ready to go I mean it's ventriloquism everywhere good morning are you ready to get the meeting started yes let's go ahead and call order just a second okay we're ready to call the meeting to order great I'll call the meeting of the Reno city council workshop on 11 one happy November and hopefully everyone is not still in a Halloween induced coma uh let's start off with the Pledge of Allegiance and you know I'd love to have Taylor Adams the new CEO of Edon who's joined us this morning lead us in the pledge right here yeah thank you so much and I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you Mr Adams welcome and thanks for allowing me to put you on the spot a little bit uh Madame clerk before we begin I just want to sort of recognize we've got a lot of interested and diverse folks in the room so it's always a privilege and an honor uh lieutenant governor Kate Marshall has joined us today always nice to see you in the room uh we've got people from a pretty ra a broad range in cross-section uh for an important topic but I'll turn it over to you madam clerk for our roll call thank you vice mayor Reese we're starting roll call council member breus absent at this time der here Martinez here eert here Taylor here Reese here shivi absent at this time vice mayor you do have a quorum of the Reno city council thank you so much let's start with public comment all right our first item today is general public comment members of the public may hear observe and provide public comment virtually by registering through the following link which can be found on reno.gov meetings https colon l i n KS period r e n o period goov sl4 4 03 capital s v v o it should be noted for those in the audience that comments are to be addressed to the mayor and Council as a whole comments heard under this item will be limited to three minutes per person and may pertain to matters both on and off the council's agenda Council may not take action upon any matter not agendized on today's agenda when you're called on for public comment please state your name for the record and begin speaking the timer will begin when you say your name and you will be afforded 3 minutes for those participating in Chambers in accordance with Council rules 6.3.1 one while in this room please be respectful disruptive behavior from audience members like clapping yelling whistling Etc which impede the meeting May result in a warning issued by the presiding officer if the behavior continues you may be removed from chambers if you're an attendee in the zoom meeting and would like to make public comment please raise your hand at this time our first public commenter is Gordon gosage followed by Barry Hall followed by Thomas Tate for the record my name is Gordon gosage of Regenesis Reno and I'm very proud we're responsible for introducing Shane to Rino and not surprisingly he's created a very actionable report a year and a half ago I wrote this article listing the 20 20 policy options adapted from the 50 policy options listed in Shane's book I recommended taking a positive regenerative approach to exploring these options Shane lists 27 primary recommendations and another 28 secondary as in my first article as in my article let's first ask our key stakeholders do you support all 27 of the primary recommendations from Shane's report if not which ones do you specifically not support as written of these how would you reward these specific recommendations to offer your support and I guess there might be neighbors who reject all 27 but I doubt it the conventional approach emphasizes rejection and boosts negative emotions of fear and anger it's degenerative to our community the regenerative process makes our community Stronger by replacing conflict with cooperation I'm certain some of the uh 27 recommendations have broad support others will obviously have supporters and opponents the positions of housing activists and the real estate industry on rent stabilization are not a mystery let's not make that the first Focus some recommendations will require input from local experts like Alicia Barber helping us understand the issues for example she mentioned the need to determine specifically what is meant by allowing byright approval of multifam infill housing except for large projects we can have subsequent meetings for those complex issues other recommendations are clearly understood it might have significantly lopsided yet very local oppositions and for example a woman uh said online I live in newans adus are not appropriate for my neighborhood but didn't we cover that in 2018 many recommendations revolve around vastly increasing density within the McCaron Loop full disclosure I strongly support these as in this article here's a few allow up to four units per parcel in single family residential zones inside the McCarron Loop eliminate minimum parking mandates Citywide upzone Parcels with maximum homes per acre from 14 to 60 people my age who've owned their homes for many years want current low density dominating by single families to continue indefinitely yet 54% of our neighbors rent we can't continue to take away housing from them it's not fair and the Seven of you should not shoulder all responsibility why don't the top employers help us it's simply because we don't provide specific requests you can't be responsible for everything look at the people in your community please ask us to help you thank you Barry Hall followed by Thomas Tate followed by Leah Sanders good morning members of the council good morning and my name is Barry Hall and before you make the decision to CH to change Reno City Zoning codes I want to encourage you and all the concerned CI cens where they Pro or con to make a visit to the Carlin neighborhood or the neighborhood known as Carin uh Carin Street and six streets between Elgen and stoker near the uh CVS and the new car wash that is uh being constructed on 7th Street Carin street is a res residential street with single family homes duplexes triplexes and apartments there you will be able to get a glimpse of what renal will look like if you change the zoning laws Sixth Street is part of the neighbor six Street in Carin um it is very crowded and the street is overflowing with vehicles many buildings are in need of uh attention I'd like to show you a photograph on the corner of Sixth Street in Elgen if I put it here will it how it'll take a minute for them to put it up there and just rotate it and then they'll help you to get it uh keep going keep going there you go okay um when I moved to Reno nine years ago this is what the property looked like I took this Photograph yesterday it's been like this for nine years it's not in my neighborhood or I would have taken action I don't know why it's been allowed to be such a blight on the community many of you might be familiar with the broken windows theory of police work when small problems are not taken care of in a community it's a signal to criminals that folks in the neighborhood are not paying attention or don't care that might explain why the Carland neighborhood is a major crime area in Reno according to the police officer with whom I spoke um the Reno PD police officer when you visit six Street in Carin try to imagine your own neighborhood and ask yourself if this is what you want for Reno uh crowded street that looks like a parking lot at night with vehicles parked on every inch of the street with garbage cans overflowing dumpsters in the front of apartment buildings um I think a good compromise would be to allow older established neighborhoods to keep the current soing codes and all new construction allow for the changes you proposing that way the buyer knows what they are agreeing to when they purchase their home I also want to remind you remind the council that if few years ago when this subject was being debated a presentation by the fire department said it would be very difficult if not impossible to get equipment to the back of properties such as the older homes in the old Northwest please take that into consideration when you make your decision thank you Thomas Tate followed by Leah Sanders followed by Bill Miller good morning I'm Tom Tade I live in the Newland Manor subdivision of the Newland historical district of Ward one I'm here today to oppose adus this seems like deja vu all over again about five years ago I stood here and argued against adus fortunately the coun rejected the proposal Now We're Here Again discussing the same thing it's like an unkillable zombie in a bad horror movie that keeps coming back it's time we put a wooden Stak through its heart and get rid of this bad idea forever yes I know the wooden Stakes are for vampires and not zombies but I don't fear imaginary creatures I do fear bad land use planning adus are appealing because they appear to be free no infrastructure is required just a relatively inexpensive building and cheap affordable H housing becomes available just rubber stamps some simple plans and H housing magically appears this simplistic view ignores hidden costs I live in a house over 90 years old and most of the houses north of me are older the house originally had knob and tube wiring their sewer system is old and occasionally backs up what could possibly go wrong if we added hundreds of new residences electrical distribution and Sewer are especially hard to upgrade because they run behind the houses uh in an area with masonry walls and old trees cost for improvements would pass to all the rate payers or owners of the area not the Adu Builders lack of planning is expensive adus only work if a negligibly small number of them are built this means that they can never be a significant uh contributor to new housing why risk major cost and disruption for little gain I believe that the best place to raise a family is a neighborhood of owner occupied single family detached houses many people in the San Francisco Bay Area seem to agree with me since they endure brutal and crazy commutes in order to provide this for their families single family zoning is a promise from the city that the neighborhood will not be densified with apartment buildings and adus changing zoning can destroy neighborhoods and breaks the promise to homeowners many new developments have CC andrs that prevent multif family use but older developments typically do not it's not fair to oppose adus only on Old established neighborhoods I've read the report by Mr Phillips and have some comments about that but I'll defer those to after his presentation uh expect something from in writing from me within a few days I urge you to reject allowing adus in single families owned areas it was a bad idea five years ago and it's still a bad idea Leah Sanders followed by Bill Miller followed by Bill shrimp good morning um city council my name is Leah Sanders it's it's been some years since I've been to a council meeting um though I've submitted comments on this and that via email forgive me if I'm a bit nervous I attended the informative meeting clearly presented by Angela fuss and her and her staff to explain the clean up of the text of the code cleaning up conflicting or inconsistent inconsistent regulations grammatical errors unintended statements seemed normal from the invitation until I listened to the more substantive changes embedded there I am in favor of Corrections I'm also looking for the ways the public can be informed better about surprise changes my concern is that I'm unsure of the priorities and Unsure how the code has been doing so far in the housing market do we have feedback on what has been constructed have the people who need low price housing been surveyed about its success for them those questions reflect the confusion I have about where there is a need to make more units easier to build with bonuses before the public knows what the code has been doing in the past these are my points please be honest with the citizens this is not just a cleanup of the code but new items if you're going to make changes please be transparent about about them other than email maybe the rgj maybe next store perhaps there will be an opportunity for more interaction with Mr Phillips your consultant from California it is scary to learn the administrative review will circumvent public com comment on property of a 100 units or less the term staff used HUD affordable housing market rate Workforce appear to be interchangeable to them and very unclear to me where will the public be able to give voice on Project sizes that affect them density bonus affordable housing by right without a hearing and other projects seem to be in progress what comes first Reno is a unique City not a Las Vegas or New York not Los Angeles or San Francisco we have a wonderful natural environment to enhance as well as an evolving cityscape I believe that interaction with the public can create cons consensus rather than the animosity of having things put on them dialogue and clear information are important the hearing process should be welcomed not eliminated for example you might be heading toward permitting adus without constraints of short-term housing limits the community may have an idea you haven't considered please put the public in decisions about our city thank you Bill Miller followed by Bill shrimp followed by Rob Fitzgerald good morning morning morning Mr vice mayor and councel I'm Bill Miller um citizen activist uh on climate change and the first thing I want to do is acknowledge you for the many Forward Thinking efforts that you have made uh to help mitigate this crisis in our town bring down the temperatures with trees uh and and other actions and I'm here to encourage you to continue doing that with uh my group of like shirted friends and in terms of affordable housing I would encourage you also to consider restricting no gas lines so that it's electric only and solar panels now even though that adds a little to the cost the buyer has no power bill so it it's a wash and we win as far as the atmosphere so thank you again uh for all the work that you're doing and just here to encourage you to do more thanks Mr Miller thank you for your positive POS comments it's very easy because we've got a great Champion for the environment Miss doer uh who has really pushed us all to be better so we're very fortunate Bill shrimp followed by Rob Fitzgerald followed by Tony harsh Mr Shrimp welcome good morning hello good morning my name is Bill shrimp as always good morning thank you guys for being here and doing this job I act really do appreciate you guys doing it so thank you uh today is part of di deos mortos it's a time to recall the memories of those who are no longer with us memories do tend to fade over time so I encourage all of you in this building uh to find some time if five couple minutes today to remember those who have passed maybe find an old picture and light a candle keep those memories alive Reno has a good problem it is a great place to live it's still affordable by by many measures but trending in the wrong direction so I'm happy to see the council is taking a serious look at this topic I didn't see anything about housing in the NAB no press releases no calls to actions no surveys nothing yet I guess there was some of it in the in the code cleanup but nothing that said hey housing as part of your direction to staff today uh I'm super excited to see how the city will encourage engagement with the public on this topic going forward so thank you very much have a good day great comments Bill Rob Fitzgerald followed by Tony harsh followed by Travis Sandifer I just want to start by saying what you are doing and attempting to do is really helpful as a builder I'm the one who's providing new housing um easing up on some code issues and cleaning up very helpful very appreciated uh housing's a tricky subject when it comes to affordability because the harder it is to get permits and the more expensive it is at the bureaucratic level obviously the less affordable the housing or the less of it which is the same thing uh I think a lot of people in some existing neighborhoods where you're proposing adus may not realize with or without adus the densities and the number of families living in their neighborhoods is increasing I'm not saying adus are the answer frankly they actually compete with me so the more adus the less buyers come to my neighborhood or less renters come to my new product so I'm not advocating one way or another but it is something to think about because adus are a solution but there are consequences I'm not here to speak two or four or against them but should be considered whilst thinking about them uh your efforts in increasing density in areas where it's very easy to do and not cont not overly controversial is great parking reduction I think that also is helpful because parking takes up a lot of land land takes up a lot of housing um I didn't come with a big prepare speech I was just thinking I'd sit here and listen but uh I just want to get out there there are consequences don't and I I just suggest there's the real consequences I don't think those are on the agenda here be careful occlusion housing rent control those things have real serious potential long-term consequences in terms of providing housing because they can ultimately impede it being done anyway appreciate it good work I'm going to hang around for a while hear how it really is you know what the real you know what the actual details in the agendas are I think you guys are doing out extraordinary work glad I'm on this side of the podium I don't envy you trying to make these decisions because they're tough thank you Tony harsh followed by Travis Sandifer followed by Donna Keats council member always welcome to have you in Chambers thank you so much Tony harsh for the record I am coming to you from ground Central Halloween so debate we don't know if we had 2,000 3,000 or 4,000 trick-or-treaters Up For Debate um I personally was out there from 4:00 to 7:30 and saw a lot of neighbors thank you so much for closing down those three streets it makes it's so much fun and so safe so thank you thank you very much um I'm here as usual to talk about process so process process process um I feel like I've been talking about that for 25 years I think I have on one side or the other side of the podium um just as we go through this I want to um refer you back to your nabs um back to Neighborhood plans I don't know where neighbor neighborhood plants fit in this um they were created a long time ago I think might be wise to look at them again back into the real where the neighborhoods are now open that up if we're still using neighborhood plants um also what is coming out of your town hall meetings um that you have and then uh what's discussed at your retreat so those were extremely valuable um parts of the process and um just curious about those as well thank you very much that's it Travis Sandifer followed by Donna Keats good morning Travis Sandifer I'm representing vaa and Northern Nevada um just wanted to take a minute um given the topic for today um to both thank you and remind you about the high impact that you've had in affordable housing on a couple of our projects um The Village at Sage Street you know about it it's got about 200 units and I want to remind you that it's changing lives we've had 440 move outs those folks almost all of them end up in fair market value housing this gives people a chance to get back on their feet build credit and save some money um so it's it's truly having an impact and I have a quote from one of our our residents there he said almost a year ago I found myself homeless I got evicted from my apartment everything about this place I like the room is the perfect size for me right now I've been trying to save up a bit this is probably one of the best places I have ever lived in I know it's not a regular apartment but it's a good place it's it's changing lives and you guys talk is cheap but you all have committed and invested and taken risks with us so I want to thank you for vaa and on behalf of the community and the other project that we're in the midst of is the highway 40 project and so we talked to you all about that and it's a partnership with Northern Nevada Mental Health Services to provide housing mayor I sat at a mental health conference that you spoke at and that was deeply touching and to see this community investing and housing for that population means the world to me so thank you for doing that that property is going to be Sensational we are working with Architects with uh contractors right now in that selection process and we're going to make that a trauma and form design campus um and it's going to be a resource to this community for 30 years and and years to come thank you so much thank you for all you're doing thank you Donna Keats good morning for the record my name is Donna Keats resident of Reno spoken to many of you many many times under many circumstances so I again am talking about process I have many many things to say in support of a lot of things that you're doing this is my general public comment about process um this confounding text amendments with code cleanups is going to backfire on the back end I think I have think there's a better way to do this um I've I went to all your meetings along the way I never actually saw Council say oh you're giving us another list which is the order that this list should should be in so leave it to staff okay so they do what they can they have a lot of things in here that they call lwh hanging fruit those are the same things that were quote loow hanging fruit for the two years we were back and forth public meetings about Title 18 like the density bonuses all those things administrative leeway taking away public or board comments on things in order to facilitate rushing things to development now in the next last two years did they work why do we need to do more of the same if they didn't work maybe that isn't the answer which is what's proposed here so you've now got a thing in front of you where staff has already gone so far with what they've doing they've already tied it into the quote code amendment when it's actually an initiative about housing that belongs as a text Amendment so these things are all wound in together and it's very disconcerting um to me having gone to all these meetings then to find out oh you're going to change the very nature of single family family housing is that going to happen in your neighborhood or just mine it's really hard to know that's where you get the fights on the back end so these are the things that you really want to push forward I'm suggesting that there's a better way to approach the public and a better way to do this instead of wrapping it into a code amendment that makes it appear like you're doing a backdoor route to densification when really you have a Housing Initiative that was never spelled out as exactly that or put on a priority item and I did attend the housing worksh shops also the question was is there anything staff's question for your motion was is there anything on this list that you want to take off and then Council discussed a lot of things and as always it was approved as a bundle nobody took anything off the list but the actual motion if you go back and listen to the tape the actual motion was to come back to council with details about all of these things and then at that point you'd pick right that didn't happen that was back a year ago or more that didn't happen so now all of a sudden these things are wrapped into the code cleanup they're not cleanup items they're amendments they're part of initiatives and I'd like to ask you today to actually give direction about what your priorities are separating affordable housing in the technical Federal definition versus things that people who live here can't afford those are different things they shouldn't be put together because you can't just say let's just bypass public process on everything up to 100 units because heck we need more houses that's a disservice to the people who already live here so separate them please and give specific Direction that's what I'd like to see than Donna I read your letter last night thank you thank you hello Madam mayor so for with that we have no additional public comment in the room additionally no hands are raised via Zoom so for the record we did receive 11 comments which were General in nature or not directly associated with an agenda item prior to 400 p.m. yesterday Yer October 31st 2023 these comments were voicemail and or written correspondence received via our reno.gov online public comment form or by email to our office and copies of these have been distributed to the Reno city council and are available on available to the public on reno.gov zero in favor five in opposition and six letters of concern with that we are closing opening public comment A3 and moving on to item A4 approval of the agenda all right thank you so much may I get a motion to approve motion to approve Madam mayor I'll second with the Proviso I understand that you will take some items out of order because at least one item B5 is was printed out of order exactly so we'll go to B5 right after this looks like correct thank you so much Madam mayor on my second stand so I have a motion and a second all those in favor say I all those opposed motion carries unanimously all right Madame clerk looks like we're going to go into item B5 we are from Monica Cochran oh Monica new last name Monica what is it kch kch KT we got to get used to that me too okay nice to see you this morning good to see you oops we're missing did Mickey did you get the new slide deck from Christy this morning there was a error this morning okay well we'll just start without the intro slide there's a nice pretty slide before this one so we'll ignore this one um good morning council members Madame mayor uh city manager Thornley Monica Cochran kch for the record see I had to get used to it also uh today I'm here to give you some fiscal year Department updates and a brief housing overview to start off the meeting now we'll go into this slide uh for a refresher our mission in hand is to create viable living environments for low to moderate income individuals and families we accomplish this through a variety of goals which are not all related to affordable housing some examples of some other activities that we do this through are Community cleanups improvements Community facilities parks and accessibility um uh improvements throughout the city we work towards accomplishing our mission through a variety of goals which also align with regional goals uh as you can see three of our goals are directly related to housing goals one two and four are in intended to create more units preserve the affordable units that we have and keep folks stably housed last fiscal year six projects totaling 565 units were approved through the Washo County Home Consortium which the City of Reno is the lead for and three projects were approved through Council utilizing arpa funds uh totaling 130 new affordable units these included uh Dick Scott which is a veterans facility uh Village 2.0 and Highway 40 which you heard about during public comment however I think it's really worth noting and very important to say that since 2017 Council has taken action that has resulted in another 2827 affordable units that's almost 3,000 new affordable units since 2017 from your actions uh as we know we need all housing types um more housing of all types will take the pressure off the market at different price points which will ultimately benefit our low-income residents and allow folks to move along the housing Continuum so I thought it was important to also show the residential certificate of occupancy um that were issued last fiscal year as you can see there was a combination of single family and residential or single family and multif family projects which resulted in CFOs for another 265 units these are all housing types this slide lists all of the affordable units in the region and I think it just gives us a visual of the inventory uh all of the units listed here total uh over 8,400 units with 7345 Bean in the City of Reno which is 87% of the H affordable housing in the region being within the City of Reno city limits how do we do this because we're amazing um the city again is the lead of the Washo County Home excuse me waso County Home Consortium which is charged with the administration of the affordable housing Municipal Loan program this utilizes Federal home funds and state housing trust funds these funds are allocated through an annual competitive cycle um with that application actually being released today um it's also uh exciting that this year is the first year that these will be submitted electronically uh when we transferred our rental assistance program over into um an electronic portal we've been working over the last couple years to get some of our other programs into the same portal so uh now they will be submitted that way and we won't be re receiving binders that are about 8 in thick they will all be virtually so that's super um exciting for staff um in addition to these funds the City offers other resources to help these projects pencil we offer sewer and building permit subsidies last year alone this totaled 4.4 or excuse me 4 million and since its Inception in 2020 has contributed to approximately 1,400 units the city also off allocates its volume cap to affordable housing uh which was approximately 16 million last year and hovers usually somewhere in that4 to16 million range in addition we offer density bonuses and parking reduction for affordable developments the city has had a rental assistance program for many years which was greatly expanded during the pandemic pre pandemic we typically uh provided about $600,000 in ass in assistance however once we pivoted away from Sheltering operations and we're really able to focus more on affordable housing we uh were able to enhance this program and provide more resources including additional staff report so just last year alone we were able to assist over 1,400 households totaling $4.4 million in assistance this goal is directly tied to goal number two which is keeping folks stably housed and we do not want folks uh losing their place and then experiencing homelessness as you can see we provide assistance regionally in Reno Sparks and Washo County these slide this slide shows the breakdown for the last fiso year and together totals uh the amounts that I listed on the previous slide so I I also think it's worth noting that so far this year uh for the first quarter we have assisted over 250 households that's just from July to September so we are on track again to uh help is probably the same amount of households this year so I just wanted sorry I just wanted to take a little bit of time and bring up some some items that I pulled out of the uh 2022 Nevada housing progress report these call out the efforts and progress by the City of Reno so I would just like to read a few uh there were more but I thought these ones were a good representation compared to other jurisdictions throughout the state of or the state of Nevada the city has emerged as having the most affordable units in the pipeline that's this progress report is compared to all jurisdictions across the state we had the strongest EXC repeat that compared to other jurisdictions throughout the state the city emerged as having the most affordable units in the pipeline we've also had the strongest level of assistance and affordable units compared to need and we also had the strongest level of support for very lwi income residents this is super exciting this is I mean this is compared to all of our other the other jurisdictions uh across the state you know this is really great and and all of the efforts I previously discussed are showing that we are a leader in this space but these percentages still show a lot of need and a huge gap so I'm going to go over a brief overview of housing locally before I turn over the presentation uh first just to make sure we're all on the same page I just wanted to go over some definitions um for the purpose of this presentation a dwelling unit includes all housing types whether it's multifamily single family housing affordability is the extent that residents can rent or purchase a home without being housing burdened affordable housing is that excuse me is housing that is Affordable to those at 60% or less than Ami and this is a calculation uh by Hud a housing burden is housing is households that are paying more than 30% of their income towards their housing cost this includes rent ERS and owners so again housing that is Affordable in scenarios where is Affordable in scenarios where folks aren't paying more than 30% of their income towards housing costs if they are they are considered to be housing burden and the particular unit that they are residing in is not affordable to them this slide shows a current snapshot in our area so the the current Ami again from HUD and this is for a family of four is $14,400 this would be uh as with Hud's calculation 5934 for a 60% Ami unit the family size this family size would typically live in a three-bedroom so those are the examples that we've provided here as you can see a market rate unit in the City of Reno is about $2,300 and an affordable unit uh a 60% unit would be about $1,543 to a family in that income range so our current inventory in the City of Reno is a little over 120,000 units of which approximately 7600 are considered affordable according to the state of Nevada 202 2 housing progress report we need a total of 28,8 15 addition or excuse me affordable units which leaves additional need of a little over 21,000 units needed these amounts are determined by an analysis of households that are experiencing one or more housing problems a housing problem is considered if they are housing burdened if they don't have a kitchen adequate Plumbing overcrowding doubling up things like that that's what's taken into account to come up with the co the PO the calculation that we need a total of 28,8 affordable units within the city within the region the City of Reno has 87% of all affordable housing Sparks has approximately 1,00 units and currently there are no units in the unincorporated Washo County however I'm very happy uh to let you know that in Washo County they have broken ground on their first affordable housing unit which is The Ridge at Sun Valley and it will be nearly 200 units for households at 60% and Below Ami several units at the 50% level here's an example of home ownership in our region um and what this looks like as of September of this year the average home price was $610,000 what this would mean in a scenario where a buyer put 10% down with current current interest rates hovering around 8% they would need to make approximately $161,000 to afford to buy an average home in this area which is considerably higher than our area median income so how did we get here we have a perfect storm of a variety of things that have happened of course we had the pandemic uh with high unemployment slow return to work we have low inventory uh rents were Rising investment properties were were being brought up or bought up by investors and taking out of the market for you know new home buyers we have high interest rates and uh High raw materials just to give you some examples of the increase in raw materials concrete has increased by 43% Lumber by 35% and Steel by 94% and just to give you what this kind of all ties together and looks like with a per perfect bow or unperfect bow I guess as that in 2017 it cost about $215,000 per door to build an affordable housing unit and today it costs approximately $35,000 for that same unit so what's happening um because of this perfect storm fewer residents with making the median income can afford to purchase a home housing prices are rising faster than median income as you can see um from this chart about a year and a half ago 38% 38.8% of those households could purchase a home with median income and now in 2023 19.8 of those households can purchase a home this is compared to the national average of 40% so signif significantly less than the NA national average um so we're continuing to see a decline in opportunity to purchase a home with median income what we're also seeing because of the scenario is that households that are renting are more cost burden this has in increased by 14% since 2018 almost 60% of renters in 2022 are cost burdened compared to 45.7% back in 2018 and the gap between renters and owners that are cost burden has also significantly um increased so just a recap we need more units more units of all type entrylevel homes are unattainable entry-level homes allow residents to clim the housing ladder traditional home buyers are unable to purchase due to interest rates and home cost which has an impact on creating generational wealth renters are suffering cost of living has increased the um the cost Burness of renters and owners has increased between 21 and 22 and renters are spending more than 30% of their income on housing as we can see we need all types of Housing and that is all I have for you before I pass it along to the next presenter unless there are any questions for the background really appreciate that um just to remind everyone this is the problem all across the country yes um actually um in other in other countries as well um I was just reading a whole um white paper on that there there's another story here too because I hear it a lot um outside and that's on the the building aspect I know you didn't include any of that I think uh Dan Morgan is here I would just love for you to weigh in on the building side and just some of the challenges that you've seen because we continue to hear the material are expensive and so there's a there's you know not just this capacity challenge but there's other challenges um that aren't included in this and I don't know maybe Dan you want to talk just a little bit about what your industry is seeing because you know noticing on how did we get here the other thing is that we don't talk a lot about but Reno um Boise um Phoenix they're all breakout cities um a lot of people in the pandemic said we want to live where there's a great quality of life and so we really saw um a lot of people moving here and building and investing here so we became incredibly attractive um so you know that poses obviously some um advantages and some challenges at the same time Dan would you just come and just give us a couple minutes of sort of your industry because I I think we saw a picture picture on that side but I think there's another um you know side to things that people never hear about good morning Madam mayor good morning thank you for putting me on the spot um sorry about that yeah you just touched on something that's really interesting and if you look at the Inner Mountain West of the United States Post pandemic we've seen a lot of growth and a lot of people Lo leaving large Urban metropolitan areas and wanting to migrate for lack of a better term to the Mountain West uh in combination with that you know we've seen a significant increase and cost from everything from materials to supply land costs have continued to grow labor costs are very significant and the the availability of Trades uh specifically in Northern Nevada is is a great challenge to a number of our Builders so it's I really don't like this word because I think it's very cliche but it really is a perfect storm uh throughout Northern Nevada and throughout the Northwest portion of the state and Southern Nevada is suffering from some of the same problems but you know a lot of headwinds a lot of headwinds and we've got some very dedicated Builders and and developers throughout this region that you know their whole purpose in life is to provide a home for a family and they're doing every we are doing everything we can part of the reason why we've got a pretty good turnout here today is to listen and to learn you know what you all are thinking about and how we can assist you and how the Builders Association and the builders in the region and developers can assist you and let's develop some Innovative policy Innovative approach to how do we provide families with homes well thank you did that answer that yeah I appreciate the background because I think like I said there's another story there that a lot of people don't hear about and the other thing is um the workforce the the workforce is a big Challenge and you know that's it's a challenge across Industries and I wish Taylor were still here and he could talk about a little bit from the economic development perspective he and I have had a number of conversations about that both on his work force development side and to making sure that uh you know our Builders have good quality well-trained trades people to build those homes all right well I appreciate you absolutely thank you sorry sorry for that all right Monica great job thank you so much all right Madame mayor at this time we're going move back to item B1 boy one and we do have public comment on this item okay fantastic our first public commenter is Bill shrimp followed by Mery beckan hello good morning again Bill shrimp um thanks for taking B5 first I think that was a great report um it really puts a lets us know what we're talking about today and the challenges um the report you're about to read uh and get a presentation on Shane Phillips the author uh although I appreciate his work thought input uh and it's important to have academics involved in the conversation because they are often less constrained in their ideas and thoughts than many of us may otherwise be as a that as an academic only he has never actually ran anything other than an academic research unit in University from what I can find he has zero Real World Experience he is however an excellent researcher and has some excellent ideas While others can only be chocked up to something that an academic not living in the impact area might come up with bottom line please don't take this report is Gospel he does have some very valuable insight and novel ideas but again he's not a practitioner and one thing from his report that I do think he got completely correct and I quote Reno officials in partnership with residents businesses Civic organizations are faced with the opportunity to LEAP ahead of peers taking action boldly in proportion to the challenges before them end quote I'm excited to see what that engagement looks like thank you thanks Bill Mary K beckan followed by Donna Keats good morning I'm Mar beckin I live in Pleasant Valley which is currently in the Reno sphere of influence and subject to rapidly encroaching annexation I also own rental properties in Reno proper and I have some comments today about attempts to increase the access to this quote affordable housing you guys run these a little differ because normally we have the staff in was County we have the staff presenting the whole report so everybody's just seeing what they're talking about so I hope the you can follow where I'm making on my little comment here um um the my understanding of be one is that it's the issue on uh compensating Developers for infrastructure requirements that portion I hope that's correct um it seems odd to me to want to compensate Developers for infrastructure requirements why should developers be paid for providing infrastructure that their money-making projects require while existing residents may also benefit from the improvements perhaps that is compensation for now being surrounded by new dense housing this action would seem to me to reduce green space with in the city and would not be something that the people in those communities would that would enhance their uh living situations and their enjoyment of our city thank you thank you Donna Keats hi it's me again Donna ke Reno resident um I didn't realize you were doing public comments before we heard the presentation so I don't have any details outline but this goes I do have comments from what I saw in the staff report that says there's no recent Council action relevant to this item I find that kind of curious because this also this list of things in process ton of them are in your code clean up they not things that don't you know there's a whole app can you adjust the microphone it moves all the way around like this it okay where do you want it can you hear me anywhere we can hear you I yeah it I don't know where can you hear me here that's great it's getting better yeah but this moves anywhere you want it to go yes but I don't know where you need it to be that's my problem closer that's great is this all right yeah much better can I have my minute back yep okay thank you anyway okay so on the staff report for item B1 probably half of the things in here are in your zoning code cleanup which makes it not be no prior Council relevant action it's the apples and oranges problem that you've got going here and I read through the Consultants report there are a ton of really great things in there that could be really useful and a lot of them are things that have come up and never come to fruition in terms of your priorities on your Council like deal better with your infrastructure we've had a proposals downtown area Midtown area where the complexes couldn't be built because of the rotting sewer lines okay so we're talking about let's go mash a ton of things here and make these things be three to five stories tall in Midtown because we're going to change the zoning code we don't have the infrastructure to support it we're going to have more people coming in reporting a fail because our downtown infill area can't support what we're trying to do with it so I think some of the stuff all the stuff is on the list as kind of a justification for lwh hanging fruit code cleanups where it doesn't belong it's really an initiative but if you go through the details of that report the things that are not on here there are some very good recommendations about funding where to start infrastructure um fee structures lots of things like that that from my reading this report seem to be really good places for you to start because right now you're just like throwing things on the wall let's give we only gave them 45% bonus increases for for over 60% let's give them 80% and let's add a line so that density increases don't count towards Hillside development um density limits which is in your code cleanup uh why do you have Hillside development I mean there's a lot of strange things going on here in the background and if you need to go do a priority list look at your infrastructure look at what we're really talking about and I can also say as an aside not on this item You' get a heck of a lot more support if these things were actually truly Citywide projects because you just run up in so much resistance because you're trying to slam it all in the same place everywhere where you don't actually have the I had the orange pipe that collapsed everybody does who lives down there you you got to deal with this and there are some things in this report that are that I think would be helpful to consider not the list of easiest fixes that you're being presented with today as if you've never heard these things before because you have and you haven't prioritized them so that's my off-the-cuff comment about item D1 I thought I would hear the presentation first but it's okay all right thanks all right Madame mayor we do not have any hands raised in zoom and so that we're going to close public comment for the record I would like to note that we did receive one comment directly associated with this agenda item prior to 4 p.m. yesterday um and it was one letter in opposition that has been distributed to the Reno city council and is a part of the permanent record so our presenter on this item is Angela fous all right good morning Angela good morning thank you Madame mayor members of the council Angela fous assistant director with development services it is my pleasure today to introduce our next speaker Shane Phillips for those of you who have not heard of Shane Phillips he wrote a book called The affordable cities that The affordable cities looks at cities Across the Nation and it looks at the housing crisis everything from the the high cost of housing and also the instability of housing that we see these are some of the things that Monica touched on um that are unique to to Rino but also again something that other cities are dealing with outside of writing that book He's also uh involved in a a program called the housing initiative this is a program out of UCLA where they do research and and strategies to come up with ideas for how we can deal with these kinds of issues whether it's finding um other ways for developers to to finance their projects or for cities to finance their infrastructure also looking at some zoning regulations so these are things that he studies with his team all day every day so it is with my great pleasure that I get to um introduce Shane but I also want to take a step back and and tell you why we brought into the City of Reno so it was about a year ago we had had two housing workshops with Council and and we were saying well are we doing enough are we moving that needle enough you know there's many things we could be doing but what should we be doing so we reached out to Shane and said can you come as really an outsider take a look at our city start with the regional plan policies start with our reimagine R Master Plan policies that talk about infill and talk about density we also wanted to look at our zoning code again there's lots of things we are currently doing doing but can we be doing more we also had him go a step further we had a meet with staff and we had a meet with developers and he could had conversations to say developers what are you seeing as barriers to housing whether it's staff not processing your entitlements fast enough uh whether it's building permits taking too long whether it's the the high uh you know inflated cost of of Supply um so he he really went above and beyond not just looking at our policies and our regulations but asking the folks that are building the housing what can we as a City of Reno do to be to be better and to help them so the product then is a 70-page report and again our direction to Shane was think outside of the box look at other cities look at other jurisdictions but also make it Reno focused don't copy and paste what Cincinnati is doing or what Boise is doing look at Reno and look at our needs and help us come up with some solutions so that's how we got to where we're at today again um Shane has about a 15-minute presentation there there's no formal um direction that you need to give Shane we're hoping that you can ask him questions get some feedback from him and then next I'll come up and present about some of the things that we're currently doing to support some of the initiatives that Shane is bringing up in his presentation thank you thank you so much Angela and we're um excited to meet Shane we're excited to see your presentation I really appreciate you doing this because I think it's important to have a different set of eyes and a lot of times also you know it seems like we can't do anything right um whether we're building or we're not building both sides hate us right and so it's really nice to have a different perspective and maybe we are doing everything wrong um and I think it's important that we look at ourselves but having someone on the outside look in um is a lot more beneficial because I think a lot of the times unfortunately staff also um sort of gets incredibly criticized uh whenever we're dealing with this issue so um and I know that sometimes it can be polarizing but I I think it just makes such a world of difference when you have someone um that's not biased or doesn't work for the city so I appreciate you being um forward thinking thank you thank you please join me in giving Shan a warm welcome to Reno thank you for being here thank you for being here yeah thank you um am I in the right place here I think you are it moves anywhere you want it to be so I here all right well Madame mayor council members it is really a pleasure to be here and to share a little bit of the work that I've been doing over the past year um I'm gonna jump right in here and uh just you know quickly show you an outline of the report and really just draw your attention to a couple sections here which is the challenges um the kind of the barriers to affordability and the recommendations that's the it's the meat of the report and it's going to be the focus of my presentation before you do that do me a kindness um we've not met before and one of the speakers sort of I think impune that academics were not someone to place our trust in so I'd just like you to share a little bit about your background because I've read it I know what it is ex it's extensive certainly isn't all academic we have a a I think a tendency as human beings that sometimes when we don't like um what the message is then the issue is take issue with the bringer of the message or we denigrate intellectuals over persons who have some kind of experience in the field you seem to have both of those so might you share a little bit about your background with us sure sure uh yeah and I appreciate that uh so I don't really know where to start I've actually done a lot of non academic things I didn't uh kind of shift into even urban planning until my mid-20s uh worked as a a cable installer for a couple years for Comcast worked at UPS as a loader and a Sorter and then a supervisor for a few more years uh those aren't super relevant but uh it's it's experience for sure uh delivered pizzas when I was in school um but I went back to school got my uh Bachelor's in Biochemistry uh was planning to go to medical school but uh while working in a research lab like a tuberculosis research lab ended up kind of developing an interest in cities because I just moved to Seattle from living my whole life in the suburbs and uh that's sort of what motivated ated me to start thinking about urban planning and that's how I ended up in Los Angeles through grad school and since living in Los Angeles you know I started out as an intern in City Hall for a year then I worked for a a a nonprofit consultant for another two and a half years including past graduation then I worked for a downtown LA uh business and Civic advocacy Organization for another two and a half years and I've been at UCLA for about four years so I've only been technically an academic for uh four years or so and uh but it's been a lot of fun in part because I get to do stuff like this and I get to kind of throw everything out there and not have to restrain myself quite as much I represent really only myself and so I can you know put out the the kind of controversial ideas that I think are what is actually necessary uh and I can take the criticism but it won't cost me my job so that's okay no I appreciate that and I I think your colleagues at UCLA probably don't hold it against you that you are a USC grad yes yes you know fight on I've been all over the Pack 12 which is no more uh yeah my undergraduates University of Washington as well I'll take I'll take the they're paying me though you know UCLA go UCLA all right well um so yeah and feel free to interrupt with questions and of course I'm happy to answer any at the end of it too um but I want to just give a little bit of the approach to this first which is you know first off this is really about identifying high level barriers to affordability and then opportunities for reform and emphasizing local action to the extent possible uh this is by no means exhaustive but it is fairly thorough uh I also you know especially based on some of the comments I heard I want to I want to make sure folks understand that like these are recommendations I don't anticipate all of them being implemented I don't uh even if they were they certainly would not be implemented immediately or exactly as I've written them so it's really intended to be uh guidance first and foremost and and and thoughts things to think about as you do this work uh and develop context sensitive uh Solutions so I also want to be uh you know transparent that uh you know I live in Los Angeles and I think people have associations with that which are mostly correct uh and I'm not here to tell you to be more like Los Angeles uh I study places all over the country uh on the academic side and just kind of the real world example side and if anything my like greatest lesson from Los Angeles and California is what not to do and so I am here to kind of help you or hopefully help you avoid making a lot of the same mistakes which really boil down to let's just sprawl out forever until there's no land left over and then what then we have no answer for what comes next so uh those of you who have gone through the report will notice that there's really heavy heavy emphasis on uh infill housing Supply um and housing Supply generally but especially INF Phil and I want to just kind of give some reasons for that so one is just that housing is never affordable in places where it is in short supply um it is not the only thing that matters for affordability but it is a necessary ingredient for affordability um the Reno city government also just has a lot more authority over Supply in terms of enabling it you know the production of housing than it does over stability policies like rent stabilization because of Dylan's rule um and subsidy policies which are important but you know cities can only achieve so much and a lot of that money ultimately needs to come from the state and federal government infill housing is also just more affordable by design it is has lower land costs the units tend to be uh smaller on average and just more diverse in their in their size generally um and I'll also add that in this report and just in a lot of my work I placed a real emphasis on smaller scale in Bill housing and we'll get into that in a little bit later um my notes are kind of the wrong size here lastly infill supports a lot of the goals that are outlined in the reimagine Reno master plan um from Mobility to transportation to health to budget resiliency it is it is complimentary to all of these goals and is you know specifically highlighted as a priority I also want to be sure to acknowledge that you know compared to many other cities especially in the western part of the us the City of Reno has done a pretty good job of building housing um it it builds a lot in some ways it is just a victim of its own success because it has increased its jobs even faster it and housing has not kept up so over the past five uh I think from what I got 2017 to 2022 jobs increased by 13.3% and the housing stock increased by 10.6% might not seem like a lot but that does amount to thousands of units in deficit that was already existing that has just grown larger and coming back to infill there is an opportunity by directing this growth inward to the extent possible to for one have control over what it looks like because it's within your boundaries um but also to you know support your existing neighborhoods there are certainly costs to growth but there are of course costs to not growing as well um and not building to kind of meet future needs and so you know there's a there's way for this to work to the city's benefit for sure what could infill housing look like I always like to start with this uh image from opticos design but really you know it can take many forms I think there are very good reasons to priori prioritize those smaller buildings which can be anything from accessory dwelling units all the way up to you know three and four story apartment and condo buildings it's often called missing middle because over the past several Generations really not a lot of it has been built it's in the middle range and it is missing from our development environment from our cities um what we have tends to be things that were built you know 50 plus years ago in many cases and I should say there is also certainly a place for larger scale buildings it's just this is um kind of a sweet spot in many ways because infill missing middle housing tends to have lower land costs than single family homes but also lower per unit construction costs than larger buildings so uh from the affordability perspective There's real advantages there just a few more examples I feel like it's useful just to show you know what this can look like so here on the left is a Cottage Court these are from all over the country not from Marino specifically just just so folks are aware um these can be you know Cottage Court Bungalow Court they're different designs on the right are kind of more modern tow houses on the left here is uh kind of a more traditional mid lowrise apartment building and on the right are stacked duplexes so rather than these units being side by side you also see three-story Triplex versions of these all over the country but again most were built prior to World War II and then on this slide we have a live work building on the left with a retail on the ground floor and then a pretty typical mid-rise apartment building uh in a kind of more modern design on the right trying to show a range of Aesthetics here in these examples but they really are just examples so uh please don't interpret this as as giving you design guidance CU I am not the person to do that so getting into the two sections of the report report I mentioned um at the top barriers to affordability and recommendations I identified five big picture areas for reform and I structure my analysis and and recommendations around those so those categories are approval streamlining and Inter agency coordination incremental and missing middle infill housing production and then uh infrastructure Planning and Development fee reform and finally displacement protections and housing preservation and Zoning development and other code standards so uh I think it was Gordon who mentioned there were 27 total recommendations they're in 17 recommendation categories uh and they're distributed across all five of those uh of those categories here because we don't have a ton of time or I don't have a ton of time to present anyway um I'm going to focus on six of those recommendations which fall under four of the five categories uh within the first category I'll discuss facilitating improved we missed out there we go improved Regional and Inter agency coordination uh also in that category is adopting objective standards and byright approvals where possible next up are two recommendations in that second category which is legalizing adus and increasing allowable density in your existing lower density multif family zones third up here here apologies is uh updating the capital plan to better manage off-site infrastructure improvements and in the fourth category I'll talk about protecting the existing housing stock because I you know this is one of multiple uh that are not about building more housing but in some way protecting what we have or increasing revenues for them uh controlling runs in other ways for each of these recommendations I'll quickly summarize the challenges that I identified in the report uh the impact that those challenges have on housing affordability and other City goals and then some proposed Solutions so first up this is the one that won't get me in trouble hopefully um the city has actually a really exceptional standard to turn around the review of project proposals uh within 10 days and they consistently meet that goal uh unfortunately many non- City agencies that have uh some role in housing review or approval or connection They Don't Really share that urgency um and you know or or have as much concern for how their practices affect the cost and speed of of what get what gets built so as a consequence projects face delay and unpredictable costs um and housing is ultimately delivered more slowly and less affordably uh and sometimes not at all so the proposed recommendation here is pretty straightforward it's to start out by organizing a round table of these agencies involved in housing approvals and to try to establish some shared understanding of uh the importance of Housing and housing affordability and how their work has an impact on that um and try to identify and resolve some of the drivers of that cost and delay right next up so objective standards and byright approvals subjective standards and discretionary review where projects may be subject to disapproval even if they comply with city codes and guidelines leads to a lot of confusion and uncertainty and that's not just on the part of the builders but also the public uh the impact of that is you know again delay and costly revisions for many of these projects and it increases risk and that risk has direct implications for project feasibility even if you can't easily assign a number to it so all else equal a project with a greater risk uh of rejection or unanticipated fees or mitigation requirements will need to Target a higher income bracket uh to justify its construction and that in turn will mean fewer homes and higher prices one solution to this uh is adopting objective design and development standards which you know sometimes is referred to as a checklist approach and I'm not on the right slide I apologize um and also allowing byright or ministerial approvals as they're sometimes known for smaller and medium siiz projects I do want to be you know very clear here that uh and I emphasized this in the report as well that this does not mean there is no role for public input or for your input um instead it's what it really can do is allow the city staff and counsel to redirect their time and attention and money toward neighborhood planning and really engaging with that in a bigger and more kind of uh impactful way and then adhering to those plans once they are developed next up is legalizing accessory dwelling units so challenge here is that you know many neighborhoods prohibit any uh kind of building except single family detached housing and uh in most cases pretty much all cases single family homes are are more expensive than the Alternatives the impact there is that you know more affordable housing choices are unavailable in many locations and homeowners properties just can't adapt to their changing needs so this isn't just about other people but the homeowners themselves if they want to make space for an aging parent or an adult child if they themselves are aging and maybe want to downsize into the smaller unit um if they just want to add space or rental income I think these are justifiable goals as well my recommendation here is is legalizing adus on residential land Citywide doesn't have to be Citywide of course um but I think there are benefits to that that I discussed in the report and at the same time you know legalization itself is not always enough you do really need to have these projects be able to be permitted in a fast uh predictable and inexpensive process especially since the developers are essentially homeowners themselves they're not you know super experienced so again some some Adu examples uh kind of older style newer style few more here you know these are all one story they they can be taller they needn't be um there's a lot of choice you can make uh in terms of size setbacks all these kinds of things next up fourth recommendation of the six I'm I'm talking about here today is upzoning your lower density multif family zones so Reno zoning code is actually I think one of its strong points it's uh has a pretty sizable share of the city that is zoned for multif family housing of some kind the mf14 21 and 30 zones account for nearly 20% of parcels in the city um there are many cities in the US where 80% is just single family zoning so this is significant um and just to be clear the the names there refer to the maximum base densities of 14 units per acre 21 units per acre and 30 units per acre which uh is really only two three four times more than single family housing um the challenge is that these densities are a bit too low and in most cases they're not going to justify Redevelopment on a parcel that already has something built on it which anywhere in the middle of the city is going to be pretty much everything the result there is that you know even though many of these Parcels are right in the heart of the city um didn't mean to skip ahead sorry their densities are too low to warrant Redevelopment so a lot of valuable Urban land that is nominally for higher density housing goes underutilized and you up you end up with more pressure to grow out rather than up and so it does have impacts on on the outer neighborhoods as well so the solution I propose here is is rezoning those mf14 and 21 zones to a higher density of at least 30 units per acre and then resoning what is currently mf30 to something like 45 to 60 uh units per acre and I should note that these are you know units per acre on the parcel when you take into account roads and sidewalks and other spaces the actual density of the neighborhoods is quite a bit lower uh the mf14 I'm this is just a view of the kind of middle center of the city uh these zones exist everywhere but just to give you an idea of where they're located so these are the lower density multif family zones that account for 8% of parcel Citywide and then you've got uh a little closer in are the MF 31s these are really in many cases right up against the densest parts of your neighborhoods but they're zoned in such a way where they're probably going to stay exactly as they are fifth up updating the capital plan and infrastructure fees so the challenge that I identify in the report after conversations with a lot of different stakeholders is uh is this off-site infrastructure uh question and this is you know in many ways one of the more unique things I've identified here um these are things like rebuilding or upgrading an old sewer or water line that might serve uh an entire neighborhood as a condition of approval so requiring developers to make improvements to infrastructure is entirely reasonable I think it's important to to clarify that since their projects do put increased Demand on that infrastructure and sometimes that demand may actually exceed the capacity of what the that infrastructure was built to sustain um the challenge is not that these requirements exist but that for infield developers in particular uh the costs are both highly unpredictable and sometimes out of proportion to the impact of that project specifically so this again is a matter of risk uh where Builders really have to budget for the worst case scenario um for offsite requirements and that renders some projects that if they knew in advance how much it cost it would cost would have been feasible but instead they don't go forward um and that means not only if you were home homes and worse affordability but also less tax revenue in the future and those projects contribute nothing to the infrastructure uh that they would have otherwise done so the solution here is I think a you know it's a more challenging one there's a lot of detail in the report on how this could be approached and I think there are different ways of approaching it but I think it starts with a capital plan that has a better uh actually you know has a plan for end of life replacement uh and repair costs of your underground infrastructure in particular and then using that plan to determine what Dev valers should contribute to these improvements a key point I want to make here is that in some projects for some developers their costs would go down relative to what they pay now other for others it would go up because this is the challenge with an unpredictable process is some kind of get away with nothing providing nothing because they don't cross some sort of arbitrary threshold where others do just because of when they happen to to build their project so um the process C for this can be you know both more fair and predictable and the fees paid by developers can actually be used in different ways than they are now right now whatever infrastructure gets improved is essentially uh wherever a developer happens to propose a project and if you have the opportunity to pool These funds and actually invest in more kind of neighborhood scale projects uh not just digging up one street at a time I think there's real benefits to that lastly as I said this is not all about building more housing um you also have to preserve the housing that you've got to the extent possible and uh one way to do that is to make sure that short-term rentals are adequately regulated right now uh they're mostly unregulated in the City of Reno and when they're unregulated these Str strs can end up taking a meaningful amount of housing off of the market for long-term occupants so an impact of that is you know if short-term rentals increase over time as they have in many many places it's going to mean fewer options and higher prices for the folks who want to rent or buy here the solution I recommend here which is commonly adopted is to adopt restrictions on particularly the use of full units and units that are rented as short-term rentals year round uh the specifics I have you know discussed several but at the end of the day this is really just about ensuring that short-term rentals are not more lucrative than renting a unit for a long-term occupant so that is all I wanted to share I apologize I've been skipping this one but not that one this was the short-term rentals um that is all I wanted to share uh just leaving it on this slide for some kind of reminders of what we discussed but happy to take any questions from here on thank you Shane thank you so much great presentation I can't wait to dive into the rest of um the identifiers I'm curious I know with the short-term rentals you see often times um I think in other cities a code that says they must be occupied 30 days or longer is that typically how you're seeing cities deal with that challenge because that is a really big concern that is one way the the more common way I've actually seen has been to just say you cannot rent them for more than 120 days 180 days some amount of days uh that basically makes it you know less profitable because it's a lot more work to run a short-term rental and if you're not making more money people are just going to rent them you know or sell them to someone who wants to occupy them sure um and out of curiosity how many cities do you think you've studied oh I mean I'm not seeking out specific cities at any given time but I've looked at policies from hundreds for sure hundreds yeah MH and uh I'm just a little curious if you had to grade Reno where would we be give us a grade well I I should say no one gets an a like no city is doing a great amazing job on everything that means you're you're tough I like that yeah yeah I'm not grading on a curve I guess uh probably a c but I would say 80% of cities are between a a d and a c or actually probably 30 plus per of cities are an F so um I think the fact that the city has done quite a bit on production is really important and it it it can and should do more in part because it faces kind of unique pressures and you know you've done an amazing job of attracting a lot of economic growth and jobs um but you know that that necessitates housing to complement it you know the the media headline will be Reno gets a c in you asked but we would be you so it sounds like though we're doing a pretty decent job you were doing better than most cities I think as I said um you know a city I would point to that's done a lot of positive things in the past several years that is Sim similar size as Minneapolis I was going to say Minneapolis um they but they actually built less housing than you have over the last five or six years um and their rents only went up 1% and I think part of the reason for that is you know if they had built much less their rents almost certainly would have gone up a lot more they built a lot for the demand that they have you just have a lot more demand and Minneapolis is surrounded by many places and you're kind of it's very cold on your own it's ridiculously cold that's true too it's not on the West Coast I could go on and on absolutely um but their mayor wouldn't like that very but thank you so much um I think it's incredibly informative love to have you back um questions from the council I'll start with you councilman nebert any questions yeah I do have some questions so in your recommendations I see that um there's some comments about developer impact fees where do we fall you know in hundreds of cities that you've reviewed where do we fall with development impact fees um in comparison to be clear I'm not studying every one of these things for hundreds of cities but from what I've seen I would say again it's it's challenging because there's so many people at the polls so I mean there are cities that on a single project these are like the California type cities that are charging 50,000 $80,000 $100 $100,000 or more in in total impact fees across the million you know all these different areas um and then there are many cities that are are charging close to nothing uh but I would say you're you're at the the the middle to lower end okay so the other sea cities where would you say we're at with the other sea level cities uh oh I don't know um I mean I don't I I can't I don't have like an idea of all the C CI in my head right now but I would say Reno's fees are not really its problem I I'll put it that way okay well it kind of is because we're lacking in infrastructure so trying to figure out how we bridge that Gap to get where we need to be with our infrastructure I meant to say Reno's fees are not too large necessarily um and so what I'm really looking at is kind of the mix of fees for sure and and whether infill warrants smaller fees because they also have longer term budget impacts that are positive um so that's you know kind of part of it but I think you know the the bigger problem with fees is when they're unpredictable and when they come early uh the amount is important of course but when they could be $100,000 or $10,000 per unit and you don't know um which is not the case here to be clear but that's really where it can get you in trouble okay so um again that's not really relevant to my question I just want to know where we fall in in those in comparison uh where our impact fees are because as I stated we're we're kind of behind in our infrastructure it's a a serious problem in my ward so just curious as to where we could kind of fill that Gap with um uh impact fees you know for doing these changes and also if if there's a recommendation here to reimburse Developers for impact fees you know if if we're not where we should be where we're charging impact fees and there's a recommendation to reimburse developers with impact fees that is an issue so if we could get a little bit better numbers on that that would be helpful I'm happy to to find a good list of kind of the range the different cities have for you okay um again I think the the real question is how do you uh I think it is entirely possible to have in some cases higher fees I'm not necessarily recommending this but I think it's worth looking into higher fees that then some of that is reimbursed through tax abatements or other things over time where you get that money you need upfront to make those improvements but then again recognizing that if you didn't have the abatements maybe that project would never happen um that kind of thing yeah okay yeah but that's where it comes in where we we need to see where we fall in because you know if we're still way behind other cities that are still considered C cities we're still more attractive to developers they're still going to come here and build here but we need to make sure that when they're doing that they're not unfairly affecting the people that already live here by not contributing to the infrastructure that need to support all that new development that's coming in whether it's adus or or whatever it is that we need to have the infrastructure to support the potential uh growth that we're having and and we do need the growth to support um you know the demand for housing but we need to make sure we balance that with what the community needs as well all right thank you I'm going to move on uh Council dur go ahead yeah thank you um thank you Mr Phillips very interesting and as you said provocative and controversial so let's start um teasing this apart a little bit on some of your recommendations um um the first thing you talked about was infil and I was struck because you said that um and you talked about missing middle and we've heard this term I would say for at least five years but what you contended was that um infill has lower land costs and lower construction costs and yet we still have a result even with lower costs that we're missing this middle housing and I want to understand why you think it's so if it's cheaper m easier to build in your opinion not necessarily developers opinion because I hear different differently from them what what's your take I'm going to ask three questions because I I'm short on time here um you recommended as a lwh hanging fruit inter agency coordination and I want to get some better understanding um of how we might do that you said we're very good on reviewing things timely yeah but maybe others don't share urgency and I want to understand that and then I guess I'll just on a third is um uh on adus you said you'd like to see them everywhere at the same time you said Str strs need to be limited and I'm wondering do you have General specific uh recommendations on Adu so starting with the missing middle even if you could address that yeah so the the reason missing middle is is not being built for the most part is it's not legal to build it um that scale of development is is infeasible so that was part of my recommendation uh for zoning the multif family zones that exist now it's not that you know if you have say a mixed use Zone which you know we have in in Midtown for example or in downtown these are Parcels that allow unlimited height uh very high F maybe unlimited F have to go back to my notes um but like you can build a very very large building there but because the demand is very high and because you can build a very large building there you're not going to build a four-story apartment because you just paid 10 million for the land and so this is really the issue is you have the Zoning for the very big buildings and you have Zoning for a building that might be you know a couple stories tall and the the stuff in the middle is not really feasible well okay I'm just going to inter I'm a little confused because I thought you didn't you just said these were lower Lan costs not higher you just said this minute that they're higher land cost so people are driven to build more part more units per acre because to offset the cost of the acre right right so it's it's land cost per unit per unit that you can build okay well let me just um I asked some questions but let's just adjust this for a minute near where I live and in my ward there are apartment complexes that historically have been perceived to be the most dense development in Reno it's right on Moana and plumis um for up to 40 units per acre and there have been downsides that people have spoken about frequently such as not enough open space for all those people they very small park nearby very um unattended to very little parking a lot of crime in that neighborhood um and so it seems like the development pressure is the living pressure of living so close in an environment like Reena we're not in Downtown LA um is is um at odds I guess with our culture and our expectations of living and so what I've heard our actual planner say is we're never going to go there again when I first got on Council I'm starting my 10th year they said we will never never do this level of dense development in Reno now this was eight uh seven eight years ago will never do it again because the results of the people the impacts on the people are not good any thoughts on that yeah I mean I think I I certainly agree that there are trade-offs to any approach and I think some of this can be resolved by planning certainly open space issues for example you know density with the right planning can allow you to actually increase open space and shared open space because you can build up taller here and you can clear space here for a park or what have you um but yeah these these costs are absolutely real but from the perspective of the tenants living in those apartments I think you know I would say that they are living there for a reason and not elsewhere and all things considered that is the the mix of you know amenities and cost and value that they've chosen to go for and I think if you didn't have that option not to say that that is the model by any means but if that housing development was not there I think the question would be where would they live instead because they probably can't afford a single family home will they have to you know leave the region will they have to move to the edge of the you know the metro area and commute in every day there are consequences and costs to that as well so it really is about every approach has costs and it's just kind of looking at them headon okay and I'll just add since way over time just something to think about when you address the other questions is you talked about neighborhood planning as a um comparative piece and I'd love to hear about that later um so that because I haven't seen that level of planning happening in Reno okay vice mayor ree go ahead thank you madam mayor um Mr Phillips thank you uh I I read your book I found it very informative I've followed you on Twitter for a number of years now and I watch some of the comments and the in discussions so there're always um some level of interest to people who are in the position to make some decisions about all this I think I want to without first in this first pass I don't necessarily want to go into any specific slide but I sort of want to understand um your experience with communities you've pointed of course to a range of communities some which you have studied probably some which youve visited some which you have studied to or visited to study I am trying to understand that if we make any of the choices that we make along the Route um and certainly no choices are to be made today it's a workshop we're trying to get some ideas going and and we've been having workshops on this topic for a number of years um how do we know they're going to work like I I heard one commenter who I think was a mixed bag of of praise and and concern say we were throwing stuff against the wall and I think that that is a good example for me a good analogy because it's like throwing it against the wall seeing what sticks um because I think when you present a range of options and you have so many choices we want to pick the options that work and we want to pick the ones that won't fail right or ones that will anger the fewest amount of constituents right or or provide the biggest bang for the buck we're trying to do the right thing um but of course none of us knows what the leap of faith will take once we take it so how do we you know is it research-based practice is it uh taking a leap of faith you identified I think Minneapolis as one example um probably one that I'm not sure that this body or or even this community is inclined to take we have a a deep connection to the earth and the land in a western state that maybe predisposes us to believe that we all want the onethird of an acre parcel with the picket fence Minneapolis a bit more urban so so how do we navigate that and again I'm talking about just a 10,000 foot view at this point before we dive into any specifics yeah yeah and I would you know I would point to another a whole state that recently uh made a bunch of housing forms in this direction which is Montana which I think would at least they would argue uh that they have a similar you know love of the environment and and are certainly uh not even as as Urban as as as Reno and they basically Statewide required all uh cities to allow adus or duplexes or forp plexes to eliminate parking like they get to choose from a list of these things um but I think you know in terms of like how where this all goes or how you get there I think part of it is certainly just these Comm you know these meetings are a really important starting point um I think sometimes it's hard to like have a a dialogue with the folks in the room behind me um and so there needs to be those opportunities as well because I find that when you're able to talk to people one-on-one or in small groups and really get into the details and talk about the trade-offs that people can find a lot of agreement um but on the you know what's going to work what should you pursue that's a that's a really difficult position I mean I I included all of these things in here because I think they all work to varying degrees though of course like adus alone for example um so in Los Angeles uh adus are legalized Statewide and so the year after adus are legalized uh we went from 100 a year to something like a th000 or or 2,000 in a city of 1.5 million homes so still not a lot now we're at like 5,000 6,000 a year uh it's a lot of homes but it's not making that much of a dent in in the crisis so one thing I would just say is nothing alone is going to get you where you want to be it is going to have to be a combination of things on supply for sure but I think on subsidies and stability and and just the planning process generally um so I don't know is that like that's probably not fully answering there's a little more I could probably say on that topic specifically anyone had a solution for housing affordability we have a solution for housing affordability right there is no one siiz fits all approach I don't think there's a Panacea I don't think there's going to be one button button that we push that'll fix it all I think that um using the tools that we have in the toolbx is an important concept whatever those tools may be and look you have 100 people in the room today and each of them has a different opinion I I often worry about the folks who are not able to be here right I'm worried about people who are a a brand new teacher or a police officer uh working in our hotel industry and and those are folks whose voices are not always present in the room and so we're trying to balance competing needs you have people who have every interest in being here for their own valid and reasonable purposes and then you have people who are not represented at all and so we I think we struggle at times because sometimes the loudest voices are the ones that control the outcomes when I'm not sure that that is makes for good policy ultimately again we can agree to disagree I'm not sure that I fall for example in the category of legalize adus everywhere I think um it would be foolish for us to believe that if we hit the button and said legalize adus all of a sudden our housing woes would be solved nor do I believe you're suggesting that I do think that adus have a role to play although I my guess is a very small one we're a community of about 330,000 and so even if I took your example of Los Angeles and uh tried to extrapolate the numbers to think about what we would do I'm not sure everyone's going to run out tomorrow and pop an Adu in their backyard be in that low hundreds I can't imagine it would be even that because Mom and Pop who want to have an Adu for an aging parent or for a child who's attending the university they're maybe not the skilled builders that are out their interest in doing that so um again I've used a little bit more than my time and we've had an iterative conversation and I'd like to continue that and hear what my colleagues have than all right thank you so much Council mom Taylor your turn thank you very much ben thank you so much for being here um really appreciate your time and the work you did this on this and all of our team this was a lot of information and this is a great step forward um a couple of things that I have questions on the first thing um on Council ur's question was missing middle for Reno specifically can you tell me what that is is that a price point or is it a type of housing um cuz we hear people come in and say we're providing the missing middle it's a $600,000 house and to me that's not the Miss Missing middle so that would be my first question then the second question I want to ask is when in your report I saw that you mentioned that we are in the early stages of urbanizations in Reno and you're not necessarily recommending that we go to high-rise development but low and men use development in that mixed use so specifically how are how do we get out of our own way at the city level to make it easier or not easier but more um get more of this missing middle in here and I think you might have been talking about that earlier with some of our zoning opportunities that we have yeah um so thank you the missing middle nomenclature is confusing and I think people have deployed it in all kinds of different ways but I think Dan perc who wrote the book called missing middle housing is really talking about like the type um um and the fact that by nature of what it is it is generally going to be more affordable uh it's not to say that you couldn't build a super luxury fourplex uh that every unit costs more than a single family home but by and large that's not actually what happens in part because someone has enough money to live in one of those units they probably just want to live in a single family home again this is like this is not saying single family homes are bad it's not saying people shouldn't be allowed to live in them it's really just saying a lot of people don't want to um and maybe even more can't afford to and so what our what is our answer for them um can you repeat just really quickly summarize the second part just like how we do second part is when we're trying to create infill in the missing middle I think there are some things that we can do as a city one of the things you pointed out was the city can only do so much so I really want to pay attention to what we can do here and sometimes I think we just kind of need to get out of our way and that's some of the recommend commendations that I see within this report to make it more um consistent and predictable in for the builders to create this it's not necessarily our problem like you said isn't impact fees we we should be okay there but we need to maybe have some standardization in how we're building and what that looks like yeah I guess maybe the number one thing I would point to is having a a very simple process for projects that are smaller because what you hear from okay see that one more time I a very simple Pro process for projects that are smaller okay so what I mean by that or kind of the justification for this what I hear from from uh people in the development Community all over the country is in most cities it is roughly the same amount of work to get entitled and permitted a 10-unit project as a 300 unit project and so if you have to spend hundred of thousands of dollars to get that 10un project approved why not just go for the larger project and and you know do something that is going to bring more investors in and and provide more housing for that matter so there needs to be kind of the process that is appropriate to the scale of the housing um and that can mean a range of things this is why I emphasize objective standards and and buite approvals especially for these smaller projects um but I will also add that you know uh the the the labor pool the contractor pool people building housing has come up and something I've observed in many places that have adopted adus Citywide Statewide has been a whole new kind of industry pops up of people who you know were never going to be the 50 unit uh apartment Builders but they can build an Adu in someone's backyard and so it's creating I'm going to stop because I don't want to go over my time okay thank you so much I know everybody has questions I appreciate your answers thank you Council Martinez I'm trying to let everyone go over a little bit just so everyone knows because I want to make sure that yeah I've not been even paying attention to it so I will do that for no no you don't have to that's my job you don't have to but um I just want to let everyone know that because sometimes people are saying I don't get my time and I don't get my time and so everyone's getting equal time and letting them go over so um because we don't we you know we don't get you usually so all right go ahead councilman Martinez thank you madam thank you Mr Phillips for being here and presenting um your findings uh all the research that you have done and what you're bringing to our city I want to stick with the theme of process and come back to one of the questions that council member der asked a little bit and um how we better work with our regional Partners to you know before getting to a state where we have to consider um as you mentioned maybe man exploring mandates from the state um to increase qual operations if you have any best practices that we can explore to start those negotiations or those conversations and Route table discussions with some of our partners yeah I I don't know that I have best practices necessarily but I think a good place to start is for this to be kind of a two-way street where it's not just hey Envy energy hey TLA health district Etc like we need you to get your act together but I imagine there are things that they would like the city to do as well and maybe there's an opportunity to kind of start from there um as this not just being how do we make housing approvals faster and housing more affordable but just how do we work together better generally um I think that might be the best place to start at least but I do think the involvement of you know State and Regional officials from the start is probably helpful too not as like a if you don't do this we're going to force you to but just they have that kind of 50,000 foot View yeah uh can you address maybe some of the things that we can do to um not maybe not necessarily convince but allow others to see the importance of making sure that these project proposals get done in a timely manner and that there's no delays as we're seeing with inflation the more that things get delayed the higher the costs are for not just the builders but the consumers who end up purchasing these homes or renting these apartments yeah and I I think it's important to acknowledge that the folks in these other jurisdictions and agencies and so forth like they have reasons for taking longer for uh you know requesting things or or asking for revision all that kind of stuff so uh I think that is important to acknowledge but um I mean maybe one place to start on this is the folks who work for those agencies live here too and they need to have housing they can afford um and so this is of Interest directly to those agencies of course and you know I've heard about uh retention issues for for the the city here and and elsewhere um where folks just you know they might get a job here but then realize they can't really afford to live here and so they don't stick around or they they never actually show up and so I think maybe those are a couple places to to start from okay and I do have another round of questions but I'll defer to my next set um and it will have to do more with like renting um price gouging which is something that is in your report but it wasn't really addressed in this presentation yeah thanks again for being here thank you Miss brockus hi hi welcome um the council has really uh strict time rules which I don't know if all of our audience knows and they're not waved in workshops evidently so I'll just um give you some feedback and then I'll summarize with my two questions for you welcome I appreciate your report um I want to clarify one thing that I I disagree with and that is that in the dillan's rule state we don't have stabilization ordinance Powers I believe we do I believe that's the prevailing view of lawmakers in Carson City who have made the laws um I'll reference uh Senator Flores from the um chair of the local government um chair uh committee down there does believe we have it I believe we have it I I've been very vocal that it's what I want four years ago that we need to stop rant gouging I've the longest serving council member um and have saw it from the Great Recession to the buildup the Tesla effect and have seen such brutality of um in the market by a small group and that's what a rate stabilization a modest rate stabilization ordinance would do and I have one crafted in my head um and waiting for a leadership from others on my colleagues to bring that forward um so I just want to clarify that to you um the adus um you we made a run on that in 2016 um at the end of the day Reno may be a CL case study which what happens when the state doesn't tell you to do it uh I think um you know that's how it's going to play out which is interesting because you know you have um Dylan's rule so you would think but um the state I think we'll be reluctant to to get there and uh you know it's hard for a local government person to talk about that I think we have pent up demand the question I'm going to have is about adus and California state law overriding cc&rs restrictions because we have a lot of those and they have to have the opportunity and the burden if you will if you call it a burden of providing that housing type and I want to know if you have any evidence of how that's played out in the California laws that have passed over the last five years I appreciate the short-term rental um position that's one that I brought forward I think last time we had a workshop was over 18 months ago 20 months ago but we all voted and it it didn't get enough votes but I I think that we do need a short-term rental um ordinance have longf that and um and so I appreciate you highlighting highlighting that you also highlighted parking districts and not when you drop down your parking ratios to um let people off the hook and thinking that the on street is their going to be their little fum and we have that I spent a lot of the summer doing constituent work on um Developers who underp Park their project and want a bailout and we need a standalone parking District i' I've talked about that a lot um parking you know like a lot of growing cities becomes kind of an a hadock thing but it needs its own Standalone policies and and they run Enterprise fund too so um I was appreciate you bringing that the CIP one you know what I'll hold because our time is very limit limited I'm going to get to the CIP and then the the agency streamline comment but so let me have you answer what you know about California laws overriding cc&rs and has it been did they put it in did it get legally challenged and upheld so I I don't have a lot of knowledge of on this offand I've kind of tangent followed it a little bit here and there I know that initially adus were were not uh allowed in HOAs if they prohibited them they could the state didn't override that just this year I think I think it was this year they passed a law where I think some will override what HOAs uh prohibit but I'm I I really should check on that and I can follow up to be sure yeah okay I thought it was you know they've been passing laws for five years now but I didn't I thought it went like two or three years ago and had played out okay that's fine and then I'll um I'll yield my time according to our rules and um get another chance to ask you those other questions thank you thank you okay let's start our second round of conversation we'll go the other direction miss breish the floor is yours oh thank you so um you know the one that really jumped out to me was your thought on offside improvements and I think you're a little cold uh because you know I pulled up the ordinance book over here and in our sewer we do allow off-site free you know front loading agreement so we've got that I sit on Toma they've got that I've been away from our no for a while but they had a very liberal kind of kooky um uh impact the uh uh second market so I think those are all in place I think what your um conclusion that we need to do a better CIP is correct and I think the CIP work is very flawed I think it needs to model Transportation policy from uh Transportation federal policy which the number one theme and every you know Junior engineer knows who works in federal process is resources are constrainted and so you need to be very thoughtful on programming and prioritizing I was down in Fresno last uh two months ago for the APA conference and through California I think was with highspeed rail they've given $200 million to Fresno to you know anywhere anyone turns a shovel there they will have ready to go infrastructure in five years that's because the state of California and Fresno is going to capture 10,000 units in downtown maybe even more over a period of time so Reno is not doing that with what we invest we're allowing it to chase other I think Market driven projects Logistics industry and so on and I think that's the rightful conclusion the frontloading agreements I think maybe is not accurate I mean maybe we can tickle that a little bit more maybe people are saying they're not working but I think it's maybe people who are saying who are coming to the table with options on Ranch Land options on Hillside development and they're just in problem terrain anyway unless they're building you know a multi multi-million doll industrial building um so that's one number two um is the agency coordination you know that's a common gripe you're always going to hear that I think we have a whole committee to that it's called the be building Enterprise fee advisory committee I think that needs to be tickled um a little bit more um you know is it NDP with a 24 vac 24% vacancy you know prob you know but that's that's big but you know we're at the point in the market where people are coming in for subd Subdivision map extensions CIP you know Su so we're at a point in Market where they're failing on other reasons and so I would really encourage you to tickle that down quite a bit you know interest rates their supply because I don't see it I I I argued when we redid our zoning code that we do our subdivision process in a better way a coordinated way it was the way that I learned as a junior planner in Albuquerque where it's really more staff driven and everyone's at the table so the boss lady of the planning department is sitting every week with the agency folks and moving them forward rather than the dispersion to the Planning Commission but I I think that um I think that one is just a Trope a little bit that needs to have quantitative data and scenarios to validate it yeah and I you know I I agree with that I will just say uh I recognized it it seemed to be a real issue here and was was regularly commented upon but I'm I'm not a communications consultant so I there are certainly folks who have much more thoughtful ideas about exactly how to engage that it just seems like some way or another reform is needed there better collaboration is needed there and you know it seems that talking to each other about it is a is a good starting point but I think once you get into the details beyond that probably better talking to someone else yeah okay thank you okay council member Martinez thank you so much um Mr Phillips in your exploration of like the Reno uh codes and what we have here uh just curious if the two stair requirements for uh multi-level buildings is in fact something that we have to abide by or is that something that you know we we can look at changing in our area so again building code is is getting at the edge of my knowledge um sometimes cities have their own building codes I would guess Reno does not have its own um it's usually only quite large cities um and so it's probably a matter of the State Building Code and the State Building Code probably does mandate this because pretty much everywhere in the country mandates it with a few exceptions and and more cities and states in just recent years have started to reform this uh but I I don't know that it's something something you would be able to solve at the local level uh you probably need some State involvement thanks for answering that in your report you also mentioned um how some Redevelopment that happens in specific areas when it happens too quickly there's sort of a loss of the Identity or the culture of that neighborhood I'm just wondering if you can expand a little bit more on that here I didn't hear what kind of development you you refer to I think you were just talking about whether how quickly developments have in a specific region so let say we have a of three or four um neighborhoods in our here in Reno and we see those quickly turn over into you know different types of dwelling units and how the characteristics or the culture of those neighborhoods can get lost and so I was just wondering if you can expand a little bit more on that here yeah and and I and I do think it's you know it's a real issue and it shouldn't just be dismissed as like well affordability is more important um I think there are ways to balance these things and you know part of that is the stabilizing policies that I also discussed in the report um but I think you know I guess I would say a few more things one is that especially for the incremental kind of development like the fourplexes that kind of stuff um where this has happened the pace of change has been very slow you know a decade later maybe one building on every block uh has has been redeveloped on average and so uh and I think part of the reason for that which really to the next thing I wanted to say is the more kind of spread out this is to some extent the the less concentrated change you see I think part of why a lot of cities have experienced or specific neighborhoods have experienced very rapid change is because most cities only allow larger buildings taller denser buildings in a very small portion of the city and so you know to the extent that the city wants to try to meet its housing needs unless it changes those rules it has no choice but to put them often where you already have the highest density you might have higher concentrations of lower income households households of color like these are all choices that are made and and again there are trade-offs but I think we're kind of airing a little too far on that side of things right now thank you for that I think my last question um is going to deal with some of the Empirical research that has been done if you can maybe not you don't have the top of your head but if you can talk about how any type of housing can help bring the afford ability in our region down yeah yeah um so there's there's a lot I guess I could say here part of why I emphasize the the missing middle is because it is just from the start more affordable than the Alternatives um it is not necessarily going to be inexpensive because new housing like most new things is is more expensive than older uh housing but the the kind of most persuasive so there's lots of research at a high level looking at Metro areas all the way down to cities and blocks um when you build more housing rents in surrounding uh buildings and neighborhoods tend to increase a little more slowly uh I think the most persuasive mechanism I've read which is like empirically studied both here and abroad is uh the migration chain concept which is essentially that new market rate unit is $2,300 a month that's unaffordable to a lot of people uh but that's what it you know it costs a lot to build and that's what you have to price that to to earn a profit whoever moves in there is going to have a relatively High income um but they're leaving some other Home behind and in most cases in most places uh they're leaving behind some home from the same metro area and so the home they leave behind is most likely cheaper than the one they're moving into because that's generally the moves that people make most of their life and so maybe the one they left behind is $1,800 a month and someone moves into that and that person left a home behind and maybe it was $100 a month and so this is kind of the the linkage between the the kind of top and bottom of the market it's not to say that all you do is build to the top of the market subsidized housing is really important but it is to say that it it is complimentary rather than kind of being in Conflict okay thank you for expanding on that council member Taylor thank you I like the way in your report you summarize that is the new car old car Theory when when you get a new car there's an old car you have used cars Supply left over for other people so that was Co yeah Co I like the way you did that um so I guess my question my my final questions are you came up with five areas of potential reform you worked with our team we have some recommendations is there anything within those five areas of potential reform that you think we should be doing first or um I know you said some of the inter agency coordination might be the lwh hanging fruit but are there is there an order or a prioritization and then my second question would be as you've worked with other C cities and you've seen this process are there things that we should be looking for um Growing Pains we know when we do this and we go through the stakeholder engagement process and we go through um the work there's going to be some Growing Pains so are there things that you might have advice that you might have from other experiences that we might look at going through this yeah um so on the uh like prioritization I guess I think of of all of the things thinking about both impact and uh kind of feasibility the upzoning of multif family areas to higher densities than they are now I think has a lot of potential because they're already multif family um in many cases I think the use there might be a single family home but the zoning has been multif family for a very long time and so no particular surprise helps with the valuation of the land too right the owners themselves will likely see their property value increase um and so you know of a ripple that parcel increases in value but by eventually being redeveloped and increasing the supply of housing there's sort of a averaging a moderating effect so it's focused increase but spread out decrease and I also like decrease actually just not growing as quickly yeah you reort talked about realistic expectations too we're not going to have 153 foot you know or 30 story buildings that we're talking about sorry go ahead um other other than that I mean I think anything to do with the uh that it requires State involvement is important to start sooner rather than later because these things move slowly I do think uh the building code one actually is an interesting opportunity because again it's something I think has been pretty uncontroversial there's not a lot of evidence that two stairwells actually increase safety in any way in the places that that only uh require one for small buildings people are no less uh safe um and and that one requires State involvement but it actually directly supports that up zoning of multif family areas because those are exactly the projects that will benefit from that reform so those are a couple that come to mind I'd have to like have the report in in front of me um among these you know uh the the infrastructure planning I think putting aside the fee reform side of things and and uh all of that just like knowing what your infrastructure looks like how old it is when it's going to you know go bad uh or should be replaced I think that is maybe something to start on and I and I do recommend maybe starting in some specific neighborhoods where you want to prioritize development thank you thank you for being here again Madame mayor thank you so much uh Mr Philips I want to talk about this by right approval and to do that I want to use some examples so that I understand what you say when you what you mean when you say that yeah because when I think the general public Hears by right approval um they are rightfully fearful that somehow where they live tomorrow will be changed because someone will come along and build something I suppose adjacent to them or near enough to them that it matters to them and that they'll have no voice in the process and and I think that that is um something that I don't want to see I I want our citizenry to be engaged um I believe that we as a body strive very mightily towards transparency our public engagement process although some people don't see it it is happening all the time even in the roll out of these recommendations there are a number of meetings that and public processes sometimes only one person comes and shows up um or two people come and show up and then when they get to this meeting they cry all manner of foul because they didn't go to the meeting so I'm just trying to understand what you mean when you say those words mhm so like very technically by write approval just means you don't go through the planning department you just go straight to the city uh you know permitting Department whatever that happens to be more kind of generally or like uh I don't think that's helpful for for folks who are concerned I would say that it's really about establishing clear rules and guidelines about what can be built on every parcel and if someone shows up and proposes a project that complies with those guidelines they are allowed to build it they don't have to negotiate they don't have to downsize it um and I think you know to your point maybe a really important place to start with that is you don't just say okay whatever is allowed right now in your zoning code and design guidelines and so forth in certain places or in certain cases it's going to be by right maybe you start with a kind of restarting a neighborhood planning process where you develop you know you you really engage with the the community at a much wider and deeper level than you ever will with an individual project and you say what do you want to see what you know what kind of buildings you know design do you want to see um what can we all kind of come to agreement on and then once that plan is developed again with many more people involved than any individual project uh you know opponent or supporter then you say okay we've decided what we want and so it's actually not the right of any neighbor to say what the community agreed to is not allowed next to me so I think that's one way of thinking about it it really is about it's not about eliminating feedback it's about moving to the front the process we have to go back to the neighborhoods and get their buy into to that concept is that accurate I think uh I mean depends what you mean by Buy in I I wouldn't expect consensus no I don't think so either but again I'm trying to make sure that people understand tomorrow they might there's a Fear Factor either on next door or on Twitter or Facebook or even in the room today where people are imagining that somehow we're going to change what they previously knew to be the conditions they were living in and we're going to do that by some I don't know uh Royal Fiat that were a word I I agree with your previous statement like I think it does need to start with Community buyin it it's it's not something that just happens by Fiat and it needs to be part of a larger process a example I might give is that we have a building project going on right now just a bit to the east of us by a few streets called the Ballpark Apartments those Ballpark Apartments were permitted by right there through the zoning process and they never came to the city council so they are a multi-story project very exciting project because it meets a lot of the things that we're trying to accomplish um and of course there were folks who I I think were surprised that it was there uh and and therefore voice displeasure about it but it was because it was zoned there appropriately and permitted by right um I think again what I don't want people to take away from the engagement process is that it is a community effort and we all have to be sharing the same goal which is to create opportunities for people to live here I think none of us can uh put a bubble over Reno and stop everybody from coming in people want to live here we have great reasons to live here when I was born the population of this community was about 100,000 is it's now hurdling head long towards 300,000 so change it is inevitable but what we want to make sure people do is that we hear them we understand the concerns they raise and that their valid and legitimate concerns will be ones to be considered in the process whatever that process is and hopefully it's an opportunity to you know to shape that growth there's so many communities across the country that people don't want to live in and they're having much harder time than you know figuring out okay how do we accommodate these people how do we make sure this development and this change serves our interests not just people moving here but people who live here now understand thank you so much Miss der yeah thank you um assuming this is our last round I'm G to make some statements as well as ask you some questions to understand how this all fits together um I Heard earlier in the public comment and this is something that a bit troubled me was we have it seems that we have mixed up the words code cleanup and new initiatives and in the staff report that goes along with your presentation many of the uh proposals are listed that they're in code cleanup and I just wanted to be clear at the start that I consider many of the things that you're speaking about to be new initiatives that to your point we have to get public input we have to discuss them debate them look at the upside and the downside of a change and so this is really a common I guess to our staff which is that I would really like us to this this Workshop is titled affordable housing but you're speaking in my mind about housing generally um how to get more of it and uh the concept that greater quantity will lead to a lower price point I think that's your basic assumption and so with that every place in this document that says me many of your proposals say they're in code cleanup and I just want to be clear as one council member it's it's not cleanup up to me it's a new idea and we should thoroughly vet it and study it um that said um one of my basic principles people know this about me is I really really care about hearing what the public has to say public input's kind of my 101 it's where I start and it's basically where I finish as well I try to add my own ideas to what I hear the public saying change is hard and so I think everyone's got to be part of this conversation that wants to be you know we we don't have 100,000 people in the room here today you know we have 50 and um and we need even more um I think existing neighborhoods have a right to talk about and have input into how their neighborhood develops which is why in my first question I asked about that neighborhood planning effort it has been proposed in other code changes but it hasn't happened even two years ago we went forth and they upzoned let's say a big chunk of my own air residential area to mf30 and they left out mf14 mf211 and the um response was quite critical from the residents and so they went back and they amended the code which was fantastic to allow mf14 and mf211 in those zones and example where this has worked really well is um we had many proposals along an area called Warren way it's a rather Narrow Street it doesn't really meet um City standards for what a street should look like um it's not striped it's not the width it doesn't have sidewalks Etc but there's been a lot of intense um up zoning occurring there one of the proposals that came in was for a MF 21 project and um because it had the opportunity of both going to my neighborhood Advisory Board and um going through the Planning Commission because it was a zoning type change going from single family um the developer heard and the um consultant elevated the concerns of the neighborhood and the developer decided to reduce it down to mf14 so they would have a sufficient on stre parking the parking on the street was almost full so excuse me they have sufficient off street parking and so I think it's an excellent example of how neighborhood compromise can work we're still going from one house in that parcel to 14 that to me is a pretty big increase many more people are going to be able to live there in a really nice neighborhood but the neighborhood was heard and so um my questions for you on the bught approval we would not have had that process they would have just checked the the box is it electrical does Plumbing meet the code Etc and I don't think that's sufficient when you're doing infill I just don't um I really think it's important to have that neighborhood buying and participation resulting in a better project still in still um increasing the density quite a bit but maybe not to mf60 okay on MF 45 not not going there um what I have to to leave you with I guess for me is when we talk about um density bonuses I I've spent a good time talking to our planning staff and right now today and I don't know if the council realizes this we give density bonuses if an apartment is less than 1,800 square feet 1,800 square feet is like the size of a single family home in many parts of Reno and we're saying if your apartment is about the size of a single family home you'll get a density bonus and I think if we doing a density bonus we need to reduce that number to something like a th000 square feet so that we're really saying if you have a small unit we'll give you more units we want to encourage that um smaller living uh reduced um footprint size but giving a density bonus for the size of a regular single family home doesn't make sense to me so I think changes if we're going to make that change it has to go and one more thing you recommended and I really like this I think you did but I it probably heard it from the audience which is that if we have um this kind of evolution we need to bring along sustainability initiatives with that those kind of Apartments should by building uh requirements be required to put in um electric charging stations should maybe consider mandatory solar uh not just hey if you feel like it you know in other words things that will Ro move the rest of our master plan forward not just more but what does the more look like okay how does it fit the neighborhood what other goals that the council's already laid out is it achieving so not just one thing but maybe a multi-impact love to hear your thoughts on some of this uh I 100% agree I'm I was here to talk about affordability but and I tried to bring in you know how the more uh not only impacts affordability but a lot of other goals like for one you know if you didn't require electrical or solar at all and I'm not saying you shouldn't it would still be a benefit to the environment just by not building sprawl at the edges and having people who are able to walk to some locations and drive shorter distances all that um but yeah none of this is to say that there isn't a place for all of those things sort of you know to the earlier comment you had like planning for more housing you also need to do the planning for the open space and the transportation and the infrastructure alongside that my focus is on the housing but it's not to say that you shouldn't focus on all of these things my last comment I guess is um my area and a zip code in my ward 89521 has been listed in the top 30 uh areas for apartment increase and so Apartments obviously a lot more people living there but the roads in those developments were planned more for less people right so as more Apartments have come in it's created a lot of congestion and we're very far behind with our RTC and building those Road improvements to accommodate the the cars and I say cars it's about 10 miles south of downtown Reno the but there's not an extensive bus system there not an extensive any kind of public transportation system there people are relying on the cars and they will be for probably several decades to come frankly and how do we accommodate you know we're going to densify but how are we going to have to my other colleague's point better infrastructure to accommodate that kind of density all right thank you moving on go ahead Council woman Eber hi I I have a lot of questions actually um so um what kind of recommendations do you have for things like zoning changes we have a master plan and and sometimes we have changes specifically in my area where we have multif family zoning that gets changed to industrial commercial do you recommend that we stop doing that and maybe change that multif family to maybe denser multif family and maybe move away from deviating into industrial commercial particularly in neighborhoods I it's hard for me to know without knowing a little more context about the specific neighborhood I would say as a general principle especially the more kind of central that we're talking about I think uh there's there's a strong argument for you know not not reducing multif family residential zoning to replace it with industrial uh which you know often tends to have a pretty limited job density um but of course it'll depend on location and circumstances so I can't say in your specific circumstance okay thank you um also flip over here it's a pretty large report report so on your um summary recommendations it's on page 62 so um primary summary recommendations it says develop a detailed maintenance plan including the age condition and planned Replacements or upgrade date for infrastructure types the city often requires developers to replace or improve as a condition of project approval so that sounds like we really need to I mean this is the top primary recommendation you've made so I I understand that we want to um streamline the process for these type of product uh projects but it sounds like we really need to know when these things are going in so that we can prioritize these things which are your primary recommendations that we need to um as a council kind of be more aware of these projects so that we can prioritize the maintenance and development of these infrastructure so how do you recommend that we balance the Streamline process for this type of development with the need to have a detailed maintenance plan um for the age and condition and the Planned replacement or upgrade of our existing infrastructure do do you have an idea for that yeah I think this goes hands hand inand with what council member Reese was talking about um the need to kind of do that planning UPF front before these reforms to stream line things take place or in tandem with them so it's not you know we're just going to run headlong into changing the rules before we even know what the conditions are in the neighborhood but we're going to figure that out as we're also thinking about the future and how you know in some places more denser or more lowcost housing might be uh feasible or legal to build so I think they they really go hand inand well I think that this report kind of um makes the assumption that this is going to be infill but a lot of development as council member ree has said several times that there was a decision made 25 30 years ago that most of the development was going to happen to the north of the city which is my ward and it's largely undeveloped it's the largest geographically Ward with the least amount of density so this area has the least amount of infrastructure so it's hard to say in advance where we should put these roads until this happens because it's not infill it's new development so how do you balance that because it is a different animal versus saying we're going to do an infill here because it's not infill yeah the that recommendation is very much focused on infill and I think you know the reason I didn't have much to say on the on the the kind of more single family larger scale developments is I think it's appropriate that developers basically pay for all of those improvements because those improvements are solely for the benefit of their residents generally that's great to hear from an expert that the developer should pay for this infrastructure and it should be a part of the planning before the development goes in because that's something that I frequently say so it's nice to have an expert agree with me on that um so another uh area I'd like to go to here um it says um you know that there may be uh the city should consider adopting fees or taxes on underutilized land such as vacant Parcels I agree with that we have a lot of different vacant Parcels downtown downtown which I hate to see I'd like our downtown um activated um so do you have any examples of that you know in other cities um recommendations or areas where we could look for examples of that or how we can tax those vacant Lots yeah so a lot of the vacancy taxes that have gone into effect so far have been focused on on vacancies in residential units and I think those are not as as impactful uh frankly uh I believe Oakland is one place that has actually a tax on vacant Lots um I don't know of anywhere else offand but I'm I have to imagine they're more I'd be happy to to to look that up um but it's you know it very much depends on your kind of legal restrictions or constraints um in in California you know we can't raise property taxes we can't do a whole bunch of things related to taxing property uh so we're kind of entirely reliant on fees um might be a different situation here okay also included that in that it says Parcels as vacant lands and surface parking lots if we're going to be encouraging infill and uh reducing or or getting way uh rid of parking requirements where do we expect people to park because even if people reduce the amount of vehicles or even if everyone's on a vest all the sudden or using a bird scooter people are going to have to park somewhere at some point I know people from my ward if they're coming downtown need to park somewhere what is your recommendations for people to park and and the city is also doing areas where they're creating parking zones where you have to have a permit how do we balance that in a way that it doesn't become uh parking is only available for people that live in areas where there's not accessory dwelling units and it's not just reserved for the people that own a home there so that parking is accessible for everyone that lives in the City of Reno yeah so uh on the on the question of you know where people will park I think the the short answer is that most developers will still build parking um that's been the experience of every one of the hundreds of places that have either eliminated or reduced parking minimums as many still provide much more than is is required if zero is required they're still building it if it's only one space per unit many are providing more than one space per unit because they recognize that that's what their you know residents need um this is more about just having that flexibility where maybe you're located very centrally or next to a bunch of Office Buildings where you're expecting your residents to work in those buildings and even then you're probably in Reno given you know the transit isn't like top quality here where you can get anywhere people I think are mostly going to be relying on cars for things um but that's you know there's it's one thing to say every adult needs a car and a different thing to say maybe only every household needs a car at least in some of these locations so it's not necessarily about uh I'm sure there are people who here who live without a car many of them just because they can't afford one um but some by choice but really the the better the bigger opportunity is households that might like to downsize to one car to save money and and and just you know okay drive less um and it's allowing that without providing much parking they don't need and having them pay for it even though they're not using it thank you right we're gonna move on minutes are we going to get another round no um I a few more questions here through there so we're going to to move on um you're four minutes over so um I let everyone go over because I think um this is a rare opportunity but we'd also like probably um be able to uh continue to have conversation with you and reach out to you I'm sure via email and absolutely okay um and then I think you're you're here for the rest of the day no I'm actually heading out yeah yeah well I'm leaving at uh at 4 so I have time I'm not leaving immediately yeah all right well love two rounds of questions is enough I mean there's there's statements in here about only having one uh staircase for up to six stories I mean does that really sound like fire safety I mean there's a lot of things in here we should really be asking more questions on it has a recommendation to organize a round table for agencies involved in residential permitting and and approvals how is that different than a city council and this is a a 73 page report and we have you know seven minutes to ask questions well we still have a whole agenda so I'm trying to keep everyone on track so I don't know councilwoman um what does the council want to do what does the council want to do I mean we're saying unlimited uh density and Acres I mean how how tall are we going to allow these high density areas don't we have regulations on shade or other areas I mean don't other council members have any questions oh I'm sure they do I'm just trying to keep on the schedule here so because I know you're going to start with Title 18 so we have a process and that's the rounds and we'll continue to um get your question ever possible to come back I'm happy to do that's just the process so anyway okay thank you so much thank you all right appreciate it all right full to just know um from this report to council member Ebert's point from this report are we going to be asked to make decisions on what's just been presented to us I from my understanding this was just information this report is just information it is a jumping off point for a broader conversation on the policy recommendations contained therein and that are being brought forward here today through a series of additional presentations and so the first of which is um assistant director Foo talking about what we've termed cleanup but I I believe she's going to put more context around um when she when she gets to the Lector uh we are not asking you to adopt anything today we are asking for direction on what would you like us to flesh out the specifics on and come back to you with a with a policy proposal that can be codified if if any of these policy directions are something that the body would like to entertain mam mayor um go ahead I see a resolution in front of us for Action so it does look like we're adopting something unless I haven't read the materials correctly perhaps we could move on to the other items B1 um or B B2 B3 before and then if time's left over before our 2 p.m Sunset we can go back to this item because I I do think in a workshop setting that there should be consideration of the body to wave the these rules I mean I've long objected to these rules anyway but I think that on a topic as impactful as this all members should have the time well and I've been letting everyone go over but the reason we we do that is because typically and you know this that it our meetings can go 12 13 14 hours at times and then that can be challenging for staff so it's not that we don't want them heard and then also from what I've been um usually the practice is if I need anything from you or need any questions then you will get back to me I can pick up the phone I can email you um those kinds of things but of course I want everyone to get those questions on the record that's why I let everyone go over um and I did both rounds so that's just the process that we've set up if the council wants to change the process we could do that moving forward but for right now I'm trying to stay to the process because I know you guys all have a schedule we have a schedule and we and here's the other thing um on housing this is such a broad topic I asked for this meeting to be um this this month so I appreciate staff doing that but it was also a series of a whole bunch of meetings on affordable housing so we cannot solve this in one meeting um that's just not going to happen so we're going to have to have a lot of different meetings on this but that's this is the starting off point is what I understood Doug and then the other piece of that was um that this is all informational we are not making any decisions today I thought it was also important to have the public involved because I don't know who has attended some of those housing meetings so and I'm glad to see there's a lot of people here there's a lot of interest but that this is not the point today to just shove things through um and just be good to go people have a lot of of strong opinions especially I've heard it a lot um on adus uh a lot of people on adus so I think you know this isn't just something that happens overnight so we're going to have to have a lot of um feedback and transparency and again this is going to be something that is going to take a long time because you also don't know the ramifications of some of the things we do sometimes um we think we're doing something that's going to benefit at the community and actually it backlashes so again this isn't going to happen overnight there's going to be a lot of long-term discussion but I'm sorry I can only work with uh the rules that we have right now and to keep everyone on track and especially staff because you guys have I know very busy schedules as well so I appreciate it so with that being said I'm Madam clerk I'm going to send it to you and I assume we're going to hear on Title 18 from Angela fo do we uh question on process do we want Want to Break and number two we're going to break um I think right after your presentation and questions correct so we're opening item B2 which is Title 18 zoning code cleanup from Angela fous great and Madame mayor just for you we do have public comment on this item okay great did you want to do public comment first okay okay our first public commenter is Mark Johnson followed by Marie beckan followed by Bill shrimp was commissioner nice to see you for former commissioner Madam May thank you um Mark Johnson um thank you Madame mayor council members uh again planning commissioner for the past eight years ended in uh July so we're actually getting ready to talk about some stuff that's obviously near and dear to uh my past experience um it's actually nice to be here on a Wednesday on this side of the Das and not the other side of the Das um but what I I want to talk to there's been some great information here tonight I'm not actually here I still say tonight like it's the evening um there's been a lot of information presented today that uh we've heard previously um and I I really appreciate appreciate everything that we've heard um the the reason why I wanted to to be here is that I think and and councilwoman D mentioned it in her presentation a lot of the information that's been presented on housing is its own entity and to combine that with some of these code updates um these code updates have been something that have have basically been initiated since Title 18 was approved when we were on the council staff has gone through uh and taken in for not just housing projects but any kind of development projects where there are code conflicts where there are clarifications items that impact every kind of development that happens in our city and there's been a number of meetings a number of task groups working groups together looking at those and providing recommendations on how to update the code for those as code cleanup items that fact impact excuse me any number of types of development and what I'm here to to basically ask this evening again in today um is that the the information about housing and all the great presentation that we've heard today be separated from that code cleanup I think there's items in that code cleanup that the sooner we can get them out there the more effective it's going to be to the development community of which I am a member so to me there's a text amendment process that has to be done for all of this goes through Planning Commission and comes back to this body this is the first step so to me what I'm here to ask is that all of these housing initiatives all of them be looked at be considered in the thoughtful manner by which this council is doing but that that not be part of the current code cleanup because to me the code cleanup has been looked at by the people that it impacts I've read through it I've looked at the red marks from page one to page 450 or something like that and they are very technical in nature they don't change zoning they don't change allowable uses they just make it easier for staff and the community to understand what's going on I think that should be pushed through as quickly as possible we were talking about that in June when I was still on the commission and then all of these topics that we're looking at all these great recommendations that we've heard be opened up for a broader um consideration broader conversation and not be brought together so so I know Angela is going to be talking about this now I hope I can listen to it um but again that's what I'm here to talk about thank you very much than you so much thank you for your service really appreciate it Mark great job good afternoon again I'm Marica beckin this topic here has somewhat been raised already but I wanted to point out that by right approvals seem to potentially remove the right of a community to participate and provide input at public meetings regarding local development as well as raising issues that may not have been fully considered by the developers you mentioned Community meetings and and setting up approvals kind of by a community in advance but Community Moors change so what a community may have agreed to five years ago may not be something that the current Community would agree to also density bonuses as presented seem to allow serious degradation of the quality of life for existing residents while rewarding developers these proposals seem likely to ad ively affect everyone already here and put Untold dollars in the pockets of developers who don't actually need to live in these new superdense regions the current procedural processes which include public hearings at all levels should be retained in all cases thank you Bill shrimp followed by Donna Keats thank you hello good afternoon I just want to say ditto for the uh first commenters uh uh points that he was making I thought he made some excellent points um thanks again for having the workshop today glad this body is taking the time to take these challenges seriously and we'll provide direction to staff I know that's all we're really doing today uh and I hope in that direction that the word gentrification and how to pay attention to that concern is part of your discussions um I have noticed to General theme of many of the comments today not just me but many other people saying that engagement can be improved um so and regarding the process of that removing the opportunity for early input even on affordable units is a tough idea um many wonderful people work in this building uh however one1 should not be the sole Arbiter in terms of what happens in each neighborhood uh removing Community engagement early um is troublesome and we have a process that works pretty well already um I think some examples been provided maybe it's not perfect but it it's better than just thrown away um other incentives such as jumping to the front of the line or Su credits or the financial incentives for lowcost housing certainly please push forward on those that's good stuff there um in my previous comments I said Reno has a good problem and it's a great place place to live um allowing development of 100 units by right is where sfr areas uh go to die uh I do appreciate the additional color comments and nuances the report uh writer uh provided so around that topic short-term rentals professionally I profit when people buy and sell these things uh but as a Reno I hope the city pumps the brakes on these um and it's probably pretty unpopular opinion um it really does cause a problem with affordability uh I do agree that adus and small multif family are nice tool to at least address part of the infill problem and and that missing middle so you know just thoughts to keep in your mind as you provide direction to staff today and again thank you for having today's Workshop thanks Donna Keats let me know when I've got it in the right spot here hi uh Donna for the record um I have exactly enough time to make my meeting so thanks for sliding this in on the front end of your presentation and I've scrolled so many notes throughout this I can't find what I want to say on this topic but what does come to mind is about this the discussion you had about by right and the 100 units I want to remind you that the smaller develop elements used to require review if they were like over 20 to 50 or something like that and in this hurry up and let's make everything easier administrative permissions for things in the 2021 update it then went to up to 50 I think 20 to 50 instead of four to whatever it was the cut offs so it's we've just increased the cut offs on this and now they want to go all the way to 100 and so there was also convers ation about doing this by right stuff if you have clear objective standards we do not what we did in 2021 was put a ton of administrative approval into the code the administrator can decide to change uses can decide to change there's a hundred things the quote administrator can do so if you want to follow this path to letting these large developments off the hook and not go in front of Planning Commission who are the people people who took care of the architectural incompatibilities and the setbacks and were really super important but the Planning Commission is going to be being removed from review of a lot of these things it's in the code cleanup there are places that Planning Commission is no longer going to see things I think that's wrong but this is all on the same pathway we don't have clear objective standards so that you can walk in and say Here's my 100 unit development AB b c d I've met every one of those well then you know what if it's in the right Zone sure but we have way too much play in our code for what the thing's going to look like how it's going to be developed that's the reason we can't do that in order to push things forward faster that's not the answer that's the decimation of Midtown that's what's happening mean with that you don't have that kind of review oh you still get a still get a public notice for 750 ft maybe but you know having a meeting that you can go to discuss it having it go to a NAB and have the neighbors know what's going on so many times people make suggestions can you just do this can you just do that and then you end up with a development that everybody thinks is fine because people aren't necessarily anti-development they just want it to be smarter and more compatible which we don't do right now so to put these things in here to go by right straight away even for affordable housing you know why don't you instead just put a time limit like the the excuse is it takes too long to go to Planning Commission with it's affordable housing we need it why don't you just say once that comes in we have two meetings that has to get on the agenda why don't you just do it that way instead of having nobody look at it anyway good goes to public process goes to quality of existing neighborhoods goes to the fact that they're probably not going to end up where some of you people live so you have a different point of view that's not true I understand but it's something I said and if it was personally offensive I apologize but but true in a lot of cases when people are doing these things that they don't live here and they don't get affected so good points thanks Donna Madame mayor with that we do not have any hands raised in zoom and for the record we received two comments associated with this I item prior to 4m yesterday October 31st one letter in opposition and one letter of concern those have been distributed to the Reno city council and are a part of the permanent record and with that we're closing public comment and moving into presentation okay great Angela floor is yours thank you again for the record Angela fuss assistant director at development services so this really is a good transition I think from where we left off with Shane he had a lot of really good ideas really big Ideas um those in my mind are housing initiatives that if that's the direction this Council wants to go let's have a robust discussion to answer your question how come some of the things we're proposing and we'll go over those are part of the code cleanup the items that Shane proposes we're not cleanup items we're not proposing to change the zoning to double the density from mf30 to mf60 those are big initiatives what we're looking at is smaller incremental pieces if we don't like them we don't have to approve them so that's why we're here today let me just get your feedback are we on the right track when I heard you say we want density as a city we want walkable communities okay let's slowly work our way towards that if you're like whoa slow down it's too much too fast that's fine too we can do that as well so I'm hoping again after today's presentation you can give me feedback are we on the right track shall we continue moving this direction or shall we slow things down or do more okay so let's let's kind of go back to some of the key things that Shan brought up one of them had to do with our Capital Improvement program this is something we do already we look at all of our pipes we look at how old they are if they're working if they're not working one thing that we're not doing is actively or proactively saying where do we want to see infill and if these are the locations where we want it then let's look at upsizing those pipes that's very different from just maintaining what we have today we already do that that's already part of our CIP what we're talking about is something drastically different us saying as a city these are the core areas of our town our city that we want to see more intense development and as a result we're going to provide some infrastructure to anticipate that type of development one thing I think that um some of you know who s on the governing board maybe not everyone Regional planning is already going through this process as a community they're looking at where's the existing schools where's the water lines from TLA where's the storm drain lines from Reno Sparks waso County they're putting together Maps so that again as an entire region we'll have a map to be able to say this is an area where all of our CRP our C cips are investing money this is a great tool um it's not going to you know change the way we do development but it will give developers an opportunity to say oh look this is an area where tomwa is gonna upssize a waterline great I was going to develop in that area now that I know it's in their CIP in the next five years maybe I'm going to hold off and wait till that's done again a useful tool nothing that's going to drastically change development but it will be helpful um in terms of impact fees there's a couple ways to look at impact fees one thing that as a region we've looked at is should we be charging less impact fees fees if you develop in these core infill areas and this is something has not been adopted but it's been in discussion for years um whether that's Road impact fees whether that's um sewer connection fees if we're trying to incentivize infill should we be providing Financial incentives maybe those of you that develop on the more the the outskirts maybe the north Valley's area would pay more versus the areas the the developers that are developing Within These infield areas again a concept not something we're proposing at this point general idea things that we think about late at night when we can't sleep um you know how do we fund some of these ideas we can either raise fees for other areas again if we're lowering fees for the infill raising fees for these outer areas that's one idea another idea is the whole idea of reimbursement agreements yes we have the tool right now to do reimbursement agreements no we don't currently do it effectively I think in the last five years I think of one project that put in a really big storm drain this was in in the north alleys um storm drain infrastructure knowing that other development was going to come in and when that other development came in they reimbursed the developer we don't do that well we don't do it on a normal basis so that's something we should look at as a city how do we do that better again not so much that the city is covering those fees but when you have a new development coming in and they have to put in a new sewer line maybe they're going to make it go from a a 10- inch line to a 12in line to put in their project we may say you know what what if you put in a 14inch line because we know that's an infill area that down the road we anticipate more development so then the next guy who comes in then reimburses that developer great concept many communities do it it's something that we want to look into um more to figure out how we can do it better all right the idea of the zoning code cleanup and what we're doing so I've I've kind of broken it down into two categories one is affordable housing and that means subsidized that doesn't mean market rate that truly means when these projects go out and they're they're supplying housing at 60% Ami they're getting it subsidized generally speaking Reno gets maybe three to four projects a year that's it we're not talking a lot of development it is a very very small piece of our development community that actually does subsidize affordable housing so what we're posing is for those projects again if you can meet the 60% Ami you can go straight to a building permit no that doesn't mean you circumvent the zoning you still have to have the right zoning you still have to meet your building setbacks you still have to meet all of those standards but if for instance because you're a unit or in a zoning that requires a conditional use permit you would be able to skip that conditional use permit process and go straight to building permit again this is this is not going to drastically change development but it helps those affordable housing developers to get there faster they're not paying for 20 extra, to go through that that conditional use permit process and hiring all the Consultants it's just one extra step to get them faster we currently have density bonuses for affordable housing projects this has been in our zoning code for years not just two years probably more like 20 years this has been in place a very long time what we're asking ourselves is it enough should we be doing more now now what we've heard from Shane and frankly from the legislature is local jurisdictions need to be doing more so what we're proposing is to take that that density bonus and increase it not just for that 60% Ami again they already get a density bonus of 45% we're saying let's move that to unlimited for them and then we have this Workforce housing right that's that 120% really down to to 60% that's the kind of that that gap of of of the teachers and the nurses how do we provide housing for them we don't currently have any density bonus allocations for that that kind of Niche and so what we're proposing is just to add another a density bonus so that they can have more units at that 120% Ami or 80% Ami not going to make a huge difference in this town but these small incremental changes again are are beneficial for everyone um the other big thing that we're looking at is just as more of an internal thing when you come in for a building permit we process your building permit the the first round of comments we do within 10 days extremely fast most jurisdictions take weeks we take 10 days then you resubmit your revisions and then we take three days and then you resubmit your revisions and we take three days we have a very fast process for reviewing building permits right now there's not much more we can do to speed that up one thing we can do though is assign what we're calling a project coordinator so when you come in with your architect and your engineer and your design team we will sit down with you and say let's go through all of staff's comments make sure you understand what we said you need to change it's more of a coordination role it's not going to have an impact on the zoning um but it will help them to kind of process their building permit faster all right so that is specifically affordable subsidized housing initiatives that we're proposing with this code cleanup let's take a step back to just everyday housing infill housing regular housing this this whole concept of buy right when we looked at other jurisdictions and other zoning codes we said well what's normal what what's the number of units that would typically trigger a public review process right now through a lot of our different zoning designations if you hit 20 units you would have to go through some kind of public review process that's not normal that is not best practices that is something very unique to Reno most other jurisdictions do not have that process you would go straight to a building permit as long as you meet all the standards so we said let's meet somewhere in the middle again not a major overhaul we're still going to trigger an entitlement process if you hit a a certain threshold so we looked at what's a 100 units generally speaking a 100 units is what would trigger a traffic study requirement so we said that's probably a good kind of threshold to say if you have a hundred units or more you should still go through that conditional use permit public hearing process process less than that as long as you meet all your setbacks and height requirements and design requirements you can go straight to a building permit again not not a major change in terms of is this going to move the needle to get more housing no it will help that housing to get to Market faster all right then the next one again density bonus we have a separate density bonus for affordable housing subsidized affordable we currently have a density bonus for these infield projects and it's based on the size of your unit so if you have an apartment project we see a lot of these let's just take 10 units Maybe by right for the zoning you can put in 10 units but you're doing small units they're about a th000 square feet in size great currently today you could do a 45% density bonus which means four units it's not huge we're not talking hundreds of units because of these these density bonus allocations again um most infill projects are pretty small so this gives them a little bit more uh Power to go to get in a couple more units well we we found that that's been great and we have some folks who have used that density bonus and it's again gives them a couple more units so we're asking is that enough is a 45% density bonus really moving that needle in terms of housing maybe not enough so what we're proposing is to bump that to an 80% bonus so instead of those 10 units now you could do 18 units right you'd get an additional eight units small changes not a major overhaul small changes all right this is probably one of my favorite topics to bring up because you guys brought this up with Shane and I wanted to jump up and tell you wait we're doing great things number one one of the complaints we get from the development Community is that we have a lot of internal staff and they're all looking at the same thing but from a different lens for instance we have Engineers that work in the utility services they're looking at storm drain and utilities from a a sewer perspective we have Engineers that work in public works looking at our public infrastructure how it ties to that private infrastructure and then we have Engineers that work in development services they look at the private side so if you take three Engineers you give them a set of plans they're probably going to look at different things and come up with different requirements we said that's kind of problematic we would like to give you a more I would say comprehensive review still making sure that everyone has a chance to review it so internally this says nothing to do with zoning code just so you know these are things we're working on initiatives that that Shane brought up that we're currently already working on um we're working on process and procedures we have monthly meetings that now we've set up with our staff to say let's let's do some practice runs let's look at a set of plans what is everyone looking at is this your lane is this your lane did anyone miss this so that we can all be on the same page on what we're supposed to be reviewing and with those checklists again we currently don't have checklists we're putting those checklists in place so that everyone can say did somebody check the box and look at this issue hopefully this will help that at the building permit stage and the entire stage we're not missing anything and then it feels like a more comprehensive review um from the developer side then the next one in dealing with our partner agencies so is it the city of Reno's job to make sure District Health approves permits in a reasonable time no it is not our job but you know what we can do better to partner with these agencies and I listed some of the key ones that we hear probably the majority of the complaints from the development community District Health I'm sure as you've heard has been uh they've had some challenges uh over the last probably 10 years um Envy energy is one the more recently they've had a lot of turnover in their staff and so it's really slowed down the process Tama that's another one um you know when they when they look at a set of of plans to deal with water it generally takes them about three months to get through that process so if our building permit time we processing building permit much faster and it's taking them three months to get through the same building permit and around revisions we have a conflict there right we're not approving that building permit until Tuma has approved it and District Health has approved it so what can we as the City of Reno do to help that process what we're doing is we have meetings with each of these agencies on a regular basis and I will say this is new this is not something we have always done I think um under the leadership of Chris pingry who's been our director for two years now you know one of his key priorities was transparency and working with with the development community and so this is something that we have really um worked hard at and that is our relationships as City staff with those agencies as well we can call somebody at Envy energy and say Bob we got a building permit they can't get through the system because something's being held up on Envy energy side can you help take a look at this and tell me what's going on having that communication is new that's not something we've been able to do in the past but again we we meet with these agencies whether it's monthly or quarterly and say what are the challenges you're having how's your staff dealing with these issues what can we do better so that's something that's really unique to reeno I don't know that the other jurisdictions meaning County and Sparks um are having those same conversations but we have prioritized those conversations with those agencies and I would like I'd like to think that it's it's working um we get calls from the development community and they're frustrated and they're mad and they're like I just can't get anywhere I got it Joe let me make a phone call and we help them out it's helping all right the the idea of an Adu ordinance the next agenda item after your lunch is if you choose to initiate then you can check this one off your list all right that missing middle so a shame brought up you know what is that missing middle we've got duplex Triplex um attached town homes condominiums we don't have a whole lot of housing products that really fit those words we have a lot a single family we have a lot of multif family but we don't have a lot of that product so what can we do to help increase that um from a zoning code perspective we looked at where we currently allow those types of of homes right whether you duplex Triplex fourplex um we currently allow them in most of our multif family and I think two of our single family zoning districts so we've added them with a conditional use permit under two other single family zoning districts so not by right you would still have to go through that public hearing process uh it just gives more flexibility if you're in a single family zoning District um you still have to have a minimum lot size of of either 9,000 square feet that's one of the zoning districts or 15,000 square feet those are those are Big Lots so we currently allow them some of these smaller zoning districts where you can do small Lots um we're just expanding that again with a public hearing process to be able to allow that kind of missing middle in more locations and the idea of a short-term rental ordinance that that was on the list of priorities that we brought up with Council over the last couple years it's still on our list um we anticipate we'll have something adopted probably within the next two to three years if you guys want to see that um fast forward we can get direction from you because again today we can bring forward a a text Amendment we can have you initiate that at a future meeting and we can start that process sooner so with that um I would like to just go over any questions you have there's no formal uh motion on this other than to say again that you accept the the report by Mr Shane Phillips and then if there's any feedback things that you want us to work on faster slower go harder do less now would be the time to tell us what we can do to um make that happen thank you okay Miss F thank you so much for the presentation um I'll sort of start us off and then we'll move to council colleagues um first of all the presentation's outstanding the work that you and your team are putting in is really unparalled um you have a keen intellect an incredible desire and heart for serving this city where you're raising your family I I just cannot thank you enough um we are a challenging body at times because we're persons who have a diverse range of opinions it it can be sometimes difficult to navigate uh when you have you know seven bosses uh but you do it with Grace and a lot of dignity and you really are to be commended for the work that you're doing one of the things I noticed in your com comments as well in the presentation is an I think an important uh point to discuss sort of openly and honestly there are a lot of sort of I don't know if it's tribalism or if it's the desire to pit us against them so I hear people demonizing for example developers like the developers are this big bad monolithic greedy community and and I think you've done a nice job of pointing out that I would think unless any of us are you know building our own homes and chopping our own Lumber uh that we live in homes built by developers some people live in newer communities that were just built you know within the last five years uh there people in significantly older neighborhoods that might have been built kind of one by one uh but at the end of the day uh this attempt to demonize developers or the realtor Community um these are folks who are not only building our communities but they're employing our trades people painters and plumbers and electricians they're the ones spending money in the stores that provide the Seatac to do the thing and so I thought your presentation did a nice job of of sort of articulating this concept that I think is worth pointing out today which is that uh we are all living in this community trying our very best to create the best community that we can and we all have a role to play in it and so this this predilection towards pointing a finger at and blaming I think is really one that I I appreciated about your presentation um what the public wants of course is to be included in the process I heard some comments by people today about avoiding um you know racing here or there I think your presentation also point out that many of these things have been thought about discussed chewed on for 20 years I would go far as to venture that we've been discussing them forever I went through in the leadup to working on this presentation and thinking about this critically I looked at historical Archives of Reno Gaz at Journal articles and and the same issues and headlines that uh you know the Ben marats of the world point to today are the same ones that were being discussed in the 1980s and the same ones that were being discussed in the 1950s it it is not a new thing that we discuss but we're trying to get it right today and so again I thank you really ultimately for the presentation because I did think it did a good job of pointing those things out and I think it's good to call out the elephant in the room sometimes even at your own Peril we have to discuss those things so I think you um have done a good job of making those opportunities available to us so thank you for that okay I'll come back now to the dis and see where we want to start Miss breus I'll let you start this round thank you thank you for that presentation I missed the first part of the meeting I was at the Joint Coordinating Committee for our torf Wastewater plan um and I I might be tracking incorrectly would did you just make a presentation for item B1 or B2 this is item B2 B2 okay so that is M just so you know we went out of order at the start B5 jumped in order and then we went back to order so that's what happened just so and and I certainly am not taking away your time and just sharing with you that that's what happened so B2 um has as an attachment a presentation on and and I do I do want my time to be held because I think this is a legitimate um organizational question it has okay okay it has the okay it does have the the packet that you just went over um but I I have some questions so if we could go through your let me go through your your pre your presentation here um I I I I do think there's a challenge in this cleanup conversation um and I'm struggling with that I don't know if you were here when we adop adopted the zoning code update is our our um I've been here the whole time um and I know there were things left that were getting worked out maybe those are the things Mr Johnson talked about um with the code are you in a process on those have those been initiated other things we have so we have the zoning code cleanup which has over 400 cleanup items uh um we met for three months with our technical advisory committee we are now holding stakeholder Outreach meetings so we're in that process meetings that I see advertised correct and so then the next up um again depending on feedback we get today we specific to these housing topics um we can go back and hold more meetings we can start workshops with Planning Commission we have options to move forward if the if the concern from this council is like the housing needs to be taken out in separate easy enough let's initiate not today we can initiate a separate text Amendment on the topic of Housing and we can lump all all of those topics together and do the zoning code cleanup separate if you guys aren't comfortable that these are clean up items Well here here's what I'm thinking because and and then and then do we have any housing um initiatives that we um initiated previously because I didn't see that in the background record but I've been waiting for you know 18 months I think I think it was in the spring of 2022 that we initiated some ordinances right yeah and we definitely appreciate your patience on this we do have the Adu ordinance that will be initiated after lunch if you choose to move that one forward and then the short-term rental which I brought up again um is something we'll probably move forward in the next two to three years two to three years that's a long time have you but did we initiate an Adu ordinance before you this is your formal initiation you gave us the go-ahead to to work to think about it okay I've been waiting for that so you know the most valuable thing I think here is time is count is staff's time and F focus on you know doing one thing after another cuz I have lost complete track of where things are at not seeing it not seeing things come forward and then you know I think we get unhappy with staff Mr manager where where are we why are we you know taking so long so the 400 that you have I suppose a red line you're out talking to the public about their cleanup you know 400 seems a lot more than I recall Clary and telling us and staff telling us about I think that should get done now if there's things in there that are policy setting as related to housing I don't think it would be fair to have this conversation here and also be parallel moving those so I I do think you need to get those over the Finish Line particularly since you're out there having six stakeholder meetings in the neighborhoods and I'm getting feedback from people on those so I don't want to put a stop to that I want to see you finish that um or at least you know yeah I I think you need to Def finish that now this is B2 so you're bringing up a lot of things that don't live in Title 18 the tmrp the impact fees arguably live elsewhere so I I just those would be B1 items I I don't think it's fair under the way this item's framed to put that first slide in now that next one the cleanup process allowing housing projects to go straight by right and you have a lot in there density bonuses and changing those my thinking on those um to the rest of my colleagues is we did just put in some density bonuses correct correct two years ago correct so you know evaluative feedback loop you know if we haven't had anyone you know use those then why are we upping them you know time resources Focus especially when you tell me a priority that mine of short-term Rental rent ordinance is three years out okay so and then you made another comment that well we only get three or four subsidized housing projects I'm very familiar with those you know how many of those went through Planning Commission or went straight to to permit because if you're just if we're just doing paper changes you know like oh we brought in a little more density bonus oh we're going to skip one entitlement of the next five years of the affordable housing projects you know that's not the um so I am not prepared to give you um feedback on slide four until I have a little more data on understanding it's worth the time and effort okay so that's that's that so I've covered the overall Title 18 understanding what's clean up what's in process the density bonuses and the subsidized ones um The Loud by right you know I think it's a it's it's it's fine I just um you know and I could be okay with that I I need a little more detail about how say the grading and the other things come in um I I'm fine with that City staff um for housing needs um Miss breus can I just ask you to pause there we're three minutes over and I'll come back to you and I'm I'm pausing at slide six and you guys could you guys bring those as I mentioned the slide I'll go back okay it's no problem your comments have been incredibly insightful so I thank you for them let me just see if any of my colleagues have any additional comments at this time I don't know if you want to go to I'll come to you Miss D okay um first of all um you asked us a question I'm going to give you my answer I believe we should separate the code cleanup from the housing initiatives just really clear even if they proceed in parallel so that people know what they're meeting on blending the two has created a lot of consternation and and un um unneeded tension in my view I want your code cleanups to proceed a pace give Clarity to builders to the community but I really think that the policy initiatives on housing and that includes changing uses density bonuses um um going to things by right need to be packaged as housing initiatives and I'm not you know opposed to them or or supportive of them I want to hear them as a package and be able to say like this one this one we should hold a little bit I just think it would help the process get you through um I've heard it from almost everyone they're confused great great feedback easy done all right that's my feedback I don't know if others agree all right um number two um there are a number of things that I would report that you mentioned and some I think we should go slower on or not even consider at this time I support the comment council member breus made about understanding we've we made some changes are they working it has to be an incremental feedback that's key to every everything we do right in our lives is we did this thing did it work I I would like some feedback on that before make more changes so if you guys could gather some data for us um and I think it's important I've had work worked on a number of affordable housing units that did not have to go to Planning Commission I'll give you an example the one on Geer grade um it's vintage by Steamboat was already incorporated into a pewd it was already Apartments but the developer decided to do affordable housing instead of regular apartments and I heard a lot of feedback from the community there because that's where city meets County and a lot of the County residents weren't very keen they felt it was in their space and it was not in an urban space uh four of us supported it and it moved forward so um and what did we support we didn't get a role a decision making on the planning what we did was make a decision on do they get home funds or not and we did support them getting home funds but we were concerned about Transportation it's so far out we were concerned and they still didn't make the changes I recommended which was to implement a um rapid unit that would go within three miles uh just to get people to services like a shopping and doctors and schools they didn't do that but I would have liked to see that be an element to support the affordable housing that doesn't have access to Transportation um another thing I would support on your part or let me just be clear so I'd like the answer how many of our affordable housing projects are even going through a Planning Commission process now how many are going straight to building already in other words is this change worth the challenge to get us where we want to be good good feedback Capital Improvement program um totally all day long I think we need to prioritize the capital Improvement program and I've seen it they came in and redid the whole um area on Country Club Acres near Virginia Lake put in upsized uh pipes and all of this and developers told us that the size that there was a physical limitation to being able to build development um including affordable housing because the pipes weren't big enough and we we've upsized them and was a big project tomwa was involved everybody's involved I like it but we have to decide and do the hard work of prioritizing this infill because the public comment said too oh you want to infill on my neighborhood but not your neighborhood is it fair we constantly talk about within the McCarron ring is that the whole McCarron ring is that a keystone we GNA allow single family homes on Kings Row to be taken out and put in duplexes and triplexes right now today I don't no so we need to have a a concrete conversation about it um the reimbursement agreements you said we can already do but we're not doing them I don't understand why okay so something I think worth discussion the um I am a no I'm going straight to building permit on um those certain kind of projects including the under hundreds I have the example I gave earlier was a 14 units it could have been 21 but guess what when they made small change the develop the community came out and supported it they didn't oppose um increased sizing you know to going to 14 units so I think the public input is very valuable in making improvements um I'm yes on improving coordination and I'm so pleased that you are improving internal coordination I want to make sure all not you use the example of Engineers I want to make sure it's not just engineers at the table I want to make sure the tree people are there the landscape people are there um the water people are there in other words there's different kind of people and I want to make sure they're all Mr managers told me this has already been happening for a year but you're telling me it's not really happening no what I'm saying is we specifically found engineering to be an issue yeah so we are fixing that specific issue but not the other components like for example I'd like sustainability at the table we yes the answer is yes we as a staff talk have meetings we talk about projects we talk about what can we do better yeah the the example I gave was a again specifically what we heard the feedback from Shane yeah and feedback that we've heard from the development Community is those three departments need to do better and I think all the Departments should be at the table frankly 100% gotcha okay um the density bonus you heard me already um I think we have to first look at the base assessment of density and not give density bonuses for 1,00 square foot which is in our code today it is yes so unless we change that I can't support the D bonuses um assign a project person I think that's a fantastic idea kind of a Shepherd for affordable housing and one more thing I don't think that we should be calling 120% of Ami to 60 Workforce housing traditionally the definitions been 80% of Ami other words these are folks work living just below the average uh median income and I don't think we should go over it frankly um I think we should really keep our eye on the ball what is Workforce housing I know I I probably have one or two more things but I feel like I'm out I've used my time so everyone's gotten a little bit over so it's okay let me come back to you on the second round please okay any other council members have comments at this time Miss Ebert let me come back to you Miss Taylor Miss Ebert the floor is yours a couple couple quick ones actually um so you mentioned the developer impact fees um do we currently ear Mark any impact fees to you keep them in a specific area or does it just go into City of Reno account to use for infrastructure so we currently have one formal impact fee the police facility impact fee and that goes Citywide goes to one um to pay for our new police station okay so if a developer you know for your example put in yep the other example is the Regional Road impact fee we don't set the the terms for that um the region does RTC does but that is divided up by North and South okay so like your example if a de developer put in a 14in pipe and then the next developer came in and paid a fee part of that could be used to reimburse the previous developer but the rest of that could just go into the Reno PD fund or the road fund or whatever it doesn't necessarily get set aside for other infrastructure needs specifically in the ward where where the development happened or anything like that right so for that specific example the reimbursement agreement let's say Military Road let's say there's a project and they're going to come in and they're going to put in their 10-inch pipe but we know there's future development happening on Military so it would be smart to put in maybe a 14inch pipe for the future development yeah so the idea is that we would set up a reimbursement agreement with that developer that basically put in an extra 4 Ines right for future development and then as other devel vment comes online they pay that developer back okay so all of their reimbursements would go to that developer there wouldn't be an additional amount that goes into a pot for any other fees or anything else for the city bring out would reimbursements specific to reimbursing that is a very specific thing to just those projects that come in they still have to pay the Ser a connection fees they still have to pay the road impact fees they they still have to pay every other fee the idea is that we would have a separate reimbursement agree because developer number one put in an extra wide pipe so they have to reimburse them to now use that pipe the other option is that they have to put in a whole new pipe for their development right and that doesn't make sense so it sounds like then that nobody's paying an impact fee because if the if developer one is paying for it and then all future developers are paying them back then who's actually paying an impact fee so everybody pays every impact fee this is you were talking two different words impact fees everybody has to pay that's that's no matter what you have to pay that based on your project reimbursement agreements is saying let's proactively look at upsizing pipes and as development comes online it's not the city necessarily doing it it could be developer number one yeah if they came in we said great you have to put in your pipe you pay for it you have to put it in I understand that piece of it and so then when those other developers come online because developer number one has basically upsized a pipe yeah then they have to pay that developer back yeah so developer one has paid the fee developer 345 pays them back correct okay so developer one have they really paid a fee if they've gotten everything paid back they paid their portion okay okay that's what I was trying to ask okay so um I did have another question um about the short-term um rentals do we know like what what is the state of Nevada's rule for tenant prot protections like how how long does somebody have to live in a space before you have to go through the whole eviction process and will that be a part of what we have to take into consideration when we do our rules for short-term rentals that specific question has nothing to do with zoning so we don't we don't from a zoning perspective we do not regulate that so I can't speak to what the state requires when we talk short-term rentals um we would be looking at anyone that wants to do a short-term rental would have to go through a formal process we would send inspectors out to make sure it meets all the requirements we collect fees for all of those short-term rentals um but we would also kind of set some parameters of you know how many parking or how many um um cars can you have parked there because that's big a problem you have you know a big party 20 cars it's it's it's it's an issue um so we would set zoning regulations on things like you know noise and how many cars are allowed to be there um we would look at how long they can stay that would be part of our ordinance as well again these are just typical short-term rental ordinance types of things that you would regulate with zoning okay so it would actually include how long a tenant could stay short term we could add yep I mean we would look at kind of some what are some best practices from other communities um Henderson has a a pretty recent code waso County just adopted a code the interesting part too is it's it's a potentially a major impact on staffing wasio county um within the Reno area doesn't have a whole lot of short-term rentals but up at the lake they have a lot of short-term rentals and it is a huge staff resource they've actually had to hire more staff just to deal with short-term rentals now that they do have adopted this new ordinance so those are the types of things we want to look at before we just adopt an ordinance without understanding the long-term impacts if we're going to need more staff to maintain you know the these databases and to go out and do inspections we want to make sure that we are teed up and ready for that before that ordinance passes okay thank you okay Miss Taylor thank you Mr vice mayor Angela I just want to say um you and your team are just amazing you're rock stars thank you and everywhere I go I hear the same thing so that that kind of leads into where I'm going to start with my comments I think everything here is fantastic and there are some things that I'm I'm have some questions about but at this point in the game I think we're just saying you know I'm not here to mro micromanage the process I'm not here here to say yes I'm on this or no I'm on this I'm here to say let's go explore I am all about looking at all of these items and I thank you for what you've done so I'm not going to give you yes I I can support this and no I can't support this because I think there's still a lot of things that need to be ha happening and I can get to that decision because first of all I think that we have the most qualified talented professional team out there and I hear it every single day so thank you the second thing is I know we're going to continue to have stakeholder engagement process this isn't the first or last time we're going to talk about this it's going to be an ongoing conversation again we're not making decisions here and I know that we're going to we are good at that we have a great Communications Department and a great team and I think going back to our first presentation we heard what some of the data has done already with with uh Miss uh Cochran new name presentation when we started that off with B5 showing us where we have been and where we're going and what we've done with the data so that gives me a level of comfort today saying yes let's go explore all of these options and based on you know what we're we're hearing today we need to bring more affordable housing to our region so very much appreciative thank you thank you okay Mr Martinez thank you vice mayor thank you director f for providing you know overall comprehensive uh view of what you all have been doing um and I want to give some kudos to director pingry as well for you shout out I caught that while you were saying it so I appreciate you acknowledging his efforts um similar to what my colleagues have said I want to make sure that um our residents in our neighborhoods are aware of the processes that are going on and if we are exploring the idea of increasing by right approvals for anything under 100 units that that is communicated to them and that these neighborhood plans have the input from those stakeholders and that they're included that because similar to what we saw in the redistricting process there was a lot of feedback um that we had received and I think this is to a similar magnitude of that that can impact the how Reno looks in the next 10 15 20 years and so we want to make sure that everybody who lives here is looking at moving into this area understands how we're looking at zoning in the Reno region and what we're going to do um to increase affordable housing options um so I just wanted to put that on the record and then I think um the other thing I wanted to ask about um is your thoughts on um I think you talked about it a little bit is uh let me just go to it sorry uh slide number oh no it's in your staff report so AB 2113 yes which allows M top ities to make various changes to land use planning processes and create expedited process for affordable housing projects yes your thoughts on that a little bit more for those of you that don't know I should have brought this up ab 213 was passed by the legislature there is a number of new regulations um and Reporting requirements on housing and so the two things that from a zoning perspective we were looking at is that each local jurisdiction is supposed to come up with an expedited process for reviewing affordable housing projects so as part of the code cleanup we were going to include some of those things um one of them is again affordable housing projects with that 60% Ami or greater could go to building permit and would not have to go through that public hearing process and they still have to meet height requirements and setback requirements and Zoning requirements they can't get around that and then we've talked about that um that liaison person at the building permit process that would also help to expedite through the building permit process and for um the project coordinator that you were talking about earlier would that be a new position or someone who was already in-house and assigned it would be in-house because we get them so infrequently you know three to four a year we can manage it inhouse with the staff we have now okay and then the other only comment that I wanted to talk about is uh Workforce housing and I understand that traditionally the 80% Ami is what the definition has been but from the conversations and the presentations um even 100% Ami isn't really attainable housing in our region and so the rates that people are getting paid don't match the rent and mortgage levels that we're seeing in our area and so being understanding of our specific needs in our region is going to be uh beneficial to us as a council great thank you okay Miss fous I'm gonna start here and then I'll come to miss breus so um there are a number of different uh recommendations and in uh issues and I just want to make sure you have Direction I think the thing that is been clear from colleagues and from the public is this question about separating the cleanup items out from um the other policy initiatives that seems A wise choice based on what you're hearing today um there are some questions I have for you that would arise when we separate them out and so I'll sort of Reserve those for that time but in passing I think some of what you've said uh resonates with me in terms of how we can make small incremental steps that may ultimately impact the housing shortage that we're we're dealing with and so I'll wait to hear back from you on that I don't know that we have enough data to tell anybody that any of the things that we did two years ago are now then working plus we've had you know the a strange economic climate of the last two years following a pandemic so I just am not sure that you're going to get reliable data based on that and so again more of the um we we're probably going to have to take a leap of faith on some of those issues especially when you've identified you know people don't totally understand the density bonus or bump because what they're thinking is somehow a single one-third parcel is all of a sudden going to house 30 people I think you just have to quantify it the way that you did today so I think that's good um the question about uh Allowed by right I think again reserved for another time but I think I am more closely in line with Miss breus in that there are ways in which that is a planning tool could be effective I don't want to eliminate any public processes or any ability of the public to have an opinion on on some of those things and so maybe it is the way that Mr Phillips described it which is going back into the neighborhoods and figuring that out but we're making a choice right if we have greater public process and you look at some communities where public process derails these projects in a heartbeat I mean San Francisco is a good example someone wants to build a affordable housing project in an existing neighborhood and yet you know something that all of us would probably say yeah that's a great aspirational goal has been tied up in in uh sort of bureaucracy for 20 years to develop a parcel so these things happen I I hope they won't happen here uh let us continue our coordinating efforts with all of our regional Partners I have the privilege of serving on the District Board of Health uh now Northern Nevada Public Health uh uh which is the new name for it and so I do hear a fair amount of times because a constituent calls me and they say well I don't really understand all the multitude of committees that you all serve on but here's my issue and they're talking about their inability to get a permit through on a pool or maybe they have an interesting water system and what I do is I come to you I come to Mr pingry and I say help this person navigate it so I would like to see more of that um I'm not sure about the Adu ordinance I I'm not sure I think that that's a priority among the things that you've represented to me in part because as I talked about with Mr Phillips I'm not sure that someone is going to go out and all of a sudden we're gonna have a th Adu units they seem like a good idea but I'm not sure they will get us the housing stock we're looking for and so maybe my focus might not be there but I'm inclined to listen to what my colleagues have to say I do think duplexes Triplex and fourplexes sounds like a good idea I think that those also can be something that uh allows us to find a way to provide the kind of housing stock that is needed for uh you know I I'll pick on my own children a brand new teacher uh a public defender uh you know housing policy analyst those are the kind of jobs that or the kind of housing that would be supportive of those people I myself have lived in I tried to do the maath earlier I've lived in 11 places in my lifetime in Reno I've lived in everything from a small apartment uh where I was uh raised on Neil Road uh to town homes duplexes I've lived on Mary Street in Midtown I've lived in Sparks I've lived in Reno most of my life has been inside of Northwest Reno uh but even then I've lived in four different homes in my lifetime so we just have to have different types of houses availability for folks um the stto or the short-term rentals again I'm not sure that that's where my focus would be on in part because I think that that is largely the provence of the state and then the county so we fall at the very end of the pecking uh order on that and I think it creates pitfalls when we are doing something that maybe our neighbors and Sparks are not doing or the county is not doing so going it alone in that space is very problematic um it it really needs to come from a level just above of ours either at the county level or um the state level um so I'm not sure where I would fall on that but again because I think we should uncouple some of them I think we can get uh further into it when the time arises and I I've gone over a little bit myself now so I've gone as fast I could and I did speak quickly so I apologize for that but sharing with you my thoughts thank you we'll come now to miss breus thank you so much for being patient yeah you know um going back to slide four and just to kind of close this up is this item is about title 18 so there's a lot in here that's not about Title 18 but it seems to be captured in the motion that you suggest and I don't think that's really you know consistent with you know how the the discussions phrase so you know looking through these on title 14 or on slide four um clean up to allow density bonuses I want to make sure that if the council's going through something it's not a check the box we did something we moved some some uh standards um but you know they're not delivering that's just telling ourselves stories and we need some evidence to produce that um and it can't certainly be creating bad faith that we're not tackling the big issues okay so let's just be clear with ourselves how many years we're into this housing crisis from the Tesla effect and um you know how we're going to get the most for what we've done because we' had a workshop eight 20 months ago and nothing got done and I'm you know whatever but um you know let's let's just not tell ourselves stories because I think people see through it so the project coordinator I'll leave that for a sec um the the back to Title 18 on Slide Five The Bu right the 100 or less um I want to know how many apartments we've done a 100 or less um that didn't go by right you know I really want the data to understand if this is where we should clean up but I did not know although you know I probably would have liked it in the staff report background of this ab2 213 is this AB 2113 in the cleanup that's out for review right now with your six um your six workshops that Mr Johnson referred to is that embedded into that it is it is okay so so we got that one covered right correct okay so so and we initiated that because we had an item on cleaning up from the Nevada legislature right so again we felt that the legislature told us to that coulded clean preemption is preemption and we always respond to what the legislature brings forward so I don't have a problem it would have been nice to have that little information um now the staff items on item six I'm glad you all are meeting and coordinating this doesn't live in Title 18 correct you're not recommending a Title 18 thing right now let me help maybe help you understand so Shane gave us a presentation I followed up his presentation to let you know what we are currently working on initiatives we're working on that tie into what Shane just told you so this is a broader discussion okay and we're also talking about some of the changes that Shane proposed related to zoning that we're proposing as part of the cleanup okay I'm going to cut you off because you know we have these rigid time frames that I've never supported but on B6 um or on slide six coordination is great I had ideas to redo our subdivision process through a technical Review Committee rather than the Planning Commission I had I had recommendations it would have been entitle 18 but it lives for a far further day um but I'm glad you're doing coordination and up above you also recommended this staff coordinator and then you said we have so few of those um I think a lot of what Dr um uh Phillips W forward is um has to get us back to Neighborhood planning when I got here in 1998 the City of Reno had tons of neighborhood plants that's where you go through and put the duplexes the triplexes and the higher density in and people like uh Dr Phillips who look at other places or the Clarion folks really want to push by right and I support that and I think it's very clear but they don't realize the context in Reno where we haven't done neighborhood planning we've actually G gotten away from it we have less neighborhood planning and long range planning than we have ever had despite you know Council discussions and directions to stand up a neighborhood planning program a long-range planning program so I think that's rather than your streamlined person to do four projects a year I'd rather see a robust discussion on um restoring that that missing middle of your planning efforts from comprehensive to uh code code Conformity the Adu ordinance I think that's going to be next but at the end of the day my priorities here for this Council are the Adu ordinance is a short-term rental ordinance which you talked about the zoning but I think Dr Phillips really talked about it in terms of housing Supply and I want an up and down vote on rent stabilization ordinance uh from this Council I think everyone needs to be out there at this point tested to whether or not they support rental Pro added rental protections and I I know we have new folks I know we have folks who have taken positions on it outside of this table before but I think what I hear a population that's been so strg Ling with day-to-day uh housing is is this Council going to stand for a rent stabilization ordinance or not so my priorities rather than these pushing your density is the Adu the short-term rental getting your code clean up and a discussion here whether or not we're prepared to move forward with a rent stabilization ordinance but um I guess I'm at time I also want to understand the the rest of the meeting because the mayor who I think we've lost for for the is she coming back I don't know okay but she said we're breaking after this B2 correct yes that's true and then um because we only we only went with four hours for this meeting and it's two so can B3 and B4 move on to a different Council agenda so we can have the mayor back and everyone else back at some point I don't know if we'll have the opportunity but we're going to continue to power forward we'll take a brief break we are going to go beyond our 2m. Clos time we I show it on calendar until 3 oh you do it's okay 3:00 we will try not to truncate any of the presentations sounds great um I'm ready to make a motion on this one if you are I may be in just one second I know Miss der would like to speak before uh we close out the discussion yeah um great thank you um a few things and I want to concur with a number of things I heard from my colleagues um I I would want any motion to make sure that we separate the code cleanup from Housing Initiative so I'm looking for that in a motion um number two for years I asked for neighborhood planning on a couple places all the way in Suburbia down South Reno uh for the hillside developments in the Foothills so that we could understand where Urban meets um Wildland interface whether it's fires Trails um transportation I wanted all of that done before these developments came in it never happened I asked for it year after year but it was never a planning priority and so developments just sort of came in with lots of issues in my opinion couldn't really support them even last meeting we deferred a development in the Foothills so we could continue to work on it so closer in we in the area I mentioned before the Warren Lakeside plumis Moana that area um we were promised that with the code changes planning would start having neighborhood meetings that was two years ago we've had zero neighborhood meetings and so those residents their only opportunity is come to a NAB which doesn't make a decision right makes recommendations come here but it's not been the front and center issue right is that we're going to suddenly move from we just allowed for example mf14 mf211 not just limited to mf30 um we added those back but we still didn't have any neighborhood meetings to talk about okay what's next what if we come in with MF 45 is everybody okay with that um there was a lot of tension over the lak Ridge Development where we had a 300 plus home uh Apartments proposed on incredibly busy intersection it was a divided Council vote um clearly we're not ready for that kind of densification on major arterials in a planned unit development that never ENT anticipated that we have Apartments but not at that density so what I want to make sure is that the neighborhood meetings do move forward prior to making these kind of changes any kind of um this level of densification um on Tas so I I'm the current Vice chair tomwa I 100% think that they could do better in terms of responding to a development project it shouldn't take that many months they do a very detailed job they come up with papers that specif ify the size of the tower uh the size of the lines all of this do they need to get to that level of determination before saying yeah we could Prov probably provide water that's a question is level of detail takes three or six months could we change that level of review to give developers opportunity to move forward knowing there's water but they're going to have to cross a bridge as far as what does that cost what does it look like how many water water towers Etc it's going to take um I'm going to want a conversation on the adus and strs I have to agree I'm not sure that's present but I I will say I did support moving forward adus my development itself is the only one that by right today that exists many puds say they'll do them but they haven't been built you you mentioned in your report stonate Daybreak the Canyons you said all of these allow a to use correct but none of them are built even started building correct so the only one to my knowledge that does is my own development and about a third of the people have built ad use and I really believe in supporting families so if you have extended family aging parents uh children that are trying to make their way that they have a place to live that is potentially separate from their family but close to their family and less expensive I support that concept do I support the adus uh becoming rentals in some cases where there is sufficient parking but this is all in my mind for another day this is not part of code cleanup this is its own initiative and we have to completely vet we heard from Newlands before that they weren't ready okay there are some developments that have ccnr that prohibit them and then ours allows them there's got to be a middle ground and what I had recommended to newans at the time was come up with an overlay you don't have ccnr you don't have HOAs but but you do have a unique community and and the parking is not necessarily there so I want to potentially not eliminate them from the whole city but I also want to do some really careful placement on where where they're appropriate um and then finally I have a question for you the same question I asked for Dr Phillips yeah what do we do to support this missing medal you're you're saying just included in single family I'm not necessarily really opposed with that but I want to know what it looks like again I pose the question is it okay on Kings Row you've got all these single family homes could somebody take one of those down and build a fourplex just in the middle of all the single family so again there's we've provided a a multitude of things to help with that missing middle I don't think anyone by itself is going to make a single small dent I think even all of the items that we proposed are barely going to move the needle none of these my mind are big enough to make a huge significant impact on our housing okay but if we do nothing we're gonna have this conversation over and over and say gosh darn it why isn't it getting better because we're not doing anything to try and make it better yeah what we're proposing is some small things that can help to slowly make it better okay okay thank you Miss St that was the longest one minute in the history of the universe and you know I'm just harassing you at this point Point angel I think or Miss fous I apologize your comment there was probably the most informative and instructive and I so I'll pause for a minute I think the issue is is if we do nothing if we continue to believe that Reno is a place that should be a time capsule for all time and Memorial put a bubble on it uh not address the issues that we face then we will be having this conversation perpetually it's like a bad version of Groundhog Day so um I think again I go back to something we said earlier which is there's tools in the toolbox we got to deploy them let us choose together which ones to deploy and how knowing that not all of them are going to work not all of them are going to have the intended effect and we may fail um but as our mayor is fond of saying you know if we're not trying we're going to fail and if we don't plan we plan to fail right so those are things that we have to remember and so I think again your uh comment was instructive and I just think it important to point out thanks a lot I'm going to come to you Miss breus and see if that we can craft a motion together that will get us all through this item I'll point out that the recommend emotion was fairly generic and so I don't know how specific you desire to see us get to I think we need to get more specific than what is on the table there I think recommending accept the report would have been in bwan you know we accept the report just acknowledgement that we've seen it read it and understood it do you want to take that as the first motion no no um no no I I I think it really was up above and and provide feedback to staff I mean we just gave all that I think we need to narrow it down especially you know I've been waiting for action on our last affordable housing workshop for over 20 months and you know and and then we have a new report which I didn't even know was coming so I think we need to get very specific and up and so here's and and if we go with that I think what we go with is what the presentation was and the presentation doesn't even even reflect Title 18 specifically so here are my recommendations I think that we need staff upon the conclusion of their uh public engagement for the title 18 cleanup to bring forward to the council a memo of that clean back cleanup and any modifications to their draft redw review draft could you say it again please yeah I think the council needs or staff needs at the summary of their six scheduled public input meetings to compile the input that they've received and let Council know any modifications to their re review draft that they're putting into an adoption draft that will go through the Planning Commission and the city council for code cleanup yes for the code cleanup and with that they need to highlight any housing specific policies like the ab 213 okay um and I think that just brings up the clarity that Mr J Johnson brought up first of all I think they need to examine examine all apartment and I saying apartment I'm not saying condos because those go through subdivision permitting since the code adoption and let us know um how many went to by right and how many went through Planning Commission entitlement and if they went through Planning Commission entitlement what those triggers were that lets us know if our focus at this point needs to be these density bonuses or the affordable versus non-affordability and then with that information and review which I think could be done very easily they return to council with that information and ask us what we want to prioritize as our next steps among Dr Shane's recommend Dr Phillips's recommendations In fairness to Mr Phillips I don't think he's obtained a doctorate yet but I he might want you to refer to him as that but I'm just sharing that with you and and and and return that um to council with the recommendations in here to let us pick which one we want they they've highlighted this one I don't think it's the one I'm not going to mention the adus because that's our next item and then third they need to return to us very soon prior to budget discussions the outline of a neighborhood planning program to the council so so summary of it the the zoning code cleanup that they're in process if they're refining their draft into any changes in their adoption version that's going to Planning Commission and city council do the research on how we are permitting uh Apartments since we redid Co Title 18 let us know how many how those have all been permitted out apartments and the definition apartment is two or more great this is great great feedback we can work on that cor the definition of apartment five is five or more okay so you know the definition and then and then return to council with that information and then go through the bu bullet points of the recommendations and let us know okay uh choose that you know maybe by the end of the year hopefully and then outline to us also a neighborhood planning program and what that looks like I'll second that okay and now we'll have discussion on the motion I'll start off M Miss F do you understand the inquiry it's a bit of an untraditional motion normally a motion would have a very specific and finite set of things and this is more like feedback couched as a motion you understand what's been requested maybe we can even go one step further from the feedback I heard from the rest of council I'm going to pull out all of the housing topics on the zoning code update check we're going to do separate so we're not going to talk about those as part of the code cleanup no see I think if you've got a review draft out right now and you've got the housing stuff in there I mean you're not what you know other than this AB 213 what's in there so again the items we went over today are the items that I'm hearing from the rest of council you want me to pull out and do a separate housing text Amendment and Miss fo I'm characterizing those as policy questions right not the code cleanup which I I am really thinking about what you've already undertaken and so I think we're saying the same thing but I want to make sure that we're clear for your benefit I yes yes we are okay does that meet your needs Miss breus well I mean you've got 400 Pages you've got the code marked up in a review draft we do how many of those are some of the policy items that were before us other than AB 213 I I think there was probably six items that we went over today those are the six items I believe that would fall under the housing policy question and you have those right now in the code markup that's going to the meeting at McKinley we do I I didn't know that I mean that's kind of it's kind of jumping ahead maybe and I think that's what we're saying is we're going to pull those out we're not going to leave them in we're going do a separate housing text Amendment so then we can talk about it some more and get more clear Direction yeah I didn't realize that the cleanup that Clarion talked to us two years about doing drove in these large policy considerations without the background direction from staff so yeah if that's the case yes my motion would Encompass that okay thank you so much seconded the motion you have any additional comments at this time Mr manager you look like you'd like to add something to the discussion I don't I don't know that I have anything to add I think for clarity's sake that um all of the goals expressed by council member breus can be achieved almost simply by running these text amendments in in parallel so the 400 items of cleanup and the housing policy questions that we've gone over here today um I think just a a very simple motion that says pull these out continue with the process and then we come back for the broader discussion as to whether or not you wish to move forward with some or all of these considerations is the direction that we're hearing and and we can take pretty easily understand and Miss bre has added a couple of nuance things there there was the issue about the planning process so given that are we still happy with where you are Miss breus with the mo well I mean the direction to staff is is spefic specific you know you know work on your cleanup if you have non-ab 213 and other technical things in there related to policy setting I think you do pull it out it's kind of problematic because you've got it out for a review draft and you got public meetings set so you know that's going to be operationally hard you know something to deal with then two you're going to run that data to let us know you know where our best bang for the buck is going to be on your resources and then you'll sketch out out an uh neighborhood planning program to us and I'd like all of this I don't want this to come through on memo form you know memo form memo form I really want the discussion to be here in a transparent manner um I think that's what you know the public wants to and as the seconder if I may I wanted to just support the motion and I I think it gives more clarity than I'm sorry Mr maner what you said I really think it gives us some key information that will really help us make a decision when you come back instead of being vague and unclear MH no 100% I I I understand what you're saying I think we're all kind of saying the same thing I will put it together we'll come back um and we'll keep moving with the zoning code cleanup so that's not going to slow the process down We'll add a new process to talk about housing and that will run parallel understand and before we do uh make a actual affirmative vote I want to come to Carl hall or Mr Shipman um the neighborhood planning program I'm just making sure that it is within the purview of our open meeting law to have it been discussed I think in line of the fact that we're bringing it back I think we're fine to I see that motion okay so we have a motion I'll call for the question all those in favor please signify by saying I I any opposed motion carries unanimously we'll be in recess um half hour 20 minutes uh 20 minutes we're we're going to try to see what we can do in 20 minutes m okay Madame Clerk all right vice mayor um our City attorney oh thank you you're welcome got it I got it I all right vice mayor if you are ready to reconvene this meeting we'll reconvene at 2:34 with council member eert and mayor shivi absent at this time okay Miss eert is here she's just in the back so just note that but miss Madame mayor is absent at this time uh for my colleagues benefit I'll just say that what we're going to do with the time we have remaining however much time it is we have is we're going to look at items B3 three and B6 so that's boo 3 and Bo six uh boo four uh is off the agenda as needing to be required to be Ren noticed at a different time and B7 will be continued to another date so let's get started with B3 item boo three great and I think that's Grace Madan and I did have public comment registered for this but it does not appear that either of them have re-entered the room so I will just State for the record that for item B3 we did receive one comment associated with this item prior to prior to 4m yesterday October 31st um that has been distributed to the Reno city council and as a part of the record all right and so we're moving into presentation all right good afternoon council members Grace mckinin Senior Management analyst for the record here to discuss the potential initiation of an Adu or accessory dwelling unit ordinance and just to clarify we are bringing this forward based on Direction staff got from Council over a year ago at that um Workshop that's been mentioned a couple times today first I think it's important to clear up what an accessory dwelling unit or an Adu actually is an Adu is a smaller independent residential dwelling unit located on the same lot as a standalone single family house these can be either attached to the primary house or detached um often times we get calls from people who have aging parents which has been discussed um or kids that would like a place close from close to home but may maybe not the same house and these are typically how these ad adus are are utilized in neighborhoods so this has been discussed as well adus are not the Magic Bullet to fix affordability they are simply another tool in the tool toolbox to help our affordability crisis it's an easy way to create more housing options in certain neighborhoods and they increase an opportunity for infill I think there's some misinformation about adus and what they will do for a community currently today the city allows for Residential Properties to have an accessory structure and a guest quarters the only difference between a guest quarters and an Adu is a full kitchen here are some examples so these pictures on the slide are guest quarters that are legal current places in the City of Reno there are specific restrictions for these accessory structures and that's something that could also be required for adus there's also a number of areas within the city that currently allow for accessory dwelling units greensfield which has been mentioned dman Ranch allows for adus Spring Mountain Somerset in certain areas stonate Talis Valley and the Canyons all allow for adus today through some preliminary research I found that most ordinances regulate for things like zoning lot sizes Adu size height parking compatibility and utilities I think this figure shows how a lot of adus end up fitting into a neighborhood and how most people don't even realize that they're there they may be built into the house and they allow for owners to utilize space that may not be being used currently so this is just the first step in the process to adopting an Adu ordinance should Council vote to initiate an Adu ordinance staff will go do the research we'll find some best practices of what other jurisdictions are currently doing what's working what's not working then we'll get Council feedback again on the direction that we're headed to make sure that we're going down on the right path after that we'll do public Outreach draft an ordinance go forward to Planning Commission and city council so there'll be ample opportunities for the public to weigh in uh and give their input here is the recommended motion and I am available for questions okay thank you Miss mckinon for the presentation outstanding any questions or comments from the body miss breus the floor is yours yeah I mean I have long supported adus I have support as broad of availability opportunity across the city to the point that I believe we should examine whether or not city ordinance could come over and lay over cc&rs or a legislative agenda that preempts cc&rs and everyone heard my discussion with Mr Shan Shane Phillips on that so there's precedent I believe on that in California um so that's how I support them I also um you know in the intervening years since 2016 questions of owner occupancy or not I'm comfortable with not having owner occupancy I also am comfortable with and you didn't put it into your parameters I think maybe a I didn't see it anyway is um is uh subdividing Lots it's it'd be a parcel map um parcel map allowances one problem we do have and it's not an Adu ordinance but it is a standard uh issue that's problematic in um secondary primary units is the allowance on a zero lot line there's unfortunate circumstance in my neighborhood where someone built what you might call an Adu but it's really a second primary units because it's own MMA 14 and they let two units and um someone was under the code allowed to build a um above garage unit to the zero lot line on a sidey yard and litigations ensued because no one gave permission if you build build on the Zero lot line you need access from your neighbor and um I don't know how it came out that that was permitted but that shouldn't be permitted so we really do need to make sure we've got setbacks in good place but I think all the other single family zoning District standards are acceptable um I just offer the allowance for subdivision um and not requiring owner op gany and as wide as possible in as many zoning districts as possible um and explore exploring um overriding ccnr and I'm don't believe those need to be parked adus do not need to be parked in my world thank you but but this Council needs to stand up a dedicated parking program for all areas um I think Mr Phillips brought that in pretty well I think the ad hoc nature of all of a sudden there's a petition and everyone gets private resources on the street like we had two meetings ago is not good faith to our residents it treats some equal more equal than others and I also think developers are being pretty foolish in how they're building um in these reduced parking areas so uh adus coming in is just going to be another issue of where we need a dedicated parking division and not a stepchild parking program okay any other colleagues have comments Miss do the FL um I support adus uh generally but um I differ fairly significantly with my colleague uh I believe that they should have fairly tight regulation um the considerations that you put on Slide Five I think are reasonable considerations but I would add um I do believe that they should be able to have kitchens unlike I'm I'm not sure this slide doesn't speak to that no I was I was saying that a guest quarters is allowed today the only difference between a guest quarters and Adu is is is the kitchen would have right so I do support having kitchen and I want to tell you why I support them first and foremost it is a vote for families it is a Supportive Housing option for extended families multigenerational uh living so that's my focus um secondary focus is the issue of can you then rent them to a non-family member um I perhaps while if we move forward I would like you to research whether there could be a vesting period where maybe they start as a family option but maybe over time five or 10 years they could or even less two years I don't know they could potentially evolve into a rental unit but that would have to go side by side with short-term rental um regulations that that's one bundle and the other bundle is if you're going to rent it out longterm and if you're going to rent it out longterm then I want want to make sure all of these things are discussed and vetted and then finally I think that we really need neighborhood input on this so I I really think it should be um okay by a majority of a neighborhood however you draw those lines whether they have ccrs or HOAs or not I don't think I don't agree with my colleague that we should be able to Trump I'll use that word um cc&rs at this point I I think that those are put in for a reason to have a certain design standard so if your ccnr for example Country Club Acres which is had previously been in my ward says we're not going to have them and it's by ccnr I don't think that we should take an ordinance that overcomes that okay so I think we should do some neighborhood planning and to me that means more than go to the nabs okay because the nabs cover many neighborhoods they cover neighborhoods with HOA ccnr non ccnr and so I don't know how you accomplish this but I do think it's important to get very specific neighborhood input okay thank you okay any other comments from the body okay for my part I'll say um that with regard to the Adu um moving it Forward I think it's fine to do that um I think we're at a time where we can consider a I guess it came before the council in 2016 16 and didn't get where it needed to go at that time so we'll have to have that conversation again um I do think that Miss doers view of the the uh issues is much more in line with mine and consistent with a belief that um not every neighborhood is either um maybe it's historic in nature and so that's not a good fit for it or it's designed in such a way that it's not a good fit for so these things about minimum lot sizes and maximum Adu sizes are attempting to thread that needle um and so I think there will be other issues that are uh revealed through the process but just to initiate it and have us come back and start having those conversations certainly in favor okay any other questions at this time comments okay Miss St can I get a motion sure I'll council member ree if you would like we do have Mr Lofton here he was one of our public oh absolutely Mr Lofton welcome sorry to uh keep you here for public comment but you're welcome to the diet good afternoon Council Jeffrey Lofton um I just wanted to say thank you for uh taking these things under advisement that staff uh that staff's working on um adus are are an interesting hot button issue in in my work uh both in realy and in small infield development I see families trying to make their financial picture work um and and trying to do so with the property that they've purchased um uh in terms of density bonus these are these are all kind of creative tools that are my everyday toolbox towards helping people um make their equations work so many of you know that when I moved here in 2010 uh I opened up a a College bookstore at campus and uh I don't know that I've ever mentioned to you guys that I was on an airplane uh sitting next to uh late Mayor Bob caselle who uh I was telling I felt like the city council wasn't listening and I was trying to you know I was trying to grow my business and uh in using language more colorful than what I will share today he explained that there were big wheels turning and that uh and that I needed to do the best that I could for my business while I could and and I took that advice to heart um my point is just to say these these types of projects so I think of these as projects so I do permit coordination and I also do Property Management so I don't know how many people in this room wrote three leases yesterday but I did and that was for uh one person moving into a duplex uh with her with her boyfriend who was stoked to have a unit and then two people moving into triplexes or actually a group of three guys that don't have any cars at all that commute back and forth to chewy uh in a car share kind of a thing and it's like look our our city is amazing I actually lived in 17 US cities um for for durations of time ranging from from six months to to multiple years before I I came to Reno and Reno is amazing for all the reasons that you know um people are coming here for all of the reasons that we know and I think it's really important to remember that a project like an Adu is very self- selecting right this is a family who has a plan that's probably more creative and complex and reasons that are probably more detailed and I want to emphasize that because I do these types of projects every day this isn't waving a magic wand and a bunch of these things are going to pop up I I love the way staff will sit and face we have brilliant dedicated staff and and I'm so grateful to be able to send an email and expect an answer back I'm so grateful that staff does respond within 10 days that doesn't exist other places when I moved to Reno that's not what was going on and so it's amazing that we have all these dramatic improvements and such a dedicated staff that's bringing these issues forward density I'm the guy that's using this density bonus thing and I can tell you what it looks like at 470 Claremont um where they could couldn't get that house sold I told my client hey this density bonus will allow you to bonus in a basement unit where four four veterans can can get back and forth to appointments they just want a room to their to themselves or maybe a shared room and that this is the type of thing that the density bonus is being used for in infill to to Mrs fo comment Mrs fo's comments earlier regarding the fact that infill is very different than what happens out in the North Valleys it makes a lot of sense to provide uh CIP credits to infill projects specifically specifically because they're different by Nature so sorry my time was short was I didn't know I was going to be here for 5 hours I thought I was going to comment this morning so thank you so much we didn't know we were going to be here for that long either but uh we do me a favor Mr Loft and just connect with my staff I'd like to have coffee with you when we get a chance I don't know that we've had the privilege of meeting but thank you for being here thank you vice mayor Reese and so you were um asking council member D for aemotion yes I am yes okay I'd like to make an emotion that Council initiate an amendment to Title 18 which would allow construction of accessory dwelling units and this is where I differ from the drafted Motion in certain districts and certain neighborhoods and with specific design standards second I'd like to have discussion we have a motion by Miss derer a second by Mr Martinez and now discussion on the motion yeah let me just start by saying the reason I added and certain neighborhoods is just because for example we have single family zoning I don't think it's appropriate to put the adus in all single family zoning no matter what it is so I really think we have to go neighborhood by neighborhood so thank you do you have any breus yeah I just I mean I'm a little confused when you say certain neighborhoods who's going to decide what neighborhoods you're going to get input my impression of how this would work is that they would do a series of meetings in different neighborhoods okay to discuss the openness to that neighborhood to have an ad use and what those issues might be one neighborhood might be parking another neighborhood might be something to do with Heights or density I don't know that's the information I want to get back so that we can craft a good ordinance so they're going to go out to the public then with this initiation and here you know when they say certain neighborhoods are they going to all neighborhoods for this input um I'm what I'm saying is I said more than five which are five nabs more than five okay and let's say less than 50 so the they will figure out what is a neighborhood and what make they we have something called Neighborhood Services we have something called um in hand it's called neighborhood development so they to go to coun to the public and say Council didn't give us any direction on certain neighborhoods no we're here to hear what neighborhoods would be you know what neighborhoods sound like a good idea let me give you an example the draw line gets drawn by this public input or compiled by staff on this public input on where the certain neighborhoods are right I'll give you an example and I'm I'm not sure if I'm over my skis here but let's just take Colin Ranch I don't know what their cc&rs are if they have HOAs if there's seven separate developments within Colin Ranch just as we have Somerset there's many subd developments in Somerset but one estate homes has allowed adus what I'm asking is at least have a meeting in some of our bigger developments or areas that have become identified as a unique area like Newlands they're not an HOA not a ccnr but we know they've spoken on the topic they have an opinion many of them do have a neighborhood meeting talk to them is is there huge opposition is there some support and that's what I'm suggesting and I can't say whether that's 10 or 50 or 20 okay I I don't know until the Staff figures that out well I guess you know because you know like she said this was based upon a discussion almost two years ago right you know and here we are and so I think we should send them up with the most specific you know Direction and process understood to all so since your examples both seem to be related to C ccnr covered neighborhoods and non that's why I use Newlands as an example yeah but but um why don't they have you know one Citywide HOA meeting of HOAs that have single family to understand you know the analysis and that and a legal analysis totally fine with that that's what Mak and have a legal analysis too because if the legal analysis is City of Reno you can't do it you can't override through your zoning regulations HOAs then put that off the table right you know so um and then we take it into another discussion in my world viw which is the Nevada legisl in Carson City but um uh you know that's how I would do it I just I'm really hung up on your certain neighborhoods because it sounds rather um uh kind of exclusionary and I don't want to have an exclusionary concept up out there which is either you know um other neighbors feel they're being burdened or some neighborhoods feel that they're not getting a development right that they want so I think I think that's kind of um uh you know where I'm looking for a little more clarity from well let me just say this in the motion do hold on one second so um normally after a motion's made then we have some discussion on the motion we've now exceeded that time significantly I'll come back to the body to see if anyone else has additional questions and then perhaps m d we can come back to you okay Miss Hebert did you have I had similar questions on just you know determining what what neighborhoods that would be allowed and you know what that kind of process would look like so just kind of you know not to rehash what council member Brea said but what was the second stipulation also I had said in certain zoning districts using their language okay and in certain neighborhoods again they didn't identify a certain zoning District that would be a recommendation you're coming back with MH okay and let me let me interject I think a good way to start with the neighborhood Outreach would be to start with the nabs and then maybe expand outwards um we can create a map or list of different areas that would be impacted and so that's kind of how we would identify neighborhoods to get input and we would come back to the council say here's the input we've received how would you like us to move forward yeah or maybe reach out to you know specific HOAs as well right okay um look miss mckinon this is a complex subject and you are one of our subject matter experts so I'm trying to understand um when you hear the motion which inserts an additional thing you've got both the certain zoning districts and I think it was specific neighborhoods are you understanding what the motion is being asked to do yes from just to clarify from what I understand we will go do Outreach to different neighborhoods different areas within the city get feedback come back to council I think the hard part there is that neighborhoods is a very fungible term right which neighborhood who gets to determine what a neighborhood is I I like your idea of starting at the NAB and seeing where that gets you I I don't know what it'll get you because what happens often times is we ask a lot of our nabs but we also accept the fact that our nabs are not entirely representative of all the people who live within the boundaries of the NAB some people still feel excluded because they can't make the location the date the time whatever it is and so I don't want to add another layer of complexity because in the City of Reno you have thousands of we'll call it neighborhoods um I don't know how long that would take you and what resources we would dedicate to that and so I'm sort of agnostic about the change or the addition of the language I think Miss derer is correct to say that um it's sort of like hedging bets it's saying that there are certain areas in the city that may not be appropriate for adus No One Believes I don't except for perhaps the W one member that we should legalize adus everywhere in one Fell Swoop I do not fall in that category either I also think that this question of whether or not adus can Trump um ccrs or other kind of restrictive covenant is one better left to the legislature we are certainly not going to occupy our field preempt to use the legal term of art what happens there they have done that in California through the legislature right um and so the legisl in their wisdom has said that adus cannot be prohibited by CC andrs it doesn't work the other way I don't think the City of Reno can say your cnrs which have existed will now be um you know not relevant to our discussion of adus so I'll come back to miss derer and see if you have any parting comments and then we'll close this out and seek and vote a vote just one more question do we need to have specifically in the motion that you know need to be neighborhood and HOA or Citywide communication or NAB communication I don't think it's necessary for the motion but the motion maker might disagree with me so I'll leave it to the motion maker okay and could i y nope hold on a second Miss derer has the floor okay um I'll say would allow construction of ACC accessory dwelling units I'm struggling um in what what I want to do and maybe you can help me I want to take out this focus on zoning districts and move more to um areas whether I call them neighborhood areas or planning areas I don't know what's do we have a a a unit of measurement that's smaller than an AB not to my knowledge no okay not that's formalized okay well if I said certain zoning districts and left it at that to me that doesn't go far enough so and I think what we can do is this like I said this is the first step in the process um we can do this public Outreach I think the concern is um arbitrarily kind of carving carving out certain areas around the city um because they were the ones that showed up to these meetings which of often times happens too um so I think it's important to do the research see which neighborhoods have um the lot sizes that would even accommodate for an Adu and then Target those areas with our Outreach and so that's kind of why we use zoning districts because zoning District takes into account the size of the lot um it takes into account the density of that lot um so on and so forth so you're saying zoning District implies a certain size correct it already does typically yes is there could you tell us what that is yes so typically with a um um each single family zoning District at least has a minimum lot size and so that's helpful for us if um we were to say the minimum lot size to accommodate an Adu is 9,000 square F feet I'm just throwing this out there then we could go and say these zoning districts have a minimum lot size of 9,000 ft we can map it throughout the city we can say these areas will be impacted so let's do Outreach in these these areas of course we'll do Outreach Citywide because it it affects everybody um but that's a way we could kind of help Target our Outreach what if I said in certain zoning districts and certain parameters because that's what you're getting at with specific design standards great does that hit hit it well Mr as you know there's a motion that's been made a second that's been made so we have some procedural Hoops to get through so our legal Council will let us move forward do you have a different motion that you are proposing than the one you've already made and has been seconded by council member Martinez um no okay so I have a motion a second all those in favor please signify by saying I I I any opposed you know I am not supportive I I think it's a very Miss breus I haven't recognized you but I understand that you're voting no can I make sure that we get the motion and the vote count Done Right M clerk I'll ask for a roll call thank you vice mayor ree um council member breus yeah I vote no may I have a few minutes to talk about um we'll come to it afterwards thank you so much the I'll record the vote dur yes Martinez yes Ebert uh yes Taylor yes Rees I thank you a motion carries now I'm going to come to you Miss breus normally we don't come after a motion but for this weigh in I tried to weigh before the vote was called here's the flaws I see and I I really need to emphasize that we have very junior staff focusing on this and staff that wasn't around in 2016 when we got very close to an ordinance and it was drawn up and everything and I feel that we're sending them out with kind of a thankless directive on how to get this forward and I think we need to take a little more ownership at this point in time if we want to understand I think what we should do is we should bring the 2016 ordinance forward we should look at it the motion should have said the 2016 ordinance is the starting place I think that the comment of you know go with zoning districts and 9,000 square feet I think it was 9,000 square feet was the 2016 ordinance um and I think staff should bring that ordinance to us and you let us because we have so many new members look at it template by template and say you know this is where the parameters of how the council wants to see this we want your response on this cuz otherwise you're just going to go into a neighborhood Advisory Board do you want an or you know meeting do you want an Adu or not you really need a little more context to visualize it and I was also uncertain because you were saying lot size um but you were also offering that they could be um uh um uh detached and attached correct did yeah so anyway I just I think that we should have I vote because I think we're sending them out with a flaw directive that is not framing the discussion properly we got so far in 2016 this Council should look at that ordinance give the direction and put and get the feedback on the parameters of that ordinance that's how I wanted to go forward and that's why I voted no thank you okay thank you so much Miss breus we'll close out this agenda item and move on to the final agenda item for today item B6 Mr flansburg welcome and good afternoon Madame clerk do we have public comment on this item thank you Vice May ree we do not have any public comment on this item nor do we have anyone registered understand thank you so much Mr flans pleasure to see you in Chambers good afternoon for the record John flansburg I can be quick um famous last words I can be quick um these are the list of projects that Council has approved to dat even including the 1.45 million as of the last council meeting um so as you're aware and as we've been discussing today the um there was allowing a legislation that that passed we in in 2019 and 2020 an ordinance came for the council that allowed for uh subsidies to occur through the sewer Enterprise fund uh to date we are at 7.3 million um the only thing that happens during these is that we have to come up with a um uh we have to make the council has to make determination that uh the sewer fund will not be ADV adversely impaired and its order ability to pay its bonds and other obligations for the record our bond Debt Service last year was 6.5 million so Revenue was 77 million so there's a we don't have we're not set up like some utilities that have a large amount of debt um we try to cover a lot of projects pay as you go when we do go into debt it's for capacity projects our current program really needs to establish some fiscal limitations because all expenditures without offsetting re uh revenues are going to have an negative impact to the Sewer fund and then um just projects that have been approved by fiscal year um uh just showing up here about a million dollars the first two fiscal years uh 3.6 and 23 and 1.7 uh currently uh fiscal year to date now um recommendations going uh recommendations I would bring to you today uh would be to set up a limit of $4 million how did I get $4 million you might ask that's a good question we have two projects that we currently know would expect that may come forward um one on line drive one on orada Street that's a total of about $1.6 million um they haven't come forward yet so we don't those are the only two projects that we're aware of um so if we put an addition $4 million down we'd still have 2.4 million um theirr currently as of today uh there's another round going out uh for affordable housing projects to go to uh uh Monica's group and um and we don't know what those are going to be yet so the 4 million additional really is Tak into account that they there's about 1.6 that we expect probably would come forward that we're aware of and then that would leave additional 2.4 to the end of fiscal year 25 so about the next 18 to 20 months uh so we would we recommend that setting aide a 4 million so we have a cap something we can budget towards also um we do a uh every two years we do a a sewer fund sufficiency study uh where we go through and determine that the rates that we're currently getting in the user fee is going to be enough to cover the um expenditures that we have and projects going forward and that that'll be sufficient enough for uh the sewer fund to operate we are recommending that you direct us to include some sort of an annual subsidy program into that sufficiency review that will occur next December that we could report back to you in January 2025 and finally during that same general time frame of early 2025 when we're doing budgeting for fiscal year 26 that we look at alternative funding uh sources for your consideration for this program and that is my quick report well you weren't uh you didn't lie to us Mr flansburg I appreciate that look I'll start off by saying um again you are someone who I greatly appreciate and thank for your service to this community I know that um you probably did not think that in your years of serving this community you would be weighing the impact of sewer fees and affordable housing like those are not necessarily the two things but given that we are where we are with the state of law in Nevada it has been one of the tools that we've had in the toolbox I appreciate your willingness to sort of step out in faith as this Council has has supported those affordable housing projects over the last several years and of course No One Believes that they uh impact negatively the sewer Fund in a way that cause it to collapse but you have charted for us what is the responsible thing to do which is think about the sustainability of such a program and I appreciate that as well um I am generally in favor of what you've identified here I suppose the one question I have is what happens if in the fiscal year that we are um saying that we would limit the number of allocations that we could make some fabulous program comes along or project comes along and it it's something that we are generally in favor of but which without the credit the subsidy would not um pencil because what I hear sometimes people say um and even folks who are well-meaning and well-intentioned is that they feel like this is somehow our effort at subsidizing developers and and I just don't see it that way I I see it as a very complex layered situation in which uh the development Community which is a small group of developers who are even playing in the affordable housing space are trying to make everything work for everybody I don't think any of them are you know becoming fabulously Wealthy on the back of developing affordable housing projects they really have a desire to do it and they have a heart for this community so how do we navigate that um I think there's a couple things that we can do one of course you set the limit here we can come back to you when we have real-time information and let you know where we stand the sewer fund and if there's something that's going to take it over a half a million dollars or something maybe there's there's discussion you set the limit here you can unset it and do something different in the real time of knowing where we're at this is more of a tool for us to help us understand what what is potentially that can come forward second of all you could look at the overall program parameters uh we have certain amount of percentages that are um that we reduce the sewer connection fee by depending on what kind of uh you know 60% Ami 50% Ami what those projects may be and and we could look at some of those to determine if there's what do we want to incentivize and where how does that work and what's what what's our end goal we can we can revisit those well let me ask a related question then if we when we do provide the subsidy out of this particular bucket how do we ensure that the project remains in an affordability component and for what period of time does that make sense what I'm asking sure so that's part of the overall I mean Monica certainly can maybe Miss B Ro is is also here I I make an assumption that we you know button the buttons take the suspenders Miss B welcome yeah hi thank you Susan B Deputy City attorney um the ordinance um requires annual reporting we record a deed restriction on the property which if they fall out of compliance with then um what happens is a lean is recorded for the amount of the connection fees and for what period of time they have by law by ordinance they have to keep it in place 20 years great thank you so much great clarity appreciate it any comments from the Das Miss breus I mean I've I've been raising the flag on this one for some time um and I think you're getting there reasonably well um and I'm you know really focused on the details here um so you said 4 million through the end of 25 because through the home or the Q app um you know the home or the the tax credits that's what you know is coming down the down the pipeline that's correct there's two project and they're always tied to that correct generally no I think they have I think all the ones that you put up before do have tax credit or home money in there yeah Monica Miss c not in yes you know the affordability I think maybe is a little bit shorter because those are required to be in 40e affordability so maybe we you know as you revise it you sync it up but but I I think I think that's good now in terms of the 4 million I don't know you know you say you do this every twoyear sewer sufficiency and we're low debt but you know I see stranded asset up there $65 million with a uh can only get halfway you know done and just sat through tum Warf and it looks like there's a lot over there so you know I want to know you know I I see a lot of need up there you know I see we need every dollar but I also realize that you have a very generous I don't support it um escalating sewer fund which I heard about from people this week because the sewer bills went out with the escalating but um but you know presumably when you do your suitability um that you know with four million is the number four million's the the number so I think I think that can be fine and and if you want to set it in every two years I mean the application process is going to be interesting too um because you know the Housing Authority might want to come in or or so on but we manage um housing of I mean I think you can sync that up through this other processes of who who gets to be an application you know application qualifying application and then within the year who gets who gets it you know um because their timelines are outlined the the one that I just want everyone to be honest is this alternate funding sources there's no alternate funding sources I mean we just saw as much Federal Money free money as we're going to see in the rest of our lives and so you know it's not going to be general fund money it's not coming from anywhere else I mean you know I I I think that I I just I don't really agree with that I mean what what what do you what are you saying alternate funding I mean what would you see that as we don't know what would be available but we but that would be something we could bring back yeah I I don't know I I think it's always going to be the sewer fund and it's much like the the one we open up at the finance department and individuals come through I think it is fine to tie it to you know the programs that get our other Federal money here's one thing that I would suggest to you on your process is I have heard from the affordable housing developers that it's been very very helpful for them to go deeper into subsidy than they normally would so my analysis on this in addition to you know what's it impacting the re you know the overall sewer fund is talk to those subsidized developers you have access to their performers and see where the sweet spot is you know that helps them you know maybe get where they need to go and and and curb it from that you know um cuz some may be asking for more than they need and we may not have to go that far you know that's what I mean what can I ask Miss Cochran just I know we're trying to get out of here what are you looking at those per have you looked at those performers which you have access to and you see through through the tax credit applications and seeing where these sewer discounts get plugged in and what they do for the projects Monica C for the record uh we do get the performers when the Home applications come in Elaine is the one that looks through those so I'm going to let her comment on yeah what are you seeing miss Weissman on that that subsidy is doing to the performers um I think it's again we're in a different Market than we were a couple of years ago with Rising costs so what I've seen like on the last application round from last year is that it's helping them even to get to that 60 or 50% you know whereas they didn't need that two years ago because of you know the costs were much lower so it's helping them even to get to that affordability threshold yeah so it's so you're saying they're saying right now that what I'm hearing is it's making a project go or not yes okay so so we know that if that's the bar that's that's a good one M wisman can you just just make sure to St your name for the record thank you so much yes elain wisman for the record as we craft this project I think we need to balance what it is doing to these tax creditor home projects and maybe that's where other money comes in I don't believe there is other money um and then what it's a doing to the overall sewer fund okay thank you miss brickus any other questions Miss D the floor is yours um I um like where you're going I would add two caveats um and there could be more that I'm thinking about one is you mentioned 20e ability but I really think we need to be looking at 30 um so during our 10 years so many of these projects have come up where they're losing the affordability maybe at 15 years some at 20 I think that this is sort of a carot and stick I want to provide this waiver of sewer fees to these homes but I think that in exchange they should commit to keeping affordable longer that's my thought and the second thought is we've had a discussion at the council already about about the fact that and I'm seeing this in affordable units in my ward which is that they start affordable but then the rents start going up because they can float with the Ami and as our wages rise in Reno those rents can rise even though these might be senior or people that are on fixed income and they can't rise so I would like to see two caveats one retain affordability as long as possible at least 20 but I would recommend 30 years and two um focus on the rent restrictions I uh Monica is very familiar with what I'm dealing with where rents um because of other initiatives other programs are going up 10 20 30 40 even I have people that are looking at 100% rent increases okay it's not sustainable so if we're going to do this I think we have to ask for something back okay again Monica kers for the record the 20-year uh deed restriction is what set up in n s but all of these projects are litech or home projects which have 30 plus years on them then we should just put it in as my suggestion they are they are deed restricted for those years per their other funding sources but this particular tool is set up through NRS with a 20-year restriction so they're still restricted regardless I'm not sure what you just said they all are 30 year or there some are 20 year all of them are at least 30 years some are 50 but not because of this subsid this subsidy through NRS requires 20 years I'm just saying they have long because of other funding minimum of 20 years can we Max can we go bigger that's my question maybe it's a legal question miss ball Ro is behind you Susan B Ro Deputy City attorney the 20 years is what we put in the ordinance yes we can amend the ordinance to 30 years that's what I'm asking I would like to see that noted just to sync up all the programs and that there's not these different requirements and the second thing is I would like to see it so that we've given this incentive they've built the housing the people are in and this what I'm dealing with five years in now we're looking at very substantial rent increases that they cannot meet especially seniors so the housing division's already taken steps in some units right some units to restrict these rent increases but I'm saying if you're going to participate in this program it should apply here yeah so and further record John flansburg Regional infrastructure I would just say that every one of these agreements comes before you as they have uh before they are able to obtain this money so we hear what you're saying um I don't well even if you don't build in a number in this master ordinance if you just say that they can propose a period whatever or amount I don't it doesn't have to be the same for every development but it we we shouldn't end up we're giving money we're waving and then they're coming back with these large friend increases on Miss breus I think you're really not talking about the same thing I think you're talking about earlier generation litech Pro program projects because the ordinance was crafted even though we have the 20y year but they were crafted to go handin hand with ones that have the longer affordability periods on them so why wouldn't we want to sync it up miss breus your point is well taken I think what Miss der is trying to say is that that um she's dealing with some very specific examples of this currently in her Ward and whether they were built 30 years ago and are just at the end of it or they were built five years ago they're not necessarily things that have been the recipient of this program um Miss der I think you're asking about whether or not we would amend our ordinance which we do not obviously have in front of us today to account for that which might be something that we'll have to come back about well it says give direction so I'm trying to there's Prov some direction yep about the sustainability of the current program and so if there's a different thing that we have we'll have to I think take that in due course do you agree I'm not sure because what I'm saying is that if we're you're talking about an existing ordinance what is our existing ordinance well Miss B just told you the existing ordinance says 20 years and could be amended if we brought it back through the ordinance process not today and not in certainly in this motion right understood that so I'm I'm trying to give where I'd like to see it going yeah and today we're talking about a funding source um putting uh limits on the funding source and directing staff to review the sustainability uh through a sufficiency review um in in a year and come back to you during the budget process of uh January 2025 and Beyond I don't know how else to be clearer this is our topic we're discussing it this is what I'd like to see um noted that's it thank you Mr any additional questions on this item okay I'm going to venture a motion I move to approve staff recommendations to approve an additional 4 million spending cap for sewer connection fee reductions out of the sewer fund through the end of the year fiscal year 25 second to give direction to staff to evaluate the sustainability impact sewer user fees to maintain an annual subsidy for the prayer as part of the biannual sewer fund sufficiency review due January 2025 and third to determine alternate funding sources for consideration during the fisal year 26 budget discussions can I get a second I have a motion that I have made second by Miss Taylor any additional questions or comments at this time I'll just comment that when it comes back I'm going to look for some of the policy uh suggestions I've made in Incorporated in and Mr I understand your inquiry and your heart is absolutely in the right place I think for me to get there when that does come back we're going to have to understand those Pro four months exactly and what it means to change the fund funding metrics I don't know what it means today so follow res orve judgment as to whether I would support increasing it yeah AG in in theory M doer is not incorrect any additional questions or comments at this time hearing none I'll call for the question all those in favor please signify by saying I I any oppose motion carries unanimously okay got a book for the meeting Madam clerk thank you vice mayor ree so just again to clarify for the we are going to take no action on items B4 and B7 that's true okay so we're moving on to item C1 which is city council comments on board's commissions okay any colleagues or comments on those I do I'm I just I'll bring it up um because it is a question we we skipped over B4 correct um Madam we lost our city manager Madam um assistant city manager do you have a um idea when that will come onto the council agenda I'm looking at bringing that back uh next week oh okay and then um which other item did we seven seven and what was seven um the Community Foundation and when same okay so you so okay so I have my agenda review yesterday for the what's our next meeting the eth the eth okay so you're planning on putting these on the be ideal if we can get it aend okay and then I did ask my um my liaison um yesterday that haven't heard back and I didn't know if it was related to today's meeting but I seem to have a hold for a council workshop on oh it got cancelled yes on the on the 29th I didn't know if that that is not happening okay thank you clear okay any other comments by the boards and commissions updates for any of the colleagues okay I'll close item Charlie 1 and come back to public comment thank you so we're opening item D1 which is closing public comment for today's meeting we did have a few individuals earlier who wish to speak but have subsequently left and so just for the record I would like to state that we have oh we do have one public commenter via Zoom Dora Martinez and while we get her transitioned over I would just like to say that we did receive um correspondents or voicemails after 4M yesterday which were either associated with an item or General in nature there were four items of support two items of opposition and two items of concern for item D1 all right Dora we have moved you over if you could unmute state your name for the record and I will begin the timer can you guys hear me yes M marz welcome good afternoon hi good afternoon I apologize I'm on the RTC access bus um traveling so I'm sorry about the background noise good afternoon vice mayor and the the astounding awesome um Council folks this is Dora Martinez and I do represent the Nevada Council of the Blind and the Nevada disability PE Action Coalition we is on and we just want to thank everyone who are trying to talk about um affordable housing um we just want to be um what's the word I'm looking for we just want to put disability in the Forefront of your thoughts while you guys are talking about affordable housing a lot of people who are disabled like what um Miss der was talking about are are um Cola does not raise as much as the inflation and the cost of living allowance so please put that in your Forefront we do not want to see a lot of people with disability being homeless given the fact that the care shelter is not adequate to support or um people who are visually impaired hard of hearing or people who are wheelchair users and we do not want to um you know I know that transitioning and and doing all that and trying to keep people home um the homeless population um out of the streets but if people with disability go to those places it's pretty scary especially when you are blind and have a service dog or heart of hearing or death you need American Sign Language um accommodations so please um thank you so much for the Ami it would be great if it was a little bit you know 30% but you know we we got to start somewhere and like what Madame mayor always say we got to do better and I know that you guys are trying and it's and it's awesome to see um that everybody are are trying to work and um compromising so thank you so much for all that you do um I also just want to thank uh um Jamie the housing person there vice mayor Reese I know I always CC you on these emails because if I don't I don't get anywhere I feel like I have to CC either of you all to get somewhere but with Jamie she's always on top of things and I know she's busy and I know that she knows that I try my best to help um people who are disabled and seniors because they come to me um they're afraid of you guys and I don't know why um you guys are are you know friendly and and easy to talk to um especially Jenny breus when she bumps into me I run into her um she always say hi Dora it's Jenny so I know who it is and and and also my uh word rep um Miss Taylor so thank you so much for always uh listening and and uh and trying to work things out in our beautiful friendly biggest little city thank you have a great day thanks M Martinez have a great day all right vice mayor we with that we have no additional public comments so I am moving on to item e which is an a motion for adjournment I have a motion by Miss Taylor a second by Mr Martin has any additional questions car none I'll call for the question all those in favor please signify by saying I I any oppose motion carries unanimously thank you