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HomeMy WebLinkAboutNatural Resources Advisory Board - Minutes - 08/04/2004MINUTES CITY OF FORT COLLINS NATURAL RESOURCES ADVISORY BOARD REGULAR MEETING 281 N. COLLEGE August 4, 2004 For Reference: Nate Donovan, NRAB Chair - 472-1599 Eric Hamrick, Council Liaison - 225-2343 John Stokes, Staff Liaison - 221-6263 Board Members Present Joann Thomas, Clint Skutchan, Jerry Hart, Glen Colton, Nate Donovan, Randy Fischer, Ryan Staychock, Rob Petterson Board Members Absent Linda Knowlton Staff Present Natural Resources Dent: Terry Klahn, John Stokes, Mark Sears City Manager's Office: Tom Vosburg Guests Ann Hutchinson Agenda Review Randy Fischer has a couple questions he'd like to talk about during New Business. Nate Donovan would like to revisit the Southwest Community Park issue. Approval of Minutes: July 21, 2004: The minutes of the July 21, 2004 meeting were unanimously approved as written. Changes to the Development Review Process, Tom Vosburg Vosburg said we are currently in the early phases of this project. Staff is responding to a Council request that we look into this issue. We're preparing for a Council study session on October 12 to review the status of the proposal. Vosburg said he feels he is in a dual position on this project. I need to be responsive and supportive to Council, and I'm very aware of the need to support an honest, open discussion in the community. Staff will develop a recommendation on this. I'm here tonight to share information and frame alternatives that are responsive to the direction that has been requested. I intend to have a similar process of outreach with other interest groups in the community. • Vosburg: A variety of issues are raised by the proposal to expand the duties of boards and commissions to allow direct review of projects. Some relate to code language required to make changes to different charters. In your packet I appended a draft of Natural Resources Advisory Board August 4, 2004 Page 2 of 10 such language that could be added. There are also administrative implications. Changes to the procedures of the development review process are substantial and significant in terms of how this would impact folks involved in the development review process. Staff is beginning to think this through from a procedural point of view. • Vosburg: The types of things we're talking about are scope of board involvement, how many boards, and what range of issues they could weigh in on. At what point in the process are boards involved? There are questions about the degree of staff support. Is it a passive routing of information, or would we have full blown staff presentations and opportunities for applicant presentations? It can make a big difference in terms of what this means. We need to flush out specific proposals. • Vosburg: It may be appropriate to get started with hearing more clearly what this board is expecting. This board has expressed a real interest. I think it would be helpful to understand and hear why that's a good idea. What problems would be solved, and what's the motivation behind it. I would like to hear the rationale and justification so that we're in a position to reflect that and express that perspective in the analysis. • Thomas: How would the process differ from what we do now? • Donovan: We review things at a subarea level, but not as far as specific development proposals. • Fischer: The city attorney came several years ago when Phil Murphy tried to speak at to P&Z about a specific proposal and told us we were overstepping our boundary. And that if we're going there as a board and the applicant chooses to sue us the City will not defend us because it is outside the scope of our jurisdiction. • Thomas: What about the hawk buffers? • Vosburg: That's setting the rules, not applying the rules. • Fischer: That's a good example. In -Situ contained significant modifications, much great than the 20% buffer for the Poudre. Because that was a specific project we never saw it. We were not able to comment on it without risking potential legal action. That's the reason this needs to be changed. We can do the policy stuff, but when individual projects come through we have to sit on our hands and not get involved. • Thomas: Does this make every board a quasi-judicial board? • Vosburg: It could, it just depends on the changes. • Hart: We can speak as individual citizens. We need to make it clear we are not articulating official board policy. • Vosburg: Sure. A few years ago the AQAB wanted to weigh in on Walmart. If its appropriate for this board to be involved in development review the code can be changed. • Vosburg: A large issue is about the structure of government and how it should be set up. The big stuff is the procedural stuff, and the philosophical stuff. • Donvoan: It really depends on how it's structured. I don't think getting involved in development review is automatically quasi-judicial. If that was the case we'd have a decision making role. There's still an option to comment on specific projects. Natural Resources Advisory Board August 4, 2004 Page 3 of 10 • Staychock: Is there a way we could stay non quasi-judicial. And see a project when its 5% to 10% along. We could be a proponent. • Vosburg: Would the board involvement be appropriate early in the process, or when there's been a recommended plan? One frame of thought would be to involve the board in the staff review, early in the process. • Hart: This first thing to do is determine if the board wants to do this. From my perspective it would supplement the staff function. The question is multi -faceted. Do we want to be involved in this? • Colton: I was on the P&Z Board, and I've done enough late nights in P&Z. This board doesn't want to review every project. There are a few cases over the years where I wish we had more input from the NRAB. hi -Situ was one of them. It was a tough decision, and I wouldn't have minded having the NRAB say, "We think that's great", or some different input. I would expect this would be a very exception case basis. I don't see it as looking at 99% of the projects. If a hawk's nest thing comes up, we'd want to take a look at it. • Fischer: I agree with Glen whole heartedly. No way do I want to get involved in quasi-judicial decision making. The recommendation in the Zucker report was that the AQAB and NRAB should be allowed to comment when modifications exceed a certain percentage. That pretty much says it all for me. All I want is a chance to comment. Administratively we don't want to see every development project. Anything that Doug Moore would identify as a concern he should say the NRAB should look at this. I would trust Doug to say when. I would be willing to let the environmental planners identify projects he thinks we should comment on and make a recommendation to the P&Z Board. • Vosburg: There needs to be a way of filtering some projects. I could see it being a process where the board scans everything. Or it could be a staff decision where the chair of the board and the board liaison talk about it. Or the P&Z Board could initiate a request for supplemental review. It's an issue we'll have to talk through. • Petterson: However it gets set up the board should have some say in it. I'm not sure I'd want to codify that someone else tells us what we should look at. Operationally it may look that way, but I don't want to have to go back and have a big discussion. We should have some involvement in deciding which things we review. • Skutchan: If we're truly there to give advice, that advice should be solicited. That's when advice is used best. Or there must be very strict criteria. How many boards are included in this? • Vosburg: That needs to be defined. Steve's draft was broad. That's something to talk about. How do we decide which boards have authority and which ones don't? • Skutchan: Would you have to come up with separate criteria for each board? • Vosburg: That's one option. Or any board can weigh in on any project it chooses, or maybe the chair and liaison will determine if the board is in or out. Or, maybe the P&Z Board requests which boards weigh in on which issues. The range of complexity and range or perceived change to the develop review process is huge. We need to talk it out. Natural Resources Advisory Board August 4, 2004 Page 4 of 10 • Donovan: Do you anticipate a staff recommendation would be ready at the study session. Or will you still be looking at different options? • Vosburg: I can imagine there being alternatives. I would think staff would be in a position to provide a professional recommendation. We do need to help. People can't respond or give input without a clear proposal. We as staff need to craft that proposal. In the spirit of honoring Council's request we'll take our best crack at developing the best system. The hard part is if we don't have clear direction on what they're trying to accomplish. It's entirely possible that staff will say if its done this is the way we think it should be, but we still think it's a bad idea. We have a dual responsibility. • Skutchan: There was mention of the fact that this is different than the first idea. • Vosburg: The first draft was more wide opened and was not limited to modifications. The draft language was requested by Eric Hamrick. Steve looked to the Zucker report and the Zucker report spoke to modifications. The idea is if there are no modifications being proposed it goes straight through the process. In hi -Situ there were a lot of modifications. Would the NRAB weigh in on each of them, or for each board would certain standards be limited? • Donovan: It was just the NRAB & AQAB in the proposal last April. Now it's pretty broad. • Skutchan: In the context of what's being done, what's broke about the system we have now? Is it 99.9% fine, or are there a lot of alterations? • Fischer: In don't think it should be limited to modifications under 2.8. A lot of the In - Situ modifications weren't true modifications. They were waivers. With the changes in the buffer regulations there's a lot more flexibility on how much you can move the buffers around. There might be waivers of the buffers for lots of different reasons that don't go to modifications that we would want to be aware of. I see an advantage to doing this early in the process. • Vosburg: What I'm hearing is there's the role about advising. Who do you want to advise? P&Z, or staff, or the developer? • Hart: Whatever accomplishes the purview of this board being carried out. I think we prefer to do it upfront, but if that can't be done we'd like to get our point of view before the people making the recommendation. I would prefer early on. Maybe this board needs to take some time and talk about this. • Staychock: 1 don't want to do anything quasi-judicial. I want to make it a helpful step for the developers. Early is better than taking a position when a project is 90% done. I like saying how can we help the project. • Hart: If we can work it out in the beginning than we could go to P&Z and say the board retains these concerns. • Sktuchan: Are you looking at if this is a necessary measure to go through? • Vosburg: My impression is it's a question and concern. By giving staff direction to work with the community and bring a process forward, that process should flush out that debate. That's the purpose of the study session, to present ideas that have been developed and thought through. • Skutchan: When you do test cases you should throw in zero change as a measuring stick. Natural Resources Advisory Board August 4, 2004 Page 5of10 • Vosburg: Yes, there is the null alternative. • Donovan: As Tom said, one of staff s prerogatives is to say that if we're going to do this, here's what we think is the best way, but we still don't this is a good idea. • Skutchan: How can you assure specific areas and the reasons for bringing it forward? Will there be strict guidelines? • Vosburg: That's one of the things we have to work through. • Skutchan: Are there legalities associated with that? Is that covered with the changes that are being proposed? • Vosburg: We have to decide how we want it to work and modify the code to have it work. Should boards weigh in with complete latitude on a project, or should their involvement be focused on certain things? Administratively, how do we do that? You're identifying issues that will be debated. • Colton: I think we're making way too much out of allowing a board to give an opinion on a project. I don't think we need a specific process. We'll know, it'll be in the paper. We can talk to Doug. What are people afraid of, that the process will create a lot of work? This board would be able to self-discipline itself. • Vosburg: Staff is very sensitive to being put in a position where we're set up to be scolded. There's not a great track record of discipline and policing. For someone who's going through the process, if a board testifies on the project they have standing for appeal. The probability of appeal goes up. We can't dismiss that lightly for someone going through the system. As staff, if we don't put this in place, and the board doesn't get to weigh in, we're the ones who catch the grief. We're not blowing this out of proportion. • Donovan: I have a general comment that I'm not yet convinced that this is a good idea. If we were to do it I would view it a way to help prevent train wrecks like In -Situ was. I didn't know anything about In -Situ until some one called me because it was on appeal to the City Council. Very few people would say that whole experience was something that should happen. Everyone lost. As far as frequency of this being used, if the whole board looked at one or two or three projects a year that would be far fewer than one percent of the development projects. I would hope that it would be limited. We need to have some structure to start out with, and then reevaluate the process. We can't go off on this without some sort of structure. • Fischer: I disagree with Tom (Vosburg). I think we use self discipline on the types of things we deal with. We were just admonished that we need to stick with the natural resources issues on things that we discuss. I have no interest at all in talking about architecture. I'm here because I want to discuss environmental issues. I would whole heartedly embrace being limited to natural resource issues. Wording in that regard would be fine. I also want to add that, in addition to three council members, it was a recommendation from a consultant the City hired to streamline the development review process. Many other things from the report have already been implemented. There is a clear hesitancy to address this recommendation. • Skutchan: When I read the Zucker report I read conflicting information. Two different positions were taken. If staff could clear up how they look at those two conflicting spots in the Zucker report, that would help out. Natural Resources Advisory Board August 4, 2004 Page 6 of 10 • Vosburg: We'll be back in September, probably, with some alternatives, and a range of specific suggestions around each issue. • Fischer: This seems to be a process that might benefit from a sub committee similar to the buffer thing. We could work through some of those issues. I think it will take more discussion than we have time for in a regular meeting. The process for the buffers was good. I wasn't completely pleased with the outcome, but it seemed like a good process. • Vosburg: We're forming a staff team to do the initial staff work. We'll be identifying the different issues and choices. We will be meeting with the AQAB, Chamber of Commerce, HBA, anyone who wants to weigh in. At the study session we need to present an analysis and alternatives. • Vosburg: I could come to another meeting, or could meet with a subcommittee. I'm happy to do either. • Donovan: Who would be willing to be involved in that process? • Colton: I would be willing. • Fischer: Yes, I would. It would probably only take one or two meetings. • Sktuchan: I would be interested. Noon on, is best for me. • Donovan: Tom, do you want a couple weeks to get the process going? • Vosburg: I think so. • Stokes: When will you want a recommendation for this board? • Staychock: I would ask the board to think of what you want out of this concept. If the board can't help the process then we should not change anything. We don't know where everyone stands. We will need to have a discussion and understand why we each are where we are in the process. Community Separator Report, Mark Sears Sears said there are a couple parcels we'd like to sell, one, we'll just give away. It's Hidden Cattails, south of Harmony Road between Shields and College. It was dedicated from the developer. The HOA would like to have it. We're more than happy to allow them to do that. It's a maintenance headache. We get calls frequently requesting different management than what we're accustomed too. • Colton: Are they going to mow it down? • Sears: They'll take better care of than we have in many ways. They may manicure it more, and they won't do anything different with the wetland. They may plant a tree. • Colton: Are there any stipulations? • Sears: We don't need a conservation easement. We could put in deed restrictions. • Colton: What's the wildlife value? • Sears: It's marginal at best. The little wetland is good. • Fischer: How many acres are we talking about? • Sears: Two or three. It's the type of area we shy away from. We have HOA's calling all of the time wanting us to take them. This is a reverse. We have a few active home owners who would like to have it. • Staychock: Are these parcels in the trails master plan? • Sears: No. Natural Resources Advisory Board August 4, 2004 Page 7 of 10 • Staychock: Is the City free from all liability? • Sears: Yes. • Sears: If there are any real strong objections we need to know that now. If there are no objections we'll proceed and bring the whole package for your recommendation to Council. • Sears: The Hersch property is 47 acres. Our intention was to get a conservation easement. There's a healthy stand of cottonwood trees and one raptor nest. We decided to keep it in fee. There's a house at the end of Midway Drive. It's a fairly nice home. We're dividing it to a 2.3 acre lot. We'll sell the house with the lot. To the south we bought a piece of land with a big giant house. We tore the big house down. We'd like to subdivide that into 2.3 acre lots. The houses would be to the east side of the high point of the hill. We'd end up with 40 acres of the original 47 acres in fee. We'd be able to recover somewhere close to one million dollars of the 51.3 million purchase price. • Sears briefly outlined progress and goals in the Community Separator areas. Committee Reports Solid Waste Reduction Committee: • Fischer said they received an update for multi -family property owners to promote recycling on their properties. It's a voluntary incentive thing. • There was an update on working with New Belgium on brown glass recycling. Bars and taverns would collect amber glass. The distributor for New Belgium would pick up the glass as they drop off the beer and have it hauled down to Coors. • We discussed what's happening in the arena of construction and demo waste. They're trying to promote the recycling and reuse of building materials. • We touched on organics recycling and the future of that. Susie's staff is doing research on making a eco-industrial park. There is concern that the Hageman lease expires in 2006, and are wondering what will happen to his operation. It's valuable to the community. There's a lot of yard waste diverted to there that would otherwise end up in the land fill. We didn't have time to get deeply into it. It's something we can discus at a natural areas committee meeting. He's leasing natural areas land. This was supposed to be the last lease. Stokes said we're looking at that and will come back to the board on about it. The lease runs through 2006. We realize the service is valuable. We're trying to think if that's an appropriate place for that business to be. We're trying to scope that out. It may take a while. Colton said that organic waste is a big concern. Fischer said they touched on a recommendation from several years ago that yard waste recycling would be added to the trash haulers licensing. Staff feels it's not a good time to think about something like that. Look at what happened with the haulers when we tried to get them to comply with HOA requirements. • Wild Oats has opened a recycling center so there's another option to the Rivendell site. Announcements/New Business Update on Southwest Community Park: Natural Resources Advisory Board August 4, 2004 Page 8 of 10 • Donovan: Parks Planning staff met with the P&R last week. There were 40-50 people there, including people from the Sports Alliance and neighbors. I asked if they had thought about putting together different options such as we had suggested. The P&R Board suggested there weren't enough facilities. Parks staff is coming up with an option such as the Park's Board suggested. He wants to wait on our option till after the Park's staff meets with the group on August 12, and then decide if they will do an option that is less intensive. They hope to be fairly well done with the public process part of things by the end of August. Nate Donovan requested that Craig Foreman come to the September 1, 2004 meeting of the NRAB. • Fischer: I went to the P&R Board meeting. Its interesting they would hesitate since this board gave a strong sense in seeing an option with less. Two Park's board members said they wanted an option with more. Two board members out of six or seven. They ignore us. It's typical of what's gone on in the public process. The public process is the worse I've ever seen. It's truly a sham. They're not listening to anyone who is not involved in organized sports. I don't know where they got their clear direction. I only heard two board members suggest more development. • Petterson: Should we make a motion? • Colton: Maybe we weren't strong enough. • Fischer: Did you get the indication they weren't planning to have an alternative with less development? Glen Colton made the following motion: The NRAB would like to strongly suggest that Parks Planning do a plan with less intense development at Southwest Community Park Rob Petterson seconded the motion. • Staychock: I will abstain since I wasn't here. • Colton: The direction will be better if it's official. It would be good to show a range of options. It's their responsibility to the public to do that. • Hart: There was enough comment by the neighbors, and the people on this board that there should be another option. • Hart: I would like to see the rationale for those alternatives, for implementing any of the alternatives. They only had one alternative with a couple options. What are the tradeoffs? I'd like to see that. • Donovan: I agree that it's good to have other options. But, I wonder if time and money will be spent, that would be better spent on other things. It's good to support the neighbors. While I agree with Randy that it is time the definition of a community park change from what a Park's Planner thinks, I do wonder if it's a waste of time and money right now. • Petterson: If they're going to develop an option with more intense development you'll want to balance that out on the other side. If you have a range the middle thing is a compromise. Natural Resources Advisory Board August 4, 2004 Page 9of10 • Colton: I went to the open house for the next BCC thing. They've got a couple million dollars of improvements to existing parks. If they weren't spending it on this facility they could spend more on those parks. • Fischer: I believe that this is one of the most unique places in Fort Collins. You have to respect the uniqueness of the site. The park gets a huge amount of use from the public. People come to recreate because of the uniqueness of the site. There are opportunities that are not available in other places. Having less development doesn't mean there won't be any sports facilities. In this community we don't build parks, we build ball field complexes. I would like to see the direction move toward a true park design, and not just focused on organized sports. We have to have another alternative. I appreciate the motion. The motion passed with six votes in favor, and one member abstaining (Ryan Staychock). Clint Skutchan had left the meeting before the vote. Other Business Budget Exception Process: • Donovan said there will be a Council study session on September 28. Is there any board interest in meeting in a smaller group to look at budget exceptions? Or, should we put it on the agenda for 18`h? • Fischer: I don't want to meet and then have staff pull the rug out from under us. I don't have a lot of interest in helping staff with the budget concerns. This department has a steady downward decline. I don't know how we'll keep some of the people we have working for us. • Colton: Let's hold off until after the 18`h, and see if we know more. Naming Policy • Donovan: There's an unscheduled item called the "Naming Policy" on Council's agenda. Would someone check and see if the proposed policy would supercede the naming policy we have in place? Building on Basics: • Colton: You can get on line and take a look at the projects. • Fischer: They want to make Prospect a four lane road. When we had our discussion we were talking about 20-30 years before they made it four lanes. Now they're talking about next year. That's something I'll have to draw the line at. Natural Resources Advisory Board August 4, 2004 Page 10 of 10 Jerry Hart made the following motion: As authorized by City Code Section 2-31 (a)(3), I move to go into executive session for the purpose of consideration of strategy for the acquisition and/or sale of real property. The motion was seconded and passed unanimously. Submitted by Terry Mahn Administrative Support Supervisor �q - \- O�--/