HomeMy WebLinkAboutPlanning And Zoning Board - Minutes - 08/20/1990PLANNING AND ZONING BOARD MINUTES
August 20, 1990
The special meeting of the Planning and Zoning Board was called to order at
6:30 p.m. in the Council Chambers of City Hall West, 300 LaPorte Avenue, Fort
Collins, Colorado. Board members present included: Chairman Jim Klataske,
Bernie Strom, Jan Cottier, Laurie O'Dell, Lloyd Walker, Joe Carroll, and
Margaret Gorman.
Staff members present included Joe Frank, Tom Peterson, Paul Eckman,
Georgiana Taylor, and Bob Komives, Planning Consultant.
LAND DEVELOPMENT GUIDANCE SYSTEM• A REPORT TO THE CITY
COUNCIL ON ITS PERFORMANCE - #39-90,
Assistant Planning Director Joe Frank gave a presentation on the 15-week
LDGS audit report, the process to prepare it, the questionnaires, the issues that
were identified as part of the audit, some of the actions that were
recommended, and the most important finding and recommendation of the
report was that the Land Development Guidance System should be retained as
the principal means of regulating land development in Ft. Collins.
Renee Cooney, representative of the Board of Directors of Citizen Planners,
recalled the report that was sent to the Planning and Zoning Board, Staff, City
Council. She stated it was a report of their review of the audit. They would
like to offer several suggestions for the improvement of the LDGS as a
planning tool. Their recommendations were based upon Citizen Planners Land
Use Planning Committee who thoroughly studied the Land Development
Guidance System and its implementation in several projects effecting
established neighborhoods. Additionally, members of the Land Use Planning
Committee had discussed the LDGS with members of the Planning Staff and
many of the Board. The many recommendations she wanted to emphasize were
as followed:
1. First, she wanted to thank the Planning Department for encouraging
citizen's comment on the audit and allowing them to review it thoroughly.
They thought the Open House technique was not useful for gathering citizen
input, however they did strongly support the round table discussions and that
they were particularly useful for getting various interest groups together with
City Staff and to get a real dialogue going on issues. Also they would like to
note for the record that the first draft that they were able to look at and
review lacked the critical section, Chapter 6, which was the implementation
section and would encourage the Planning and Zoning Board to take no action
until citizens could review the implementation activities and comment upon
that section in a public hearing.
2. Accountability, a concern of Citizen Planners was the question of
compatibility. If the LDGS audit proposed to modify the system, who would
implement the changes. They asked this question based on current policies
which did not appear to be implemented. An example of the lack of
implementation was the policy of encouraging development north of Ft. Collins.
The LDGS had been a total failure in achieving that goal and yet there was
no recommendations on how to improve the LDGS performance on that
objective. Perhaps the audit should, for example, propose changing the
weighting of criteria to better meet that goal or perhaps give negative points
for building elsewhere in the City.
3. Neighborhood Meetings. Citizen Planners suggested perhaps a two-step
process in the neighborhood meeting concept would help resolve alot of
emotional problems that occur at those meetings. They recommend the process
be changed to require two neighborhood meetings instead of one. The first
meeting would be to introduce the neighborhood to the process and to inform
them of .the proposed development. Both the meetings could be scheduled in
advance and the neighborhoods could be notified by one letter. The second
meeting would be held two to three weeks later and would bring the developer
back to present a more detailed preliminary plan and to identify changes since
the earlier meeting. They felt the two step process would better enable
neighborhoods to get up to speed and organize a more objective and less
emotional response.
4. Neighborhood Compatibility, they agree that there was a need to define
very precisely what constitutes compatibility between neighboring land uses.
They think that would clear up a lot of problems. The staff had found that
this was one of the strongest criticisms of the Land Development Guidance
System and they felt that it needed to be thoroughly looked into.
5. Mixed Use Development. Citizen Planners believed that the protection of
neighborhoods from incompatible mixed uses could be accomplished by
requiring traditional land uses between them. They recommend that the premise
that any land use may be made compatible with any other use in most cases
by mitigation measures be re-examined and modified by requiring well defined
transitions in land uses and intensities.
Ms. Cooney stated that Citizen Planners strongly supported the following
recommendations of the LDGS audit.
1. Prohibition for more grocery stores on College Avenue
2. Mandatory design standards for bike and pedestrian access, and addition of
car pool parking and drop-off zones for industrial/commercial developments
with over 100 employees.
3. Preparation of lighting, noise buffering and transitional land use guidelines
as soon as possible.
4. Training of neighborhoods on the LDGS review process and their rights
under the process at neighborhood meetings which may be accomplished
through the two-step process discussed earlier.
5. Inclusion of additional environmental criterion such as hazardous materials
and waste, water conservation, storm drainage, natural resource protection, air
quality and recycling as a evaluative criterion in the LDGS.
Emily Smith, secretary of the Prospect/Shields Neighborhood Association, stated
they had serious reservations with the implementation provisions and could not
support their approval tonight. In good faith, members of their board and
various residents participated in the LDGS performance audit. Imagine their
surprise last evening that this draft that was completed Friday, August, 17th
and would be coming before the Planning and Zoning Board Monday, August
20th. Inclusive in the draft was Chapter 6 which dealt with implementation
of recommended actions and products of the LDGS. Until mid -day they had
not seen Chapter 6 nor had they seen the subtle changes in Chapter 4 which
dealt with the audit results and general recommendations. This document had
not been available to the citizens for a long enough period of time to be
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adequate participation. Three days of availability, two days of which were
Saturday and Sunday. That makes a mockery of citizen's rights for public
participation.
Nancy York, stated that she also did not realize that the board was thinking
about approving the LDGS tonight, so she had not even finished her comments
to them and so she would like them not to approve it tonight so they could
still get other comments.
Chairman Klataske asked Mr. Frank to comment on the implementation section
and how much information was new that had not been presented before.
Mr. Frank replied that Chart I was not available at the July 25th Open House.
The draft report was. Chart 1 had some new information as to who was the
responsible departments and which board or commission would be involved.
The actions or products or the duration were very similar to the report that
was published July 25th, it identified the actions and Chapter 4 which
included alot of detail about the actions and also identified the duration. In
some cases the responsible department was identified. Chapter 6 was a
summary chart of what the recommendations were in Chapter 4 plus a little
more detail on what department would be responsible and which board and
commission would be responsible. He admitted there were some changes that
were made in between the July 25th draft and the current draft. He would
term the changes as "polishing". The document that was presented on July 25th
did not include the priorities established by the Board.
Harold Worth, representative of Citizen Planners had been involved extensively
in the process from the very beginning stated that Chapter 6 to his knowledge
was not available in its entirety to anybody in their group and had talked to
no one else who had it before Friday. He would like to compliment the staff
on the wonderful job they did. They did an amazing job of analyzing the
issues and coming up with recommendations on what they heard. They think
sometimes the staff was listening selectively to what they tell them and he
thought this time that there was a minimum of that from their perspective,
however, he did think that in the necessity to get this done in a certain time
frame that there had been certain public involvement steps omitted such as
review of this final draft in a timely way. He to would like them to consider
putting over final action on this tonight.
Member Walker asked that given the fact that he too had not received the
document before Friday and were they short circuiting the process here by
moving ahead with this given the timeline between the receipt of the final
document and tonight.
Mr. Peterson stated
that staff did not
feel this was a short circuit and as Mr.
Frank indicated in
his testimony, what
you saw
in Chapter
6 was essentially
no more than a listing of what was
in Chapter
4, it was just organized so it
was easier to read.
There was some
accountability
built in
there as to who
was going to be
responsible for
what and
there was
some tentative
recommendations in
Chapter 6 based
on the last
worksession
with the P & Z
Board.
Member Carroll stated he too had not had a chance to really review Chapter 6
and thought the statements everyone had made were correct that it did
incorporate what they had discussed in the roundtables.
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Member O'Dell asked the people who requested more time if a week would be
enough time to look at it and look what the priorities were and be able to
come back next Monday with some kind of opinion.
Emily Smith stated that they would appreciate the week.
Harold Worth stated that the most substantive issue this week
would give them
time to deal with was the
idea of priorities and they had
not
had any idea of
that before and thought it
was important that they had
that.
He hoped that
the board would entertain
comments at that time about
the
relevance of the
exact proposed action items
to what the recommendations
were
in the first five
chapters.
Member Walker gave his comments and concerns on land use policies and
neighborhood compatibility, Master Plans and that they should be addressed
through a public input process.
Member O'Dell thanked Citizen Planners for their letter and stated it was not
a closed process and the Board would be open to new issues and new ideas
during this process.
Member Strom stated
this had been a worth -while effort
from
the standpoint
of a much broader
spectrum of the community had an
understanding today
what the LDGS is and
what it isn't. They had come to a
better
understanding
that the LDGS was
a tool for implementing policy and
how
effective the
LDGS was depends on
how good the policies were and that
was
something that
had come out in the
review process.
Member Cottier stated that to say that the LDGS had failed, for example in
accomplishing getting development in north Ft. Collins, was not the proper way
to look at the LDGS as a tool. There were market forces out there that the
City cannot control and that the LDGS was not intended to control. It can
merely try to influence them to accomplish what citizens as a whole desire.
The process had been good so far and agreed that Chapter 6 would be useful
to have more citizen input, particularly with respect to priorities.
Member Cottier suggested that the following items be added to the most
important category; 2.22 Policy Clarity; 5.31 Area Plans; 5.32 Appropriate Uses;
These were kind of definitional things that she hoped would not take 18
months but things that were important to get a unified perspective of what
they were trying to do with the LDGS. Clarification type things and those
were important to do as soon as possible. To delete 6.51 from "most important"
to balance it out and she did not think this needed to be under "most
important" and needed to do ones that would have a broader impact first.
Member Walker stated that they needed to be sure in the revision of
the LDGS
that they allow in the
process the
opportunity for once the policies
had been
revisited and affirmed
or changed
at that point they could use the
LDGS as
the appropriate tool to
manifest
those particular policies. He stated that he
would like to see more
emphasis
on water conservation and needed
to really
look at the policies issues.
Member O'Dell stated that the suggestion by Citizen Planners of having a brief
presentation at the neighborhood meetings was really important. She thought it
was related to 2.13 Prepare and distribute informational materials. She thought
if was a high priority and something that could be easily be put into the
neighborhood meetings right now. She believed that action 2.22 was a high
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priority and they needed to take this one on and needed to decide before they
make any decisions the kind' of directions they wanted to go and wanted to
make that a most important priority and that 3.21 Urban Design become an
"important" priority.
Chairman Klataske commented on the prohibition of grocery stores on College
Avenue and how that should not apply to North College Avenue.
Member Strom moved to table their consideration until next Monday's meeting.
Member Cottier seconded the motion.
Motion passed 7-0.
OTHER BUSINESS
There was no other business.
The meeting was adjourned at 7:45.
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