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HomeMy WebLinkAboutEconomic Advisory Commission - Minutes - 02/20/2019Economic Advisory Commission Regular Meeting February 20, 2019, 11 a.m.- 1 p.m. Colorado River Room, 1 st Floor, 222 Laporte Avenue 1/16/2019 – MINUTES Page 1 1. CALL TO ORDER Time Started 11:07 a.m. 2. ROLL CALL List of Board Members Present • Connor Barry • George Grossman • Aric Light • Denny Otsuga • John Parks • Braulio Rojas • Ted Settle • Linda Stanley • Renee Walkup List of Board Members Absent NA List of Staff Members Present • SeonAh Kendall, Economic Health Manager • Erin Zimmermann, Economic Health Admin/Board Support • Ryan Mounce, City Planner • Katie Ricketts, Senior Analyst List of Guests • Dale Adamy (r1st.org) • Kevin Jones. Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce 3. AGENDA REVIEW a. To accommodate schedules, the agenda item order was switched so that the TBLS presentation was first, followed by the City Plan Update. ECONOMIC ADVISORY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING 1/16/2019 – MINUTES Page 2 4. CITIZEN PARTICIPATION None 5. APPROVAL OF MINUTES The January16, 2019 meeting minutes approved as presented with the correction of Ted Settle’s attendance. 6. UNFINISHED BUSINESS. a. City Plan Update (Listen/ Clarify) Connor— No meetings since the last time, so no update currently. b. City Plan Engagement Ryan Mounce (Discuss/Act) The commission gave a final review of the draft memo expressing EAC’s support for support the overall proposed recommendation of the Structure Plan concerning Commercial Zoning. Linda moved to approve memo as presented. Renee seconded. Motion passed unanimously. George brought up the EAC public facing website and highlighted that more should be done to keep this updated with current action. Staff will look into how to best support this request. Ryan gave a final presentation and update on City Plan regarding how this fits with the bigger picture. He highlighted that there may be a slight delay in the schedule. Staff is still planning for City Plan to go to Council in March, but it may be delayed. The housing and economy group hasn’t met since the beginning of the year. The suggestion had been made that maybe this group continues meeting and advises on implementation. Ryan— We are establishing a framework in City Plan but there’s a lot more work to do. Highlights: • Combined City Plan and Transportation Master Plan in one document. Also bringing forward the transit master plan. City Plan was focused on ECONOMIC ADVISORY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING 1/16/2019 – MINUTES Page 3 Community Engagement to provide direction. The Strategic Plan provides short and mid-term plans and City Plan provides the long-term plan. • A lot of people like the general direction of our community. We are not changing direction. A lot of it is our current strategy and philosophy. We did put a lot of effort toward policy consolidation that articulate the highest priorities at a community-wide scale. Utilize functional and neighborhood/corridor plans for more detailed policies and actions. • Focus areas influencing new ideas/ changes in 2019 City Plan update: o GMA Buildout o Employee Lands o Housing choice and access o Expanded transportation options o Climate Action • In terms of metrics, currently 23 percent of residents have access to high- frequency transit. Access to all transit is 50 percent. Future Transit Network would have 53 percent of residents having access to high-frequency transit and 85 percent of residents having access to all transit. • Major concepts o New road construction and widening will be limited to areas like NE Fort Collins. Ongoing targeted improvements (intersection upgrades and signal optimization. Managing congestion will require managing travel demand and offering more efficient trip choices. o Climate Action- first time climate action and City Plan have aligned at this level. • Highest Priority Action Items: o Continue community & neighborhood outreach – housing choices in neighborhoods o Update East Mulberry Corridor Plan o Structure Plan & Land Use Code amendments to address place types and primary/secondary use provisions in employment zoning o W. Elizabeth Bus Rapid Transit o Transit Funding Study o Multi-Modal Level of Service Update ECONOMIC ADVISORY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING 1/16/2019 – MINUTES Page 4 o Master Street Plan Updates o Capital Improvement Plan Update Comments: John— It sounds like some of the language has shifted sounds like Scenario 2 and three. Is that accurate? Ryan—It is not an explicit message that we are doing are doing scenario two, but rather that we incorporated what we heard through the scenario activity. Denny—Aside from the memo we just adopted, are there other areas you would like us to comment on? Ryan—Many of these topics are interrelated. If you see areas where there are conflicts with the ideas that is also helpful. Ted—Was there conversation about shifting GMA? Ryan—I think we heard from community, most people don’t want to see that. In most areas of GMA, it would be very hard to expand it. Early on, there was conversation about if there was ever a time to consider it, that would be during the City Plan update. But again, there are many factors that led to not going down that road. George—Out of all of the highest priorities, I do not see much focused on Economic Health. Ryan—One would be the East Mulberry Plan. This would include looking at land use there. The other one is on the Structure Plan and looking at employment zoning. Another area is looking at our gateways. Denny—Do you feel that there is anything more to comment on or provide more voice into? Linda—I’m pretty nervous about the number one up there on housing choices in neighborhoods. For me, I can’t say I want our board to adopt as is because I don’t know enough and same thing with some of the other areas. Connor—You mentioned the working group and continuation on the implementation. That could be a forum for ongoing feedback during actual implementation. Denny—I would like to provide high level support that opportunity zones be mentioned in the Mulberry plan. Linda—I have a problem with Fort Collins going after Federal money when so many other places really need it. I just have a different view. Ted—It seems redundant to me. ECONOMIC ADVISORY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING 1/16/2019 – MINUTES Page 5 Aric motioned that Federal tax incentives should be incorporated in the Mulberry plan where feasible. Connor seconded. Vote: Two against, one abstained. Motion caries. John—I abstained because I don’t feel like I fully comprehend the scope. Could we maybe have a future presentation. SeonAh—We had a regional conversation and could have this be a future agenda item. c. Board and Commission Evaluation (Experiment) Update—Ted Settle (Listen/ Clarify) Ted—It is a way for boards and commissions to come together and talk about issues of common interest. We are having final planning meeting next week. The shared meeting will be in late April. My hunch is late afternoon/evening about 3 hours. It will be our choice if we want to have that meeting replace our normal meeting. The reason we had the presentation on TBLS today is that will likely be the topic. The second meeting will be in the fall. 7. NEW BUSINESS a. 2018 EAC Annual Report— Board (Discuss/Act) No discussion. b. Triple Bottom Line— Katie Ricketts (Listen/Clarify/ Discuss) Katie gave an overview of the TBLS, an internal tool with 10 questions in each area (Economic, Social, and Environmental) that identifies potential impacts and scale. It’s something utilized at the onset of a project to have a conversation at the Council level regarding what we anticipate with a project. Tool has been redone and moved away from a confident scale and changed to expected impact (Positive/Neutral/Negative and Direct/Indirect/NA) It takes about an hour to go through the tool. Have developed a new report that summarizes the findings. Also updated the visual that is produced to help present the results in a quick and efficient way. ECONOMIC ADVISORY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING 1/16/2019 – MINUTES Page 6 Comments: Ted—What is the state of usage thus far? Katie—In the next couple months, we will start rolling it out as a more mandatory use. We are doing a lot of training and roadshows, so departments are aware. Renee—Does this mean every City initiative will go through this? Katie—Not every program will use this. For example, some updates on certain projects may not apply or be relevant. First audience is Council to help facilitate a conversation and second is program managers to help them think through challenges and mitigations. Renee—So a lot of it is subjective? Katie—It is, but we try to convene a diverse team to go through the scan together so that different perspectives are represented. Ted—A couple years ago the state invested 8 million in comcast to create a call center. A concern about level of person, salary range, affordable housing issues and impact on schools. This tool is a way to help nurture that discussion. A place like EAC focused on Economic issues forces us to get our of our silos and look at other factors. It will help us all think more broadly. Linda—It’s more qualitative than quantitative analysis. Denny—How can we help? If that tool is available now, before they speak to us could they use this tool? Katie—I would like to think about it more and get back to you. Just finalized Economic Health group questions and so it might be good to road test the simplified language with you. John—How readily available is this to the public? Katie—Right now it’s really internal. The core team is having discussion about what the engagement looks like. I think boards and commissions is a great place. 8. BOARD MEMBER REPORTS Denny—Startup Week is coming up next week. It is supported by the City. A program put together by group in Boulder called Techstars. It’s one week of celebrating entrepreneurship. All of the events can be found on their site. George—I’m also on the board of the Downtown Business Association. It’s nice to see the interplay of downtown business issues and here is more high level. My involvement was with the Walnut Street project. As a small business, Lucky Tea had a great January. Growth rebounded. Point is when there is construction and how it impacts ECONOMIC ADVISORY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING 1/16/2019 – MINUTES Page 7 business. Renee—On a positive note, I am passionate about making mosaics. Being new to the City, a couple things bother me. From the sustainability component, what bothers me is plastic bags. I’d like for us to think as EAC how we can shift that. I think we need to think about how we can promote the reduction of use of these plastic bags. Second thing is there is goose poop all over our beautiful City. This impacts business. I would like to put those on the table to consider in the future. Ted—I retired to Fort Collins from Virginia Tech. I find a different experience with CSU engagement. Wade, Darin, Josh and I are going to explore what role can universities play in economic development at the state level. What’s their plan and approach to attracting tech and talent to Colorado. Conor—I’m working on an expectations document for us so we can agree to expectations and that we are all on board with what our roles are. We have a first draft and will pull in some additional City documents. Something we will follow up with online. John—In three weeks I will be attending a climate reality training corps conference. One of the commitments is to hold 10 events focused on climate. More info to come. Braulio—I’m not formally working on this but an issue I have heard is how drug activities effecting the community. How are we addressing it? I haven’t found how we are addressing or tracking those issues. 9. OTHER BUSINESS None 10. ADJOURNMENT Adjourns 1:01 p.m. UPCOMING TOPICS March: ▪ Water usage fees– Abbye Neel (Listen/Clarify/Discuss) ▪ FoCoCreates Arts & Culture Master Plan – Jim McDonald (Listen/Clarify) April: ▪ Open Slot ▪ Open Slot Unscheduled: ECONOMIC ADVISORY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING 1/16/2019 – MINUTES Page 8 ▪ Update on Industry Cluster Approach – TBD (Listen/Clarify) 2019 Priorities: ▪ Talent Development, Economic Dashboard, Business Engagement, & Cluster