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HomeMy WebLinkAboutEconomic Advisory Commission - Minutes - 06/20/2018Economic Advisory Commission REGULAR MEETING June 20, 2018, 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. Colorado River Room, 1 st Floor, 222 Laporte Avenue 06/20/2018 – MINUTES Page 1 1. CALL TO ORDER Time Started 11:05 a.m. 2. ROLL CALL List of Board Members Present • Sam Solt, Chair • John Parks • Aric Light • Denny Otsuga • John Parks • Craig Mueller • Connor Barry List of Board Members Absent • Ted Settle • Ann Hutchison • Linda Stanley List of Staff Members Present • Josh Birks, Economic Health & Redevelopment Director • Erin Zimmermann, Admin/Board Support • Ryan Mounce, City Planner • Noah Beals, Senior City Planner List of Guests • George Grossman • Stacy Lynne (investigative journalist) • Dale Adamy (r1st.org) 3. AGENDA REVIEW • No changes 4. CITIZEN PARTICIPATION Economic Advisory Commission REGULAR MEETING 06/20/2018 – MINUTES Page 2 • George Grossman— Owner of Happy Lucky’s Tea House. Would like to talk about the Poudre River. Thornton has rights to the river that were purchased in the 80s. I was looking over duties of the EAC and saw the role of looking for long-term threats. There is an opportunity for the City to fight for the water being piped to I-25. There is an opportunity for the water to flow through the river and then Thornton could access it at the end. The river is a natural pipeline. There are environmental factors and secondly, there is a huge economic opportunity to add a vital river district that is longer than the water park. It could actually flow from Overland to Mulberry and beyond. This is a once in a 100-year opportunity. Thornton has rights to the water, but the question is where they get it from. It takes vision on the part of City employees, and Council working with County, but I think it is something residents of Fort Collins would rally around. • Stacy Lynne — I am legally and ethically required to tell you I’m an investigative journalist. I’m completely independent. I am here to write a story about the sign code. My question is will you give an official recommendation to Council? Requested a list of all the journals that EAC is using to make the recommendation on Sign Code. • Sam Solt—Yes, we will be considering an official recommendation. 5. APPROVAL OF MINUTES John Parks motioned to approve the May 16, 2018 minutes as amended with the corrected typo on page two and the confirmation that John Parks was absent. Motion passed 7-0. 6. UNFINISHED BUSINESS • Commission Member Updates- None 7. NEW BUSINESS • City Plan Update— Connor Barry reported there were no major updates at this time from the Housing and Economy working group. • Experiment—Sam Solt provided an update. Anne Hutchison wrote draft memo from EAC supporting the advancement of the Board Experiment project. EAC reviewed and made minor edits and corrected typos. John Parks motioned to approve and submit the memo as amended to Council to be included in their packet. Connor Barry seconded. Motion passed 7-0. Economic Advisory Commission REGULAR MEETING 06/20/2018 – MINUTES Page 3 • City Plan— Ryan Mounce (Listen/Clarify/ Discuss) Ryan Mounce provided an overview, update, and next steps on the City Plan. First City Plan version was written in 1997. This is three updates together: the comprehensive plan, transportation mater plan and transit master plan to provide high level vision for the future. Hope to take to Council next Spring. Currently the plan is in between phase 2 and 3 (visioning and scenarios). Goals: Leverage existing city plan vision as a starting point, understand important values and how the community defines them, and understand if/how existing vision and objectives should be updated. Approach: Facilitated small group discussions started with city-led visioning workshops (2-hour events that reached 180 people.) Trained city plan ambassadors to facilitate conversations with their circles (They met with 220 individuals). Partnered with community organizations where the City provided training and the partner organizations meet with populations that the City may not typically meet with. Coordinated an online questionnaire. Coordinated City Plan working groups and council/board and commission discussions. Formats were similar but not identical for each method. Gave some flexibility to some groups. All the data is helpful. Summary what City is hearing: Highest priority: Livability, sustainability, community. Medium: Leadership, innovation, fairness, wellness, choice, connection. Lower priority: Distinctiveness (lowest priority by 55 percent of participants). Livability: Quality of life, safety, low stress, east to get around, access to amenities. Sustainability: Stewardship of natural resources and environment. Community: Friendly neighborly and pride in community, spaces and celebrations for interaction, inclusive and respectful of our diversity, responsibility of shared space, open communication. Distinctiveness: Unique elements that set us apart, recognized by others for our efforts and leadership, a feature of being successful achieving values. When asked if any values were missing, opportunity (in relation to housing, jobs/prosperity, education) came up frequently. Economic Advisory Commission REGULAR MEETING 06/20/2018 – MINUTES Page 4 When asked what should be changed or modified, the City has heard the recommendation to change Fairness to Equity. Enhance local and regional public transit, accessibility to services close to home, housing options and housing, mental health, social services, homelessness, flexibility for smaller dwellings were key themes. When asked what is working well, the City has heard that residents love the open spaces, parks, natural area recreation, compact development stick to growth management area. When asked about what should be prioritized, housing by far is the one people want to focus on most. Next Steps: Big Picture vision statement and vision objectives: Refine to better reflect values and priorities and how they are being defined/used by the community. Scenarios: Help design scenarios to show different potentials. The City will develop and evaluate three scenarios exploring alternatives to our land-use, transportation, and policy frameworks to illustrate different ideas. Scenario feedback: Use input to inform policy recommendations and implementation of actions in City Plan. Feedback focused on elements/ options from all scenarios. Scenario Framing: Scenarios as variations on overall current direction, balance between aspirational but achievable, focus on changes/ideas that do not require extensive new funding/ resources. Questions: Priorities for livability— What would that look like? More flexibility for commercial/ mixed use? More as home occupation? In general, where does the City have gaps in connectivity? Sam Solt— Using the Max as an example— Seems good example of taking high priority items and moving them forward with things that are actionable, visible, doable. Connor Barry— How are you identifying where the pieces of feedback fit within the scenarios? Economic Advisory Commission REGULAR MEETING 06/20/2018 – MINUTES Page 5 • Sign Code Update— Noah Beals (Listen/Clarify & Discuss/Act) Noah Beals provided an overview and update on the Sign Code, which is currently in Phase 2. In Phase 1 the City was looking at the current code and making it content-neutral. Listening to what other things we could improve. The City has had public meetings, coffee talks, questioners, drafted some proposed changes to that code. Sharing with boards and commissions and asking for recommendations on the proposed changes. Why does the City sign standards? The purpose and intent of the Sign Code is to set out reasonable regulations for the design, location, installation, display, operation, repair, maintenance, and removal of signs in a manner that advances the City’s legitimate, important, substantial, and compelling interests, while simultaneously safeguarding the constitutionally protected right of free speech. There are all different types of signs. Businesses are given certain square footage for different times of signs. The City’s sign compliance inspectors enforce the code. Businesses must have a permit and then the City inspects it to make sure the sign is compliant. The proposed changes to the sign code allow for expansion and flexibility of different configurations of how the square footage of signage can be allotted, while not changing the overall square-footage permitted. Noah Beals walked through each of the proposed changes in detail and highlighted what would be different. Some of these changes are in response to variance requests the City has received. Comments: Aric Light— How did you determine if current square footage is accurate? The City had conversations with owners. Denny Otsuga— Concern that technology moves faster than policy, so for the new technology, is there an opportunity to have a variance for the special event projected sign? Economic Advisory Commission REGULAR MEETING 06/20/2018 – MINUTES Page 6 Connor Barry— What is the reason for wanting to remove the static billboards? Any consideration on where we consider enhanced transit corridors? Noah Beals— It has been City policy to remove them. John Parks— How many billboards are in Fort Collins? Noah Beals— in growth management area, 70 plus. Quite a few on Mulberry, I-25, some on North College, some downtown. There are state laws that you can’t put them up on byways. (Highway Beautification Act). Sam Solt— Seems like you have expanded on some and restricted on others. It seems you hare granting more size increases. Is the code more or less restrictive; it seems it breaks even. Josh Birks—Not changing square footage restrictions, just expanding the shape and where they can be displayed. Denny— I understand there are parts of the code to just maintain, but I would like to see a little more directionality. If the real direction is that the City wants to reduce billboards, then let’s put together a plan to do that. Noah— Most of these billboards are privately owned. They want to stay in business. We have gotten some feedback from billboard companies on what they would like to see. Craig Mueller— It would be helpful to have a purpose statement at the front of the presentation, as to what to purpose of the changes are. Sam Solt— I like Craig’s recommendation. It would seem like it would be easy and interesting to see a summary slide. Josh Birks— Can you generalize feedback you have received especially from business community? Noah Beals— They want to make sure we are not taking away square footage. Next steps: 2 nd Council work session in July. Will go to Council August 21 st . Josh Birks recommended that staff share a slide or additional information for grounding, as a follow-up. Proposed that EAC could act on this topic in July or August and suggested someone create an initial draft memo to be circulated prior to the next meeting. Economic Advisory Commission REGULAR MEETING 06/20/2018 – MINUTES Page 7 John Parks volunteered to daft a memo to include EAC’s support of sign code with the recommendation to include a clearly stated purpose and projected economic impact. Memo will be reviewed in July. 8. BOARD MEMBER REPORTS No updates 9. OTHER BUSINESS N/A 10. ADJOURNMENT Time Ended 1:14 p.m. Upcoming Topics: July: ▪ Art in Public Places/ Broadband & Underground Projects Update– Ginny Sawyer (Listen/Clarify and Discus/Act) ▪ KFCG Sunset Update– Ginny Sawyer (Listen/Clarify) August: ▪ Conversation with the Mayor– Mayor Troxell (Discus/Act) ▪ Metro District Policy Update– Josh (Listen/Clarify) September: ▪ Budget Review Update– Josh Birks (Listen/Clarify) ▪ Open (Potentially Code Named Project) Next meeting time and location: July 18, 2018, 11:00am–1:00 pm, Colorado River Room