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Boulder planning board narrows work-plan priorities for council and assigns drafters
Summary
At its Nov. 18 meeting the Planning Board compiled and prioritized topics to recommend to City Council for the coming year, selecting site-review evaluation, middle-housing/code/fee review, and ground-floor retail activation as top items and assigning board members to prepare short draft paragraphs for a Dec. 2 drafting session.
The City of Boulder Planning Board on Nov. 18 compiled a list of possible items for a letter to City Council and used a facilitated n/3 voting process to prioritize the boards near-term work-plan recommendations. Laura (board member and facilitator) framed the task: Council requested items that are achievable in roughly a one-year work plan or concrete first steps on longer-range priorities.
Board members proposed a broad set of topics. Kurt outlined a slate of technical and procedural suggestions, including a site-review evaluation and streamlining (with a staff-led evaluation of how the recent code changes are working), changes to discretionary community-benefit processes for incremental height and benefits, reductions in water-intensive nonfunctional turf/setbacks, updates to the citys street design standards (DCS), creation of transportation demand management in-lieu funds where site constraints limit VMT reductions, and shifting certain private open-space requirements toward shared or public space in residential projects. He also proposed a pre-disaster planning effort so the city can plan strategic changes following potential future disasters rather than reacting under urgency.
Other board members suggested complementary items: Mason proposed a program of preapproved housing plan sets to speed infill housing approvals; Mark McIntyre urged a focused reassessment of middle-income housing approaches including any code barriers and the nexus/in-lieu fee structure; George urged prioritizing area plans for commercial and redevelopment corridors; Claudia recommended workforce- and family-oriented code reforms (single-stair design implications), an evaluation of overbuilt ground-floor retail and options to activate it, and stronger shading and landscape design for cooling.
The board used n/3 voting (each member received n/3 votes, where n is the number of items) to prioritize the combined list. The top three winners were:
- Site review evaluation, streamlining and clarification (combined item). - Missing-middle / middle-housing evaluation including revisiting inclusionary/in-lieu fee and code barriers. - Evaluate causes of vacant ground-floor retail and consider policy changes to better activate those spaces.
Several other items tied for the next tier, including preapproved housing plan sets, prioritizing area plans, and landscape/shading measures.
The board agreed to prepare a one-paragraph description for each of the prioritized items and assigned drafters: Laura and Kurt will draft the site-review evaluation paragraph; Mason will draft the preapproved plan-sets paragraph; Mark McIntyre will draft the missing-middle paragraph; George will draft area plans; Claudia and George will collaborate on the ground-floor retail activation paragraph; and Claudia will draft the landscape/shading paragraph. The group set a deadline of 10:00 a.m. on Monday, Dec. 1 for members to send their paragraphs to staffer Thomas for compilation; the board will work on the compiled draft at its Dec. 2 meeting and aim to finalize the letter in a subsequent session.
"We want things that staff can accomplish in a year or less, or a clear first step on longer-term priorities," Laura said while facilitating the session. The board emphasized modest, achievable requests and the value of planting strategic seeds for longer-term planning work.
