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Housing Advisory Board to ask that BVCP explicitly endorse increasing housing supply
Summary
At its March 25 meeting the Housing Advisory Board heard a staff presentation on the draft Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan and agreed to draft a recommendation asking City leaders to add a sentence to Policy 79 stating the city supports increasing housing supply; the board will consider the formal recommendation at its next meeting.
The Housing Advisory Board on March 25 heard a presentation from City Planner Tess Shorn on the draft Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan and agreed to prepare a short recommendation urging the City to add an explicit statement in Policy 79 that "the City supports increasing housing supply." The draft plan, posted March 3 and open for public comment through April 6, frames a 20‑year vision for the Boulder Valley and reduces the number of future land‑use designations while emphasizing 15‑minute neighborhoods, equity and an implementation chapter.
Shorn told the board the draft now has four broad classes and 12 designations (down from 26) intended to simplify the plan, tie policy to land use at a neighborhood scale and allow flexibility in how future zoning implements the vision. She said the draft includes approximately 102 policies and an implementation chapter meant to guide later regulatory and capital decisions.
Board members pressed staff on how the plan would interact with zoning (Title IX) and with county review. Several members said the plan’s current language reads as a high‑level vision and could be interpreted as less prescriptive than prior iterations; others said that vagueness can make it difficult to apply the plan during site reviews. In the discussion that followed, members converged on one concrete edit: add a brief sentence to Policy 79 to give policymakers a clear goalpost when evaluating rezonings or site reviews.
Philip Ogren, a HAB member, argued that an explicit statement about increasing housing supply would guide decisions about allowable densities and reduce ambiguity during site review. Other members said a simple, concise sentence would be more powerful than a longer set of caveats because it would be easier for staff, Planning Board and City Council to use as guidance.
The board did not vote on the amendment at the March meeting. Instead members asked the chair and clerk to draft a one‑sentence recommendation for inclusion in a memo to the City Manager and City Council, circulate a working draft consistent with open‑meetings rules, and place the final recommendation on the HAB agenda for a vote at the next meeting.
Staff also noted other draft plan features that HAB members flagged for further attention, including language tied to agricultural workforce housing on rural lands, the 15% permanently affordable housing target (unchanged), and policies supporting protection and rehabilitation of existing manufactured (mobile) home parks.
Next steps: the public comment window closes April 6; HAB will review and is expected to vote on its formal recommendation to staff and City Council at an upcoming meeting, after circulating a draft memo and allowing public notice and comment.
