Mayor Jordan Hess Our third presentation, our third public hearing is on an interim ordinance surrounding conditional use approvals and we have Ms. Pehan here to introduce the staff report and then Ms. Gress as well. Ms. Pehan.
Eran Pehan Good evening. Eran Pehan with CPDI. As most of you know, we've been working hard in the last several years to address regulatory barriers to development, more specifically the development of homes while continuing continuously engaging in community and statewide conversations that address other large barriers to development including the current cost environment, as well as labor costs and shortages just to, to name a few. Some of this work has already been before Council and you're familiar with it. This includes our work under the development capacity proposal that we presented to you last spring that amended our fee schedule to support the addition of five positions across Planning, Permitting, Parks and Engineering. This added capacity improved our rate of residential building permit issuance dramatically. It resulted in the permitting of 140% more homes during the last fiscal year when compared to the year prior. This also includes our work around Our Missoula, our comprehensive growth policy update and code reform project that is currently underway. Alongside these successful efforts and efforts underway, we were looking across our current process, processes to determine where changes were warranted now today based on what we have determined as good practice and also changes that had overwhelming support and where we identified a clear urgency to act. And this is what you'll hear more about tonight during our public hearing from our Senior Planner, Jen Gress, and that includes the recommendation from CPDI to pass an urgency ordinance regarding conditional use that we feel will improve our ability to address, directly address the current housing crisis by allowing us to direct more capacity, more energy from our planning team towards those specific activities. So with that, I'll turn it over to Jen Gress to provide us with those details.
Jen Gress Thanks Eran. I’m going to share my screen, just a moment, sorry. Okay, I'm going to assume that you can see that.
Mayor Jordan Hess Yes, we can.
Jen Gress thank you. So, yes, as Eran said, I’m Jen Gress of Community Planning, Development and Innovation, and tonight we're asking you to consider adopting an emergency ordinance regarding conditional uses. Discussion will cover proposed amendments to update the city zoning regarding uses allowed conditionally in specific districts. I'll provide information regarding the proposal and intent along with some background, cover the thinking behind our choices, we'll review the amendments generally, I'll go over comments that we've received, and then I'll be asking you to adopt the interim ordinance. CPDI is proposing an interim urgency ordinance in accordance with state law that will shift many existing conditional uses throughout the various zoning districts to permitted, based on specific considerations. And as we heard from Eran, this interim ordinance is consistent with the city's charge to provide for the overall public health, safety, and welfare of our growing community, and will help to provide a more effective delivery of city services by freeing up staff time to review and approve housing and support services to support a safe and healthy community. It is meant to improve on and provide increased capacity for ongoing operations as well as provide an interim solution while the city studies and contemplates broader amendments to improve review process efficiencies through the code reform project. State law provides for an interim urgency ordinance through Section 76-2-306 and allows a municipality to determine when an urgency ordinance is necessary to protect public safety, health, and welfare. The process requires a public hearing with a minimum of seven days’ notice prior to the hearing, an adopted interim ordinance takes effect immediately and lasts for six months, and then if it's necessary, the interim ordinance can be extended twice, each time for 12 months and each extension requires a public hearing prior to approval. Missoula is experiencing a housing crisis that presents a threat to the community's general health, safety, and welfare. Our response to the urgency of this crisis begins by freeing up staff time to review and approve housing and support services and provide for more effective delivery of city services. The City of Missoula is facing historic levels of development review, causing backlogs and delays that are directly and indirectly impacting our ability to move key priorities like residential projects forward. So, this slide provides some background information on the number and type of development review applications received in our office for the years of 2019 to 2021, as well as the various types of land use applications our office processes, and these are applications related to development that require some level of approval beyond administrative review by staff. Subdivision application requests continue to be a cause of the most recent backlog of pending projects because of the state mandated response times, these requests essentially jumped to the head of the line. As of the beginning of November 2022, there were 25 subdivision development requests and these subdivision requests include a variety of types of subdivision related reviews and including new subdivisions, phasing plan amendments, phased developments, final plats, and minor adjustments. Outside the subdivision applications, there are also 24 non-sub-division related board review projects, either in process or waiting for a scoping meeting. Proposed projects include annexation and re-zoning requests, public forum, subdivision exemption requests, and others including conditional uses. Beyond the increase in land use application reviews, the amount of review related to building permits has also increased drastically. Between 2019 and 2021, the number of permitted dwelling units has increased 193%. The largest increase being between 2020 and 2021, and as you can see in 2019, the total number of dwelling permits issued was 456. In 2020, there were 476 and in 2021, there were 1,338, and the largest number of those permits were for multi-dwelling apartments. This trend of growth has continued into 2022, in just two quarters, which was January to June, the City saw 2,396 building permits issued, 480 of those were for dwelling units. So, we saw the same amount of permits in the last half of a year as we saw in the entire year for both 2019 and 2020, and again, this year, the majority of residential permits were for multi-dwelling units. Each of these building permits must be reviewed by staff but with time spent on other types of reviews, especially those mandated by state law such as subdivisions, building permit review is sometimes necessarily put to the side and this slows the process even further. All this to say, our office reviews and processes a number of different types of development applications and requests, and in the last year or so, the number of many, if not all of them, has increased significantly. Since the conditional use process is a discretionary review that is not subject to state mandated timelines, CPDI staff is focusing on amendments to simplify this review process. By reducing the number of uses required to go through the conditional use process, we will be removing around three months of work for each request from the development review process and that's allowing staff to work on review of other projects. The zoning code includes three basic use designations permitted by right, unpermitted, which we generally call prohibited and conditional. Conditional uses are intended to provide a transparent public review process for land uses that because of their widely varying design and operational characteristics require case-by-case review in order to determine whether they will be compatible with surrounding uses in development patterns. Uses are reviewed by certain criteria found in Title 20 under review and approval procedures to determine if the proposed use is compatible in the specific location being proposed. Approval through the conditional use application process is ultimately received through a vote by City Council and includes a public hearing. When Title 20 was adopted in 2009, it included 49 use types that depending on which zoning district they occur in may be conditional. In 2019, two of those uses were removed from the conditional use process, assessor dwelling units and townhome exemption development projects, both became permitted in all residential, commercial, and Industrial zones allowing for more buy right housing options. In the time since Title 20 was adopted, there have been a total of 78 conditional use projects processed of which only one of those was denied. Twenty-one of those projects were accessory dwelling units and town home exemption development projects, which as I noted are no longer conditional. This shows the distribution and frequency of which specific uses have seen conditional use reviews in the last 13 years. So, as you can see, after accessory dwelling units, which are no longer conditional, the tavern nightclub use was the most requested and then followed by enterprise commercial and microbrewery, micro distillery as the next most common tier. Through the lens of community design and livability, the city's strategic plan identifies the need to create understandable and reasonable regulations that support sustainable and equitable development. Even though the conditional use process has raised awareness of projects, the outcome of the process has resulted in only one denial over 13 years, which suggests that more often than not, these uses are likely to be approved. Moreover, it's not very likely that in order to gain an approval, a conditional use project will be conditioned to include elements or features that are not already required in some form or another through existing regulations. Of the 78 projects that have been approved only 24 or 30% got us additional requirements not covered by Title 20 or other regulatory documents. The proposed interim urgency ordinance will yield reasonable interim regulations and it'll still retain additional review for some conditional use types. In approaching this project, we first looked at the simplest fix, could we just change all conditional uses to permitted wherever those uses are currently conditional? After applying a set of considerations that I'll go through in just a minute, staff's professional opinion was that an across-the-board relaxation of conditional uses was beyond the intent of this ordinance and that in some cases it was most appropriate to maintain some uses as conditional. However, it did become clear that focusing on the uses themselves rather than some other approach was the most intuitive way to proceed. As part of the process for determining which conditional uses are good candidates for shifting to permitted, staff developed the following considerations, though not every consideration was used in a decision for every conditional use. We used level of frequency and that means how many individual projects have we seen within a specific use type. We used a degree of controversy or perceived impact, what are the uses that have generated notable levels of public comment and input? What specific projects resulted in applying conditions that would not have otherwise already or already been required? Policy alignment, which uses are clearly aligned with existing policy goals such as the growth policy, associated issue plans, or the city strategic plan. Is there additional support by other standards or codes? What uses have existing specific regulations that are also required and help to mitigate impacts? We addressed equity, is the application of the conditional use requirement applied equitably across similar use categories? Similarly, is application of this ordinance applied across similar zoning districts? Relationship to code reform, are changes associated within this interim ordinance focused on streamlining department business operations and not requiring consideration on a more comprehensive level that should wait for inclusion in the code reform initiative? Complexity was looked at, which individual uses require a level of evaluation and Analysis that a conditional use review is actually warranted? Which changes to uses would require other edits to the code, making it too complex to address at this time? And then finally, addresses transitional areas. In relation to the previous considerations, special focus was included on how this would affect specific uses applied for in a transitional area, especially between residential and non-residential zones, as well as between the various degrees of intensity between commercial districts. Along with the previous considerations, staff included some assumptions while evaluating uses. First, we only consider districts under Title 20, no special districts, PUDs, or other similar districts. Next, we're not expanding the range of where uses are already designated. So, for example, if a use is prohibited in a certain district, we're not recommending making them permitted or conditional. No use is proposed to be more prohibitive, for example, we're not moving any conditional uses to prohibited or permitted uses to conditional. We considered the M1R district to be more residential in nature than industrial. The central business district was considered a little more carefully than other districts. We looked at all three business districts more or less consistently by not differentiating between the three and similar types of uses are addressed similarly. For example, daycare centers, community residential facilities, and group living were treated similarly. Based on applying these criteria and assumptions, we landed on three categories of amendments. Changing some uses from conditional to permitted in each district that was listed, changing some uses from conditional to permitted in some districts, and not changing some uses that are conditional at all. So, as stated previously, the proposed amendments are intended to be interim as allowed by state law and because it is an interim urgency ordinance, public outreach is limited, but with the safety catch that because it is an urgency ordinance, the time span that it will apply is also limited and provides for an opportunity to check back in and reassess in a relatively short time period. Once staff identified the need initiated this process, CPDI leadership was informed. We conducted internal departmental review and provided for public engagement by including information on the Engage Missoula webpage. We notified neighborhoods through the office of neighborhoods contact list, the clerk's office has published a legal ad, and we gave you a presentation in the Land Use and Planning Committee on November 16, 2022. In keeping with our approach, as a temporary measure, the Engage Missoula webpage will be maintained during the interim six-month period in order to keep the public informed and to receive comments as we approach our next decision point on whether to extend the interim period or not for another year. The following slides show the amendments generally and indicate which of the three categories each conditional use ended up in. So, if you have a question about this actual amendment, we can show you that as well. The first categories are those that were changed to permitted in every district they're currently listed in as conditional, and those included animal services, sales and grooming, as well as veterinaries, auto wrecking, bed and breakfast, college university community residential facility for nine or more persons, day labor employment agency, fraternal organization group living, junk, salvage yard, and library cultural exhibit. And this slide continues the list of change to permitted in every district and includes manufacturing, production, and industrial service for both artisan and limited. Microbrewery, micro distillery, office, personal improvement service, preschool center, general recycling service, religious assembly, residential support services, and schools. The bed and breakfast uses is one that will be permitted in every district where it was conditional. So this slide shows a snippet from the Title 20 use tables for the bed and breakfast use. The end result will be to change it from conditional to permitted in residential areas and you can see that in the red and continue to permit them in the commercial districts, as well as the one industrial district it's listed in, and the use is not permitted in the M1 or the M2 district. Other examples of use changes to permitted in every district it's listed in his junk, salvage yard, and auto wrecking, and these two uses are only listed in the M1 and M2 industrial districts with the two uses being permitted in both. This next category are those uses that are changed to be permitted in some of the districts that are listed while remaining conditional in others. They include animal services for shelter or boarding kennel, casinos, check cashing loan service, cidery, daycare center, emergency homeless shelter, and enterprise commercial use, and this slide continues with those uses that were permitted in some of the districts listed. Those are meal center, tavern, nightclub, vehicle sales and service for heavy equipment sales and rentals, as well as vehicle storage and towing, winery and ground mounted wireless communication facilities. So, the tavern nightclub, as I said, is an example of a use changing to permitted in some of the districts it's listed in. So, as you can see, the use is proposed to be changed from conditional to permitted into C2 commercial and the industrial districts M1 and M2, and again those are in red, while remaining conditional in other districts, and this use is prohibited in residential districts. They use of cidery and winery are another example of some districts changing. They're treated the same currently and will both remain conditional in the B2 and B3, but change to permitted in the C1 and C2 and this use is prohibited in residential and open space districts. The next two slides are the final category and are those that will remain conditional and unchanged. Those are building maintenance service, construction sales and service, detention and correctional facilities, fraternity, sororities, gas stations, hospitals and parking that's non-accessory. They also include residential storage, warehouse, truck stops, major utilities and services, car wash cleaning services, waste related uses, and lastly, water testing laboratory. And this slide, again, shows warehouse use will remain conditional in residential and commercial districts, and permitted in the industrial districts. And this last example shows fraternity, sorority uses as only being listed in the residential use districts, and they'll remain conditional in the RM 2.7 and RM2, and remain permitted in the other districts listed. Applying the proposed amendments will result in 21 uses changing to permitted in each district that are currently condition, 13 uses changing to permitted to in some of the districts they're currently conditional, and 13 uses remaining conditional and unchanged. Of the 47 existing conditional uses, more than half of them will be either permitted in every district they're listed in or will be permitted in some of the districts they're listed in. The project was posted on the city's Engage Missoula website and received several comments. We also received comment from the Missoula Organization of Realtors, and all these comments can be found attached to this project in the escribe or found in communications sent to the City Council email, and these were all the comments that we received as of this afternoon, and I'll be describing them here generally. We received several comments asking that the tavern, nightclub used to be permitted in the C1 and the M1R zones. There was a question regarding public engagement for each project and if the interim ordinance lessened community input for them. Frustration was expressed with the perception that it seems easier for outsiders to open businesses than locals, and they asked that this process consider ways to make it easier for local entrepreneurs to get started and to start that process by looking at the beer wine use. One commented noted there are good reasons to maintain conditional use review, including that adjacent property owners are notified and can provide on-the-ground information to staff and Council. It includes staff review impacts and a collaborative environment to create sensitive solutions to a given situation. This comment recommended retaining conditional use for all residential public, civic, and commercial designations. Another comment was not in support of the changes, saying that a change in the rules now will be unfair to past participants and the results of cutting corners will not be fully realized until it's too late to correct; the ordinance doesn't meet state law. We received a comment in support of the ordinance, especially if it supports the City of Missoula staff and local businesses, and the last comment was also in support noting staff's recommendations are a strong step towards achieving the priority actions that they noted in their letter. And we are not proposing any changes based on any of the comments received right now. Staff recommends that City Council adopt an interim urgency ordinance generally amending Title 20 conditional uses and this motion is here if you need it, and that concludes my presentation and I'm available if you have any questions.
Mayor Jordan Hess Great, thank you for the staff report Ms. Gress. I appreciate the thorough report. So, we're going to open the public hearing and then I'll come back to questions from Council. Anyone from the public wish to comment tonight, come on up or raise your hand online. Come on up.
[unknown speaker] here in Missoula with A&E Design. I just wanted to speak in support of this measure. I think that dedicating city staff to residential reviews is much needed and very appropriate use of their time, and also a lot of the uses that are outlined as going from conditional to permitted are totally appropriate for the community and are going to help us get some much needed services in this community. So thank you.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thanks for the comment Mr. [inaudible]. Anyone else? Online, I’ve got Mr. Bashan. Jim, you should be able to unmute.
Jim Bachand Hi, this is Jim Bachand with the Missoula Organization of Realtors. As Jen said, we had submitted a letter earlier today in support of this. I think when we think back on some of the comments made earlier by Councilmember Jones around the long-term affordability of housing, I think some of the steps taken here go towards that, especially in an interim basis while we're in a crisis in housing. So, again Missoula Organization of Realtors are in support of this.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thank you. Anyone else tonight? All right, I'm seeing none. I will close the public hearing. This item will be, we will conclude this tonight for final consideration. So, with that, are there questions from Council members? Ms. Jordan.
Alderperson Kristen Jordan Thank you Jen for that presentation. I'm just curious to hear a little bit more about why local developers think it's harder for them to start businesses than it is for folks coming from the outside?
Jen Gress I don't believe I have an answer for that. Personally, dealing with the permitting and those kinds of things, it's not something I do on a regular basis and the comment didn't provide any examples. I don't know Mary, are you? Is Mary McCrea in the audience? She may have an idea of how that works.
Ben Brewer I don’t know. This is Ben Brewer, Planning Supervisor and Mary's not on the, the call currently, but yeah just wanted to reiterate what Jen said that that was a comment we received but it didn't provide specifics or details on, on why that is.
Mayor Jordan Hess Ms. Jordan.
Alderperson Kristen Jordan Sorry, if this is obvious, but do you guys have any ideas why that comment might have been made?
Jen Gress Sorry, I don't.
Mayor Jordan Hess You know, I'd weigh in for a second. I think the conditional use process is, is takes a lot of time and is fairly I mean it's fairly onerous. There's an additional application fee, there's a there's a lot of additional delay in waiting and so, I think to me this comment really speaks for the need for something like this, where it simplifies our process of getting a, getting a project through the pipeline. And so, I think, I think this really goes, I think this action really kind of goes to the heart of that comment that we're, you know regardless of what the background is on why that commenter felt that way, this simplifies the process in a way that, that saves time, saves money, and creates predictable outcomes and I think that's those are some of the things that we hear most frequently are predictability, time, and money. So, that would be my take on it. I've got Ms. Vasecka next and then Mr. Nugent.
Alderperson Vasecka I would like Mr. Nugent to go first because it looked like he had something to say about that comment.
Alderperson Mike Nugent Yeah, I’m not, this isn't my comment yet, I was just going to take a stab at answering Ms. Jordan's question. I, I don't know who made the comment. I have, I have heard the concern that for instance a large chain that has a real estate development arm based out of New York City has more, more capability of, of waiting out a long development process than a startup entrepreneur in, in Missoula. And so, I think maybe that's what the, the basis of that comment would be for. I don't I don't know who made it, so I can't speak to it but that would be my hunch is what they're getting at.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thanks. Ms. Vasecka.
Alderperson Vasecka Okay, thanks. For my comments, I, I disagree with what the public commenter said tonight. I'm a big fan of government efficiency and making things easier for the citizens of Missoula, so I will proudly be in support of this tonight.
Mayor Jordan Hess Ms. Sherrill.
Alderperson Sherrill I don’t have questions, I have a comment though.
Mayor Jordan Hess Okay let’s hold those for now. Ms. Jones.
Alderperson Jones Sure, thanks. Jen, you touched on this, but I just wanted to make sure I understood it, and was clarified. There was a comment from someone that they wanted taverns and nightclubs to, which are under the kind of partial category, they'll be permitted in some areas and then conditional use in, remain still conditional use in other areas and the commenter thought we should be moving taverns and nightclubs in areas in zoning C1 and M1R to being permitted instead of conditional, and can you just walk me through staff's rationale? This is, this is a short-term ordinance, so nothing is set in stone, and we've got code reform that will handle things in the long run, but just your thoughts on that specifically.
Jen Gress Why we're suggesting that they don't be permitted? Is that what you’re asking?
Alderperson Jones I think, I think it was that taverns and nightclubs in C1 and M1R will remain a conditional use instead of just being permitted by right.
Jen Gress Yeah after conversations and some looking into it, we just decided that those are one of those things that are very controversial, and we decided that that was probably one that needed to just remain conditional because of its controversy.
Mayor Jordan Hess As a followup to that, you mentioned that and I think correctly so, that you characterized M1R as primarily a residential characteristic and can you describe a little bit about where those districts are and what the character are and, and kind of how that, how that supports that decision?
Jen Gress A lot of the M1R districts are right along our railroad spurs and they, in several parts of the city, they're basically residential in nature, no longer occupied by the, the railroad. So, they have a tendency to be more residential in, in nature. There are several maybe over by Costco that you might know of, there are several on the south end that are more or less single family residential, so.
Mayor Jordan Hess Additional questions? Ms. Becerra.
Alderperson Becerra Yeah Jen, I think you mentioned that the interim ordinance would be for six months and then this would be, staff is going to be tracking and assessing, so that we know how this is going to inform the code reform, is that correct?
Jen Gress Correct.
Alderperson Becerra Could you expand on that, just so that we know who this is going to be tracked and see how it’s performing.
Jen Gress Well one of the things we're going to do is, is watch what's happening with the Engage Missoula. We're going to continue to take comments and then of course in our office, we always know when applications come in. So, we have the ability to talk to who's like Mary McRae who is the leader of the permitting section, and we can keep track of those projects that are being requested.
Mayor Jordan Hess I don’t see any additional questions, so we can take a motion and then have discussion on the item. Mr. Nugent.
Alderperson Mike Nugent Thank you Mr. Mayor. The motion coming from LUP is Pursuant to State Law Section 76-2-306 Montana Code Annotated, the Missoula City Council hereby adopt an interim urgency zoning measure amending Title 20, Missoula City Zoning Ordinance Section 20.05 Residential Districts, Section 20.10 Business and Commercial Districts, Section 20.15 Industrial and Manufacturing Districts, and Section 20.20 Open Space, Public, and Aviation Districts, prohibiting the application of the conditional use process to certain use categories.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thank you. The motion is in order and on the motion Ms. Sherrill.
Alderperson Sherrill Yeah thanks. I appreciate all the work on this and I, when the presentation was given last week, there was some different wording in it or I misread it, so I thought you guys had lost your minds at first, but I'm glad to know that you haven’t, and this looks really good to me. So, I, I think that I've heard from a number of people in the community and developers it's just too slow, I mean it's just too slow and this is I think this is a great way to speed things up. I'm glad it's gonna going to come back to us to be renewed in six months, so we can really get some data. Anyway, I'm happy to support it. I appreciate all the work that has gone into it. I appreciate the clarification and that I miss reread some of the information and that everyone seems to be of sound mind and moving forward in a good direction for our community, so thanks.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thanks Ms. Sherril. Additional comments? Mr. Carlino.
Alderperson Carlino Yeah, I, I also agree with that, that I think this will be really helpful to help speed up housing development around town and help address the housing crisis in Missoula. And on that note, I do have one amendment I'd like to propose. I moved to amend that we keep the bed and breakfast use type in the conditional.
Mayor Jordan Hess Okay thanks. Do you want to make any comments about that?
Alderperson Carlino Yeah, if I could speak to that, that'd be great. Yeah, you know I see this as a great way for us to, I see this interim zoning ordinance as a great way for us to add to our housing supply and in a timely manner and you know for the sake of making sure that we have more and more homes for Missoulians and especially in our residentially zoned areas, I believe that it's appropriate to keep bed and breakfasts as conditional to ensure that we can maximize housing supply and have a good conversation about whether or not we want to take homes off the market for a bed and breakfast instead.
Mayor Jordan Hess Okay thanks. So, so the motion is in order, the motion to amend and then comments on that, I've got Mr. Nugent first and then Ms. Sherrill. Is your hand still up or is it up again? Okay, Mr. Nugent.
Alderperson Mike Nugent Thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you Councilman Carlino. I, I would agree with the intent of your motion. I, I think that the idea is to pull a lot of things that are taking staff time out but find a balance for controversy and things like that and I do think that bringing a bed and breakfast into any residential area is something that neighbors should have a, the ability to at least be informed on and, and comment on. I believe that Councilwoman Jones looked into it this afternoon and there, there have not been any bed and breakfast requests since Title 20 was adopted. So, I think that that probably doesn't fall into the urgency category, so I think it's very reasonable to keep that in the conditional use and I would support your amendment. As such, well thank you.
Mayor Jordan Hess I’m going to move on to Ms. Sherrill and then Ms. Vasecka.
Alderperson Sherrill I, I, I have no problem with that amendment, I'm happy to vote for it. I've not seen one and I don't think that we have, I don't even know how many we have, but I don't think we have very many, but I think it's a completely reasonable amendment, so I'm happy to support it.
Mayor Jordan Hess Ms. Vasecka and then Ms. Jones.
Alderperson Vasecka Thanks. Can you clarify for me? I, are we trying to get it from? So, right now it is conditional use, and we want to remove it from conditional use? Or can you just clarify that for me?
Mayor Jordan Hess Mr. Carlino.
Alderperson Carlino Yeah right now, it is conditional use in residential areas, and the interim ordinance, as currently written wants it to be permitted without conditional use. So, I'm moving to amend that we keep it as conditional use like it currently is.
Alderperson Vasecka Okay, thank you for that clarification. I, I do see the intent behind it, but I I've always been a firm believer of private property rights and you can do what, what you want to do with your own property and if this makes it easier for folks to have an additional income at their home then I, I want to see how it is currently, currently proposed in the original motion. So, unfortunately I will not be supporting this tonight.
Mayor Jordan Hess Ms. Jones.
Alderperson Jones Yeah, thanks for the amendment and I understand the intent behind it and the logic. I, I asked a few questions as staff, it sounds like from what I can find, I think there are nine in Missoula, and we have not had an application since Title 20 was codified in 2009 we've never had a conditional use application. So, I think, I think the business plan has changed and now they're short-term rentals. Honestly, I think that's what's happened and that's a much bigger conversation, but for now, I'm, I'm fine with this. I have a feeling I think with our code reform they'll be looking at this holistically, so I just wanted to but yeah, I think for right now it's fine to just leave it in conditional use.
Mayor Jordan Hess Anyone else? All right, is there public comment on the amendment, motion to amend? Seeing none, we can have a roll call vote on the amendment Ms. Rehbein.
Mayor Jordan Hess And the amendment passes and we're back to the main motion, and I don't believe I have any speakers left on my list or I'm looking at the wrong list. So, if you want to speak, raise your hand. Ms. West.
Alderperson West I just wanted to say for the record that I'm going to recuse myself from this vote. While there's no direct financial benefit to me either way, I am intimately involved in a project that would definitely benefit from some of these changes and for, to just be transparent and objective, I'm not voting on this item.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thank you. Anyone else tonight? Ms. Becerra.
Alderperson Becerra Yeah, I just want to express my support for this ordinance and thank staff. I know that there was thoughtful consideration of the implications of each change and the potential consequences in each situation, so for that, I'm, I'm grateful and I do think that through this ordinance, we can enact changes I can help move the needle in terms of allocating staff time to reviewing housing projects, which I think is where our staff time should be going if we want to move the needle and in that regard, so I'm fully supportive of it and thankful for all the, the work that went into it.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thanks. Mr. Nugent and then Ms. Jones.
Alderperson Mike Nugent Thank you Mr. Mayor. I would, I would echo my, my colleague's comments. The, the emergency is the housing crisis and you know some of the public comments that came in referenced that some of the things in conditional use and changing them to permitted aren't a crisis and it's like, the idea is to clear the staff time up and I just want to say that out loud again to, to make sure that people are clarified that you know if we free up staff time to more efficiently review housing opportunities and remove those barriers that are unnecessarily slowing projects, both housing in general, when over 70% of these have no additional conditions, these changes will help ease the gridlock and free up staff time to better serve the city's goals to provide housing options, efficiently and effectively. And I think this is, this is good government identifying areas where we've had rules and it's like, if over 70% of them aren't are proving necessary and all we've done to those projects is at a minimum of three months’ time, eliminating some of those barriers makes sense and it it's something that we should be looking at more and I know that you know just by reading some of the comments, it does make people nervous and I certainly understand that but we, we have you know a lot of people on staff who are experts in this area who have who've spent a lot of time studying this analyzing this and I've been impressed with, with how they came to the recommendations that they brought to us. I think they left the most controversial ones in conditional use, which is where they should be and that's the definitely the goal there. I also think you know circling back to the, the one comment about it being easier for out of out of state or out of town developers to develop projects, you know one thing that I think gets lost in the process is that it's probably not an out-of-state thing so much as a big guy versus a little guy thing, but larger organizations that that have you know engineers or planners or a real estate arm you know have people on staff and they can wait out and participate in processes that, that take a long time so six to nine months which is some of the public comment we heard on, on these conditional uses in our in our hearing two weeks ago in committee. You know, they can absorb that but most of the projects that come before our Council are, are led by you know smaller businesses or, or, or operations that are paying lots of professionals in town by the hour to come hang out at these hearings and to go back and forth with our staff and you know that's include, that, that includes you know paying an engineer and an architect and a planner and that stuff really adds up and it adds the cost of projects and it adds the cost of housing and so if, if the end result is that you know over 70% of these conditional use projects are resulting in no additional uses, all we've done is had a minimum of three months and a lot of extra expense where we didn't need it. And so, I think that you know as we as we look at the more permanent solution of code reform, which we clearly are working on to try and address this this crisis and this emergency, that's definitely something to keep in mind is, is where we find that balance and, and how we do that as a community but I think it is important for people to understand that you know whenever, whenever the Council holds stuff up even if it's two more weeks, the, the, the applicant who's paying the professionals to be part of that is continuing to pay people and, and that does cost money. So, I think that it's, this is a great step to be cognizant of, of recognizing that process and, and making sure that we're, we're taking a bounce and I would just kind of make sure that the people who commented and reached out to us about making sure the public is still involved participate in our code reform project, which kicks off on December 13th and is going to be a great opportunity for all the residents and the people who love Missoula to participate in this conversation on a much broader level.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thanks. Ms. Jones.
Alderperson Jones I’ll just keep it brief because people have said good things. I agree, I think this is good government. We talk a lot about how government moves slowly for all sorts of good reasons, but this is pretty quick and it's for good reasons because we do have a serious housing crisis that our community is facing. So, this, this goes to that, it's helpful but I also wanted to emphasize that this is a short-term ordinance and then we have to look at it again and re-up it so it's quite side boarded, and I don't anticipate there being unintended consequences. I think staff's been very thoughtful with it but if we're seeing something that's not working, first of all we can address it and second of all our as Mike said our full code reform project will be holistically looking at this and making recommendations. So, I feel like it's, we've got it in a nice, neat box and it's a, it's a good decision to go forward with.
Mayor Jordan Hess Yeah, my, my definition of conditional use over years on Council is primarily one of frustration that that developers are frustrated, neighbors are frustrated, Council members are frustrated, staff are frustrated, everyone is frustrated because there's this promise of a tool that doesn't deliver. It doesn't deliver what I think people think it does or think it will and really what it delivers is, is additional time and, and delay and cost, as has been referenced several times tonight. So, I'm, I'm really I'm glad to move in this direction, I think we can look to a number of capacity building items through the, throughout the code reform process, whether it's this interim approach or process review, but this, this as several others have mentioned this allows staff to dedicate time on, on reviews that matter and sort of filter out things like this that really just create process for, for process sake. You know some of the conditions that I recall being added to conditional uses over, over my time on the Council are things like requiring four bike racks instead of two. You know, w these are these are little things that that think you know requiring that an entrance faces east instead of south, or you know they're really little things that that can be handled in a more administrative way and without, without the uncertainty of, of the, the board review process. The, I also appreciate that this is a systemic approach. This this was prompted by when, when Ms. Jones was acting Mayor there was, there was an applicant who came forward with a project who is impacted by conditional use and rather than, rather than trying to figure out a way to make a concession that wouldn't have been fair, it was gosh let's take a look at this systemically and say what do we do to address every project in this boat. And I think we can do that as we move forward to build capacity, we can say what are the common factors that that are limiting our ability to get projects out the door, how do we, how do we address that systemically? So, that's what this does and that's what I hope we'll see more of over the next couple years as, as the code reform process moves along. Anything else? All right, seeing no additional comments, we've had a good discussion, we've had a public hearing and we can have a roll call vote.
Mayor Jordan Hess And the interim ordinance passes. Does anyone need a brief recess before we move on or? Yes, okay. We’re going to take a; we're going to take a 10 minute recess we'll be back in order at 7:40 pm.