The City Council will hold this public hearing open until they take up the item for final consideration on June 6, 2022.
President Jones We have one last item tonight. It is the opening the hearing on the Expo Parkway rezone . I think it would be good to just take a 5-6 minute break; we've been going for a long time. How about we take 10 minutes? Everyone hit the restroom and we will reconvene at 7:50 p.m. and hear Expo Parkway.
President Jones We have one last item tonight. It is the opening the hearing on the Expo Parkway rezone . I think it would be good to just take a 5-6 minute break; we've been going for a long time. How about we take 10 minutes? Everyone hit the restroom and we will reconvene at 7:50 p.m. and hear Expo Parkway. I'm going to call our meeting back to order. Thanks Claire. If you guys can all turn your screens on. Okay, thank you everyone. It's a long meeting tonight. I appreciate your patience. The last item is to open the public hearing on the Expo Parkway rezone. So, we will start off with….I'll just, to let everyone know, we'll have staff presentation and then the developer can have comments and then we will take public comment. And public comment will be limited to 3 minutes per person, and we'll be pretty strict about that and then if there's any questions from Council, we'll do that. However, I will say this will be back in Land Use and Planning Committee and Mr. Hess, you had an update on scheduling regarding…..
Alderperson Hess Yeah, I have a scheduling issue that became aware of. So, we'll, I don't know exactly when we'll schedule this yet, but it'll be, it'll likely be in late May or early June, and we'll just make sure that we work with all the, work with the applicant team and with staff and interested parties, and make sure that it's well noticed. And I'll, I should be able to announce that at the meeting next week, as well but, so it'll be it'll be kicked off a little bit farther than, than the 18th.
President Jones All righty. Thank you for that. So, yes, we will, we'll start it tonight. If you are going to give public comment tonight, that is greatly appreciated. I would ask that people try to keep in mind when they give their public comment, give us their public comments, say it, it would be good to not repeat the same public comment for the several times that Council hears this item, to not be repetitive. So, just keep that in mind for when you do want to provide that. All right, so we will go to staff for presentation.
Dave DeGrandpre All right, thanks Councilor Jones. I'm Dave DeGrandpre with City of Missoula Development Services, and I'm pulling up the slide show right now. How's that?
President Jones If you can, you know, we can see your side….
Dave DeGrandpre Oh I see.
President Jones Yep, you can make it bigger.
Dave DeGrandpre How about now?
President Jones That looks excellent. Thanks Dave.
Dave DeGrandpre All right, thanks for your patience. Again, Dave DeGrandpre with Development Services, and this is a request to rezone property at 2900, 2920 and 2990 at Expo Parkway to RM1-45. And so, to set the stage a little bit, I would like to provide a little bit of context. So, zoning amendments are based on state law and Missoula Title 20; that's our city zoning ordinance. Unlike subdivisions and annexations, there are no conditions of approval. It's either a thumbs up or a thumbs down vote and also please keep in mind that approval of a rezoning is not the same thing as approval of a site plan. It would simply change the zoning map to a different zoning district than the zoning district or districts that are currently in effect. The subject property is located just north of I-90 near the intersection with I-90 and Grant Creek Road. There are two parcels, both a north parcel and south parcel that are a total of 44 acres in size. The property is a former gravel pit with steep slope and an irrigation ditch on the west side of the property and the property is accessed from two city streets, Stone Bridge Drive and also Expo Parkway. This slide is meant to show you where the property is located within city limits. So, city limits are shaded in red, and you can see address points that are pointed out in red and also undeveloped ones in green, and then with the star, there is the subject property. There are several hundred homes north of Grant Creek, I think it's over 600 address points at least north of north of this property in the Grant Creek drainage. The property is served by city water and city sewer. Surrounding residential development includes several different types, to the south is highway oriented commercial, so there are three hotels, a restaurant, a couple of lots, farther down that are zone C1-4, that's a commercial zoning district, a higher intensity commercial zoning district. So, it's highway oriented commercial really along interstate 90 or just north of interstate 90. On the property, there are two multi-dwelling buildings that have been built so far, four have been permitted total, total units I believe that have constructed are 141 total, total units that have been permitted are 146. To the east of the property are smaller scale condominiums, the Cottonwood Condominium Complex. To the southeast restaurants, hotels, we have a convenience store across Grant Creek Road, city open space and trails. Immediately to the east of the property, there's a four-story rocky mountain elk foundation warehouse and then the elk foundation headquarters and then to the north are single-family residential, residential homes. So, in my view, the, you have highway oriented more commercial or more heavy commercial along the interstate and then multi-dwelling to the east and single to the north. The current zoning is a mix. It's an interesting situation where the property itself has several different zoning designations. On the north property, there are three in fact. There's an R5.4 to the north and that's a single family type residential district. The bulk of the property located in the light brown or shown in the light brown is RM1-35, that's a residential multi-family district. So, a higher, higher density residential district and to the south, C1-4. This is a highway-oriented commercial type zoning and then there's also B2, that's a neighborhood type business on the property. So, several different zoning districts on the parcels, which creates an interesting situation because under, under Title 20, that's our zoning ordinance, when a parcel is zoned with more than one designation, what happens is the most restrictive zoning effectively applies. So, in what that means in this situation is the north property, although the vast majority of it again has a has a zoning designation of RM1-35, again that's multi-family, under Title 20, the most conservative or most restrictive zoning is R5.4. So, that applies to the majority of the property, again that's a single-family residential district and I'll give you the specifications for that here in just a second. And then the southern parcel the effective zoning is not one of the commercial zoning designations that apply but the multi-family, the RM1-35. So, this is kind of a unique attribute of Title 20 is that when you have a split zoned parcel as we call it or a parcel with more than one zoning designation, the stricter applies. And so, I'd like to just provide some information on the current development potential of the property under the existing zoning. So, in the north parcel I mentioned the R5.4 is the predominant or effective zoning and so this is a single family type residential district with a minimum parcel area and minimum area per dwelling unit of 5,400 square feet, maximum height of 35 feet, and ultimately after the gross development that can be permitted on the property under the current rules is 156; it would be single family, typically dwelling units on the north parcel. The south parcel is again the multifamily zoning the RM1-35 that permits a variety of different housing types, so single-family dwellings, duplexes, apartment buildings or multi-family dwellings, mixed use, etc. A minimum parcel area is 3,000 square feet, minimum area per unit or per dwelling unit is a 1,000 square feet. This also has a 35 foot maximum height, just like the R5.4, and after all the math is done what it boils down to is about 339 dwelling units that could possibly, gross dwelling units I'll say that could be developed on, on that southern parcel and so you add those together and it's about 495 dwelling units under the current zoning that could be permitted, but there I have a big caveat with that number and that is, it doesn't take into account those are those are gross numbers, which don't take into account things like the area needed for roads, parking, landscaping things like that. So, I think that's a high number but let's just use 495 under the current zoning as a baseline and we can compare that with what's proposed under the zoning. So, again proposed is RM1-45, that's also a residential district multi-family. Just like the RM1-35, it allows single dwellings, duplexes, multi-family dwellings and, and mixed-use type development. It has the same minimum parcel area and minimum area per unit as the RM1-35, really the only difference is the maximum height. The previous or the current zoning allows buildings up to 35 feet. The RM1-45 allows them up to 45 feet. So, when you do all the math, what it boils down to is again gross dwelling units of just under 1,200 but again I would very much like to emphasize that that figure is gross. It doesn't take into account parking, circulation, landscaping, activity area or you know kind of park land on site things like that. And I know it feels a little silly to be talking about these gross figures, I feel a little bit silly talking about them but in order to really understand what can be developed on the site, you'd have to develop a very detailed site plan meeting all the codes and we just we don't have that capability and that's not our practice here at the city, that's the developer's realm. And so, now there's a little bit of history to this as, as I'm sure at this point you all know. So KJA Development, the current applicant, applied to rezone this property to RM1-45 in 2000, the year 2000 and that was not approved. That zoning change was not approved by Council. At that time, Council raised concerns and voiced concerns about several different items some question about Growth Policy compliance. There was concern about only one ingress and egress from the Grant Creek drainage, in the event of an emergency like a wildfire, lack of safe non-motorized transportation facilities in the area, existing traffic issues, and the potential, there was just uncertainty about the developer mitigating those transportation impacts and then also discussion and concern about some of the city's Growth Policy or long-range planning goals related to climate change. In particular, things like single occupancy vehicle trips, auto emissions, and things along those lines. So, the developer again is applying for the same designation today; the RM1-45. So, what's changed? I guess you know in my view housing demand has continued to outpace the supply. Now there are dwellings that are, that have been built and permitted on the south parcel and I think that's relevant or important because you can see the type of development, you can see the architectural design, and kind of how it how it looks and feels I can imagine something like that continuing northward. So, at least you get a sense of it but maybe more importantly, the transportation facilities are a little bit better. Back in 2000, there were only two southbound lanes toward the I-90 interchange when you're headed south on Grant Creek, now there are three. There's also a bike lane that's been added. The developer has petitioned into the urban transportation district, which is the first step toward providing transit. Transit is not available today at this location, but the first step of course is to get into the tax district, so the taxes be, can be collected and I know that Mountain Line is currently undergoing a strategic planning process, although we don't know that this development will be brought in so. And then a couple other items, there are the city is developing a trail system to the east on in the Bluebird recreation area, which is just across Grant Creek Road and the developer has, has done some additional work in the meantime. You know there was concerns cited regarding public safety, evacuation, things like wildfire, things like that. So, the developer commissioned a risk analysis and fire protection and emergency plan, that's included with the application materials, and also the developer has provided more refined and modified plans to address some of the issues that were brought up during the public hearing process back in 2020. One of the things the developer has submitted is a development agreement. And so, a development agreement has been used by the city in the past but is not something that we commonly see. It is a contract between a city and an applicant that, that runs with the land. In this case, the developer has provided a detailed site plan and along with this development agreement that proposes a maximum of 700 dwelling units, in a four-story type apartment buildings, and also lower density condominium type units. So, again under the zoning, the gross number that could be permitted, the RM1-45 is 1,185 roughly and the developer is proposing to limit that here to 700. The site plan and the development agreement also include things like a community center, recreation areas, hiking trails, community garden, and other kind of facilities for…hiking trails actually could be used by the public under this agreement but most of the facilities would be internal to the residents of the development, but one what I would really like to emphasize to you, when you're considering this, is the rezoning that's on the table really must be divided, must be decided based on whether the request meets the review criteria under state law and our local rules. So, I guess what I'm saying is the development agreement is nice, it's nice to see what the developer is actually proposing, but in making this decision, it's important to review the request on its merits. Does it comply sufficiently with the review criteria that you have or does it not? Regardless of the development agreement, and it did not weigh into staff's assessment and our recommendation. So, I'd like to go into a few of the review criteria. Again, under state law and local regulations, we have review criteria for judging whether a rezone is appropriate, it should be approved, things like compliance with our Growth Policy, effects on public services and transportation, whether the growth allowed under the zoning would be compatible, whether the zoning would promote public health and safety, etc. And so, I'm going to just discuss a few of those right now. The staff report evaluates those in detail and provides more information and if you'd like me to go in to staff's impression of compliance with the review criteria, I'd be happy to later but in the interest of, of time and to allow the public to comment, I'll move through more quickly, but, I don’t really want to focus on compliance with the Growth Policy because I think this is certainly one of the most important. And so, the Growth Policy is a guide for where development and what types of development are appropriate. And it includes a whole lot of goals, of objectives, of policies, of things that that the community would like to become. It's an aspirational document but also provides some, some real guidance and in particular, in my view the most important element of the Growth Policy when thinking about development review, particularly something like a rezone, is the future land use map. And this is a snippet from the future land use map and so the text surrounding the future land use map and the Growth Policy says something I think is very interesting. And it says the future land use map is a visual representation of the culmination of goals, policies, and objectives of the Growth Policy. And so, to me, what that means is you take all these policy statements, all these aspirational statements, and then boil it down to a map to show where certain types of development are appropriate and warranted. And so, this map shows the property in a red outline or two different properties, and the vast majority of it is residential. It has a designation of residential high, which means residential high density development greater than 24 dwelling units per acre is what's recommended on, it's 87% of the property and then the remainder of the property about 5.6 acres is recommended as regional commercial and services. And so, residential high, as you can imagine, just like it sounds, it's where things like apartments. You know, high density development is deemed appropriate under the Growth Policy, regional commercial and services is more like highway-oriented commercial things like auto dealers or manufacturing or hotels or restaurants, things like that. So, that's, that was the vision laid out in the Growth Policy when it was adopted in 2015. And so, under those Growth Policy designations, those are big picture type designations, umbrella type designations and underneath those there are zoning districts that are deemed appropriate or relatable as the Growth Policy calls them. And so, under the residential high, greater than 24 dwelling units per acre, the Growth Policy cites four different zoning designations that are appropriate RM1-35, RM1-45 which is what the developer is proposing here RM1.5 and RM0.5. And then over to the regional commercial and services that was pink on that map, it has three different commercial and industrial designations and also in public lands and institutional, institutional sorry. One thing I'd like to point out to you about the regional commercial services designation and the three commercial industrial zoning districts that are deemed appropriate in the Growth Policy is those three with the red asterisks, permit residential development up to 43 dwelling units per acre. So, although they recommend, the overall recommendation is for some sort of commercial type of development, the implementing zoning districts also allow higher density residential development, just like, just like the, the left column and those four different zoning designations. So, in the staff report, we go through, quite extensively, compliance with the Growth Policy, looking at that criteria and we believe that the RM1-45 substantially complies with the Growth Policy future land use map for several reasons. One is that 87% of the property is designated as residential high density, greater than 24 dwelling units per acre. RM1-45 is an implementing district is a zoning district that's deemed appropriate for this residential high Growth Policy designation. The allowed residential density is the same density also allowed in the regional commercial and services future land use map designation that was the pink designation. So, overall, this, this proposal seems to comply quite well with the Growth Policy future land use map. The Growth Policy is not only the future land use map, of course, there are also several other goals objectives and policy statements, but the main theme of the Growth Policy is a focus inward approach and that's one of the reasons that I, I showed one of the first maps I showed was where city limits are. So, this property clearly is not within the urban core, but is served by city services, already the development served by city water, city sewer, police, fire, road maintenance. This project, or sorry, this zone change would support many of the city's housing goals. It's true though that some services don't currently exist, again, there's no transit. Developed public parks in the area are lacking, neighborhood commercial. It's not as though there's a, a grocery store you know within a quarter mile or something like that. So, some things currently, some services and facilities currently are not available and, but the developer can be required…. I guess a couple of things. So, one on those services, you know there's a question of if there's a greater demand will those services emerge? Will, will private business, if, if there are enough residents there will private business come to provide those services? Will trails be developed? Will parks be developed, if there's demand? And then with regard to public safety, the developer can be required to provide transportation improvements, safety improvements during the building permit process. So, when considering all these things, staff found that the, that this rezoning proposal substantially complies with the Growth Policy, and which is our recommendation ….or leads to our recommendation for approval in the staff report. Again, there are other criteria for rezoning not only compliance with the Growth Policy and the staff report, details those thoroughly, I think. And so, I guess I'd refer you to that and would I have a few more slides, so I'd like to get to those, although if you'd like me to address our view on compliance with these other criteria, I'd be happy to. But ultimately, staff is recommending approval of adoption of an ordinance to rezone the property to RM1-45 based on the findings effect and conclusions of law in the staff report, that decision won't be made tonight, of course. The planning board heard this back in April, considered this request, and did not approve a motion to rezone the property. It was a really interesting discussion; it was thorough also subtle. You know, there are a lot of a lot of pros and cons to rezoning this property and I'd like to commend your planning board, it's a City-County Planning Board but commend them for, for the thought and effort they put into it. You know, again, there were varying views and so you can, you can find that in the minutes and also the planning board summary but ultimately the board did not vote to approve the rezoning. Rezoning has an interesting protest provision under state law and so this is for municipal zoning, not county zoning, but in municipal zoning law, if protest petitions are signed or received by owners of 25% or more of the lots or condominium type units within 150 feet of the property, then at least 2/3 of the present and voting members of Council are needed to approve a zone change. So, in this case, we've counted 58 property owners within 150 feet of the subject property, 23 valid protests have been submitted, so that's just under 40%. Actually, we received one more protest today. I haven't had the chance to, to verify it according to our list, but in any event, the threshold is met. So, more than 25% of the of landowners protested, so that means a super majority, or 2/3 majority would be required to approve this zone change. And so that concludes my presentation for now, but I'm available to answer any questions you might have.
President Jones Thank you Dave. So, next in the queue, we have comments by the developer. So, why don't you come on up and state your name for the record and have the floor.
Spencer Woith Yeah I'm not sure who to look at, you're all there, and you're all right here. So, so I'll just keep my head down and read.
President Jones Whatever works for you.
Spencer Woith All right. Spencer Woith with Woith Engineering at 3860 O'Leary. Thank you Councilors for the opportunity to present this project tonight. Dave did a good job, and we'll touch on a few things. The team on this project is comprised of Woith Engineering, Hoffman Morgan, and Ken Ault, or KJA as the developer. Ken has developed a number of projects in Missoula and is currently the builder of the existing multi-family projects that you'll see in our presentation. We're here this evening to request the property be resented to RM1-45 and Mr. Ault is voluntarily entering into a development agreement, which will place restrictions on his property and help to address the community concerns. We will quickly reiterate the merits of Mr. Ault's request to RM1-45. As Dave said, Grant Creek Village encompasses two parcels at the mouth of Grant Creek drainage adjacent to I-90 and a former gravel pit. Our Missoula 2035, approved by the Missoula City Council on November 23, 2015 uses the criteria discussed at depth within the documents to recommend the land use of residential high density for both parcels. Residential high density, as Dave said, 24 to 43 dwelling units per acre and the relatable zoning districts are RM1-35, RM1-45, RM1.5, and RM0.5. One key that I wanna talk about, RM1-35 and RM1-45 both have the same density calculations of 43 dwelling units per acre. So, the difference between RM1-45 and RM1-35 does not give the developer any ability to go any more dense. The only thing it allows is to go to 45 feet. We specifically want the 45 foot, again so no more unit counts, but we get the opportunity to create open space and create a good development by adding that four story. It is important to reiterate also this future land map is a graphical representation of the goals and objectives of the Growth Policy. The map was created through a public process of focus groups, steering committees, neighborhood Council, planning board, and ultimately adopted by the City Council. Mr. Ault's parcel also falls within the boundary of the 1980 Grant Creek area plan. In Montana, neighborhood plans are approved by local governments as an extension of the Growth Policy document, so it's very important to consider the 1980 area plan. Grant Creek Village was split into two recommended land uses in that 1980 plan high, density single family on the north and medium density multi-family. If you look at the overlay of the Title 20 compared to the 1980 area plan, it provides an important context to the existing zoning and additionally, this has been in place for 42 years and has been planned for high density development. You can see how Title 20 district boundaries are closely related to the 1980 with the R5.4 and the RM1-35. The majority of the property being zoned multi-family, as envisioned by 1980 plan and the Growth Policy, the property was zoning, as it was approved by Council would allow for 1,100 units to be constructed. However, we're 1,185 based on Dave's calculations; however, as Dave mentioned the quirk in Title 20 creates a split zoning and essentially down zooms the parcel entirely to R5.4 and that creates a direct conflict with Our Missoula 2035. We can compare the extent of the proposed development to the existing zoning districts to understand why the request to rezone to RM1-45. You can see the smaller buildings on the northern region, the development as envisioned by 1980 and the R5.4 designation that is the current zoning on the northern parcel. However, as previously stated again, that prohibits the parcel with two zoning districts. So, the northern portion parcel would be entirely zoned R5.4, bringing it out of compliance with 1980 plan and the Our Missoula plan. Our proposed development would comply with the existing zoning districts without a split zoning provision, so that is why we're requesting RM1-45. To show our commitment to the development agreement, we have executed a copy of the development agreement. It's been signed and notarized by the developer, and I can give it to someone…..In response to the community concerns, we're voluntarily entering into this development agreement with the city and placing restrictions on both parcels. The development agreement will restrict Grant Creek Village to 700 dwelling units. This will limit the density to 15.89 dwelling units per acre, which actually falls below the Our Missoula 2035 recommendation but is very much in line with the original 1980 plan. Nex door, Cottonwood Condominiums have a similar density in the medium density multi-family category. Next, we want to highlight a few of the provisions in the development agreement, as provided. The development agreement was created in response to community concerns voiced at both prior rezone hearings and several meetings with Mr. Ault and Friends of Grant Creek. I will go through these quickly. A limit of 700 maximum dwelling units, the intent to build a pool, a no build zone in open space and hiking trails on the hillside, construct a playground on the parcel, and dedicate a large contiguous open space in the center of the development. And that again comes back to our RM1-45 zoning allows us to create this large parcel in the middle and still maintain the density. You can see the scale when compared to a football field. There was concerns about pet controls, so committed to building a fence dog run for pet exercise and dog waste stations throughout the development. Another community concern was the lack of public transit in the air, and this is a tough one; it's the chicken or the egg. No one's gonna drive, the bus is not gonna come to a vacant gravel pit. So, we've got to find a way to create the density and to create the ability and the desire for Mountain Line to go there. I understand their lack of funding doesn't allow them to go everywhere we want them to go. So, we came up with a different option. We reached out to the Missoula Urban Transportation District or I'm sorry, we reached out to, or David said we did petition, so that we're paying taxes in for this. So, in addition, we, we reached out to the Missoula Ravalli Transportation Management Association or MRTMA, and to come up with an idea to try and reduce the single occupancy vehicle trips as much as we possibly can, we've committed with them and there is a letter that was provided that they are dedicated, we're dedicating some spaces and they will commit bans for a ride share program. With the idea that if there's enough ridership on there, we can prove that there is capacity for Mountain Line to serve this area. The development will provide co-working space in the central clubhouse and will allow these remote jobs to work somewhere other than their home without needing to drive to the library, coffee shop, or other co-working space. There's been some questions about neighborhood character and one of the things we want to make sure is to touch on, we're providing increased setbacks as part of our development agreement to mitigate some of these concerns. The development agreement will require 115 feet of a setback from prospect from the single-family development to the north, a 30-foot setback from the Cottonwood condos, and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation on the east. Due to a utility easement along the east boundary, the Cottonwood condos are actually set 40 feet back from the property line. So, in the end, these buildings will have a separation of 70 feet which already includes mature trees and landscaping. Finally, we are committed to improving crosswalks in the area to mitigate connectivity issues in the existing infrastructure and as Dave mentioned, deficient infrastructure can also be addressed and required at building permit. A traffic study has been provided as part of our submittal and we will continue to work with city and their staff to address all of their concerns and their questions, but we can break this down very simplistically and based on different build-out scenarios. As shown on the screen, you will see the daily traffic counts based on our proposed development agreement criteria, 700 multi-family units create 3,808 daily trips. Based on the institute of transportation engineers' analysis, single-family residences produce 9.52 average daily trips where a low-rise apartment unit produces 6.59 daily trips. Because of this, under the existing zoning, accounting for the split zoning provision, which effectively down zones the property, a development built under existing zoning would produce 3,320 daily trips. These 3,300 can be built out, as the zoning stands today. So, we're proposing an increase of 42% in overall residential unit counts at an increase of only 14.7% of daily traffic counts. I think there's another point that we need, that has not been brought up when it comes to road infrastructure in the area. Grant Creek Road was constructed from Stone Bridge south to have one lane, Grant Creek was constructed south of Stone Bridge to have one lane going north, a turn lane, and one lane going south. This allows, in an emergency situation, the ability for two lanes of egress, while still maintaining one lane for emergency personnel to enter into the canyon and this only is from our two access points to the interstate and when you go further north, it turns back into a two-lane road. Another thing we haven't touched on is that all developments in the city of Missoula are required to pay impact fees. Based on our build out, the proposed bill that would contribute slightly over one million dollars to the city with roughly $630,000.00 going to address transportation related issues. So, the city can request us to improve things at building permit and we would be required to do that, and also they would still get $630,000.00 to address other traffic related issues in the area. As you can see, on the next few slides, there have been two buildings already built just off of Expo Parkway and these buildings are the model for what we hope to continue the rest of the development. These renderings show the vision for the development and what will be formalized through our development agreement. With that, I would like to introduce Bruce Suenram, President of Fire Logistics. Bruce served as the Montana State Fire Marshal from 1992 to 1997 and the Chief of the Missoula Rural Fire district from 1980 to 1992, prior to starting his safety business. Thank you.
President Jones Great, thanks, just come up and state your name. And Ms. Jordan, just make sure that that document gets to the clerk eventually….when we're….just make sure it gets to the clerk so it can be submitted on the record. Okay thanks.
Bruce Suenram Madam chair, members of the Council, my name is Bruce Suenram, s-u-e-n-r-a-m. I'm the President of Fire Logistics and was contracted to do the fire protection analysis and emergency management plan for Grant Creek Village. The slide that you're looking at is based on the Missoula County Community Wildfire Protection Plan and it indicates in the project area that the hazard is wildland urban interface. And I'd just like to point out that that hazard is very similar to other areas in the community, such as the University of Montana, Walmart on Brooks, Walmart on Mullan Road, and the Missoula County Airport. And so, this plan is a broad brush of the of the wildland urban interface hazard that is associated with this project. The next slide is a closer view of the area, and you can see that it is split slightly by low and wildland urban interface classification and a wild and urban intermix classification, which is again similar to lots of areas around the community. The next slide is based on a national product that we looked at for classification of wildland urban interface and it's the wildland fire risk to communities site developed by the Forest Service. Again, that shows that it is a low to moderate hazard, again similar to areas like Lower Rattlesnake, again the Walmart on Brooks and the Missoula County Airport. So, I mean, this is just an indication of the areas that are around the Missoula Calley that are classified in a very broad way by the models that were developed to classify the interface hazard. Again, a low to moderate hazard for this project area. Next slide. So, I had the opportunity to meet with your staff, Chief Gordy Hughes and his staff at the at the Fire Department. I had the opportunity to work with Adrian Beck at Missoula County Emergency Management and we met with the sheriff's office and the police department to talk about how we could approach this project, met with the fire department guys, and got their requirements for the project, and we with the sheriff's office and, and emergency management and the police department to discuss the, the emergency management strategies for how we would conduct an evacuation in upper Grant Creek and how this project would impact those evacuation routes. And the general consensus was that if there was an evacuation in upper Grant Creek, this would be the last area to be evacuated and would not impact the evacuation during a fire in upper Grant Creek. Some of the strategies that are referenced in the, for evacuation are highlighted in the fire and risk emergency plan that's in the document. Just some key points that you keep in mind from a fire protection perspective, the wildland urban interface designation is comparable to much of the urbanized area of the City of Missoula. The wildfire hazard assessment risk is also comparable to much of the City of Missoula. Within the Grant Creek Village Development itself, once that area is developed, there's going to be very little risk within the project area itself. Higher risk areas up the Grant Creek will need to be evacuated first certainly, but there is a very low likelihood that the Grant Creek Village would ever need to be evacuated. All buildings in the in the Grant Creek Village are going to be equipped with automatic fire sprinklers. So, some of the issues raised from a fire protection perspective are, are immediately mitigated by having automatic fire sprinklers. So, the, the developer's request for 200 additional units, as he's proposing in the development agreement, is not going to increase the risk from a wildfire perspective to the community. The proposed zone change is not going to change the risk at all. And I'd be glad to answer any questions, and now I'd like to introduce Alan McCormick legal counsel for the project.
President Jones Thank you. Good evening Mr. McCormick.
Alan McCormick Good evening, my name is Alan McCormick. I'm an attorney with Garlington, Lohn & Robinson, a I represent KJ&A Development. You've heard a lot about the quirk tonight, about zoning and it's a real thing. Those of you who are in Missoula many most of you were in Missoula when we did Title 20, converting it from title 19 to Title 20. You'll recall the consistent mantra; we're not changing anybody's zoning. It didn't turn out to be quite correct because of this quirk. This quirk effectively down zones this property without providing due process to the property owner, to allow the property owner to know that was going to happen and then say something about it. And so, that's part of what this request is today, is to fix that quirk, restore the zoning back to what it was prior to that enactment of Title 20. When you're talking about code reform, pay, watch out for this so that we don't repeat the mistake with the next code reform. State law says your Growth Policy is not regulatory but that's a bit of a legal fiction. In and of itself, the document is not regulatory, but your zoning must substantially comply with the Growth Policy. And because of this quirk in Title 20, it actually down zoned the property and took it out of compliance, substantial compliance with the Growth Policy and this request would restore that. Here's something else to watch out for in your code reform, PUDs. When we talk about this development agreement and the genesis of it, you might be thinking, and you've seen public comments that this would have better been done as a PUD because PUDs do allow you to put conditions on the ultimate approval of the PUD. Here's why we couldn't do it; your current code only allows PUDs on a project involving one parcel of land. So, although this has two parcels of land and they're owned by the exact same person who is already building the style of units on the lower parcel that are going to be built on the northern parcel couldn't use the PUD process because your regulations don't allow it on a project involving more than one parcel. So, watch out for that on your code, that'd be a really good thing to fix because you'll increase the ability to conduct projects using a PUD type process. So, where'd the development agreement come from? We heard the community very loud and clear back in 2020 who said sure your project, well the project wasn't this defined, but at the time, Mr. Ault was suggesting he was only going to build 950-ish units, not the 1,185 that would be allowed. The community said well how do we guarantee that? Well, we couldn't do it through a PUD, so we looked at another opportunity and, and reached out to the city attorney's office and said could we do a development agreement. We received positive feedback, so we spent the last year and a half working on the development agreement, only to find out now that maybe that's not jiving quite right with the zoning approval process. You like to know what projects are going to be built. You like to know that the project you approved is going to be built the way you prove it, that's why this voluntary development agreement is being offered to you and the city as a as a voluntary agreement to be basically a land use covenant. And if the city can't hold it, maybe we can find someone else who can. We met with Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation multiple times. We met with Friends of Grant Creek multiple times, trying to find some common ground, didn't find it, but found some elements that could be incorporated into a development scheme and you're seeing some of those in the development agreement. You're seeing them in the plans that Mr. Ault is developing for the project. Again, to be clear, the development agreement is not required; it's a voluntary measure to help ensure that the project is a what you see is what you get kind of a kind of a thing. We're aware there's concerns about legal issues with it, Friends of Grant Creek has suggested it's contract zoning, it's not. Contract zoning is illegal zoning because you are guaranteeing an outcome by issuing, by enacting or executing a contract in advance of the public process. So, you're cutting the public out of the ability to affect the outcome of the zoning and that's, that's illegal for those reasons. It's not happening here because we're not asking you to execute it in a promise of granting the zoning. It's important to note the impacts that are actually being considered with this proposal. You are not being asked to decide is there going to be zero units on the property or 700 units on the property. You're being asked to decide whether it can go from 495 units to 700 units; that's the increment we're talking about. So, what is so significant about that increment that makes this turns this project into something that's already allowed under current zoning into something that is so impactful that it shouldn't happen? And the analysis shows that it has not. Dave DeGrandpre's analysis does not take into consideration a cap of 700 units. It takes into consideration that there's a theoretical maximum of 1,185. He notes and it's absolutely correct, you can never build 1,185 units on this product this property. You need parking lots, you need activity areas, your zoning code requires activity areas, you need the infrastructure, you need the roads to get in and out of the project, you could never fit 1,185. So, even if you put, if you don't accept a development agreement, if there's no control like that, the actual number of units that could actually be built would be somewhere closer to the 700 units being planned. More importantly, Dave DeGrandpre's analysis, which determines, results in a recommendation of approval has assumed and done the calculation the data analysis based on 1,185 and nothing less. I'll add my own personal story. You know, you already have all this data. We've lost staff members at our firm whose rental housing got sold out from under them to people who wanted to convert it into owner-occupied housing because they couldn't find housing. We've had multiple staff members who we've offered jobs, accept, and then turn us down because they couldn't find housing. You know this, you're being told frequently, and your staff is telling you frequently and you're, you're, you're faced with this and making difficult decisions every day for this housing crunch. It's having a real world impact, so I'm adding my personal story to it. Again, I ask what is so impactful about 200 additional units that takes this project from being acceptable under the current zoning? Not acceptable under fixing the quirk. That analysis has been run; it shows that it's not. It's not so significant that it does, and it helps with the housing crisis that we have now, and it helps meet your housing goal. I'm happy to answer any questions as are the rest of the team members and thank you for your time.
President Jones Thank you. Are there any other team members to, to comment? Okay, given that, next we will go to public comment on this item. We'll entertain public comment, 3 minutes per person. Please state your name on the record. If, let's do the people who are physically here, present in chambers first before we go to virtual commenters. So, if you want to come on up and state your name, and 3 minutes.
John Langstaff Good evening Council persons, and my name is john Langstaff. I'm a Grant Creek resident and I'm a former captain on the Missoula Fire Department and I wanted to speak tonight about the mission statement of the Fire Department. And our mission statement is, save lives and protect property. That's our goal. That's our promise. I'm recommending staffing a three-person ladder company at Station 4. Fire impact fees for additional three-person crew are going to be expensive outpayment for the City. So, I'm, I'm guessing that probably the impact fees indicated for this development are way low. Anyway, ground ladders such as the 25 footers carried on our type 1 first response pumpers lose 1/3 of their vertical reach due to the angle that must be provided for safe access and rescue of people from window locations. Each Missoula Fire Station is staffed by three firefighters, trained in incident command, fire attack, emergency medical skills, vertical and contained space rescue, heavy rescue, and safety awareness. These are universally recognized skills that are critical to any emergency, hence the type 1 engines are always the first dispatched from any station. I wonder how many of you are aware how many fire stations we have in Missoula? Five, there's five zones. I don't have any high tech videos to show you, but I would like to show you a picture of the zones. I was wondering if you could enlarge the Council chamber screen there and I would put this up as an example of what the zone 4, where this development is located looks like?
President Jones I'm not sure if we're able to technically do that, but if you want to submit a…. you can try and hold it up and see if that works. Okay, thank you, great.
John Langstaff [inaudible for a period of time]. It's also the zone where most of our multi-story apartments are located and some of these are over 25 feet off the ground, such as the 35, that the zoning is allowed for, but not the 45 feet that they are requesting in this submission. Missoula has two elevated platform trucks 148 at station 4 on Latimer and West Broadway and the other located at station 3, which is at South Russell and 39th Street, which is clear across town from where this development is. So, hence those response from the ladder truck would have to come from, from station 3 and the, the ladder truck would require a delayed time of arrival for that platform truck into zone 4 of an extended period. These delayed response times could put lives in jeopardy and property in danger. The proliferation of multi-story apartment complexes in both zones 3 and 4 should require the staffing of two three-man truck companies at these stations. This would supply critical rescue manpower at the scene and a water tower for fire attack. It would also supply extra manpower on the fire ground and capability to man a type 6 vehicle from each of those stations.
President Jones Mr. Langstaff, we're over five minutes, so I don't know if you can wrap it up quickly but there will be future, future possibilities for public comment also.
John Langstaff I'm sorry, I'll wrap it up here. Emergency rescue is a critical facet of local services infrastructure that should be provided prior to approval of any apartment complex greater than two stories. Council and developers requesting greater than two-story apartments by zoning are putting human lives in peril. Thank you.
President Jones Thank you and you can submit written comments and there will be future possibility of public comment also.
John Langstaff Yes, I'm aware of that and wasn't Gordy Hughes, the Fire Chief, going to speak tonight?
President Jones Not tonight. He will be present at a future Land Use and Planning meeting.
John Langstaff Okay, okay. Thank you.
President Jones Is there anyone else here in chambers that wants to speak on this matter? Okay, great. Come on up, state your name. Thank you.
Maggie Bornstein Awesome, thanks so much. My name is Maggie Bornstein, and I am not a Grant Creek resident and so you're probably like why do you care so much about what's happening in Grant Creek? I live in Ward 1. I look this way to Ward 1 because I really care about housing as safety infrastructure in our community. I was so gleaned to see when the city staff recognized that this project hits the checkbox, we're promoting public health and safety and supporting our housing goals. I know, I'll say it a million times, I have so much respect and admiration for all of you for working under the circumstances that you do because we are so limited by our state and I'm so excited for this to be an opportunity to say yes as more housing. I am really passionate about domestic and sexual violence, which is something that I think we don't often hear about as a public safety issue, nor a housing issue but the reality is that it's both. I myself have been stalked and I, when looking for an opportunity to move, I looked to Daniel. We looked at maybe a one 200 square foot apartment that was more than what I was paying at the time. In 2020, law enforcement in Montana responded to a domestic violence related call every 1.75 hours and I can't even imagine how those numbers have continued to grow and change and show up in this community. That very small 200 square foot apartment was all I could really find on the market and I know there are a lot of people here who are very passionate tonight, but I think we need to recognize that a lot of people don't get to be in this room because they work construction and they have a big job in the morning or they don't have good access to child care or they're a single parent, and I think that just the opportunity for surplus. I hear you say all the time, we don't, we don't zone based on project, we zone based on opportunity and how it fits in our Growth Plan. I've started getting really nerdy about this because I care so much about this community and I think everyone here too does, but I just really see this is such an awesome opportunity to create a really high impact, to promote public safety, and to make Missoula, you know, livable for all people, for all the working families that make this community such a special place. Thanks so much.
President Jones Thank you. Come on up and state your name for the record. Thanks.
Glenn Slay My name is Glenn Slay and I live in Grant Creek, and I'd be very interested in knowing, how many of you live in Grant Creek?
President Jones So, we don't, we don't respond to questions, but go ahead and give your public comment.
Glenn Slay Okay in order to get out of Grant Creek, right now, the cycle on the light at the base means that you sit there for 2 minutes and 40 seconds between green lights. The idea of evacuating into a situation like this where we're already slow, can only get worse with the number of cars and people that we're talking about now. If you put in two, 700 units, it's going to average between one and a half and two cars per unit, and those cannot get out of there is in the situation that we're looking at now. The fire protection plan does not include anything north of the Elk Foundation. You've got 700 residents up Grant Creek and that, that doesn't, that doesn't give them much of a chance to get out. All right. The 3 lanes that were discussed by the, the gentleman here, go only as high as the Elk Foundation. Once you get past there, it's 2 lanes, it's crooked, and there is no way to get around it, and you won't get a fire truck up there. This is class 10 protection, National Fire Bureau, which means that the closest fire truck is 7 miles from my house. It's 8 miles from the gentleman who spoke to you before. So, once you get past the Elk Foundation, it's two lanes and the evacuation plan calls for 2 lanes coming out. So, there's no way to get fire equipment up. I think it's something that we should be spending a lot more time looking at before we decide that it's going to be okay to turn loose that many more people, more cars, more congestion in an area that can't, can't contain it. Thank you.
President Jones Thank you for your comments. Just come on up. Thank you. State your name for the record.
Matthew Harris-Shears Hi, my name is Matthew Harris-Shears and to start I just want to thank my very patient 7-year-old for making it this long and thanks for letting me cut in front of some other folks who are interested in comment. I'll keep it quick. I'm a resident of Ward 5, that's Miller Creek and I live in an area that you know has some similar concerns that some of the residents here have shared about the Grant Creek area and that includes access and especially like you know traffic management, in general, plus access during an emergency. I do mention all of this just to share that I have a similar situation; however, Missoula is currently you know, Missoula's housing market continues to be punishingly crushing for those looking for or in need of stable housing. Rarely does a week go by without hearing about the difficulty our friends and neighbors experience in finding safe, affordable, and available housing. Vacancy rates in the city, according to the City's own impact assessment are unsustainable, last year dropping to a historically low 0.38%, which is far below that of a healthy housing market's 5-6%. What this means is that renters and potential homeowners can't find a place to live. We've already heard a few stories about folks who can't take jobs and have to move away. On a personal note, I volunteer with families and individuals experiencing homelessness, helping them try to find resources and access to housing, and I won't share any specific stories, but I can tell you that I've met with multiple families, including those with very small kids who came here job in hand and have just exhausted their resources while just waiting to find a house that they can rent. A major issue in the city is the housing stock does not keep up with demands of our growing city. Approval of this proposal meets Missoula's stated growth policies, creating opportunities for diverse housing needs through the addition of sorely needed housing units. I mentioned that I live in Miller Creek, a neighborhood with similar concerns, that I already talked about and this project, like some others that have been discussed in my neighborhood, helped meet the demands of our growing burgeoning city, allowing you know multiple people to really come into enjoy and experience the city the way that I do. So, I just hope that you all take in consideration that there are a lot of impacts, while absolutely valid expressed by my neighbors in Grant Creek, I feel them having similar concerns living in Miller Creek. However, I don't think that we should sacrifice the needs of every neighbor in this city when there's so much evidence that this meets the overwhelming supply issue that we have here for housing. Thank you.
President Jones Thank you for your comments. Next, just come on up and state your name. Thanks.
Peggy Walker Good evening, my name is Peggy Walker. I'm a resident of Grant Creek and a Board Director of the Prospect Meadows Homeowners Association in Grant Creek and also a member of the Friends of Grant Creek. I'm here this evening because I oppose the proposed rezoning of the properties at 2920 Expo Parkway which would allow the developer KJA to build up to 1,100 plus dwelling units on land that is current, currently zoned for less than half of that number. I do not oppose the current zoning, even though it would double the population of Grant Creek and post in and of itself serious traffic and wildfire evacuation risks to Grant Creek Canyon, which unlike any other canyon in the Missoula area has only one egress and one ingress. We have already seen the effects; we are seeing the effects of the increased traffic resulting from the 102 recently completed and occupied rental units at Grant Creek. Namely, we're seeing more accidents and near accidents. I personally have witnessed many of those incidences in my travels down from my home to the city or below. There are many reasons to oppose this rezoning application but the one that I want to emphasize this evening is that the proposed rezoning and the developers' plans do not address Missoula's most pressing housing needs, namely affordable rental units and single residents for sale, single-family residences for sale. There will be no affordable apartments in the Grant Creek Village. Mr. Ault has made abundantly clear that he has no interest in developing affordable housing and the rents at Grant Creek Village where the least expensive one-bedroom apartment rents for $1,450.00 a month reflect that, nor do his plans include any single family homes for purchase. No houses, no town homes, no condominiums that would add to the city's tax base and address an extreme desire for single-family homes to purchase. A project that simultaneously creates serious safety problems, especially with regard to evacuation under a fire incident, while not addressing our city's most pressing housing needs, does not make sense. Thank you for your attention and I urge you to deny the rezoning application.
President Jones Thank you ma'am. Anyone else? Great, come on up and state your name.
Riley Jacobsen Good evening ladies and gentlemen of the Council. My name is Riley Jacobsen, and I am a member of the Missoula community. I hope everyone's having a good night; I'm very excited to be here. So, let me begin by saying that in my day-to-day affairs of this community, I work for a housing nonprofit. I also serve on a board that's dedicated to affordable housing. So, anytime that I hear of a development that is talking about 700 units of housing, my inner child gets very excited. It's no secret that within this community, housing is a dilemma. We have a lack of units, we have a lack of stock, we have a lack of affordability, but overall, we all share this desire to live within Missoula. It ranges from people who are living on the streets to people who are going to college, to people who are looking at this community from out of states, from other cities within Montana, and within my heart, I know that the only way we can begin to address this issue is by creating more units. Commonly, in my work, I've seen a not in my neighborhood attitude. I've seen various differences in opinion to housing people, whether they live on the streets, where they live, how to say where they live in different communities, and so for 700 units to come into existence, I think it's a great opportunity for us to not only have more people engage in the Missoula lifestyle, but also have the opportunity to go to school here, to have the opportunity to raise families here, to have the opportunity to experience what we all love about our community, to see the mountains, to see the sun rise, to get jobs, to contribute to the betterment of our society and anything that takes away from that, to me, it would be a slight against our personal responsibility that we all share as community members, to help others feel included to help them have access to our resources, whether they live on the streets or they go to college, or they live out of town. And so, I ask that you take that into consideration, that you help work with the various sectors of our community with various boards, the various trust in helping to create more housing in our community, so that eventually, we can start to look at things like affordability, so we can start to look at things like job infrastructure, but it really does begin with housing stock. Thank you.
President Jones Thank you for your comments. Anyone else in the room that wants to comment tonight? Okay then we're going to go to virtual attendees and first up, we have Will Seaborn. You should be able to unmute yourself and speak. Go ahead Will.
Will Seaborn Hi there. Can you hear me?
President Jones Yes, go ahead.
Will Seaborn My name is Will Seaborn. I'm a homeowner in Ward 4. For identification purposes only, I'm also a member of the Affordable Housing Resident Oversight Committee nominated by the City Council. I just want to be clear my statements are my own and not an official comment from that committee. And I want to start out by saying that no housing development, development worth doing amidst our housing crisis is ever going to satisfy all of our concerns in all of the stakeholders. And the best we can do is to prioritize and balance the various competing interests and I would submit that there is no greater need to prioritize than solving our communities housing crisis and that's why I'm speaking in support of the Grant Creek Village rezone request for three principal reasons. One, it will meet the demand that we need in our housing crisis. Two, it conforms with our Growth Policy and three, it conforms to the place to call home, this to be the Missoula approved housing policy. With respect to a housing crisis another speaker mentioned earlier just the fact that, particularly in the rental market, our vacancy rates are hazardously low and in fact that healthy measurement we talked about before about five percent vacancy rate being a healthy market, we actually haven't experienced that as a community according, according to the Missoula Organization of Realtors since 2018. So, this is a systemic issue that we have in this community without about not having enough supply in the market and I know we're hearing a lot of voices tonight, both for and against the development, but what I want to point out is that the 700 households that will benefit from this development are not going to be able to speak here because they haven't had the chance to actually be a part of that and I think that's an important point to take into consideration. I'm not going to belabor the points about the Growth Policy since I think that's been mentioned a lot already but the one thing I would just say is I believe a Growth Policy should be administered consistently across similarly situated developments and so I would have a concern as a community if we made a decision about this development that maybe we wouldn't apply to other developments based on the amount of neighborhood support or lack thereof. And finally, I just wanted to close with a lot my probably favorite line from a place to call home our comprehensive citywide housing policy that the Council adopted on June 24, 2019 and it reads this the strategy recognizes that neighborhoods have unique needs and that as we grow as a community, we must develop thoughtfully, in a way that is sustainable and equitable while maintaining community quality. Throughout this growth, no neighborhood should be asked to experience radical change and consequently no neighborhood should be exempt from change either. I would encourage the Council to consider that when making your final determination the importance of this equitable distribution of housing that we committed to as a community in 2019 and we have an opportunity to step up to that commitment and live up to that commitment today through this decision. Thank you.
Dodie Moquin Can you hear me?
President Jones Yes we can. Go ahead.
Dodie Moquin Okay. My name is Dodie Moquin and I live in upper Grant Creek, about a half a mile north of Snowball Road and the gentleman who just spoke, I think his name was Will Seaborn. He said that no development should be asked to submit to radical change, but I say 700 units, more than doubles the entire population of Grant Creek. To me, that's radical change and we shouldn't be asked to do that, 495 units almost doubles the population of Grant Creek. The, we had a community, a community meeting at Grant Creek in, in late March and overwhelmingly, the attendees voted to stick with the existing zoning which is Grant Creek doing their fair share. Overwhelmingly, we support the existing zoning, which really contributes to our community. And I would like that to be acknowledged that 495 units, which almost doubles the entire population of Grant Creek is really doing our fair share. I want to emphasize this is not affordable housing. This is not going to help your typical person who is looking for an apartment to get housing in Missoula, when one bedroom one bath goes for $1,450.00, that's not going to happen. And Ault is not going to lower the rent of his condos. This is not affordable housing. The biggest concern of the people in Grant Creek is one egress, one, one ingress, one egress and it's, it's just very frightening, terrifying. I've been up here since 1987. We, my husband and I raised four daughters, up here and actually from the get-go, there were two fire years where we put so much of our belongings in storage, in Missoula because we were terrified we would not get out of here. So, to continue to build 700 units and to me it's like okay so what's more important the safety of people's lives or more housing? I used to be the transitional housing coordinator at the YWCA for 5 years, I'm very committed to building and very committed to housing people that need housing. It just doesn't work. We are the only area in Grant Creek and surrounding areas with one egress and one ingress, and yeah so I would really, really, really like you to consider to deny the rezone for the safety of all of us here in Grant Creek. Thank you.
President Jones Thank you for your comments. Next we had Mike Cole. Mike, if you can unmute yourself….There you go. Go ahead.
Mike Cole Yeah, I'm going to go a little a, little different tack here because of some issues that came up the other day. So, my name is Mike Cole. I'm the project leader for the Grant Creek wildfire risk task force. We're a volunteer group of Grant Creek residents working the under the direction of the Friends of Grant Creek. Based on our discussion at the LUP meeting on May 4, I'm concerned the City Council members will meet with different city and county emergency response departments and an LUP meeting later in May without having the full knowledge of what was in the wildfire presentation made at last week's LUP meeting or the ability to even review it. Most of the wildfire presentation was not recorded, while all of the developer's presentation was. I believe that was just an error, so I don't have a problem with that. Some Councilors were not in attendance, so they have absolutely no information from the wildfire presentation. For those that were present, there is no way to review the presentation, but they do have the option with all the rest of the land use planning meeting information that was presented in order to inform them in making a final decision on this rezone. So, for instance, new information by the developer concerning wildfire risk during that meeting was countered in the wildfire presentation as misleading but that discussion was not recorded and none of that information is even available to anyone. Although, the slide portion of presentation was provided to the LUP committee ahead of time, the slides alone had no context. So, luckily a similar wildfire presentation using the same slides was made at the planning board meeting on April 19, 2022. So, I would request that, that presentation which I believe was recorded be placed in the public record for the May 4, 2022, LUP meeting to replace the missing one and used for reference by City Council members in helping them form their decision on this rezone proposal. Since the rezone proposal has an enormous amount of documentation to read, I have no idea how many Councilors have actually read the three wildfire letters totaling 23 pages of research we produced over the past three years, none of which, which was considered in the staff report for this project, even though a good deal was based on City, County, State, and Federal documents specific to wildfire issues in Grant Creek and Missoula. So, the way we looked at the staff report was obviously pro-development and didn't take any of that into consideration. So, you had new Council members since the 2020 rezone proposal. So, this issue of development in the wildland urban interface in Grant Creek, specifically may be totally new to them. Without that background information, both the proponents and the opponents, how will you determine what questions to ask these departments to assure that your questions are answered? So, in trying to answer that question myself today, I prepared a two-page list of questions that I would ask members of those departments if I was going to conduct an interview on those issues, such as wildfire and evacuation in Grant Creek. So, I'm going to send those to Council member Hess and at his discretion, he can provide those to you, that you can look at as a starting point to form your questions, use all of them, use some of them, or none of them at all. That's your choice. I would also suggest that you ask the developer if they would also like to submit questions for you to consider asking when you interview the emergency response departments, so it is fair all the way around. Also, if you have your emergency response agencies meeting with you to provide you with a more thorough understanding concerning evacuation wildfire issues from their point of view, they also should see both opposing viewpoints, the pros and the cons. In a similar situation, I'm sure that the city engineer is going to read both of the traffic reports one prepared by the developer and one of by the opponents informing his opinion about traffic issues and feed that information to you. So, what I'm asking for here would be no different. I would encourage you to provide the 23 pages of research we prepared as well as the fire logistics report from the developer and the recorded wildfire presentation from the May 4, 2022, planning board meeting to the emergency responders you plan to question. They should have plenty of time to read through this material before the future land use planning meeting since it was postponed from this coming Wednesday, and they should be able to look through all that before they meet with you. Otherwise, some of the agencies will have the benefit of meeting with the developer's fire expert last year and providing input on the fire logistics report, especially on evacuation. So, they're all listed by the agency in the fire logistics report and the developer specialist mentioned the names of those agencies tonight in his presentation. So, if you don't do something like that, that could lead to the appearance of a conflict of interest at the expense of Grant Creek Residents. So, thank you for your time tonight.
President Jones Thank you for your comments and we said it earlier on the record, but I want to reiterate, anything that you can submit, I would recommend you email it to Jordan, Councilor, Jordan Hess and we will make sure that that is attached to the record, all Councilors have access to that, and it is all public records. So, Jordan, did you want to address that also?
Alderperson Hess Yeah and I just wanted to clarify that there was a technical glitch at the last LUP meeting where our ZOOM system crashed. We should be able to recover video from MCAT or from somewhere and we'll, I'll make sure that I work with staff to do that, and to the extent that we can't we'll, we'll make sure that there's an opportunity for, for folks to submit material to the record. And I'll just leave that at that, I guess. Thanks.
Mike Cole Thank you.
President Jones Thank you. Okay. I believe we have one more person with their hand raised to provide public comment. Hannah, I don't see a last name, but Hannah are you able to unmute yourself?
Hannah Kosel Yes, thank you.
President Jones There you go. Go ahead.
Hannah Kosel Hi, my name is Hannah Kosel, k-o-s-e-l. Yeah, I am calling in tonight in support of this rezone, yeah as an avid housing advocate in Missoula. I believe this is really important. Will this be affordable housing? No, it might not be. Will this address everything that we need within our housing in Missoula? No, and like yeah folks have said before, I think we need to make this a realistic vision for housing in our community and of course we want to keep working towards our ideal solutions but right now we really, really need more, more spaces. We need more vacancy in our town. I work with a Montana emergency rent assistance program. This is a program that was designed with folks who had past dues, on their rent through COVID, but has also been really useful for folks whose rents have been raised through these past few years as well and due to the skyrocketing prices of rent and home ownership through our, our city and our state. We are able to provide folks with a full coverage of deposit and the first 3 months of rent, if they are able to find a spot. This is if they've been evicted from a foreign place, if they have been chronically unhoused for a while, if right like rates went up and they needed to move somewhere else and we are able to give this over to folks as long as landlords approve and we have had so many people who just have not been able to find a space within our city to be able to use these funds. Yeah, it's just defeating every single day to work with tenants who, who have families and who are working and have been lifelong Missoulians, and who care so much and give so much to our community and don't have space to stay and to rest and to call a place home and don't have that stability in in consistent and open places. Even if this wouldn't be affordable housing, this would still help folks who need affordable housing and that for vacancy rates will continue to increase and that landlords won't be able to charge such outrageous fees for folks knowing that that is the only option for those tenants to move into. I also just want to highlight the comparison that this plan and kind of the conversations and discussion has to one that happened really similarly in Whitefish, Montana in February just of this year 2022. There's proposed plan for Mountain Gateway which was yeah a very similar area. A lot of conversations talked about the character of the neighborhood or traffic issues and yeah reasonable concerns for climate change and wildfire but that were also addressed by experts in their fields too to make sure that and ensure the safety of community members. And I don't want to see Missoula take the same path that the Whitefish City Council took in denying that request for an increase in housing in their community. I want to see you all take the lead as leaders in our in our city to yeah be a lead in western Montana for addressing housing issues, to be able to recognize the folks who are not in this room tonight who are not able to stay up past nine or have kids to tuck in or have dinners to make right and to that are able to hire lawyers or organize as neighborhood Councils to be able to deny more access and folks to come into their neighborhood. It's also an interesting view when you look at these neighborhoods comparably, in that they're both also keeping access to ski resort roads. And so, how can we just really focus on? How do we want our neighborhoods to look? How can we create them in more diverse ways? How can we invite more people into our space and into our community instead of continuing to ask people to stay further away from us? I look forward to the upcoming vote and grateful for my chance to share my support.
President Jones Great, thank you for your comments. I have one more person queued up to provide public comment. Diane Stensland Bickers, you should be able to unmute yourself. There you go.
Diane Stensland Bickers All I need to do is agree with what the former person said because she said everything I was going to say.
President Jones Okay, that's short. All righty, thank you very much. I'm not seeing any other public comment. So, at this point, we have questions from Council. Are there any questions from Council? We will be hearing this again in LUP, but let's start with Ms. Jordan.
Alderperson Kristen Jordan Thank you. I just wanted to ask the folks, the developers, and the proponents of this project, is this going to be set up like an HOA where they're going to be additional fees for maintaining the pool and the, and the grounds, and whatnot?
President Jones Why don't you come on up and put it on the record?
Spencer Woith Sorry, no, to answer your question, it will all be contained in your rent.
President Jones Sandra.
Alderperson Vasecka Thanks. So, I know with the rezone we can't really dictate what's, what we specify but I was just wondering I'm sorry if I missed this but, so will the entrance be on Stone Bridge Road and then as well on Expo, or is there only going to be one? One way, what are you planning on that?
Spencer Woith Do I have to keep saying my name every time?
President Jones Just, no, just stay up there, but ….
Spencer Woith I'll just stay here. Spencer Woith. There are 2 entrances, both on Expo Parkway and Stone Bridge…Or 3, two main roads going. There will be 2 entrances on Expo and then Stone Bridge will run directly into the belt.
President Jones Ms. Anderson….oh wait.
Alderperson Anderson I was looking through the attached files and I did not see, and this might be for Mr. Hess or the staff, the referenced 27 page document in regards to fire mitigation. So, I wanted to make sure that that was on the record…there's only a 7 page one and to look for it, so wanted to make that got on the record.
President Jones Okay, thanks for clarifying that. Ms. Sherrill.
Alderperson Sherrill Yeah thanks. I don't actually have a question for you, although you probably should stay. I'm, we're going to hear from Adrian Beck and Gordy Hughes on Wednesday, is that correct? Emergency services and fire at the committee meeting? I just want to confirm that, that was something we discussed last week.
President Jones Mr. Hess, do you want to clarify the timing on the hearing.
Alderperson Hess Yeah, at the Wednesday, to be announced, it'll, what I intend to do is hold about, well probably about a three to four hour meeting to really get through all the content and I, we'll structure that by subject matter area. So, we can have a period of time to talk about traffic counts and traffic related impacts and then we have time to talk about emergency access and egress and fire safety and Adrian Beck, can of course, would be there along with… I shouldn't speak for Adrian, Adrian will be invited to be there and Chief Hughes and, and others that have been, that were requested last week at LUP. And then I think that there's, Mr. McCormick raised some, some questions about the development agreement that I've asked the City Attorney's office to weigh in on, so I think we'll have an opportunity to, to discuss that additionally but I'll, I'll try to set the meeting up a little bit thematically. So, that we can keep it moving and get through all those topics and if there's other requests of course you know send them this way.
Alderperson Sherrill That's great. Thanks, I just wanted to confirm and have it on the public record that we're going to be discussing those things in the future.
President Jones Yes, but it's, it's 2-3 weeks out. We're not quite sure what the date is, that it will be set for but….
Spencer Woith Hess Yeah, I apologize. We had everything set up for the 11th and understanding, we need the timeframe. It's created some scheduling conflicts on our end. So, it may be a few weeks longer.
President Jones Okay great. Ms. Jordan, you had a followup?
Alderperson Kristen Jordan Yeah, thank you. My next question, and I think I already know the answer, but just to double check, are any of the units ever going to be able to be purchased by the, the occupants or are they going to be permanently rentals?
Spencer Woith At this point, the intention of the development is to be rentals. We are setting up our plan and it's, it's an internal plan that we are setting up provisions for the duplexes that would be set up and constructed as townhomes. So, there is a possibility in the future, but at this point, the plan is for all rentals.
President Jones I'm going to go to Ms. Becerra and then we'll come back to people in the horseshoe. Ms. Becerra.
Alderperson Becerra Thank you. How many units have been constructed already on the allowed for zoning because we have already welcomed new residents to the Grant Creek neighborhood?
Spencer Woith 105 have already been constructed.
Alderperson Becerra And do you know, proportional, like what what's the breakdown of one bedroom, two bedrooms, and I'm just asking to know what the diversity of family or family sizes could be in, in this part of the neighborhood?
Spencer Woith I don't have the exact unit count, but the demand has been for two and three bedroom, and the next units are going to be more two and three bedroom. We're one of the few newer developments that offer three bedroom apartment units.
Alderperson Becerra Great, thanks. Do you have any idea what the three bedrooms are gonna rent for?
Spencer Woith Fifteen or sixteen hundred is what he said…..
Alderperson Becerra But the two bedroom runs for $2,000.00 currently, so it's going to be cheaper?
Spencer Woith No, oh yeah. I don't know what the exact….The information is actually I believe available on your website….yeah it is on, it's on and I can provide the website here in a minute.
Alderperson Becerra Okay.
Spencer Woith Grantcreekvillage.com. There you go.
Alderperson Becerra Yeah, that's, that's where I got the current numbers, but I was just curious as to what you're proposing for the for the units that you're seeking the rezone for…Whether they're gonna be two bedroom, three bedrooms, and how much are they gonna be renting for because it'll be interesting to know, if we're meeting the demands in terms of the renting, their rent price…..
President Jones Is that a question?
Alderperson Becerra Yes.
Spencer Woith Oh….
Alderperson Becerra If you can provide us with that, as some point, I think it would be really helpful….
Spencer Woith Yeah, we can work on providing you some information. I think one key factor we need to consider when it comes to what is the ultimate cost of this is, we don't know what the cost of this is going to be yet. It is the same conversation everybody has about every industry in the world. There's supply chain issues and no one will even give you a price quote that's longer than a week and it's very difficult at this point, it's thrown our financial models kind of into a tailspin. So, we can give you a range but it's a difficult question to answer at this point…
Alderperson Becerra Sure. And may I have a followup, but actually, it's for our staff?
President Jones Yes.
Alderperson Becerra Thank you. Dave, Mr. McCormick mentioned that you cannot do a PUD based on the fact that we currently, that the property currently has, it's a, it's, two lots and you can only do it on one, but presumably you could do a boundary line relocation, create one lot, and then do a PUD. Would that have been a possible outcome?
Dave DeGrandpre Unfortunately, I don't think it would and the reason is, we can't create new split zone parcels under Title 20.
Alderperson Becerra Okay. And then one last question?
President Jones Okay, go ahead.
Alderperson Becerra The development agreement that's in place essentially has also been referred to as a land use covenant but the city doesn't regulate or enforce covenants. Is that correct?
Dave DeGrandpre Well I'm not an attorney but I do believe that there are different types of covenants. So, no the city does not typically does not regulate private covenants. The way I understand it, a covenant is a type of an agreement, so maybe that's better, that question is better answered by our city legal office.
Alderperson Becerra Great, okay. Thank you.
President Jones Alright, let's get a queue going here. Daniel let's start with this side for a change.
Alderperson Carlino I know that we vote on rezones and not developments in cases like this, and I know in the past I've been cut off from commenting asking for the price of what the proposed homes or apartments might be, and I just wanted to ask the staff is that criteria that the Council is able to consider? Because in the past, we've told me that we can't consider the possible price of developments on rezones. So, I just don't see why it's different here. Could staff speak to that?
Dave DeGrandpre Sure, you know that's definitely not one of the criteria under state law or local regulations. You know, but you might be able to finesse it a little bit. I mean does that impact public health and safety? I'm not sure. Is it compatible urban growth? I guess I'd look at the look at the rezoning review criteria and see if you think it fits, but no it's definitely not one of the statutory review criteria, is price. So, I guess I would be careful.
President Jones Thanks Dave. Raise your hand if you want to ask a question. I've got some of the names down…. okay next I had Mike Nugent.
Alderperson Mike Nugent First, thanks Daniel, I was going to ask that question too. I appreciate it. Jordan, I think I want to just get this question on our list for, for Adrian, maybe your emergency services, but one of the public commenters timed the, the stop lights at Grant Creek and then suggested that if we were evacuating Grant Creek that they would be stopping at red lights, and I assume that we would emergency services would overrule that but I want to make sure that somebody answers that on the record. Thank you.
President Jones Got it, thank you. Sandra.
Alderperson Vasecka Thanks. I have two questions. The first one is for the applicant. The sheet that came around on the back of it, sorry it's late I can't remember what those are called, it was like a diagram of what it was going to potentially look like, it was like a mock-up map….
Spencer Woith Like a site plan…
Alderperson Vasecka Site plan. Thank you. It's been a long day. Is that on, on the attachments already or will that be on there? I want to study it a little bit….
Spencer Woith On the development agreement or in the slides?
Alderperson Vasecka Anywhere that's attached to the…..
Spencer Woith Yes, they're available in the slides.
Alderperson Vasecka Okay.
Spencer Woith I we've sent those to you Dave. If not, we will.
Alderperson Vasecka Okay. And then my second question is for staff. Dave, I was wondering, so right now, the only… I know we're going to go in more on this on Wednesday. So, you can go from Expo, Expo Parkway to Old Indian Trail, but then that goes to the Harry Potterville over there and that's besides Grant Creek, that's the only way in and out of this area is that accurate?
Dave DeGrandpre Currently, there no public right-of-way down that Old Indian Trial. I mean someday, it's possible it could lead to… there is a little underpass, under the interstate. I haven't been on it myself, so I don't know how functional it is, but I know that there is one. However, at this point, I do not believe that there is a public right-of-way to make that happen, although it's, you know at some point in the future, it may connect into the city, but, but it's not there today.
Alderperson Vasecka Okay, good to know. I'm done with the questions. Thank you.
President Jones Ms. Anderson.
Alderperson Anderson Thanks so much and I, I do appreciate the fact that we cannot take the price of the units into consideration when as a rezone, but it's a whole entire package and I just want to clarify it because this is on the record meeting, and it will be transcribed. I'm looking at the Grant Creek Village website right now and its listing, and I just want to confirm this. Is one bedrooms for $1,450.00, two bedrooms for $2,500.00, and three bedrooms for $2,325.000, and that is on the Grantcreekvillage.com website/floorplans. So, just curious on some confusion back and forth on that and I'd like it clarified for the record.
Ken Ault Sure. Ken Ault, developer. So, these prices….we're 100% full right now and once, when they come renew, we are asking for what we can get, and this is what happens when there's such a demand. Our current two bedrooms are not $2,000.00. We are asking for that because we know we can get it, not that, not that just because we know we get it, is that rates are going up, every point rate goes up our loan goes up $26,000.00. We have to get it. We're already 1 1/2 years behind on this project that we could have saved a point and a half. So, we're, these costs are real. The construction costs are going up. Bringing these, this fine team in here, is expensive and the more we waste time on this, the more we have to, to cover it and while these rates go up, construction costs are an all-time high, labor's all-time high. The only thing we had in our favor was interest rates and now they're, they're going up. Affordable means green light. I mean, we can't stop in in today's time and, and, and dance around with this stuff. I mean it's day to day. We can't quote lumber for more than 24 hours. So, yeah, right now, because we're doing that….. I want to give you another story on what the other complexes are doing. When you walk into their office and you ask for how much is a two bedroom unit, you pay your $40.00 to get approved and it goes into a lottery, based on how many units are available in Missoula. And it can, it can be, if there's 10 that day, it goes down. It's automatic. The management doesn't make the decision, the computer does and if there's no units out there, you start asking for those two thousand numbers. You know, we thought we'd never see $2,000.00, the computers are telling us it's $2,000.00 because there's nothing out there. So, right now, no our…I can give you a copy of our rent roll, we're not at $2,000.00, we're not even close. We're about three to four hundred dollars under market in all of our units right now. We can provide you with a, a rent roll, what we're sitting at today, but that's how fast the rents have gone up since we opened the door last summer because right now, we can get another three to four hundred dollars.
Alderperson Anderson May I have followup?
President Jones Sure.
Alderperson Anderson Thank you for that and we are all familiar with the price of everything going up. In regards to the trip counts that you guys are looking at in terms of the generated amount of traffic, how are you basing that on in regards to deciding what size of you know obviously a one-bedroom unit will have less generated trips to versus a three-bedroom unit. So, I'm assuming you have some sort of estimates on what the new, the new developments will be in terms of the size of units?
Spencer Woith Yeah yes and no. We do have our traffic engineer available online here and he can answer some of those questions but it's more of a generality of, of what apartments compared to single family are when you go and do the analysis. Not knowing what we're going to build, it kind of does skew that and you go with what the national average is and that's what traditional traffic engineering is based on, and I know it's kind of a vague answer to the question because I'm not the traffic engineer, but he is available for…. I think he's still online….
Alderperson Anderson That's okay, we can discuss it more….
Spencer Woith Okay and we can, I can follow up with you on that one on Wednesday. Okay.
Alderperson Anderson A Wednesday to be determined…
Spencer Woith A Wednesday to be determined, yes…
President Jones Yes, Wednesday, TBD. Okay. Any other questions? I did have a question actually, whoever can answer it. I was curious when Mr. Ault purchased this, the parcel that is split zoned?
Ken Ault 2020….
President Jones Okay so it was recently, then? Okay, thank you, that helps. Any other questions from Council? Mr. Hess.
Alderperson Hess Yeah, that's actually brings up a point, maybe fore Mr. McCormic, but if there's a, if there's a due process question on the split zone piece, wouldn't that due process concern reside with the former owner? I mean it appears as though this owner bought the parcel knowing what the zoning conditions were. If that hypothetical due process concern exists, that appears that it would be on the owner at the time of the Title 20 adoption.
Alan McCormick Alan McCormick. It's a question that comes up frequently in situations like these that was answered by the United States Supreme Court in a case called Palazzolo . Basically, the fundamental question is can you buy yourself into a restriction and are you giving up your rights to challenge that restriction by buying a piece of property already subject to it? And the United States Supreme Court says that you do not give up your right to challenge the validity of a restriction just because you bought the parcel after the restriction was imposed.
Alderperson Hess Thanks for that.
President Jones Mr. McCormic, could you send us that site so that we can have that? I'd appreciate it.
Alan McCormick Certainly…
President Jones Or spell it because I can't understand what you're saying either?
Alan McCormick Spelling is not my strong suit…..
President Jones Send us an email…
Alan McCormick I'll send you an email.
President Jones All right, thank you. Okay. Any other questions from Council on this matter tonight? Oh, Mirtha, there you are…One last one…Ms. Becerra
Alderperson Becerra I'm here.
President Jones Sorry.
Alderperson Becerra I just, I just wanted to clarify my question regarding rents. I was, by no means, trying to suggest that we need to base our decision…. I'm very clear on what our rezoning regulations say in terms of how we base our vote. I simply wanted to point out that, what I'm trying to say is, that no I, I perfectly know that we cannot base our, our vote on, on the price of rent, neither can we base it on what amenities the community is going to have, if it's going to have a pool or a community area. So, I just, just wanted to be clear on that.
President Jones Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? Then this public hearing will be kept open, and we will be hearing this back in LUP, to be decided, and Mr. Hess.
Alderperson Hess I'm sorry. I do have one more question and maybe…it doesn't have to be answered now, but I'll just get it on the on the record about the development agreement. There's, you know, you you'd suggested Alan that there could be a someone else that's party to that. Can you speak more to what you, who that might be or what you? If the city is ultimately not party to that?
Alan McCormick It's not a preferred option. It raises questions. It's late, so I'm not going to bore you with a difference between easements of pertinence and growth, but it raises questions about what's attached to land, that's attached to other land and so if you really want to do covenants well, you need two landowners with both parcels being both burdened and benefited by the covenant. And that's why the development agreement is a better option here because it's, I've referred to it as a type of covenant, but it's really an agreement between the city and the development developer that would agree that they're sufficient and presumed to be sufficient consideration for that agreement that would be then enforceable out of the rules of contract and not under the rules of, of this dominant versus servient tenement versus easement gross, easement [inaudible] …..covenants running with the land. I know you guys are just dying to have a two-hour session on those, which you can actually have because I'm presenting on that topic on May 19, 2022 in Helena.
President Jones Well now, we've triggered another question.
Alderperson Anderson Okay, yeah do go far Alan. Okay, so that does bring up the question though in from a standpoint of you are presenting the development agreement to us just as something to take under consideration, but we cannot base our decision on a rezone because we're not legally allowed to take into factors, development agreements as a part of rezones, but if the development agreement is, is executed, be in, the rezone is gone through, and the parcel is sold. How can you guarantee that the development agreement stays with the land? When there's really no you, you voluntarily entered into it, and we are not a party of it as part of the rezone?
Alan McCormick Let me unpack that.
Alderperson Anderson Okay.
Alan McCormick Again, knowing it's late….
Alderperson Anderson Yes, yes..
Alan McCormick I don't happen to share the city attorney's concern as much with whether or not the development agreement can be considered as a package with the zone. You can't attach conditions to zoning….
Alderperson Anderson Right.
Alan McCormick But, but this isn't a condition to the zoning, it's a voluntary condition outside of zoning. The zoning remains the same; the zoning would be R1-45, and it would be impacted by a separate agreement entered into between the developer and the city, and so it's not a condition on zoning, it's not a contract zoning. It's just a, it's a different mechanism. We did this with, you'll recall the 50-some acres that's at the corner of Mullan and Flynn, that now has O'Leary and Mary Jane Boulevard running through it. The city adopted a development agreement, this basically said the zoning gives you a little too much, so we want to ratchet that back by entering into a development agreement with the developers. So, there is precedence for this, and it's been done, and I think there's some new thinking on it at the city attorney's office that's raised some concern. The other issue, can it, can it run with the land? Is a case, it's the Donna Metcalf Trust case, Montana Supreme Court, that's not an easement and gross. This was a deed restriction where the woman put a deed restriction on the parcel, sold it to someone, and the deed restriction said you're never going to subdivide the property. That person sells it to someone else; she gives what… she doesn't own property. She's not a next door neighbor. She just put a deed restriction on it…Can a subsequent assignee enforce the, the deed restriction? And the Supreme Court said yes because the document said, this covenant runs with the land. So, it was the intent of the parties that it would run with the land and had they not put that language in there, it would have been of questionable enforceability. So, I think some of that question has been answered, as well.
Alderperson Anderson Thank you for that brief education.
Alan McCormick Two hours on that subject for the 19th. I can get you a discount code.
President Jones We've got, Dave DeGrandpre, is raising his hand. Staff, did you want to add to this only?
Dave DeGrandpre Only one, one short item and that is the planning board public hearing is available through escribe and that includes Mr. Cole's presentation on, on fire and all the slides. So, he, he mentioned that this presentation wasn't recorded at the LUP, but it is fully available if you go to April 19th agendas meeting minutes, you can, you can watch that entire show.
President Jones Great, thank you. And Ms. Becerra, did you have your hand raised again? Or did you just lower it?
Alderperson Becerra I think…No, good.
President Jones It must have been an old one. Okay, any other questions on this item? Then, we will keep the public hearing open. We will hear it in LUP in several weeks, with lots of notice given to everyone, and we appreciate your patience for a long meeting tonight. Okay that…we will be done with that agenda item.