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2 - Minutes, 3/20/03CITY OF BOULDER PLANNING BOARD SUMMARY MINUTES March 20, 2003 Council Chambers Room, Municipal Building 1777 Broadway, 6:00 p.m. The following are the minutes of the March 20, 2003 city of Boulder Planning Board meeting. A permanent set of these minutes is kept in Central Records, and a verbatim tape recording of the meeting is maintained for a period of seven years in Central Records (telephone: 303-441-3043). BOARD PRESENT: Macon Cowles Elise Jones Thom Krueger, Vice Chair Simon Mole Alan O'Hashi Beth Pommer John Spitzer STAFF PRESENT: David Gehr, Assistant City Attorney Mary Lovrien, Board Secretary Peter Pollock, Planning Director Randall Rutsch, Public Works/Transportation 1. CALL TO ORDER Vice Chair, T. Krueger, declared a quorum at 6:00 p.m., and the following business was conducted. T. Krueger welcomed Elise Jones to the Planning Board. She was sworn in formally as the new Board member. 2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES February 20, 2003: T. Krueger conected the spelling of Tishler on page 11, last paragraph, second sentence. On a motion by A. O'Hashi, seconded by S. Mole, the Planning Board approved the minutes of February 20, 2003 as amended (6-0; E. Jones did not vote because she was not a Boazd member when this meeting occurred). 3. CITIZEN PARTICIPATION There was no citizen participation. 4. DISCUSSION OF DISPOSITIONS, PLANNING BOARD CALL-UPS M. Cowles asked why the wetland permit for 4796 Arapahoe Road was the responsibility of the Boulder Community Hospital. P. Pollock explained that this is an off-site improvement that s:\plan\pb-items\minutes\030320min City of Boulder Planning Board Minutes March 20, 2003 Page 2 helps with the flood issue on the hospital site. The levy was not certified previously, and this project is a reconstruction of that levy so that it acts as mitigation for some of the flood impacts on the site. D. Gehr added that there are a number of homes on Harrison that will be taken out of the 100-year floodplain because of this project. The Board had no other comments on the wetland permit. 5. DISCUSSION ITEMS A. Discussioa and direction on the work program and schedule to impiement Resolution 922 on the Jobs/Housing project. This item was postponed. P. Pollock presented an update on the item under MATTERS. B. Briefing on the Transportation Management Plan Update. R. Rutsch said that this update is to provide background information on the Transportation Master Plan (TMP) Update in preparation for its upcoming consideration for approval. The process includes four phases which were approved by the Transportation Advisory Board (TAB) and City Council, and the discussion tonight will include only the first two phases, some information about RTD and the EcoPass program, and introductory material for Phase 3. He outlined the timeline for the four phases. Phase 1 involves the plan assessment (how aze we doing and what is working); Phase 2 involves policy refinement (what are best practices and options); Phase 3 is plan development and what staff is currently involved in (what adjustments should be included and how and where money will be spent in the future); and Phase 4 is plan adoption which wi11 happen this summer. During the plan assessment staff tried to figure out what had been accomplished over the last 12 years under the current policy direction. There is an increased emphasis in terms of maintenance and improvement of the system, including the sidewalk completion program. So far, 47 transit shelters and 116 benches have been installed; 11 underpasses added; one-fifth of the TMP bicycle projects identified in the 1996 bicycle plan completed; inventory increased, capital maintenance and funding provided for the bicycle program; bike lockers at Park and Ride transit stop facilities and bike racks on RTD buses added; five high frequency bus services and additional RTD service added; the EcoPass program expanded; and progress made toward a life- cycle replacement of the existing road system--things that connect the different modes of transportation. He showed a chart of the trends in commuting patterns. The trend shows that people have longer commutes to work, and the commute that is increasing the fastest is that of 20 or more miles. s: \plan\pb-items~minutes\030320min City of Boulder Planning Board Minutes March 20, 2003 Page 3 When the commute is this long, people are typically commuting from areas where there are not a lot of options for alternative transportation modes. Staff has evaluated what has been achieved relative to the specific objectives of the 1996 TMP. The TMP objective was no growth in long-tarm vehicle miles traveled (VMT) of 2.4 million miles. The chart indicates that the goal has not been achieved, but probably because of a number of factors, including TMP policy, our VMT has increased at about one-fifth the regional rate, and we have managed to avoid about a million VMT increase over this period of time relative to what would have happened if growth had occurred at the regional rate. Both the Transportation Advisory Board and City Council felt that significant progress had been made, and "stay the course" is the fundamental policy direction for the TMP. The four policy focus areas (funding, multi-moda] corridors, regional travel, and transportation demand management (TDM)) were identified from the analysis as areas needing additional work and to be improved. Staff has tried to understand where and what percentage of the transportation funding comes from RTD, CDOT, and federal and state grants and where the money is spent (about an even amount on transit and roadways). J. Spitzer asked how realistic such a plan is if the total cost to implement is not totally funded and asked if an alternate plan could be accomplished with the revenue that is available. R. Rutsch said that this is a reason why funding is one of the focus areas. Staff has committed to producing a fiscally constrained plan or a plan that only spends what money is expected. If there is a vision beyond fiscally constrained, there should be some commitment and understanding around the funding mechanisms. He presented a chart that outlined a sampling of many ways that staff might be able to raise revenues, along with an evaluation of the likelihood of success for each item. An analysis was conducted around multi-modal comdors and corridor segments to determine what makes a corridor a success, such as inventorying the corridors, the leve] of improvement for those corridors, and what kind of performance is seen on the system relative to that level of performance. An example was the successful SKIP bus corridor along Broadway, a low-density corridor, with the exception of Downtown and the University of Colorado. For transit planning it has been assumed that it takes so many residential units to support transit along the corridor. In this case, however, the corridor has several things supporting it--primarily there is no free parking in the two main activity centers which is one of the most effective ways to change travel behauior, and there is a great EcoPass penetration on the comdor (many neighborhoods and businesses participate). Staff has used the understanding of the Broadway corridor to think about ways to make other transit services and other corridors successful. Another focus area involves the regional conidors (what is the existing infrastructure and whaf are the opportunities to improve multi-modal travel on those corridors). He presented a chart that represents the 2001 households and employment and the projected households and employment in 2025 along the major regional corridors. One of the major findings from the Jobs to Housing project was the expected increase in regional travel and the significant increase in congestion that s:\plan\pb-items~ninutes\030320min City of Boulder Planning Board Minutes March 20, 2003 Page 4 wouict result on these regional connections. While some corridors have a strong level of partnership and agreemcni on planned improvements, others lack such agreement, and all are without the needed funding to make significant needed improvements. Finally, there was work conducted in potential TDM measures, the opportunities that might exist within TDM, and various levels of efforts for each. A panel discussion was held last year consisting of five experts regarding TDM. The panel discussed potential concepts for Boulder, and one of the things that came out of that discussion was the idea of transportation management organizations (developing a public-private partnership, being creative and geographic specific, addressing the needs of a particular area) which is being carried forward in the TMP Update. Also occurring with the TMP Update was the modeling and analysis needed for the transportation section of the Jobs to Housing impact assessment. A transportation analysis was done for two areas or zones (the city limits and the Boulder impact area which approximates the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan areas I, II, and III), for six land use scenarios (today, current trends to 2025, Scenarios 1, 2 and 3, and Current Trends at Capacity), and for three transportation investment scenarios (today's system, the fiscally constrained 2025 system, and the 1996 full funded TMP system). He presented a chart that depicted the population in 2001, where the 1996 TMP projected that Boulder would be in 2020, and how it compares to Scenario 1 from the Jobs/Housing project. The city's projected population for 2020 indicates a lack of 17 years' worth o£ investments that were anticipated to be a fully funded plan by 2020. If the Jobs/Housing base is included, the additional increment will need to be addressed as part of the update process. M. Cowles asked if this represents a situation where the development fees are too low; otherwise, if the development taxes and fees were more in line where they should be, the city may have had the funding to build the 17-year infrastructure investments. R. Rutsch said that in the ideal world there would be sufficient funding to keep up with growth, and one way to do this is through impact fees. The Tishler report stated that the impact fees should be ten times more than what they are today. There are parts of this growth that should be discussed-there is additional population, a lot of additional employment, and people are traveling more. A broader question is whether our source of funding is appropriate relative to the growth that is expected. The impact fee would provide only a small fraction of what is needed and will not solve the problem because there are already a lot of people in the community. P. Pollock said that there is a certain amount of catch-up in providing infrastructure for development that occurred some time ago, such as providing sidewalks, and the impacts caused by the current development. M. Cowles said that the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) projections are that the transportation infrastructure required for every new resident is $30,000; this will be a challenge because there is less federal and state money available for such s: \plan\pb-items~minutes\030320min City of Boulder Planning Board Minu[es March 20, 2003 ' Page 5 projects. R. Rutsch agreed and stated that the latest figures from DRCOG indicate that there will be $51 billion of unmet transportation needs by 2025 in the region. Staff reviewed two different investment packages (a fiscally constrained package and a fully- funded TMP package). This analysis was done prior to a lot of the RTD announcements about cut-back in service, so there is an additional financial deficit in these numbers, and it does not include FasTracks. Hours of congestion delay, which measures what goes on in the systems, is one of the most meaningful comparisons. In any of the scenarios there will be a significant increase in hours of congestion delay. In looking at where the growth happens there is a larger amount of increase on the regional facilities which is significant in terms of how few roads are actually there. Without something changing like the approval of FasTracks, the regional facilities will be very congested. J. Spitzer said that at build-out there should be more of a ten-fold worsening of congestion rather thau a doubling. P. Pollock said that the peak hour numbers are current trends at capacity and were hypothetical upper limits of what could happen under the current zoning. R. Rutsch said that when looking at the current trends at capacity there are a lot of reasons why this will not happen, as we would become unattractive to employment if the commute into town approached these levels of congestion. T. I{rueger suggested that staff make some comparisons of which places are experiencing those kinds of significant congestion delays or hours of commute per capita. R. Rutsch presented a chart that showed sample travel times in terms of how things actually change by corridor. The new model allows the reporting of things that were not able to be reported in the past, such as hours of congestion or the travel time increase. These things might have mare meaning for people than the reporting of vehicle miles traveled. As part of the update, staff has also been responding to changing conditions, such as the situation with RTD. RTD depends upon sales tax revenue but is experiencing significant funding shortfalls. They are reevaluating all transit service which puts a number of Boulder's services at risk. RTD proposes to use a new service standard for the high-frequency services, and the city seems to be penalized because these high-frequency services are not being compared against every service in the Denver region. RTD is proposing to eliminate the Business and Neighborhood EcoPass programs because it is felt that money is being lost from these programs. However, if a person has an EcoPass, the person is 6-1/2 times more likely to try transit than without one. RTD's proposal of using a community check program is great if a person is already a transit rider but will not encourage new people to take transit. A new model is needed for how transit is funded, and Boulder County has agreed to take on the leading role for this discussion. The TMP update, however, will only reflect a beginning of this discussion because any new model for providing transit in the county will take about two or three years. s:\plan\pb-items\minutes\030320min City of Boulder Planning Board Minutes March 20, 2003 Page 6 In Phase 3 staff will be developing an investment program and reviewing the current four objectives (no long-term growth in vehicle growth, a transportation mode shift of 25 percent, continuous improvement in air quality, and no more than 20 percent of the system congested). These are vehicle focused targets and do not reflect what we are about in terms of the TMP-we are trying to maintain the system and improve mobility and access for all modes of travel. Within the "stay the course" policy direction and four policy focus areas we are following an iterative approach of making a proposal, evaluating it in terms of system performance, and determining if there is anything else that can be done. By the end of Phase 3 the policy decisions and spending priorities will have been made. Staff is looking at ideas regarding transit real-time information (allows the user to find out when a particular bus will be arriving and conditions on the road system) and land use TDM linkage (with additional site specific TDM measures a project might be able to develop with a higher floor area ratio (FAR)). In this phase staff will work on a fiscally-constrained plan, establishing a 2025 vision and determining what an ultimate view of the system might be. He presented the timeline for completion o£ the update, including the Board discussion on the update at its meeting on April 24, a TAB/City Council joint study session on May 27, and a meeting with City Council in July for the end of Phase 3. P. Pollock said that the area planning would initially focus around the Boulder Valley Regional Center and the 28th and 30th street corridors, and the transportation management organization as a model can be discussed at this time. J. Spitzer asked how much work is being conducted with the Boulder Valley School District on this issue, in particular open enrollment and their vision of large schools in the middle of nowhere where everyone needs to drive or be bused to the school. R. Rutsch said that he was not certain what discussions will be held with the school district. A few years ago there was a major effort to work on this very issue, but the process did not proceed further. This is a growing issue, and it is constrained by state law and by funding. J. Spitzer asked if staff could forward a letter to the school district outlining some of these concems. P. Pollock said that City Council generated a letter based on the staff analysis, including traffic impacts. B. Pommer said that the school district is under a state mandate to allow open enrollment so the district handles this issue the best they can. The state standards are driving the discussion about moving Boulder High School because it does not fit the standard for the number of acres for athletic fields. T. Krueger suggested that the conversation between the city and the school district be resumed. P. Pollock said that City Council and members of the school district recently had a study session discussion so a dialogue is ongoing. There is nothing on the planning staff work program for further interaction with the school district other than what might be directed by City Council. B. Pommer suggested involving Don Orr and the school district planning staff in the TMP update. s: \plan\pb-items~minutes\030320min City of Boulder Planning Board Minutes March 20, 2003 Page 7 J. Spitzer suggested adding coordination with school districts and the University of Colorado in the plan. It will encourage City Council to take more of a look at this in future policy discussions. R. Rutsch said that there are a couple of representatives from the school district on the study committee, and they are apprised of this concern. A. O'Hashi suggested that under the list of financial tools, there are six items, including inter-governmental agreements, that might be able to address this issue. R. Rutsch said that the current plan states that one of the key strategies in terms of success for our goals is cooperation with partners. M. Cowles said that it is worthwhile for the Planning Board to express to City Council our desire to support efforts that will build a bridge with the school board and the university to make a better community. B. Pommer thought that it would be advantageous to have someone from the school district discuss with the Board how it is dealing with transportation issues. P. Pollock suggested that this interaction might be better with TAB because their role is to participate with groups that are dealing with transportation issues. M. Cowles said that since a lot of the TMP update wil] service what develops out of the Jobs/Housing project he asked about the schedule for developing land use changes that would be worked into the TMP. P. Pollock said that there are two overlap pieces-when there is area planning, there will be an opportunity to integrate some of the work discussed relative to transportation management organizations and to implement this there will be code changes. Part of the resolution would be to review density bonuses for things like TDM measures. R. Rutsch said that the results of a variety of things will not be known at the adoption of the TMP update, but it will give direction as to where to put time, effort, and resources. A. O'Hashi suggested that the city develop primary and secondary snow routes so that people will know which bicycle routes are.clear. R. Rutsch said that there is already an established system of primary and secondary routes. 6. MATTERS FROM THE PLANNING BOARD, PLANNING DIRECTOR, AND CITY ATTORNEY A. Expectations for Planning Board Retreat. M. Cowles suggested that D. Gehr make a presentation on the provisions of the City Charter that set up the Planning Board and outline the authority and charge of the Board. S. Mole suggested that there be some exploration of the Planning Board's role and responsibilities. The Board and staff outlined other topics that it would like to discuss at the retreat, including ex- parte and e-mail communications, election of chair and vice chair, appointments to committees, procedures and operating agreements, review of the 2003 department work program (revisions to the Land Use Regulations and pop-ups and scrape-offs, and Jobs/Housing), roles and responsibilities of the Board, expectations of the chair and vice chair, Board comportment, s:\plan\pb-items~minutes\030320min City of Boulder Planning Board Minutes March 20, 2003 Page 8 opportunities to be proactive/visionary, items that the Board would like to see in the next Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan update, team building, and how the Board works together. T. Krueger suggested that at the next meeting the Board discuss whether to take a recess sometime in the summer. M. Cowles suggested developing a procedure so that the chair and the vice chair can keep track of issues that the Board has already discussed to make sure that they get back on the agenda for check-in at appropriate places. T. Krueger said that check-ins on the department work program have been rnissed on a regulaz basis. Since B. Pommer will not be able to attend the Board retreat on April 12, the members discussed changing the date to April '_7. The Board members discussed their aspiration~ fnr filling the role of chair or vice chair during their service on the Board, expectations for c`:. ,e positions, and opportunities far all members interested in filling these positions. Other Matters P. Pollock gave an update on the City Council retreat. Council heard an overview of what was happening on the federal, state,and local economy and received an update about the city's fiscal situation. Council reviewed an effort of a cut of two percent of the general fund budget from city departments. Council discussed alternative scenarios that included a sales tax increase and whether public safety would be included in a tax cut. Council agreed to meet again on this issue in April. B. Pommer said that in the code revisions for garages the Board's intent may not have been well written into the code and suggested that this be discussed in the phase II revisions. P. Polloek said that City Council approved the update for the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan (BVCP) except for 0 Linden Avenue. Council recommended the change from Open Space to Very Low Density-Residential on the eastern portion of the site. Council asked the Board to reconsider its earlier decision on this matter. City Council also approved the BVCP Action Plan. The Work Group for the Gunbarrel Commercial Area Plan will meet with all the property owners who might be affected. J. Spitzer asked if the applicant for the Gunbarrel Town Center can apply for Site Review before the Gunbarrel area plan is developed. P. Pollock said that the applicant can apply for a Site Review at any time, and if the Site Review is reviewed before the area plan is adopted, it will not affect the application. He provided an explanation for the postponement of the Jobs/Housing implementation discussion. City Council asked Frank Bruno, the City Manager, to become more engaged in this project, and Mr. Bruno wanted more time to review the draft work program. The project will be developed in four phases (residential and industrial zones through Conditional Use and Use s:\plan\pb-items~ninutes\030320min City of Boulder Planning Board Minutes March 20, 2003 Page 9 Review, other code changes in the Land Use Regulations, monitoring uea and the Gunbarrel plan, and the Transportation Management Plan) and integration of the work into the 2004 annual changes to the BVCP and the 2005 major update. He mentioned that the American Planning Association conference will be held from March 30 to April 2, and the Board orientation and reception will be held on April 8. He outlined the agenda items for the upcoming Board and City Council meetings. He explained that Board members received the Drought Management Plan so that they can be informed when discussing the drought response plan. 7. ADJOURNMENT The Planning Board adjourned the meeting at 9:45 p.m. s:\plan\pb-items~minutes\030320min