The purpose of the minor amendments to Chapter 3 is to ensure a fair and transparent public process for all plan amendments and specific plans. The amendments would achieve this by creating a clear description of which development applications and City projects will require a major or minor plan amendment, clarifying the role of specific plans, filling in information missing from the current chapter, and reorganizing information in a more logical sequence. Staff has limited the scope of this minor amendment to the content of Chapter 3. Changes to other Plan chapters may be considered as part of the future work program.

COUNCIL GOALS:
7) Continue to implement the Flagstaff Regional Plan and focus efforts on specific plans
8) Improve effectiveness of notification, communication, and engagement with residents, neighborhoods and businesses and about City services, programs, policies, projects and developments
 
REGIONAL PLAN:
Policy CC.1.3. Design development patterns to maintain the open character of rural areas, protect open lands, and protect and maintain sensitive environmental areas like mountains, canyons, and forested settings.
Policy LU.1.1. Plan for and support reinvestment within the existing city centers and neighborhoods for increased employment and quality of life.
Policy LU.1.6. Establish greater flexibility in development standards and processes to assist developers in overcoming challenges posed by redevelopment and infill sites.
Policy NH.6.1. Promote quality redevelopment and infill projects that are contextual with surrounding neighborhoods. When planning for redevelopment, the needs of existing residents should be addressed as early as possible in the development process.
Goal ED.1. Create a healthy environment for business by ensuring transparent, expeditious, and predictable government processes.
Policy ED.1.2. Steadily improve access to easily understandable public information.
 
Amendment Overview
City staff is proposing minor plan amendments to the Flagstaff Regional Plan 2030, Chapter 3 How the Plan Works, as described in the Regional Plan Annual Report 2015. The Flagstaff Regional Plan 2030 (Regional Plan) is the General Plan for the City of Flagstaff. The amendment includes several types of proposed changes:
 
1) Changes proposed to major plan amendment categories and criteria (with options for addressing changes from Rural to Suburban Area Types),
2) Clarifications regarding minor plan amendment categories and procedures,
3) Adopt a clear and legally accurate description of specific plans,
4) Clarifications about the role of the City Council, and
5) Non-substantive editorial changes to the Chapter.
 
The reasons for these proposed changes are because of factual errors in some of the language, vague descriptions that make it difficult to understand the categories for amendments, incomplete information about the relationship of the Plan to other laws and regulations, and illogical gaps in the categories provided in the ratified Regional Plan.
 
At this work session, staff is seeking feedback from the Council on the proposed amendments. In addition, the City Council has some options to consider regarding the Rural to Suburban amendment category (see Attachment D for details).
 
Staff’s original proposal for the Rural to Suburban category was to have all plan amendments in this category be minor, because conditions of approval cannot be as effectively enforced when attached to a plan amendment compared to a zoning case. Public comment since the Planning and Zoning Commission’s review has been centered on this issue and staff is offering to City Council three options for consideration.

• Option A: Treat all changes from Rural to Suburban as minor amendments (original proposal).
• Option B: Keep current major plan amendment category of Rural to Suburban greater than 20 acres.
• Option C: Only require a major amendment for Rural to Suburban area type proposals more than ¼ mile from an activity center.

Attachment A: Description and Analysis of Proposed Amendments to Chapter 3 – How this Plan Works provides a before and after comparison of the key changes, their rationale, and an analysis of how the changes support the implementation of the Regional Plan. The proposed plan amendment is provided with and without track changes in Attachments B and C. Attachment B shows the proposed amendments to the Regional Plan. Attachment C is a clean version that shows the proposed amendments accepted. Attachment D explains options for treating changes from Rural to Suburban Area Types.
 
Project Background
The Regional Plan was ratified by voters in May 2014. In May-June 2015, The Comprehensive Planning staff presented the first annual report to the Commission and the Council. Throughout the first year of introducing the Regional Plan to staff, citizens and officials, numerous questions, concerns, and inconsistencies were brought to the staff’s attention. The 2014 Regional Plan Annual Report stated that staff had “identified over 85 changes to text and maps needed to address editing errors, legal issues, and to clarify assumptions and the relationship between different sections.” Rather than bringing so many unrelated edits forward at once, staff proposed five “amendment tasks” that provided a meaningful way to organize related changes and to provide a chance for the Commission, Council, and the public to have input in how the ongoing work of maintaining the Regional Plan could proceed. The Council gave staff direction to proceed with these amendment tasks. The first amendment task was completed in December 2015 with a comprehensive update of Map 25 (Road Network Illustration) and Chapter 10, Transportation, to bring them into compliance with State law and to remove inconsistencies with the Engineering Standards that were missed in earlier reviews. During the review of the Map 25 plan amendment, the issues with the categories for major plan amendments became obvious to the Commission and they included in their recommendation to the Council to “prioritize updating the table of Major and Minor Plan Amendments on Page III-9 as the next highest priority for the Comprehensive Planning Program work plan.”
 
Records from the Citizens’ Advisory Committee showed that the groups did not review or discuss the major plan amendment categories and that the categories were first introduced at the public hearings for the final draft of the Regional Plan. The City Council did not bring forward any discussion items related to the major plan amendment process. The Comprehensive Planning Manager interviewed six former CAC members related to the committees review of Chapter 3 and confirmed that discussion related to this issue was minimal and therefore its importance not well understood at the time. However, in the two years since the plan was ratified the categories have been an area of intense scrutiny for Planning and Development Services staff. Given this lack of review, these proposed updates provide a second chance for the public, staff, the Commission and Council to discuss the major plan amendment categories and what would be most appropriate for the Regional Plan.
 
Context of Major and Minor Plan Amendments
There are three legal mechanisms that work together to establish the process for major and minor plan amendments of the Regional Plan. The first is A.R.S. §9-461.06. Adoption and amendment of general plan; expiration and readoption. This statute requires that the City “Adopt written procedures to provide effective, early and continuous public participation in the development and major amendment of general plans from all geographic, ethnic and economic areas of the municipality.” The statute only discusses procedures, and leaves the decision of what changes trigger the major amendment process to each municipality.
 
The minimum requirements for the major plan amendment process are:

• Major plan amendments must be completed prior to submittal of rezoning or annexation applications;
• A 60 day review of the proposed major plan amendments is required by specific agencies and anyone who requests such opportunities;
• Planning and Zoning Commission will hold two or more public hearings at different locations within the municipality to promote citizen participation; and
• The City Council will review all major plan amendments at a single public hearing during the calendar year the proposal is made.

Flagstaff City Code Title 11-10, General Plan Amendment, further refines the procedures by adding the requirement for a neighborhood meeting or Citizen Review Session, and by providing procedures for minor plan amendments and adoption of new elements. In Flagstaff, minor plan amendments do not require a review period and only require one public hearing with the Commission before presentation to the Council. Minor plan amendment applications can be processed concurrent with applications for rezoning and annexations.
 
In June 2014, approximately a year after adopting the Regional Plan, the Council adopted amendments to Title 11 to clarify procedures and to remove content that related to the previous version of the Plan. Clarifications about submittal requirements were also needed, but these were put on hold pending completion of the Chapter 3 plan amendment and consideration of how to address impact analyses for major and minor plan amendments and specific plans.
 
The Regional Plan provides the last piece of the major plan amendment puzzle by establishing categories of amendments that will be subject to the major plan amendment procedures found in A.R.S §9-461.06 and Title 11 of the City Code. Chapter 3 of the document also describes the status of specific plans and how they relate to the General Plan, as well as how the plan will be used by City staff and the community.
 
Public Participation
The amendment was available for a 30-day public review in March and April. The Planning and Zoning Commission held a public hearing on May 25th and recommended the amendment for adoption. The resolution is scheduled for vote by the City Council on September 6, 2016.
 
The goal for updating Chapter 3 was not to rewrite the entire plan or to reinvent policies that had been well vetted during the CAC process. The Public Participation Plan (Attachment E) was designed to begin working from the knowledge of those who developed the plan and then to provide opportunities for wider feedback from the public. Interviews with former CAC members and interest groups involved in developing the Plan was the first step in the public involvement process. These conversations confirmed that there was little discussion of these items prior to Plan ratification. The feedback received and questions asked during these interviews were important in informing the draft proposal.
 
Once the required proposal was complete, staff sent out the document for a 30-day public review. There is no review period for minor plan amendments, but staff believed it would be difficult to gather meaningful public involvement without one. During the public review, a public work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission and an Open House (Attachment F) was scheduled. The changes proposed were available to discuss interactively on the Flagstaff Community Forum. Staff received comments from nine individuals during the public review. These comments gave important insight into how to make the proposal better and how well it kept with the desires of the community for involvement in revisions to the Regional Plan. Staff carefully reviewed and considered all of these comments and has provided written responses to them (Attachment G). Attachment H shows how the comments were incorporated between the Public Review and the final draft. In the draft, there are two colors of track changes: Red changes were proposed by staff for the public review and blue indicates a change made as a result of the public review.