Chair Wolkowinsky called the meeting to order at 4:32 P.M.

Council member Born arrived at 4:35pm.

No public comment was given this meeting.

Commissioner Wolkowinsky moved to approve the December draft minutes, and Commissioner Lammy seconded the motion. December meeting minutes are approved.

Plus, welcome McKenna, our new minutes taker!

Commissioners Lammie’s and Konkel’s terms end on February 1^st,2025. Both have reapplied, and Ms. Hatton Tenny stated she talked to the city council members to request that they be reinstated.
 

Informational presentation on the land availability and suitability study, followed by discussion.
 
Question Commissioner Carlson: Asked about barriers to implementing certain types of codes, to which Ms. McNulty responded that this presentation is mostly about zoning codes, but that there is other work taking place for addressing barriers.
 
The presentation featured an overview of different codes they looked at and the key codes and barriers they found in their diagnostics.
 
Question Commissioner Carlson: Asked how it connects to the Regional Plan given that they are concurrent projects. The speakers answered that they were analyzing the same problem in different ways, but they are integrating their observations to understand community priorities towards understanding code concepts.
 
Ms. Antol spoke about the code concepts report. She said they are working to find a community balance that best will resolve the barriers identified, that work towards solving the housing issues and towards carbon neutrality. They said they hope the final recommendations and the code adoption happen at the same time, so that they can implement the regional plans through zoning codes. The report comes up with some conceptual alternatives for how they might update zoning and subdivision codes. She mentioned they incentivize land developers to capture affordable housing units where they can.
 
Ms. Antol described how they are trying to move away from incentivizing sustainability in development to mandating it (the state of Arizona does not allow mandates in this way). She also highlighted their focus on reducing parking minimums with development.

Ms. Antol described impact modeling that was done on all the different scenarios to look at revenue and cost impacts that might result from these changes. They also did spatial analysis, to understand if they can actually increase the capacity of new housing. They also examined if there are ways to target density to double down on greenhouse gas emissions associated with transportation. 

Ms. Antol then reviewed the scenarios for coding configurations to reach the program goals. 

Question, Chair Wolkowinsky: Asked about density bonuses versus sustainability bonuses, and how these incentives play out.

Question Commissioner Lammie: Asked what do we consider sustainable resources? Ms. Antol addressed this later in the presentation. 

Question Commissioner Carlson: How do these percent bonuses play out? Ms. Antol explained that when units are committed to being affordable, the density in units can be increased to 10% of what is by-right.

Question Chair Wolkowinsky: Asked for clarification of “by-right development.” Ms. Anton explained that there is a list of land-units that are permitted to be on that site. If permitted, they can come get the permit, do the process and be done. However, some uses in the zone require a conditional use permit (these are not considered “by-right,” which means building something along the code as it exists).

The presentation addressed carbon emissions modeling for different building code scenarios, and what they assess can be achieved with making cost reductions through the zoning codes. 

Question Commissioner Carlson: Asked if there is a potential gap between scenarios 1 and 3 where only 3 has the FAR (Floor Area Ratio) standard? The answer given was that there are changes in intensity while keeping the general usage roughly the same.

Question Commissioner Lammie: Asked what are the established goals with these coding analyses?  Ms. Pearthree responded that there isn’t necessarily a numerical housing development goal for this project, only that more is needed.

Question Commissioner Lammie: Asked what they expect to happen with the State Trust project that has been proposed. Ms. McNulty explained that their team is partnered with local developers that have an understanding of the city’s housing needs and are looking at a creative way to develop in the focus area. 
 
Question Commissioner Lammie: Asked how the student population contributes to short-term rental issues? Ms. Anton explained how that is another huge factor in influencing the housing affordability issue. 

The presenters offered anecdotal shared experience about how non-students also rented in the Hub, and this happens a lot so really even what is marketed to students should just be considered “housing”.

Scenarios 2 and 3 seem most effective in maximizing the goals of the program. 

Question Commissioner Lammie: Asked what developers say if apparently they can run rampant? Ms. Anton said she thinks that would just do more of the same; with residential they usually want less but for commercial they always seem to want more. 

There was discussion surrounding ways they have tried to assess the problems associated with how high-density housing areas are restricted on parking, and the problems associated with that. Especially near NAU, even though there are many amenities available, people still want to use cars. They stated they want to zone in a way where parking density can come down.

Question/comment Chair Wolkowinsky: Stated that the dialogue regarding incentivizing “high density and mixed-use” configurations as a tool for sustainable development (especially around transportation corridors) could continue through Ms. Hatton Tenny and over email, given time constraints.

Next steps: Ms. Hatton Tenny said she will send out the presentation including a staff summary with questions posted, requesting feedback. Staff will reference that feedback at future commission and council meetings. 

1.    Due to time limitations, there were a couple of questions/comments to address at a later time. Commissioner Carlson said he would like to know how codes increase resiliency with a resource protection overlay.

2.    Commissioner Born suggested having building incentives to offset the higher amount of miles traveled, and Commissioner Carlson agreed. 

Commissioners discussed adding time on a future agenda for talking about these zoning topics. Ms. Pearthree requested feedback/comments from the Sustainability Commission, by February 4th to then offer to Council. She said she is willing to walk people through the information and answer questions.

Ms. Pearthree noted that a formal meeting will likely be needed to provide the Council with feedback as a Commission. 
 

One of last year’s grant recipients requested a budget change, which Ms. Hatton Tenny said is supported by staff. They want to create community-focused workshops and asked for a time extension and budget adjustment, priced per workshop. 

Chair Wolkowinsky motioned to support the request, and Commissioner Lammie seconded the motion. 

Motion passed.
 

Chair Wolkowinsky reviewed the process of getting neighborhood sustainability grants and requested the Commission decide how to handle score discrepancies in the future.

Ms. Hatton Tenny showed the results of a poll about the grant application. There were two responses indicating it was easy to apply for the grant (a 10) and one that said was terrible. 

Comments from Commissioner Carlson: He said he found the grant review overwhelming and asked for a more customizable rubric and general improvement in the navigability of the process. He thought some applicants were just saying what they thought the reviewer would want to hear.

Comments from Commissioner Born: He said he found the scoring somewhat confusing and did not realize that there should have been comments with the lower scores and struggled to come up with comments in the end. He thought it would be easier to look through the scoring section while creating comments, to better understand the criteria from which the grant applications could be assessed.

Chair Wolkowinsky thinks that comments were a little bit hard to remember in this process, and asks if there are scoring sheets publicly available. Ms. Hatton Tenny says yes. One iteration was attached to the agenda so that the applicants could look at their scores before the final voting meeting and she was able to see an improvement in the quality of comments, and she thinks it’s a good idea to embed that further.

Comments from Commissioner Lammie: He commented on the challenge in trying to objectify something that is sort of subjective and suggested democratizing the application a bit. He said he would like it to be more accessible to more of the community.

Although they disagreed on a resolution, the Commission indicated the need to discuss solutions for the problems they ran into last time. One suggestion was to lower the amount of the grants for half of those selected in order to alleviate the budget. 

Ms. Hatton Tenny said some reviewers pitched the idea of restructuring these grants, however the Commission did not seem to agree.

Commissioner Lammie suggested offering different funding amounts based on a tier system. 

Chair Wolkowinsky suggested involving more people in grant reviews because they can be complicated and heavy, as well as having a longer review timeline. Chair Wolkowinsky proposed that the applications be assessed in the October meeting.

Commissioner Carlson mentioned managing bias in this process, suggested better clarity in certain sections of the rubric and restructuring points for the different topic sections. He said further discussion is needed to address the implications when a project organization secondarily rather than directly meets the grant goals.

Given comments regarding formatting differences in some of the applications, Ms. Hatton Tenny suggested moving away from Survey Monkey and into a different program that provides the same structure for all applications. He also comments that there was a bias issue in the review process by the presence of one project applicant at the final voting meeting. 

Chair Wolkowinsky moved this discussion to the table for next month’s meeting. The motion was seconded by Commissioner Lammie. 
 

The Commissions seeks one to three commissioners to come together and plan a working group for a networking event for the awardees. Question about if there is an available budget for the event, which there is. Chair Wolkowinsky and Commissioners Lammie and Spurlock volunteered to participate in the group. Ms. Hatton Tenny states that this networking event should happen in March 2025, ideally during the Spring Break week.

Commissioner Lammie stated that he can stay working on the Commission until a replacement is found, which will be decided at the next meeting on February 4th, 2025. 

Chair Wolkowinsky moved to create a working group for planning the neighbor sustainability grant awardees networking event and confirmation of the volunteers including her and Commissioner Lammy and Commmissioner Spurlock. All ayes, motion passed.

Chair Wolkowinsky moved to table the discussion on forming working group to go over the Commission’s ordinance which needs to be updated, but needs further education around this process. Motion passed.
 

The next Fix It Clinic is February 15th 2025 at 10 A.M.-2 P.M. 

Climate Action Section Director Neaman announcement in solid-waste service changes and schedules and notification of that council update that will be posted on February 28th, for more information on an upcoming meeting. 
 

Four people filled out a survey for future Commission agenda items. Some are interested in water pollution concerns, Lake Mary issues, Recycling in Flagstaff, and Pinyon Plan Mine. At the very least, Ms. Hatton Tenny requested that the results be discussed. Commissioner Carlson mentioned that he left comments on his survey entry. Chair Wolkowinsky and Ms. Hatton Tenny will seek additional responses to the survey and evaluate the results.

Chair Wolkowinsky adjourned the meeting at 6:34 P.M.