Coding for Better Places

So, welcome to On the Park Bench, a public square conversation brought to you by the Congress for the New urbanism. On the Park Bench presents interactive conversations with thought leaders in new urbanism and allied industries, providing an opportunity to engage in real time. Uh the webinar series is a platform for CNU members uh to discuss, debate and collaborate on pressing issues of the day. Today we have coding for better places with Susan Henderson, Bart Grieentro, and Gail Sumi. And [clears throat] I can uh once again uh this is sponsored by CNU. Um, so if you're not currently a member, uh, please uh consider uh becoming a member or um if your membership is expired, uh you can renew your membership by going to members.cnu.org/memberships. And uh once again, this is a public square conversation. Public Square is is the CNU journal online and there's some great content. So please check that out at www.cnu.org/pubsquare. If I can advance this slide. It's going a little slow. There we go. Susan Henderson is an architect, urban designer, and founding principal with Placemakers LLC. She is the chair of the board of directors at CNU and is a nationally recognized expert in code reform and formbbased codes. Bart Greentrog AICP CNUA is the planning and development director for the village of Shorewood, Wisconsin, an inner ring suburb of Milwaukee. His current work focuses focuses on zoning administration, code reform, and process improvement. Bart has been named has been at Shorewood since 2017 and prior to that was a planner for the city of West Dallas in Wisconsin. Gail Sunumi is membership engagement and communications director for the League of Wisconsin Municipalities. The League sponsored along with other organizations uh enabling better places, a users's guide to Wisconsin neighborhood affordability published in 2022. This report is all about coding for better places, the topic of today's webinar. A link to this report will be available in the chat in a few minutes. I'm Rob Studville, editor of CN News Public Square. Okay. And the panel is going to discuss uh zoning reform tools to enable better places, affordable housing, and complete communities with Wisconsin as a case study. First there there are going to be a few presentations followed by discussion with panelists followed by Q&A from the audience and so we're looking for a lively discussion. So please use the Zoom function I [snorts] mean the Q&A function of Zoom to ask your questions as they occur to you. And now I'm going to pass this along to Susan. Thanks so much Rob. And just to give you a brief overview into um the the enabling better places zoning for affordable housing, CNU has been doing um the project for code reform since I think it was CNU 23 in Detroit. So it's six or seven years now. And the main reason being that code reform is a heavy lift. And while many of us are huge advocates for and and writers of formbbased codes, that process when you're doing a complete overhaul, it's expensive. It's complicated. It takes a long time. It takes a lot of political will and advocacy and it takes a whole lot of education uh to build public buyin for support. And so when Lynn Richards, our our former CEO, envisioned this this product, she was saying, "What about the 44,000 units of local government with zoning authority that can't afford the process and the time and so she wanted to find the incremental solution, the quick fix that uh local governments could afford and could implement on their own." So that's the background and then our mantra was given to us by um Rick Burnernhard who's the former planning director of Nashville uh Tennessee and he did a lot of code reform through his tenure there and he said to ground everything in the question or the or the comment if you do nothing else do this. So what are the things that are absolutely crucial to achieving your goals? And so the goals of this particular project in um Wisconsin, the the number one goal was increasing housing availability. Like most states, Wisconsin is facing an incredible shortage. And we were looking at issues within existing neighborhoods that were um limiting availability like non-conforming lots, non-conforming densities and parking requirements. And then because AARP was a partner, we were also looking for solutions to aging in place. And of course, the number one goal there is the permission to write ADU regulations that actually work. And so things like the parking requirements again allowing owner occupancy and allowing larger units were all suggested. And finally the market demand. Um it's very very interesting in the state of Wisconsin all communities are empowered to write TND ordinances or traditional neighborhood development ordinances. And any municipality with more than 12,500 residents is required to write one. But the problem we're seeing is that uh without these ordinances in place that most progressive um land development is being done via PUD. Mixed use is preferred in the market. Blended density is preferred but there's essentially spot zoning across all of the case studies because uh not all communities have the TND ordinance in place. So, one of the big things that really grounded us in Wisconsin that we hadn't done in prior states was this this question of where are you historically in the timeline. And I want you to watch the lower leftand corner of the screen and I'm going to read you some numbers. So, we we actually went in and did quick models of building types in each community. And we saw in the lower left the single family detached um town houses, duplexes. This is a quad. the next building and then a small apartment building. This was very common in the 1900s up through the 1940s. There are 21 units illustrated here on 3/4 of an acre of land, which gives you a net 28 dwelling units per acre. So that's not metropolitan center numbers, but for smaller communities, that's a really healthy missing middle density. And then we get into the 1960s and suddenly with the parking requirements and the setback the huge setbacks that came online in that era. Uh the town houses went away entirely. We're left with in the lower left single family detached duplex. This is still a quad and then a small apartment building. But you're noticing, you can notice how this expands out on the screen that these because of the parking and the setbacks, these buildings are taking up a whole lot more air area. So we have 16 units now on 1.22 acres for 13 dwelling units in acres. So we went from 28 to 13 um almost did a flip of the switch with Uklitian codes. And then finally the 1990s to the present. You can see what's happened. The the lots have gone off the top of the um screen area in size. So we we got the townhouse back for building types. We still have the duplexes, but we lost that sweet spot of three, four and three to six units in small apartment buildings. And then we of course acquired the garden apartment. Um, so this is illustrating 11 units on 1.86 acres. So we've gone from 21 dwelling units per acre to six dwelling units per acre on average if you were making a neighborhood of all the building types in um that are common in Wisconsin communities. So the big takeaway for us in this process in in Wisconsin was for them they're do if you do nothing else do this statement was to align dimensional standards to match the context. Part of that is political. Um, and we'll get into the discussion with Brett on this, not to freak out the single family neighbors. Um, and part of it is to utilize your existing infrastructure effectively. To permit ADUs by right, which shockingly many communities don't, and to reduce parking minimums. So, with that, I'm going to hand it off to Gail to talk more about why they invited us to help them. Always helps to unmute yourself. Good morning and good afternoon to some of you. I'm Gail Sunumi, the member engagement communications director for the League of Wisconsin Municipalities. And Susan, thank you for that. It really illustrates the need here in Wisconsin. Um, I'm here to give you a little bit of an idea of what Wisconsin looks like, a little bit of an idea of the league, and a little bit about the project before we hand it over to Bart, and then leave time for discussion and questions. So, first, a little bit about Wisconsin. We're the 20th most populous state in the nation with a population of 5.91 million. Um, Susan talked about the number of uh units of government that um can write code. In Wisconsin, there are 615 cities and villages. Cities and villages are really or forgive me but interchangeable for for this um this context. Uh it's village is just a a political um name for something that is really kind of a city and other mean in other states. So 615 cities and villages and I think of interest to you might be that the mediansiz city and village in Wisconsin is,450 in population. So even with Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, etc. All the cities that you might be familiar with and unlike our neighbor our neighbor to the west, Minneapolis, St. Paul, umund,450 in population, a lot of small municipalities and really spread throughout the state. Um so the league, the league was founded in 1898. Uh of those 615 cities and villages, um all but a handful are members of the league and always have been. uh we're we're a strong organization and probably mirror the kind of organization that you have in your state or um your locality as well um who represent cities and villages. So uh going on to the next slide, Rob, please. Thank you. I want to talk a little bit about Kurt Watinsky, our deputy executive director, who found CNU's zoning guide for Michigan and Vermont and was uh really fascinated by it and saw that this was applicable in Wisconsin as well and uh decided to spearhead this project. So, uh Kurt worked with the center on new urbanism, of course. Thank you. and uh had several funding and technical partners as well. Realtors, the builders, ARP, as Susan mentioned, our housing and economic development authority, uh the commercial realtors, and the American Planning Association. And not only did they help fund the project, uh but they really acted as technical support partners throughout the project. Next slide, please. Let's talk about the process just a little bit. The first step in the process was conducting case study workshops uh with five Wisconsin communities who raised their hand to um volunteer for this and I've divided them here into three and two. Oaklair Wakaaw and Wanaki are growing. They're generally along um the highway corridors. So they have a growing population that's growing a little bit faster than some other municipalities throughout the state. For example, Horcon and Ripen are not on corridors necessarily, but all of them have need for housing and need for change. Next slide, please. Next step in the process was conducting a regulatory assessment. Three, engaging with the Wisconsin context. And thank you Susan for those slides. I think it really gave a good indication of why we needed this report and why this work is valuable here. And then uh you worked with the municipalities that were case studies and others as well to identify seven core recommendations and you've mentioned three of those in your you do nothing else do this first and I haven't listed them here but they are listed on our website in an article that Kurt wrote for our magazine in February 2022. Next slide please. So then uh about a year later and after a lot of hard work um both on the ground and through Zoom and um surveys and all kinds of things, we have our Wisconsin specific users guide and it really is Wisconsin specific and this was important to us and uh a huge benefit I think for our municipalities. Um, and you can see the table of contents there. And something I think that really surprised us that Susan, you alluded to briefly was the recommendations that you have for how to talk about middle housing uh and the need and talking about the people that need the housing like the teachers and the firefighters and and the service workers and connecting those people to people you might know or perhaps the person that you were at the beginning of your career when you were living in your parents' basement or you needed an affordable place to live that was close to work because you didn't have a are or whatever it was, whatever your circumstance was. So, connecting it to the person to get rid of a little bit of that nimism that we find is so prevalent. Also on this slide, you'll see the link to uh the resources on the league's page and I think uh I'll put that in the chat later on and Rob was also going to um connect you to all of the the zoning guides that CNU has worked on and their other resources. Next slide, please. So once we had the guide in February of 2022, CNU staff was kind enough to come to Wisconsin, which is not the most welcoming place in in February. It's dark and cold and rainy and and damp, but we appreciated it and they held three trainings throughout the state as well as a Zoom training and we had over 100 city and village leaders and staff um come to those trainings. um they were divided uh they were a dayong training divided into training that was more specifically for the elected officials and staff and then in the afternoon really drilling down for the planning staff and I think that was a really valuable way to do it and then we we're seeing results uh Ripen is one of the case study communities you see there in the headline um but other communities are also taking this and and charging with it we'll hear from Bart in a minute about what Shorewood has done but even before uh some of this work was done. Mount Pleasant, for example, which is a small village in southeast of Wisconsin, which may be familiar from the Foxcon project, had started this work already, as had the city of Madison, but we're also aware of other municipalities that are now taking the guide and really using it to their advantage within their municipality. Next slide. So, thank you. Um, spearheading the project was Kurt Watinsky, our deputy executive director. He would be happy to answer questions as would I. Um, but if you want to uh contact him, his email is there on that last slide. I'm at gsumi atlwm-info.org and I'd be happy to point you in the right direction. I'll hand it over to Bart. I'll mute myself first here. Um, things going. Sorry, that wasn't the right place. Okay, so here we go. Um, so yeah, thanks to um Susan, Gail, and K and uh um Rob for their introductions. Just as a as a way of brief reminder or um reference, so the village of Shorewood had been doing code reform prior to the league's um uh publication with along with the CNU. And so I attended one of those sessions um that was um offered by the CNU and found great great value in it and connected with Susan and and other people. And so they just asked me, you know, to to perhaps share some of the work that we have been doing before the publication was done and that we continue to do. Um so what I'm sharing here I I always kind of downplay it as not the most revolutionary um kind of actions. If you participated two weeks ago or a month ago, we heard about, you know, eliminating zoning, things of that nature. um the much more re reality for most of us here is that um code reform is necessary just to continue to work what we're doing and so small steps is how we've um decided to take it on and so um I'm just going to give a brief overview of what we've been doing for the past four or five years here in the village of Shorewood just some brief context for those not familiar um the village of Shorewood and to Gail's point we are a village by um government form only we are an urban land use um an inner ring street car suburb of Milwaukee just north of the city um we are a walkable community. We are very dense. We tout ourselves as the most dense community in the state of Wisconsin. That is largely based upon the fact that we are relatively small. And so there are other neighborhoods and and communities that have similar densities in in their ver in their parts. But um overall we are a very dense community. Um we are um known for high quality single family homes and duplexes. Um we are bifurcated by two mixeduse commercial corridors that have over 250 commercial occupancies. So we do have a fair bit of commercial activity as well. Um but because of those duplexes and that commercial corridors, we are actually 54% rental and so we do have a lot of um conflict between homeowners and renters when it comes to uh an ideal zoning code. So we deal with that quite a bit as well. Um we are adjacent to WM um but we are um a little more higher end in the market in terms of rental properties and so we're not necessarily um what people might think of as student housing but we definitely have a lot of students living within the village. Um, and then I think one thing that's very important, at least from my perspectives. We're a highly engaged community, we have 15 plus committees, and so there's a lot of different perspectives, a lot of different priorities from everyone coming at this um kind of stuff. And so what we've had to do here in short is find a way to prioritize and and make these um mutual connections between those committees um because as the as the bottom note notes um we have a planning staff of one. So getting getting things done sometimes um can be quite difficult when you have a lot of different um perspectives in the room. Just a brief overview here. Um to the east um is Lake Michigan. To the west is the Milwaukee River corridor. Um uh the the areas highlighted here in red are commercial corridors. This image is slightly old. So we do have additional redevelopment that's taken place on this corridor since that time, but you get the kind of the perspective of we are a fully built out community, rather dense with four quadrants of residential um development. um uh uh separated by these commercial corridors. So before we could begin um uh any sort of code reform, we had to set the stage, which I think most communities have these kind of plans. We have a comp plan, we have a vision plan, but we also have a little more um unique um kind of uh documents as well. So we had a transportation and parking analysis. We had a comprehensive housing market study. Both of those had public engagement processes. So they kind of um were able to um identify those specific areas as as things that we needed to improve upon and each of those did offer um specific recommendations within them. So being able to use both broader documents and more specific documents helped us set the stage to understand what we needed to do here um to move forward. Um and so with that, the village of Shorewood has an annual prioritization process in which all of our um departments and committees do um submit this form so that we can kind of get everyone's um ideas on the table because as I mentioned before, we have a lot of competing interest in terms of who wants to do what, but we also have a very small staff um to be able to do those things. So here, for example, is the plan commission's prioritization um sheet in I believe 2019 um of which four of those ideas um really related to updating um code sections within the zoning chapter. And so with that, we decided to embark on um uh off- streetet parking as one of the priorities um to to begin with um because to um to um Susan's point before, rewriting a a code and a form-based code obviously takes a lot more time, effort, and money. So we did what we could to get the process started. Um, so with that, uh, parking really has been a large issue in the village of Shorard for perhaps, um, too long. Um, the the picture on the right here shows the condition probably of the sign when it was last touched. And so, um, no parking on any village street from 3:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. Um, that really has impacts in a dense community in terms of not being able to park on the street at night. And so that limited um, both residential and um, you know, apartment users in terms of how they can interact um, with with parking in the village. And so the first thing that we did was we looked at on street regulations which acknowledged are not zoning but perhaps impacted zoning as equally as much. And so with that we did a um the transportation and parking analysis that I mentioned showed that we had plenty of capacity for on street parking. And so it took probably um a year and a lot of public meetings to um establish um more inclusive parking regulations. and that set the stage for off- streetet requirement modifications that hopefully will um impact affordability and um other matters in terms of development coming forward. But getting on street parking regulations in line with um both the region and reality um really was a necessary first step. Your community might not need to do that. Um so this is kind of unique to Shorewood or maybe you do as well, but understanding how these um regulations uh uh impact each other really is necessary from our perspective. And so, um, the primary, um, opposition that we had in terms of not allowing parking would be snowfall here in Wisconsin, which, you know, might have 10 to 15, um, impactful days a year, but for some reason that that needed to dictate the entire calendar, um, which which really didn't make sense. And so, working with the police department and Department of Public Works, we took our street grid, um, kind of mapped it out in terms of street widths. And so, anything of a certain width allowed parking year round, we thought there was no issues with that. There were streets 30 to 34 feet wide that allowed parking on one side only in the winter and then under 30 feet only allowed parking on one side throughout the year round. So just kind of visually showing this to the community and rationalizing, you know, how these regulations met with our operations really did allow us to adopt these regulations um which allowed um a lot of other efficiencies along the way. So previously we limited on street overnight parking permits to um a handful of qualifying districts or or developments. Um there were numerous districts temporary requests. It was an administrative nightmare. We had two full-time staff that essentially worked full-time on um you know answering parking questions and and monthly entering permits and things of that nature. So with the introduction of the on- street overnight parking permit, um we've made it available to all residents. Um apartment dwellers and single family homes alike. Um administrative efficiency has been immense. That has freed up additional staff to do additional um things outside of parking. Um it it actually has increased permit revenue um which which may or may not be a goal. Um it reduced enforcement and so you know the the parking checkers don't have to be as vigilant in terms of understanding um certain areas because the the availability is just it's it makes it much more sense and then it eases communication between us and the residents in terms of uh allowing them to um you know understand the regulations much easier. Um, this was adopted in early 2021. Um, and the fears were not realized. And so within the within the year-long 2020 process of planning for this, we heard a lot of reasons why we couldn't do this. Um, nothing was realized. And that did build additional support for additional reform. So that was a big win for us early on, which then allowed the plan commission to proceed with other um, uh, other um, code reform, which notably went to off- streetet parking requirements. So um, the village of Shorewood prior to 1951 did not have off- streetet parking requirements. um it built the village that many people know and love. Um our our housing and and most of our development pattern happened prior to that. And so it's it's always interesting to point out that what what people love was built on something that you can't build today. And so in 1951, we introduced off- streetet parking requirements over the next 70 years. Those were actually raised and increased to the point where development could not take place without um either financial assistance or a plan development district or a special exception. And so this was the result of a portion of our commercial corridor. And this isn't necessarily the only portion that ended up like this. But um off street requirements did essentially, you know, gut large parts or prohibit large parts of the corridor from being developed into what the community and in the last 10-15 years wanted to see. And so over the last 10-15 years, all of these developments did take place. They all took financial assistance. They all took some sort of parking special exception um which at some point just just proved the point that the code was not working. And so the community evolved into um you know redeveloping these types of uses along the corridor which by and large um the community wanted. And then even um within the last two years we had two more developments that are currently under construction. That once again required exceptions to the rule. Um you know because our our previous calculation was 1.75 parking spaces per um per unit which in a dense community with with narrow lots just wasn't feasible unless we provided some sort of financial assistance either to build a garage or to go underground or something of that nature which just drove up the cost of all these projects and made things really unaffordable and um perhaps not market driven. So, um, we actually utilized the Michigan's CNU, um, guide. And so, that's kind of how I was, um, introduced to the CNU's guides, both Michigan and Vermont. And it really just it it it lays it out for you. And it's a good guide for people in smaller municipalities, um, and even people that don't have professional zoning on staff, you know, to just to read it and to understand how you can do this. And so for us, the process of reform really involved research, understanding, um introducing and educating the community to the topics, um listening to their concerns, developing, um a code, uh draft in response to those concerns, and just continuing the way along through adoption. Um and so in our case, this this did take probably, you know, um a good year to six months. um and being able to find that time um within the prioritization process is difficult, but it really has been helpful in terms of building um the case to move forward with other reforms. And so we found the guide in Michigan super helpful and I was happy to participate in reviewing um and understanding the guide in Wisconsin. And so I hope it's useful and it continues in other states as well because local context really is helpful because um even Michigan, which is very similar to Wisconsin, people people would tell me, well that's Michigan, not Wisconsin. And so having one available for your own your own municipality, your own state I think has been really nice to have. Um so the results we clarified the applicability of when off- streetet parking was required and so um we've we've exempted a lot of things um based on the desired context of the village. So you know commercial properties under 2500 square feet don't require parking. Um we we we clarified that it's not required when a when a a new occupant changes. We had a lot of special exceptions that were simply based on um you know the occupancy of a building had changed and now it's no longer an office the restaurant but the the parcel itself didn't change and so just clarifying when off- streetet parking should be required was was a big step for us and then um updating our multif family requirements which was the most difficult because um to Gail's point nimism does exist here in short it exists in most places it was utilized often as a as a reason to deny projects um but um using the chart below here what we did is we we identified all multif family and mixeduse properties in the village and showed what the actual parking ratio was. And once again, we were developed before parking ratios were a thing. Um the real number here in Georgia is that there's 34 parking spaces per unit in these developments um per per each development, right? And so we had 1.75 required that was grossly out of line with what people knew and loved to be Shorewood. And so um politically um we weren't able to reduce it to that reality or to even lower. you know, some places are removing parking requirements. We couldn't get that way. Um, but politically, we did land on a a revised ratio of one to one, which has been much more in line with recent developments and hopefully does not require exceptions or financial assistance and things of that nature, which will hopefully lead to more equity and affordability in terms of our um new developments. And so, it it takes a lot of work, but it's been worth it for us. Um, the lessons that we learned were it helps to take the issue separately. So once again, as as Susan mentioned, a large co-re rewrite would take years um for us, but we we were able to identify, okay, we're going to tackle on street parking first because that's that's the bigger problem here and then off streetet parking hopefully will be able to um to fall in line after that. Do your research and know your context. I spent a lot of time in our village vault, you know, understanding when these ordinances were adopted, why they were adopted, um what it means for us locally. Um, like I said, people weren't necessarily interested in what, you know, San Francisco or Minneapolis or even Milwaukee were doing, um, because we are our own place. Um, understand affordability and equity because, um, those really are what's driving a lot of, um, political momentum to understand that these changes are necessary. Overcommunicate if possible. I mean, the amount of village managers memos and postcards and things that we sent out, I think was kind of, you know, unnecessary in terms of what actually um was uh was resulted in um in in the engagement efforts. But being able to tell people that we we've given everyone more than enough opportunity to understand these issues really help politically drive the ability to um adopt these changes, stay on track. plenty of people will try to um you know take these issues in a different way. So, back to our initial um uh lesson of taking things separately and individually, just being able to stay on track and whether it's this or ADUs or other other zoning reform, um being able to keep keep momentum is is critical. Um listen and be willing to compromise. Once again, there were people that wanted to eliminate parking. There were people that wanted to go to 1.5 or to 0.5. Um one is where we landed. And I I I hope that um we can continue to look at that number as as we need to. But um it really is a political process at the end of the day and you need to understand that be prepared for criticism and extra meetings. Um extra meetings uh definitely in our case um tried to lengthen the process but once again we stayed on track. We held those meetings to answer those questions. There was criticism but we were able to to respond to those with facts and then report on progress and consequences. So, once we adopted these ordinances, we always um provided a six-month check-in just to give the um plan commission and political leaders the understanding of where they've been. And once again, not having that huge backlash or that huge um that huge problem after the fact has led to more reform. And so, um unfortunately, parking has taken probably three or four is three or four years to tackle here. Um we've hopefully moved on from that. And so, um, in progress and up next, we're doing a commercial zoning update that actually will, um, incorporate more form-based elements into our commercial corridors, provide more predictability, um, uh, in terms of what development we're getting here. We also will tackle accessory dwelling units, um, which is in the Wisconsin guide. So, we look forward to referencing that. And then, um, with with the rise of COVID and working from home, we're also looking at home occupancy regulations, which have not been touched in probably 50 years as well. And so, this is what we're prioritizing and tackling next. And on an annual basis, we will review this list and and perhaps add more or remove things from it. But um for now, we are in the midst of a commercial zoning update. It's been almost a year now since we started this. Um we've been doing a lot of redevelopment plan development district, which is which as Susan mentioned, you know, essentially spot zoning by saying this this this spot can be something different than what the zoning code allows. And so we're cleaning up the zoning code to to get more predictable development. it'd be a lot easier to administer those predictable developments um and remove the messy process of of a PUD or a PDD. So, we're hoping that this is the next step towards easing um and understanding development within our community. It will define our community expectations, incorporate those form-based elements um with respect to, you know, required storefronts and things of that nature. And perhaps most importantly for us, establish a clear process that is not PDD driven in terms of unknown meetings and things of that nature. So people hopefully in the village will get a more clear understanding of the development process and why why things take place the way they do. And that is my presentation. So I will turn it back over to um I believe Rob. Actually I think what the way we're going to do the next section is I just have a couple of questions for each of you and then we will go to uh the questions from from um the the listeners. Um so to go back you raised you raised it Gail and then Brett you followed up on it to go back to the issue of nimiism. Um and and the barrier that that is to substantial code reform. The interesting thing I thought about the league was that you all were crystal clear that that was one of your biggest barriers to providing housing. Um, and you asked us to put the section in on community engagement. Can I ask um do you all have other tools? Do you have other um recommendations to your local governments on how to advocate for um housing within their communities? We don't really the CNU guide is really the the core of our recommendations. Since we have a very small staff and you've really expanded um the ability of what we were able to do by providing this guide, uh we have not written about it in the magazine or had any other focus on nimiism other than the guide. Yeah. So Brett, to your to your on the ground experience with nimiism, um it's interesting because as you know, I encountered one of your trustees who was terrified of your zoning reform. Um, and as you see yourself moving in, what through that experience, did you find that one thing was more successful than another and having that dialogue in a convincing manner? Yeah, I think just back to my process, overcommunicating, staying on track um, and being ready for criticism were all really valuable lessons um, to us. and and often times, you know, it's it's one or two voices that that take away an entire meeting. And just, you know, understanding that who's in the room does not necessarily represent what's in the community. And being able to find those other voices and being able to bring those um into the conversation is is really important. But, um, yeah, criticism is going to happen. You're going to get sued for something. You're gonna you're going to have um your opponents tell you that you're out of line. be a I mean our board of appeals is kind of out of control these days in terms of people believing that either staff or the plan commission is not working within their with their bounds but it does happen and that's why we have to stay on track and just understand that what we're doing is is based on facts based on a process based on reality um but it does take a lot of patience um to get through it but overcommunicating I think really is critical to letting people say that they they were part of the process they understood what was happening and they might not like it um not everyone's going to like this. That's that's understandable as well. But um you just have to make sure that you allow those voices to be heard but stay on track when you know that um other voices are also representative. Yeah. So someone had put in the chat earlier uh Brent Swagger that he'd be curious to hear about the theory of reducing and removing parking requirements for housing and the reality of development proposals that incorporate adequate parking. And I'm assuming from that, for example, let's and and I think Shorewood found that sweet spot of of compromise. But um for example, I think about Portland and some of the issues they've encountered on their corridors where they removed all parking minimums and now the um four like four and five story buildings. the residents are parking on the adjacent neighborhood streets which you know is resulting in chaos. And so I think finding like you did some delicate way to at least begin incremental change that gives you a lot more um leverage if you find that you're you still don't need that much that that you have room to reduce it further. Um, do you have any other thoughts on your ne your next phase since parking was brought up already? Do you have any thoughts for, you know, in the best of all possible worlds in five years, I'd like to get to X? Are you happy to be the one to one? Um, I personally as a planner and as a as a person, you know, who doesn't actually own a car and bikes and takes transit and and lives in a in a great dense urban environment in the Metro Milwaukee region don't know that um the 1:1 ratio needs to be kept as it is. I think the market often times will dictate whether or not people can develop without that parking ratio. And I'm not sure that the zoning code in our case is the place to have to have that. But once again, politically in Shorewood, that's where we landed because um I mean it took us two years to get people to be able to park on street, let alone new people parking on the street, right? So um I think it's always going to be a process and it's clear to understand that, you know, if it's written in 1951, you shouldn't wait 70 years to to do it again. And so that six-month check-in that we do, so at the budget time every year annually, we do provide parking numbers so that the board understands whether or not the permit fee is is the right ratio because, you know, there's no such thing as free parking. And so, um, we understand all those concepts and I think it's something that you just have to keep keep your eye on. I don't know that one to one is going to stay forever, but I also don't know that it's going to go anytime soon. Right. So Gail, I have one last question for you and then for you and then we can start responding to the ones in Q&A and that is um thinking of part your partnership with Guided um is that how you say it? Your acronym. Okay. Your your housing and economic development uh authority. Um, do they have I'm thinking about the the collaboration between Michigan Economic Development um cooperation and and MML, the Michigan League. And the interesting thing about the league and their work for zoning reform is MEEDC had built in all of these redevelopment ready grants that said basically you have to reform your zoning to be eligible for this money. Um, do you have any um carrots like that in the state of Wisconsin that you can use to incentivize housing reform at No, that sounds that sounds great. And no, not that I'm aware of that those connections have not been made between the money that's available and and changes in zoning code. That's something it's a fabulous tool in in Michigan and people kind of line up to get their codes um amended for that for that reason. Yeah, thank you. I'm writing that down. Yeah, something to think about. Thank you. Okay, so uh going to the Q&A. Um someone asked about discussing the history and background of formbbased codes and is it the same as performance-based zoning? And the answer to that is no, it's not. Uh it's quite a different theory in zoning. They both were involved the theory of change of course, but formbbased codes are are looking explicitly at um prioritizing the physical standards that are in zoning like height and setback and um parking location and parking quotas. uh prioritizing that over use um which conventional codes obviously prioritize use. Performance zoning has almost ceased to exist because a couple of things it's so bloom and hard to administer and um secondly it's almost impossible for people to understand um you know the criteria. So you mentioned that uh Jean you mentioned that Los Cruus had used it and and discarded it and it's for that reason largely it's um it's based on you know performance standards that are hard to oversee. Um and then the final question there and maybe uh Bart with your interest in formbbased standards. Someone asked is that applicable in a very rural county with limited private land. It's only 6%. Um I personally would say formbbased standards are the gold standard in any environment, but I don't know if you have further thoughts on that. Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean formbbased standards to me are are what the community expects for redevelopment. it's a matter of calibrating to the market of what you can you know require and so I think yeah even simple um building placement is a is a form-based element and so making sure that you prioritize that over whether you know a particular use is is preferred but getting the getting the environment I think um in line whether you're in a a dense community or rural community really is something that just needs to be calibrated to what your um development community um can understand and staff can administer to that point as well, right? And so, you know, segueing off of that, that's the reason that the project for code reform exists. It's how to do the little things that get the greatest impact uh without completely throwing out your your uh existing structure. I like to use the illustration of if you're I'm a I'm a Apple Macintosh fan and when you switch from PC to Mac it's a big learning curve and uh for about six weeks you wish you hadn't but then once you get into it then you never go back. So switching operating systems and zoning is a big heavy lift especially with a small staff. Um so in that respect we think PCR is the best tool. Um someone else had asked and maybe Gail this question you could lead with it is do you have any guidance on how to start conversations on code updates um items like parking or obviously you know a four-letter word in most political environments. Uh everyone's afraid of getting the phone call from the iate neighbor. Um, and nimism is the same thing. I I don't know if you all are advocating at the at the community w with your constituents at the community level for zoning reform, but if so, do you give them tools for how to start those conversations? Really, the zoning guide that the enabling better places is is our best tool. Um, I really like the the BART's approach to taking the data on parking and having the data speak for themselves. People had a, as you said, Bart, had a certain perception of what was allowed and and what was reality and the reality was actually different. And I think that that's probably your best bet is to start with Bart, do you have any other thoughts on that? How do you start the conversation? I mean, yeah, I'll give the the the plan commissioner to short a lot of credit. They they are the ones that um you know, propose these changes and so um I'm I'm happy and and blessed to work with a ambitious group of plan commissioners. But even if that's not the case, you know, there's a lot of um even these these guide these other things that that should be shared with leaders who are looking to make those changes. And so um to to to us, the the biggest thing was prioritizing and being real with your expectations. And that's why incremental develop incremental code reform made the most sense. But I I think most people that are in public service, whether they're elected trustees, alder persons, plan commissioners, are are looking for um ways to make their community better. And this this is a clear way of doing that. And so pointing out, you know, what you love about your community and and why you can't build it now. I think that's a that's a great way to get that conversation going. Yeah. Um so um someone also mentioned and then I want to get to well let's go with this one first to follow on with that. Um someone asked a question did it take a lot of persuading with uh DPW to get them on board for the additional on street parking. I mean, yeah, it was it was definitely a lot of conversations between between us, but I mean, the reality is that um snow happens in a lot of places that don't have such stringent regulations. And so, it was probably more of a community expectation. So, they were fine being able to plow around things. It was it was whether or not they were prepared or willing to take the phone calls from the community that that was, you know, seeing the change out there. And so, um, our DPW was actually very open to the idea and and understanding their role in the process of of building great places. Um, but it it really is a community expectation in terms of when that snowfalls, it it might take an additional, you know, couple hours or or day to get it to what it used to look like. You know, the expectation of curb to curb clearance is is not necessarily reality in in today's um staffing levels anyways. But I don't think DPW necessarily was um as much of a a a roadblock or discussion point as the community expectations of what their service levels would look like. Right. So, someone mentions this about Airbnbs and the negative impacts of that. Also, does that apply to ADUs? And I saw that Terry is here from Terry Keane from Atlanta. And I know Atlanta's really struggling with how to get um politically acceptable ADU um zoning in place and you know some neighborhoods accept it and others are u freak out about it. Anyway, um, uh, Gail, we had worked with some some communities. They weren't case study communities, but they participated in some of the workshops in the UP and very vacation centric communities, summer communities, but they obviously, you know what, the Airbnbs were destroying their local um their local available housing uh and and incre and decreasing affordability. Um have you all worked on any sort of policy around at the state level around um theories around Airbnbs? Uh we have uh the legislature has not um not understood the problem in the way that we would like them to understand the problem. This is particularly a big issue in Ashwabanon which is where Title Town and Lambeau Field is located. The village president in Ashwabanon, Mary Kardowski, this is her issue. I was talking to her the other day and there are very small houses selling for a million dollars um putting everyone else out of the market. So, you know, affordable housing is a huge issue in that community in part because of the fact that they host the Green Bay Packers and and it's party city, right? You're you're an elderly person who lives next to an Airbnb that becomes a party house that sold for a million dollars. Yeah. So, one thing that we we like to tell our clients is um put the appropriate regulations in the appropriate ordinance and short-term rental is not a zoning issue. Um it should have its own ordinance and whatever you decide locally um that's you know critical to your economy and your and your your place your character of your place whatever's critical there you have to codify it but don't confuse it with zoning because then you know like Bart said he has planning staff of one so don't make that his problem to oversee um when it really isn't it doesn't belong in zoning. But to ad to the ADU issue, I haven't personally seen with our um clients where ADUs have become a problem other than um I mean we we restrict size um to a maximum of one bedroom. So it's not substantially changing the density of the of the neighborhood. Therefore, it doesn't really have an impact on water and sewer. It really shouldn't have an impact on um traffic, especially if you're not requiring a parking space. So, I think adus are a very delicate way to increase your density, but it's at a scale that is um compatible with the place where you're putting it. it um do you have any thought further thoughts on that Bart? Yeah, in Shortwood ADUs haven't been necessarily discussed in terms of um um well at least yet in terms of the impacts in terms of density because once again we are a relatively dense community and and adding a single unit here and there is not necessarily the problem. um what where we've been kind of guiding the conversation in terms of whether it's aging in place or whether you're going to be able to currently you know afford your house and so with rising housing prices the opportunity to you know add rental income I think is probably where people are coming at it from here in Shorewood saying it's a good thing for you know existing homeowners to be able to provide that additional um unit and get some get some ability to maintain their home and and um uh h have the aging in place and and the cost kind of benefits of that. Um the the density really hasn't come up as as the issue because once again to your point, these are very small units. They're they're oneoff here and there. And so um our our nimism or our bigger problems um with development have been the the larger the larger developments. I think gentle density um hasn't been quite the problem here because we're used to gentle density. Yeah. So um sorry I didn't uh collect these questions in in topics but I see another one about u on street parking before we leave that al together and the question is were there other policies that you had to deal with besides the one about when it was permitted like for example this um this person had issues like time limits like in their town it if they weren't moved within 24 hours they were towed which I think is essentially what happened in Shwood and street sweeping for them, snow plowing for you. So like with your snow snow events, do you have um on street parking implications tied to that in Shwood? Yeah, I mean on our commercial corridors, we have the ability to do a um snow emergency that would require people to relocate, move them. I don't think we've actually done one of those in my time here and so we have been able to work around it. um DPW does a very diligent hard job um at doing that and so they've been able to maintain that. Um we do have the requirement to move your car once or once every 24 hours and so if you know if snow was piled around that car clearly hasn't been moved and so we do have that. Um there is a discussion about increasing towing or booting or things of that nature for any problem vehicles. Um it hasn't been a huge issue to us. We haven't had a lot of snow since we've adopted this ordinance and so we'll see when that comes. But um yeah, a lot of our on street parking I think was based on the fact of our proximity to WM and not wanting um to be uh you know a parking lot for commuter traffic. And so um being able to require daytime permits and things like that, we we've been able to calibrate to those specific um fears but not necessarily just get rid of all parking. And so being able to have more nuanced regulations is is definitely critical to that. and being able to work with your DPW, with your police department on when they see those issues, what's the better regulation rather than throwing the whole thing out. Okay. So, I'm seeing a question that I'm not quite sure how to interpret because so if if you both would look at the Q&A as well. Uh James Abbott asks um that he's having problems with particularly uh partially built out blocks that have been upzoned from R10 or R20 in later years to one acre. How to create some continuity. Um so I guess it's how to create continuity in upzoning in general. I'm not sure what R10 and R20 um might be physically. So I'm not sure how that transitions to one acre. I'm not I I I don't know how to answer that unless one of you do. Yeah. So James, if you can add some detail about um about your question to help us to understand how the how the area changed, then we we'll be able to respond. Um then also someone asked what role and I assume this is for you Bart. What role did public transit play in your code update process? Did they have were they um stakeholders? They weren't stakeholders necessarily because um the routes um they just readed all their routes and they did a um you know they kind of rightsized their routes and their timing and so we worked with understanding what service levels they could provide. It's provided through the county um for us here. So, but we definitely did tout that um on these commercial corridors that the zoning um largely impacts that those are both on um express um or rapid um service bus lines. And so whether or not people used the bus um because that was part of a question too is whether or not people are using it um it still is available. And so if you build an apartment that you know is more transit ready, people will use it but use it more. But if you build an apartment that has two parking spaces and you're paying for those parking spaces, you're likely not going to use it. So being able to um build the development that allows for this transit use which we're very hap we're very blessed to have here. Um but they weren't necessarily stakeholders per se. They had done their process um you know before we entered into ours. Um but nothing really changed as a result of it other than making it hopefully more transit um accessible to our community. So then here's one last question and then I guess it's time for us to wrap up and to thank you all for all of your great questions um and for attending today. But um do your parking requirements in Shorewood have any accommodations for shared vehicles or other alternative car ownership models that might support the reduced um parking quotas. We we definitely allowed for shared use in terms of um so if if there's a commercial occupant that's not using it at night, you can you can have that shared use with a residential who wants to use it overnight. And so we have that. Um I don't know that it's been utilized. Um I don't have any reference of you know a great model of that. We do allow for that. Um I'm blanking on um other examples of that. Um we unfortunately um we had Zipar here in the village but Zipar left us. We we would have been happy to to keep them and use them as a as a um resource for people but the market just wasn't um working for them. And so we're definitely open to those those concepts of of of ride sharing or or car sharing or things of that nature. But um right now it is a parking thing and so um the parking can be shared amongst users that have differing needs. Um but I haven't I haven't seen that um take place a lot at least. Okay. So I'm going to Rob I want to take a minute and just give a quick response to James Abbott about his change in lot area from 10,000 or 20,000 to one acre. And I have to say that's, you know, that's exactly the sort of thing that we were seeing in Wisconsin was how these areas transitioned over time and it made those historic parcels legal non-conforming and then it was incredibly difficult to do anything with them. And so I think our um our recommendation to the state of Wisconsin was to um was to um change the zoning back to what it had been to make it match, you know, the majority of the existing lots. And it was really the only way um for there to be continuity to your question. and and then it automatically empowered a lot of infill. So I think Rob, we've hit all the um all of the questions. Well, that's awesome. This has been a great discussion. [clears throat] I wanted to thank um all of you uh Gail and Bart and Susan for um a really fine conversation and I wanted to thank the listeners and those who ask questions. Um, and uh um I really appreciate uh the interest in in CNU's project for code reform and that we're able to have a a show on that and I'm sure there'll be more in the future. And uh with that I will just end it and uh once again uh thank you all. Thank you.