Flagstaff Sustainability Commission Reviews Sweeping Zoning Density and Building Code Overhauls Headed for June 16 Council Vote

Hello everybody. I'd like to call our meeting to order. I'm Amy Walowinsky, chair of the Sustainability Commission, and I'd like to welcome you to our May 2026 commission meeting. Um, let's uh go ahead and get started with our roll call. Amy Walawinsky, chair here. Vice Chair Mary Mezer here. Commissioner Audrey Ridge. Commissioner Cameron Carlson. Commissioner Alyssa Kazukian here. Here. Okay, thank you everybody. Um, next up we will do our land acknowledgement.

Commissioner Kazukian, will you please share that with us? Sure. Um, the Sustainability Commission humbly acknowledges the ancestral homelands of this area's indigenous nations and original stewards. These lands, still inhabited by native descendants, border mountains sacred to indigenous peoples. We honor them, their legacies, their traditions, and their continued contributions. We celebrate their past, present, and future generations who will forever know this place is home. Thank you.

Um, now we will move into public comment. At this time, any member of the public may address the commission on any subject within their jurisdiction that is not scheduled before the commission today. Due to open meeting laws, the commission cannot discuss or act on items presented during this portion of the agenda. to address the commission. Please either use the team's chat function or raise your hand to indicate that you would like to comment.

I will then recognize you and staff will unmute your microphone as needed. Yes, please come up and introduce yourself and and also please try to keep your comments within about three minutes. I'll try. Thank you. You ready? My name is Ken Shives. Uh, I've been living here, like I said, for about 10 years. I just recently got a plot at Bonita Gardens. Been volunteering for three or four years in all the three gardens.

And thank God I got a free scholarship because I'm so poor I couldn't afford it. But I enjoy doing garden. I'm trying to get in the master garden class. I missed it last year. But my comment is I've heard that the city of Flagstaff is considering closing Bonita and moving the whole garden someplace else. And I was not really happy with that when it's my first year. And it was all because the plan is to do that Rio D flag and they need to park their equipment there.

And I have an alternative to that. I don't know why with all the room you have at the sustainability office and all up at that warehouse that they couldn't park their equipment there and travel a minute to the ROD flag to work on it. And if it's trying to get down in there, there's a path over there that's big enough to drive a 950 frontend loader down. All they would have to do is level it off a little bit, put some rocks in there, and they could get all their equipment down in there.

I just don't see after the commission or the city spending all that money on that brand new fence around there to keep out the deer and the havalas.

I just don't see why they have to tear it all up and move it to another spot because it's going to be a lot to do and a lot of the people that garden there are not going to be happy because all the money they put into that garden and all the time they put in that garden now they've got to move it and change it and I just think it's a terrible thing to do to us even though it's only my first year actually gardening there.

So, the alternative is I think they have another place they could park their equipment and get it down in there to work. And uh that's all I had to say about that. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for bringing that to our attention. Anyone else for public comment? Okay, we'll move to the next item on the agenda, which is the approval of minutes from our April meeting. Is there any feedback or recommended changes from anybody? I move to approve them. I second. I I And now we'll move on to business.

First up on the agenda, um the land availability and suitability study code analysis project, otherwise known as last cap. Um we'll have an update from Jenny Neman, the climate action section director, Tiffany Antl, the zoning code manager, and Jennifer Mickelson, our housing planning manager. All right, thank you folks. Um really appreciate the time. It's been a long time coming um for us to get here. Sorry, just need to get situated out of here.

Um it's been a long time coming and we're really thrilled to finally be here. Um as Sher Wowinsky said, I am joined tonight with by Tiffany Antal and Jen Michaelelsson. Um this has been a project of many folks um and a partnership between our planning and development services division, our housing division and our sustainability division.

Um folks here tonight um there are folks that are not here tonight are Genevie P3 who you all know and has talked to the commission about this project before um multiple times I believe. um along with our lovely crew um as well as Michelle McNelte and PDS and Justina Costa. So, it has been a large effort um and we're also trying to work with pretty much every other division in the city as well. Um and so I'm going to go through um the code recommendations report.

The most important thing to know here is that this recommendation report has been prepared by our consultants um which are primarily Cascadia partners and DAO. Um and those consultants have spent three years. It's been a very long complex project studying the city of Flagstaff, studying our codes, our regulations, our goals, what building actually looks like in Flagstaff. Um and they have created recommendations. Um we are thrilled.

It's like an absolute privilege to get that outside support um and recommendations. And so staff are presenting these to the commissions. We were at the housing commission um earlier today. We were at planning and zoning last night.

Um but this is the work of our consultants of that consulting team and it's really important that that is that sort of outside analysis because they can really help us and say well looking at across the US this is what we're seeing this is how we're doing and they really have that expertise. So while staff is presenting this, this is the work of the consultants um and these are recommendations on how to move us forward.

We will be at city council um to discuss this and and the consultants will actually be in town which we're very excited about. That will be June 16th. Yep. That's that's why that date is there. Um and so I encourage anybody to tune into that. We're really excited um for that conversation with council.

After that conversation with council, we will get some direction from council um make sure they're all good to go and then the really hard work begins of changing code um and getting into the details. And so that's just all to say what you see here tonight are those consultant recommendations. Where we end up with code will deviate from those consultant recommendations in some ways. Right? They have made those recommendations from three years of studying Flagstaff.

They are very Flagstaff specific, but they will deviate as staff works through it. And so that's a just to say like there's still lots of time and all of this will come back to council. Not sure how much will go to every commission because there's going to be a lot. Um but just that's to say we're sort of at the start of a process here. Um had to make sure Tiffany was still here. Um all right folks. Um we have five parts to what I'm going to talk about tonight.

I'm not going to dwell too much on here, but we'll do background. Um then we'll do zoning, parking, incentives, and code barriers. Just a little bit of background, and the commission has heard much of this before. Um what we want to do here is really go through um those final recommendations and then, you know, really go into um where we go from here. There are three policy goals that this project is trying to advance.

The first is housing affordability and supply that is backed by our 10-year housing plan. The second is climate action that's backed by our carbon neutrality plan. And the third is community growth and livability and that is backed by our newly adopted regional plan. This project was delivered in three different parts. It started with the diagnostic report. Um we went out and talked to folks who use our codes. That's the development community. That's all kinds of professionals.

Um and we tried to think of figure out what are the real barriers to development and to meeting our housing and our sustainability goals. This is a large list. The consultants took this list of these barriers and then we got a concepts report. That concept report sort of tested scenarios and explored various ways to meet our goals. We looked at should we focus on incentives, should we focus on buy right goals, etc.

And we ended up be in between scenario two and three where we're going to in we are the recommendation says to we really want to push our buy right code and allow more by right but also beef up our incentives at the same time and the report that we have now is a streamlined result of those code concepts. Prior to the diagnostic we actually did an initial study um we call this the last cat project.

It is the land availability and suitability study is the last part and then the cap is the code analysis project. We're going to focus on the cap today that code analysis process. But this really helped us kind of set the stage and understand our barriers. It looked at how much buildable land do we have? What are specific opportunity sites that we could build on? Um and and that really defines what's actually possible, right? What can be done within Flagstaff?

We are landlocked by national forest generally right we have a lot of barriers just in itself and so the diagnostic built on top of this as well as this also informed the regional plan. So the last revealed that most of our future housing production will be on two types of sites. The first is infill that is um existing sites that are in transit oriented centers and communities. Um these are mostly commercially zoned within Flex. We won't talk about that. It's also reszoning of large tracks.

Those are on the periphery. Those are some of the larger areas that you have heard about that are getting developed that are essentially green field development. The implications that they found here then inform the code analysis project. Um we talk a lot about and we thought a lot about um how can we address those issues. Um, the first is streamlining the resoning process to create more certainty to make that easier to get the zoning that is good for everybody.

The next is thinking about the R1 and MR zones. Um, that's really how do we encourage compact neighborhoods at densities that support more affordable housing and at densities that support transit service. And then finally, how do we recalibrate key standards that limit density in commercial zones? I'm going to go through the recommendations of this report. There are six key recommendations. There's a lot to each of these. There's a lot of detail.

Um, but the first one, and this is maybe the most important, is increasing base max density. Um, how much you can build on our current land. Uh, Flagstaff has lower density, particularly in its downtown, than most of our peer cities, um, that we look at, and we've looked at them in a couple different ways. Now how we increase that density is a question and we'll get into the details and that is where we really rely on experts um to to really look at kind of the mechanisms there.

I am not that expert. I just want to be clear but I have them with me. Um the next is what's called floor to area ratio and and really kind of having a maximum Florida area ratio an F in residential zones. This is to say, you know, we've heard you, right? We've heard you community, right? When things are built that feel out of scale with their neighborhood, we hear about it, right?

Um, and so we want to be sensitive to those places that people love about Flag and F is one tool to help with that parking. Um, we need to look at lowering parking requirements. We also need to look at the winter parking ordinance as part of that. Next is a standard baseline for sustainable design. Um what we want is to figure out how to get more sustainable design into Flagstaff's buildings and into its developments. Um and so we want to come up with a flexible system to do that.

And then finally, we want to integrate our incentive programs that operate really separately. Um those incentive programs um are a little bit disjointed right now. And so we want to look about how can we combine them. And then finally, there's a lot else to look at. Um, this includes resource protection overlay. Um, street design and how do we sort of align more of our regulations with housing and climate goals.

I'm going to get into all six of these recommendations, but this is really just the preview. Okay. Um the recommendations that have been presented by the h the consultants their goal is to reduce the cost of development while advancing our housing and climate goals. That is the sole goal, right? And so when you look at this, what they looked at is what are the costs per unit and how can we get this down?

And so these slides just sort of show, you know, from left on that top graph there, it's it's this is our existing development. Um, and then going forward or going to the right are recommendations. And there's a lot of different ways you can do this. And this is where the devil's in the details. Um, but they all lower, if you look at that red line on top, they all lower the price of housing, right? And so that's a a goal of ours.

Um, we also want to, you know, do things that not only affect our single family zones, but also our multif family zones, our highway, residential zones, um, our commercial zones, etc., and really figure out how are we lowering costs across the board while also advancing our sustainability and housing goals. All right, zone district standards. Um, higher density is crucial to meeting housing and climate goals.

If you went and and asked you know the the technical experts right if you want to achieve high housing goals if you want to achieve climate goals density is that answer. What we know about density is the how really matters right and how we talk to our community about it really matters. How we move everybody forward really matters. Um but density has that ability to reduce cost. It reduces carbon and it provides community choice. When you have more density you have more choices.

you have a different array of housing products um and building products um and and we really need to think about how are we serving a variety of uh folks in Flagstaff um detached single family homes um you know the American dream you know that model has a lot of consequences to it right and it doesn't actually fit everybody because what we see is that when you build a lot of detached single family homes they're incredibly expensive and So we can just look at the math and say we're not really serving our whole community here.

What can we do differently? And density is one way to do that. Current densities limit land where it's feasible to build lower cost housing types. What this means is our existing density limits are pretty low compared to other cities um as I noted before and this has been the case for us going back to the 70s actually. Um and and so what we see are a lot of single unit detached single family homes and that's because our current standards really limit what you can build the recommendations.

So the gray is what we have now. That's our existing code. And these are the consulted consultants recommendations for what we would allow by right. By right means to allow without let's say a zoning change. Um and so you can see there are increases. they're pretty significant um throughout this graph and and that is because this recommendation is if you actually want to be serious about your housing and climate goals, this is what you need to do.

Um in some cases it could be a a doubling of density. Um in most cases it's a smaller increase than that. Um there's a lot of room for conversation here as we move forward. Again, it's going to be months and months of making all of these changes um and coming back and and trying to figure out what works. Um, Tiffany said it last night. You know, this might make folks feel uncomfortable. Um, that's actually the point, right? This is change, right?

Um, and so we want to talk through this change as a community. We want to think about this, but this is what the math says, right? If you want to do these things, if you want to achieve these two goals, um, if you want to achieve a livable community, you have to increase your density. Um, and so we need to also change other parameters to make that possible because again, it comes back to that how. We can't just increase the density.

we need to look at sort of that whole picture um of what we're trying to do. The R1 zone, so that is single family residential generally. There's some other things you can do in there, but generally um the R1 zone will make up a large share of future housing development that is in yellow. Um around this map, it's sort of there's the light yellow, which is I think mostly state land.

um or no maybe um the the darker yellow is that R1 land um and it will make up a a large portion of what will be developed. And so what we want to do is set that R1 zone up for success and how we think about what can we do within the R1 zone to achieve our goals. Our current R1 standards do not support lower cost housing. Um, it's fascinating. The consultants modeled with our current zoning what developers could build with our current standards in the R1 zone.

Um, and their numbers are about $900,000 per single family house. That is the price of what new single family homes are selling today. Um, we we pulled the numbers. I think it was like $911,000 in December. Um, so we're likely far past that now. Um and so that is they modeled that and said with your current zone um this is what you're getting and and that's exactly what we are getting. The system is working exactly as designed.

Um really unfortunately right and so we don't we allow six units per acre in the R1 zone. So six housing units per acre. Um but what if you talk to our planners we actually don't even see that density today. we often get three or four or five units per acre. Um, an acre is pretty large. If we're only putting three or four homes on it, we're going to run out of space really quickly, right? Um, and that's generally what we're seeing, right? And so, how do we think about that?

Um, the reason we're not even hitting our max density has to do with our overlapping standards. Um, and that gets into, you know, what else do we require on our land that makes it so people can't even hit that density. And so we want to look at how to continue to incentivize um reducing the size of homes. That is how you make homes that are more affordable. Um planners have tried to do this.

Um and often, you know, we get we make small all our lots or we make our lots smaller, but you actually end up with large homes on small lots, right? And then you have some interesting character concerns. um what we need to do is look at how do we really incentivize um those small homes on small lots, town homes, um small multif family, etc. So, what we want to do is increase choice and range. Um there are variety of people in Flagstaff. They don't all have the same housing needs.

Um and so we want to look at, you know, the proposal from the consultant is increasing density allowed in R1 zones from 6 to 12 units per acre. And the modeling from the consultants shows that you could probably get housing in that zone, just in that zone, down to between $500,000 and $900,000. Still a lot, but it's much much less than what we're seeing today. And again, we see that $900,000 today for new housing.

It's really important that that's just a new housing number, but that's what we're talking about here. We're talking about new housing. All right. So in terms of size um of the structure this is this gets this gets into that that how um increasing density allows more units but there's currently no regulation to constrain over overall building size and scale. Floor area ratio can fill that gap.

F is a way of assessing the size of the structure and all the floors of the structure and how that relates to the size of a lot. it's just one tool to look at the size and mass of a building. Um, and so it's it's an ability it would give us the ability to look at those that massing, right? And we've heard that from folks of, oh, we don't like these new buildings because they're too big and they take up too much of the lot, etc.

This would be a tool to try to control that and also to try to incentivize more uh multif family homes. And so if you look at um this diagram here, it's the Texas is small, but it's the first one on the upper left is one unit. The second one is two units, four units, and eight units. That is all within the same exact size building, right? And so when you think about this, wow, what can we do within this? And does one large big house really serve our community?

And how does that compare to an 8plex or a forplex that actually could be look like the same mass and size as a home that's already in my neighborhood, right? That might be a single family home, but maybe there's actually four units in there. Maybe there's eight units in there. Maybe different types of folks can try to live there. This one, um, a max F can prevent those out ofcale buildings and again they can encourage those smaller lowerc cost units.

Um, right now we see town houses being built in town. That is the red example, the second from the left there. Um, we see town houses going for about 900,000 still at about 2,000 square feet. Um, in that same space, right, in that same building, you could allow a forplex in that same home size. Um, and those smaller units, based on the modeling, could sell for closer to $500,000. um by while providing a very livable space fill still um at almost 1,200 square feet per unit, right?

That's a very reasonable size home. Um and so, you know, this is it's really helpful, I think, to to have an open mind in what this looks like. And Tiffany has offered to do some walking tours um and just look at like how does this actually show up in our neighborhoods, right? How does this look? But this is just one tool that the consultant recommends um to help us get those different types of housing.

Recommended F levels are scaled by the number of units to reward projects that build smaller lowcost units. So going back here, we would want to incentivize providing four homes on a lot, right? Instead of just one very very large home. Um and so the question is how can we do that? Um and it the way that it scales is you actually can build more you can have a higher ratio if you have a higher number of units. All right. Um, centers and corridors are a key building block of the regional plan.

Um, we really want to think about what are the areas that are transit supportive. Those centers, those corridors, if you if you looked at the regional plan maps, it really maps all of that out and tries to say where does it make sense for us to invest in transit, right? It's really hard to run a transit line if you don't have the density to support it. Um, you know, the bus that goes up to Cheshire, right?

they did actually just increase frequency here, but for a long time folks would say, "Well, why can't we get more bus service?" And it's like, "Well, there just aren't enough people up there, right?" And so there is essentially a transit supportive density um that can make the transit operate a lot more efficiently. Um and that really happens though when destinations, people's and jobs are all kind of along that same corridor. It's really hard to operate transit if if they're all spread out.

Um, and so if you increase density and proximity to existing transit, you can support higher frequency services. It's also a more economical and efficient way to add travel capacity without significantly increasing roadway capacity, which is incredibly costly, right? Um, and so this can actually help more people travel.

it can better use the existing traffic or existing capacity on our roadways because you've just got more folks on the bus because the bus is going to places that more folks are traveling to. The commercial zones are kind of this sweet spot um and they are where transit supportive land use is most effective. Um, thinking about housing capacity, um, we we modeled a walkshed to transit and within a half mile of our current transit stops, there's a ton of highway commercial zoning there.

And that highway commercial zoning can provide the biggest bang for our buck in terms of helping us to put that density onto our transit corridors that already exists, right? So, the question is like, wow, wouldn't it be amazing if we can put some affordable places to live, right? some some places that folks can actually access in town and they already have access to transit right away. That is what actually helps people get out of their cars, use our existing transit system.

It also supports a lower cost of living because car ownership is really expensive. And so this is just a way to think about how can we most efficiently provide those dwelling units that we desperately need.

current commercial zone standards right now they constrain density too strictly or they require an uncertain approval process um through what is called a conditional use permit um that is related to our high occupancy housing zone but essentially either we don't have enough density or there's too much uncertainty. The recommended commercial zone standards allow transit supportive density by right and they actually add on incentives for affordability and sustainability.

And so what the consultant's recommending is increasing by density to 50 to 60 units per acre. Um and and that's really exciting because that's just with by right. You don't have to go through a special process. You have that as part of your zoning. You have that right to that zoning. Then we look at what could we do beyond that? Um what could we do with incentives to help us achieve our sustainability and our housing goals.

And so the recommendation is increasing the density if the developers um participate in an incentive program. Tier one incentive is doing um sort of sustainability requirements. Tier 2 incentive is providing affordable housing and tier three incentive is providing both affordable housing and sustainability.

And what that does is it says if you want to participate in this and and go both with sustainability and affordability, we want to make that easier for you and we will provide that increased density. So, it's a way to kind of push our um incentives together and have them working in tandem while also getting density and also getting more units in return. This is I I think you know we're we're we're ready for this question.

We you know think that people might see 50 to 60 units per acre and be like, "Wow, that is a big change." And again, it is change. We need change. Um that's that's incredibly apparent, right? And so the reason that we're recommending 50 to 60 units per acre is because it allows for a really efficient construction type. We really are thinking about um the t cost of construction and how that is influenced by the type of construction.

Um that construction type is a four-story woodframe building with surface parking. the density level there and and what you get there. It's just much more cheap, much more affordable to build that housing um for that developer, which then translates into more affordable living opportunities. Um I think what's really important is that the density level at 50 to 60 units is actually lower than mixed use of development that we've seen in the past.

Um the Jack, formerly known as the hub across the street, um that's closer to 100 units per acre. Um, so we've seen this before and it's actually spread throughout Flagstaff already. It is actually not that huge of a change. Um, we just want more of it and and we really want to think about, you know, we don't allow that now by right. You have to go through these special processes and so we want to make this process easier. It's what we've heard from developers is the uncertainties too high, etc.

Beyond that base density increase, we can further incentivize developers to provide um more density because if we get those affordable or sustainability benefits and then those incentive options um can actually avoid the need for structured parking um which is incredibly expensive and it also can provide that public benefit in exchange for a higher impact on the community. So, we we know we're we're going to get concerns about higher densities.

Um, and you know, we we 100% want to anticipate those concerns, hear them, and then work with folks. Um, one, you know, that we think we will hear is that new buildings will be tall and boxy. Um, that they will have high lot coverage and they won't be compatible. Another is that we don't have the infrastructure. And I'm not going to go through the responses here. I' got to speed up a little bit.

But um it's it's really important that you know other cities have done this and we're learning from them. Um and this recommendation is based on what other folks are learning and they're also based on um the idea that we can uh work through some of those negative consequences, right? We can try to anticipate where things might go. Um and we have a lot of tools to help um avoid those consequences that folks might not want to see. All right. Part three, parking requirements.

Um, higher density without coordinated parking reforms will limit the effectiveness of higher density towards meeting our goals. Um, we've actually already reduced parking requirements for one type of development in town. Um, if you have four units and below, um, and nothing insane has happened, right? We've we've we're working through it. It's really important to remember. Um and and the the recent change we've had with parking requirements is that this change happens gradually, right?

It doesn't mean that all the parking that we have right now goes away, right? It means that new buildings might operate differently with parking. Um but as we know those really come in slowly through our town, they are dispersed, etc. So the direct cost of providing parking is substantial and it scales up if structured or underground parking is needed for higher densities. Um so this is really important. Surface parking is cheap relatively still $7,000 a spot. Um, and this is per spot.

Tuck under. Um, so maybe you have, you know, town houses above and one under is more expensive. Structured is about $35,000 a spot. And then underground is $60,000. Um, and so this really comes back to um, how do we think about the cheapest types of parking that there are, but also if you're required to have a ton of surface parking, you look like Milton Road. Milton Road is looking working exactly as designed. Um, because we required all that parking.

And so we want to think about, well, we want to encourage cheaper forms of parking, but also maybe the answer is actually in the number of parking spaces that we require. And really this comes back to choice. Um there are folks who live without a vehicle but actually live in an apartment building and are paying for that parking space because the developer was required to build it and so they have built that into the cost of housing.

There are already places in Flexaf where your parking space is not tied to your room and then you can figure out if you want to purchase a space and by room I mean home. Um but you know that this is really about choice and and helping the developers to find the thing that works for the market, right? They can go above that parking minimum. Um, but how how can we lower our minimums to allow them a little bit more flexibility?

Lower parking requirements require encourage lower cost housing, smaller units, and lower emissions. This shows up through the model over and over again. Um, when a parking space costs $35,000, $60,000, you can see how that impacts our housing, our density. Um, and so reducing our parking requirements can allow a building to be built completely differently. um on the left, the building on the left and the building on the right here have the same number of housing units, right?

The same number of folks that can live in a new home. Um but one has 100 parking spaces and one has 50 parking spaces. And the costs that come from that, the type of buildings that come from that are incredibly different and incredibly divergent. It's really fascinating when you get into sort of parking dynamics. I'm not going to go down here, but reducing parking requirements can provide more options to developers and more options to residents. We did look at eliminating parking requirements.

Um, really importantly, it's other a lot of other cities have done it. Um, but what we came back with is we still want to recommend base require base parking requirements for multifamily projects. Um, and the reason is is because we want to hold on to a base requirement so that for folks who we want to incentivize, maybe we can get to zero, right? If folks are able to do certain things related to sustainability or related to affordability.

And so we really just want to think about can we have this base level and then we could think about going down from there um for developers who might be particularly interested in that. Um, but we also think that most folks will continue to want to provide parking. Parking reductions are also recommended for projects that meet standards which indicate that they might be able to reduce their vehicle trips. Um so if you look at Southside, right, there's a lot of students that live in Southside.

Those folks are not driving to campus, right? And the reason they're not driving to campus is because campus charge what is it now? 500 bucks a year, maybe 600 um to park on campus. It's actually it's like the best climate action in the city. Um because they are putting prices on something that's actually incredibly expensive. Not only to NA, but to all of us, right? The traffic is incredibly expensive.

Um and so what we want to do is think about what are the things that we c can what are the developments we can work with that have transit proximity, maybe affordable units, and trip reduction strategies. And if they do those things, then we can reduce the parking that they provide. All right. One really important thing um is Flagstaff has a winter parking ordinance. We have a winter parking ordinance that is stronger and more restrictive than pretty much every other pier city that we looked at.

Um and essentially we can't park on our streets overnight for 5 months out of the year. Um and this winter was a very good example of well what happens when it's not snowing anymore? What happens is that we have a lot of I'm sorry I shouldn't say snowing anymore. What happens when we get less snow? Um, we have a lot of unused space on our streets and we all pay for that space, right? We all pay to maintain that space. We all pay to sweep it.

Um, we all pay because it actually reduces available land for housing, right? Because it's just parking spaces that nobody can use overnight. And so what we want to think about is when we reduce parking requirements on site, we will see more parking on the street. And so if we're going to reduce parking requirements, we need to rethink sort of what we do with street parking. That involves rethinking our winter parking ordinance. This is going to take a lot of study.

It's going to take a lot of work with internal partners, a lot of communication, etc. But the consultant's recommendation is try to figure out how to do this. Try to figure out alternatives um so that we can um better use our public infrastructure and our public space, which is all that street parking. All right. Um, there are concerns about reduced parking requirements. I am not going to spend time here.

Um, but I there's a lot of cities that have worked on this, a lot of cities that have gone to zero parking that are peers. Um, and and they're figuring out and we can learn from them. Um, and we have a lot of tools to work through those concerns. All right. An integrative incentive framework. So, our we have current incentives um options. Those are on the left here, but they're really not cohesive and they don't work together well and there's a pretty low barrier to entry often.

And so what we're trying to do with a new incentive framework is take our different parts of the code, take our different incentives and combine them together so that they do work together. Um, and so that new framework is simplified. It also um allows us to think about how our goals relate to each other and think about what we really want to incentivize. One thing that's important is that we are going to try to think about how to put a sustainability baseline for all developments.

Um we often are already seeing these things in town. Often developers are already doing these things and particularly when a developer maybe has a has a um a reasonzoning or comes to council. They often tell you about all the sustainability things that they're already doing. Um we don't really have a way to judge that.

We don't really have a framework that says, "Oh yeah, you've checked these boxes but not these ones." And so what we want to do is say, how can we put forward a sustainability requirement that would require a minimum level of sustainability um in all developments, right? And then the incentives can go above and beyond there. but to say we actually all want all of our buildings to be doing our part. Um, this is going to take a lot of work. I have some more slides on it. There's a lot of details.

Um, but we haven't really gotten there of exactly what that will look like because it relates to the building code. Um, which believe it or not, I'm going to be up here for more talking in a second um or in a half an hour. But um, so all this is a little bit TBD, but the most important thing is we want that sustainability baseline. Um, we are going to eliminate essentially the plan residential development for most of our zoning districts. We will retain them for the ER and RR districts.

Um, and and but change those requirements a little bit, but the most important thing is we'll then have three tiers of of incentives. The first will be sustainability, the second will be for affordable housing, and then the third will be developments that do both. All right. A flexible point system with a required baseline would replace our current sustainability incentives. So there's a lot of different ways we can go with this. Again, we want to think about energy.

We want to think about certification, trip reduction, transportation, water, materials, resilience. There's a lot of different ways to be sustainable. What we want to do is try to provide flexibility for developers, right? Most developers are trying to actually integrate sustainable features. Some might be really focused on resilience. Some might be really focused on transportation and trip reduction. That's also location dependent, right?

And so what we want to do is provide flexibility while also asking everybody to yeah, let's let's actually put um let's put down what we're doing. Let's make this into a little bit more of a systematic framework. um what the consultant has done and I know that you can't read this but essentially it would give minimum points based on your project type and then it would give points to different sustainability features. Again these are the consultants recommendations.

Um it's a very sophisticated and complex menu of a lot of different possibilities but what it looks at is how do you reduce greenhouse gas emissions and how do you reduce greenhouse gas emissions most affordably. And so it's just sort of their science and saying, "Okay, let's put that in here." We have a lot of choices about what we do with this and how we go from here. Um, but there's some really great things. This is in the appendix in your agenda packet if you want to dig in.

We will be talking much more about this. Um, but we're really excited to kind of streamline things, provide flexibility, and also move the needle a little bit. All right. This is that incentive structure I've talked about multiple times now. I should have just started with this beautiful slide. Um, we want to because we have that sort of base level sustainability, the sustainability incentive provides the least amount of density.

It is that tier one, but again, we're already getting some with that base code based on this recommendation. Then affordability and then affordable and sustainable. Um, this gets into a lot of details about um that baseline and then what you would do for each incentive. Um we are really excited to figure out how we can better incentivize affordable building, sustainable building and sometimes both. Um and so there's a lot here. Um we will change it. The levers will move up and down.

But this is sort of just that recommendation from the consultant and the consultant is really thinking about what are our barriers to development and how can we solve them. a developer also as it gets into housing um and affordable units. Um the the consultant has learned a lot about what sort of affordable products we're getting, what works, who can qualify um and and how do we think about folks's income.

And so what we want to do is give the option to developers to choose which income level to target for affordable units. Um, and if a developer is targeting higher income, then we would actually require a higher share of units be income restricted. Um, right? So, if you're targeting, well, I'm going to target 120% of AMI, which is area median income. Um, we would ask you to to set aside more units for that housing. Jen, feel free to jump in here. Um, we really looked at this.

the the consultant really analyzed this um what works right now and what doesn't. And what they found is that we're doing a pretty good job at rental units, right? Getting rental units built in town that are affordable. Where we struggle is ownership units that are affordable. Um and particularly those ownership units that are between 80 and 100 for 50% of area median income.

And so the developer is looking at how can we change the incentives to get more ownership units um because there's a huge demand for them. All right. Um this is the recommended density by zone and incentive tier. There is a lot here. Um but the bottom chunk the blue chunk in each column is the byite development and then it's tier one, tier two and tier three. And so what you can see is you get more density as you go from tier one, tier two to tier three.

Um but we are trying to put a pretty solid amount of density in just those by right requirements. Finally um proforma modeling is what developers do to kind of figure out how the math works. Um and what this indicates is that our incentives would likely be more effective than our current incentives in delivering the benefits. Um folks aren't able but folks won't participate in incentives if the benefits are not worth it. Right? And that's basically what we're seeing now.

And so what this does is it says, you know what, this really makes those projects more viable um and and will motivate that participation to actually participate in our incentives. There are concerns about zoning incentives. Um and we've tried to anticipate those. Um we've done a lot of modeling. Um we really will be working kind of on the incentives to get them right. Um and figure out, you know, how do we best fit them into our community?

How do we get the incentives for the things that we want to see and actually get more participation? We don't have enough participation in any of the incentives that we have right now. All right. Additional code barriers. Um this is the last part thankfully. Um this is yeah. Thanks friends. Um the thank you chair me commissioner mezer. Wow. Vice chair. Vice chair. Thank you. Um you all have heard us talk about the resource protection overlay before. We call this the RPO.

The RPO um is used to protect resources. It is not science-based in terms of those resources that it protects. Um it is not it was not designed for our current fire risk and the current health of our forest.

um it has a lot of issues and so Tiffany in planning um has already started to look at our current standards and to figure out what can we do to change them and we actually already have a pilot project for the RPO and it's going well and and we've had some success and we're learning a lot and so what we want to do is um keep learning about the RPO keep learning about what are those resources that we really want to protect right and what are places that are are sort of just overgrown own densely populated ponderosa pine that actually increase our fire risk.

And so how can we think about this from a firebased perspective? Um Tiffany has been working incredibly closely with our wildland fire department to figure this out. Um but what we want to do is figure out our RPO right now limits density. Um and we're not getting that much benefit and it's actually increasing our fire risk.

And so how can we um better think about you know can we put a premium on you know existing sorry not put a premium can we figure out those existing resources that we want to preserve um and preserve those and then allow density in those places where we actually don't need to preserve those resources. The RPO sorry I should have gone here. The RPO can become a more targeted tool. This is what we're using. We're using data um we're using LAR.

we're using tree maps um to think about where our risk is, what resources we want, etc. Um and how can we be more targeted? How can we also really pay attention to slopes and ridge lines? Um not every slope is created equal. Um and we want to figure out how our RPO thinks about slopes that are meaningful, thinks about ridge lines, etc. Um and and what should we save in each space to do development more smart? All right. One other thing we need to consider is our street engineering standards.

Um we want to develop exceptions to permit narrower street designs. Um our current standards require a wider right of way um than is necessary for all the vehicles that need to get down that street. This adds cost to development. It limits density. It actually encourages higher speeds. Um, I have very wide streets in my neighborhood because we've planned for two cars passing and two cars parking. Um, and there's almost never any of those, right? There's one car at a time.

Um, and so what that means is, and the the studies are very clear on this, you go much more quickly. Um, and so our current streets are not serving as well because then we get a lot of complaints about people speeding in residential neighborhoods, but the systems working as designed. People are are driving as as we built them. And so what we want to think about is can we allow narrower residential and minor collector cross-sections? Um and can we consider narrower travel length?

Um queuing configurations where you actually have to wait for someone to get through before you can get through. Um can we think about you know one-sided improvements and and lowcost street designs. Um, but what are the things that we can do that actually slow down traffic on our streets instead of building really wide streets, going through the process where everybody complains about it, increasing danger, and then doing traffic calming. Can we build them better from the start? All right.

Street connectivity. Um, we want to adopt design standards that reduce the number of culde-sacs and improve walkability. Um, I always think about town site. Um, townsite is on a grid. It is lovely, right? It feels really nice. Um you go to other parts of this community or other communities and you can't walk from one place to another because they're actually not connected because you've got cults in the way.

Um there's a ton of research on this on health on resilience on knowing your neighbors um and what a street grid can do. And so what we want to do is how do we figure out how to have smaller block size, have fewer dead-end streets, um, and really kind of think about those best practices and walkability and what makes a good neighborhood. That is it. I am so excited um, to hear any discussion or questions. And we've got Tiffany and Jen here with us. Sorry that was long. Thank you so much.

That was amazing. You did an incredible job as Commissioner Vice Chair Mezer pointed out. Um this is really complicated and a little bit confusing and you did an amazing job. Um I have a lot of questions but I'll just start with one.

um this uh the regional protection overlay if it wasn't science-based and it's it's not taking like wildland or uh fire urban interface wildland you know what I'm trying to say um into account what what was it actually based on because I you know in the community 20 25 years ago it was like this sacred thing like well you know you can't cut down the trees and the slopes and people seemed really behind it. Um, so I'm I'm curious if you know that. Um, sure.

I mean, I'm not I I wouldn't say it was completely not based in science. No, no, no, no, no. Um, uh, forest forest science has changed dramatically, right? How we thin properties today is not how we thinned properties even 5 years ago or 10 years ago. So we've seen ra you know science changes frequently. We don't always change code as rapidly as we need to in terms of how fast science changes.

Um, with that being said, you know, the resource protection overlay and especially the tree resource protection, it was designed in a lot of ways to to limit development and we have been breaking through that barrier. Um, aesthetics and environment are incredibly important to Flagstaff. We can have both. We don't have to necessarily limit development. We want healthy trees, healthy forests um and healthy um communities and we can do and can accomplish all of those things.

Um we're just using newer technology now. We're using LAR data. This technology allows us to and our GIS team has created a whole model because luckily our GIS manager also has a degree in forestry. So I just end up luckily falling into the the hands of amazing people. Um and so you know using this data allows one us to control the data set have a little bit more control over what we know.

We can more directly upfront work with the developer without having them having to expend a significant amount of cost having tree surveys done. We can consider um thinning at the same time as we're considering development. So we're just making smarter choices. Previously, all thinning would be done first and then we'd work on how many trees are left after thinning and then do our calculations from there.

Um, you know, the and again in a lot of communities that I've talked to when they work on tree resource preservations, they start saving at the smallest DBH trees. Um, and we're changing that. Um, you know, we got to get people more comfortable with it's okay for the smaller trees to grow to go. You know, let's focus on the larger um mature trees that can withstand situations.

Um, we're also trying to implement Firewise principles, zone zero requirements, um, and just being much more sensible and creating better flexibility for homeowners at the end of the day when they inherit this property from a developer so that they understand even what they can do with their property and it isn't an amazing try nightmare for staff to try to nope, that one tree was supposed to be here. So, um, yeah. Yeah, it wasn't. Yeah, there you go. That's the story.

I think the short answer was to to to prevent development. I mean, it's not entirely prevent development, but to be it was at it was developed at a time when we had a different perception. Yes. Yep. Everything was different. Thank you. Go ahead. And you were talking about the apartment densities. You made the comment that we have a lot of good apartments in the town.

And then you talked about ownership of properties and then you mentioned r uh ratios where you might have um some some places where you would say you have to have a certain number that are set aside for people that are more affordable. So, I I put that in my brain that you were saying something to the effect of, which I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just thinking it sounds like a good idea, but that might not have been what you said.

is that let's say you're building a condominium structure that you would say to the developer, you can sell about 80% of these condominiums at these incredibly price gouging prices of $500,000 for a condominium, but you need to set some aside that would be affordable that someone might be able to afford it for 200,000. Is that what you were saying? Were you talking about condominiums in terms of density, ownership of ownership in density places?

I know that some of when we're talking about it, we're talking about tiny houses, etc., etc., but when you're looking at the density and apartment structures, the five stories, blah, blah, blah. I assumed a number of those would be townous or condominiums. That's Michael. That's generally true.

The you're looking at a story and it's an own developer product rather than the mechanism by the airspace and it becomes by um I guess I want to clarify right now we can't as a city we can't require that correct yes willing to deliver a set aside, you know, a certain of 10 at a certain they get the developer does have some what income level um their price point their minimum price what is that's a I came across yeah I we came across that in the in the report is like when the developer takes into all of their ABCD and they add them out what they spit out of well and I would assume there's a likelihood that there be in a in a specific building for example the four or five uh condos that are at the back of the building that look out on a hill or look out on a freeway and they're going to say we're going to charge a lot less for these so that then we can consider them affordable is but is that part of the vision is that we will have structure structures within these large density places because you know frankly you you're building condominiums and charging $900,000 for a condominium.

I don't think you're doing a whole lot more for the affordability situation, right? Well, we wouldn't necessarily have much control over the market rate pricing.

Um, so we would be focusing on those that percentage of affordable units and and and we we I guess I'm not exactly sure how to answer your question, but we do have um language in our zoning code that guides us to um again, it's not like a hard and fast requirement, but we encourage developers to spread the affordable units um throughout the development, whether it's a subdivision or a big building or whatever or multiple buildings on a large property.

We we we want to we just want to see integration. We want to see a lot of mix of income. We want to see um we don't necessarily want to be encouraging at all like a block of affordable units down that hallway kind of a thing. So that is yeah a dispersal of units is encouraged. Um but at the same time when it's so hard to come by an affordably priced unit we're not necessarily going to say no to the back smaller unit. Absolutely.

I mean that's that would seem to me like fair a fair kind of gig going on there. So this is my other question and it's I will not ask anymore after this. How many developers do we have in Flagstaff? How many development firms do we have in Flagstaff that actually go out and build housing etc? I can think of about four or five off the top of my head. Um planning probably is familiar with several more. Um but I would say four or five kind of major local players. Um, is that fair? Mhm. Oh, sure.

Tiffany said that. Um, for the record for people listening, um, she clarified that if you're seeing like a much larger multif family project, those are more likely to be um, firms from out of town building those, not local. Yeah. Council member Alen has his hand up on Zoom. Can you unmute him, Diane? Yeah, I'm here. Oh, hey. Hey. Um I So, I kind of have more of a summary thought, but I'll go ahead and share it now just in case I'm driving around.

I don't know if it'll be more convenient for me to speak towards the end or not. Uh, I just I I I want to thank Jenny for the presentation. I've heard a lot of this before in several different formats, but it absolutely never hurts to hear it again. I always learn something new or retain something new every time um this all comes up. You've gotten very good at presenting all of this and laying it out in a fundamentally uh approachable way.

What what I want to do is just quickly um remind the the commission uh of the power that you have uh out in the community. These things, as Jenny's right, some of these are hard conversations. Some of these are going to be new ways of thinking about uh shared values um for a lot of people.

I highly encourage you all to remember that you guys are ambassadors to the community for these concepts and uh to be talking them up, to be to be um uh pushing them um sharing them about and uh you know actively campaigning on their behalf and and spreading the word. Um, that's kind of where I wanted to leave it. Just to add too, you know, like one way to show support for these things is to show up to council meetings and state your support out loud to the rest of council.

You can encourage other people to show up to council meetings just to be warm bodies um to, you know, leverage uh the idea that there's a lot of um momentum behind this.

And uh one thing I highly encourage you all to do is attend the council meeting in in June where we're talking about uh our latest code changes um which are you know is going to be a little bit of a difficult conversation but full of great ideas for how to move this community forward and to save uh both developers and um more importantly home dwellers uh money. Uh so just just remember that uh you know you guys don't just attend meetings once a month and learn things.

Um take it back out there wide and far and recruit some new uh you know spokespeople for this stuff and and just make sure that uh we're dissolving the tension out there around some of these ideas because uh you're mostly going to be talking to folks who share your values but never saw things through this lens.

And when they hear it from you, uh, it's going to be far more valuable than just catching it in the newspaper, uh, and then scratching their head or just outright rejecting the concept because it doesn't, you know, it's a square peg that doesn't fit in the round hole. Um, that's all I have to say. Thank you all so much and especially Jenny um, for all you're doing. And Tiffany, um, I know you love to go out there and count trees on properties.

Uh I hope you will continue to do that and I I appreciate the effort to to protect old growth trees uh and stuff like that. Um but uh yeah this this firewise conversation is sort of a an eye openener for everybody. Um it makes a lot of sense and I had the same question about you know retroactively you know why was the thinking so different before?

Um, you know, I live in Ponderosa Trails and not only are all the trees from the forest still here, but every property has new trees and and plantings and uh non-native trees and all sorts of fun stuff coming up, too. And new developments will do that as well. People are going to garden in their yards. Uh, and so the forest will crop back up around these trees no matter what the resource protection is. And um, uh, these are all just great new ways of thinking about things.

and uh it's up to you guys to to make sure that you're the messenger so that the message sticks when people hear it. Thank you. Thanks, Austin. That's an awesome call to action. Um one more quick question. We really need we we have um another 45m minute presentation and another shorter presentation. So, um, can we collect further questions? Um, can we submit them by email to Diane and have you guys answer them that way? Will that work? Oh, I can you share the answers?

Like everybody could submit questions to Diane and then the answers can be shared with the entire commission. Um, we can also continue this conversation too. Um, to the extent it makes sense if that's appropriate in June. This is going to council June 16th. Um but and so we're happy to answer questions before then, but this will not be the last we see of this also. Okay. Um well, yeah. Um let's do one more question and we'll save the rest for email. Apologies, Commissioner Carlson.

Mine is a very simple question. It's yes, no. Um, so relative to increasing FAR, um, I know some cities use a zero lot line building approach. So, um, I was just curious if the city was considering that as part of their, you know, way to increase FAR. In some instances, we have some zero lot line allowances already. I mean, town homes would have the zero foot setback, but it's one of the considerations. Thank you. Okay, that was quick.

So, we'll do one more for Commissioner Carlson and then we're moving on. Perfect. Thank you, chair. Um, and thank you, Jenny, for the great presentation. Honestly, love the framing um and the clarity that you emphasized throughout. Um, and just wanted to know it's great to see all these things that are aligned with like uh proper climate solutions um from the policy standpoint in the city. Um, I definitely still have some serious concerns with using parking as an incentive.

Um especially you even emphasized that uh developers will still be building parking. I mean it's the norm. Um and it's easy to build surface parking. Um and there's a lot of uh you know we we've got flooding concerns uh inducing more driving sprawl affordability by just building parking. So um so that just wanted to voice that concern by using that as an incentive. And also the the street width I saw only reduced by about five feet.

Um I live on West University A and that's one of those large 57 foot streets. Um no one parks on the side and so even if it was uh decreased by 5T but parking is still mandated. Um there's plenty of parking in the uh homes and developments nearby then people will still be speeding on that street. So I think that uh may be too large in these existing areas um unless we get rid of these parking mandate or or redo these uh streets. So thank you. Sure. Thank you.

And just uh absolutely we we have a fire requirement that that you know requires that sort of minimum with but there are other things we could do. Can we only require parking or can we only build with parking on one side of the street? Right? How can we think about the mix of all of those things within there that we can do? Absolutely. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much, everybody.

Um, next we've got a building code overview with Amy Trestler, um, building official from Planning and Development Services and Jenny Neon. I think Amy's gonna start us off. Amy, I'm working on getting the slides up. Thank you. My computer is freezing. Amy, they are up. If you can see them. Oh, this is the building code overview. And they're they're actually the same. They're all combined. So, we'll do them all. Yes. And I think it sounds like we might have just lost Amy.

Um Rick, you want to you want to stop it or do you want me to? I will do my best and see if Amy comes back. Okay, you're the best. Thanks, Rick. Hello, commission. Uh, I'll introduce myself. I am uh Rick Stenonis and I am building inspection manager for City of Flagstaff um building safety section. Uh let's see if I can pull together this uh briefing of the uh suite of building codes. Um building code adoption is important.

Um industrywide uh the codes are updated every 3 years and uh city of Flagstaff is on a six-year uh adoption code cycle. Uh, additionally to the uh, building code books, we also amend the codes relative to our uh, our own needs here in the city of Flagstaff. And uh, let's see. Good. And uh, let's see. We'll go on. Sorry, I'm filling in and I was a little unprepared for this. I'm back, Rick. If you want for whatever reason, uh, games crashed and I am back. Take it away, Amy. Thank you.

Okay, to prevent that from happening, I'm not going to turn on my camera because I'm worried that that might be part of the problem. When I was trying to turn it on, it logged me off. All right. So, why update the building codes? Well, building codes uh come out every 3 years. um city of Flagstaff as well as the majority of jurisdictions within the state of Arizona are on a six-year cycle. So, uh we do code adoptions every other code cycle.

Um, but what these capture is advances in building safety, lessons learned from failures and disasters, new construction technologies and materials, improved energy efficiency and building performance and modern industry standards and best practices. Oops. Did the slide advance? I just want to make sure that I am advancing. But I advanced it. Yours is just for you, but just tell me next slide and I'll push you through. All right. Uh, so what building codes help protect?

So they protect life safety, which is structural integrity, fire protection, um, safe exiting during emergencies, electrical and mechanical safety, public health, which is moisture and mold prevention, plumbing sanitation, indoor air quality. Next slide. And property protection.

So, it develops uh and allows you to build stronger buildings, better resilience to snow, wind, and environmental conditions, reduced long-term maintenance issues, as well as energy energy efficiency, lower energy consumption, improved insulation, and HVAC performance, and reduced utility costs over the life of the building. Next slide. So why it's important for Flagstaff?

Well, Flagstaff experiences heavy snow loads, freeze thaws like cycles, cold winter temperatures, high elevation climate conditions, and updated codes help ensure the buildings are designed appropriately for these type of conditions. Next slide. It also provides consistency with modern construction practices.

Updating the codes aligns Flag Staff with current national standards, helps designers and contractors work from current code language, and improves consistency with neighboring jurisdictions. It also has support for long-term sustainability. Modern codes promote more durable buildings, reduced energy demand, and improved building performance over time.

So the city is proposing local amendments to address address flex staff specific climate conditions, maintain practical construction methods, reduce unnecessary cost increases in balance safety, efficiency, affordability and constructability. Next slide. So, these next few slides um are going to be on the energy code, more specifically what Jenny will be presenting, but I will kick us off on on these uh few slides that have to do with uh what we are proposing for insulation reduction.

So currently the 2024 uh international energy code is requiring wall uh insulation to be an R30 or equivalent wall assembly. And what this does is uh this will require either a thicker wall assembly, exterior continuous insulation, more complex detailing, increased construction costs, and reduce design flexibility. Next slide. So what what we are proposing, what the city of Flagstaff is proposing is to amend that R30 back down to an R21.

Currently in our 2018 code adoption, we are at a uh R19 cavity insulation, which is for a 2x6 wall. R21 can also fit within a 2x6 wall. And there's a couple ways to achieve an R21. So you could do just your simple R21 bat. You can do an R13 plus an R5 continuous insulation or an R15 continuous insulation. In commercial multifamily, uh we are also proposing the same. So an R21 or an R20 plus an R-3.8 continuous insulation or an equivalent type of assembly. Next slide.

And why we are proposing this amendment is to maintain a standard 2x6 wall construction which will allow builders to continue using conventional 2x6 framing, reduces complexity within the wall assemblies and simplifies construction methods and inspections. Next slide. It will also help reduce the construction cost by minimizing material and labor increases.

reduces impacts to housing affordability, avoids widespread use of thick exterior continuous insulation systems, and it will still maintain energy efficiency. Our 21 walls will still provide strong thermal performance for Flagstaff's climate. Alternative compliance methods will still remain available and balances efficiency goals and practical construction realities.

And Jenny will probably touch on this in in her presentation as well, but to be clear, uh, this R21 is if somebody chooses if an applicant chooses to go with a prescriptive design and then they could be able to use this straight out of the book. uh performance designs um design professionals can work with numbers to either increase window uh u factors or insulation factors in order to get reductions elsewhere.

So this this amendment would really cater specifically to somebody who wants to use the prescriptive code to build their home. Next slide. And we're off to Jenny. Lovely. Thank you, Amy. Thanks, Rick. Um, hi folks. Jenny Neman, climate action section director. Um, I'm going to be pretty quick and so you all have seen versions of this presentation before, I believe, from Genevieve. Um, and you have this in your PowerPoint. Um, but just we have a lot of information tonight clearly.

Um, and so we're happy to keep this conversation going. Um, but I just wanted to note that there and and we're happy to to continue this if you all have specific questions, etc. Um, I'll also say some of you have seen Genevie Pere give sort of the introduction to this I believe earlier this year. Um, you may have even seen her out in the community and she is presenting she has presented costs estimates and projections. Um, those have changed since you probably last saw it.

We also presented these in January at council as well. Um, we are updating our cost projections every time we get local data because we really want local data. And so, um, just as a heads up that those numbers have probably shifted. All right. So, um, again, these slides are in the packet for reference. Um, we're going to kind of give an overview of the energy code, what it does.

We're going to talk about what we're proposing as an approach, the benefits of the code, um, draft amendments, costs and savings estimates, and then what we've heard uh, from the community. The hold on one second actually. Okay. Um the purpose of the international energy conservation code is to set minimum energy efficiency requirements. Um we call it sometimes the IEC. In this presentation I will refer to it as the energy code.

Um the great thing about that energy code is that it's developed by experts. This is not something that's developed inhouse. Um it is a rigorous three-year process. It's made up of lots of committees, lots of different stakeholders, and they develop actually a new code every three years. Um, the city of Flagstaff is on a generally a six-year adoption schedule um along with most cities in Arizona. But the really nice thing is that this process is tested, it's tried, it's true.

Um, and then we get to rely on it. The energy code sets those minimum efficiency standards. It also really looks at efficiency, safety, uh, resilience. Um, and it has residential components and commercial components. So, there's an IEC residential and an IEC commercial. What the energy code regulates, there's a lot on the left, but just pay attention to the picture. And all those orange things are what the energy code regulates. So, this includes attic insulation.

Um, this includes a the envelope of the house, the crawl space. And then it also includes how air flows in your home and appliances that you use. The IAC is designed to be broadly adopted by cities all across the country. Um it's been adopted by uh plenty of jurisdictions across the United States, including Arizona's four largest cities um on almost half of our um population at this point, as well as statewide adoption in other western states as well as other states across the US.

This was a new slide. Um it wasn't in your packet, but it it's really important. Um, the energy code only applies to new construction. Um, we pulled the numbers in 2025. Uh, we I think it was we had 504 building permits for new housing units. So that's 500 homes. Um, and what we know about housing is that we have filtering. And so new homes, when you look at who lives in new homes, those are folks a lot tend to be on the higher side of the income, right?

Then maybe folks that you know buy existing homes, right? they we filter through as homes age, as neighborhoods age. Sometimes there is a reverse trend, as neighborhoods become more desirable. But what we know is that new homes are a small part of our total housing stock. Um the energy code does not apply to repairs, routine maintenance, if you're replacing your furnace, etc.

It does apply though if you have a major renovation, if you have a major addition, um or sorry, major alteration or a change of occupancy. But it's really those additions um conversions to conditioned space. So if you were converting a garage to a conditioned space, etc. All right, I'm going to go through benefits really quickly. I believe you all have actually seen a a pretty close version of this already. So the most important thing is that we hope to build homes that last 100 years, right?

There are homes that are over a hundred years one block from here. Um, I know you know that you all are familiar with all the different types of neighborhoods we have and what's really important to think about is the benefits that we get from new housing acrrues to that first owner or renter, but it also lasts through generations and decades. Um, my home was not built great and it's 60 years old, right? And and so our benefits acrew, but also the challenges acrew, right?

And so what we also know is that new construction is the least expensive time to improve energy efficiency. If you've ever tried to renovate a home, you know that well, right? Um it is costly. It is hard. And so what we want to do is figure out how can we build it, right? Um to boot more than one in four homes in Flagstaff are 45 years or older, right? They're middle-aged.

Um, and you know, then you think about, okay, well then another third of our homes were built in the 80s and '9s, and those are still affecting us today. And so we want to just think about again, who's going to live in these homes, not next year, right? But actually in 20 years, and 30 years, and 40 years, and 50 years. There's a lot that gets decided at new construction that affects how this home operates down the line. Really exciting.

Um, the reason we have energy codes is to put forward energy efficiency for health, safety, and welfare. Um, and to reduce energy costs. And so, these are numbers by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, a federal lab. Um, and they found that this new code will reduce energy cost by 12% over our current code. That's pretty amazing. Um, our current code is a 2018 energy code. Um, and it's really awesome to get that sort of benefit.

If you retrofit the home, it's it's hard to get that benefit. And so this is just the base code. Um and again will affect folks in you know how we live for decades. Um one thing as we think about energy costs is we know that utility costs are increasing. Um they've increased in the past. They will increase in the future.

We don't know exactly how much they will increase, but we do know we've already seen increases in uh gas this year based on an Arizona Corporation Commission decision, and APS has um requested a significant residential base increase. And so we know that they will continue to increase over time. Energy efficiency can insulate a person from rising energy costs.

It doesn't completely take it away, of course, but it means that you're less vulnerable to those higher costs, to those increases um in cost because you're just using less energy regardless of the fuel source that you use. Maybe that's gas, maybe that's electricity. Um but it means that you will have a little bit more of a buffer there. Energy efficiency can help lower the cost of living in Flagstaff.

Um it's really an amazing example of where we can address both housing and climate goals concurrently. Um, it's really important particularly for our lower income residents. Lower income folks across the country spend more of their income, more of their monthly budget on their energy bill. Um, and so what we want to do is think about who lives in our homes. How do we think about it? How do we make an efficient home available to more folks? Um, because these are costs that go on, right?

They go on and on and on and and um I everybody I know pays an energy bill every month, right? I think and so how do we think about that? Energy efficiency features are also a really smart small part of a home sale price. They are part of it and and we're really aware that it all adds up. Um but it is really important to think about. It's about 1% of the average price of a new home.

Um one other thing that is important to know is that and we talked about this a little bit with last cap, but in December the average price for a new single family home is $911,000. Um and so we're we're already dealing with really high prices and so um you know we understand that this contributes to that but it we think it's really important to have that context. The energy hel improves safety. Um there's something called passive survivability.

So when the power goes out how long does your home stay heated if it's in the winter, right? How long does it stay cool if it's in the summer and maybe you have to close your windows because there's smoke outside, right? How does your home react when you lose sort of those fuel sources and power? Um, energy efficiency means that your home stays warm longer. Finally, energy efficient homes are healthier and more comfortable.

Um, there's a lot of research here and we know that well insulated homes, ventilated homes also with mechanical ventilation provide benefits. Um, they can reduce pollutants and particularly when we think about wildfire smoke that leakage into homes. Um, better insulated homes, more efficient homes perform a lot better in those instances. And then finally, stronger energy codes are a climate action tool. Um, they might just be our best climate action tool.

Um, we have a uh retrofit program at the city of Flagstaff. It's federally funded. Um, it's taken years to build and and we're only going to serve, you know, a couple dozen families, right? Um, it is incredibly hard to retrofit homes and it's incredibly inequitable because people don't have the money to put it down.

And so really just goes to, you know, if we're building 500 homes a year, gosh, we can make so much more of an impact in those newer homes, it's also where we have lower construction costs, right? Or lower cost for getting these energy efficient features. All right, that's the benefit. Now I'm going to get into the proposal. So the 2024 residential energy code, these are repeat numbers, but they would give us a 15% improvement in energy efficiency and a 13% energy cost savings.

What the staff recommendation is to do is to adopt the 2024 base code with a few amendments. One of those amendments would add efficiency standards for both furnaces and heat pumps. Uh we want to make sure that we're getting efficient equipment in our homes and that if you're installing a heat pump that it works in Flagstaff. We keep hearing from folks who installed a heat pump that would work in Phoenix. Um and that's not a cold climate heat pump.

And so we really want to make sure, tell your friends, you need a cold climate heat pump to work in Flex Staff. They're amazingly efficient. They're incredible machines and we just want to make sure we're getting the right type of heat that we need here. The other two amendments I'll talk about in a second, but they would be to lower cost. We also want to add readiness appendices. There's three in the residential code um for solar, electric vehicle charging, and electric ready.

And I'll talk about those in detail. The residential amendments to reduce costs. Um the the bottom one there is what Amy already referenced in uh regard to installation um and and going with a 2x6 construction method. Um the first two is allowing apartment buildings. The first is to allow apartment buildings over three stories to use the residential code.

This can result in significant cost savings and what we want to do is make sure that those homes we we really want those homes and so can we allow them to use this simpler process and use the residential code lighting controls. This is something that most cities in Arizona have done um just reducing requirements for lighting controls. All right, I'm going to talk a little bit about the readiness appendices. The biggest thing to to understand here is that we want our homes to be future ready.

We don't want to build homes that people have to retrofit in two years because they didn't get an EV. They don't they can't plug in their EV um or they can't get the kind of stove that they want. We also don't want that happening in 20 years or 40 years. And so these readiness home approaches are really about how can we build homes for the future. The first one is solar ready. We have this in our code currently. Um it's really best described using that top picture.

um you can't put solar on that roof. It has too many roof penetrations because it wasn't planned out for hey in 20 years maybe somebody wants to put solar up here. Um you can get a great return on investment in solar panels. We actually want that to be available to folks for decades to come. Um there's also resilience benefits and when you have a roof like that it makes it incredibly hard. Um the roof below it doesn't have any penetrations on it.

um where we want to land is somewhere in the middle, but the solar ready requirement is is really the the biggest part of it is to show a solar ready zone on your construction plants. Um it our estimate is that it's about $120 because it's pretty much a box on a plan. And so what we want to do is say this building was built to have solar in the future, right? It might not have solar with the first owner or the second or renter, but maybe it does with the third and the fourth.

And we want to make that easier because it's really easy to do in the beginning and harder to do it. Again, we currently have this in our code for detached one and two um family dwellings. We do not have this requirement for apartments and so we do want to expand this so that apartments do this. Um this is has not seemed to be something that there should be a big barrier to electric ready construction. So this is about choice.

Um, and what we've seen is that more and more folks are wanting to install electric appliances. And what we want to do is build homes so that it's pretty easy to install an electric appliance. If you want to run on gas, you can run on gas. If you want to run on electric, you can run on electric. But maybe you've heard of a stove, a friend who's getting a nice new exciting induction stove and they pull out their current range. Maybe that's an electric range they're pulling out.

Um, but probably it might be a gas stove and there's no plug there. And then they've got to call an electrician. It adds months and it actually can add thousands of dollars. Um and so what we want to or more. Yeah. Um and so what we want to think about is can we get the plugs in the right place to provide flexibility for homeowners and renters in the future.

Um and so that what that looks like is it's outlets close to your dryer, close to your stove, and close to your water heater so that the electricians if you do do that upgrade in the future can access it. Um or you can kind of just plug and play. And so this again is really about um consumer choice, making it easier to switch if you want to. You don't have to, but maybe the owner after you wants to, maybe the renter after you wants to make those switches. And so how do we make that easier?

Um there are cost benefits here just because the cost of retrofitting those can be so high. All right, the next is EV infrastructure. Um I want to talk a little bit about EV infrastructure. I'm not going to spend too much time here, but EV adoption is growing. Um, we had the same conversation back in 2019 with the last round of codes. Um, folks believe us a little bit more now, which is great. Um, but we're seeing more and more.

You know, ADOT predicts we've got a million EVs in Arizona in just four years. Um, and so we see it at our chargers that the city of Flagstaff owns. Um, I most of our um users are from outside Flagstaff. They are looking for places to charge, right? And so we want to think about how do we build for our vehicle fleet that we might have in 20 or 30 years um or today. Um most charging occurs at home. It's the cheapest place to charge. We have a gap. It's sort of called a charging gap.

Um it's really easy to charge if let's say you have a garage and you have a maybe it's 120 outlet. Maybe your home was built after 2019 um or where you rent was built then and we require in our current code a 240 outlet. um that's really easy to plug into. If you live in an apartment building, can be a lot harder to find a place to charge. If you live in a condo, can be a lot harder to find a place to charge. And so, what we want to think about is how do we close that gap?

Um you can save a lot of money driving an EV. The used EV market is actually amazing. You can you can buy a used EV um and get really cheap fuel. I think it's about a $150 a gallon um for your fuel. Seems really nice right now.

Um, and so how do we make that a more affordable transportation available to more folks and not have this gap that says, "Oh, if you need if you're looking for an apartment, maybe you can't live in certain places because they don't have the infrastructure that you need." All right, I'm not going to spend a lot of time here. Um, there are three different kind of require types of requirements for EV charging.

Um, we've talked to developers, we have heard, you know, most folks feel really good about EV capable. That means installing conduit. Doesn't even mean installing the electric infrastructure. It just means installing that conduit. So that let's say you build an apartment building and in 10 years you decide, yeah, we really do need EV infrastructure. You don't have to rip up all the pavement. You already have the conduit to put the electrical infrastructure through it.

EV ready means that the EV infrastructure is installed near the parking space. Um, in my home, that looks like the 240 outlet that I currently use as a dryer, right? that's actually already EV ready because I needed a plug for my dryer. Not I don't have an EV, right? But that's it can look complicated, but it actually can also just be a plug. Um and then EV installed is an actual charger. All right. We currently require a um single family home to have that 240 outlet.

We have slightly required requirements for multifamily. Um what we want to do is increase those requirements for multif family to fill that gap. keep that requirement for um single family and really try to ensure flexibility within our code. Um there's a lot of different there are exceptions if it's too expensive. There are exceptions if you can't get the power. Um but what we want to do is really establish that base sort of set of requirements. Um this table is a little bit complex.

Um but I will just say the appendix there is an EV charging appendix in the code now. Um, and that requires 40% of spaces to have EV infrastructure. We have taken that down significantly. We are not going that far. We've learned from Colorado. We're we're kind of following theirs. They also revised um this and they did adopt it statewide.

Um, but essentially, we are asking for folks to have um EV charging if they have more than three if they're in an apartment building with more than three stories and with more than um 15 parking spaces. Um, so that's what we want to look at those bigger developments. We do want them to have a little bit of EV charging because again already in Arizona, I think it's 15% of No, no, sorry. In other Western states, it's about 15% of new cars are EVs. We're already there, right?

In some ways, Arizona, I think, is around 6%. All right. These are the flexibility exceptions, but we're trying to be flexible. We're trying to work with folks and and say, "We want to help you get there." Um, but we want to make this easy. All right, commercial. I'm going to go a little bit more quickly through this. Um, but our recommendation is to adopt the 2024 base code with amendments. Um, as I said before, we want apartments to be able to use the residential energy code.

Um, we will also lower minimum installation standards for the prescriptive paths and then we'll make a couple code or cost-saving amendments and then we will do readiness. Um, these are five amendments that we're putting in just to reduce costs. Um, we're trying to find every lever we can pull to reduce cost um for building housing in Flagstaff. That's it. That's all I have for commercial actually. So, I'm going to stay here one second. Um, solar ready.

Um, we want solar ready on commercial buildings as well. Um, electric vehicle charging as well. Again, they have a current requirement, but we want to increase that a little bit. Um, electric ready. This looks different with commercial, but same concept.

um we want there to be the outlets where we think we might need uh to have that infrastructure and then demand responsive controls that is really related to the ability to if you build let's say an apartment building um at putting in infrastructure that allows future tenants to be involved in a demand responsive program. So a demand responsive program is you have to sign up for it.

So, it isn't that we just enter people into it, but what we want is you want to we want our buildings to be built with the ability to join these programs. What that means is there are programs APS has a program right now where you can sign up and if it's a really hot day and let's say you live in the valley, um they can decrease your thermostat by like one degree, right? Turns out if you decrease everybody's thermostats by one degree, maybe your thermostat was on well increase in the summer.

Um maybe your thermostat was on 70, they might increase it to 71, right? There's actually a huge amount of power savings and it allows a much more resilient grid. So that's a demand responsive program. It's responsive to high demand. It is completely optional. Um you can get out whenever you want, but what we want is to build buildings that can participate that in that in the future. Um we're seeing a lot of increasing energy needs right now and so those programs will only become more important.

All right. Um we want to talk about radon. Um radon is a public health issue. Um it is a radioactive gas. It um concentrates in buildings if you don't have radon resistant features and there's no safe level of radon. Cookanino County has high rates of radon. Um we the average tests in Cookanino County is actually above the EPA recommended limit. Um and there are 20,000 deaths in the United States um from radon levels that are far below that every year. Um and these are from non-smokers.

Uh radon causes lung cancer. Um and so it's a really really big cost to our community and our country. Um and Flag Staff, we've been talking to radon testers. um the great majority of homes that they test um have test above two pico curies for per liter for radon. Um and almost half test above the EPA recommended limit. Um and so what we want to do is think about what can we do um to think about radon at construction instead of later.

Um, if you look at this uh graphic on the right side, there's that if you see you you probably have one of these in your neighborhood. Um, if you live in a single family neighborhood, there's a you'll see some houses with a big white PVC pipe sticking out and then a fan that's like this big and it looks like a weird little flying saucer thing. Um, that's a radon fan and a lot of folks have them and they're pretty expensive. They cost about $2,300 to get installed.

Um, and we expect that price to rise. um if you install radon um passive mitigation at construction, it's much cheaper. It's $300 to $500. And so what we want to think about is what could we do now to reduce the incidence of radon. Um and how can we think about this kind of as a community health issue uh that we can all work on and get done right in the beginning. Um and so we are proposing to adopt this appendix as part of the IRC. All right, I'm going to be really quick on cost estimates.

Um these estimates are a model. Models are wrong. Some models are useful. Okay. So it's really important to know we have collected all the information we can. We've spent more than six months collecting data from national sources, from local sources, talking to all the developers and the contractors. We've can. We've been to the chamber. We've been to the realators. We've been to the home builders. Um we are trying to understand what the impacts of these energy codes are on housing costs.

Um and there's a ton of radi variation, right? And so this is our best shot. Um everyone, you know, may say, "Oh, you know, there's a lot of variables here." And absolutely, right? Like you may have seen different costs and what we're trying to do is collect all the information that we can and um average it. We've gotten a whole lot of data sources. Again, some are national.

Um the base costs that we actually use are from the National Association of Homebuilders as well as um the Pacific um Northwest Pacific Northwest National Laboratory PNNL. Um and so we're going from those national numbers and then refining them with local data and local experience. Um and I have a lot of assumptions in here, but they are in here for the packet if you need it.

Um the most the the biggest takeaway is that we are expecting about a $8,400 upfront cost from the IECC for single family homes. Um this includes the electric ready appendex below as well as the solar ready appendix and the EV charging appendix that are already part of our code. Um this is a significant cost and so that's it's really important. Um and we don't do this lightly. There's also a really wide range. Um the national estimates say like h it's closer to $4,000.

Um a local builder has said it's closer to $13,000. We we will fall somewhere within that range. Um we don't know exactly what that is, but what we see is that the utility savings actually outweigh increase in cost even when you put in the mortgage cost. So it's actually really exciting. It's a great return on investment. Um most things that the city puts on code, you don't make money from. This is something that you actually get savings every single month.

Um, and you get savings over the life of the building. Um, and what right here we've calculated over 30 years because of a 30-year mortgage. We know most people don't stay in a home for 30 years. Um, but again, those benefits acrew to everybody that's in that building after you. Multifamily housing, it is less expensive to comply with the code. It's about $3,200 on average per unit to comply with this code. What we see there is that your payback is a lot quicker.

your return on investment is greater. Um, and you see those sort of you see an increase in monthly costs by about $14 on your mortgage. Um, but you're actually saving $23 in utility costs every month. So, again, this is our model. Um, but we've really tried to look at, you know, understanding increased costs, understanding our housing affordability crisis, what benefits would we get from this rate on mitigation cost estimates.

Um, the topline number there is really the thing that's most important to look at. $300 to $500 um for that thing um or for that um one uh installation of that passive system. I'll close just um you know we really want to think about those overall benefits um and that has really shaped our recommendation um that we will be giving to council.

Council will be discussing this um on June 9th um for at a work session and then we will be at a city council meeting where they would potentially adopt this code along with the full suite of codes uh on June 16th. I am going to hand this over to Noah. Noah, thanks for your incredible patience and you can just next slide me. Awesome. Thanks everyone. Hey, my name is Noah Baker. I work for the Flagstaff Fire Department. I'm one of our wildfire specialists.

Uh today I'm subbing in for Neil Chapman and Chris Jack who are both out of town. Uh so please excuse me if you have questions that I can't quite answer. Should be able to answer most of them though. Uh next slide please. Okay. So we are here to talk about the WOOI code. WOOI stands for wildland urban interface.

And the intent of it is the intent of this is to adopt the 2024 international wildland urban interface code to create a more fire adapted community while reducing the risk of urban confilgration. Urban confilgration is kind of a newer term uh that we're using and this is this describes the situation where wildfire has entered the community and it is using homes as fuel in the same way that uh it would use trees as fuel in the natural environment. It's very difficult situation for us.

uh we pretty much don't have any success. Um but I'll talk more about that in a minute. The draft amendments are based on local wildfire risk and heat transfer science. So we are looking at three things. We're looking at embers. Uh we're looking at radiant heat. We're looking at direct flame. Contrary to popular belief. U most homes are lost during wildfire from embers. Um we don't see like a tsunami type event or a line of fire moving through communities.

Mostly it is embers entering an attict and those embers can travel pretty significant distances. Um so we want to take care of them when we can. But radiant heat and direct flame are also of course a concern. Uh whether that's from a direct wildfire near a home or whether that's from an ember that landed on the ground and now has active flame near it. Um we take all these things into account.

Uh we're here to simplify construction requirements from three standards down to one which we'll talk about and then uh aligning all this with the city of Flagstaff's zoning code and forest management plan. We're at a really cool point right now where we are all this hard work that we've all been doing for the past couple years uh to try to get ahead of the curve is actually everything's coming together right now. Um and we're really excited with this.

And something else we're excited about is that this aligns with the IBHS standards, uh, which IBHS is the insurance in in Institute for Business and Home Safety. Um, and it aligns with their wildfire prepared home plus standards and their wildfire prepared home neighborhood standards. Uh, to my knowledge, we are the only community in the country that is adopting that and we are we are pretty far ahead of the curve there. That doesn't mean we're done. Uh, we will never be done.

It's wildfire resilience. It's kind of just a forever thing we got to get used to. But uh we definitely it's something to be proud about. Uh next slide please. So some significant updates because of this are section five construction regulations. Um and then deconlicting the three construction standards to just one standard.

Uh before you had three options, now you just have one and that's wildfire prepared home plus eliminating uncertainty with fire hazard severity and defensible space calculations. Um, this is all important to us because this gives when I go into a community that has wildfire prepared home plus um, and that's a baseline standard. I have a much higher chance of surviving that experience if fire gets into the community.

Urban confilration is an incredibly dangerous event uh, full of not just a fire hazard towards towards physical safety but also people fleeing away from the community um, power lines, toxic smoke. So never a place I want to be. And if I had to be there, I would want to be uh in a wildfire prepared home plus neighborhood. And then u moving from ignition resistant materials to non-combustible construction.

Um that makes a difference to us because there's no doubt in my mind that that's not going to catch on fire. Ignition resistant is still really good. Um but this just eliminates any uncertainty. Next slide, please. So, to talk about costs, um, obviously this we're talking about new construction. Um, it will increase the costs. Not significantly, though. For an,800 ft² home of new construction, it's going to be about $4,500 of additional cost.

We are in a really good spot in Flagstaff uh where most other communities will need to ask uh builders to account for a class A roof which is the highest fire standard that you can have for roofing. Um that is already something we have in Flagstaff. Most homes have a class A roof here. So that gives us a a really really simple pathway where all we got to do is focus on exterior walls. Um focus on eaves gutter covers and then creating that zone zero.

Um all of this stuff is you know dependent on the type of construction and where it's at. We know home prices are going up. Um but it is um the the the benefit is significantly higher than the cost for sure. I would much rather pay $4,500 for my home. um $4,500 more dollars for my home than uh not have a home at all.

And what's really interesting about some of the the physical science about this is um this cost increase isn't just helping out the individual homeowner or the individual neighborhood.

Um the way we can fight urban confilgration events is when there are neighborhoods that are prepared in the path of the fire where we're not going to lose homes there and hopefully we're not going to lose homes there and we can actually um begin to pick up fire in those neighborhoods to protect the rest of the community. So this is uh this is something that is pretty important and uh we're really excited to be part of it. Next slide, please.

So, I'm going to talk about something I know uh not a whole lot about, but we're going to go for it, which is the international fire code. Um, and we can go to the next slide. So, there are some major code impacts that have happened. Uh, some of the more interesting ones are about batteries and EVs.

Um so lithium ion batteries there's been a ton of talk in the fire community about this recently because it is um really difficult to put those fires out and does present a new challenge when we are fighting those fires. So talking about battery storage uh systems, thermal runaway protection, fire detection, explosion control, ventilation and then emergency operations planning. Um 3D printing also came up in there.

Uh not under lithium ion batteries, but um 3D printing did come up as something new to regulate whether that's industrial or non-industrial. Um talking about power handling and ventilation and combustible things. Uh emergency response communication systems are always going to be important, but uh really this the highlight of this is talking about um you know radio communication in buildings. Sometimes we have difficulty with that. Um, hazardous materials control areas coordination.

I'm just going to skip over that one and go to EV infrastructure coordination. Um, this has been a big one in the fire community recently. And, uh, we love EVs. They're awesome. Uh, but they do because of the development of technology and and some of this stuff, they do pose a new fire hazard uh, that we aren't necessarily used to because they're so widespread. And when I say EV, I'm not just talking about cars. I'm talking about electric scooters.

I'm talking about electric bikes, um, which are awesome things, but in New York City, the number one cause of of, uh, structure fires right now is electric scooters, um, exploding in people's apartments. So, we're learning a lot about this and we're being very mindful of it.

Uh, a lot of this stuff's talking about EV charging, um, parking structures and when it's okay to, uh, bring some of the electric scooters inside, uh, hazard mitigation, and then what's really important here, and really the the the takeaway is fire department response. We are learning how to do this. Um, and we are learning it really quickly. So, we continue to learn lessons from other communities that have experienced this.

We've had a couple run-ins here and there at the fire department, but uh there are places where that are having a lot of issues like this. So, really interesting stuff. Um and we're really excited to get better at doing this. And then last two things are enhanced hazard materials provisions. Um which is just talking about gas systems and energy system integration and all that stuff. Um and then carbon dioxide detection uh which is just expanded and and getting better every day.

So um I think that's my last slide. If we could go next slide. Okay. Thank you everyone. Thanks for having me. Thanks. Thank you Noah. Okay. Questions, comments? Commissioner Carlson, thanks for the excellent uh presentation. Um it seems like the codes are uh the recommendations are pretty top-notch. Um a couple curious curiosity questions um to possibly consider. I don't know what is allowable within building codes, but with like new builds like to maximize passive solar orientation.

Um, a quick search, it saves 25 to 50% on energy costs, both cooling and heating. Um, and then alongside with that, uh, just strategic awning placement requirements over some windows like west windows. Um, a quick search on that is also 25% savings on energy costs. So, um, seems like an another kind of like, you know, while you're building, uh, it can be a lot, uh, bit cheaper to to implement those. So, yes, thank you so much, Commissioner Carlson.

And, and I'm like looking behind me for my smart planning friends. Um, passive solar is is such an incredible thing to do that can save so much. That's one of the things that we're looking at. We talked about the last cap that sustainability menu, right? Is that appropriate there?

I think it might belong in zoning code because it relates to where your building is on the lot as opposed to just what's in your building and that's I'm like, oh, you know, but that is one of those things that we're looking to figure out where would that go? How can we balance that? How can we really incentivize that? Um, and maybe, you know, as we look at that sustainability menu, if you do that, right, we have a lot less to do in every other area.

So, thanks so much for bringing both of those up. I will take them back to Genevieve. Just as a comment, I think APS is incentivizing it right now with raising their rates. Incentives working always. That's right. Okay, one more one more question from Commissioner Carlson. So, this is on the previous presentation since we have an extra minute. Um, I'd be curious if parking mandates end up um being around if green infrastructure requirements can can be coincided with that.

So essentially like uh that you have soils and catchments or water um next to paved areas. So, um I think if we're requiring parking, we should have some smart uh green design around them that can also be cheap while you're building uh parking. Um yeah, thanks. Thank you so much. Thanks everybody. I know this was a lot. Um we did not plan for both of these things to be on the same agenda, but we've been doing the tour this week of all the commissions with the same.

So, thanks for your patience, perseverance, Yeah, thank you. Sure. Commissioner Scurlock, go ahead. You were talking about um R5 continuous insulation and I what is the in continuous I know what bats are in the walls, but what are what's the continuous part? Rick or Amy, don't go away. Um that is a question for Rick. Thanks, Rick. Uh sure, I can try to feel this one.

Um, continuous insulation is just some form of uh insulation placed on the exterior surface of the wall such as 4x8 sheets or 2x4 sheets of polystyrene foam for example, something to that effect. That's continuous. That's what the code means by continuous insulation. Thanks. You're welcome. Okay, let's move on to the next item on our agenda. Quick to and from. Does anybody have anything they'd like to share? Upcoming events?

I think we have all noted um the council meeting where this will be potentially adopted is on June 16th. So, that's an important one. Commissioner Carlson. Yeah. Real quick, um one of our uh uh grant awardes from last year is doing one of their cleanups this Saturday. Um like a riparian uh invasive cleanup. Um, and so yeah, wanted to share that since we talked about doing service. I think it's at 9:00 a.m., but um, maybe Diane, if you have more information, you could send it our way.

That'd be great. Um, again, we could get that information sent out, but just wanted to to share it so that we could cedar. Oh. Yeah. Do we have any future agenda item requests? I had something on my mind from the last few meetings and it's just a suggestion neither here nor there.

We've been having the sustainability commission um the sustainability department come and report to us on every one of our meetings to keep us up to date on things and yet most of the things that they report on are in their newsletter and I've been reading the newsletter.

What I would like to suggest is that in the future we make a point of reading the newsletter and maybe have just five minutes to ask a question if we need to do that rather than having them come and reiterate everything that they've already written down someplace else. That saves them time, gives us an opportunity, maybe increases our likelihood of reading the newsletter and saves time in the meeting as well. Okay, we'll take that into consideration when preparing the next agenda. Thank you.

Um, okay. With that, I would say this meeting is adjourned. Thank you so much everybody. Jenny, thank you for talking for so long so articulately and fluently. Um, yeah. All right. So, I do have the the updates on the the information on that uh event.