Rob Dalley stated this is a discussion to see what everyone's temperature is, because he has been asked for a lot of building height changes in both residential and commercial. He knows it is a sensitive and controversial subject. We have a lot of other work to do and he doesn't want to bog us down if no one is interested in looking into it. Council is split on this. Tiffany Wynn also sent out an email. Commissioner Dave Robinson stated that as a contractor, 25 feet is hard to hit. It is not impossible. They have to have a low pitched roof. Depending on how wide the structure is, even then you may still have to get creative. We talk about zero as the floor, but do we measure off back of curb? If it is off pad elevation, can't they just raid their pad five feet? Chuck Gillette stated it is off pad elevation. Pad elevations are set at construction drawings. You can't raise those unless you can show a drainage problem. That goes through engineering. Commissioner Dave Robinson stated 8 foot ceilings are an antiquated minimum and floor joists makes you at least 17 feet before you can put the roof on. A 4/12 pitch barely fits under that. 25 feet is short. He would be in favor of seeing it raised. Rob Dalley stated there are portions of the old township that have homes at 35 feet. Currently our ordinance states our maximum height in residential is 25 feet and commercial is 35 feet. We had a developer come in proposing an outpatient service, but capping a medical building at 35 feet would never work. They would need 45-50 feet. Chuck Gillette Tiffany Wynn stated in her email that it doesn't have to be a blanket ordinance. It could be certain areas we feel are important to keep that single-story height. Maybe when you are adjacent you have a row of single-story homes before going to two-story. Council did not approve the height request for The Retreat. They only approved the setback flexibility. They asked us to look at this citywide to see if it is something we need to do. We have a view corridor angle already. Go to the property line and in certain corridors like Center Street, Highway 91, Snow Canyon Parkway and Kwavasa Drive. There may be others he is not remembering, but you start at the property line and go up six feet and there is a fifteen degree view angle to show how far you have to set your building back from the road. That is an additional height restriction. Maybe we can go to 35 feet because we have protected those corridors with the view angle restriction. We need to consider that as we discuss this. Commissioner Doug Clifford we are applying two different requirements. Views are one thing, but taller rooms in homes are becoming the standard. If the reason we are doing it is the view angle, we need to make that the dominant feature. Chair Perry Brown stated last meeting we recommended an adjustment on height for an aesthetic reason. It didn't pass Council, but it is still worth having a further conversation about the flexibility of height. We would generally be in favor for the right reasons, as that one was for the site. The housing for that was not next to residential. The Retreat would like to see us hurry this along. The rest of the City may not be in a rush. Commissioner Dave Robinson stated is the height issue along Highway 91 as well? There are some areas we need to look at. Bryan Pack stated you and the Council still have flexibility in the form of a development agreement and special height exception. The ability to approve a higher height exists now. This would be more of a universal solution. Chuck Gillette stated he did not work here at the time, but in 2005 the zoning ordinance was completely redone. They lowered the height to 25 feet for residential homes because of the desire to preserve views. People generally like that ordinance. There are fewer two-story homes in Ivins and are not as imposing as other cities. As we look at that, we realize it did hurt affordability in Ivins. You need to be up in the trusses here to get that second story. Commissioner Brandon Weight stated his home has a one bedroom, one bath and a family room. Chuck Gillette stated it is more like 3/4 of a second floor in that bonus area. There are homes on 200 East 600 to 800 South that were able to get two-story homes in. They shrunk the second story in width. There have been a few subdivisions to do it, but every time they have had to shrink the size down. With affordable housing people want to take advantage of that second story on one foundation. We are balancing desire in the City for better views and a more scenic City with the idea of being able to have more affordable houses. We are the "oldest" City in the County and the County is the "oldest" County in the State. The median age is 52. In his own neighborhood he has watched an exodus of family after family move out of Ivins and go to the Fields to get into a larger home, more house for less money. That has been an concerning impact to our City. We would love to have more families in Ivins. Rob Dalley stated the Council didn't approve it because they felt like it was opening the door to the whole City. He felt like he was doing what was best for the City by writing it into the Development Agreement that would keep it just in that one area. They have a good argument. Commissioner Doug Clifford stated let's not table it. Commissioner Dave Robinson stated if we show interest they may want to put something together. Chair Perry Brown stated we have taken a look at specific cases and said yes. Let's take a bigger look across the City and then see what Council wants to do. Commissioner Doug Clifford stated he thinks it should not be an exception every time. Rob Dalley stated he has a good friend that does attainable housing and he has a 28 feet layout for a two-story that families can grow into. That is a good way to keep families where they are at. They are able to add on and double their house size easily. If you are interested we will look into that. Council just needed more data to make that kind of decision.
Chair Perry Brown stated this will be a continued discussion item and we got quite a bit of information to look at. Rob Dalley stated that Councilmember Mike Scott was working on getting us some more data, and he knows Commissioner Dave Robinson has some information as well. Councilmembers Dillon Hurt and Sharon Barton and Cade Visser were also getting some questions together for our Ivins businesses. Sharon Allen stated that the list they received is what we were able to get to. The undeveloped map did get completed and is not on that list. We will just keep going. Chair Perry Brown stated there are quite a few maps on the City website we will need printed off in a large format for them to look at. Chuck Gillette stated everything that is not gray is technically undeveloped on that map. The hatched areas are projects in process. The side hatch is undeveloped infill. Those are big lots that could potentially be subdivided. You can see where we have high-density and medium-density residential. What we don't have is high-density single-family, two family, or multi-family residential. Big part of this land use update is deciding if we need more multi-family? We have a site visit on Thursday. We could also have some on the SITLA annexation section. Do those two areas take care of it? We may not want to look to the center of town to add high-density. Chair Perry Brown stated that is the type of discussion we need to have these next few months. Commissioner Dave Robinson stated that the average age in Ivins is 52.1 years old. 32% of our residents are over 65. We are also older than the state and national average. We have the most combined as well. We know we are dealing with an older generation. He is also above that age. He is afraid the laws we write are for that older generation. He hates to make this comment, but that representation of our City is dying. We start losing some of the essentials that we need. He pulled student enrollment from the Washington County School District. There are 896 students in Ivins. We have almost 11k residents. That is right around 8% and includes other school programs. There are 172 that have addresses in Ivins that don't attend traditional schools but are still within the District. Commissioner Doug Clifford stated he read there are only 365 elementary school age. Commissioner Dave Robinson stated that Red Mountain Elementary has 237 attending. That does not count Vista school, but very few Ivins students attend there. They come from all over the County but he was unable to get those numbers. Even our younger families are the oldest of the younger families. This affects the School District and their funding. They look at these numbers to see what schools stay open or close. We need to write rules and guidelines and laws to encourage younger families to move here, and stop writing them for people on their way out. He was not able to get a breakdown of pockets where those younger families live. We can identify where there are not any young children. We have lost a lot of youth over in our area. We need homes they can afford and can also be added to and have long-term goals in. We need more Dillon Hurts in the City Council and Planning Commission so the younger generation has a voice. Commissioner Doug Clifford stated the little pockets here and there we do still have an ability to change, but the majority of our City is already built. Would it help to move a new land use into the middle of a gray jungle? Who would want that? We need large enough pockets to allow them to be a community amongst themselves. One or two houses are not going to do it. They need neighbors they would do things with. Commissioner Dave Robinson stated that the houses next door for these families to grow into right now is a million dollars. That is why they are moving is because there is nothing here. We want them to be able to stay. Chuck Gillette stated we need to recognize we don't get the participation of parents of busy families as we do from retired people with more time on their hands, which allows them to be more involved and amplifies their voice. Commissioner Dave Robinson stated we need to connect with them the same way they connect with us, like push notifications. Chuck Gillette stated we are trying to beef up our social media accounts to make those a bigger exposure and voice as well. Chair Perry Brown stated people want to participate but they need the trigger to help stimulate them to be involved. Commissioner Doug Clifford stated unfortunately as we look back on the General Plan it actually was a big factor in looking at us like a giant retirement center. It resulted into some of the problems we have now and it seems like there is very little we can do. We can try, but it is going to be a tough uphill road. When we say follow the General Plan, that was not done by young families. It was created by retirees. Commissioner Brandon Weight stated he moved from Richfield. He and his family fell in love with Ivins. He's in his youthful 40's and his kids are high school age. There is a stigma about Ivins that pushes youth away, but more than that, it is a money issue more than the culture. The homes and schools and community is great. They just can't afford to live here. Rules are great, but the home prices and the bills and utilities are high. It is expensive to live here. How have to have a good high-paying job to live here. That is the fact. How do you drive the costs down? That is fundamentally where it lies. Until you can change the cost of things, you won't get young families here. $400k is not an affordable home. It is the wrong initiative. My kids will never live here. It is not just Ivins, it is a Utah problem. It is much more complex solution than the Governor's initiative and a map. It is a long range problem and we would need to invest in our own selves by hiring people with more education and research to solve this. Going through our maps is not going to help. Chair Perry Brown stated we need to focus on the few larger parcels and do the best we can to drive prices down to make them as affordable as we can. Land is high. We don't own that land. We can't manipulate that cost the same way a developer could. Commissioner Brandon Weight stated he has a hard time visiting Lance Anderson's property, because what he is going to propose will actually increase home values. SITLA's intention is to do that, but overall he doesn't believe that will help either. It is a band-aid covering up the real issue. These are not long-range plans to lower prices. Chair Perry Brown inquired how do we as a Commission want to review this data? Rob Dalley stated it starts with the ground and we need to think outside the box. The dirt is the real cost. We need to look at that and how the infrastructure goes in. Take the lateral all the way in and pinpoint where it has to go. We have to think outside the old ways and find new ways to bring these costs down. Get utilities all in as one shot because it adds costs. Then you don't come back later and redig. Chuck Gillette stated the equipment is already on site so dig for another ten minutes rather than bring everyone out again later. Las Vegas has a no-dig rule once pavement is down, but we are famous for it statewide. Commissioner Brandon Weight stated that UDOT has a five-year moratorium that they enforce to not dig up roads. Chair Perry Brown stated that height matters too. Instead of increasing the size of the footprint, we need to move it up a bit. Rob Dalley stated that he has been on the building side and every time you go back in, it costs money. Let's get uncomfortable and come together. It won't be easy or fun. Chuck Gillette stated the down side of that is having to know all the floorplans for every lot ahead of time. It would not work in a custom home neighborhood. Commissioner Dave Robinson stated that we aren't looking to save money if you have a custom home site anyway. Commissioner Brandon Weight stated efficiencies are the sum of the parts. That does accumulate to their benefit. You don't give a contractor paper plan anymore. It is digital. This is not a new concept. We can all put our heads together with our vast experiences and come up with a sum of inefficiencies to correct. Commissioner Doug Clifford stated that the scariest thing about the map is that even if we make are able to make a major impact on the remaining properties, it is such a small portion, is it enough? Maybe we embrace who we are as a community. Maybe we accept that we are an old folks home with upscale homes. Look at the numbers. He is being realistic. Our General Plan summary was that people wanted to maintain what they have. It was never said, but it was not conducive to having younger people move in, it was more about let's protect who we are, and maybe that is okay. That is what Newport Beach has done. Commissioner Dave Robinson stated we made it to these numbers in less than ten years. We were not this old. We are annexing new property and we have a lot of new land that is coming in. It is out of our hands, but we can make plans. We are stuck on these maps. There are programs to entice people. There are infrastructure type things we can do. Commissioner Brandon Weight stated we are subject to inflation in the local economy. The payrates are lower. There are so many factors that make this more complex. Chuck Gillette stated that he doesn't know if that data takes into account that townhomes have brought in a lot of families. Those areas have babies not in the School District, under five years old. Townhomes have also been overbuilt throughout the County. He read a data report that stated the vacancy rates in townhomes are double the average. Those are rentals and not home ownership. We probably need to focus in on single family homes on smaller lots that can give additional affordability without having to share a wall with their neighbor. Chair Perry Brown inquired how do we all want to review this data and information that we have? We can take a certain number of the items and review those, or we could have a special work session to go through a lot of it all at one time. Rob Dalley stated we are going to come together to a work meeting on September 17th he believes and take an initial run at all this data. We will take one bite of the elephant at a time. Meanwhile we will keep gathering data. Please email him with anything else the Commission comes up with. Chuck Gillette stated Councilmember Mike Scott was going to help do an analysis on the General Plan and get us that information.