A bill for an ordinance approving and accepting Comprehensive Plan 2040, as the City’s Comprehensive Plan for the City and County of Denver. Adopts Comprehensive Plan 2040 as the city’s required comprehensive planning document to express the city’s vision for the future. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 4-2-19.
On the wall you'll see your time counting down. Speakers must stay on the topic of the meeting and must direct their comments to the council members. Please refrain from profane or obscene speech. Direct your comments to council's hold and please refrain from individual or personal attacks. Councilwoman Sussman, will you please vote Council Bill 302 on the floor? Certainly I move that council bill 19 served three zero to be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved and seconded before we go into the hearing. Councilman Cashman, I understand that you have some amendments to offer this evening so that speakers may address these amendments during their comment period. If they should choose to. Would you do a brief description of them now? I will. Thank you, Mr. President. And I do not take lightly putting an amendment on the floor at this point, but for reasons I'll discuss a little bit more later, I felt it was important to do so. Later this evening, I will offer an amendment to Council Bill 302 to change the clerk's reference number to the Filed Comprehensive Plan to allow for inserting the following sentence on page 57 of the Comprehensive Plan under the environmentally, environmentally resilient introduction. And that amendment reads, The science is clear. Our planet is facing a global crisis attributed largely to human behavior that is changing climate patterns around the world. This environmental emergency threatens to alter our normal landscape, limiting where we can live, where we can grow our food, and how we are able to access natural resources. As we look to our future, we recognize that reversing our contribution to climate change is critical. How we plan our city can help us reduce our drain on resources and reduce Denver's carbon footprint to eliminate our collective contribution to the climate change crisis, that commitment must be our overarching guide. I will also offer an amendment to Council Bill 303 to change the clerk's reference number to the Filed Blueprint, Denver to allow for inserting the following sentence on page 27 of Blueprint Denver under the Vision Introduction. Same sentence, but I'll read it again. The science is clear. Our planet is facing a global crisis attributed largely to human behavior that is changing climate patterns around the world. This environmental emergency threatens to alter a normal landscape, limiting where we can live, where we can grow our food, and how we're able to access natural resources. As we look to our future, we recognize that reversing our contribution to climate change is critical. How we plan our city can help us reduce our drain on resources and reduce Denver's carbon footprint to eliminate our collective contribution to the climate change crisis. That commitment must be our overarching guide. Mr. President, I'll just add that this amendment has been put together with the cooperation of community planning and development and the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment. Thank you very much, Councilman Cashman. The combined public hearing for Accountable 302 and Counsel 303 is open. Speakers may addressed either or both bills, including the amendments that Councilman Cashman just read out and will offer up with each bill when we vote later this evening at the conclusion of the public hearing. Council will vote separately on each bill and separately on the amendments as well. So with that, may we have the staff report? Hi. Good evening. Members of city council. My name is Jill Jennings Gorelick and I am the interim executive director for community planning and Development. And I I'm absolutely thrilled to be here in front of you tonight to present the final draft of Comprehensive Plan 2040 and Blueprint Denver. Based on three years of hard work by tens of thousands of Denver residents, neighborhood groups, community leaders and city staff, these plans reflect our shared community vision for an inclusive, connected and healthy city. I want to thank City Council for all of your time that you have put into shaping these plans. Your extensive review, countless briefings with staff and invaluable assistance to help us schedule public meetings has helped make tonight possible. I also want to thank the thousands of Denver ites who took the time to engage in this process and give us their thoughtful comments. These plans reflect their voice and we are excited to see them adopted and to begin implementation as we start that work of implementation. We look forward to continuing to partner with the community to make this vision a reality. Through such things as using zoning to improve residential design, protecting historic neighborhoods, and integrating cultural heritage into our preservation program, supporting public works and their updates to Denver street design standards for safer, greener, high quality streets and sidewalks, and creating a citywide incentive for building affordable housing near transit. Just to name a few. I will now turn it over to Sara Showalter, who will present the staff report on Comprehensive Plan 2040. Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you, Joe. Good evening, City Council. I'm Sara Showalter with Community Planning and Development. And I'm going to talk about concert Comprehensive Plan 2040. So I just wanted to start with a quick reminder that we have a great foundation comprehensive plan. 2000 was a good starting point for us as we launched this process three years ago, and there's still some great values and vision components of that plan that we're carrying forward in the draft plan. Before you tonight, I also wanted to remind everybody that comprehensive plan 2040 is part of the Denver right package of plans that we've been working on for three years now. As a reminder, that includes five total plans, comprehensive plan 2040 plays the role of really tying all of those plans together. Denver Right. Was a very, very robust community outreach process. We were committed to try and reach as many people in Denver as we could. That includes all the different geographies of our city as well as as many demographics as we could hit as well. So we really focus on how do we engage people in different ways throughout the process. This included having traditional public meetings and community meetings was a huge component, but it also included a lot of other techniques to try and reach as many people as possible. So some of the different tools that we use was our website. We had a great interactive website with lots of surveys that included map based surveys where we could get comments on draft maps in the plan. We also had paper surveys that we brought, particularly to some of the focus groups that we did in communities that don't have as much online access. We did a lot of events, but we called our street team, which was a great group of staff and volunteers that went out to meet people where they are, recognizing that some people may never come to a public meeting, but we still want to hear from them. We, of course, also had a lot of volunteers that spent countless hours working on the different plans through the task forces, as well as the Denver right think tank. And we did office hours throughout the community as well, which was more focused on one on one time with staff for people to really dove into the content of the plans. I mean, all together that totaled over 25,000 touch points from the community. We don't have a way to track exactly how many different individuals participated because many people participated multiple times, taking different surveys, coming to different meetings. But we know it was well over 25,000 pieces of input received. And this is just a summary again of all the different tools we used. This is also a map showing how much we tried to reach every city council district throughout the city, going to the far corners of our city as well as the Corps. And through all of that community input and the many, many voices that we heard from, we were able to develop what we call our six vision elements that are the foundation of Denver. Right. And in particular, the foundation of the comprehensive plan. These are the six vision elements before you all walk through them. If folks aren't able to read them on the screen in just a minute and just wanted to remind everybody the role that the comprehensive plan plays, this document really is about what do we want Denver to be over the next 20 years? What are our values as a city and what are the important policies that guide us as we make decisions in the future? So all of those vision elements come together and they also have informed a series of goals under each vision element that tie together all of the plans that we have as a city, not just Denver. Right. Plans, but other plans, too, like the Climate Action Plan and Housing and Inclusive Denver. And imagine 2020, we really worked extensively across multiple departments in the city to reflect what we heard from the community, but also bring components of these city plans together and show how it's all interconnected and formed by the same vision. And so the way that the plan is organized, so there's a short chapter on each vision, and that vision element contains goals and then more detailed strategies. Under the goals we also have where to find more for each vision element, which is basically kind of a guide to point you to all the plans that are more that are most relevant to that vision element with more detailed strategies on how we'd actually implement. So we really want the comprehensive plan to play a role of bringing all of our plans together and kind of stitching them into one vision framework. So very quickly, I will walk through what's in each of those chapters. This is by no means a comprehensive review that the draft plan was included for you, and it's been online in its final form for people to view as well, but wanted to hit the highlights. So under the first vision element, equitable, affordable and inclusive, we very intentionally put this vision element first. I would say of all the community input, we heard the concerns around equity and really building an inclusive city where we have the ability for everyone who wants to afford to live here to do so was a huge theme. So some of the topics that you'll find addressed in the. Goals and strategies in this chapter deal with affordable housing, with equitable access to all the services and amenities that our city needs. Mitigating involuntary displacement for residents and businesses. Education. And really trying to integrate equity into all the work we do as a city. Thinking about how we can better integrate it into decision making, including things like our budget decisions and all of the plans that we do moving forward. Strong and authentic neighborhoods. We also heard so much about this from the community. We have so many wonderful, unique neighborhoods in Denver, and preserving them, reflecting what makes them so unique was very important to the community. So we have a lot in this chapter about urban design, historic preservation, creating complete neighborhoods. And. Safety was also another big concern that came up that's addressed here connected, safe and accessible. This element is really all about mobility, how we get around the city, making sure people feel safe. And we've designed a safe transportation network for all of our users, people of every age and every ability. It's also very much about providing the highest and best range of options for people and really thinking about what that means in terms of implementing and advancing a multimodal network. And this vision element, economically diverse and vibrant, is very much about how we can have a rounded economy in Denver, well-rounded economy that's diverse and sustainable and able to weather downturns because of that diversity. It's also very much about on the vibrant component, the arts, culture and creative industry that makes for a strong economy and a vibrant city environmentally resilient. This was a huge theme that we heard a lot from the community about. It is really important and it focuses a lot on climate change and the realities of that and what it will mean for Denver if we don't continue to work to adapt and mitigate climate change. Also, a lot about water and the importance of water conservation, solid waste reduction, protecting all of our waterways and the river in Denver , as well as green infrastructure, stormwater, soil remediation and as well. Another big topic under resiliency is emergency planning and making sure that we have a city ready and prepared for any large event that might come our way. And then we have healthy and active. We also heard a lot from the community about how much they treasure living in a city where we have access to mountain parks. We have so many great open spaces and trails and recreation and how vital that is to our vision going forward. This this vision element also says a lot about increasing and making sure we have equitable access to the health services that everybody needs, as well as including health analysis, which is something we already do in a lot of our plans, but looking for opportunities to advance that even more into our work as a city. And the final chapter in the comprehensive plan. This is an example where we use the Comprehensive Plan. 2000 is a great foundation. That document had a lot in it about the importance of regional collaboration. Still a very, very important theme now, and we're very aware that many of the vision elements in this plan can truly only be implemented with regional collaboration. Whether you're thinking about a transit network or our goals for open space and affordable housing, regional solutions will be really important. And as the core of the region and the city, that's the model for everybody. This chapter really tries to set the standard that Denver will be a model but also help read lead regional collaboration. There's a lot more in the plan. Happy to answer more questions tonight, but we have a lot of people here to speak. So I want to keep things moving. And I will close by saying that the proposed comprehensive plan 2040 conforms with our code requirements for a city comprehensive plan and staff recommends approval. And now I'm going to turn it over to David Gaspar to do a presentation on Blueprint Number. Thank you, Sarah. President Council. David Gaspar, Principal City Planner and Community Planning, Development and Project Manager for this update to Blueprint Denver. As with Sarah, we do want to mention that we are building off of an existing plan document blueprint. Denver, 22. If you're familiar with the appendix of the new plan, we did a thorough diagnostic of Blueprint Denver, which has been guiding our land use and transportation since that adoption and has served us very well. Moving forward to the new plan is in front of you today. It is our land use and transportation plan for growing and inclusive. Denver And we have three key elements to move that forward. First would be the addition of social equity factors to tailor solutions by neighborhood in the plan. It also contains a measured, common sense approach to growth in Denver out to 2040, and it does that by working on creating complete neighborhoods and connecting those complete neighborhoods across all of Denver with a complete multi-modal transportation network. When adopting a supplement to the comprehensive plan, there are three criteria to follow. It's an inclusive community process was used to develop the plan, that the plan was consistent with the vision, goals and strategies of the comprehensive plan, and that it demonstrates a long term view. So I'll just walk through those three questions with you tonight and try to answer them. So first, was an inclusive community process used to develop a blueprint? Denver Sara has already mentioned the considerable amount of Denver Rite Outreach with the 25,000 touch points. So I won't bring that back. But I do want to highlight our task force, which has 33 community members that were tasked to guide the plan throughout the entire process. They did bring an immense amount of professional, personal and community expertize to the process. And also they worked as a liaison back to the community to communicate how the plan was evolving. 20 meet meetings over a three year period at the task force met. Those meetings were open to the public and they provided feedback. Feedback on the community, values, vision elements, plan framework, draft maps and the draft recommendations that are in front of you tonight. We also had an equity subcommittee that was formed out of the task force, and they analyzed the public review draft of the plan, focusing on racial equity and institutional racism. We had six different community engagement windows ranging from 1 to 6 months throughout the three year process that included two public review drafts, the first being released in August of 2018 and then a revised public draft two coming out this January. Communication. Additional outreach thanks to the umbrella of Denver. Right. We had a significant amount of promotion of the planning process, which was great. Much help from council members, too, to get the word out on on all the efforts. We had a robust website that had all the Denver right plans in one location. Our public comments that were received through the public drafts were actually posted on our that website. We also had annotated versions of the drafts as we were trying to show our responses to those comments. We had translation services of of the key plan documents and the website content interpretation services and child care were available to public meetings and additional outreach. Focusing on underrepresented communities was another key component of the process. So start finding his blueprint. Denver was developed through an inclusive public process. Next is playing consistency. Is the plan consistent with the vision, goals and strategies of the comprehensive plan? Those are the six vision elements that Sara just went through with you. So I'll just step through each one of those and highlight the Blueprint Demo recommendations and how they advance. The comprehensive plan, first and foremost, with equitable, affordable and inclusive is the strong commitment to equity. We have those three equity concepts in our vision chapter and we also speak about completing creating complete neighborhoods for everyone in all of Denver, across all of our neighborhoods. It advances affordable housing and housing diversity in all of our neighborhoods and considers the potential for involuntary displacement with city led projects. Second Comprehensive Plan Vision elements Strong and Authentic Neighborhoods Blueprint Denver Recommendations focus on complete neighborhoods with increased access to amenities, high quality urban design in all of our neighborhoods, working to preserve the authenticity and character of our neighborhoods and empowering more people to be involved in planning processes, especially our small area plans as we go forward. Next Rear Vision element excuse me connected, safe and accessible places. Blueprint Denver presents the complete multimodal network to connect our neighborhoods and supports the city's Vision Zero Action Plan and mode share goals. It has recommendations related to equitable access to opportunity and services throughout Denver and focuses on growth near transit, especially in our centers and corridors. The economically diverse and a vibrant vision element here were focused on providing a diverse economy for all of Denver with a great mix of jobs throughout the city. Our job growth is focused on our regional centers, community centers and corridors with equal access to those job areas. We have targeted investments for small, locally owned businesses. Recommendations to preserving high value manufacturing areas and also promoting the innovation economy, including handcrafted maker spaces. With environmentally resilient blueprint. Denver has recommendations addressing climate change and how to mitigate environmentally responsible resource and efficient building practices. Another recommendation has recommendations related to the landscaping requirements being climate appropriate, recommendations on environmentally friendly and green infrastructure in development, and also managing stormwater as a holistic ecological system as well as in recommendations on improve air quality and water quality. And finally, with healthy and active, we never had recommendations, increasing opportunities for a healthy lifestyle, supporting greater health considerations and analysis for more city wide programs, and expanding tools and regulations to ensure high quality parks and open space throughout the city. So staff finds that blueprint is consistent with comprehensive plan 2040. And finally, a long term view. Does the plan demonstrate? A long term view? We remember establishes a vision for an inclusive city of complete neighborhoods and networks in 2040. Plan recommendations are based on that long term holistic vision and will take many years to achieve. So staff finding is that blueprint never has an appropriate long term perspective. And we are here tonight with our counsel hearing on April 22nd. So a staff recommendation based on the findings, I believe, from Denver, using an inclusive public process is consistent with a comprehensive plan 2040 and that the plan takes the long term view. Stack recommends adoption of Blueprint Denver. That concludes the staff presentation. Thank you very much. We do have 58 individuals signed up to speak this evening. So if I can if you're sitting in this front bench, I'm going to ask you, unfortunately, to move somewhere else so that we can bring a remembering five people at a time up to the front so that we can get through people and get people right to the microphone. So if you wouldn't mind, could you clear a little bit of room in that front bench for five? So I'm going to call you up five at a time with 58 people. You may find that by the time your name gets called, someone has already said what you wanted to say. And so feel free to reference other people who have spoken. You don't need to use all 3 minutes if you don't need it, but they are yours to use. So with that, if I call your name, if you could please come up to the front bench Kimball Kringle, Joel Noble, Terrence Wear, Chris Pelkey and Abdur Ali. If you want to come up to the front right now. So you're ready. As soon as I call your name, the next time, then your time will start to lapse. So step, step right up to the microphone. First up, Kimball Kringle. Hi. Good evening. My name is Kimball Kringle, and I had the great honor and distinction of being one of two co-chairs for Blueprint Denver. Joel, you'll hear from next. I'm here tonight to voice my support and urge you to pass Blueprint Denver tonight. I do need to pay a great deal of thanks to the members of our task force, many of whom are here tonight. Our task force represented a diverse group of stakeholders that represented their various community groups and stakeholder groups. Our task force has been committed and dedicated. We've been total pains in the butt to staff over the last three years in the sense that we all pushed. We pulled. We asked. We were impassioned. We called out. We read. We edited. We asked more questions. We asked for subcommittee processes. And in the long run, we made Blueprint a very thorough and guided document from the various stakeholders that we all represent. This plan is what it is because of the stakeholders and the community input that guided this document. Blueprint Denver provides the foundation for policy related to land use, mobility, design and growth since the 22 blueprint Denver was passed. We've seen tremendous growth in the city, growth that's presented great opportunity, but also incredible challenges. We know that this growth is going to continue. By passing Blueprint Denver we get to account for what thousands of residents and stakeholders have asked for to guide growth through the lens of social equity. To be honest about institutional barriers based on race to improve urban design, to direct growth to centers and corridors tied to transit, and to emphasize neighborhood area planning. Equity is a term that you'll hear about a lot tonight. Equity is when everyone, regardless of who they are or where they come from, has the opportunity to thrive. This plan integrates equity into our planning policy without accounting for and adjusting for this equity. The forces of change will prevent our city from achieving the vision of an inclusive and complete city. We set the stage to advance equity through improving access to opportunity, reducing vulnerability to displacement, and expanding housing and jobs. Diversity in all of our neighborhoods by guiding implementation actions. We can have a more inclusive and equitable city. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next up, John Noble. Good evening, Council. President Members of Council. My name is Joel Noble. I live at 2705 Stout Street. It's been my privilege to serve as co-chair of the Blueprint Denver Task Force for the past three years. As you heard from Kimball, we had a large and diverse task force ensuring that public engagement reached and continued to hear from communities that they're a part of. In all parts of the city. I believe that comprehensive plan 2014 meets all the requirements of the Denver Revised Municipal Code and Blueprint. Denver meets the requirements of Comprehensive Plan for adoption, namely, an inclusive community process was used to develop Blueprint. Denver And I'd like to point out the time frame for Blueprint. Denver was extended based on public requests for additional time to comment on the first public draft and an entirely new public draft that was not in the original plan. Blueprint Denver is consistent with the vision, goals and strategies of Comp Plan 2040, a very successful strategy to develop them together. Under the Denver Right family approach and blueprint, Denver demonstrates a long term view blueprint. Denver is a worthy evolution of the original blueprint. Denver for the next 20 years, whereas the original blueprint Denver set the intention of linking land use and transportation blueprint. Denver 2019 goes much further. Being co-developed with Denver moves, transit pads and trails and informed by Denver moves bikes. It sets modal priority for streets, identifies pedestrian priority areas, and deeply incorporates vision zero principles calling for complete streets policies and new street design guidelines. Whereas Blueprint Denver 2002 described a simplistic and often misunderstood concept of areas of change in areas of stability. Blueprint Denver 2019 evolves this concept into a growth strategy map more strongly emphasizing transit, transit rich corridors and centers as the key areas for sustainable growth, where Blueprint Denver 22 incorporated the concept land use map blueprint Denver 2019 goes further by providing direction for our context based zoning code and also including other recommendations. Blueprint Denver developed with extensive public input, incorporates goals, strategies and that are all summarized in an implementation matrix with specific timeframes and responsibilities, which includes the topics highest on the minds of the public today, including design, quality, accessory dwelling units and strong consistency with many matters identified in agencies point by point requests and direction in their transportation platform and zoning and planning platform that I also had the ability to participate in developing. It also captures existing practices that we have as a city but are not in any adopted plan yet. Vision Zero Neighborhood Planning Initiative and the Denver Multimodal Network Plans. This is the first time there will be an adopted plan. It's my hope and belief that in the years to come, as we do neighborhood plans, people will think first of Blueprint Denver as the plan that requires complete networks and complete neighborhoods. With that, I'd like to thank our task force and ask for your support in approving these plans. Adopting. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Tahrir. Where? Thank you. Terrence where? 2380 Albion St, Arizona, a member of the Denver Right Advisory Board. And I have to say I'm disappointed in the process and the product. The key thing that I think is missing from the plan are economics and the interplay of economic patterns, impacts and trends which are entirely missing from the discussion. The role of government is not just to provide high quality life, but to provide services and the regulatory framework to direct development where it provides the greatest public benefit. Those services are paid for primarily by property and sales taxes, but nowhere in the plan does it talk about or discuss whether or not there is enough commercially zoned land to generate sales taxes to support these services. Does the mix of residential densities create a drain or supplement the tax base? How do development economics impact the location, cost, construction, quality of new development, or the preservation of existing neighborhood character? How does zoning impact property values and does it act as an incentive for displacement of local businesses and long time residents, or as a disincentive to housing affordability and diversity? Job growth may depend upon the location and size and availability of land. Is that accessible? Does it have the capacity and the infrastructure? Does the city's infrastructure have the capacity to accommodate additional growth? If not, where will the cost be absorbed? The visual preference survey approach to developing this plan could have incorporated metrics to have given some depth and answers to these choices and decisions, but it didn't. Instead, implementation is primarily regulated or dependent upon the planning department, which is doing as best job as it can. But clearly, when you read through the plan, it talks about a multi-year and 20 year process for that to occur. I think the plan has some great components to it. It's a real format. It's easy to read, but I really think that there is additional work that needs to be done to make this plan worthwhile. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Chris Mulkey. Thank you, Chris Mulkey. 3835 North William Street number. Happy to come tonight, both as a resident of Denver as well as an avid supporter and put my my young career's work towards affordable housing development in Denver. And this plan is really exciting to see you come forth and really become the tool that we need to take forward . The wonderful efforts have already been done as part of the inclusive Denver five years, five year affordable housing plan. And and I think it really meshes well with allowing a lot of the tools that would be created to really create truly mixed income, mixed use development projects that are appropriate for each neighborhood will serve. And so then specifically around aligning with the goals of the five year housing plan, I think that one of the great suggestions in implementation follow up tools is creating informative data and mapping that allows for each council district and also each neighborhood to truly analyze where, you know, an affordable housing project and what type of affordable housing project makes sense, as well as obviously creating additional permanent supportive housing, homeless projects and where those need to be dispersed throughout Denver. And I think that another unique part of this that we do not have today that really allows the framework to be put in place for the small area of small area planning initiatives that are in a lot of the work that we're doing where existing zoning doesn't allow for the mix of uses and truly creating complete neighborhoods that we like to see specifically around transit and also larger neighborhood redevelopment efforts that by allowing and empowering residents of that specific neighborhood to come forward and really tell us what is the missing gaps of services that aren't here, that this plan would allow us to do that much more easily and and include not only affordable housing projects, but also a mix of uses that really, truly serves that neighborhood. And then as far as just a quick closing, trying to keep it quick, I mean, everyone knows land is very scarce and growth is inevitable. And we need to find a way to incorporate an appropriate level of density to really create a true inclusive Denver for the next 20 years. And I think this plan does that. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Abdul Ali. Left. All right. I'm going to call the next five up to the front. Gabriel. You. Me? Sorry about that. Christine O'Connor. Logan Meyer. The radical. Her and Ken Strobel. Gabriel is a first. Is. Good evening. My name is Gabriel, G.M. and the president, CEO of Live Oak, Colorado. We work on making sure that people in under-resourced communities and communities of color have access to healthy food and physical activity. I was honored to sit on the Task Force for Blueprint for the past three years. And I just want to also say that the the Planning, Community Development and Planning Department did a really an extraordinary job and should be commended for how well they managed such an inclusive process that really required an enormous amount of expertize, openness and tenacity. As an advocate for an expert in access to healthy food and physical activity, I can say that I am pleased with the attention paid to and creativity displayed in the policies and recommendations. Included in this blueprint. From the aspirational expectations that every Denver might be within a ten minute walk to a park and a full service grocery store to specific policy recommendations to. Maximize urban agriculture and access to locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables. To what I believe was one of the more central themes a blueprint to ensure excuse. Me, multi-modal transportation system, investing in walking, biking, rolling and public transit, and the potential of what new technology will bring us in the future. The blueprint has recommendations for and clear straight strategies as to how the health and wellness of Denver sites can be advanced through its infrastructure. I also know through my 15 years working in the health and wellness arena that the most important strategy lies in our collective ability to implement an. Inclusive and equitable vision. In my opinion, the Equity Subcommittee. Which I also had the honor of sitting on its most important contribution to the blueprint, lied in its recommendations in translating vision into implementation. Every single policy recommendation here is at risk of being implemented in a way that is not equitable or inclusive. If we are to accomplish a healthy city, a thriving city. And innovative city, we must have the wisdom and courage to engage in an inclusive process that measures success through an equity perspective. There will be many city council elections between now and the next time the blueprint will enter into this process again. Over that time period, over that time period, many conditions will change. But our commitment to inclusion in multiple cultures, to resident voice, to diverse economic growth, to multi-use infrastructure, to neighborhoods that tell us our history and inspire our future, should be, as the blueprint implies, centered around equitable opportunity. Approving this blueprint is about accepting that challenge and accepting it for our future leaders. I'm optimistic that what we've done will help accomplish that. And I appreciate your service and leadership on council. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Christine O'Connor. My name is Christine O'Connor. I'm going to make a brief personal comment and then put on my ANC hat. First of all, the narrative itself in all these plans is wonderful. It identifies everything that we've heard from people throughout the city, identifies the inequities, the displacement, the erratic gratification of affordable housing, stock congestion, loss of park acreage . It's perfect. It says it all. It's picked that up. The problem is it focuses on mitigating these impacts and spreading these impacts equitably. There's no discussion, as another gentleman already mentioned, analyzing whether what rate of growth we can tolerate, how much water we have, whether it's sustainable. Those are the things that I think are missing. So now I'm going to put my ANC hat on to make way for Loreto, who's going to read the ANC statement. And I'm just going I'm the chair co-chair of the Zoning and Planning Subcommittee, and I've been on air and sea for about ten years. And I'm going to read the list of the neighborhoods that make up ANC Alamo's policy to ask more. PARC Baker Stark. Bellevue Hale. Berkeley Bluebird. Bonnie Brae. Capitol Hill Chun. Chappie Park. Neighborhood Association. Cherry Creek. East Cherry Creek Neighborhood Association. Cherry Creek North Cherry Hills Vista Community Association City Park Fans City Park West Cole Neighborhood Association. Colfax Avenue Business Improvement District College View Concho TownHome Congress Park Neighbors Cooke Park Merrell Corey Merrell Country Club Historic Neighborhood Cross Community Coalition Krammer Park Hilltop Civic Cultural Arts Residential Organization Curtis Park Neighbors Driving Park East Colfax Neighborhood Organization Eastside R.A. O'Leary and Swansea Neighborhood Association. Fans of Washington Park Fans of Cheesman Park. Golden Triangle Creative District. Greater Park Hill Community. Harkness Heights Harvie Park Highland United Neighbors Historic Montclair Humboldt Street Hutcherson Hills Inspiration Point Jefferson Park Alma Lincoln Park Larimer Place Lower Downtown LoDo and a Lowry United Neighborhoods Mayfair Neighbors Montebello 2020 Old San Rafael Neighborhood Overland Park Platte Park People's Association Rosedale Harvard Gulch. Sloan's Lake Citizens Group. Sloan's Lake Neighborhood Association. South City Park Neighborhood Association South Hilltop South More Park East South More Park South Stokes Place Green Bowers Sun Valley Swallow Hill The Unthinkable United North North Metro Denver University Hills University Hills North University Neighbors Uptown on the Hill Virginia Village Washington Park Wilshaw East East 38th West Colfax West Highland West Washington Park and Woodson Downs and sorry. Good times. They made it okay. You made it just under the wire. Thank you. Next up, Logan Meyer. Hi there. My name's Logan Meyer, resident of Capitol Hill. Denver is at a critical point for addressing its housing crisis, its role in future environmental sustainability and economic opportunity for residents. And the Blueprint Denver plan is a step in the right direction. A 2018. Article in the Denver Post had Denver growing by. 100,000 people in the last seven years, or roughly 20% since 2010. This is despite Denver only adding 22,000 housing units, according to the U.S. Census Bureau over the same period. Even if all those housing units were generously two bedroom units, we have where of the other 55,000 new Denver sites without new units set up residents, simply stated . Whether or not Denver leadership addresses the housing crisis, people will continue to move here, and this change and diverse population will continue to be the result of people doing what they have always done in cities, which is simply making it work by living with more roommates, often moving in with family, often spare bedrooms are often an unpermitted accessory apartments. These are natural adaptations that have happened in cities since the beginning of time are only natural reactions to natural market forces. Only in Denver, the market forces have been compounded by inherited, onerous and restrictive housing policies, limiting the number of unrelated people in a single unit. Technically, the only two people and requiring a bureaucracy for building zoning and change of occupancy units that are quite simply too sophisticated and costly for the vast majority of Denver residents who could benefit from legal adaptations to the housing supply crisis. In addition to creating a windfall for large, legally sophisticated developers who are able to navigate the official processes, this has significantly contributed to the soaring housing costs affecting many long term residents. It is important to remember that making policies that limit the housing supply does not mean that people will stop moving here. It simply means that residents will get displaced and or will unnecessarily put tenants in illegal housing conditions. Today, you will hear from people claiming that Blueprint Denver plan is too fast and that they managed to sleep through the last three years of community input development in countless meetings. To those grappling with the effects of the housing crisis and economic inequality, it is a step in the right direction and long overdue, as current conditions will only continue to further stunt economic prosperity. As large rents continue to move from poor to wealthy, young to old and local residents to large out of city corporations. Ultimately, Denver is one of the lucky cities in America that is attracting new creative talent that is moving to the city. Whether the city's leadership decides to get out in front and lead from the front or not from the sick for the sake of Denver's residents, families and its future, I sincerely hope Denver's leadership will heed the call to lead from the front and make this city into an example of what a modern, complete city for all can be. Thank you. Next up, Loretta Koehler. Hi. I'm Loretta Kaylor. I'm vice president of ANC. And member of. Baker Historic Neighborhood Association. And you heard from Christine talk about. All of our neighborhoods that are part of ANC. ANC as a cooperation is in a neighborhood. Cooperation is an organization of active invested citizens who promote the integration and promotion of a healthy, strong Denver. So in understanding. That we had a resolution. On February 9th, that resolution passed from the majority of our our members present at that time and with some concurrence later on email. And so let me read that resolution. The resolution, although it says April 15th, the Denver Comprehensive Plan 2040 and Denver, right blueprint. Denver and the Denver Game Plan for Healthy City are scheduled to be voted on April 22nd. Now, the Denver Right plan documents are volume is detailed and complicated, whereas collectively the Denver Right plan documents, more than eight documents total more than 1000 pages and over 100 goals and 300 policies and recommendations in more than 450 strategies. The maps crafted for individual and neighborhoods and subdistricts of the city are complex and require layering. Of. One on top of another to evaluate the implications. Whereas there were multiple requests for staff to come and meet with neighborhoods throughout the city to explain very detailed information in the documents and proposed changes in local neighborhoods. Whereas such meetings with neighborhoods to explain impacts of these documents have not occurred throughout the city. The city's official website listing information received through citizens and neighborhood comments is missing many individual comments that were formally submitted, submitted information, identified changes made to the plan. Documents for the second draft are divorced from the materials, listing specific requests for changes and additions received from the public. Whereas these plan documents continue to be incomplete and vague in terms of addressing impacts on the city's budget and work program is especially with more than 450 proposed strategies, Denver citizens need more time, thoroughly and intelligently to review and provide meaningful input upon the Denver Ray plan documents and all city council members and the mayor up for reelection on May 7th. And the mayor. But two city council members have challengers. Basically, the Denver Ray plan documents will be Denver's guide. To be used. For the next 20 years, among other things, to guide decision making by city officials, staff, citizens, etc. And these comments basically just say that there's too much for one public meeting for somebody to sit down and go through 1000 documents. That can never happen. Thank you. Next up, make it through. It can support and I think I'm going to call it the next five before you get started. So the next five, if you could come up with front bench, Sara McCarthy, Fred Glick, Charlotte Winsberg, Perry BURNETT and Sherry Way, go ahead. Thanks. Good evening. Denver City Council. My name is Ken Trouble. I've been a Denver resident for 30 years and I currently live in the Highland neighborhood. I fully support the new comp plan and blueprint. Denver. I particularly like Blueprint Denver's conceptual framework of complete neighborhoods as opposed to the suburbs where land uses are usually so segregated and dispersed that everyone must drive everywhere. Urban areas offer a more fine grained mix of land uses housing options and compact building forms, which leads to increased walking, biking and transit usage. The foundation of any great city. Denver already. Denver already has a legacy of complete neighborhoods in many parts of the city. Through Blueprint Denver's new Complete Neighborhoods Framework, we can help ensure that every Denver neighborhood can welcome their fair share of new residents, whether they are renters or owners, or whether they want to live in a single family detached, home attached, or multi-family homes or an accessory dwelling units. And that all residents have some neighborhood retail offices and other uses nearby that they can get to without a car. Ad in blueprints. Vision for a multi-modal transportation network supported by the recently completed Denver moves, transit pad and trails and bike plans. And we have the smart and sustainable approach we need to allow Denver to continue to grow and accommodate new residents to live in the city. Finally, I'd mentioned that over the past several years I attended several Denver right public meetings and completed several. Online surveys to provide input into the playing process, which I found to be thorough and engaging. So I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you tonight, and I urge you to support both the new comp plan and blueprint. Denver. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Sara McCarthy. Good evening, city council. Thank you. I'm Sara McCarthy. Do you still tell us tell where you live? 300 block of South Clarkson Street. Blueprint was originally passed in 2002, but without changes to the zoning code, the fullness of blueprints implementation couldn't occur. That changed. The zoning code changed in 2010. Yet zoning variances and code changes continue unabated. I have questions for which I am waiting for a direct answer relative to blueprint the missing middle. Are we talking wages or are we talking housing? If housing, then why are our smaller, more affordable houses being demolished at an alarming rate? Other cities new plans mention this concept of missing middle. What are the research studies that were used as a basis for placing such an important on this concept? Transit. A recent book uses Denver as an example of cities with transit systems built where people were not. Have city planners analyzed this book and its thesis to determine if the results are accurate for Denver? Folks along federal are shared in West 38th Avenue or Martin Luther King are still hoping for their transit systems if Denver is a glaring example of transit in the wrong place. Why does this plan follow the current transit locations to build out our density? West Washington Park was redlined in the 1930s, like Lama Lincoln Park and Curtis Park with their many single family homes. People, though, couldn't get mortgages for a $25,000 home in the West Wash Park neighborhood along South Pearl Street in the mid 1970s. Yet this plan suggests that single family homes are segregationist. Based on what research results? Then in the late seventies, a group of residents banded together and got a federal grant to upgrade the houses. And they're building it up to building code standards. These efforts continued with one way street conversions the Mountain View Ordinance, Broadway marketplace, Gates redevelopment. Yet these efforts brought popularity, and the West Wash Park neighborhood is used as an example of the kind of neighborhood people want. We are characterized as not wanting any change when what we want is predictability and maintaining the quality of life that we've worked hard to generate and so many others find popular. I have become skeptical after participating in the first blueprint process. Let's settle on the comprehensive plan before codifying underlying plans like the new group blueprint. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Fred Glick. Good evening, Mr. President, members of city council. My name is Fred Glick, 3850 York Street. I'm here this evening to encourage you to approve, without any further delay, the group of plans before you collectively known as Denver. Right. You've read the reports, you've seen the presentations. You know how many staff hours have gone into this? How many thousands of Denver residents have participated in the process? It is unfortunate that this process into which so many have put so much time, energy and thought has become politicized and come to be seen by some as a way to further an anti-incumbency agenda. As a member of the Board of Clayton United R.A., I would like to make clear that the Clayton United R.A. has certainly not voted to oppose or delay the approval of the Denver Wright plans. When the draft came out last August as an R.A., we reached out to the Denver Rite Team with questions about how the plans might impact our neighborhood. One of the principal city planners leading the process arranged to come and speak with our members, as well as a few neighbors from just outside our boundaries. David came with his daughter in tow as to accommodate people with work obligations. The meeting was held in the evening, he explained. He answered questions. He listened. We submitted comments that were acknowledged, and as I read the subsequent draft, they appear to have been heard. Some have suggested that postponing the adoption of these plans, or even as some have advocated, scrapping the work that has been done and starting the process over should be done because there was not enough time for people to read the plans, that there was not enough opportunity for residents voices to be heard. Let's not kid ourselves. This is politics talking, and it is an insult to the thousands of residents who volunteered to be part of the process, showed up for public meetings, responded online, read the plans and took the time to give their input. It is an insult to the city staff who have led this process, who have done the research, who have read the tens of thousands of comments residents submitted. Staff who have worked nights to bring the process into Denver's neighborhoods. Staff who have listened and worked to make these plans reflect what they heard. I urge you to do the right thing and approve these plans tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Charlotte Winsberg. Can even you? Members of council. My name's Charlotte Winsberg. I live in the 500 block of South Sherman Street in West Washington Park. I sound like an echo of Sarah, but I'll try to be. I've worked on the blueprint for nearly three years since the first advisory committee was put together, and there's much to be admired in advocating for equity in neighborhoods and for complete neighborhoods hoods that serve the needs of residents. But there are some issues that give me concerns. The urban and general urban contexts are already quite dense. The lots are smaller than the exurban and suburban contexts, making them more densely populated. When I guesstimate it from the last census that we had probably around 9400 residences within our boundaries in the last ten years that our edges, which are Spear, Broadway, I-25 and Downey, we have seen built or permitted almost 5000 new units. That doesn't include the Gates and Broadway station properties on the west side of Broadway that have yet to started the redevelopment. We we've paid at the office with ink on our interior. There is no missing middle. The middle, the duplexes, the small apartments, the little row houses have been spread throughout for over a hundred years. We don't need accessory dwelling units to give lots of good and affordable spaces for people to live. We do suggest that we should now allow adus in all residential zones when we have worked to accommodate density in large redevelopments around us and co-operated with it. It wasn't an adversarial situation or will be incredibly detrimental to our quality of life. I moved to West Washington Park 35 years ago. Then much of the housing stock was often worn outdated, fair code and code violations because of the neglect from the city. The one way streets. Everybody in that neighborhood either lived on a one way street or was one block off. And then, as Sara said, many Larry areas were even redlined. But by the efforts of the people who live there, it's become a vibrant, livable, popular neighborhood. So I'm just speaking to ADAS at this point and saying that allowing them in all residential neighborhoods will slowly take them back to investor owned rentals that will slowly deteriorate as they began to do in the 1920s and thirties and had reached the state of near blight by the 1960s in our neighborhood. Think about that, please. Thank you. Next up, Perry BURNETT. Happy Earth Day of council members. Thank you, Councilman Cashman, for your your resolution. My name is Perry BURNETT. My husband, Dan Slattery, and I have lived in Platt Park in the same 1885 home, raised two adult children there. For 35 years, I've worked as an activist and in public service for sustainability, climate and for mobility. For the past three years, I've been very honored to serve on the Blueprint Advisory Board and no other collective endeavor and I've been involved in many have I experienced such depth of inquiry, sincerity of community engagement, professionalism and patience by our city staff, and such dedication of volunteers. You'll hear about equity, housing affordability, design and mobility, all issues that are explicitly addressed by the plan and blueprint. UPDATE You also heard some of the details in the Environment Mental Resilience Section. What I want to talk about tonight is that I think with this plan, Denver is setting a new standard for urban planning. That is, climate forward. Complete neighborhoods will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. All neighborhoods in Denver deserve to be places like Platte Park, where more people can afford to live and meet most of our daily needs with an A walk, bike or transit ride. Complete networks will reduce greenhouse gas emissions networks and streets that are designed to prioritize the convenience and safety of walking, bicycling and transit will reduce vehicle miles traveled together. And this is really important. Complete neighborhoods and complete networks will increase social interaction between people. Our relationships with our neighbors will be closer. Our capacity to work together will be deeper, and our resilience to disruption will be stronger. The Denver Right plans envision our city in 2040, the same year envisioned by the recent report in October by the U.N. Scientific Panel on Climate Change. The report is urgent. They warn that in the next 21 years, lower temperature increases than previously predicted would produce more extreme weather responses. Rational scientist us that, quote, avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has no documented historic precedent. Back in 1989, I was working in the climate change arena, worked on a symposium in Sundance, Utah, called Greenhouse Glasnost. We knew enough at that time to take action. There is no more time for delay. The 2040 comprehensive plan and Blueprint were three years in the making, three years of research, analysis, outreach, discussion, mapping, listening, innovation and revision. The proposed plan charts a way forward, and there will be opportunities to improve it as plans. They mean nothing until we begin the hard work of budgeting tonight, even after three years, our work is only beginning. Let's keep let's keep moving. Please support both a comprehensive plan, the the Blueprint Initiative and Councilman Cashman's amendments. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next up, Sherri Weight. Oh, and I'm going to call the next five up to the frontbench Lindsay Fender, Charlie Bush, Tamir Goldstein, Jesse Paris and Pam Joyner. Come on up. Go ahead. Good evening, Council President Clark. My name is Sherry Way. I live at 1231 South Ogden Street, and I am the president of the West Washington Park Neighborhood Association. Sorry. For those of you who are familiar with our neighborhood association, you may know that we have spent significant volunteer hours both from our neighborhood association itself and getting input from our community and residents within our boundaries. As Charlotte Winsberg noted, we have approximately 9400 residential and business units and largely residential within our boundaries its very large district encompassing the Spears statistical neighborhood in West Washington Park. I feel like I spent the last 20 years working on plants, working, commencing with the T.Rex plan, the original blueprint . Denver The zoning maps. We have the Broadway station area plan, the Alameda Station Area Plan, and the Louisiana Parole Station plan all within our boundaries are on our perimeter. So we are no novice to planning. We have reviewed each and every iteration of this blueprint. Denver the plan. Denver moves game and game plan. And whoever said it's over 1000 pages. That's right. Multiply it by four. And that's the amount of work we put in our neighborhood. Association is not now, nor has it ever been anti-growth. Rather, we are smart growth. We are directed growth. You asked us where do we want to see growth in our community? And we've told you we don't want to see growth within the interiors of our boundaries. We have supported and will support it and will continue to support growth on our perimeters. We've supported extreme density at the Broadway station, Alameda Station, and we also have density at the Louisiana Pearl Station, which is a walk up station. So obviously that's lesser. We were accommodated and thank you very much, David Jaspers, Shira, Sara Showalter and your teams with a number of our comments. And I think they worked very hard to address them. There were some instances where we couldn't be accommodated and in those instances we sought assurances. I'll read those assurances to you now and ask that you confirm them. First, we were assured that future zoning decisions about increased density will respect our neighborhood plans small area and the small area plans we participated in. That's very important to us. As carte blanche density will destroy the character of our neighborhood. Secondly, we've been told that the appropriateness of proposed zoning and map amendments in our low density residential area will be based on our existing and future neighborhood plans. And not just on having a duplex. One or two blocks justifies putting a duplex on every blocks. We've been invited to create overlay districts. We've done that. We will ask for your support when they bring them forward. Lastly, we ask for future neighborhood plans that we, to the extent we have two or three neighborhoods, that our individual plans be accepted and not something that I'm sorry, one size fits all. Thank you very much. Next up, Lindsay Fender. Last chance, Lindsey Fender. All right, Charlie Bush. First of all, I want to say that I am a lifelong project manager and I have had to run many meetings and this one is just amazing. So I think for all of you that have to listen to us talk very quickly. One comment. I am ALS. My name is Charlie Bush. I live at 715 South Sherman. I live two blocks from I-25 and Broadway Light Rail Station and next to Lincoln. I am also part of West Wash Park. The the research that we did when somebody was talking about it to use, I heard people around me going are all issues are great. The research that we did in Portland showed that one neighborhood that went total 80 use actual home ownership with homeowners living there reduced from 80% to less than 50% because it became an investors neighborhood. And the quality of the homes actually over the ten year period went down because they were all renters and the quality of the neighborhood was destroyed. So my question is, when you're considering the complete neighborhoods, at what point is it kind of a tipping point for just investment and not for people who want to live there? We have a complete neighborhood. We have townhomes, apartment buildings. Our price points are between $200,000 and up to 1 million. I am here because I have been on a 20 year journey to try to get Denver to be a more walkable place. I lived in D.C. for ten years, very walkable, lots of transit. Here in Denver, we allow patios, sidewalks, patios to be drilled into sidewalks, which then become part of the buildings, and it becomes an impediment to people being able to go down the street. If you look at the pictures I just handed you, this is at the corner of Sixth and Grant. There's a patio there that just jumps out into the sidewalk. You can't get around the patio because when you go around the patio, you run right into an electrical box. If you try to get into the electrical box, there's only two places to step into the street or into the ramp that is there for 80 for the ADA purposes. I can stand and balance quite well, but I've been on crutches a number of times in my life and it is a just a dangerous corner for anybody that has balance problems. If you look at the next two pictures below, it is the corner of the Washington Park Grille. The part that you see that was cement 20 years ago was part of their exterior patio. They have grown and and gotten to the point where they have actually put up a brick exterior and now they have two additional patios on the exterior of those original patios. This is what we allow in Denver. My frustration with these plans and David Gasper just tried to tell me that the Pedersen Trails plan really is in part a blueprint. If you look at the second page, it's page 17 of the PEDs and Trails plan, and it gives the limits for sidewalks. Harry, let's do sidewalks. We had somebody here and I'm going to run out of time. We get to shorten sidewalks because of patios. We need to be able to have sidewalks. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Tamir Goldstein. Tamir. All right. Jesse Paris. Jesse Paris represented for Denver, home of Salau. Black starts a movement for self-defense, a positive outcome for social change. And I'm on top of the ballot for at large. Make sure you vote by May 7th. I want to read this resolution that was mentioned in the Westword a few months ago. So I'm going to read the passage from the Westword article about this Denver right comp plan 2040. In this resolution, Denver Ink declares the incoming mayor and city council members cannot be held. I got to go back. Sorry, wrong page. On February 9th, Denver Inner Neighborhood Cooperation Neighborhood Association, otherwise known as Denver IOC, passed a resolution urging the city to pump the brakes on its comprehensive plan 2040, which covers everything from areas of the city designated or not, for growth and development. That part of the plan is known as Blueprint Denver to how the city should build out roads, parks and transportation options for the coming years. The sheer volume of the Denver Wright planning documents have been daunting for the MO for most neighborhood associations and those insensitive citizens to respond to thoroughly and intelligently by city set deadlines. Denver IOC declares in a news bulletin released after the passage of the resolution, which was supported by 80% of its members. That documents total more than a thousand pages, with over 100 goals, nearly 300 policies, recommendations and more than 450 strategies addressing the neighborhood to 2040. As Denver population increases, the plan 2040 is scheduled to be held and voted on Denver City Council today being Earth Day, April 22nd, just in time for the new election. The election and its resolution, deborah IOC declares the incoming mayor and city council members cannot be held accountable accountable for the Denver Wright plan. Plans passed immediately prior to their election. This is something that will guide us for 20 years, and it's happening way too fast, says Drew, Dr., a architect, president of the area, and Suozzi, a neighborhood association and delegate at large for Denver, AC. Something of such impact, that long impact ought to be carefully considered. Not sure. Claims that drafts of the current plan 2040 only include cherry picks, feedback from community meetings with residents instead of some other common suggestions, like requiring stricter design rules for new buildings. As for development, Delta maintains that the current plan is too vague. I will say that the Denver right documents are aspirational and very lofty goals which are unimpeachable, sustainable health. All of the things I'm sorry, but we love about Denver. Vote on this. I urge you to vote no on this. You need to give it to the new council. Let us decide. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Pam Grier. Thank you, Pam. Designer one, two, two, one, one is 52nd place in Denver. 80239. I didn't know I was signing up to speak, but I'm glad you. Called my name. Look, I am very, very happy with the plan. Living in Bel-Air for 45 years, I'm just really, really pleased to see something coming our way. I would just hope that once they start actually doing the work and develop it, develop the plans that they really consider the voices that they heard, you know, like well. That they just really consider it. And that equity is number one on the list. Thank you. Thank you. Next, five of you could come up to the front. Kyle Lisi, Steven Sweat, David Nye, Dimitri Zorro, Tony and James Wardle and Steven Sherwood. You are a first. Oh, I'm sorry. It was Kyle lives here for. I'm sorry, Kyle. Lazy of first. Hello. I'm Kyle Lacy and I live in Capitol Hill. Sorry, mine's going to be really short, but I really support the this plan. And I really hope you all. Thank you very much, Steven Sweat. Yeah, I'll I'll keep it short as well. And I support strongly support Blueprint Denver and I hope the council will pass the resolution. Thank you very much, David, I. I'm David Nigh from 91/14 Street in Denver. I'm here to speak today. For those who are too afraid to cross Colfax, too afraid to cross fear or too afraid to cross Broadway to make it here to this meeting tonight to walk across, of course. And for those who couldn't make it here because of busses that only run every 30 minutes, sometimes on time, and we're prevented from coming here tonight because of those. I'm here to just say I strongly support this plan for obvious reasons, and I urge you to pass it today. Thank you. Thank you very much. Dimitri is Czar Von. I'll let you say your last name. It's Dimitri Zavala at me. I live in 1950. North Logan in Uptown. And I'm. I'm here today to urge council to please support Blueprint Denver. I think it's been we're approaching close to 20 years since the last blueprint. And since that time, Denver has grown from about 500,000 people to about six 7680. I think, you know, this process has been going on for about three years and a and delaying it is simply a tactic to, you know, to stop growth. And I think what we need to understand is that growth is not the enemy. It's the lack of housing that's the problem. As long as we have a robust economy, people are going to want to come here for the opportunity. They're going to come here for the for the sunlight and the mountains. And you're not going to stop that. What you're going to end up doing. And here's a quick anecdote. I immigrated to this country in 1998. I move to Boulder in about 93. My parents were looking for a house in Boulder. And Boulder, as you know, is very restrictive on housing. And they decided to deny building permits that year. As a result, they moved over ten miles away. And for the last 30 years, they've been commuting, adding to the to the carbon footprint and adding to the pollution of this area. If we go the direction of Boulder, we're going to see housing prices skyrocket. I believe their their average housing prices, 1.5 or above. That's that's absolutely insane. We need to build enough to to house everybody. And how's everybody equitably? I think it's very appropriate that today's Earth Day, I think cities are at the forefront of of combating greenhouse gas emissions and and pollution in general. I think by providing the opportunity to live close to where you work or close to transit so you can make it to work and not be forced to drive. I think it's it's very important. And I think the cities such as Denver need to be leading the way. Again, I urge you to please support this and pass it today and don't delay. Thank you very much. Thank you, James Waddell. And then I'm going to call the next five up, David Schultz, Shane Wright, Jill Loken, Tori, Sarah Center Hall and Darrell Watson. If you want to come up to the front, go ahead. All right. Thank you. My name is James Waddell. I live in Fine District nine and I'm the executive director of by Denver. We are also part of the Demonstrates Partnership Coalition. I also represent the voice of over 10,000 people who bike every day in our city, on our streets that are often dangerous emerging. You ought to adopt the updated version of Blueprint in Denver tonight. I've said publicly that Denver is the gold medalist in the planning Olympics and a sometimes finalist in the implementation Olympics. I think if we pass Blueprint Denver, all of the plans that lead up on the Blueprint Denver will have a better chance of implementation if we don't pass Blueprint Denver. I can see us just stagnating and a lot of these plans are just gathering dust and dust. You know, when the original version of Blueprint Denver was passed, it was 20 years ago. We're in a very, very different city. And to sit on that plan essentially for another two or three years doesn't make any sense whatsoever. This is a land use and transportation plan. So I've heard a lot about land use, but I want to make sure that we all recognize this is a transportation plan as well. And that, you know, if we do just leave this, our streets are going to become more congested and more dangerous. We need to do something. Okay. One of the plans that comes out of this is the Denver Moves Bicycle Plan. It calls for a complete buildout of the network. And I think a lot of the plans, if they're just left in isolation and not building up under one plan, we're going to continue to have this mishmash of of disconnected streets and unsafe streets. I would also say that the public process, from what I've seen, has been very, very strenuous and very in-depth. A three year process shouldn't be needs that. And I would just say that plays on all of the work that everybody's done creating this plan and adopt Blueprint Denver tonight. Thank you. Thank you, David Schultz. Thank you, Mr. President. And Council. My name is David Schulz. I live at 1376 Raleigh Street in the West Colfax neighborhood. And first, I just want to say that I'm in favor of not only the comp plan, but the Denver I plan as well. I believe that this has been a long and thoughtful process. And we, my wife and I and I've been to some of these events and believe that the three years is plenty of time to go through this. And is it perfect? Certainly nothing is perfect, but there's a lot of work to be done still with us. So I have a company that specializes in building accessory dwelling units. So we hear from people constantly about Adus and what they can do for a city. We've traveled to Portland and many other places that have more progressive views on how to use, and we continue to see that this could be a very integral part to the affordability and equity bit of what the city is trying to attain. And I would encourage anybody that does not think this I will come and show you the stuff that we've built and the stuff in the neighborhoods and how they fade into the background and fit with the neighborhood feel of the various neighborhoods. It's the 80 ups especially is I think can be a key component to the affordability aspect and especially with the proliferation of more. It's a simple supply and demand. We need additional small units. We've gone from household size of over 4 to 2. And so we don't have enough housing, small housing especially and 80 use can be a way to provide some of this affordability that we're sorely lacking in the city at the moment. So I'm asking my councilman, Espinosa, and all the council people to support these plants. Thank you. Thank you, Shane. Right. Shane. Great. All right, Joe, we'll continue. Sarah Sanders off. Hi. I'm Sarah. Under half. I live at 1378 Raleigh Street. And I'm also asking to that this plan be approved this evening. I personally live in an accessory dwelling unit, and I'd like to kind of focus on that tonight. There's been a lot of good comments that have been made that I also feel supportive of that it's not necessary for me to repeat with me being able to live in this. ADU At 1378 Raleigh It is an affordable housing opportunity for me to live in the city and not be pushed out into the suburbs or actually be a Denver resident. And I do feel like 80 years will continue to help more people stay within our cities. The Adus they do help preserve our neighborhood character. And you do have to really in order to even see these, you need to be driving up and down the alleys because it's hard to even see them from the streets. So they do really fade into the background. And I think that they do also allow us to have a more inclusive neighborhood where we see we're seeing a lot of people right now being pushed out of neighborhoods. Adus are an answer to that, to be able to allow more people to be there. And I hear a lot of comments and people being worried about parking with all of the ideas that are that my company has built. We've built over we built ten. We have five under construction right now. All of the garage spaces, all of the garages have that where we have built these adus people were using them for parking. It was basically a big storage shed. And by the 80 use that we're building, we're building garages with living quarters above and we're actually adding parking most of or more, seeing an additional 2 to 3 parking spots that were never used before. So I'm asking that this plan be approved this evening by all of you and my councilman. Espinosa. Thank you. Thank you, Darrell Watson. And of course, the next five up will cover Lubbock. Jeff hopping and back people and human. Naomi Gold, Gornik and Leslie Tori Gorski. Come on up. Go ahead. Good evening. My name is Darryl Watson. Thank you so much, Councilman Clark and members of council for holding its public hearing. I live at 2625 Lafayette Street. I've been a 23 year resident of the Whittier neighborhood, and I stand here today in support of both the Comprehensive Plan 2040 as well as Blueprint Denver. I also wear a separate hat. I've had the honor for the last three years serving as the co-chair, along with the great amazing Florence Navarro for the game plan for a healthy city process. I'm here to speak really as to how these plans and this planning process intersected and how that actually evolved into my very strong support for both of these plans. First and foremost, a comprehensive plan, 2040. Not only did that the Blueprint Denver plan, but also the game plan for a healthy city to focus all the strategies for each of those plans really were derived from the comprehensive plan. I think this was a very unique structure that the city and county of Denver engaged in when they decided to focus on the the Denver right planning process. To say that equity was a priority would be to to under highlight the importance of equity, not just in the comprehensive plan or in Blueprint Denver, but also within the game plan, something as simple as within the Blueprint Denver to highlight the ten minute walk or roll to a park in prior iterations of blueprint or land use planning. Such discussions as such highlights were not included because the idea of having a continuous, seamless planning process in which all of our plans build on each other really, truly was not the crux of the process for land use and transportation planning. But the Blueprint Denver plan to Comprehensive Plan for 2040 included those thoughts because we knew that they knew that this process needs to build on each other in order for the city to continue to grow and to be healthy. I stand here tonight to say that each of the three factors that were highlighted by staff as to what City Council stated that they will use to identify whether Blueprint Denver, a comprehensive plan 2040 were successful have been met and those specifics were articulated by staff. So I won't repeat those points. I would like to speak just specifically to one point concerning the thousand pages of paper. We know that this process has been a three year process. Thousands of us have engaged in this process. We thank you for engaging with us tonight to listen to us. And we encourage your support for both plans and hopefully as Blueprint Game Plan comes down the pike that you also support us as well. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next up, Will Karlovic. Yes. The name is Will Karlovic. I live at 2828 Zuni Street in North Denver. I'm here tonight to represent all in Denver, and I'm also here representing myself as a concerned citizen, as well as a person that has actually three master's degrees, two of which are in city planning and urban design. And I've spent 33 years doing real estate development, community development, economic development and urban planning. And last year, I actually started the Denver and Colorado's first social impact real estate development company to build more affordable housing and community serving development. So you might say I know a little bit about this subject tonight. I'd like to read a message from the all in all in Denver board. All in Denver is a nonprofit advocacy organization that believes Equitable C is where all people have the opportunity to prosper and thrive. In July of 19 of 2016, All in Denver offered the city of Denver a list of guiding principles as they were initiating this three year process to start updating. Blueprint Denver. The five guiding principles that we urge the city at that time were as follows one to incorporate a broad set of community values. Two To prepare, better prepare the city for growth. Three To shape a vision of the city beyond just the physical form. Four To provide more sophisticated version of land use and transportation planning beyond the old binary framework of either areas of change or areas of stability. And five, to emphasize innovations in housing, equity also was an important criteria of ours, and we actually applaud the city for using that as a lens for the entire process. We have reviewed the final draft of Blueprint Denver Document, as well as all the conclusions, values, policies and recommendations contained within it. And for all these reasons, we therefore actually support Blueprint Denver and urged the council to pass it tonight without any delay. One last thought. We actually find it a little ironic that the critical voices asking to delay the vote are the ones that who are also concerned about land use and development patterns that are alarming people. Without passing this new blueprint, Denver is merely going to perpetuate and continue to increase the bad, bad planning patterns we have. And we believe that tonight is the time to implement more progressive and equitable change and enlightened growth patterns. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Jeff, Jeff hopping back. Hi. My name is Jeff Offenbach. I'm a resident of Congress Park. I live at 1350 Clayton Street, and I'm here to urge the council to pass this plan for two primary reasons. First, as a matter of principle, this plan is the result of three years of input hundreds of hours, if not thousands of hours of staff time , work of hundreds of volunteers and input of thousands of community members. It's a was an incredibly thoughtful process that I believe should be respected. And I object to the idea that more time will lead to a better outcome or that the plan should be politicized in the way that it has. Also, as a matter of policy, I believe that this plan is a step forward for a city. I represents a step towards equality, towards inclusion, towards sustainability and frankly, towards better design. And in particular, I'm encouraged by the push towards more missing middle housing strategies. I think that we have an affordability crisis in our city and this is a really thoughtful and low impact way to address those concerns and address those real problems that we have. I know this because I live in a neighborhood and on a block that epitomizes the missing middle. Our block has three low rise apartment buildings. We have two duplexes. We have 14 single family homes. We have eight Adu, and we have two for taxes. It is the missing middle and it's a lovely place to live. It's diverse. We have a million and a half dollar house and we have Section eight housing diverse, different people that live there, different income levels. And frankly, I think that more people in our city should have the opportunity to live in such a wonderful neighborhood and in a connected community like we have it at 13th and Clayton . I ask the council to support this plan and approve it today. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Benjamin. Good evening, Mr. President. Council members. My name is Peter van Leuven and policy director of Bicycle Colorado. I'm also chair of the Denver Streets Partnership. The partnership is a coalition of community organizations working together to advocate for people friendly streets and Denver streets where walking, biking and transit are the first choice of transportation for all people, no matter their age, income level or ability. We share the belief our city street designs directly support our community, health our streets, connect us to jobs, to school services, amenities, our neighbors and neighborhoods. Our coalition includes many nonprofits, among them all in Denver. Groundwork Denver. Bike Denver. Walk Denver. Bicycle Colorado. Colorado. Public Interest Research Group. Colorado Cross Disability Coalition. The AARP and the American Heart Association. We provided regular feedback to the Blueprint Denver Project Management Team to community planning and development, and also to Denver Public Works throughout the blueprint process, including multiple face to face meetings and at least two formal letters with a very long list of specific recommendations. We also promoted public engagement opportunities to our memberships, and our involvement dates back to 2016. We're very happy to tell you that the project team adopted the majority of our recommendations. And in particular, we're excited about these elements. Priority streets for walking, biking and transit. A priority order that focuses on the most efficient transportation modes with people walking at the top of the pyramid and personal vehicles at the bottom. Vision Zero and Improved Street Design Strategies. A framework for complete networks that recognizes our streets should be designed for vulnerable users like users like youth, seniors, and people with disabilities. And then finally, strategies to pursue more long term funding for mobility options. So as advocates for street safety, walking, biking and transit, we know Denver needs a land use and transportation plan that recognizes the importance of completing mobility networks and establishes walking, biking and transit as priorities. We ask you to vote yes tonight so planning can transition to action. Please give Denver the blueprint it needs to build our safe street networks. Thank you. Thank you. Next, Naomi and Maha call Nick. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Naomi Mahogany. When I grew up, I walked to elementary middle school most days. This is partially because my parents both worked full time jobs and weren't able to take me to and from school. This was also because I was fortunate to live in a neighborhood where the sidewalks were complete and connected and I could then get around to the places I enjoyed the most. Enjoying the scenery I love the most, caring the things that I love the most. Walking to school as a child helped me shape my perspective on mobility and transportation issues. I know from my personal experiences that complete streets, protected bike lanes, access to park and sidewalks that accommodate all users can surely help children grow up to be successful and healthy. That young girl with the dream of really trying to serve and help our community groups who serve as a committee advocacy director for the American Heart Association. So I'm here on behalf of my organization and also the Denver Streets Partnership urging you to adopt Blueprint Denver Plan. We ask that you adopt this plan because it helps really guide the next 20 years values specific to complete neighborhoods and complete transportation networks. Land use decisions through the lens of social equity. Sidewalks that connect the community to. Parks, public. Transportation and schools. Roads that include designated and protected bike lanes and streets that accommodate all people and can help us see safely and actively get around our community. When our children can play and either walk or bike to school parks or playgrounds, they're more likely to be healthy and do better in school. A study from the American Journal Preventative Medicine assessed 154 communities using what they called a community walkability index. And through that research, they found that youth were more likely to be healthy and less likely to be obese if they lived in walkable communities. Adopting Blueprint Denver will help ensure a framework for complete networks that recognizes that all streets are designed for the most vulnerable users, including our youth. Therefore, I ask that you all vote yes to adopt the plan, and we look forward to working with you in the city in. Adopting this plan. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Leslie Tore Gorski. Hi. Thank you, Leslie. Terry Gorski, 1754 Olive Street. I'm with the East Side Reno. We do not agree with the alliance's. Statement of. Postponing this vote. We're strongly in favor of the Blueprint Denver plan, and we strongly urge you to pass it tonight. On a personal note. I'm very excited for ideas. I think they absolutely belong. Well, I think we need to look at density additions in all neighborhoods, not just analysis district, not just in Rafael's district. But all across Denver. So I'll be back. Next week to talk on behalf of this small, tiny houses. Which also belong in our neighborhood of East Colfax. Thank you very much. We strongly hope that you. Pass this initiative tonight. Thank you. All right. The next five, if you could come up, John, Ricky, Teresa, Saint Peter Ryan, Keany, Andrea Byrnes and Adam Astrof. And John. You're up first. Hello. Good evening. My name is John Ricky. I live at 2650 West 13th Avenue in Sun Valley. I don't claim Sun Valley as my own. I've only lived there for about a year. Before that, I lived in Capitol Hill. Before that, I lived in Clayton Congress Park, Uptown, Virginia Village, Montclair. And when I was a child, I lived in university. I have not lived a static life. I have lived in houses. I've lived in apartments. I have lived in condos. I even lived in an 80. You. I have rented. I have owned. I have been a landlord over the course of my life. I have moved. I have grown. I have changed. Our city is moving. It is changing. It is growing. The city should do that. This plan is allows for growing and changing. And and it is not static. This plan should not be static. It should move and grow and change. This plan. We will find out things that don't work in the future and we will change those things. This is not the end of the line right here. This is the beginning of the journey. Cities compete for growth. More growth brings more resources to everyone, more talent, more opportunity. It allows us to provide more services. We need these things. We fight for these things. We've come to this point. We come to a point where we think that we can have economic growth, commercial growth, without allowing any residential growth. Those are ideas are at odds and we need to move past that. This plan acknowledges that that growth happens. It doesn't stop that growth. It doesn't change that growth, but it does guide that growth. And that's what we're looking for. We're looking for guidance. So what are the risks of not moving forward tonight? There's a risk that there has been a lack of input on this plan. I would say I would venture to say that of the 700,000 people who currently live in Denver, maybe 695,000 of them simply want a functioning, resilient city with economic and housing opportunity for everyone. How they get there, they are not really interested in the details. That's just the general direction that they want to go. And they will. They'll if there's a plan in place, they're happy. Over the three years that this plan has been created, which I'll remind you is 15% of the time that it's actually supposed to be in force. Everyone has had an opportunity. They might not have taken it, but there has been an opportunity through the 25,000 comments, through the dozens, scores of public meetings, different times, different places. It's all been there. In conclusion, I would like to warn that delaying this plan, or worse, allowing that delay to become a scrapping of the plan and starting over from scratch would be a waste of resources, a waste of time, and a waste of goodwill. I urge you, not allowed it to happen. Please vote in favor tonight. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next up, Teresa Saint Peter. Hi there, Teresa. Saint Peter. All of my points have been covered. Tonight, so I do want to say two. Things. I live at. 1235 East 12th Avenue. I am a. Responsible, caring community member and a renter. That is not a contradiction. As some other folks may. Have alluded to earlier today. And thank you so. Much for all of the years. Of. Extensive effort that council staff and the community have put into this very important plan. And I hope. That you pass these. Tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Ryan Kinney. Hey, I'm here to support the adoption of Blueprint Denver in the comprehensive plan. First, I'd like to state that I participated in many public meetings regarding this plan going back to early 2017, and that I participated or volunteered on the Denver Rite Street team to collect public input at the Colorado Black Arts Festival. I think the notion that the community has not been sufficiently engaged is preposterous in the face of all of these meetings and the thousands of public contributions. Second, I would like to state that I identify as someone who holds yes, in my backyard values. I believe that in order to be as inclusive as possible, Denver needs to allow for growth. If if we don't, I worry displacement will worsen. Blueprint Denver provides a vision to accommodate that growth in ways that are minimally disruptive to neighborhood character. It calls for allowing 80 use and duplexes in all neighborhoods and allows for focusing and calls for focusing the most intense growth in transit corridors and centers. This leads to my third point on this Earth Day. I support blueprint diverse call for sustainability. We put the inverse called for complete neighborhood makes it easier for people will make it easier for people to access goods and amenities on foot. And the plans focus on transit, pedestrian and bicycle prioritization will help us reduce the most share of car trips in our city. This is critical. If you want to stand a chance in the fight against climate change, land use and transportation must work together to help us change our unsustainable car dependent lifestyles. Personally, I think Bluford Denver could go further in allowing more diversity of housing types in our single family zone neighborhoods. And I know that I'm not alone in this. I think the plan, as is, is really quite modest and as a testament to being a good compromise of all the different perspectives of the residents of this city. Because of this, and because it calls for a sustainable, equitable and inclusive growth, I urge Council to adopt these plans . Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Andrea Burns. All right, Adam Nesteroff And I'll call the next five up Jeff Walker, Alison Turek, Gaucher, King, John Desmond and Brad Buchanan. Come on in. Go ahead. Hi. My name is Adam Astrof. I live at 1801 Chestnut Place in District nine, and I'm the president of Yimby Denver, where a group formed to promote Yes in my backyard values. Many of our members and supporters are here tonight and we are encouraging, both as a group and myself individually are encouraging the passage of Blueprint Denver and the comprehensive plan. This new plan is great because regardless of who wins the upcoming elections, it's a better plan than the old one. This is a plan that was built out of three years of compromise. As Ryan said, this doesn't go as far as I would like to see, but that's because it represents working really hard with members of a number of different neighborhoods, many of whom have shown up here tonight and a number of other meetings. This change that's going. On in Denver. It is pretty scary. Our homes are part of our identity. There are community. They mean a lot to us. And, you know, so people are fearless, fiercely protective of them. And I just really appreciate how much everyone really cares and loves this city. I believe that the changes called for in Blueprint Denver are going to spread. Development more. Equitably. Living where I do, I have seen the displacement that's occurred in the Highlands and in five points. We've seen new housing types occur in some parts of the city, whereas in other parts of the city we simply just see scraps as the underlying value of the land just vastly outpaces these small bungalows that were built on it a long time ago. This plan, by allowing a to use and duplexes is going to allow us to have a better utilization of that land. And, you know, maybe something other than an $800,000 single family home. I also do. Since it's Earth Day, I want to speak to, you know, the environmental goals here. And we haven't talked about it as a group, but as an individual, I strongly support Councilman Cashman's amendments. You can't be strong enough in talking about climate change, but really focusing on making sure that we're getting, you know, investment out of our transit dollars, which, you know, the plan will do by making sure that we're getting that payback around those transit areas. And then, of course, the complete neighborhood model itself. You know, if you're giving people things they can walk to, they don't need to make as many car trips. There's a grocery store across the street from my apartment and it's amazing. It's just one of the most wonderful amenities that you can possibly have. There's also a park a block away. You know, it's really it's it's not quite a complete neighborhood. I have a lot of thoughts, but it's a great place to live. I hope council will adopt the plans tonight. I look forward to coming back next week to talk about the tiny home village because I believe this will also these plans will also help us to meet our housing first goal. So thank you so much for all your time. Thank you. Next up, Jeff Walker. Good evening. Good evening. Jeff Walker, 2354 South Lincoln Street in Denver. I'm on our TD's board of directors and I represent some of you in that room. All right. So first, I was a member of the Blueprint Denver Task Force. I encourage your improve your approval and acceptance of this element of the comprehensive plan. This is an ambitious plan. I'm excited about the attention it pays to functionality of streets and their effects on residential and commercial uses. The attention it pays to equity. The attention it pays to opportunity, and its acknowledgment of the possibility of displacement. I'm excited about the partnership between RTD and Denver and how this sets the table for better regional land use and transportation planning. The city clearly sees transit as an important backbone for future mobility. We all know that funding for transportation is scarce, and I appreciate the prioritization of future investments in transit. I believe that partnerships between local jurisdictions are key to keeping transit at the forefront. Of mobility. In the region. I feel that the continued partnerships between RTD and the city and county of Denver is central to successful mobility in the region. Thank you for your work. Thank you to staff that. I think they did a phenomenal. Job. And I encourage you to accept. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Aliza Allison Tawfik. Hi. I'm Alison. Tawfiq. I live near East High School near Vine Street Pub near the Kala Madison Rec Center. That neighborhood. First of all, I wanted to point out. That a bunch of us who are in support of this are wearing blue today. So if you see a theme, that's our theme. I strongly. Support it. I am three years into this process and I'm going to be super disappointed if this also gets thrown out. I was three years into the process for the City Park playground and that got thrown out at the last minute. You've got thousands and thousands of thoughtful ideas that have come through. So let's listen to everybody. Some people are going to hate the ideas, but we need to have a vision for where we're going to go. Maybe we don't need to have each sidewalk issue debated tonight, but let's know if we're going to go to Chicago or if we're going to go to Los Angeles. You know, we need to have an idea where to be in the next 20 years. And that's really all I got to say. They said, oh, one more thing. Gosh, Kong, who's after me? Had to leave early. Her nine year old son had to get dinner and go to bed. But he said, we need more busses. Thank you very much. All right, John Desmond. Mr. President. Members of city. Council. I'm John Desmond. My address is 1515 Arapahoe Street. I've been very honored to serve as a member of the Blueprint Denver Task Force for the last three years. I'm also speaking tonight on behalf of the Downtown Denver Partnership, and I first want to commend the task force ably led by Kimball and Joel, the city of Denver staff. And I want to call out. Dave Jaspers here in particular for his leadership and the consultant team, which we often forget about, led by Big Man Mike for the incredible amount of thought and vision they have put in and for the thorough outreach effort they've made to an enormous. Number of stakeholders. I want to call out just a few points that we strongly support about this plan. We strongly support the overall growth strategy, which rightly focuses both residential and employment growth on regional centers such as downtown, while allowing other areas to evolve in smaller ways. It strikes a commonsense balance between fostering smart growth and stability across Denver. We're also very much in favor of the overarching goal goals of providing complete neighborhoods and networks, as well as the plan's focus on measuring social equity and then tailoring implementation of the plan recommendations to reflect the needs of different areas. The citywide recommendations portion of the plan is strong, especially regarding these recommendations increasing the development of affordable and mixed income housing, ensuring Denver has a vibrant retail and hospitality marketplace, creating exceptional design outcomes in key centers and corridors. Ensuring an active and pedestrian friendly environment. Prioritizing people walking and rolling over other modes of transportation. Improving safety on Denver's streets, especially regarding the. Implementation of. Vision Zero policies and ensuring high quality parks and open spaces to. Keep pace with Denver's. Growth and for downtown in particular. We applaud the plan's emphasis on these items the high density mix of uses, high quality of design, especially at the ground floor level, a focus on humane, well landscaped public realm, especially creating a robust urban tree canopy which we lack. And downtown right now, a mix of multi-modal options highlighted by pedestrian having priority, a complete network of safe, easy to use bicycle facilities and frequent, reliable and high capacity transit. So to reiterate, the Downtown Denver Partnership strongly supports Blueprint Denver and looks forward to working with the City Council and the administration in admitting and implementing this ambitious and visionary plan in the coming years. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak this evening. And also we urge you to pass this plan this evening. Thank you very much. Thank you, Brad Buchanan. And I'll call the next five up Stuart Lundy, Heather Noyes, Greg and Joe Fowler, Jesse Adkins and Caitlin Quander. Come on up. Good evening, Mr. President. Members of council. My name is Brad Buchanan. My address is 1705 17th Street. For most of the last. Five years, as. Denver's former executive director for community. Planning and Development, I have had the privilege of working with the most incredibly dedicated team of planners who work to facilitate this significant and important community driven plan that you're considering this evening. I've also had the privilege of sitting on the original Blueprint Denver Stakeholder Group before its adoption in 2002. Blueprint Denver anticipated the coming growth in our city and successfully guided it to areas of change to lessen impacts on areas of stability. Tonight, you consider the next generation of our city plan that once again represents the leading edge of citizen. Driven urban thinking. And planning or using the change in areas of stability where advanced in 2002 today and into the future. Investment in change must be informed by much more sophisticated, nuanced and critically important assessment tools focused focusing on equity and healthy development. You might be wondering and thinking, should our city planners control the pace of change? Controlling the pace of the market simply drives real estate prices higher. Experience has clearly shown us this. So how do we balance the success of our welcoming city while also protecting that which is most important to us? All our plans don't control the pace of change. Our plans can direct how and where change happens. The plans before you tonight do just that and in ways that are more relevant than ever. The last few years we've experienced some of the most significant investment our city has ever seen in our plans have guided that development. That is because our city has valued planning for 100 years and certainly 20 years ago. It has been these plans that helped to create the city we are today and why we once again following the discipline that our city was built on, started this citywide planning effort. Three years ago to inform and guide the next 20 years. At whatever pace it comes. Our plans choose to value all people in all cultures. They choose to value open space and art and opportunity. They choose to value equity and design. They choose to create livable, affordable neighborhoods that grow responsibly and thoughtfully. These values we hold require sophisticated planning tools to consider more than ever before to ensure we are considering all the contributors that create change in our city. The plans you consider tonight have been driven by the voices. Of our community. They represent thousands of staff hours in working with thousands of citizens hopes, fears, concerns and dreams for their block, neighborhood and city. Never has the community conversation been better informed with data and the impacts of their choices involved in the process of creating a city plan. I hope you will support this important next step in keeping Denver. Denver. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Stuart Lundy. Stuart. All right, Heather Noyes, Greg. Sid Evening my name is Heather Noyes. Craig I live at 4492 Xavier in Northwest Denver. Many of my concerns and comments have already been addressed, so hopefully I can keep this short. I was honored to serve on the Blueprint Denver Task Force and also the Equity Subcommittee. I want to just say that staff was over the top, responsive throughout the process, super organized and very, very flexible. The consolidated list of public comments that I hope you have looked at and the responses and the corresponding notations in the draft, I believe, set a new precedent for both inventorying and. Tracking public comment and. City projects. This was no small feat. This was an an added task. It was a request by Blueprint Denver Task Force members, and it was greatly appreciated by all of the task force I know and also many members of the public. In northwest Denver. To the chairs, Joel and Kimball. The task force was comprised of diverse and expertize, people not only knowledgeable about issues and challenges, but incredibly passionate about the city and its future. Keeping discussions on track and focus was no small feat, and thank you both so much for your leadership. Blueprint Denver Process was thorough, inclusive and accessible. The document is visionary, progressive, action oriented and comprehensive and will provide guidance in the evolution of our city and most importantly to me. To the Public Realm City Council. I urge you to adopt Blueprint Denver tonight so that the hard work of implementation can start immediately. Thank you very. Much. Thank you. Next up, Angela Felder. Well, good evening. My name's Angela Foster, and I live at 4900 Troy Street in Denver. I am a resident in District 11, and so a lot has been said. I don't know if I'm 57 out of 58 and I think there's more to come, but I won't go down into the weeds with you. I would like to just talk about my feelings, talk about how I feel. And I had the privilege also to serve on the Blueprint Task Force for Blueprint Denver for three years. And I have to admit, when I first was appointed to the committee by Mayor Hancock, I was skeptical. I'm a resident, born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, where politics are kind of gritty. And, you know, it's it's a little hard to believe things until you see them. And so going into the process, I believed that things were going to be pretty prescribed and that perhaps our roles would be perfunctory. I would like to say that I have felt very proud to be part of this process. I have felt that the staff and the members of the task force have been very responsive. When we took a look at the next 15 to 20 years is it's very hard to know what to expect. And no doubt those that crafted a blueprint some 15, 20 years ago had this same dilemma. But what I feel is that we have been inclusive, we have been responsive, we have been creative, we have been adaptive. I feel proud that 25,000 individuals had input into this plan. I feel proud that we took hours upon hours to layer on an equity focus and really analyze how this plan would impact all communities and recognize that different communities need different things. I feel proud that as I did research of other communities throughout the country, while some had a comprehensive plan, I did not find one that had an integrated, comprehensive plan or blueprint that layered equity into it. And I feel proud that Denver has an opportunity to be the first, if not one of the first. The first to be the first. I feel proud that we are here today and we are considering this plan, and I want to feel proud that this council passes it and urge you to do so with my full support and affirmation of the process. Thank you. Thank you. Jesse Adkins. My name is Jesse Adkins. I'm an architect with Sures Adkins Rockmore Architects. And I was appointed to the board or the Committee for Blueprint through the EIA. So I in some way am representing the American Institute of Architects. I think we do have to congratulate staff. This was an immense undertaking and the consultant team that was assembled very, very talented. So I didn't see and even into the committee, our co-chairs really did do a great job of keeping us on task. And even to the committee members themselves, everyone in that room contributed and meshed extremely well. There wasn't a single time where we didn't have a challenge that we couldn't overcome. Most of the contribution from my seat at that table had a lot to do with how this plan was formed relative to our built environment and how people and vehicles and and our lives are maintained through what we're trying to update from the 2002 plan. And I do believe that this does a number of great things that are aspirational in nature. And to some of the previous folks that commented about it not going on off or needing more detail, I warn against that as an architect that deals with urban design or design guidelines and design standards all the time, sometimes those documents can be very, very prescriptive and that can be a challenge. So there's a balance here that this plan had to strike that I feel like we were able to accomplish. And so to establish its relationship relative to the neighborhood planning initiatives that will continue to to look at where our city grows and how it develops, we'll link directly to that. And I feel that this does a fine job of establishing and. Overarching trajectory for where we're headed as a city, because I think last last week I heard there were about 44,000 people that moved to Metro Denver last year, which is staggering. And they're coming. So how do we how do we accomplish that? How do we solve for that? And this is the plan that I think that does that. So I urge you to support it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next up, Caitlin Quander. Caitlin. All right, I will call the next five up. Carson Roar ball. Rebecca. Rebecca. Alexis. Matthew Crick, Will Martin and David ROI Ball. And first up is Carson. Good evening, council members, and thank you for your time. Here to voice my support for Blueprint Denver, most specifically as it relates to the changes regarding its use. I know we've heard a lot about that tonight. Two things I want to point out that haven't been mentioned or so. Clarifications to use are as they're explained in Blueprint Denver. They're for primary residences, not investment properties. So you're not going to see people coming in buying five houses in Wash Park West, where I live. By the way, I left that out intentionally with how many people had comments from there earlier. You're not going to see people coming in, buying a bunch of houses, turning the garages into its use, and all of a sudden, you know, it's just a bunch of investors without any interest in the community. These are people like myself who have bought houses, are looking for ways to make them more affordable. About a year ago, I purchased my first home, a 125 year old Victorian style house in Logan Street in the Wash Park West neighborhood, despite higher offers from other parties. The sellers chose my offer for two reasons my commitment to keep the house intact and my sincere interest in restoring the beauty of the property. I was told that the other interested parties were developers with plans to scrape the lot, divide it, and build two modern houses where my current house stands. They can't be faulted for their objective of maximizing the use of the land by turning one residence into several. But the inevitable change to the neighborhood landscape and the loss of the innate beauty of one of those streets. Older houses are changes that can't be undone. Adding an 80 you to my lot is an alternative that accomplishes the same goals of the developers. Blueprint Denver. More efficient land use additional housing without disrupting the neighborhood or the landscape of the neighborhood or the integrity of my 125 year old house and the even older neighborhood. My current zoning restricts my ability to build near to you. That's why I'm here tonight. Please vote yes on Blueprint Denver and give homeowners like myself the opportunity to make our mortgages more affordable while helping to increase housing throughout the existing communities. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Rebecca Alexis. My name is Rebecca Alexis. I'm a Denver native practicing architecture living in the Platte Park neighborhood. I recommend approving Blueprint Denver and the Comprehensive Plan 2040 as it is written. I agree with many here that that there is no time for delay. The state of care, in particular the allowance of age to use into all neighborhoods is critical. Over two years ago, the state of California mandated aid use in every jurisdiction throughout the state. They did this because of safety here and there. People are building spaces in their homes and in their garages that are not safe for their family and the people moving to Denver. By allowing aid to use everywhere, we can support safe permitted housing that does not impact the curb appeal of established neighborhoods and. Literally cleans up our alleys. Thank you. Thank you. Matthew, quick. Thank you, city council, for hearing all of us tonight. And thank you to all the city planners who put all this all the work into this and to make this initiative something really great. I'm here in front of you. I'm from Lincoln Park neighborhood. And I think it's been it's been a long enough. It's been three years now that we've been working on this. I know I've been to a bunch of city meetings myself, and it's we've heard from a lot of people all around the city. And I think it's time to make this make this a reality. There's three main reasons I really like this one. It's ideas. I think those are awesome. They provide a lot of great flexibility for any homeowners. You can have your, you know, people rent in there. You have in-laws in there. You can have a you can just gives you a lot flexibility over the whole life of your property. And it's a great way to build density without demolition and it's a great way to also improve our alleys. And if anyone's ever walked in, or at least they're not always in the. Best shape, there's a lot of trash or. Rundown garages, so having it used back there gives eyes on the eyes on the alley and increases their security back there too. I really like the bike paths. I like the addition of the bike paths in Denver. Great Denver, Plan and Blueprint Denver. I think that's going to be a great addition to the city. And three, I there's a lot of people living here to Denver. We have to plan for it. We have to have a great plan that's in place. And if we don't have a plan, we're we're not going to grow well. We're not become a great city. So I urge city council to adopt this Denver plan. Thank you, Will. Martin. No. Will Martin David Rebel. Be left. Or right? The last three. I'll call up Margie Valdez, Jeff Baker, Steven Chester. Margie Valdez. You're up first. You just. Mr. President, members of council, good to see everyone. I echo what many of my colleagues on the Denver. Blueprint Task. Force have. Testified to today. It was a real pleasure and an honor to serve on the. Denver Blueprint. Task Force. They were we were a diverse group. But the. Thing is, we were all dedicated to making Denver. Better. We had a goal of helping Denver to grow intelligently. Fairly and equitably, equitably. The plan is very thoughtful and will serve Denver well in the next 20 years. Denver needs a good road map. This is the opportunity to go ahead in a responsible manner. I urge you to vote for to adopt this the plans. And lastly, I would be remiss. If I did not think Joel Noble. And Kimball and David and Sarah and all the community. Planning. Development staff for the many thousands of hours that they must have put into this. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jeff Baker. All right, I'm starving. Let's just pass this and get on it. My name's Jeff Baker. I live at 2422 Chapel Street. I'm also president of Curtis Park Neighbors and which is a neighborhood registered neighborhood organization within five points. And we have had lots of interaction with our neighbors throughout reviewing drafts, community events and support the adoption of these two plans. We also do not support the agency position, which suggests that the last three years of work should be delayed. We were not part of that and we voted against that in response to the use. Curtis Park was a pilot neighborhood, has original ideas from the late 1800s and has a lot of ideas that have been built. We have not seen disruption in the neighborhood. And secondly, you're not going to see investors flipping these or people flipping these because this is a long term investment in their property to sustain and be able to have flexibility. Like they said, there's all sorts of flexibility that comes with having an EDU and the cost that's associated and the blood, sweat and tears that people put into building these things. They're not going to turn around and flip these units. So Curtis Park has been a good pilot as a proof that it works. And Curtis Park neighbors voted earlier in the year. To support both of. A comprehensive plan blueprint, Denver and the other three. Denver plans. So please adopt this tonight without delay. Thank you very much, Steven Chester. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, members of council. My name is Steven Chester. A little bit. 843 Steel Street. Took my wife and I three years to buy that house at 843 Steel Street. Partly because we're extremely picky, but also because we were unwilling to compromise in our desire to live in a walkable, bikeable, transit rich neighborhood . And it turns out many other people in Denver want the same thing. And also, as it turns out, there's not many neighborhoods that fit those categories of being walkable, bikeable and transit rich. Looking back on that process, I'm left feeling angered. Angered primarily because I'll be the first to admit my wife and I are privileged. We're privileged to live in this great city, but we're also privileged because we don't face the barriers that many other residents in Denver face when it comes to institutional racism, socioeconomic barriers. And, you know, let's just leave it at those two barriers. Those other residents of Denver also want to live in walkable, bikeable, transit rich neighborhoods as well. And this plan goes deeper than any plan has ever before in Denver to do those barriers and to create a truly more inclusive Denver. So I urge you to support this plan with a slight disclaimer that I previously worked with the city and county Denver with CPD for about eight years, and I had the privilege of working alongside David and Sarah for many of those years, and I just want to thank them for their unbelievable amount of time and effort and passion that they put into these plans. Denver is truly lucky to have two people working to create a more equitable and diverse future for Denver. So thank you, sir and David so much. And so working with the city. I had the great honor of being in the front lines when this plan was created in terms of really, truly creating a community plan. This is not the mayor's plan. This is not city council's plan. This is not CPD's plan. This is the communities plan. I saw with my own eyes the hours of deliberation that took place in small, hot conference rooms, going over every single comment that was submitted to Blueprint Denver. I witnessed the many, many events all over this great city and the chili fest in Westwood and in community meetings in Marbella and movies in the Park and Virginia Village, along with the equity training that this plan went through in order to make sure this plan creates an equitable future. So I urge Council to support this plan because it outlines an innovative, comprehensive and inclusive future for this great city. Thanks. Thank you. That concludes our speakers. Thank you all so much for coming down, for spending, for sitting in those seats and for sticking around. We are now going to go to questions from members of council. Councilman Brooks, your first stop. Wow. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm going to start off a little different and just staff folks from CPD. Can you please just stand if you were a part of this deal for three years. Great. Thank. He shared it. Mr. President, I didn't ask them to clap. I was just going to recognize them. But thank you for the clap. I think a lot of blood, sweat and tears in there. So we gave Gasper and Showalter a little time. I just wanted to make sure we had extra time for the people who spent time on this. And so, Brad, we can call you up first. Hi, Brad. How you doing? Good to see you. Brad, you had 3 minutes. You've been you know, you kicked this thing off. And so I just wanted to make sure that there wasn't anything else you add to kind of the chorus of individuals kind of talking about this plan. I think I think a lot of it's been said I think a lot of it's been said very diplomatically this evening. But, you know, cities, successful cities grow. And that's why we've been growing the last 20 years. That's why we've seen such amazing investment in the city the last seven or eight years. And while that changes is a painful and hard thing. Just the pace of the change is hard to consume. The folks, the planners, the citizens, the the task force get that, but refuse to give up on the promise of of what is great about Denver. And and it's not perfect and things change. But this plan, I think, authentically addresses the the impacts to what that change in pace of change and the realities that if we continue to sprawl outside, if we continue to not allow density around transit and to increase even a transit oriented density, we, as it was spoken by one of the speakers tonight, will absolutely just increase the carbon footprint, spend more time in single occupant vehicles. And so we need to think very creatively about how how we handle both of those things, how we value open space in our city and green space and natural space in our city. And and I don't I don't think it's it's magic. And I think that blueprint and the Denver suite of plans get to the heart of it that looking around equity and and density and affordability and design quality because density can be a very livable place when it's when design is valued at the highest. Very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to call up our co-chairs, John Noble and Campbell Crandall. You all got paid $0. And so I wanted to ask a question, but I also wanted to give you as much time as you wanted to to to talk or excuse me as much time as the President will allow for you to share some of of your feedback. I guess the leading question that I'm going to give you all is I represent a district where there's a lot going on. There are a lot of people who are pro density, you know, a lot of urban is a lot of folks. But there are a lot of a lot of folks who don't want to see a tiny home in their neighborhood. They don't want to see an Adu in their neighborhood. How did you all balance this over the last three years of being progressive, having a vision and having a progressive vision for the future, but at the same time, recognizing that this growth is scaring a lot of folks. This growth is hard for a lot of people. How do you balance it? Sorry. We always have to talk to each other first. So I'm going to let Joel talk about the neighborhood plans and small area plans, because he's so eloquent about that. But what I'd like to talk about care about is the neighborhoods of Denver. I've had a great I love Denver. I moved to Denver in 2003. So I'm a transplant from Kansas. And when I moved to Denver, I moved into the Harvard Gulch neighborhood, and I found a city that was very welcoming to me. I didn't know many people. I actually didn't know anybody in Denver. And I had a choice about where I wanted to live. Even though I was making a pretty low wage at the time, I was able to find a community that I felt comfortable in and that I could take the bus to. I didn't have a car. I couldn't afford a car downtown to my job at 19th and Grant and I've moved a lot. I like to move. I like to experience new places. So I've had the privilege to live in La Alma Lincoln Park and Congress Park and West Wash Park and Harvard Gulch and my offices in the Golden Triangle I've office downtown. Most importantly, I do work in affordable housing, and I've worked for Denver Housing Authority for six years and led the Mariposa redevelopment in La alma Lincoln Park. I've worked in Lowry when I was the executive director of the Lowry Community Land Trust. I've built great projects in Westwood, in Globeville. We just are we just acquired the Colburn Hotel and preserved it from flipping to market rate in Cap Hill and. The work is big. It's overwhelming at times, especially when you see the families that have lived in general in Denver for generations and all of a sudden, you know, they've lived in Westwood in a home that meets their needs, had, you know, family members sharing their household with them and all of the sudden their property or their suite of properties gets purchased and they've got 30 or 60 days to move and find somewhere else to go. Well, where do they go? Where do you go for a family? And how do you uproot your children and your lives like that? This is big. And in Denver, this is what we're facing a lot. We have that extreme. We have seniors that want to downsize and can't. They can't age in place. We have parks that are in neighborhoods that aren't safe to walk around at night or even during the day. And people think, oh, well, there's green space right there. Well, you walk around that, see how you feel. We live in a in a great city, but we live in a city with a lot of challenges and a lot of inequity. And until we face that head on, which I think we're doing now in Blueprint Denver and we're acknowledging institutional barriers that have existed for a long time, and we're saying redlining might not exist the way it used to, but it still is prevalent in many of our neighborhoods. Until we face that head on, we're going to perpetuate the innate and equity that exists. So when I look at Blueprint and think about, well, this person doesn't want an ADU and this person doesn't want a tiny home. I think what we can say collectively is that we want to live in a safe place with amenities and walkability, where our kids are safe and where our parents are safe. And I want, you know, my family to be able to afford to move into town. And I want my neighbor next to me to be able to stay put and not feel like they're being forced out because of property tax increases. That was the Denver I moved to in 223. Not all of that, but some of that. And Denver's changed a lot. And Denver's worth fighting for. It's worth saying we're going to grow. We should keep our doors open. But there's a way that we can grow that's welcoming and safe and comfortable. And I think it's worth it. And I think our neighborhoods want many of the same things. It's how we accommodate and funnel growth in a way that's respectful, tolerable and sustainable. So that was way too much talking. Thank you, Councilman. I think I'll just have one point micro. One point macro at the micro level. There was a strong emphasis here on neighborhood plans because to take the the vision and the values and the goals and the strategies and blueprint Denver and make them hit the ground. These plans leave a gap. They aren't regulatory. So it will be up to the council, will be up to speed working with the communities to say, okay, we've agreed as a city these are the tools we have in the toolbox. Now how specifically does that meet the ground in your neighborhood? And those neighborhood plans should guide the regulations like zoning. I mentioned at the end of my comments that it's my hope and my belief that the thing people will have on their lips when they talk about Blueprint Denver for the next 20 years is complete net, complete neighborhoods and complete networks. And that's a deceptively powerful framing. Complete Neighborhoods is going to challenge people to have discussions among themselves as they're doing their neighborhood plans, to say, what do we have completeness in and what don't we? Does our neighborhood support a range of age levels? Does our neighborhood support a range of income levels? Does our neighborhood have things to walk to or only residences? Completeness on a lot of dimensions, and hopefully that will generate a lot of very good conversation that leads to neighborhood plans that lead to more complete neighborhoods and networks. And serving on the Denver Planning Board. I look forward to challenging staff as they bring us neighborhood plans. The first one will be the far northeast plan and say, all right, this plan is going to be adopted under the new blueprint. Denver If council acts tonight, how does this plan? Provide complete neighborhoods, show us that the conversations have occurred, and I very confident they will zooming out to the macro. I was reminded the other day about April 2017, the April 2017 public meeting here it was the growing a better Denver game for those of you who attended that session. And the question is, how much growth do you accommodate and where? For 20 years, we've had this idea that you put growth near transit, so much so that people who are not involved in planning and don't come to public hearings at night, you ask them, where should the growth go? They'll say, Well, near transit. Of course, we've got that in Denver. But where and exactly how? At the task force level, we talked abstractly about growth strategy. But it was at this April 2017 meeting in the in a high school cafeteria that people broke up into different tables you set where people you knew when you sat by , people you didn't know, but you had six or eight people there and you played with playing pieces and you worked out where should growth go? And staff went and blended those together as the as one way that the community was expressing itself that later got refined into the maps that people could comment on online. So at a macro level, how did we say decide where to grow? We asked people to very tactfully show us, leave aside abstractions, where should people go? And the centers and the corridors that are in the plan emerged. That's great. I think, Mr. President, that's another question that really helps me to understand each of your perspectives on some very tough questions that we're dealing with on city council. So thank you. Thank you. Councilman Brooks. Councilman Espinosa. Joe. Till I can ask you to stick around. Just sort of a follow up to your response there, because I've heard the term a lot about complete neighborhoods, particularly in your response. Is it fair to say that we're not doing a very good job right now of compelling, complete neighborhoods as an outcome? I think as we've heard testimony tonight, some neighborhoods are certainly more complete than others. We talk about walkable, bikeable places to live where you don't have to drive to do your normal trips of life. Certainly. Yeah. So the thing that I've been struggling for four years from this day is is sort of a massive amount of opportunities on Fox Island and the limited ingress and egress for that part of Globeville. And and so one of the things is, as I've said from here as well, that we should treat it as an island. Right. Because, you know, the doctor should be present there. That should be present there. Grocery should be present there. Sort of all the things that you would need to sort of live on an island should largely be present there. That I think those would those elements be consistent with this idea of a complete neighborhood. Or. I think that's the kind of conversation I hope happens in the neighborhood plans is as people talk about complete and let that very positive idea roll around in their minds and then meet each other and compare their ideas. A completeness. The vision for that neighborhood should emerge. Now there's market realities as well. A plan or city zoning can't compel a business to open there if if there's no market for it. If they don't if we've seen that with grocery stores, the community wants a grocery store, but it's not economically viable. So it also raises the opportunity to have two way dialog with the community and with with planners to say, if we agree, we want that. Then as a practical reality, a prerequisite of that is this, for instance, rooftops. For the grocery stores. So it's fair to say that the and are you going to be around for the blueprint Denver discussion? I will be here till we're done. Great. Because these are sort of more in that realm on the recommendation side of these things and trying to figure out how we would get in these recommendations to those outcomes. Because I don't disagree with the idea of complete neighborhoods, because those are the things we need to take to get to all six vision elements. But I'm I'm worried that the you at least you acknowledge the market element to this is how these documents will get used by the market. And the timetables associated with it, you know, will play out if the market continues in the way that it's been. Yeah, I'll certainly be around for any other questions. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Desmond, as this is our question session for both. This was a combined hearing. So once we move out of this, that will only be comments of your questions. I do then. Now would be the time would welcome. All right, Joel, then let's go into the into that. Right. So the final comment or Mr. Steven Chester made some very eloquent remarks about sort of the disadvantaged elements of our of our community. I think those align with vision element goal five very well. Reduce involuntary displacement of residents and businesses. But then in the strategies, it says advance a comprehensive approach. This is really to staff or to advance a comprehensive approach to mitigating involuntary displacement that includes expanding economic mobility, creating new affordable housing, and preserving existing affordable housing in the recommendations underneath item five on the implementation matrix. There are three items listed, but they only address major city projects and this potential. I'm going to disregard the fact that they reference OED, which is an agency that means an office that doesn't exist anymore. So I hope we're not sending them somewhere that doesn't exist. But, you know, how is it? That integration. How is it? I mean, how do we address the situations that might happen that are like Jefferson Park and the communities that I represent that didn't have major city investments or projects, but exhibited major involuntary displacement? Which tool, which recommendation are we putting forward in this plan to address that level of displacement? And I'm sorry, could you clarify which plan you're reading? Because there's very similar recommendations in both. Yeah. So I'm actually. Reading from both. Referencing goal five in the current plan, which then goes to Blueprint Denver recommendation five in the general and then has an actual implementation strategy in the matrix in the back. So actually talking about The Matrix because that's sort of the nuts and bolts of what's going on. So let me start with the comprehensive plan. The comprehensive plan as an implementation matrix to. Do you have that in front of you? No, I didn't have that. So I think part of the challenges that you're jumping from one plan to the other is let's start with comprehensive plan, because goal five that you pointed out in the implementation matrix for the comprehensive plan has strategies there that go well beyond just major investments. So there's in addition to the one that you already read, advanced comprehensive approach to mitigating involuntary displacement. That includes expanding economic mobility, creating new affordable housing and preserving existing affordability. We also have stabilized residents and businesses at risk of displacement through programs and policies that help them stay in their existing community and evaluate city plans, projects, and major regulatory changes for potential to contribute to involuntary displacement. So I want to just start there. The comprehensive plan does have more because its scope is much broader. I think you might also have an outdated version because we did go through and change all references from OED to Dito because we agree with you. We want to move on the right direction. Although now we'll have even a new challenge ahead of us to update the Matrix and point people to a new Department of Housing and Homelessness that this will be created because we worked really closely with our partners in what's now DITO Economic Development and opportunity to focus on a really comprehensive approach to displacement blueprint. Denver was trying to take a little more of the lens of a land use and transportation plan, not the whole involuntary displacement picture, which is going to involve a lot of programs and policies that go well beyond zoning and land use and transportation investments. So the blueprint recommendations that they might feel a little more limited in scope to you, that was actually intentional. We were trying to really link where involuntary displacement comes together with land use and transportation decisions and the comprehensive plan. Our hope there was that it has broader policies that cover other things, which to your point, yes, there are a lot of neighborhoods that may not have those big investments, but we still want to stabilize residents there. And then also point you to housing inclusive Denver and some of our other plans that have much more detailed strategies on what some of those tools might look like. So where I'm struggling, which is how do these plans, especially if if and I apologize because my my Excel spreadsheet is cut off. So I didn't know the first half of the. Yeah sorry. Things. How, how these two things that are in conflict seemingly which is you know recommendations in certain places for increased density based on some transit notion that may or may not exist marries with with the economic market reality which is that somebody could go in there and justify that creating the opportunity for increased density in an area, even at a low scale increased density that would be sort of commensurate with the form of the surrounding neighborhood would still result in the displacement of people occupied housing. Do we would we look at is there anything in here that prescribes us going forward, looking at the existing property, its use and if it's occupied before moving forward with the rezoning to sort of address the the the displacement? Or are we still agnostic to who's there and what's there right now? Yeah, it's a great question. I would say that generally the approach that we've taken this is based on a lot of input from people working on this topic, you know, trying to prevent involuntary displacement in Denver, as well as a lot of research we did into other communities. Denver actually through through Dito is the lead is part of a policy link network across the city policy links a national nonprofit. That brought together ten cities. We had to apply. We were accepted into the network to be part of what they called an anti displacement network. And we've learned a lot from peer cities through that. And I would say through that research as well as people working here, generally the approach has been the best way to try and solve these problems are through policies and programs that aren't going to be side by side. So one small rezoning, we also don't always have the data to really understand what the displacement impacts might be from a small site. So we've seen in the language and Blueprint Denver, the focus is on how do we take the involuntary or the vulnerability to displacement map that's in the plan and integrate that at a minimum into our larger scale rezonings? I don't think we do have a good model for saying that every single kind of smaller parcel coming through would go through the kind of analysis that you're bringing up. But I think if you look more comprehensively at the plan recommendations, when we would do the analysis for plan consistency, that would be part of any rezoning we would certainly be considering if it's in it, particularly if it's an area that's vulnerable to displacement. Do we have tools or programs in place in this community to address those needs? So it may not be the burden of one particular rezoning, but we would certainly want to be thinking about that community as a whole. Does this plan, would you say, would it address existing conditions that we created? So I have a lot of some $500,000 homes that are that are that are being ground up for multi-unit. Well, north of a half a million dollars on resale. Again, will this plan are we basically saying what we've done in the past and what is existing? Is is is is. Or are we. Are there any recommendations that compel us to sort of revisit existing fabric and and put in new tools to address the involuntary displacement? In some cases? It's weird, right? It's not involuntary. Some people are actually choosing to to to leave that afford formerly affordable unit and make a slight windfall off of that transaction. But now we're creating a Denver that doesn't have those affordable units. So what? Which which recommendation addresses the century? The situation that I have in West Sloan's Lake or East Sloan's Lake or on Long Tennyson? Yeah. That's a great question. I would say there's several recommendations, but I guess a couple that I would highlight is that we have very strong language around the importance of missing mental housing. That's something we heard about a lot from the community, but we also heard a lot that the exact scenario described basically where you in the name of housing diversity or, you know, new units right in the neighborhood are actually losing. Affordability is a huge concern. And so we very specifically have the recommendation that where we're going to look to enable gentle density in our neighborhoods that we should seriously consider things like income restriction for the the added units that are kind of a bonus. So that's one tool we're looking at. We also have a strong recommendation to look at more incentives for affordable housing across the city in all of our transit rich areas. So doing something, at least for now, given state law, since we can't just do a lot of requirements, the model is, well, let's do more of what we've done at CBD Area and 30th. And Blake, it may not be that exact same model because we want to figure out how to apply it to some of our lowered on city areas as well. But the concept of saying because we had really strongly from the community that there was actually more acceptance and you might think around density or adding more to a neighborhood than what's there now, but only if in exchange for that it comes with affordability. And so we have recommendations saying let's look for more ways to incentivize that kind of have a base, but then an incentive that comes with doing more affordability. I think those those are the kind of strategies that would hopefully help prevent some of the situations that you mentioned. Do we have a timetable for that? Because we've spent three years developing this document. How fast can we get into that realm? Because because it might. These are when I talk about Tennyson, those are areas that are not in the NPI process. They're not going to a neighborhood planning process. This conversation may or may not happen for better part of six years. Right. You are interested in the design. All right. So, yes, great point. Honestly, on a lot of this run, we should have started it three years ago. Right. So I think I want to be clear, this implementation of those ideas, we actually really tried to set them up to be a citywide conversations. You don't have to wait for a neighborhood plan. And the incentive for affordable housing is one of the zoning code amendments we'd like to kick off this year as major implementation item. You know, we do a very robust community process around a major change like that. So the process would probably take a year and a half to two years, but we're hopeful to start it very soon if the plan is adopted. Okay. Yeah, I think. And then did. You I just wanted to add one quick policy to your question, Councilman. So Policy three in Blueprint Denver on housing Policy three on page 83 is incentivize the preservation and reuse of existing smaller and affordable homes and a strategy that talks about implementing zoning tools incentivize the preservation of those homes. So I think that's really to one of your points. Yeah. Councilman Espinosa, you good for now? No, I'm chuckling because this is this is this is one of those laments I've heard from the community, which is that that recommendation is three is in the housing recommendation, not the general recommendation. It's very it's a lot of recommendations, sort of the. Yeah, I would be happy to skip unless there's no one. Else out. There. A couple other people in the queue. All right, Councilman, you're next. All right. Thank you, Mr. Sarah. First, I want to thank you and Dave for the great work your leadership did and the co-chairs and all the volunteers. It's really good to see all the massive positive support that we heard from the public tonight. And that was, you know, I didn't know what was going to happen. And I was so glad to see that there was that overwhelming support. So congratulations on a great job done. Thank you. We're talking about a couple of issues strictly from a residents perspective. Issues we've been talking about each time. Now your responses to it. Let's talk about rezoning, you know, on page 66, 67 as the rezoning process. Yeah, the rezoning has probably been a concern or anxiety of a lot of residents and neighborhoods. And and what's going to happen, especially in the process we're going through. There's been some concern about in certain neighborhoods. But the in looking at the type of 67 it describes as the rezoning process, but it doesn't mention neighborhoods. It doesn't mention resident involvement in the rezoning process. Well, can you describe what the role is of neighborhoods and residents in the rezoning process so that people might have a clear understanding of what that is? Sure, yeah. So neighborhoods play a really important role of informing the analysis that staff and the Planning Board and City Council do to evaluate whether a rezoning, the first criterion that they would get reviewed against is is it consistent with our adopted plans? And as you can imagine, sometimes there's a bit of subjectivity or disagreement sometimes around whether it's consistent with the plan. And that, I would say, is one of the main roles that we see the public really informing and improving the process. So the neighborhoods have a lot of opportunity. We have a required notification of any registered neighborhood organization at the time that we receive an application and then again for the planning board and city council hearings. Thanks to Councilman Espinosa, we also now have a requirement for postcard mailing to go to all owners within 200 feet of the property for both of the hearings. So there's lots of advertisement. And and through that, we see a lot of neighborhoods get engaged sometimes to the extent that they even help change or influence what the proposed rezoning is, what the applicant goes for because of that neighborhood input. All right, Mr. Good, so been left out of this process. That doesn't mean they're being excluded. They still going to be a valuable component to the rezoning process, right? That's that's correct. Okay. Looking at the future places, you know, that map, you know, we talked about, you know, and even though, you know, maybe there is a change, the stability is simple that, you know, sometimes residents like very clarity. They like concise, simple things. You know, they don't have the knowledge about sophisticated tools to figure it out. But and that was the thing about areas of stability and change was really good. And this and this map here shows the future, shows the changes. And I like the color coded version. It shows it shows you what the the the zoning is going to be. Have you had is a resident know what's going to change? How do they know what area that is, how much change is occurring, and how do they go about that kind of discussion by looking at this document ? Yeah, great question. We're actually thinking about developing a companion piece that would really kind of be a flowchart almost of because the pieces, the steps you would go through is you could look at an existing zoning map, which we have online and see what the zoning is today. And you can also look at existing land use because sometimes the zoning doesn't match the land. She sits there, then you look at the plan map, the calls for the future, the aspiration, and to understand if there's a difference, you would go to the section of the plan that describes usually we have a whole paragraph describing what that future places. So if it's a community quarter corridor in the urban context or if it's a community corridor in the suburban context, then we have different scales of those corridors. And so it's kind of about going to the plan, finding what we say is appropriate for that type of place, and then comparing it to what's on the ground today. And I think you've had some good ideas about how we could make that a little clearer for people to understand. And we're going to explore how to do that in the Web version of the plan. Okay. They'll have somebody come to the they can actually see what a zoning change is going to is going to be recommended. Yeah, exactly. See if there's something that would support a change in zoning. Yeah. I love the implementation matrix. You know, we talked about that and I've been loving to see this come in, hoping we have that every one of our plans is great. And we talked about some things and I especially like the the priority section and the responsibility section. I mean, you know, I'm a purist when it comes to some of this. I mean, we're missing the action plans. And most important, the resources, the money is is not there. So that's the thing that I think, you know, I know that you're limited and just want to know, did you have a discussion with the finance department has been going through this 20 year plan about resource that can be applied because I see that we've done that in go bond in 2017 we had resources applied and I know we're working on like six year, you know, CFP plan. We've got resources apply. Somebody can estimate some of these. Can you have any discussion at all about the resources to make sure you can implement this plan? Yeah, that's a great question. We did what was actually really valuable about doing the Denver right process is that we aren't the only ones generating recommendations, right? So you throw in the transit plan and game plan and the head trails plan, there was actually a lot of discussion around, wow, this is a lot. It's the right things to be asking for. But we also want to talk about different ways we might implement. So yes, there were strong discussions on that and that included thinking about the existing tools we have, like the ones you mentioned, certainly Bonds and our CIP every year. But also there's some ideas in the plans about needing to explore other ways that we might be able to find the resources needed to fund a lot of the ideas. Okay, pull this out of the old Blueprint Denver Museum. This was the guy that everybody loves. I mean, is that executive summary document of 27 pages from several hundred pages, you know, is it's a great thing that the public can really sink their teeth into and look at and see the essence of what happened in Blueprint Denver . The thing that I would encourage you to is the the priorities. What are those key 10 to 20 priorities are going to make a difference for this city, you know, and I hope that you'll include that in there. So they can see that because you look at the implementation matrix and there's a lot of the strategies are just ongoing. It says ongoing. It's not new things that the public needs to be aware of, that they may not be aware of going to, but still. But the the new strategies are the ones I think they're going to make the difference. I would hope so. I just encourage you and hope you. Are you planning on having a sort of a document like that? Yeah, I think we have the starting point of our executive summary already, but I think you raise a good point that maybe there's a middle ground between the executive summary and the full plan, so we can definitely look at that. Yeah. And if you had top priorities, I'm sure you can do maybe four, ten years or so hard when you get it out to 20 years, you know. But yeah, at least it would give the public an idea of what the future is going to hold. So yeah, it's a great point and that's certainly part of what we want to do with the annual reporting. And our goal to keep this a living document is to do a better job, you know, of organizing that matrix and showing these are our priorities and how are we doing on actually implementing them? Well, thank you. Great job. Congratulations again. Thank you. Thank you. Kels minu, councilman flynn. Thank you, Mr. president. Maybe david or sara either one of you could handle this question, but i heard one of the witnesses state and I want to say maybe I didn't hear it correctly, but that addus would not be owned by they had to be owned by primary resident. And which implies that an aide to you could not be owned by an absentee owner of the primary residence. Is that true? Are we contemplating that? And if so, how do how would we enforce that? Or was or did I hear that incorrectly? I think it was. Mr. Rohrbach. Yeah. So the existing Denver zoning code has language speaking to how accessory dwelling units can be used today. And you either need to be the primary residence to be occupying either the house or the accessory dwelling unit. That's in the current zoning. As in the current occurrence. Okay. Because I know there was a concern in Westwood as as the Renaissance project, there developed more ideas that they could turn into investment properties and and whatnot. So that's we're not contemplating changing that. Correct. Okay. What is the status of existing neighborhood plans? Would they now be were this to pass, would they be considered automatically as supplements to these new plans? Or is there a cut off to them? Because we've dealt with plans that are 25 and 30 years old. And then if so, which I assume is true, what would be would there be a foreseeable occasion where a recommendation in the new blueprint would override guidance in an existing neighborhood plan during a rezoning hearing or application process? Sure. So I'll start the the ordinance for the Comprehensive Plan, which is what the neighborhood plans are supplement to, includes the list of all the supplements. So if it gets adopted tonight, it will include all the current small area plans that we have. Okay. So if there is a conflict in the guidance in Blueprint, what and the neighborhood plan, how would staffers? I would say there's not a straightforward answer to that. We actually have that challenge today sometimes already. Right. And so you've probably seen rezonings before you where we've the legally there isn't something that clearly says this plan always trumps this plan based on your it's adopted or its scope. So we we consider with the same amount of weight what both plans say. But we also acknowledge sometimes, particularly if one is 20 years old. Correct. You know. Oh, okay. Well, that things might have changed. We also sometimes acknowledge, well, this this this plan took the time to dove into a deeper level. And this area, in a way, a citywide plan can't. Right. So it really depends on the situation. We always have to consider both plans. They both legally need to be considered. But how we address it would would vary. Sarah, do you know standing here right now, do you know if any of the plans that are are adopted by reference? Do you know of any of them that have conflicting recommendations? Oh, I wish I knew group enough to know the recommendations of all these plans. No, you don't. Nobody does. I mean, the list here, I don't have the total count, but it's you know, it's it's well over 70 plans and some of them were adopted well over 20 years ago. Yeah. So I'm going to venture to guess that there might be some things in there that aren't consistent. I don't have. To worry about that in my district cause I've never had one, but I'm getting one now. And finally, is can. Shrapnel here still? He was sitting over here. Did he leave? Okay, David or Sara, maybe you could answer this. Something that can said kind of set off a little anxiety in the pit of my stomach, and maybe I misheard him, but I think he was talking about the suburbs of Denver as opposed to the suburban areas of the city and county of Denver. My council district is entirely suburban context right now. But he seemed to say that suburban areas are antithetical to complete neighborhoods as envisioned in Blueprint, and David and Sarah know well because of our many back and forth conversations and emails, and especially in the last few weeks that I have a great deal of anxiety over over the a one size fits all or homogenizing all of our neighborhoods to be complete. Maybe in the same way when the differing characters and contacts between urban, urban edge all the way down to suburban might call for different and more discrete approaches. How does CPD view those? Does CPD view suburban context areas as antithetical to complete neighborhoods? And if not, which I I'm hoping you'll say, no, you don't. How would suburban context be treated when trying to declare that this is now a complete neighborhood? Sure. I'll start and then let David chime into. Yeah, you are correct. We very much see suburban neighborhoods as part of what makes Denver great. And we have a lot of people that live in suburban neighborhoods, participate, coming to community meetings as well as some task force members. So you're very correct there, and I think it depends on the strategy. I'll hit a couple and maybe Dave in particular, I'm going to talk about about transportation, because that's a big component. But it's interesting because we don't want to this gets to the equity a little bit. We don't want any neighborhood to feel like it has a lower bar because of its context. Right. In terms of being complete. Right. But we also there are basic amenities that you think no matter what context you're in downtown to suburban everybody should have, including things like transit. But we also recognize what that's going to look like and what the kind of the standards are. For example, the expectations of how many services you should be able to walk to in your neighborhood or how close a lot of high frequency transit is is going to vary by context, and we're very much aware that in a suburban context we'll need a nuanced approach. Very happy to hear you say that. Because definitely we are not complete when it comes to mobility. Mobility looks different in any in all the different contexts. Yeah, I think the plan in its context based approach is very intentional about how suburban parts of the city need to be complete in their own way. And so just for example, in the equity concepts, the axis of opportunity, we looked at at different distances to access different types of centers and corridors. And it is different in, in a suburban setting to reach a regional center or a community center than in a urban neighborhoods. So we're very cognizant of that. And I think it's also important to note that we have a lot of recommendations on how to think about how our suburban context can evolve over time. And there's a lot of opportunities in some of our corridors that are very auto oriented today, and we'll still need to accommodate the auto in the future. But also it's a transit investment along some of those corridors, like federal, for example. How could we see infill at some of those large parking lots, etc.? That makes it more walkable and transit friendly community. Thank you. That's all, Mr. President. Thank you. Councilman Flynn, Councilman Espinosa, you back up. So I want to thank David for if anyone was watching Lou to you saw me sort of question the you know, the vulnerability that I just was mentioning, neighbors, neighborhoods without statistical neighborhoods that have never had plans and basically asking you guys to consider having language that in those areas that have never gotten any sort of major scrutiny from the city to have customized that that be the appropriate place where customized zoning be to be used and to to get these outcomes because we talk about transitions, right? But there's nothing in the zoning code that requires transitions other than, you know, the relationship to existing mean to protected districts. That said, where you directed me was page 73. I hope that page number hasn't changed. Again, in the record general recommendations, but I'm worried because it's the last line in item recommended recommendation be so David or Sarah, because that line is an afterthought in that second paragraph. And it's right next to this big blue box that talks about the challenges of custom zoning. And we have policy that is averse to custom zoning. And in the Denver zoning code, it talks about essentially a lack of wanting to use custom zoning. Are we still pointing everybody in the direction of base zone districts should because I the thing I was asking for then and I'm going to still ask for that now is rather than have it be a tag on sentence, it says custom zoning tools are the are most effective when a standard zone district does not exist to implement the adopted plans for an area. Why can't we just pull that out? Do another bullet point in, say, custom done zone districts and I'll say it. Shall. Be used when a zone when a standard zone district does not exist to implement the adopted plans in an area because this is the only adopted plan. This will talk about transitions. This will talk about equity. This will talk about all the elements, the vision element. We don't have a zone district that does that today. You do have the current page in the current language. So yeah, it's a great point. I would say that we're trying to strike a balance between acknowledging when it is completely appropriate to use custom zoning, which as you've seen, there's been a lot of custom zoning that have come through council recently and it's it's definitely not the policy to always steer people away from it. So the starting point is, is there a standard zoned district? That's the intent of having the form base code with the context based approach is to start with, we have this vast menu of districts. Is there something there that can get us, if not all the way there, than very close? But if there's not, then there's certainly an appetite to discuss custom zoning. And I don't think that the language here is trying to set us up to say that we we don't want to do that in the future. But haven't you seen developers basically be averse to approaching something when there's that many flight red flags telling them not to do something like that? Because I have I have had conversations, developers that don't want to approach that because CPD essentially advise them not to approach the customized zone district. Yeah, I would say that's not something we hear a lot about. I feel like a lot of a lot of advocates we work with are usually pretty open to wanting to just have a very successful process. So whatever is most likely to get them the to get through the zoning criteria and showing plan consistency as well as community support. And it is true. I mean, there's a reason why the language is in here. We are trying to recognize not just because of the development community, but also even neighborhood residents. You know, we have people in Cherry Creek East that we've heard from most recently saying, you know, we we really want to support as much as we can getting rid of old code zoning and having to do kind of site by site negotiation because they have a neighborhood full of feuds. So we're trying to balance the desire to have predictable straight forward zone districts that implement our plans, but also recognize sometimes the custom zoning is an appropriate tool. Are you is KPD aware of the hubbub right now, whether it's fact or fiction about the Home Depot on Fox Island at 41st and Fox Station? Of course. I'm not quite sure what you mean by the hubbub, but I'm aware that there is a proposal to build one there. Yes. So the hubbub that I'm referencing comes from the fact that, yes, repeatedly I talked about and staff acknowledged that there were no minimums. Right. So as a district that allows 30 allows one. Yeah. And if we look at the Globeville neighborhood plan, which is only now five years old, it doesn't contemplate big box retail. It contemplates something much, much more dense and much more mixed use. And so that's what I'm talking about is we could take an MCs 30 or 20 or whatever we have there and put the minimum there. And that's a custom zoning and basically have precluded a big box retail, single story, big plugs, retail project. I don't know that it's going to be that. And so that's how we can get plan objectives, whether they're this plan or NPI generated plans, but only if we tell people that know if we don't have a zoned district that compels the outcome that is envisioned, we will tweak the zoning so that we do. Why not state that very clearly that our objectives here is as an equity component, we want to mitigate displacement. Therefore, we're going to we're going to we're going to have a housing component within a requirement within this distance to the TOD. We need a neighborhood serving retail, so we're going to have a retail component. Why not put that in? Yeah. Well, I think overall, I would just say that we feel like the best way to address those kinds of issues, like doing the minimum density requirements next to transit, which I would point out land use vote form, general recommendation number two and Blueprint Denver. That's what it's all about. How are we going to address the equity that you mentioned? Those things are best addressed by a more comprehensive approach an amendment to the zoning code creating zone districts that accomplish what we need. If you start doing it, every site that comes in side by side by side, not only does it add a lot to the process, you don't necessarily end up with consistent results. So one landowner negotiates this outcome, the next lander owner negotiates this outcome, the next landowner negotiates this outcome. And now in an area where you want one kind of comprehensive outcome or playing field site by, say, you've negotiated something differently. I'm not saying we still have done this particularly for large rezonings. We have used customs earnings or other tools like a. Development agreements. To get to the outcomes that we want when we can't get it fully through standards or districts. But I guess my point would be we have other tools that we're trying to use to get those outcomes. It's not just through a custom zoning. I don't think that CPD should fear the uniqueness of our areas. Right. Town of Highland developed one way. Denver developed a different my area developed a different way. And they sort of came together and turned into something beautiful. And Lowery's standards are not the same as Stapleton standards, and they're not the same as downtowns. Well, I want to be clear. I'm sorry if that was unclear. Totally agree with you. I didn't mean to imply that has to be the same solution for the entire city or half of the city or whatever. But I mean, like you brought up Fox Station when I was saying a comprehensive approach, I mean, for an area . So it's not one landowner at this point compared to this land over landowner over here, but it's all within a half mile radius has completely different rules. But we have a that's what's frustrating about those rezonings, right, is we had an adopted plan and it envisioned a certain negotiated outcome that the community envisioned. But I the things that you heard me say time and time again was that this plan there's nothing about this rezoning that compels any of these outcomes that the neighborhood sort of envisioned that are the justification for those those rezonings. And somehow to the the idea of complete neighborhoods. We need to figure out how to make these tools deliver that. And until we have zoned districts that do, I'm saying it should be a requirement when you're going to map to these new places, a new zoned district that has no precedent in any existing plan because they don't exist. That should be a condition whereby we do have that neighborhood discussion and yeah, it is a one off, you know, and CPD seemed averse to doing that too, putting that in the language. And then with all three places stating that customized zoning is essentially a big taboo, don't do it because it's hard to implement is antithetical to getting the outcomes of complete neighborhoods in areas that don't have a complete neighborhood already. That's the real beauty of Northwest Denver. Would you not agree? And why it actually scores so low on our need for plan is because it actually was a complete neighborhood. It developed around fixed rail transit in. So the infrastructure was already there in the built environment and the walkability of it. I mean, that's why it scores better than Lowry and Stapleton on plan need. And that was done without that holistic one size fits all. And I think there's benefit to that and I wish we would codify it. Thanks. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. Seeing no other questions, I have what I hope will be a quick one for you, David. Thank you for all your work with the Wasatch Park Neighborhood Association. Although I know you've met with them a lot of times there's a letter that they submitted. They read, you know, into the record just on some things where they're you know, I think they were saying we reinterpret this way. You're saying that's not what it means. This means the same. Can you just confirm that the issues that they had in the letter, I won't go through one at a time unless you want me to that the that that the assurances that they were looking for just in terms of what the language read and how it would be interpreted that you guys got that ironed out and that that was accurate. Absolutely. Yeah. So I was able to read their letter and the four different bullet points on the assurances. And I agree with how they've written that there was the dialog between us to make sure we were understanding the interpretation of how the plan was written on those points and is a fair way to assess how the plan is applied to West Washington Park. And we'll look forward to working with them in the future. Thank you very much. All right. See no other questions. The public hearing for council bills 302 and 303 are closed. Councilman Cashman, would you like to formally offer your amendment to Council Bill 302? Yes. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Microphone. Microphone. Thank you, Mr. President. I move the council bill 19, dash three zero to be amended in the following particulars on page one Line 24 Strike April ten, 2019 as 20190012 and replace with April 23rd 2019 has 2019001 to a. It has been moved and seconded comments by members of the Council. Councilman Cashman. Yeah, thank you, Mr. President. So in 2019. As we prepared to consider the documents that will guide planning in our city over the next several decades, we must be clear on what the challenges are to our civic well-being that these documents must address. Some challenges affect some neighborhoods. Some affect our entire city. Some extend even further. As the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has elevated concern over continuing warming of our atmosphere to emergency levels. It's critical that whatever plans we implement hold the need to mitigate our civic impact on global warming and protection of our planet and its resources. As a Prime Directive, I fully support the six vision elements. Excuse me around which comprehensive plan 2040 and Blueprint Denver have been organized, equitable, affordable and inclusive, economically diverse and vibrant, strong and authentic neighborhoods, well connected, safe and accessible places, healthy, inactive and environmentally, environmentally resilient. While sustainability directives are present in numerous places throughout both plans. It became clear as I examined the documents that climate change needed to be given more prominent placement as an area of primary concern. I would like to thank David Jaspers and Sara Showalter of Community Planning and Development for their partnership and willingness in finding the prominent placement we saw in Tom Herrod of the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment for his assistance in fine tuning the wording of the amendment. These plans are indeed aspirational in nature and do not include precise directives in most cases, but they will in fact provide grounds to inform future discussions by clearly stating the priorities by which the people of Denver felt future development should be guided, along with increased emphasis on pedestrian safety on our streets, the need for affordable housing for all Denver residents, and long overdue attention to equity. In the application of all our plans, Denver needs to come. We'll know that in 2019, the citizens of Denver in this Council, when stating priorities, declared our intention to preserve not just a livable city but a habitable planet for future generations. As stated before, the purpose of this amendment is to allow for inserting a sentence on page 51 of the comprehensive plan under the environmentally resilient introduction. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. And I just want to thank you for bringing this forward. I think this is critically important. I'm excited that you brought it forward and thrilled to support it. See no other comments, Madam Secretary, roll call on the amendment. CASHMAN Hi. Black Hi. Brooke, i. Espinosa, I. Flynn Hi. Gilmore. I. Herndon. I can. Lopez. I knew Susman. Mr. President. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and know the results. 1212 US counts about 302 has been amended. Councilwoman Sussman, we need a motion to pass as amended. Certainly I move that council bills 19 dash 0303 be placed. Oh sorry we're on 0203. And. I move the council bill 034003 or to be passed as amended. Perfect. Thank you. All right. Comments on 302. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. Are we going to do them individually or in a block individually? Because we we've just amended this one. Now we're going to vote on adoption of comp plan. And then we will Councilman Cashman put forward his amendment, a blueprint, and then will vote on blueprint. Okay. Thank you. I have remarks that were aimed at both. So should I do those now? Yes, go ahead. Okay. So this is for both comp plan and blueprint. And so I strongly support so much that is in these plans, particularly the intentionality with which they take on historic systemic inequities among different populations and different neighborhoods. I like the emphasis on developing design requirements, especially in my suburban context, with its emphasis on improving pedestrian access. When I walk to my King Soopers, I can walk on the sidewalk up to it. But there are no sidewalks from the driveway, no sidewalks lining a driveway into the shopping center. So we walk in the driveway. With the cars. I'm also extremely grateful to the planning staff and its responsiveness, particularly to my district in southwest Denver. A little more than two years ago when Colorado Heights University was forced to close and they put the historic Loreto Heights campus up for sale at my request. David and Sarah and the core staff from CPD organized Ad Hoc. One of the very first general public meetings to gather neighborhood input not only regarding the campus and vicinity, but especially in every southwest Denver statistical neighborhood, none of which had ever had a community driven, city council approved neighborhood plan. I was very concerned that this large redevelopment site coming on the market right at the beginning of blueprints rewrite without any neighborhood level plan. And I hope that this had some small part in shaping the characteristic, the characterization and recommendations for the suburban context areas of the city into which my entire district falls. My district, in my estimation, already reflects a lot of the values expressed in blueprint and in comp plan, at least as far as residential, if not in mobility. We have, as the draft blueprint concedes, the most varied types of all neighborhoods. Southwest Denver has greater diversity than many neighborhoods in terms of population incomes and access to opportunity. It has a higher percentage of households of color than are represented in the city as a whole. The maps and blueprint of the changes in nonwhite households since 1990 show clearly that my council district is one of the only areas of town where households of color have increased. While the overall percentage of households of color in the city as a whole and in our gentrifying neighborhoods has decreased. We are the part of Denver where people are moving to buy homes when they're gentrified out of other areas. My single family neighborhoods are where households of color increasingly found that they can own a home and build wealth and equity. So at least in my estimation. But the plan leaves me uncertain going forward. Whose estimation will matter when it comes to guiding density and change because of the highly aspirational and frequently unspecific nature of the plan ? I can't sit here today and be certain whether the character of Southwest Denver will be preserved or disrupted by these plans. While I can interpret the recommendations as supporting preservation of character, I also see that ten years down the line when none of us is here any longer. This plan is vague enough that it can be substantially disruptive when interpreted differently than what I and my neighborhood leaders and residents have in mind right now. For instance, one of the recommendations in comp plan is to ensure city policies and regulations and encourage every neighborhood to provide a complete range of housing options at the statistical neighborhood level. My district already meets this, but in discussions with staff, I have a concern about applying that recommendation at a micro level, which the plan might lead to. There's a huge area of apartments and rowhouses a few blocks east of my house. My constituents don't want single family houses scraped off to build multi-unit structures in their midst, as they have seen elsewhere in town. But this plan can support that. Their biggest fear was not Don't let happen to our part of town. What's happened in in Highland, in north Denver, in Jefferson Park and Sloan's Lake? I spent the past few weeks reaching out to discuss this with numerous neighborhood leaders and constituents. And to a person, I heard great anxiety that these new plans could lead to the kind of unpopular change that has disrupted some other parts of town, almost illogically. Many places where we've added density in an effort to preserve affordability are now some of the most unaffordable in gentrified parts of town. Meanwhile, in southwest Denver, a full 40% of dwelling units are in multi-family developments as expected. In the suburban context, though, they are found in their own spaces, not interwoven in the same blocks as as is common in the urban core that developed that way over decades. My own subdivision sits astride large multifamily developments of apartments, condos, row houses and townhouses, duplexes and a few for plex's blueprints. Guidance could be used, however, to justify the insertion of four plex into suburban blocks of single family homes. And my constituents have told me they don't want that. In fact, I believe in my Marston neighborhood, a majority of the dwelling units are in multifamily developments of all types. The recommendation to allow adus as a use by right in all residential districts also conflicts, in my opinion, with the guidance to preserve the character of suburban context neighborhoods. We had a person who lives on Raleigh Street testify about her Adu. The folks here who spoke in favor of ADA use everywhere have talked about how well they fit into urban contexts, but not suburban. The Raleigh Street Adu had an entrance off the alley. In fact, they're often referred to as alley homes. My district has one alley. As much as we've talked about respecting different neighborhood characters. I keep hearing echoes of one size fits all, so I have a great concern that as much as the plans express a commitment to preserving unique character, the recommendations and strategies inexorably may point to an outcome that will homogenize our unique and distinctive neighborhoods. Suburban context areas can absorb more growth and density, and my constituents, in fact, look forward to seeing, for instance, more commercial density. As the drafts acknowledge, suburban areas are characterized by these different types and uses having their distinct areas within the neighborhood. My concern is that these plans, with their lack of sufficient specificity, will open the door to disorderly change rather than in those areas where infrastructure is in place to handle it. So it is with an abundance of concern and caution that I will be voting no. My vote does not reflect disagreement with the plans overall, but is cast because of the very few areas with which I have an irreconcilable concern. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. See no other comments on this one before we vote on comp plan. I just want to say I'm really excited about comp plan and I know a lot of the talk gets on the blueprint very quickly. But comp plan is, I think, one of the most exciting planning documents that I've ever seen. I think it's really cool to see how we talk about climate, how we talk about equity, how we talk about our city in that document. And I think you just did a really amazing job with the comp plan part of it. So I'm speaking specifically to that because that's what we're about to vote on. So, you know, I want to say thank you to everybody who stuck around this long to finally see us vote on something here. But also to just say that in particular on the comp plan piece. Really excited about this document. So, Madam Secretary, roll call on the comp plan as amended. Black Eye. Brooks Eye. Espinosa Eye. Flynn. No. Gilmore Eye. Herndon. Cashman. Carnage Lopez. All right, new assessment. All right. Mr. President. Madam Secretary, please close voting and the results. 11 eyes, one may. 11 eyes, one nay council bill 302 has passed as amended. Councilwoman Sussman, now, will you please put Council Bill 303 on the floor?