Late last Friday, with little fanfare, the City of Boulder released its latest draft FAR regulations. In analyzing it to develop an online calculator to show you how restrictive it would be, we observed numerous inconsistencies between the draft ordinance language and the supporting documents including not only mathematical irregularities but what can only be described as arithmetic errors. Presumably the more obvious of the last will be caught and corrected before or when the Planning Board reviews them–we expect to see the City issue another round of “Oops! We goofed!” errata soon. We particularly expect to see corrections to the proposed ordinance’s tables 7-2 and 8-3!
Among the current proposal’s lowlights are:
- Proposing not only a 45% cut in the FAR standard (from .8 to .45 on the mythical “reference” 7000 sf lot), but piling several other ill-considered regulations on top of that cut
- A 30% building coverage standard, despite obvious questions of fairness to owners of ranch homes (likely the single most common architectural style of single-family home in the city).
- Abandoning the idea of a larger single-story building coverage standard of 40%. If you want to expand your own ranch home, you’ll have to block your neighbor’s view by building up, not out.
- Still including basements as part of the FAR calculation, with increasingly complex rules about measuring the grade and increasingly difficult calculations. And if you have big enough windows to bring enough natural light into your basement to save energy, even your window wells might not be exempt from the FAR calculation.
- Perpetuating the illusion of “increasing” the FAR to .45 from the .42 proposed by Winter and Co. This of course wasn’t an actual increase, but instead a sleight-of-hand trick by the Mayor and other FAR proponents. When faced with the fact that not counting detached garages was unfair to the large majority of homeowners who have attached garages, the City compensated by eliminating all garage exemptions while adding only .03 FAR (or 210 sq ft on the “reference” 7000 sq ft lot), blithely ignoring the fact that most homes on any actual 7000 sq ft lot are likely to have a standard two-car garage of about 450-500 sq ft. In fact, if you already have a detached two-car garage, your effective FAR just dropped by about .04 (280 sq ft on the “reference” 7000 sq ft lot, assuming a 490 sq ft garage size).
- Exterior stairways of more than 30″ high, wherever they are located on your property, are to count toward your building coverage. We can’t wait until some of the folks who live on steep slopes find out they have to count the steps on their front walks or their basement stairwells. We know of some tiny homes on slopes in Newlands that just grew by one or two hundred feet!
But let’s be fair. What they may have done a little better on includes: Read more…
FairFAR.org needs volunteers! Please, if you haven’t already filled out the extra information section of your profile, do so now.
We’re also looking for people to:
- hold neighborhood discussion groups on the city’s FAR proposals
- analyze the FAR regulations proposed by the consultants/staff/city council to help us build instant calculators
- write critiques of the FAR proposals for our website and for letters to the editor
- code the public hearings and sift through the various public documents and comments
- model the effects of the proposed ordinances on ordinary Boulder homes
- identify homes that would be (or would nearly be) non-standard under the proposed ordinances
This notice came yesterday from the City of Boulder PDS compatible development mailing list (info to join it at the end, if you aren’t already on it). Taken as a whole, the Planning Board has generally been quite a bit more reasonable and willing to listen than the City Council on this issue, so please take that into consideration if you plan to speak.
Planning Board meeting date change; new meeting date July 9, 2009
Compatible Development in Single Family Neighborhoods
The city of Boulder Compatible Development in Single Family Neighborhoods
project and proposed ordinance language will now be heard at Planning Board
on Thursday, July 9, 2009.
Please note the date change as the hearing was previously scheduled for next
Thursday, June 18, 2009. The change in Planning Board date will also change
the first and second readings to City Council; these dates have yet to be
determined.
For up-to-date meeting information, visit the project Web site or call
Julie Johnston at 303-441-1886.
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Today’s Boulder Daily Camera has an article on another group forming around this same issue!
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2009/jun/11/law-firm-hired-to-prevent-pops-and-scrapes-pops/
Just over two weeks ago, we formed this group over lunch and resolved to put up this website. We discovered the same clauses in the City Charter that this group did, and decided we should create a space for discussion and to gather together the opposition. We even thought about eventually recruiting a lawyer to help with the 501(c)3 process, but hadn’t gotten there yet. So kudos to whoever had the same idea and started a similar group.
Matt Appelbaum, you were right about one thing: The opposition to this proposal is widespread. But it is also grassroots, stemming from the fact that your and many on council’s high-handedness on this issue has alienated so many of us ordinary homeowners. And guess what? Homeowners vote in overwhelming numbers in our municipal elections.
Welcome to FairFAR.org!
We are a newly formed citizens group in Boulder, Colorado who are concerned about the direction of the FAR / house size limits proposed by the Boulder City Council. Formed by ordinary homeowners who feel that our ability to expand and modify our own homes to our present and future needs is being threatened by the proposals put forth so far by the City Council, the consultants and the city staff, we have started this website for several reasons:
- to serve as a central location at which we can gather and disseminate the City’s various FAR proposals and track the changes in them
- to provide a forum for discussion and critique of the City’s proposals
- to develop a database of interested registered electors in the event that a citizen-initiated petition is necessary to put any ordinance to a popular vote
- to coordinate strategy to prevent Council from passing an unreasonable ordinance, and to hold them individually accountable if they do
Members of our group are not necessarily opposed to any form of regulation to address the underlying issue(s), though some of us certainly may be. In fact, the founders of our organization have repeatedly said that they would be willing to consider a moderate form of regulation, but the proposals to date do not fit that description and Council’s proposals appear to be becoming even more complex and less sensible. Though we expect most of you are generally opposed to what is being proposed, we welcome participation from all interested points of view–including those of you who would favor tighter regulation.