FairFAR.org

FairFAR (http://FairFAR.org) has endorsed 5 candidates for the 2009 Boulder City Council elections. We urge you to vote in the upcoming election–you will receive a mail ballot sometime after 13 October 2009. While we give details and rank all of the candidates below, the five candidates we endorse (listed in the order in which we have ranked them) are:

Download a PDF Version of the FairFAR Endorsements

• Fenno Hoffman
• Suzy Ageton
• KC Becker
• Barry Siff
• George Karakehian

Cream of the Crop:

Fenno Hoffman stands head and shoulders above the other candidates running for election this year. Fenno is the only candidate who consistently points out that our current zoning and building codes have “suburban DNA” in them that prevents us from achieving our other environmental goals: reducing carbon footprints by housing more of our workforce, creating a walkable city with nodes of density along its transportation corridors, and revitalizing and rezoning the city’s neighborhoods and commercial centers to be more humane. At the neighborhood forums FairFAR attended, we were also impressed that Fenno is also the fastest candidate to leave the podium to sit down at the table with the voters–and actually listen to them.

Suzy Ageton is the cream of the crop among the three incumbents running for reelection. Suzy is a tireless champion of good government who asks the hard questions that too many other council members would prefer not to have raised. True to form, Suzy has been a consistent voice of reason and moderation in the compatible neighborhoods debate. In particular, we share Suzy’s views on redevelopment and density: “Done appropriately where services and transit are available, and utilizing the most current green-building technology, we can achieve more energy-efficient, compact structures with transportation needs being met significantly by foot, bike or transit.”

Worth not just your Vote, but Volunteering for:

KC Becker would come to council with impeccable environmental credentials, but what FairFAR finds most encouraging is that she is someone who understands the difficulties that the compatible development ordinance would pose on ordinary families who struggle to buy and stay living in the city. That’s important because families stay in their homes an average of 2.5 times as long as other homeowners do (according to US census bureau data). We agree with KC: Whatever else Boulder should be doing about its housing issues, reducing the number of families in single-family housing is not one of them.

Barry Siff is a dynamo. FairFAR is drawn to Barry’s pragmatism on all the issues, but particularly on the compatible development issue. He has noted publicly that the compatible development ordinance affects far too many ordinary-sized homes, and will discourage families from moving to distinctive neighborhoods like University Hill. We feel that he will bring a level of energy, dedication, and expertise to council work that will rival Suzy Ageton’s. As a candidate, he has immersed himself in the last year of council work, regularly attending hearings to hear from the general public and examining the budget line by line. This proficiency and attention to detail will be particularly valuable during the fiscally constrained period in which Boulder now finds itself.

George Karakehian reminds us of the voice we see missing from council debates–Tom Eldridge. That’s not just because George owns a business downtown, but because George is always asking whether our priorities are sensible priorities. George is smart enough to see compatible development for what it is and call its advocates out on it–a misplaced priority at a time the economy is falling apart and our libraries, parks and even public safety funding is being cut.

Didn’t Make the Cut:

Matt Appelbaum is a dedicated and intelligent public servant who wants Boulder’s example to lead on a national and international stage. We respect that Matt brokered a transition in the compatible development ordinance which moved it out of the “terrible” category and into the “merely bad” category–and the difference between “terrible” and “bad” is always a much sharper line than that between a “good” and “bad” regulation. Ultimately, and unlike Matt, we do not share the PLAN-Boulder vision for Boulder that the compatibility ordinance is designed to produce: middle-class neighborhoods divided on a block-by-block basis between run-down rentals and owner-occupied starter homes.

Valerie Mitchell’s candidacy doesn’t have a strong enough voice yet.  While she positioned herself first as an advocate for renters and later for landlord-renter relations, we never heard a clear position emerge on the compatible development ordinance, let alone many other issues in the city. She did say that compatible development ordinance was perhaps appropriate for some neighborhoods and not others, which is a position for which we have some support. We look forward to hearing more from her in future elections.

Serious Deficiencies:

Tim Plass has represented Mapleton Hill citizens on the Landmarks Board and has consistently voted for the smallest FAR and building coverage numbers on the table. We like Tim’s even tone and statesman-like qualities, but we think that he suffers from a myopic vision of the city that does not include South Boulder, East Boulder, densification or city-wide concerns. Tim strikes us as a candidate who is interested in protecting the status quo, and the fact that his strongest supporters include the city’s political elites does nothing to dissuade us of that. Ultimately, we see Tim as continuing the trend of well-intended but devastating housing policies that will continue to drive working families out of the city and into the surrounding communities, ironically creating an ever-larger carbon footprint for Boulder.

Jyotsna Raj is likeable enough, but has neither the experience nor the fiscal tough-mindedness for FairFAR to consider her as a serious candidate. This was particularly true with respect to the compatible development ordinance, where Jyostna on one hand supports tighter FAR and building limits than were in the ordinance that passed, but also called for more Accessory Development Units (e.g. alley houses and garage apartments) to house the “artists” and other young people who make our city so vibrant. But the latter cannot be built without city codes that allow their construction, and the compatible development limits will make small alley houses a relic of Boulder’s past. To us, Raj’s candidacy represents what has gone terribly wrong with the present leadership at PLAN-Boulder and the Sierra Club Indian Peaks Group: these groups say they want livable, walkable cities with appropriate levels of density, but they promulgate policies that are diametrically opposed to bringing about livable and walkable city blocks anywhere but in Central West Boulder.

Macon Cowles has consistently been among city council’s two most extreme advocates of the compatible development ordinance, so it should come as no surprise that FairFAR cannot support his re-election bid. Macon has repeatedly failed to listen to divergent points of view, at one point even declaring that the city was already so polarized that he saw no use in listening to others. While we respect Macon’s boundless energy and do not question his intelligence or his deep commitment to council work, Macon’s priorities are just backwards. Great cities are not built by council members with misguided but good intentions; they are built by the citizens on a solid foundation of good libraries, good schools, good jobs, good neighborhoods and good government.

FairFAR has no comment on the Seth Brigham or Rob Smoke candidacies.

Our endorsement process:

FairFAR evaluated the candidates by attending and/or watching several candidate forums, council meetings, neighborhood candidate-meet-and-greet parties, corresponding and/or speaking personally with the candidates, and listening to the audio interviews that David Thielen made with each candidate.  We were primarily interested in their positions on the compatible development ordinance and its relation to other city policies, such as increased population density along transportation corridors, a walkable and bikeable city built to a human scale rather than an automobile scale, and reducing our carbon footprints.  However other issues, especially our sense of the candidate’s budgetary priorities and prowess, were also factored into our decisions due to the severe economic challenges the next city council will face.

As most of you are aware, the city council passed the house size limit regulations on third reading late Tuesday evening (6 October 2009). The regulations were essentially unchanged from the 17 September meetings–a 35% building coverage ratio, a .5 floor area ratio, 45-degree side yard bulk plane standards, wall articulation standards and a host of other revisions to the code. They will take effect on 4 January 2009, after a 90-day implementation period has passed. To be considered under the existing rules, a building permit needs to be considered complete by the City prior to that date.

We still see several difficulties with the regulations, including:

• The building coverage ratio still makes no sense, particularly for majority of the city’s neighborhoods which do not have alleys.  It will encourage popping up rather than bumping out, and the increased building heights will actually work against several of council’s goals (perceived mass/or bulk, reducing the height of tall “looming” walls, the loss of rear-yard privacy, and the impact on views).  A better regulation would have focused on limiting the amount of second story coverage.
• For single-story ranch homes, the building coverage of 35% is equivalent to the .35 FAR that was floated by council as an interim measure–and was roundly rejected by the public.  So after 2 years of debate, ranch home owners are in only a marginally different boat than they were when this process started.
• There remain substantial issues with sloped lots, including counting toward the FAR significant portions of basements with no exterior access due to the fact that a lot slopes from side to side.
• There are similar problems resulting from how the bulk plane standard interacts with sloped lots, particularly in that they work to push the building upslope by measuring the building envelope from ground level at the side property lines, rather than averaging their elevations together.  Buildings that are off-center on their lots and lean upslope will be perceived as taller and more massive due to being situated higher on the hill.
• The interactions between the existing solar plane standard and the bulk plane standard on sloped lots have still not been adequately studied.  In many cases, these standards will interact with slope to produce a building envelope that forces homes to be off-center on their lots, with second stories and above crammed into a narrow corner nearer to one of property lines than the other.  Not building the upper floors centered on the lot could result in a loss of privacy for the neighbors and contribute to their sense of looming walls.
• Significant increases in both the document preparation costs and permit fee for homeowners preparing even modest additions.

As Macon Cowles noted, FairFAR did not attend the public hearing at the third reading to reiterate the same objections we have been making for months.  However, he was wrong to assume that our absence meant that we felt the “compromise” regulations were fair or even adequate.  Rather than seeing little to nothing change again at a public hearing, we have chosen to focus our time and energy on making endorsements in the upcoming City Council Elections.

We have updated the FAR and building coverage calculator to reflect the house size limit ordinance language that Boulder City Council has passed on second reading on 17 September 2009 and on thrid reading on 6 October 2009.  The ordinance will take effect on 4 January 2010.  For comparison purposes, the former versions are still available as the Staff Memo and Planning Board versions.

After the Council seemed to settle on a 35% building coverage and .50 FAR at Tuesday night’s meeting, several people have written to ask whether we will be posting an updated FAR calculator.  The answer is yes, but not until Council actually passes a reading on the ordinance, which would happen tonight.  While it seems unlikely to fail, strange votes are always possible–for example, a house-size limit proponent like Cowles could decide to vote against it in hopes of forcing a more restrictive set of numbers later.  And since it is a bit of work to tune the calculator, we’ll wait and see if they actually pass the revised numbers on second reading.

The first thing to note is that there are now a plethora of complex variations contained in the 70+ page 4 September 2009 staff memo that would interact with each other in even more complex ways, as well as a highly questionable “analysis” of how the proposed bulk plane ordinance would work on sloping lots.

Highlights:

• The staff recommendation has increased to a 35% building coverage and a .50 FAR.  The bulk planes remain unchanged, and would still force the mass of a home on a slope uphill (see our previous articles for illustrations).
• The report contains a number of alternative tradeoffs, including a small 240 sf exemption from the FAR for a one-car garage (but not for building coverage).
• There are two options for recommended starting points for Council to start redrafting the ordinance.  Option 1 uses the old numbers (30% and .45) as a starting point, while Option 2 uses the new staff recommended numbers.
• At the last Council meeting, Council asked for analysis of a building coverage/no-FAR/tighter bulk planes ordinance as proposed by Mayor Appelbaum.  There is an analysis in the last 20 pages of the staff memo.  However, we have discovered that the analysis that was performed by Winter and Company and staff may have failed to apply the proposed bulk plane ordinance correctly for sloped lots.  Hence, we still have no idea how well the Mayor’s alternative proposal would work.  Moreover, we don’t have a sound analysis of how the staff’s bulk plane ordinance would work on sloped lots either.

We would like to see council pursue further and more accurate information about how the bulk plane standards would interact with slope before taking any action.  We also strongly oppose the building coverage limit at 30%, and while 35% is a more reasonable number, we would suggest instead that council seek a different way to restrict the impact rear detached garages have on the effective building coverage after setbacks.  We would suggest that the current effective building coverage limits of just under 40% on a suburban 7000 sf lot and 42.5% on the old Boulder 6250 sf lots are just about right; the problems come in when–especially on the narrow old Boulder lots where alleys are common–rear detached garages occupy another 7 to 8% of the lot.

We have proposed two ideas to address this issue.  First, a rear yard setback of 25% instead of 25′ would increase the overall size of the rear yard on the narrow and deep (50′x125′) old Boulder lots, so a large two-car garage in the rear setback would cover around a third rather than nearly half of the rear yards.  Second, and alternatively, we could simply require those with detached rear garages to preserve that much open space within the primary building envelope on the lot–that is make detached garages count against the size of the building envelope that your main home must sit within, just as having an attached garage already does for suburban homes.

Lastly, we would like to point out that should council adopt a FAR of .50 or .45, as still seems likely, having a larger building coverage limit means that if first story construction is maximized, there will necessarily be a smaller second story and above.  In other words, if a home were to be built out to the limit of 35 or 40% on the first floor, the second floor would be limited to just 10 to 15 % of the size of the lot.

As we have repeatedly pointed out, most of the neighborhood compatibility concerns result from mass contained in the second story and above; the upper stories are what contribute most to perceived bulk and mass, generally require taller and looming walls, block neighborhood views, and decrease the neighbors’ rear yard privacy.  If instead Council persists in ratcheting down the building coverage limit, those problems will become worse, not better, as a result of an action that forces anyone expanding their home to build up and not out.

At the 18 August 2009 meeting Council asked staff to carefully examine the differences between no-FAR/building coverage/more bulk planes proposal and the planning board proposal, and the recommended staff proposal. But we have found what appears to be an error in how our highly paid consultants, Winter and Company, and city staff have applied their own proposed regulation. Look closely at the following diagram, which is from p. 69 of the 4 September 2009 staff memo to council on the proposed house size regulations.

The problem with this diagram is that the lower right hand leg of the building envelope is taller than the lower left hand leg of the building envelope, but the proposed bulk plane standards clearly state that they are to begin from 12′ above the side property line.  In other words: If a lot slopes from side-to-side, the ordinance as proposed clearly states that the bulk plane would begin lower on the lower side of the lot than the higher side.  This is exactly how we diagrammed the interaction of slope and bulk planes in our previous article Why the proposed ordinance doesn’t work.

The error here illustrates the gap between what the drafters of this ordinance think they are doing and what they are actually doing.  The proposed ordinance language will push the center of mass and bulk for homes upslope, causing them to lean uphill just as current homes now lean to the south under the bulk plane of the solar ordinance.  In fact, what their diagram illustrates is something closer to what FairFAR proposed as a revision to the bulk plane ordinance over a month ago–averaging the elevations across the side property lot lines.  We would actually like to see Council change the ordinance’s bulk plane measurement procedure to something that actually does do this, because centering the mass of the home on the lot using bulk planes would actually be helpful.

More importantly though, we have to wonder how profoundly this has affected the rest of the “analysis” done by Winter and Company and staff, and how it may have driven their conclusion that we should stick with their flawed two-dimensional proposals.  FairFAR would simply note that this just another illustration of the lack of objectivity in the process–had the Technical Advisory Group really been composed of geographically diverse and ideologically open-minded Boulder residents, we would have spotted this a long time ago.

We’ve notified the City staff of the issue and are awaiting a response.

FairFAR Note: We did not receive a response to this question before the 9/15 council meeting.  However, in examining the related “models” in the same scenario with a magnifying glass, we did see that it is possible that the problem results from unevenly distributed side setbacks (setback distances do not appear to be indicated in any of the diagrams).  This is a highly technical issue, but there is a strange odd arbitrariness about how one could choose to draw the building envelope as defined by the side yard bulk plane ordinance.  Because the side yard setbacks must total 15′ added together with a minimum of 5′ on either side, the building envelope intersects the bulk plane limit at varying heights (e.g. one side of the building envelope would be 17′ tall at a 5′ side setback, and 22′ at the other 10′ feet side setback, while if the side yard setbacks were assumed to be distributed equally as 7.5 feet each the bulk plane intersects the side setback at 19.5′ on each side).

We won’t know for sure whether this was an error or an unfortunate choice of example until we request and the city sends us the sketch up files used to draw those models.  So it is at least theoretically possible that the models were in fact correctly drawn–but in our judgment still unlikely, given what appears to be bulk planes which start at the same elevation despite trying to model a sloped lot condition.  At the very least, choosing a slope which essentially drops the same amount as the difference in height between the two sides of the building envelope provides a singularly unusual, “not-lopsided” case in an ordinance which would ordinarily result in lopsided building envelopes–and thus yields a very uninformative and misleading graphic.  In any case our point about the unintended consequence of the bulk plane ordinance on lots which slope from side to side remains unchanged–this ordinance will cause the mass of our city’s houses to lean to the uphill side of a lot, just our solar ordinance now causes the mass of our city’s houses to lean to the south side of a lot.

Based on the Council discussion at the 4 August 2009 meeting, we have again reverted the calculator to reflect the staff recommendations in the earlier, more restrictive proposal given to the Council and the Planning Board.

We’ve finally updated our online FAR calculator to match the latest version of the draft ordinance language proposed for in Attachment A (pp. 20-41) of the City Council Agenda for 4 August 2009. As with the previous version, Please note that we cannot model the newly proposed bulk plane and wall articulation standards with the calculator.

For the mathematically inclined, what follows is the key part of the source code for the planning board recommendation: Read more…

Proponents of the FAR, “neighborhood compatibility” or house size limits ordinance often will show people what they think their ordinance will do on an idealized model of a lot. Unfortunately, they conveniently omit important real-world details that would matter on any actual site.

To fix this we bring you three perspective drawings of how the proposed ordinance would prevent an ordinary homeowner from expanding their small, single-story home with a non-walkout basement.  These drawings were done by a FairFAR member who studied the proposed standards in detail in order to understand the effect it would have on his family’s home.  He’s not an architect, but an electrical engineer who spent over 40 hours working to develop the thousands of dollars worth of drawings must of us would need to pay an architect to do in order to expand their homes under the proposed ordinance. These three views show the interaction of the slope on a site, the existing setback and solar ordinances, and the new bulk plane regulations.  Tip: You can click on a picture to get a larger view.

In the two diagrams at left, a front view and a perspective view, you can see how the trifecta of bulk planes, solar access and the slope of the actual lot combine to create an extremely distorted building envelope that is lopsided and off-center on the lot. In fact, it would be virtually impossible to expand the existing home under the proposed ordinance; it is far more likely that the homeowners will be forced to scrape their home to expand should the proposed ordinance pass.  Consider, for a moment, what a misshapen horror of a building would result from an attempt to expand one’s own home into the tight spaces that the new regulations would mandate.

The top right and lower right diagrams illustrate how the ordinance drastically curtails another possible way to expand the home, this time by limiting the building coverage.  Under the proposed ordinance, the homeowner would only be able to add about 500 sq. ft to the rear of their home (note diagrams currently reflect the planning board proposal and not the staff proposal), or put up a two-car detached garage.  In the diagram on the lower left, you can see how the natural slope of the lot partially exposes the walls of the basement, making it count.  Note that this home’s basement has no exterior doors; it can be accessed only by a narrow flight of stairs from inside the building; it is by no means a “walkout” basement.  However, because of the fact the lot is on a natural slope, about 25% of the basement square footage will count toward the home’s overall size limit (FAR).

City Fails to Consider Sloped Lots in the Direction that Matters (i.e., side-to-side)

One last point: Consider how the city’s analysis of the interaction between the slope of a lot and their proposed bulk plane standard differs from what actually is the case in the real world.  In the real world example above the direction of the slope is primarily across the the lot from side to side, but the city makes a simplifying assumption in their diagrams–that the slope will be along the front-to-back axis of the property (see the diagram to the right, which comes directly from the proposed ordinance council is being asked to vote upon).  Of course, the city has “analyzed” slope only in the directions that would actually work for their proposed ordinance–and they haven’t done their homework to see how it will work in the real world, in situations outside their idealized models.

You can’t easily find the new language of the draft FAR ordinance–the city published it on their website late Friday, but they’ve buried it as Attachment A of the city council’s agenda packet for next Tuesday the 4th of August–and the city’s website does not yet even mention that the agenda contains a new version of the ordinance!

But here’s a link to the agenda, which contains the newest proposed ordinance language.  The ordinance language is attachment A, which starts on page 20 and runs onto page 41.

Oh, and for anyone who thinks that you can find the facts about the FAR process from just the city “Compatible Development” website:  There is no link yet to the draft ordinance or even to the agenda packet on the city’s “Compatible Development” website.

One of the most unfair comments from a public official during this entire house size limit/FAR process came from the otherwise quite well-spoken chair of the Planning Board, Willa Johnson.  At the 9th of July public hearing, she admonished those of us who were critical of the FAR ordinance for not articulating what changes we would like to see to the ordinance to make it better.  However, members of the public had three minutes each to make their case while the city staff had over an hour to make theirs. It simply isn’t possible to point out what is wrong with the city’s proposed ordinance and what to do instead in a three-minute sound bite; all one can do is settle for making a choice point or two, such as that the proposed ordinance will actually encourage pops because building coverage is set so much lower than the FAR limit, or that staff’s presentation has failed to analyze the slope of a lot in the directions that actually matter to how the bulk plane ordinance would distort the building envelope.

But on the other hand–Willa Johnson does have a point in the abstract if not in the moment–if we would like to see a fairer FAR we should try to say what we think that would look like, even though ordinary citizens cannot do that in the three minutes they are allotted at a public hearing.  So here is FairFAR’s initial alternative proposal.  But because we hope but do not expect that City Council will be open-minded enough to consider a proposal that doesn’t include the two-dimensional measures–FAR and building coverage–they seem to have already fallen in love with, we’ve also presented two sets of tweaks to their proposed regulatory framework that would vastly improve it.

Alternative Proposal 1 – FairestFAR

We suggest the fairest ordinance would abandon the two-dimensional tools (FAR and building coverage) that do nothing to address what is essentially a three-dimensional problem, and will in fact make the problem of perceived bulk worse by encouraging pops and scrapes.  Instead, we propose that Council consider putting into place a combination of a bulk plane standard similar to the one so far proposed, a second-story rear-yard setback for primary structures and staff design review guidelines for unusually shaped lots, sloping lots, corner lots, and two-story accessory structures.

Bulk Planes. While we generally agree that the proposed bulk plane standard is a much better idea than either of the two other components in the city’s current proposal, we have three areas of concern.  We think a particularly important part of the overall ordinance is granting a staff design review process the power to waive the bulk plane standard for sloping and irregularly shaped lots; many such lots require different roof forms due to solar and other concerns.

1. First, we do not think the ordinance provides for adequately-sized dormer exemptions when considered from the perspective of the people living inside the structure–an eight-foot wide dormer will provide an approximately a seven-foot wide space on the interior, which is simply not large enough to accommodate a queen bed and person-sized walkways on either side of it.  This inadequacy is magnified when one considers the effect of the sloping roof of a dormer (and the sloping ceiling under in) on the headroom of such walkways.  Thus, we do not think the dormer exceptions in the proposed bulk plane ordinance are large enough to be meaningful; twelve to fifteen feet is much more reasonable size.  But because we agree that dormers should be proportionate to the structure, we propose instead that the length of all dormers be limited to 75% of the roofline with no single dormer larger than 20 feet long.
2. Second, staff has not appropriately analyzed the relationship between the slope of a lot and the way in which the bulk plane envelope is constructed.  Consider an example in which the direction of the slope on a lot is from side-to-side rather than back-to-front (or front-to-back), as staff depicted in their diagrams.  Under staff’s current proposal, the bulk plane would be lower along one side property line than the other, and as a consequence the building envelope would be lopsided.  We have discussed a number of proposals about how to compensate for this, including excluding lots of a certain slope altogether, averaging the elevations of the two side property lines at their midpoints, and moving the point of measurement to the lot at setback rather than the property line.  We are also particularly concerned with how the proposed new standard might interact with the existing solar shadow ordinance, particularly on east- or west-facing lots  lots which slope downhill from south to north. Currently we would propose the averaging method on all lots with less than 4% grade and require a staff design review for all lots of a 4% grade or larger.
3. Third, the bulk plane ordinance was newly proposed in the draft ordinance and has not met the the same level of public scrutiny that other measures have. We do not think it is appropriate to enact a bulk plane ordinance until it has gone through a significant public outreach and comment process.

Rear-yard Second-story Setback for Primary Structures and Staff Design Reviews. Planning Board member William Holicky proposed the idea of a second-story (and above) rear-yard setback. We would propose a second-story rear-yard setback of 25% of the lot’s depth. While we find this idea to be very attractive in that it addresses issues of privacy and bulk by means of limiting building height, we have some concerns about existing structures located on the rear of their lots, sloped and irregularly shaped lots, corner lots, and small lots.

Staff Design Reviews. To remedy these concerns, we propose a robust staff design review process focused on ameliorating such issues.  For example, which is the rear-yard for a corner lot?  Many homes on corner lots have been reoriented to face a less busy street from facing what was once a quiet residential street but is now a much busier street.  It also seems appropriate that a rear-yard setback should apply to the relatively flat portion of some sloping lots, so that a lot which is large only by virtue of a sloping hillside behind it does not impinge on the rear-yard privacy of its neighbors to either side.  Likewise, the staff design review should have the option to grant an exception for a home which is on a shallow lot or when an existing home is located at the rear of the lot due to variations in the slope on a lot.  Similarly a two-story accessory structure that meets the bulk plane standards, such as an office over a detached garage, should be permissible if the staff design review shows that it does not have balconies or windows overlooking a neighbor’s yard.  The guidelines for the staff review in such cases could, for example, suggest that such structures instead have skylights placed on a sloped roof, but we believe that the guidelines for staff design review should focus on stating purposes and goals, including such suggestions as heuristic examples only.

Alternative Proposal 2 – SlowToGoFAR

Because the current FAR process has been focused on Newlands and surrounding neighborhoods, we do not think the studies that have been done have produced an ordinance that is adequately fair to all neighborhoods across the city, particularly those in its southern and eastern reaches. For example, Council and the city appointed only one neighborhood activist to be a member of its Technical Advisory Group, and that activist is a well-known proponent of the tightest possible FAR ordinance who is from the Old North Boulder neighborhood.  Similarly, the city sent out a survey to affected homeowners that depicted homes with detached garages such as are found in only a small minority of Boulder neighborhoods (like Newlands), while newer neighborhoods in south and east Boulder where homes almost universally have attached garages were not depicted in the survey diagrams at all.   To remedy the neighborhood biases in the studies so far, we propose initially limiting the geographic reach of this ordinance to the RL-1 areas of Newlands, Mapleton Hill, and Old North Boulder, with the neighborhoods included to be reconsidered when the ordinance is reviewed each year after they receive appropriate amounts of study.

Alternative Proposal 3 – FairerFAR

Because we are concerned that a majority of Council members will not be open-minded enough to consider the above proposals, either singly or together, we have also put together one set of tweaks that would make this proposal much fairer to all architectural styles, regardless of whether they are or are not currently trendy architectural styles.  We are especially concerned with ranch homes because they happen to be the single most common type of housing stock in Boulder’s RL-1 districts; we have confirmed this by sending out neighborhood volunteers to several of Boulder’s 1950-1970s vintage mass-produced neighborhoods to do hand counts, and we are currently at 2,346 single-story or story-and-a-half ranch homes as of 7/27/09).  It contains all the elements of the current proposal, although we still consider the building coverage and FAR standards to be misguided.

FAR. First, we propose that the FAR sliding scale standard be normed to a .55 FAR (7000 sf lot) to accommodate the home offices and two-car garages that are the reality for most working families.  If RL-1 is genuinely intended to be a single-family home zoning district, we must realize that the mass-produced homes of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s do not meet the needs of a 21st century family.  Those homes were built for a stereotype of the nuclear family where the father worked and the mother stayed at home to care for the kids; most families today have two working parents.  In times past, one generally left one’s work at the office; today, cellphones, fax machines and the internet have employers expecting their employees to work irregular hours; moreover, parents now need to juggle work and child-care duties in the home, so one or two home offices are often needed to meet the needs of contemporary two working-parent families.  Because garages, basements, and other kinds of unconventional spaces such as unheated storage rooms and garden sheds all count under the current definition of FAR, we feel there is no choice but to set an FAR limit which is probably higher than some proponents would find reasonable.  We would also strongly recommend that the FAR measure should not include “true” basements where there is either no basement access from the outside or the only exterior access is via a door that is entirely below grade and accessed by an exterior stairwell (we want to continue to promote good fire safety egress); walkout basements would still partially count as measured under the current proposal. If the definition of FAR were amended to exclude such spaces, the lower FAR of .5 recommended by the Planning Board might be a more acceptable maximum FAR.

Building Coverage. Second, we propose a smarter building coverage standard (though we still would argue that even in the existing framework, it could simply be done away with altogether.)  To do this, we propose that the sliding scale for building coverage should be normed to 40% (7000 sf lot).  Setting a building coverage standard lower than 35% will force owners of larger ranch homes to expand their homes by popping their tops in order to gain any significant amount of space, and we all agree that problems of perceived bulk and mass are exacerbated by multiple-story buildings.  There is no advantage in setting a building coverage standard that effectively encourages development on the second story when the stated goals are to reduce perceived bulk and mass and preserve the neighbors’ rear-yard privacy; moreover, encouraging first-floor only expansions also has the beneficial ancillary result of preserving neighborhood views.

We would also propose a sliding scale for single-story building coverage normed at 5% (.05) less than the FAR (7000 sf lot).  We would like to see the city encourage all single-story development for the same reasons; single-story homes simply do not have the same visual and privacy impacts that multiple story homes do.  To accomplish this, we propose linking the FAR and single-story building coverage measures; for a modest reduction in the maximum overall FAR, the community gains the benefits of lower impact, reduced height architectural styles.  We understand that staff and Planning Board raised two other sets of issues concerning this provision, namely that “single story” is hard to define and that in some cases a home that exceeded the single story threshold would be forced to remain single story.  We propose treating the former by setting a lower overall building height limit of 25′, an average wallplate height limit of 12′ or less, and requiring a more strict bulk plane standard (see below) to prevent flat-roofed two-story sections of the primary structure.  The latter concern we propose to handle by grandmothering in such properties so that they can either expand upward or outward–knowing that they would be limited in that expansion to a maximum of just 5% of their lot size.  By linking our sliding scale proposal to the FAR standard, we have also disposed of two other concerns raised by staff–inequities with large and small lots at the extreme ends of the scale.  The link between the scales ensures that the single-story building coverage never exceeds the maximum FAR on a large lot, and on small lots staff has already said that it is accepted that the maximum allowable FAR might not be achievable given the already existing regulatory constraints such as setbacks that do not vary with lot size; similar reasoning should be applied to the fact that the maximum allowable single-story structure would likely not be achievable on a small lot.

Bulk planes.  We propose the bulk plane standard with the same provisions and concerns we have above in Alternative Proposal 1. However, we would also propose that in the case of a single-story building coverage option for relatively flat lots only (grades of less than 4%), that there be a more strict version of the single-story bulk plane standard that is tailored to more tightly to a single-story building envelope.  Two possibilities seem equally plausible to us before detailed modeling on existing structures is conducted: either reducing the angle of the bulk plane to 30 degrees from horizontal instead of 45 degrees, as measured from the same 12-foot high point along the side property line; or measuring the 45-degree bulk plane from a point 12 feet above grade at the setback instead of 12 feet above grade at the property line.  Sloped lots pose additional challenges for any bulk plane standard, as we have pointed out previously, and we would suggest a similar combination of staff design review guidelines, neighbor input and other standards such as wall plate height be employed in such contexts.

Staff Design Review Process. We would propose a robust staff design review process and not an appeals-based, hardship-oriented Board of Zoning Appeals (BOZA) process.  By now it should be obvious that we foresee considerable difficulties in implementing this ordinance with respect to sloped and irregularly shaped lots.  To this end, we would like to see staff be able to grant up to a five-percent waiver to only one of the FAR, bulk plane or building coverage standards due to unique characteristics of the site, taking into account issues raised by the immediate neighbors and any design modifications made to accommodate such concerns.  We would propose that any more substantial variances go to BOZA, and that BOZA be given the authority to waive them on grounds other than hardship.   Alternatively Landmarks Board may serve a similar variance-granting role for historic properties, but not all homes should need to go through the Landmarks Board processes in order to gain a waiver that has nothing to do with preserving historic structures.

Reducing Fees and Expediting Permits for smaller improvements. We propose encouraging smaller homes and smaller expansions by expediting the permit process and waiving the increased fees for projects that clearly undershoot all three major standards of this ordinance. If a project undershoots all three major standards (FAR, building coverage, bulk planes) proposed in this ordinance by 10% or more, the increased fees–and the staff time spent–should be less.  Additionally, some increased documentation requirements should be waived for smaller projects on homes which do not approach these limits.

Zoning Districts treated. Finally, we endorse planning board’s recommendation that RMX-1 be excluded from this ordinance. RMX-1 is clearly nothing like the other zones covered by this proposed regulatory framework, and council and staff have repeatedly failed to consider how the homeowner’s privacy could be enhanced by building a sunroom, detached garage or other structures to shield themselves from the prying eyes of the noisy, tall, overbearing multiplex next door.  In all districts, but particularly this one, it is not only the neighbor’s privacy that should be considered–the homeowner’s privacy matters also.

initial draft, FairFAR, 7/27/09

minor revisions FairFAR 7/28/09

revisions to bulk plane section, separate out the notion of a staff design review, FairFAR 7/28/09