FairFAR.org

[FairFAR note: Reposted from the Compatible Development in Single Family Neighborhoods Mailing List]

Planning Board documents available; City Council dates have changed

The documentation provided to Planning Board at its July 9, 2009 meeting is now available on the Compatible Development project Web site. Also posted are Planning Board’s draft action minutes and summary of recommendations. See links below:

* Summary of Planning Board Recommendations;

* Draft Planning Board Action Minutes;
* Comparison between existing and proposed floor area ratios;
* Planning Board Recommendation Building Coverage and Floor Area Ratio;
* Landmarks Board Recommendation Motion (July 1, 2009); and
* 2008 New Residential Construction Comparison of FAR on a Sliding Scale.

City Council is scheduled to host a public hearing on the proposed code changes and Planning Board’s recommendation at its meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2009. The first hearing [FairFAR note: I think the city means first "reading" of the ordinance], which was previously scheduled for July 21, 2009, was moved to Aug. 4 to be combined with the public hearing. Council will continue its discussion of the proposed code changes and is expected to make a decision at its Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2009 meeting. The public is welcome to speak to City Council at the Aug. 4 public hearing. (The public hearing may be continued to Aug. 18 if necessary.) These meetings will be held in the City Council chambers, 1777 Broadway, and will also be televised on Municipal Channel 8.   City Council agendas are posted on the city’s Web site the Friday before the meeting, visit www.bouldercolorado.gov and click on “Council General Info and Agendas” toward the bottom of the page.

For more information, visit the Compatible Development project Web site or contact Julie Johnston at 303-441-1886.

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Please note that we’ve updated our calculator to reflect the latest draft ordinance language.

We’ve just completed our online calculator for the proposed new FAR and building coverage standards.  Please give it a whirl, though we recognize that determining the actual figures that go in the different boxes is beginning to resemble doing your own taxes!

But remember, the online calculator doesn’t try to model the effects of the new bulk plane ordinance on your home, and that may immediately put many existing homes in violation of the new standards.  Frankly, only an architect and land surveyor could model the effects of that part of the ordinance with any certainty.

The formulas we use come straight from the proposed draft ordinance language in the 26/30 June 2009 staff memo, attachment A.  We observed that there are numerous other formulas scattered throughout the various attachments to the current staff memo, and we suspect there are some errors in those tables, but that is the current proposal and we’ve implemented it faithfully.

One of the more interesting findings that we observed in building the online calculator was that even modest homes can easily run afoul of the new building coverage standard.  Try the default figures to see an illustration of how it can catch even small homes.

If you’d like to check our mathematics and logic for accuracy (hey, it was just written by a couple of guys with PhD’s who write software for a living), here is the relevant part of our source code.

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