Another error in the analysis
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.