INC ZONING AND PLANNING COMMITTEE MINUTES – JUNE 25, 2016

By Michael Henry

Chair Margie Valdez convened the meeting of the INC Zoning and Planning Committee and introduced City Councilman Wayne New (District 10), who explained the detailed neighborhood planning process that resulted in the controversial Cherry Creek Area Plan (2013) and the following process that resulted in the much less controversial rezoning process for the Cherry Creek North neighborhood (2014). He said that the major lessons for neighborhoods which are or will be working on neighborhood planning and/or rezoning processes are:

• Coordinate the planning and zoning processes so that there is little time gap between them.
• Use detailed data and analysis in decision-making and public presentations. In particular, the Cherry Creek rezoning process considered the square footage of commercial square footage for office, retail, residential and hotel; peak hour vehicle trips; key intersection traffic study areas; and variable parking ratio comparisons and modeling to determine impacts on development and parking.
• Try to get experienced city planners. In the Cherry Creek North rezoning process, Sarah Showalter and Kyle Dalton were top-notch.
• Reach a consensus with all or most parties.

Councilman New and the committee agreed that it was unfortunate that the success of this process depended on the financial capability of the Cherry Creek North and Country Club neighborhoods to raise enough funds to hire a respected independent traffic engineer (David Lahey) to help with the analysis.

Jordan Person (responsibleusedenver@gmail.com), the executive director of the Denver chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, explained a ballot proposal (Responsible Use Denver) for which signatures are currently being gathered for the November 8, 2016 Denver election ballot. The supporters have until August 15 to gather more than 4700 signatures from registered voters. She explained that the group believes that the biggest problem is that, even though use of medical and recreational marijuana is now legal in Colorado and there are now about 200 sales and grow locations in Denver, there is “nowhere public to go” for the legal use of such products. In Denver the penalty for public consumption of marijuana is $250. If passed, the ballot measure would allow the licensing by the Department of Excise and Licenses of “private marijuana social clubs.” The proposal would not change the distance requirements, would not change any zoning code provisions, would not allow sale of marijuana on the premises of such clubs, would be limited to use only by members of such clubs and could not be combined with any alcohol-related or food-related licenses. Committee members were concerned that the proposal does not require notification of license applications to registered neighborhood organizations, does not require needs and desires hearings on applications and does not require any sort of ventilation controls to limit odors.

The committee passed the following motion to send to the INC Delegation meeting for consideration on July 9:

PLEASE SEE PROPOSED BALLOT INITIATIVE HERE

Responsible Use Denver Ballot Title and Ordinance -Resubmission 20160422 (1) (2) (1)

Paul Riedesel (720-865-5410) and Aiste Misiunaite (720-865-5528), the city’s 2 noise inspectors/enforcers discussed the work that they do and demonstrated the use of new sound meters. Aiste is assigned to special events. They indicated that for occasional short-term noise, the best thing is to call the police non-emergency number (720-913-2000). For chronic noise, call 311 and be sure to give your name, address and phone number and the precise location of the noise. Between 7am and 10pm the allowable noise limit (at the line of the receiving property) is 55 decibels and between 10pm and 7am it is 50 decibels.