Citizen Input

I don’t want to be engaged in a public fight, speak on camera at city council meetings, stand in the cold petitioning, or post on Next Door. But I must.

REPEAL, RESET, AND HAVE A PUBLIC CONVERSATION. The new Land Development Code approved by the Fort Collins City Council on November 1 should be repealed so the city can RESET and engage in a public conversation about affordable housing, housing density, and our built environment. In one sweeping and historical move, the new code would eliminate single family residential zoning from 98% of Fort Collins. The new LDC is objectionable in three main ways, 1) The way it came about, 2) What it allows, and 3) What it doesn’t really do.

THE DETAILS MATTER. The City Plan, the Housing Strategic Plan, the Transportation Master Plan, the Climate Action Plan, were formed over years of discussion by city council, city staff, and various stakeholder groups. Let’s face it - not something the vast majority of FC citizens participate in. Nonetheless, these plans can guide a general direction. They are just that, general guidelines, notions, and goals. But it could be argued that it’s the DETAILS that matter to citizens day to day, where the rubber meets the road, on the street, next door. Looming buildings, human density, noise, parked cars, traffic. The DETAILS are in the new code, the details are exactly what have damned the new code, and the details are part of what ignited this controversy. Did all of the approving council members know and fully appreciate the ramifications of the details of the new code, especially where the rubber meets the road in neighborhoods? 

AN EXPENSIVE CITY AUDIT RECOMMENDED A MODERATE APPROACH TO DENSITY. The reader probably doesn’t know that the old Land Use Code was “audited” in a months-long process involving city staff, developers, Realtors, and stakeholders in Fall 2019. The 40+ page Land Use Code audit was published in January 2020. The purpose was to determine how the code could be reorganized for ease of use and interpretation, and how it might be amended to support the general plans. Relevant here, the audit 1) said on page 3 that “the City does not intend to complete a major rewrite of the Land Use Code at this time…”, 2) in Table 2, for the residential single family zone (RL), the audit recommended adding only ADU’s as an additional allowed building type (ADU: more modest low-occupancy addition), and 3) for the special historical Old Town zone, recommended adding only carriage houses as an additional allowed building type. What in the heck happened between Jan 2020 and 2022, when all of the larger, multi-unit, objectionable building types were added to the code for Residential low density single family (RL) and Old Town (OT) zones? Who added these building types and via what decision-making process, exactly? Who exerted the major influence on this process? These additional building types are a big problem due to their negative impact. Reasonable people could agree that modest ADU’s should be allowed so that people can use their lots flexibly, without massive impact to others. That’s what the audit recommended but that’s not what we got. 

A DEFACTO HIDDEN PROCESS. City staff and supportive council members followed the LETTER of the law.  There were meetings, information sessions, and working group sessions in the lead up to the final code formulation. The groups were populated by developers/real estate/builders/affordable housing advocates. Expensive outside consultants were hired with your money to write it. Notice was published in the newsletter from the development department and elsewhere electronically on the city website. But there was no REAL public outreach, at least not that comes even close to matching the magnitude and impact of this change in the land use code. This was you might call passive notice, not active notice. You didn’t see this. You didn’t know about this. YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THIS BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T TELL YOU. They know your mailing address. The have your email address. They send you bills every month. If they say they do outreach, but no one is reached, can it be called outreach? This I know for sure – almost no one was reached, except those in the city/development/planning/affordable housing/realty bubble. So, let us please dispense with the idea that the public outreach was adequate for this huge change. It was not, plain and simple. We know it, city staff knows it down deep, and city council knows it.  Do not attempt to “gaslight” the citizens of this city. If this new code is so great (according to the city), why weren’t they shouting the announcement of the final draft from the rooftops of Old Town before the first reading at city council? What were they afraid of?

IGNITION OF A MOVEMENT. While scouring the town with petitions, canvassing neighborhoods, and engaging in hundreds of conversations a person can learn a LOT about what The People didn’t know. They knew nothing. 99/100 people I talk with. The only reason folks were alerted (in mass) to the new code after Oct. 18th first reading at council was Next Door posts before Halloween followed by citizen-placed flyers on doors in Old Town on Halloween night, the night before Nov. 1 second reading and the final vote. Only two weeks passed between first and second reading – an absurdly short period for something this big. Why the rush?  I think we know why. The pitchforks and torches were rustling on social media, and they heard it in the council chambers that Nov. 1 night. Old Town caught fire first, and only now five weeks later does the message seem to be truly penetrating out into other neighborhoods, HOA-governed or not.  The People are not happy, and their HOA’s are REALLY unhappy. The new code trumps HOA restrictions. It’s right in the code. The HOA will still be able to regulate the color of your house, the height of your fence, and the size of your doghouse, but under this code it can’t prevent a multi-unit rental. 

THIS IS HUGE. Fort Collins talked about the plastic bag ban for weeks in city council, and then the vote went to a referendum so the people could decide.  For PLASTIC BAGS. That’s the mildly irritating (I forgot my cloth bag in the car…) category of city ordinance. The amount of public discussion for the land use code pales in comparison. The land development code is enormously important to everyone, in many ways, in all places, every day. 

WE DESERVE BETTER. Fort Collins is one of the best places to live in the country, with a highly educated, thoughtful, active population. The citizenry deserves excellent public process, good government, transparency, and rich public input. Here, we got the exact opposite of all of that. Long-time local public servants have recognized this for what it was. Many former city council members, some current city council members, a former mayor, multiple former city staff, and first hundreds, then thousands, of regular citizens like myself see this for what it obviously was, a “horrific” public “smokescreen” of a process, to directly quote a dissenting council member and 40+ year scion of Fort Collins government. 

AFFORDABLE HOUSING IS AN ISSUE IN Fort Collins. This new code does precious little to address it in any real way. Whoever was representing affordable housing in the code-writing working groups did not produce a good deal for the income challenged. Facts: There are NO mandatory requirements for federally-defined affordable housing units (80% AMI) in this code. None. There are weak incentives. If a builder chooses to build six-unit apartments in Old Town, only the sixth one must be affordable. If a builder chooses to build five rowhouse units, only the last two must be affordable. If a builder chooses to build a triplex instead of a duplex in an RL zone, only the third one must be affordable. IF and only if the builder chooses. They might just build all market rate, high rent units in the white-hot housing market that is Fort Collins. Sadly, this new code is likely to do damage to renters, in that the smaller, older, more affordable rental home stock on desirable lots will be sold to investors, scraped, and replaced with high-end multi-unit market rate rentals. There goes that affordable unit.

The affordable housing aspects of this code are weak, a smokescreen, a façade. The supporters of the code have no idea how much of this will be affordable and no idea if their stated affordability goals will be met, because nothing is mandated. Other incentives for including affordable units are they can build HIGHER and PROVIDE LESS PARKING. I’ll argue that those are not good things.

EXTRAORDINARY BUILDINGS WOULD NOW BE ALLOWED IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOODS. Six unit, 2.5 story, 35ft tall, apartments that cover 85% of a 4500sf lot (half a typical OT lot) in Old Town-B. Five unit, two story row houses in Old Town-B. Multi-house cottage courts (on one lot) in OT-B. These buildings will be preferred by investors due to the income generated by the high rents. These relatively massive, looming buildings right next to the quaint, historic, 100-120 yr old bungalows that make Old Town famous. In RL zone district, the vast majority of single family residential neighborhoods, triplexes of three stories can be built, depending on the lot. Multi-house cottage courts too, depending on the lot. In regular neighborhoods.   

Let’s be clear, these buildings will be built by investor/developer/landlords who will compete for lots with regular buyers and affordable housing groups (and they will win…). Money, market pressure, and maximal ROI always wins. As the effects of the new code play out over time, large rentals will dominate, and single family ownership and the building of generational wealth that comes with ownership will be degraded. This reduces the ability of income challenged people to build generational wealth…if they even got their foot on the ladder and got a chance at bidding, they will be competing with cash-flush rental investors every time a lot comes available.  The new code makes Old Town and most other FC neighborhoods “target rich environments” for investors and developers.

THE CARS WILL GO ON THE STREET. Cars will dominate our transport for the foreseeable future. The new code only mandates the provision of parking for a fraction of the cars for a dwelling.  Where will all the cars from a six unit apartment go? You know where. 

EXACTLY HOW MUCH MORE DENSE CAN FC GET AND AT WHAT COST TO THE CHARM OF OUR CITY? The stated goal of the new code is to increase housing density by 53% in already established neighborhoods. Yes, if we build these many thousands of additional rental units, the average rent might be ever so slightly lower than if we build none at all. However, that is unlikely to help those on the far lower end of the income scale. The vast majority of the units will be market rate and therefore expensive. If there are units, people with money will keep moving here and paying the rent because this is a great place to be.  

The new code is part of what is often termed upzoning, residential infill, new urbanism, YIMBY. Do you want that?  Can you imagine what that will look like after 30 years of residential lot turnover? The center of town will be like one giant Raising Cane’s drive-through line. We don’t have to kill the goose that laid the golden egg in order to address housing cost in this city. There are ways forward other than turning regular neighborhoods into rows of multistory apartments dotted with the remaining historical bungalows. 

REALTORS AND INVESTORS ARE READY AND WAITING. There are already at least two real-estate listings marketing old rundown houses on big Old Town lots for investors to build multi-unit (up to six), high end, apartments for “discriminating buyers”. 335 E. Magnolia.  830, 834 E. Myrtle. Not affordable. There are many lots in Old Town and RL neighborhoods being purchased, reviewed, prepped, scraped, and readied for the new code to take effect January 1, 2023. And they ain’t building bungalows. They’re building big rentals. Do you know who owns that run-down lot across the street? 

THESE PROJECTS NOW WILL UNDERGO ONLY A BASIC DEVELOPMENT REVIEW (BDR). Your ability to object or provide input to a multi-unit project has been dramatically reduced in the new code. Notice will occur with a posted yard sign and mailings to nearby houses. BY THEN IT’S TOO LATE. You know it down deep, and the city staff knows it.  The public meeting has been removed. You can make an appointment to provide input to city development staff in their offices. This is the same city staff who wrote and promoted the code, so how is that conversation going to go? Your only other avenue for input is a formal appeal, which is complicated and costs $100. It is factually the case that real, meaningful input to most of these projects, in the public square, has been removed. The biggest developer in town spoke publicly at Nov. 1 city council against these changes in review.

REASONABLE PEOPLE CAN DISAGREE WITH THIS NEW CODE AND IT DOESN’T MEAN THEY ARE DEMONS. Groups opposing the repeal of this code have used words like uncompassionate, cruel, dishonest, regressive, elitist, and resource hoarding to describe the ideas behind repealing this code. Sadly, in the same breath they condemn divisiveness, misinformation, and incivility they say comes from vigorous objection to the new code. This is not correct, righteous, or fair. But it is unfortunately a very frequent argument they make in support of a wildly unpopular measure.

Show where the name calling was. Repeated accusations of misinformation have been slung. Show where the misinformation is. If the term misinformation is used in excess and in error, is that act in itself a form of misinformation? The opposition to the new land development code has been factual to the public on this. Show where the facts were wrong and it will be corrected. There was an early instance of an error in the interpretation of public notice for BDR projects. It was publicly acknowledged and corrected in pro-petition materials. 

Fear mongering is an accusation commonly used to describe opposition to the new LDC. Is it “fear mongering” or an appropriate level of concern about a radical and impactful change in land use? 

A REAL, PUBLIC CONVERSATION IS NEEDED. This petition is meant to reset back to normal for long enough to have a public conversation about these issues, in the open, for all to see and hear. Let the people decide this by repealing the land development code and allowing a referendum vote. Then, let’s revise the code, keep the reasonable parts like modest ADU’s, remove the objectionable building types, reduce the extreme density, solve the parking issues, and add robust provisions for truly affordable housing. A more moderate path, with real public input, is the best way ahead. Good Democracy requires robust informed consent of the governed. Rushing through these massive changes to our city’s blueprint while neither adequately informing nor seeking the consent of the people is not good democracy.

• Brian L. Tracy. Regular citizen, third generation native of Colorado, descendant of a 1915 Fort Collins sugar beet worker family, and resident of Fort Collins for a total of 27 years.