IDO Annual Update 2022 - EPC Submittal - Citywide Proposed Changes

Walls usually generate a lot of community interest as they represent the aesthetic character for the community. Most of Albuquerque does not have front yard walls, or has followed the 3 foot wall height requirement for a front yard wall. Changing the rules would create a lot of resentment. There are areas of town where the taller walls with view fencing are more prevalent such as the Southwest area of town, where I used to live. Since this amendment could change the visual character of a community resulting in a lot of community resentment, if approved; I recommend not passing this amendment. Perhaps in the future, a solution could be reached through more community discussion to allow a simpler approval process for only certain small areas of town where tall view walls are already prevalent. But it should be carefully done so it would not affect areas of town that want to maintain the current rules.

Could it please be clarified who proposed this amendment? The document says only "admin."

I Support expanding the Landmark Commission's ability to review specific 50 year old or older buildings citywide; as many structures may not be within a Historic overlay zone but still have historic or architectural significance. Hopefully, this will give the public a chance to express interest in the preservation of significant buildings. If this had been in place a few years ago the westside may have been able to preserve the 3 beautiful southwest style/adobe buildings on the Poole Property homestead, instead of them being demolished.

These changes are clearly (but badly) designed to address procedural and substantive due process problems the City faced in the appeal by neighborhood groups of the conditional use permit for the Gateway Center. The City (the permit applicant) failed to give neighborhood associations notice of a remand hearing and they had no idea the remand hearing took place. This was manifestly unfair, and the LUHO found it a violation of due process. It doesn't make sense that the LYHO would notify parties of any remand -- he/she is not the one who conducts remand hearings! To simply change the IDO to eliminate the need for notice does not alleviate the due process concerns.

The second part of this change does not take into account instances (as with the Gateway conditional use permit appeal) when only discrete issues are remanded, but the rest of the original decisionmakers' decision is not remanded. None of these changes should be accepted. It is exceptionally disappointing to see the City's Planning department deal with legitimate neighborhood issues by attempting to amend the IDO to try to erase the issues.

I strongly oppose any IDO changes that would make it permissive to build higher walls in front or side yards. Our neighborhoods in the southeast are walkable, friendly, and safe precisely due to the LACK of high walls. Fortresses should not be the default in many neighborhoods. For all the reasons that others articulate better than I can, please do not change this section of the IDO.

Has this proposal been vetted with experts? Most EV charging--to be efficient and done off-peak (not during busy times of the day for the electric system)--should be done overnight at home. While this proposal may seem virtuous, I'm not sure it's well thought out.

I agree with the comments from Patty Willson and Debbie Conger

I agree with the comments of JA Montalbano and others opposing the increase in fence height. There is a real safety concern about children who may not be seen as a driver backs out without a clear view.

I agree that distance is needed between the car wash building and adjacent residents due to noise and fumes. This has been a major concern expressed by residents at prior EPC meetings. Fifty feet is not enough distance. Has any research been done to determine the distance needed to address impacts related to noise and fumes? Google earth show distances between residents and car washes at over 100 ft. to 250 feet. The further away the better. I would recommend car wash buildings be at least 200 ft. away from residents. Place vacuum stations and drying/polishing stations on the opposite side of the building away from residents, which also helps to buffer the noise.

I agree with community comments in supporting this amendment to ensure affordable housing has full kitchen appliances to operate in order for the homeowner/tenant to provide cost effective meals for their families. Note: public testimony at City Council meetings from tenants who have lesser kitchens, have expressed that lesser kitchens are less cost effective in providing nutritious meals for their families, making affordable housing less affordable. Therefore I support this amendment to ensure we have full kitchens in affordable housing.

This Amendment to increase Town house density along certain corridors needs more explanation, and discussion. There are certain areas that are labeled urban centers, main street, premium transit areas that may be more historical, rural, or near sensitive /natural/cultural areas, where increasing the density of townhomes may not be appropriate, as they might not fit with the scale and character of the surrounding area. This amendment should not be approved until appropriate locations along these corridors have been determined for town house density increases.

I support this amendment to keep balconies from encroaching into the required setback areas. I would also include bay windows in this requirement. This would help resolve privacy and encroachment issues with the adjacent neighbors.

Agree, there should be a distance requirement for Methadone clinics. I don't understand the reason to lump Medical and Dental clinics with the Methadone clinic requirements. Please explain. Also be aware, that drug dealers have targeted certain drug treatment clinics to do drug deals with clients that are going in and out of the clinic. What is being done to prevent this from happening?

Please explain what the amendment wants to achieve, in regards to parking. There have been lots of conflicts associated with not having enough parking in many areas of town, such as Nob Hill, Downtown, University, and Old Town areas. More recently the Journal reported on Old Town businesses not having enough parking spaces for their businesses and their customers. Customers have said they will stop shopping in areas that do not provide enough parking. Please do not reduce parking at this time as it affects the quality of life in Albuquerque.

Amendments #2 and #3 need better explanation. It is unclear what is being proposed. Please explain the intent of the two proposed amendments: on how to request special exceptions to NR-BP Master Development Plan standards and PC Framework Plan standards. Development standards are important to the Community in order to maintain quality development. Will these amendments strengthen or weaken development standards, or any negotiated site plan agreements?

A general comment: I find it problematic that there is no way to make interactive, online comments for Case RZ-2022-00059 Text Amendments to IDO - Citywide (Housing Forward). These 6 major, substantive changes to the IDO should not be happening in the annual text amendment process. The blowback about Safe Outdoor Spaces will pale in comparison to the reaction to the changes in this case!

Off street parking is important. Charging stations are important. But don’t trade off one for the other. Find a better way to incentivize installation of charging stations or maybe better yet, let market demand handle it.

In addition to my previous comments--Regarding the statement that higher fences are needed in the front yard for children and pets--a look at google earth will quickly identify that most of ABQ have back yards for children and pets to us safely.

I suppose this change is requested because the first CPA (Near Heights) took a lot longer than planned. Perhaps the city could hire more long range planners to accomplish a process carefully defined in the Comprehensive Plan, rather than adjust the process time.

I just want to say shame on you all for really solidifying that community inputs and discussions are not necessary.

When Community Planning Area Assessments were first discussed (you can go back to the recordings and the questions that were posed to planners where written responses to questions were not required), city wide amendments would be discussed at CPA's giving the opportunity for substantive amendments to be fully vetted and for council representation to it's CPA to be clear.

Continuing down this way is not fortifying democratic processes it is removing the public further from the goals of public engagement.

The task of aligning the IDO with State and National standards should be a priority of long term planning staff. It is a substantive task and should be done as a separate task and not part of an IDO Annual Update to textual and technical changes.

Again, the public requests that amendments to our zone code include impact statements, beneficiary analysis, examples, and risk analysis with possible unintended consequences highlighted. The continued denial of providing information to the public in this fashion as applies to the creation of law may constitute a breach of due process.

Furthermore, it is the my understanding that the IDO Annual Update process does not meet the standards noted in NM State Statute for gauging successful achievement of notification as pertains to zone code changes to our city.

Substantive changes should be dealt with differently than Textual/Technical changes. These are important issues affecting hundreds of thousands of individuals properties. Without a full analysis of who all is affected, you cannot determine if notice has been fully achieved and in that as EPC commissioners, you participate in the taking and put yourselves at risk.

See above comments

These amendments support developers over current residents and should be addressed individually to protect communities rights to participate in decisions that affect their own properties.

Again, the public requests that amendments to our zone code include impact statements, beneficiary analysis, examples, and risk analysis with possible unintended consequences highlighted. The continued denial of providing information to the public in this fashion as applies to the creation of law may constitute a breach of due process.

Furthermore, it is the my understanding that the IDO Annual Update process does not meet the standards noted in NM State Statute for gauging successful achievement of notification as pertains to zone code changes to our city.

See comment in #20.

The question about whether or not this would affect the approval of the site plan at Alameda and Louisiana has not been addressed in writing by the planning department. This another example of spot zoning where the applicant is in process and the planning department is changing laws in order to facility that particular plan. Shame.

Again, the public requests that amendments to our zone code include impact statements, beneficiary analysis, examples, and risk analysis with possible unintended consequences highlighted. The continued denial of providing information to the public in this fashion as applies to the creation of law may constitute a breach of due process.

Furthermore, it is the my understanding that the IDO Annual Update process does not meet the standards noted in NM State Statute for gauging successful achievement of notification as pertains to zone code changes to our city.

This whole section is substantive and needs a wider discussion than 40 persons.

Again, the public requests that amendments to our zone code include impact statements, beneficiary analysis, examples, and risk analysis with possible unintended consequences highlighted. The continued denial of providing information to the public in this fashion as applies to the creation of law may constitute a breach of due process.

I agree with the given statements and again suggest that zone code amendments include impact statements, beneficiary notes, risk analysis (where possible unintended consequences are addressed) and examples.

This appears to be associated with current discussion on townhouse developments along the west mesa and, in that, it has to be considered spot zoning change. This change needs to be in a publicly vetted, community engaged process of an approval of a single site plan. There after one could see a wider application of this issue brought to the public in a change to our zone code. Changing our zone code to facilitate a developer's needs is not best practice and sets the city up for risk and sets a bad precedent.

Without a clear impact statement associated with this zone change, how can anyone approve it?

We need examples of this. The intention was unclear. With clear written response to our questions we would be able to see how the IDO will protect areas that are currently zoned for parks when they are sold by the city. One can imagine that where an underlying zone might influence this removal of trees being replaced by bushes. This was discussed without written responses regarding the case at Coronado Park. (A requisite statement on possible unintended consequences would address this)

Need a definition of 'feature'.

This amendment is in response to a suggestion by the public and I fully support it. As well, I support the additional restriction on bay windows. Yes, this would be a substantive issue using the ICC's suggested metrics, as it is a public health issue as the encroachment affects the fire corridor. Information on this would be beneficial and in fact, very telling, in that it is a huge taking of the IDO.

The EPC should ask a long range planner to calculate the actual taking that was done in 2018 when this was enacted. One would take all R-1 built out to 1 story add up the square footage for a second story on sides and back and subtract 30" for every foot and that is what we as residents lost to the IDO. Shame. How can any of the EPC commissioners or the City Councilors not see this apparent 'taking' by developers. (A requisite risk analysis would have shown this directly)

A clear example of a necessary textual/technical update.

Public questions regarding estimates of beneficiaries, impact summaries, examples, and risk were not addressed.

We also asked to have the site plan buffers extended for this use, but were denied the opportunity to have this amendment included in the packet to the EPC.

We asked if there were any current site plans in place for this change and were told no, but this would need to be in writing in order to have it apply in a court of law in a case regarding spot zoning. And, we were denied this.

There was additional dialog on this issue regarding how a hydrology analysis would be affected for each such site plan. Given that community concerns are no longer to be heard at a public hearing for such site plans, how is oversight for water use to be affected?

The public does not trust the Abq planning department, we have lost faith in the Abq City Administration. We do not believe that planning, nor the city admin, prioritizes residential rights over and above economic gains. This is something that R 1980-270 did to protect Albuquerque residents - simply stating that community concerns would be weighed prior to and above development plans, but residents lost that protection in the faulty translation process at the IDO's inception in 2017. Subsequent attempts to build residents' protection back into the IDO have basically been met with distain by planning officials and staff and by City Councilors' empty rhetorical amendments to the IDO. For example the purpose to protect communities was added during the 2019 IDO Annual Amendment process by Councilor Bassan. This change was accompanied by the promise to create metrics that would provide guidance to planners in adhering to this protection. But the following year the person who was working in planning to help achieve this was transferred out of planning and long term planners then said the following year, that the department was no longer working on metrics such as these.

We need ways and means to protect our residents' investments in their property. But we do not have them. This benefits NAIOP and realtors as people move in and out at an astounding rate. This also benefits investment realty as more and more ownerships transfer over to absent landlords and rental opportunities. This data is somewhere, where is the leadership that needs to bring this to the surface. Oh wait, they moved out of town.

While I fully support this change and applaud Councilor Grout for bringing back this issue, this is an example of how significantly broken the IDO Annual Update Process is broken (as is the circus of the SOS amendment from last year).

The negation of a full section within the IDO would qualify an amendment as substantive if the ICC's IDO Amendment Committee's 2020 suggested metrics were applied here. During the 2020 IDO Annual Amendment process, the ICC's IDO Amendment Committee suggested to the EPC that simple metrics could be used to determine if an amendment is textual/technical in nature or substantive. We had agreed that substantive zone code changes need more information, a wider notification process, and a better application of best practices to adequately address impact, beneficiaries, and risk. Without examples of substantive changes and a better understanding of public concerns we set the city up for a true abuse of power and a serious deviance of justice.

Zoning laws are to be stable, reliable - things that homeowners with $20,000 down can depend on. They are not to be changed annually like this. With this IDO Annual Update Process flying through without public questions being fully addressed, without proper information for our commissioners to read and analyze, we are creating systems for Oligarchy to become entrenched and destroying established systems of Democracy that we fought to have in place.

We need examples for this amendment.

We need an impact analysis for this change as we may need more notifications as we cannot determine if 20% of residents that will be impacted by this change have even been notified in order to make a written comment about this. (See NM State Statue 2021 New Mexico Statutes
Chapter 3 - Municipalities
Article 21 - Zoning Regulations
Section 3-21-6 - Zoning; mode of determining regulations, restrictions and boundaries of district; public hearing required; notice...C. If the owners of twenty percent or more of the area of the lots and [of] land included in the area proposed to be changed by a zoning regulation or within one hundred feet, excluding public right-of-way, of the area proposed to be changed by a zoning regulation, protest in writing the proposed change in the zoning regulation, the proposed change in zoning shall not become effective unless the change is approved by a majority vote of all the members of the governing body of the municipality or by a two-thirds vote of all the members of the board of county commissioners.)

While we have seen that IDO Annual Updates pass through EPC and City Council with majority votes and therein this passage is nullified. The true nature of the notification legislation is not being addressed.

We need numbers of those impacted and some way to confirm that those impacted are aware of this change: as per findings for notifications in state statutes in regard to
(see 2021 New Mexico Statutes
Chapter 3 - Municipalities
Article 21 - Zoning Regulations
Section 3-21-6 - Zoning; mode of determining regulations, restrictions and boundaries of district; public hearing required; notice, ANNOTATIONS IV

Notice: Purpose of section. — In New Mexico, substantial compliance with the statutory notice provisions would satisfy the purpose of this section, but where substantial compliance with mandatory publication requirements is not met, the action of the zoning authority is invalid. Nesbit v. City of Albuquerque, 1977-NMSC-107, 91 N.M. 455, 575 P.2d 1340. The public believes that Due process is subverted by the current publication of these amendments without responses to our questions and that public bodies refusing to provide information on law changes is a breech of their responsibilities.

and

Notice: Determination of adequate notice. — In order to meet the statutory requirement of adequate notice, it must be determined whether notice, as published, fairly apprised the average citizen reading it with the general purpose of what was contemplated. If the notice is insufficient, ambiguous, misleading or unintelligible to the average citizen, it is inadequate to fulfill the statutory purpose of informing interested persons of the hearing so that they may attend and state their views. Bogan v. Sandoval Cnty. Planning & Zoning Comm'n, 1994-NMCA-157, 119 N.M. 334, 890 P.2d 395, cert. denied, 119 N.M. 168, 889 P.2d 203 (1995); Nesbit v. City of Albuquerque, 1977-NMSC-107, 91 N.M. 455, 575 P.2d 1340. The public believes that this standard has not been met since the inception of the IDO. (This would be evidenced in a requisite risk analysis for both textual/technical and substantive amendments since 2017).

For TLTRers: The IDO Annual Update process is negatively impacting property values for single family homes across the city and has significantly reduced the capacity for an individual to hold on to his/her property rights.

See comments to #3.

Again, at the public discussions, public questions were not responded to by the planners. With out our questions being considered, we cannot determine the nature of this change (if it is substantive or textual/technical in nature) to our zone code.

Last year, in the IDO Annual Update ordinance for 2020, it was legislated that each proposed amendment would be given an identifier/number and it's source captured. The numbering system was faulty at the onset of the 2021 process but has been modified to qualify. However the source information does not qualify here.

It is important that the source (and in this, the motivations) for amendments be full disclosed in order to understand the need for this change to our zone code.

It is not clear to the public what is driving this change. We asked for examples, impact, risk, beneficiaries but were denied. We still have questions on this amendment:

Does this reduce the ability for community members to be engaged in the discussions for deviations, variances, waivers? (this would be evidenced in a requisite impact statement)

Does this benefit developers over residents? (this would be evidenced in a requisite beneficiaries statement)

Are there current plans in process that need this change to move forward? (this would be evidenced in a requisite risk statement - to avoid the illegal process of using law changes to provide certain individuals with legislation to favor their developments, a process known as spot zoning)

Prior to this approval don't we need metrics for these Deviations, Variances and Waivers that provide for a full review of public health issues to to protect residents and sensitive lands from unintended consequences of this change? (this would be evidenced with a requisite set of examples and maps where this amendment would affect changes)

Sad.

This amendment presents as a good example of a fundamental flaw in the broken IDO Annual Update process. This year, as we began discussions regarding amendments and pointed to this as a non-substantive change to our zone code, planners insisted that this too would be a substantive change. It was as if they had planned to have these discussions here at the beginning of the process to divert the issue that the Annual Update process needs a different approach for substantive changes to our zone code.

The public had highlighted this change as a substantive change in the 2020 amendments, but having had that pass (without our concerns and questions being addressed: our request for examples, risk analysis, beneficiary statements, impact summary and a salient digest of public comments) this then becomes an appropriate, non-substantive update. The planners, working without metrics to gauge whether or not an update amendment is textual/technical in nature versus an update being a substantive change to our zone code, continue to obfuscate the issues at hand.

In addition, the public made a suggestion to address this oversight by suggesting an improvement to the process. We proposed a complimentary amendment to the IDO sections where the Annual Update process is defined. It could read something like: when a substantive amendment is considered, the associated impact analysis will review the applicability of the change for each zone code.

But planners do not want to listen to public concerns.

It appears to me that Item 23+24 and item 25 have comparable stated goals which is to remove redundancy, but there is a subtle difference. Where 23+24 would make the properties in Areas of Consistency the regulated properties, by deleting all of section 5-6(E)5 as proposed by item 25 the distinction between Areas of Change and Areas of Consistency are lost making the regulated property the one that is more commercial and/or higher residential density no matter which side of the boundary it is on. Granted, in most cases that would be the property within the Area of Change. But again, I raise the same point I made in item 23 and that is which properties are more likely to be in development/re-development and in a better position to incorporate the buffers, those in the Areas of Change or those in the Areas of Consistency?