Council member Carter. >> Hi. >> Council member D'Alessandro. >> Hi. >> Council member Rivas. >> Hi. >> Council member Nelson. >> Hi. >> Council member Robertson. >> Hi. >> And the mayor Bussey. >> Hi. Motion carries 7-0. Thank you very much. Uh similarly I will make that same motion for the Port Authority to to approve tonight's agenda. Second by Council member Nelson. Thank you very much. Uh any further discussion on this If not, we again will have to do a voice vote. Kevin's going to do that? >> Uh Commissioner Nelson. >> Hi. >> Commissioner Lentz. >> Hi. >> Commissioner Hunt. >> Hi. >> Commissioner Santana. >> Hi. >> Uh Commissioner Bussey. >> Hi. >> And Commissioner Erickson. >> President Erickson is not here. >> Very good. Thank you. And as established, very good. Uh all right. So I I didn't realize others had to do it as well. Do we want to jump into uh HRA? Do you want to get the approval? And you don't have to do a voice vote because you got nobody Uh or you don't have to do a roll call vote. You just can do a voice vote because you don't have everybody remote. >> All right. So everyone who approves of the Well, first I need a motion to approve the agenda for tonight. Moved by Commissioner Robertson and seconded by Commissioner Who came all in favor? Hi. Motion passes 7-0. >> Thank you so much. Sustainability? Uh >> Oh. >> Okay. Uh but uh Motion carries. Very good. Good enough. All right. Please. Oh, you're not the chair. Who's the I'm sorry. Angie, go ahead, please. >> We don't even though we don't have a quorum. >> You don't have a quorum, either? Okay, very good. We're good then. We are good. All right. All right. Just was reminded that if you are part of this meeting, you need to have your cameras on. So, Rob, we need to see 93 and Sunny. And Cecelia, we need your camera on as well. >> Okay. >> [laughter] >> And just a reminder to everybody else, if you have a question or a comment or if you're recognized by your chair to speak, if you could use the microphone and get in nice and close, not only so we can hear you here, but also so the recording and so the folks online can hear you as well. All right. Our first order of business tonight, gang, is item 1.1, uh the housing nexus study related to our opportunity housing ordinance. You all are aware of our opportunity housing ordinance, and way back when we uh first adopted it, it was the based on a housing nexus study, uh basically trying to figure out exactly where the where we were in terms of housing in the city of Bloomington, where we wanted to be, and uh put some hard numbers to it and to to make sense of it all. So, Kenny Niemeyer is going to lead us through this. Mr. Niemeyer, good evening. Welcome. >> Thank you, Mayor and boards and commissions. So, and thanks for the warm intro to this item. So, I won't take too long before I hand it over to our consultants who have joined us remotely, but the background is that our opportunity housing opportunity housing ordinance, which was adopted back in 2019, had a basis of a housing nexus analysis. And within the ordinance, it the ordinance language allowed for periodic review and revision of the ordinance and its requirements based off of the economic conditions and the evolving real estate market. So, to that purpose, staff worked with the consultants who are online to prepare a updated version of that Housing Nexus study as well as the financial feasibility analysis of the opportunity housing ordinance. And that is what we'll uh have presented by our consultants this evening. And then once they've concluded their presentation, I'll bring forward the staff recommendation for potential ordinance adjustments based off of the report findings. And then we'll have time for discussion and questions and answers. So, with that, I will hand it over to our consultants. >> Excellent. So, first up, can everyone see my screen? >> Yes. Yes. >> Yes. >> Okay, great. Okay. Um so, my name's Shawn Bourgeois and um I'm going to walk you through I'm I'm with Daedalus um and um our team, Daedalus, and BAE were the people who put the uh helped the city with the first OHO draft um and planning and implementation planning back in 2018. So, it's great to be back. It's great to have such an august group that we can present to. Um I've also never seen the where a place where we've had the mayor, the city council, the HRA, both sustainability and planning, and the port all together in one time. So, thank you for letting us present to you guys. That's that's really uh interesting. Okay. Um so, what what we're going to do is cover a lot of material in a short time. So, we've got um six sort of buckets of information that we're going to give you before we get to the or the the last one's the result, but that get us to the results. Um the the six are that we'll look at the market context. We'll really look at how things have changed since we originally uh helped to design the OHO and look at has it achieved what we thought it would achieve and that's the OHO performance to date. We'll talk about what the the developers themselves have told us. We'll look at what an updated version of the Nexus study has shown. We'll look at some policy options that flow from those and end with some key findings and next steps. First off, as I mentioned Shawn from Data List. I'm going to be leading most of the presentation but when we get to the Nexus work I'm going to hand over to Sherry Okun Rudnick from BAE and she'll walk you through the the Nexus details. My colleague as well, I mean the law is on. You see him. So the the project purpose really we had three broad questions that we were looking to address from our side. So the first was just to understand how is Bloomington's housing market change since the OHO was originally designed and implemented. You know the the time from seems strange to think about but there was a time pre-COVID and pre-inflation and in a way those are halcyon days for real estate. Right? So looking at how the market's changed since then is important. How the OHO performed against its original objectives helps us to understand if need to make those changes and what changes if any would then naturally flow. The work that we did was not based on any one set of data. It was really a read across a lot of different sets of data. The first being that we used Census ACS tables that the five-year estimates are two different periods that covered about 10 years worth of data, so that we could get structural changes to Bloomington's both housing, demographics, and other factors. Um, they're When you look at some of the data, if you use shorter term um estimates and tables from Census, you can get different numbers, but they tend to be volatile and not as statistically significant. So, we went with the stronger versions of those numbers to present the the facts that we're going to show you. Uh, we also talked to um developers. And the developer interviews were all held off the off the record, so that the developers could speak freely. Um, they were roughly 1-hour interviews with 10 different groups. Um, and they were semi-structured. We had a an output format that we were looking to complete, but we also let the developers guide the conversations as they wanted to, if they wanted to expand on certain points. Um, we touched on the OHO as part of those conversations, but other parts of the conversations were strictly about uh market conditions, input numbers that we could use in our financial models, and things that we should know. The financial models were all that that we used were all custom-built uh in Excel using two different methodologies. One is just looking at the um the the pre-development uh yield on cost numbers that we could get for different kinds of projects, and we're going to get into this more in a in a few minutes. Um, and we also looked at discounted cash flow, so we could take account of what happens to these projects when you take into account the time value of uh money. And lastly, we had um we had a nexus analysis that that that was done. Um, so all of those together uh uh reflect what what you see uh here. Okay, so uh for market context, um we're going to zoom out and look at the big big picture for a sec. Um and this is one of the most interesting slides that we have in the deck and it's it's really emblematic of what's happened in Bloomington. You start at the top left corner of the slide where you see high-income households 150,000 plus. We see that they went from a a bit under 6 and 1/2% of the total um of all the households in Bloomington to nearly a quarter. It's a stunning transformation. And to the right, as you look at those um as as you look at at the graph, you'll see that except for the very very lowest income group, which may even be a statistical fluke, everyone else reduced as a share of household population. Right? So, Bloomington's workforce now is 47% within uh the management, business, science, and arts grouping, which tends to be fairly well-paid, upper-income, white-collar types. Um we've seen some demographic shifts. The The numbers you see here at 30% growth in those age 65 to 79, we're looking at the period between 2014 and 2023. Now, some portion of that growth reflects people aging in place, meaning in 2024, they may have been under 65 and then they were over 65, so they get counted in this other group, but some portion of it also reflects inward mi- migration. Uh we also saw a small change of a bump in the 35-to-44-year-old, which again likely is upper income workers moving into the city. Um So, those types of structural changes will shift the supply demand um fundamentals of the of the area. In this case, we've got a lot of money coming in and of course it's much slower to build houses than it is to change jobs and and and or move to a new city. So, a finite stock of goods is effectively being bid up by more people with the money to to pay for it. At the same time, um it's hard to generate um households that quickly, not population households, housing units. Um so, you see the 2021 is obviously our our big COVID drop, but even pre-COVID where we were growing from the point in time at which the OHO went into effect, we grew up to our peak of 793, fell quite a bit, and then um the the post-COVID boom brought us really between the the 19 and 20 periods, but we've never recovered after, and that that reflects a quite a number of economic factors. One of the most important being that we had the interest rate spike, we had the inflationary spike, home prices nationally, and Bloomington's no exception here, also went up. So, again the the underlying economic drivers of um of housing supply and demand were impacted in meaningful ways. Um and if you look be be before I change the slide, the cost per unit in 2024 was up 28% um relative to its 2019 baseline. That'll be important later as we talk through this. Um so, with the if if we look at how housing costs changed between 2014 and 2023, you can see all of the yellow lines. These are effectively the places where you would look for um, you know, not strictly just affordable housing, but first-time home buyers, um, you know, middle-market home buyers, and you can see that the stock of housing available at those price points really declined substantially, and everything that became available moved from the, you know, mid 150 to 300 up to 300 to 500,000. And where um, and $500,000 and above homes now represent 9% of the total homes available in Bloomington. Right? So, if you lost um, your starter homes, those homes that are under 200,000, we'll say they're completely gone, but you went from 70% of the market having them to or them being 17% of the total market, and now they're 6 and 1/2%. Possibly even lower now, cuz these this data ends in 2023. Um, you know, that's real motion away from where middle-income people are able to um, to make housing choices. And it's not just owners, renters face the the the same pressure. Um, where you used to have units that were broadly available under, let's say, $1,000 a month. Um, you can see uh, when we look at the graph to the right, 48% of units at the time were under $1,000 per month, now just 10% are. Right? And even if we adjust the the numbers for inflation, which is what you see there, um, taking the midpoint of the 500 to 999, we would have adjusted it again just under $1,000 per month. And you can see that almost all of the growth in rental properties has happened at the $1,500 a month and up area. That's now 52% of your rental market. And again, uh partially that reflects the upward cost basis of new construction and partially it reflects the supply demand factors that happen when you have limited stocks of house of housing units and many people with the disposable income to pay for those units, right? Um I guess the the final point here is just that um with units under $1,000 a month now moving from 56 to, you know, 15% or less, you're looking at 85% of the market is in a place that is um you know, difficult to obtain for people of modest means. Uh construction costs continue to rise. Um if you look, you'll notice our our COVID peak again in 2021. But as you see the decline, that orange line in the percentage of cost, remember that's a decline of the percentage growth rate. So, um you know, as you go to 5.6%, that's 5.6% on top of the 22.5% from 2021 and the 2.4% in 2023 is on top of the 5.6% and on top of the 22.5%. So, those cost pressures have contributed substantially to a lot of stickiness in the new construction market, which we're going to talk more about in a few minutes. Okay. So, let's talk about the OHO performance to date. How has it worked so far? Um so, if we do just a quick review of um of our um um OHO requirements. We've got 9% of the units in new multi-family projects that have at least 20 units, they have to be affordable at 60% AMI or below. And um we have 16 incentives available to support the economics uh at the site level. Um oops. And our in-lieu fee, if a developer chooses not to have on-site units, they can pay a fee, and that's currently set at $9.60 uh per gross square foot. That was set in 2018. >> [clears throat] >> And effectively, everything that we did for this project to evaluate how the OHO has worked in practice is what we did originally to set it up. Um So, if you're curious how the numbers were originally set, it would follow the exact same uh process, basically. Um what we saw from the use of the incentives is interesting for a a few different reasons. One is that you can see that there's uneven incentive usage. So, that doesn't mean that the incentives um down near the right-hand side are not valuable. It could be that we could do better jobs of explaining it or showing developers how to layer cake it, but the reality is they've shown strong preferences. And those preferences, you can see uh very strongly in the parking stall reduction. Everyone took that. And in conversations with developers, that actually gave us an insight, very good insight, into how the OHO is actually helping development in Bloomington rather than retarding it. And we're going to come back to this point in a in a minute, but it's worth noting that the incentives that you see being used um are strongly supported by the development community. And the OHO itself has delivered results. So, on the left, these are the the the pie chart reflects all the the share of all of the units that were built uh under the OHO since it's been in in place. 62% of those have been at the 60% AMI level, 32% at 50, and only 6% at 30% AMI. So, that's our distribution of what was built or is under construction. Over to the right, these are the goals, housing policy goals of the city. And here you can see that we've got a bit of an inverse. So, just 18% of the goals are at the 60 to 80% AMI level, a further 29% are at 50 AMI, and more than half are at 30 AMI. So, we have a clear uh focus here that we would like to be at 50% or below AMI. But, that's really the the need that has not been uh touched very strongly uh currently. So, [clears throat] what did the developers tell us? Well, um the developers first told us that at 60% AMI, incentives are generally well calibrated. Okay? That that means that um if you shift the percentage of units um to lower AMIs, then you may have to consider changing incentives or sweetening the deal. But, at the moment, um they're reasonably happy with how things are set. Uh they mentioned that a a much bigger problem currently, and it's getting better. I literally just saw numbers right before this presentation started about rent growth in um the Twin Cities and Bloomington specifically growing faster than many of the averages in the area, which is supportive for um future development. But, what they had told us is up up to the point at which we had done the interviews, um the cost had risen faster than they could grow rents. Right? So, even with upper-income populations, there's still a limit at which you just can't go, or else your building sits empty, or it takes a very long time to lease up. And that that was a very big barrier to development. So, um sometimes real estate goes through these growth um cycles, and we're in a somewhat painful part of that cycle currently. Though we seem to be potentially growing out of it, um depending upon, you know, oil shocks and tariffs and other things that could throw monkey wrenches into it. Um we're over the post-COVID impact um portion of that that cycle. Um one of the key messages that the developers told us is that cost volatility has made forecasting their projects difficult. And in layman's terms, what it means is if you're a developer and you're trying to put pencil to the numbers to say how much would it cost me to do project X, it's very hard to know until you actually go out and start getting real cost from your subs, and very often they surprise you with what they come back with. So, the redevelopment pipeline has been choked a bit by that. Another thing that's happened that works negatively against the development um growth is that investor returns um have gone up, not down. And the up the the reason they've gone up is that the investors view the risk profile of deals in the current environment as greater than before, because of the things like um again in except when um inflation was a a bit higher, but still the issue that it's hard to underwrite, you don't know how long you're going to have to sit on a project. You don't know if pre-development and due diligence is going to take longer. So, that all gets translated into higher returns to equity that are required and harder bank underwrite. Uh finally, um they a very common comment was just that parking requirements as per code um may often exceed what they think the demand is. And that's partially why you saw such high usage for the parking incentive under the OHO. Was that was their way to um better approach what they believe market um market demand is for those parking stalls. Um so, that basically gets us to a cost revenue squeeze. The costs are up, the revenues aren't. Harder to underwrite. And so, what we originally [snorts] had um underwritten the OHO with um you know, that that world is no longer there. Um so, our financial modeling approach had to go back to square one and we took five construction types and we tested these all the garden wrap, podium, mid-rise, and for sale. Within each one of those we use we we had different variations. We had um versions where we had 30% AMI units, 50, 60, uh a market rate development or in a market rate development where they paid the in lieu fee. And really what we were trying to do was um just get to solid numbers for yield on cost, IRR, and net net present value that would give us some indication of what notional projects for these different construction typologies might look like. Now, granted, these are conceptual, right? So, it's not an actual project that we were underwriting. There are lots and lots of nuances to doing underwriting. Uh developers who may have land banked at um any given point in the cycle may be able to use that land when they're ready and be able to bring a project out of the ground that other developers would struggle to do if they had to pay market uh prices for for land. Um could be that they they're able to tap uh better sources of equity than other developments. There's a lot of nuance. So, we tried to do a very good but still somewhat generic view of how would these projects pencil? And you can see some of the estimated um inputs that we used off to the uh right. Um what's useful in this big brick of numbers is simply to say that when we ran our numbers, what we were looking for was to get why YOC just means yield on cost and it it simply looks at what's called the net operating income. Basically, the operating income for a building as compared to what it cost to build it, the development cost. And developers use that as a kind of snapshot to test is my building likely to make money or is it not? And you need to have enough spread between your yield on cost and what's called the exit cap rate for them to be able to say, "Okay, this this makes sense." Um in most of our underwriting, we couldn't clear that threshold. And it's the same pattern we saw for IRRs and net net present values. What I would say is that means that on the one hand, uh we're in a hard part of the cycle. On the other hand, real estate by nature is cyclical and you can't base all of your decision-making on what happens at the lowest point of that cycle. You have to assume that things will get better, things will turn the corner, incomes will rise, um costs will moderate and stabilize, and you can say that with pretty pretty good confidence because this happens periodically in real estate. Um in fact, we're sort of um in a due for a reset back to more normal growth rates. So, we weren't necessarily floored by the results, but it does indicate that we do have to take seriously the idea that it's not simple for developers to make deals pencil, and when you see the $1,500 a month and higher rents, that often reflects what's necessary to get the projects out of the ground and get them funded. But, if they try to underwrite with lower rents, they wouldn't be able to make it make it happen. This is just graphically showing you the same thing. Um again, the the most important points here is we would ideally like to see numbers that get up to, you know, 16 to 18%, even 20%, and we don't see that. Now, I'm going to turn this over to Sherry to go over the Nexus study numbers, and then we'll come back with some other details on uh findings and next steps. >> Thank you, Sean. Um thank you, honorable mayor, boards and commissions. Um we performed Nexus study both this time and last time. Um a Nexus study shows the connection between new household development and new households moving in and the demand for affordable housing units or housing units at various income strata. So, the way that this works is when new households move into market rate housing units, and remember that new housing units tend to be nicer and built towards the top of market and command premiums, the people who move in or have incomes, and then they go out and they spend their disposable income in the local economy, and they create jobs for new commercial development. Some of those might be healthcare jobs, some of those might be retail jobs, some of those might be other kinds of jobs. Um, they create jobs across the, um, the income strata, but we're really trying to figure out how many how many jobs and and more how many households, um, are are created that that need affordable units. So, some households with, um, with a lower wage workers will qualify for and need, um, affordable housing options. So, that's the connection we're trying to make in the Nexus study. Next slide, please. >> Thanks. >> Sure. Uh, so the way that we do this is we have, um, a five-step process we go through. First, we define housing types and identify the market prices and rents, um, for we looked at for sale and and rental housing. Um, we estimate the household incomes of buyers and renters needed to to fill those housing units, and we make the assumption that, um, that people moving into those units are paying, you know, no more than 30% of their incomes towards housing. Um, and then we estimate the spending, um, cre- by the market rate households, uh, within the local economy, which in this case is Hennepin County, and, um, we use the IMPLAN input-output, uh, model to generate the information, they distribute it, create, um, the number of jobs created, uh, by industry, um, and then we go back and use some public use micro data from the American Community Survey and Census to estimate the wages and household incomes um, of those workers. We're We're not necessarily interested in the number of jobs created. We're more interested in the household incomes that include some of the lower wage workers. So, you know, we're not assuming that every retail position created or minimum wage job created is a single person who lives alone. We use this this census data to cross tabulate to see, okay, how many workers are there per household? And what is the overall household income of these households to really get at the number of households created that are in these lower income strata. And we use that to calculate the justifiable inclusionary percentage by household tenure. So, we're looking Next slide, please. at new development of market rate multi-family rental and new development of townhome condominium. And based on what Shawn was just talking about in terms of, you know, and that housing attainability becoming more increasingly out of reach, you could you know, you would you would anticipate and we did find that the household incomes required to move into a new multi-family rental building in Bloomington are a bit lower and not the same as those required to purchase a new townhome or condominium. Next slide, please. So, what we found is that the incomes needed to move into a new rental unit are about $86,700 per year for the household. And the incomes needed to purchase a new townhouse or condo is around $173,900 per year. Um using the IMPLAN model, which which again distributes spending throughout the local economy, we estimate that a household in a new rental unit creates about 55 jobs, whereas a household in a new townhouse or condo spending in the local economy creates about 72 jobs. Um And then our our data shows us that that equates to about 34 households in the case of the rental unit and 45 households in the case of the condo or townhouse. And all of those households, six and a half um households from the new rental unit are above 50% AMI. So And then someone in a new rental unit goes out and spends their money in the local economy, it creates jobs, that creates demand for about six and a half housing units or households that earn up to 50% of area median income. Um another 5.6 or nearly six households between 50 and 80% AMI. Um seven and a half almost households between 80% and 115% AMI. And then another 14 and a half households that are above 115% AMI. And we did look um at up to 115% AMI just in case when it comes to shifting the policy around, um you wanted to know what that is. I know um HRA has on their website that they do look at um different uh AMIs up to 115% as um um maybe not qualifying for and certainly not qualifying for um federally subsidized housing, but but you know, that is the workforce housing that so many communities are concerned with. That is the middle-income housing that so many communities are concerned with. And so, we just wanted to um show that full complement. Please, next slide. So, what we found was um based on 100-unit projects, uh 100-unit multifamily rental project can justify an inclusionary requirement of up to 17% of units for households up to 115% AMI or below. So, essentially, there is um the 100 market-rate units create demand for an additional 20 units uh serving households across those lower-income strata up to 115% AMI. And so, if you have an inclusionary requirement that says you have to build those 20 units on top of your 120 units, that turns out to be about 17% of the project. Uh similarly, it is 21% of the project um of a for-sale uh um housing development because that has additional demand for um for those units below 115% AMI. So, that creates demand for 26 units. And so, you still have your 100 market rate units, but with another 26 units at that lower income strata, um that's about 21%. And so, that is your maximum justifiable inclusionary percentage. Um not to say you have to go up to that. That is a policy question, but if you wanted to sort of know what that upper book end is, uh that's what we were trying to calculate. Next slide. I think that might be it. >> Yeah. >> Yep. >> Uh and um as Sherry was talking about as when we were looking at the financials even um back in 2018, we had a similar um [clears throat] difference between what's maximally acceptable and what the policy ultimately settled on largely for feasibility and adoption reasons. So, um that's a good segue into our policy options. Um So, we mentioned that the in-lieu fee was set uh back in 2018 and obviously a lot's happened since then. So, um you know I guess we should start with just saying what is the in-lieu fee? And that's the That's the fee that a developer can pay if he doesn't want to um keep on-site affordable housing units, but still be within the uh the still be compliant with the AHO. So, he pays the fee based upon the gross square footage. And again, the the fee is $9.60 per square foot. If we adjust that for inflation since uh since the fee was set, it moves to $12.24. Okay? Um that's below the rate of construction cost inflation. That's just general inflation. But, it helps to understand that that fee when it is paid goes into the affordable housing trust fund, and that then directly supports the provision of other affordable housing units. Since it's lost 28% roughly of its value, there's been a real loss of purchasing power for those ILF dollars. Um So, we could do a couple things with it. We could keep it where it is, noting that um as we saw earlier, the financials really aren't very good. It's hard to make things pencil, and we could um you know, not we could choose not to um add any additional burden. I think the um the second option is to just bring it up to its inflation-adjusted um number, so that we're roughly in line with where we started in 2018. Um it's analytically supported, and um while it does add some cost, it's it's only there when developers choose to pay the in-lieu fee to exit a deal versus putting the affordable units in their project. And the third option is that um there is actually a number much higher than this, which is if you do the math and you try to [clears throat] account for the full cost of adding affordable units in buildings, it's actually higher than the in-lieu fee that we're quoting, but it becomes um it becomes meaningfully higher, and if we begin to set it closer to the $1 square foot level, it may be the case that we simply um close off the use of the ILF, um or it becomes restricted to only uh those cases when the developer absolutely has to pay to to make his deal work. Okay? Um there's also the potential addition of AMI tiers. So, when the OCHO was originally formulated, we in fact had in some of the planning documents both 30% and 50% AMI tiers. Um and so we potentially could add those back in. Um and because the loss from those units at the NOI level, meaning the operating income for 30% units, for example, typically don't pay even the operating cost for those units. 50% pays a bit over their operating cost, but obviously not as much as Marjorie units. So we would look at potentially adjusting the number of units that would be applicable at those AMIs down so that the net burden on the developer's pro forma falls a bit, um but not so much that we're overcompensating on the incentive side. It's still kept in in balance. Okay. So our key findings summary, um we saw that the market transformed lots more um upper income health households. But at the same time developers saw a cost rise and supply constraints um helped to push prices higher. Uh we saw the success of the OAH show and the affordable housing trust fund com- combines um produced 621 affordable units um at a below 60% AMI. We saw the the policy goals um really trying to um push us towards getting those 30% and 50% AI units. Um we saw the feasibility challenges of getting the um developer pro formas to actually pencil for standard deals. And we ran through the policies that we just talked about about um possibly changing the ILF fee and adding the additional tiers. So that leaves us with just the issues that would be available for the city and Kenny's going to talk through this in a second with you about what um what the city staff had recommended and what's available for you as policy makers to to look forward to. >> Thanks, Shawn. Uh, yeah, I'll take it from here if you could go to the next slide. >> Yeah. >> So, thank you. Yeah, and thanks, Mayor and Commissioners. So, I'll just queue up the policy consideration before we open it up to questions and a Q&A. So, and you can go to the next slide from here. So, based on report findings, staff did have recommended adjustments to the opportunity housing ordinance, which you already heard Shawn uh present the menu. So, here are the options that staff are recommending proceeding with or considering. So, one would be adjusting the fee in lieu, but it would be to account for inflation. So, that was that policy option two, rather than the full gap recovery, which the concern there is that it inhibits development. So, the proposal would be for $12 per square foot increase from $9.60 as it is currently. And then, the other recommended adjustment would be adding those compliance tiers at 50% AMI and 30% AMI. This would actually mirror action taken by City of Minneapolis recently. Similarly, they commissioned a report that found the difficulties of development in the current market and introduced these compliance tiers to have flexibility for developers. Um, and then we've included what those income levels or rent levels are at those various AMI levels. Next slide, please. Uh, we also staff have also been looking at the existing ownership requirements for the opportunity housing ordinance, which currently are based off of the type of housing being provided. So, for single-family detached homes, 9% of a development of 20 units or more must be affordable at 115% AMI, but condos, townhomes, or cooperative developments would be required to have 9% of units at 60% AMI. Uh so, there are concerns here that the uh we're introducing challenges just for certain housing typologies or housing types. Uh and then the other thing that staff looked at with regards to ownership is that the requirements and incentives for ownership housing in the opportunity housing ordinance don't all line up with what we currently have as our most powerful and available subsidy for affordable home ownership, which is LAHA, the local affordable housing aid. LAHA qualifies affordable home ownership at 115% AMI. Uh so, if you go to the next slide, please. The recommendation with regards to ownership housing would be to set that requirement across the various housing types to 9% at 115% AMI, and also to introduce a different compliance tier to provide flexibility, and that would be 4% of units at 80% of the area median income. And just a reminder that this is for developments of 20 units or more. So, this wouldn't be impacting housing ownership developments of four or five units. Anything fewer than 20 units wouldn't be impacted. Uh and then we also want to ensure that the ordinance does apply to cooperatively owned home ownership, which we've seen uh staff have seen proposals that um there are concerns that it isn't covered or that the the applicability of the requirement isn't clear. So, we would uh ensure that that requirement is clear. And a few other final slides, please. Uh for your consideration are the next steps that we would take to enact those changes, and that follows the requirement for a ordinance amendment. So, there would be um community engagement and updates brought to these boards and commissions with a final formal approval uh occurring after public hearings held by the planning commission and city council. And that could take place later this year. And with that, we'll open it up to Q&A. Thank you. >> Thank you very much, and uh thank you to our consultants for a very comprehensive presentation. Thanks much. That's uh that's some deep stuff, and uh interesting, very interesting. This is basically a study session, so it's an opportunity to ask questions and to try and understand better, learn more. Uh and so I would open it up to questions, and I'd ask, considering the size of the group, maybe we limit the uh the opinions and discussion uh to, you know, we keep it to a minimum, but we ask questions and try and understand better. So, we otherwise, I think if everybody tried to weigh in on this, uh it might get a little unwieldy. I I know each of your groups, each of the boards and commissions will be discussing this, and so you'll have the opportunity then. But as as the bigger group here, maybe we can uh make sure that we everybody gets an opportunity to ask a question. Please. >> Thank you, and that was a very interesting presentation. Quick technical question on the in lieu of fees. Um it's a two-part question. The first question is, is it a one-time payment? And the second question is, with the proposed changes, would the in lieu fee would the proposal be to keep it as an all or nothing fee? I.e., you either comply completely or you don't comply. What if a developer is willing to comply with providing, you know, the 60% but not the 30%? Thank you. >> Thank you, Mayor Commissioners. The the fee functions as a flat fee, as you said, and it's calculated based off of the leasable square footage for the building. So, that $9 per square $9.60 times the leasable square footage, and that fee is paid out at building permit issuance. So, the fee there's options for how that is collected by the city, either it's immediately released for usage within the housing affordable housing trust fund or the developer may elect to essentially hold that fee for 2 years and have it applied to a subsequent development. That subsequent development would have to provide the affordable housing that would have been required with their initial development. So, that's the current structure of the fee in lieu. And the to your question on flexibility for how that requirement is applied, the structure of the OHO does allow for uh developers to take a menu of compliance options. We haven't seen that yet utilized to date, but essentially it opens up the opportunity for negotiation and the ordinance has language of how to value some of these things. Uh some of those compliance options that we haven't gone over uh but are very interesting if you want to take a look, but include things like acquisition of existing housing and converting to affordable housing, uh off-site development of affordable housing instead of on-site development, uh and then there are some other options. So, developers may choose to select an from this menu of compliance options. >> Others? Let's remember Nelson or is it Commissioner Nelson? Which hat are you wearing? >> Councilmember Nelson. >> All right. Is this on? Great. Um Sorry, Matt. I just have a couple questions. Um So, in the information that you said that housing was um somewhere around $200,000 per unit, but my my recollection from looking at the various projects that have come forward is frankly our subsidy was over $200,000 per unit. Can somebody sort of explain why we're subsidizing a unit $200,000 and yet they only cost $200,000. I I'm I'm confused by that um or data point. Am I wrong in my recollection about that? >> Maybe I'll come and do this. Okay, thank you Mayor. Commissioners, I think you're maybe referring to Bloomington Affordable Homeownership Program. >> No, I'm referring to TIF. >> Oh. Okay. Um Yeah, I'll hand it over to Kevin. >> Okay. Yeah, I I can also say that in our modeling we used 220 to 300,000 depending upon the typology that was used. We maybe even gone to 350 for the the higher levels. Um so I I think it was only garden units that were down that that low. >> Thank you, Mayor. >> question, I have to defer. >> You're welcome. >> Mayor, Commissioners, Council Member Nelson. Uh so we have done some analysis of the per unit subsidy that has been provided through the history of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. And that per unit subsidy is not at that 200,000 amount. It's I think it's closer to 30 35. I'm looking at Kenny who's shaking his head yes. Um so that that's sort of been our benchmark when we're evaluating projects. Um the 200 unit 200,000 amount that was referenced um it I'm not quite sure where that number came from. Maybe if we want to go to that slide, but from a city perspective usually when we're looking at subsidy we're basing it on sort of that amount that I just framed. >> Yep. >> I appreciate that and and I think he clarified the cost, but my recollection when we've done TIF um has been a much higher amount per unit um on all the developments particularly the the um South Loop area. Um my second question is how many um OHO projects have we done that um it it looked like am I correct it was about 66% or something utilized TIF? Is that right? >> 64 >> 64. And then how many took advantage of the ILF? Um my recollection is one, but I may be wrong. And that one they want the money back. >> Okay. I think you're correct. >> Okay. Um And then if we did not have the inclusionary requirement, how many units could be built in the marketplace uh with without that uh requirement to do that? >> Are you asking opinion or >> I'm just asking if it's been studied. >> Uh we we didn't study it for this project. I mean, I could tell you work we've done in other places where we were looking at voluntary trades for development um bonuses um and money, frankly, um to get affordable um if if that's what you're asking. >> I'm just asking strict number of units uh regardless of price. >> Yeah, we we didn't evaluate that for for this project. >> Anything else? Others? >> So, I have a question and I think for our our consultant team. You You touched on it a a bit, but I I'm thinking bigger picture of about how robust the study is considering the uncertainty of tariffs, considering oil prices, considering you know, the prospect of a of an expanding war and whatever might be happening to the economy. So, how how robust is the the work that you've done and how how confident are you that it can withstand some of the external factors that we just don't quite understand or know how far they're going to hit it? >> [clears throat] >> I mean, we've done all you can do at the at the notional level. Meaning, we've, you know, looked at the numbers and we crunched it and we ran through, you know, a hundred different model model iterations. But the market does what the market's going to do um and there are things that no human can predict. Right? Um all that said, looking at the real estate market generally in Bloomington in particular, I know there are very very promising green shoots um in the market that lead me to think that we're unlikely to experience another significant downturn um at least in in Bloomington. The with rent growth, I saw uh right before our call, I think we were approaching between 3 to 5% depending upon product type, which is very good. Um lots of places are 1 to 2% these these days. Um I would imagine that what what the developers told us when the market was even less um good than it is now, that they liked the OHO because they liked the incentives that it offers and that they really didn't push back on the existence of the OHO per se. Um I feel very confident that keeping it in place it's as it currently stands again with the adjustments we've talked about is its own robust data point, right? The developers have come to rely on it, they underwrite with it, They know what to expect. Um that stability is useful for them. >> I'll I'll add we we do a lot of this work um around the country as well and to that to Shawn's last point, um certainty is what the development community really wants. If you know, interest rates or um logistical pipelines, supply pipelines, um or war and oil prices, um those things are going to do what they're due and they will maybe delay a recovery, speed up um a slowdown in the real estate in real estate development. But it's the certainty that you provide in your regulatory environment and through the OHO and because this is something that's already on the books and you're talking about providing them in some ways a bit more flexibility even if um raising the um annual fee I think $3 or $2.50 a foot, um which is, you know, not very much in terms of the overall project cost. Um I I think that the that your particular market has all and your development community has already adjusted to having this on the books. So, those macroeconomic factors are going to do what they do, um but in terms of really throwing a wrench into your local market, um because this is already on the books and you've provided them certainty and you've provided them different incentives along with this, um you've really given them as much as you possibly can uh to give them confidence um to move forward. >> Thank you. That's helpful. Councilmember D'Alessandro, I see your hand up. >> Uh thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um I appreciate the opportunity to talk to all of you. Sorry I wasn't able to be there in person. Um just two kind of brief questions that to stimulate a a thought process. What I you know, I know that the opportunity housing ordinance is is kind of um there's the Met Council kind of edict that sits on top of all of us that that kind of forces some of these decision-making, but I I I want to counter that with the notion of of flexibility and the idea of that we used in our our one decision-making, for example, that we said, "Hey, just put it out there and let the market do what it does." In in in light of some of that and in light of the volatility that you described here, was there any consideration to um just like saying, "Hey, these incentives are available um for uh or there's a different set of incentives available as long as you make every unit in your building no more than 115% of AMI. Like it it is it is is that is that something that um is an option that would stimulate the housing development in a way that would get us units even if those units are above what our targets are, but would stimulate some of the other economic factors that you all mentioned, like the fact that we don't have um you know, uh we're not growing in some of the workforce sectors that have been identified in the family sectors that have been identified. Um so I'm just curious if if if that's a different concept of like saying, "Hey, none of your none of your property can be market rate, but none of them have to be 30% AMI AMI either. And does that do anything to to to to um potentially stimulate, especially in the homeowner area, for example? >> It might. It's It's an interesting question. Almost borders on the voluntary um side of the program, where you create a program that says, "Look, you can voluntarily opt into this and it and and receive all of these benefits. We're not requiring um that you comply for any given market rate development. You would have to opt in, but it's not something we evaluated, but it sounds interesting. >> So, I'm going to assume that you don't see that elsewhere, either. That's not something that you have experience with. >> Yeah, yeah. We actually were were working in Austin now looking at um other variations of how you can stimulate market rate uh developers to use um just purely on a voluntary basis how you can get affordable housing units included. Um It's It's different because of jurisdictional rules everywhere you try this. Um We also did a project in Dallas that was very similar to that. We changed the one portion of the development code specifically to target voluntary exchanges. But, you have to have some initial sort of comfort with the fact that, you know, purely voluntary exchange you almost have to over-incentivize the pot because the desire for compliance is not as high as the desire to get something built and just move on, right? So, if the cost is X, you need to be providing some multiple above X. Doesn't have to be 2X, but, you know, 1.25, 1.3, something that says you want to participate in this program because by not participating you're leaving money on the table. But, that's a sort of a different view of the >> Right. Okay. Um you know, for for our consideration, not necessarily with the revisions that are in front of us, but for something for future thought, and especially as Council Member Nelson, I know you have talked a lot about your disdain for TIF in this place, maybe making that kind of a lever where you know, TIF comes at a higher price uh because you have the option of volunteering in or voluntarily, you know, doing all of your units at 115 or whatever, um might be a way to incentivize like TIF that gives us a lot more towards that lower tier of uh our AMI requirement. So, just something to think about. Thanks for the opportunity to ask the question. >> Thanks. >> Anyone else? Council Member Lowman. >> What? Here we go. I guess what my question would be for since we've got all these folks from all these different boards uh that are here, I'm curious what some of the folks from HRA and sustainability think of this study. Um you know, to kind of get some of your your kind of feedback, so. >> Anybody want to take a run? >> Please. >> Um I don't have a question. It's more just feedback. And my feedback is um I'm not it's not a good feeling being someone who was part of the OHO from more of the inception of it to go to 115% AMI. I mean, the whole point of the OHO was to go for deep affordability. And I just don't feel that that's what this is doing. So, that's my feedback cuz I'm just not I don't feel comfortable with this at all. >> Thank you. Um Yes, please. That's fine. >> That that was for the um that was for the ownership um portion. No, the the math on ownership, just for what it's worth, is it's it's a different equation than when you look at the rental units only. >> I'll I'll say affordable ownership is really challenging because I mean I think you saw on the slide that there down payment assistance um incentives um and programs that kick in at at like some of those middle incomes around 110%, but even if the developer were to fully subsidize the affordable ownership unit the people still have to qualify for a mortgage, which as you get into those deeper levels of affordability becomes more and more challenging to convince a bank um to give you a a a commercial mortgage. Um and so at 60% really anything below 80% um a lot of places sort of experience that those units sit sit fallow. And on the other side of that, sort of when you get to that 115% AMI um you know, if you have affordability on a on a for-sale unit, there might be some appreciation cap or um deed restriction on appreciation for the homeowners so that it continues to be affordable for the next people who buy it. And a lot of times households will, you know, they'll stretch, they'll pay more than 30% um if they're anywhere close in the market so that they uh don't have to take the cap on appreciation. So, I think it's it's doable in that sort of 80 to 120% depending on the market, but it's it's just a a really hard needle to thread practically. >> Yeah, to to add to Sherry's point, the the other thing that doesn't get talked about much cuz we always talk about qualifying for a home, it's the homeownership maintenance cost for people who are at lower incomes can be very challenging. If the AC breaks or they need a new roof, often if there's not a program for assistance that exists at that moment, you could you can have other problems that you didn't foresee. So, that's another reason why you just don't often see sort of deep affordability on the ownership side. It's a great idea if someone could figure it out, just the math is very hard. >> Mhm. >> Anything else from the group here? Commissioner Lenz from sunny California. >> Thank you, Your Honor. Um I wanted to follow up what mis- what Shawn Bourgeois said, uh affordability, insurance costs are staggering. And you know, it's one thing to buy a house, make the mor- mortgage payment. Taxes are what they are. But the insurance costs now, I got to be a massive hurdle. The thing I'm kind of wondering about beyond that comment is that when you interviewed the developers, wow, what is their psyche? Are they positive about how developing housing are they pulling in their horns? Where are they? And it kind of ties into your work that you have done. I want to know what the shelf life might be for this study. I mean, I I follow a lot of it. I was in evaluation for many, many years of real estate, so I follow much of it, I think fairly well. Um but again, we the I can't remember when OHA came into existence, but here we are in 2026. How many years has that been? So, what would be the shelf life for your this work now going forward? And of course, keeping in mind that change is ever present and markets have this thing called fluctuation. It's kind of a run-on, but I'd like I'd like to your feel for what the developers are telling you. >> Okay, we can start with that. Mostly, we talked to multifamily developers. And again, they were reasonably bullish, not necessarily on the current moment, but and developers are known for optimism, right? I mean, it's a it's a risk forward venture. And you don't meet too many pessimistic developers. It's just not in their genes. They will tell you it's a challenging environment. And again, I think things have turned the corner a bit for for the better. Um, but I I don't recall and Amit did most of the the interviews with the developers, but I don't recall any >> Yes, so just a quick feedback. I mean, most of the developers actually all of the developers want to comply with the original they want affordable housing to be part of the development and to make it work, but all of them felt that this was the right thing to do and that they would try their utmost best to do it. And that's why you see that only one project went the ILS route and most of them tried to make it work. So, they are So, they are committed to having affordable as part of the building development. Um, the second point, the developers really are squeezed, you know, in that slide that that we had shown, you know, they are in the classic squeeze of costs have gone out of control and and the and rents have you know, reached a ceiling and it's only now a little bit of appreciation. So, there's definitely you know, they've been caught in the classic squeeze and you know time will tell they'll break out of it cost will settle down and the cycle will kick in once more so developers were quite quite sort of optimistic that they will be able to weather the storm. >> Yeah and to and to the point about the shelf life of the study it's very hard to say everything you said is correct the the market and the world moves in ways that none of us can predict right but it's been 8 years roughly since we did the first version of the OHO and really we went through an incredibly difficult set of challenges you know with the pandemic and inflation and interest rate spikes to historical levels let's hope we don't do any of those things again. You know assuming we we live through more normal times I would assume we have as about as much life in this one as we had in that one but um worst case you could always do more frequent updates. >> Oh you're you're on mute Mr. Lynch. >> I just said thank you. >> Okay. >> All right folks last call for questions otherwise I think we should move on with our agenda here. All right let's uh want to send our thanks to our consultants from Donal list and BAE. Great work very interesting stuff and I appreciate the work that you put in and and your analysis and your understanding of Bloomington thanks so very much. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thank you. >> We will move on to item 1.2 on our organizational business tonight. This is an update on our Bloomington 2040 comprehensive plan. Dakota Caston day is going to lead us through this. Just as soon as he gets the presentation up. >> All right. Good evening mayor, council members and commissions. I'm going to share my screen. Let me mute myself there. Um share Okay. Okay, perfect. All right. Good evening. My name is Dakota Cassiday. I'm a planning supervisor in our planning division and serving as a project manager for our Bloomington 2050 comprehensive plan update. So just want to kind of walk through the kind of this first introduction conversation and we'll have many more conversations here over the over the process to um work on our comprehensive plan. So if you don't remember anything else tonight, hopefully you can just take away these three kind of key messages that I'll come back to in that presentation. So Bloomington 2050 is our road map for the city's future. Everyone can influence the values, goals and strategies of Bloomington 2050. And let me move this. And as we've already kind of alluded to in some of the conversations here with OHO and thinking about the future, encouraging folks to kind of embrace uncertainties so that we can collectively act and prepare for change. So just want to give a high-level overview of the comprehensive plan process. Comprehensive plan's a long-term citywide plan that outlines our vision for growth and change. It establishes community goals, strategies, actions related to a number of things including land use, housing, transportation, parks, community infrastructure and facilities. Part of our work also relates to the regional development guide that's adopted by the Metropolitan Council. And so they adopted their regional plan last February and that's under the framework of Imagine 2050. And then we have until December 31st of 2028 to get our local comprehensive plan adopted by the Metropolitan Council. And so you our 2050 comprehensive plan update is called Bloomington 2050. So if I'm saying Bloomington 2050 or 2050 comp plan kind of interchangeably talking about the same document just for your awareness. The Met Council does provide us a system statement and a minimum requirements checklist. So there are some required components that we have to address in our comprehensive plan. These are the kind of elements or chapters that they require to be included in our local comprehensive plan. I just highlighted climate and natural systems as those are new requirements in our 2050 cycle that weren't previously part of our 2040 cycle. So looking at climate adaptation mitigation strategies with a particular focus in extreme heat and localized flooding. And then natural systems is looking at you know water bodies like lakes, rivers, streams, protected wetland areas, kind of sensitive natural or wildlife areas in the city. And then of course cities can always go beyond those minimum requirements and tailor the local comprehensive plan to their their priorities and in needs and I'll kind of touch on that here. So this is our proposed outline for Bloomington 2050. So we have our executive summary, a land use element, a housing element, transportation, water resources and utilities that really kind of touches on surface water, water supply, waste water. And then new for our 2050 plan introducing an economic development chapter. In our 2040 plan there's some slight reference to economic development in our land use chapter, but just kind of given the growth of the Port Authority and their 5-year strategic plan, as well as one of the BTT strategic plan goals of an inclusive inclusive economic growth, wanting to to bring that into the comprehensive plan process. Like I mentioned the climate chapter that'll be new Met Council requirements. Um And then I kind of put newish on these next two chapters in our 2040 plan we had a community facilities chapter that kind of covered everything. So it covered parks and all kind of community facilities. But again, just kind of given the growth of the parks with Bloomington Forward projects, the park system master plan that was adopted just a few years ago and these new natural systems requirements, I'm really kind of separating that out into a separate chapter really related to parks and open space and then having a community health and services element to bring in those non-park community facilities. Thinking a little bit more broadly around community assets, thinking about creative placemaking and the work that's being done at the city and then tying in a lot more of our public health initiatives. Again, just wasn't really accounted for in the 2040 plan. Want to bring that into 2050 and and kind of aligning with one of our other BTT strategic goals. And then there's always an implementation element that really kind of summarizes everything and how how we get to achieve these goals that we're we're striving for. And so just at a really high level want to walk you through the plan development and kind of community engagement process here. So for this year in 2026 it's really focused on big ideas and issue identification. So on the the plan development side it's really the data collection, understanding some of those requirements. Do we have the data? If not, where do we need to get it and and getting that all together. Really identifying those key issues and in our value statements um that really provide that framework to take into 2027 um to have our policy um goals, strategy alternatives, and then of course selecting our preferred alternative um into 2028 to um have our final draft plan and final plan adoption. Uh one of the things I just want to highlight here as part of this process is um what's called an adjacent and affected jurisdiction review. So, that is a required component of our process um where we actually send our draft plan to all of um the neighboring communities, as well as the school district, the watershed districts, um Minnesota Department of Transportation, Hennepin County, um and they have an opportunity to provide comment on our draft plan. And then all of the surrounding communities send us their plans as well to provide comment. And so, that's a 6-month review. So, even though we kind of have 3 years, I would technically consider it more 2 and 1/2 years because the second half of 2028, you know, the plan's really going to be like 95% done, um and it's really just kind of going through some of those formal steps for for comments and kind of minor um adjustments to then bring it to the City Council and the Metropolitan Council for adoption. And so, um on this slide too, you'll see the community engagement um kind of um throughout this process we'll kind of go through different phases as as the plan develops. There's different questions we want to ask and different goals. Um using our kind of P2 level of engagement that the city has adopted, um staff would recommend using the collaborate level of engagement on this project. And so, just for expectation settings, we always try to develop a promise to the public in our engagement. Um and what we're proposing um here is to work with community stakeholders to determine the value statements, the goals, strategies, and actions of Bloomington 2050. So, um as I'll kind of show here on the next couple slides, you know, multiple opportunities, of different mediums to uh for input to collect those ideas um and make sure that there's more um community voice into the plan. And then another um strategy that we would propose um is using a community advisory committee that would incorporate input from the public um input and feedback from boards and commissions and our elected officials to really recommend the goals that should be adopted in the plan. This was a similar structure that was done in the 2040 comprehensive plan and I believe there was a kind of similar advisory committee group as part of the Bloomington Tomorrow Together Strategic Plan. So, wanting to continue to refine that that process and and bring it into our 2050 comp plan. Um again, it's just another way to provide more community opportunity in the decision-making process of of the plan. So, it's not um staff necessarily selecting all those goals, but really this kind of um representative group um of of community stakeholders that are um recommending the goals for the plan with incorporating, you know, feedback from the public and all and everyone. >> [snorts] >> And so, just some potential engagement techniques that will likely be utilized throughout this process and we're open to your your feedback and and thoughts. Um I know engagements are really important topic for everyone. Um but utilizing our our Let's Talk um page to do online surveys kind of throughout the process um and then of course in-person tabling and pop-ups, um different um interactive things at community events, info displays at City Hall, um and then really utilizing kind of visioning sessions or focused conversation, open house style meetings around different community priorities or topics, um as well as community dialogues with with different community groups and um and then that community advisory committee that I had mentioned. And so, um this just kind of details um what staff was kind of proposing at each phase um and really trying to tailor it back to kind of what is the kind of key objective and what are the key questions of each phase. So, um as we're doing different different engagement events, um you know, sometimes it might be really specific on a topic or more general, but regardless of that it's still kind of tying back to these key questions that will help inform us throughout the process. So, you know, phase one and phase two are really trying to understand I would say the you know, the aspirations, the kind of expectations that we have from from community members, kind of what are those like core values um for community. And then um kind of in 2027 uh kind of diving into those different policy options and getting more specific around, you know, what what should the city do to address XYZ topic over the next 20 years and then starting to get more at some of those um actionable steps um in the plan. >> [snorts] >> Um I've mentioned this a couple times already, but just want to reiterate um part of this work in our 2050 cycle um is to really align um with ongoing city initiatives and plans and and making sure that we're coordinating those efforts. So, a key one will be on the kind of next round of the Bloomington Tomorrow Together Strategic Plan um will be kind of occurring during the same process. So, um really uh wanting to make sure that we're strengthening the the clarity and consistency in decision-making across these plans, you know, reducing kind of duplication, particularly engagement. So, our comprehensive plan team isn't asking community questions and then 6 months later the BTT group is asking those same questions of community. Really trying to avoid that um and making more clear that the engagement that we're doing can inform multiple plans and is part of this larger um larger mission and vision. And then for all of you on different boards and commissions and for City Council, just wanted to highlight um some of the, you know, one one way that you can be plugged into this process here is in kind of in your more formal kind of board or commission capacity um is really being able to review and provide comment on different elements and components of the plans. So, just as an example, the HRA board I envision would be um more involved in kind of the housing chapter and housing element, Port Authority in that new economic development element, our Sustainability Commission in the climate element and the kind of coordination with the Climate Action Plan um that is also going to be occurring during the same time period. Um you know, lots of coordination with staff to ensure that really that Climate Action Plan, a lot of those components can really just be um copied and pasted into the um the comprehensive plan um and meeting a lot of those same goals. Um our Community Advisory Committee um really focused on the goals of uh Bloomington 2050 in the draft plan. Um the Planning Commission um I'd envision as a little bit more involved in some of the more general kind of value statements, goals, strategies, and then different topics kind of throughout the out the uh process and really recommending action on the final plan to the City Council. And then the City Council uh City Council members ultimately um kind of reviewing and adopting the value statements um goals and strategies and adopting that final plan and then kind of directing staff to send that to to Met Council for final adoption. And then just some things more in general as you all are also live in and or work um or recreate in Bloomington, um just some more general ways to be involved in this process is just encouraging you all to be um champions of Bloomington 2050 and spreading the word within your networks, um sharing the value and importance of long range planning, um you know, definitely continue to check out our let's talk page and then participate in those online surveys and online engagement as well as attending those in person engagement events as well. And we always say as a bonus, you know, bring two friends with you for bonus points. And then and then of course reviewing and providing feedback on the plan as as drafts become available. So I don't I don't want to spend too much time here, but also just wanted to give a really high level overview of some trends and some demographic data points just to I think help kind of frame the conversation kind of getting you in that mindset of how to think about the future a little bit. And you know, was kind of already brought up in the OHO discussion and um kind of different levels of certainty or uncertainty in thinking about the future and how long can these plans like really last or how do you account for everything? So of course that's part of the the challenge of planning for the future is just kind of embracing that uncertainty, kind of leaning into the uncomfortability of, you know, doing the best that we can to make some best educated guesses, but of course things will will change and we won't ever know for certain what may or may not happen. But just at a high level here just kind of showing, you know, some of the buckets or like areas of things that were going to be thinking about throughout this process or, you know, changes to the economy, different environmental impacts, public health impacts, you know, technological advancements, particularly I think about AI and data centers and kind of what does that mean for the future as it relates to the economy, environment, public health, and then of course demographic shifts of things not only happening in Bloomington, but in in Minnesota and in the United States more generally as our population continues to age and gets more racially and ethnically diverse. And what does that mean to for the city and ensuring we're providing um a safe and inclusive services to to residents. Uh but so just uh wanted to touch on a few demographics. Part of the comprehensive plan will include a community profile that will go into more detail than what I'm showing here, but just wanted to um share some highlights. So this is looking at our population, households, and average household size. So the the blue bars are population, the orange is um households. So you can see um kind of at the bottom here of each slide, I've just tried to show kind of over the last 10 years since we've done the 2040 plan maybe what are some trends or what is the change. Um and for the population, we've seen about a 2.2% increase in population over the last 10 years. And the other thing I would highlight um as part of the system statement from Met Council is they also do population projections for us. Um and so part of that is, you know, they're projecting um by 2050 a population of 103,400 people. And so part of the work of the comprehensive plan is figuring out, well, how do we what are we going to do? If that's 11,000 more people now or or uh you know, almost 5,000 more households now than we currently have. Where where are they going to live? Um what kind of housing do they need? Um you know, a variety of things. So that that's part of our work, too. Um just for some racial demographics, this um is from the American Community Survey. So this is looking at it um citywide, about 65% of the population is white, uh 12% black or African American, 11% Hispanic or Latino, and then kind of goes from there with um Asian, some other races, two or more races. Um Part of, you know, looking at it citywide only tells so much. And so this um uh chart here just shows the percentage of non-white pop- population by a tract. Um and so the darker shades of green um in in some of the in this map in the subsequent maps just means a higher number. Um so if you're seeing a darker shade of green, that means it's a higher number. Um and then just kind of looking over the last 10 years, uh about a 30.5% increase in in the non-white population in in Bloomington. Um looking at age, um this is broken up by kind of age groups by gender. And so just uh orange is female, blue is male. It's uh just um is one way to read this. Um just under 8% of Bloomington's population are males age 30 to 34. Um so this just kind of shows a breakdown. Um here I just that I think the main takeaway is our median age is 41. Um just about 20% of our population is under 18 years old, and then about 20% of our population is 65 and older. Um just some quick housing stats, not at the level of the consultants for uh OHA, but uh just looking at our total occupied housing units, about 65% of those are owner-occupied housing units, and 35% renter-occupied. Uh median gross rent kind of across all unit types and all bedrooms, um $1,440. Um from our 2025 assessing report, the median sale price for a single-family residential home was $427,300. And then um this chart is looking at units in the structure. So essentially half of all housing units in the city are single-family detached homes, and then the other half are some kind of attached or multi-family units. So um about 7% are town homes, just under 1% are duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes, and then about 40% of our our housing stock are multi-family, and in this case, the Met Council defines that as five or more units in a single structure. And then just one kind of trend over the last 10 years, there's been about an 18.5% increase in multi-family homes in Bloomington. Um for income, the city citywide median income is $93,211, and then here again, just breaking that up by census tract to kind of see how that that varies in geography across the city. Um in a similar fashion, the poverty rate, we have about 9.2% poverty rate. This is again broken down by census tract, and I think one of the um key trends or things that should be aware of kind of over the last 10 years, we've seen about a 37% increase in population living in poverty or I you know, indicating that they're below the poverty line. Looking at employment, this is from the Minnesota DEED, and kind of looking at those larger industry sectors and the number of jobs. So our, you know, top areas are in the kind of professional and business services, and then retail trade, kind of transportation, utility, warehousing jobs second, and then education and health services. Um our Port Authority does also track um the employers in Bloomington. So our top five employers are Mall of America, that includes Mall of America staff and all of the tenants and their employees in Mall of America, HealthPartners, the Bloomington School District, Seagate Technology, and Donaldson Company. And then um just some interesting stats over the last 10 years, there's been actually about a 2.6% decrease in the number of jobs, but then kind of interesting, just a very slight increase in the number of business establishments, so kind of indicating that um you know there's likely more kind of like smaller establishments and smaller businesses that have have kind of grown or locating in in Bloomington. And then finally just looked at school enrollment. So this is from the 2025 enrollment report from Bloomington public schools. So over the last 10 years there's been a about a 4.5% decrease in students enrolled. You can see the drop here in 2020 and 2021 was the pandemic and then enrollment hasn't quite gotten back to pre-pandemic levels. I don't want to speak for the school district but just that's this is also more of kind of a national trend of enrollment kind of dropping and not getting back to pre-pandemic levels of as students had to go fully online and and either stayed online, went to homeschooling, other methods or students that couldn't participate kind of in online learning maybe were kind of lost in the shuffle or not quite back in school after. And then just another data point about 44% of students in Bloomington public schools are eligible for free and reduced school lunch. And so I think I know that was a lot of information relatively fast but just wanted to open it up if you all had any feedback or questions as we're kind of embarking on this comprehensive plan process. >> Thank you Dakota. Questions? >> Councilmember Lomen. I think I got it now. Okay. So I and I look at I think it's page 144 the Bloomington 2050 elements and I know I look at the ones that have been been added there and I I recognize that in and I'm I'm happy to see we've added climate elements and and other things there. And I know that our community health and and services elements and really throughout the entire comprehensive plan, we really kind of look at the issue of demographics. You know, you've really put a lot of demographics up there and I just, you know, you look at cities like Vancouver, Washington or or Charlotte, North Carolina, they have really taken the issue of equity and inclusion and kind of made it its own chapter. And I just think that, you know, especially when you look at Bloomington, you know, with that 44% reduced um um you know, you know, uh thank you for lunch and and for breakfast and all of that, you know, you look out to 2050 what our city looks like and then we just, you know, we just saw earlier you know, in terms of the housing stock and what that looks like in the city. And also that declining, I wonder if it makes some sense to to really kind of focus in on that to try to make sure that it's not just dispersed across all of the different elements, but there's something that concentrates and really has a conversation with that. So, I just wonder if staff has looked at that. I know, you know, in the Twin Cities that's not what other other cities are doing, but I am really curious about, you know, what cities are being successful and if we really kind of look to try to see if we can look at that directly. >> Yeah. Um Mayor Council member Lomen, yeah, thank you for that question. Um yeah, I think some of the initial conversations that I've I've had with city staff kind of in our office of equity and workplace culture um have been kind of I think there's some opportunity in that community health and services element kind of at some of the you know, community assets kind of creating that sense of identity. It was kind of meant to be a chapter where it's um some of those other services of the city that aren't maybe directly reflected in things like land use or housing that are just much more kind of straightforward from that council and those requirements. Um you know, it'll definitely be a theme across the the plan, but certainly welcome that feedback too if it should be its own more designated chapter, but I think there's an opportunity in that community health and services element to provide more distinct >> fear about that with the community health part, there's really important health elements that need to be addressed there and I think that the you know, really the equity and inclusion piece is is something that can kind of go beyond that and so if it's its own thing, it really allows you to kind of say I'd be afraid to kind of uh dampen that or or kind of kind of go into it. And I get we that's what we we've kind of placed it, but I I wonder if it makes some sense to pull it out. >> Sure. >> Council member, I suggest if you have examples from Vancouver or Charlotte, forward those on. Yep. >> Okay. Yeah, that's perfect. Yeah, thank you. >> Yep. >> Yeah. That sounds great. Thank you. >> I would just want to second that a little stronger language. It definitely should be its own. Um because across the country it's been diluted and that's you know been very unfortunate. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Yep. Any questions or feedback for Dakota? All right. Thanks for being here with us this evening. >> Yeah. >> Uh good luck and you're just starting this journey. >> Yeah. >> Uh it's a long one, I know and uh it's a lot of work, so I appreciate you taking it on. It's a big one. >> Yeah, well, thank you all. Yep. Uh and you'll be hearing from me much much more throughout the process, so >> I know. >> All right, thank you all. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. >> Our final item of business tonight, folks, is item 1.3 our city performance city manager performance evaluation report. As I mentioned earlier, we we did this last night and we are officially required to report out at our next meeting and this is an official meeting of the Bloomington City Council, so I'm required to report out, so I will go through it quickly not to keep you here. Uh last night on Monday, March 9th, we met in closed session to perform the 4-month performance review of our city manager, Zack Walker. The entire city council was there, and we took a look at Mr. Walker's performance over the past 4 months based on eight different categories: transition and onboarding effectiveness, relationship with city council and governance partnership, leadership style and organizational culture, strategic alignment and early execution, financial stewardship and organizational readiness, communications and community engagement, equity, inclusion, and values alignment, and progress on key challenges. Each of the council members had the opportunity to rate uh, Mr. Walker on each of those areas, and then offer uh, key strengths observed and suggestions or areas for growth and adjustment. And ultimately, each of the council members uh, did all agree, actually independently of each other, uh, to to rate Mr. Walker's work over the past 4 months as fully meets expectations for initial review. So, congratulations on fully meeting expectations for initial review, Zack. Well done. And that is uh, item 1.3, and we're done with that. >> [clears throat] >> We are done with our agenda, and I think uh, if we have to everybody adjourn all individually, I think we can adjourn en masse. Let's do that. How about that? We're going to roll the dice, and we're going to adjourn en masse. Uh, I'll make a motion that we adjourn tonight. Council member Robertson with a second to adjourn this evening. Everyone in the room from our our commissions, all in favor, please signify by saying I. >> I. >> Opposed? >> All right. >> Opposed? All right, we are adjourned. Thank you all very much. Thank you very much for being here tonight.