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November 22, 2019
MOAB CITY COUNCIL MINUTES
SPECIAL CITY COUNCIL MEETING
November 22, 2019
The Moab City Council held its regular meeting on the above date in the Council Chambers at
the Moab City Center, located at 217 East Center Street. An audio recording of the evening
meeting is archived at: https://www.utah.gov/pmn/index.html and a video recording is
archived at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= 7LJ3b8HPu2c&t=25s .
Regular Meeting—Call to Order and Attendance:
Mayor Niehaus called the meeting to order at 10:03 AM and led the Pledge of Allegiance. In
attendance were Councilmembers Rani Derasary, Mike Duncan, Tawny Knuteson-Boyd, Karen
Guzman-Newton. Councilmember Kalen Jones was absent. Staff in attendance were City
Manager Joel Linares, Assistant City Manager Carly Castle, City Attorney Laurie Simonson, City
Planner Nora Shepard, City Recorder Sommar Johnson and Deputy Recorder Joey Allred. Three
members of the public and media were present.
Approval of Minutes:
Councilmember Knutson-Boyd moved to approve the minutes of the November 12, 2019
Regular City Council meeting and November 18, 2019 Special City Council meeting.
Councilmember Guzman-Newton seconded the motion. The motion carried 4-0 aye, with
Councilmembers Derasary, Jones, Knuteson-Boyd, Guzman-Newton and Duncan voting aye.
Proposed Ordinance 2019—30: An Ordinance Amending the City of Moab
Municipal Code, Sections 17.21 C-2 and Commercial Residential Zone and 17.31
RC Resort Commercial Zone to Allow New Overnight Accommodations, Subject to
Revised Development Standards:
Discussion and review of Planning Commission recommendation: City Planner
Shepard updated Council on the Planning Commission’s most recent meeting and what subjects
the Commission would like Council’s direction on. The Commission requested clarity from
Council regarding metering of new Overnight Accommodations. The Commission is in favor of
metering but are unsure of the best way to go about it. Should they limit the number of rooms,
developments, square feet, etc. per year? Should the projects pending the lifting of the
moratorium, but have not been constructed, be counted in the first year’s allocation? The
Commission feels that they need something in place to control the amount of growth and rate of
change each year. The Commission also requested direction from Council regarding the
maximum size of projects as well as commercial use within each project. Shepard told Council
that the Commission had said that Overnight Accommodations in the RC zone could be two
stories and incentivize the inclusion of commercial uses beyond what is normally associated
with a hotel, such as space for daycare or farmer’s market. Development could build an
additional story if they put in 20,000 square feet of commercial space or they could get an
additional 20,000 square feet for overnight accommodations. Another option to get an
additional story and/or square footage would be to provide affordable housing over and above
the assured housing or donate land upon which the housing could be built.
Mayor Niehaus thanked staff and the Planning Commission for all of their work and then
commented on points of the proposed revised development standards.
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November 22, 2019
Energy: Mayor Niehaus said that Net Zero certification is usually performance based,
but performance can’t be measured until it has been used. She wondered if the City could
require a letter from a solar contractor instead, showing that the solar sizing is built to 80%
efficiency. Councilmember Knutson-Boyd wanted to know what the City could do if a
contractor’s estimate of performance isn’t accurate? The City Building Inspector has the skill set
to be able to review a solar plan and make a good decision that the load is enough.
Councilmember Guzman-Newton asked if the City could offer incentives toward energy
efficiency like increased density according to the level of energy efficiency, such as silver, gold
and platinum. Councilmember Duncan was dubious that 80% efficiency is doable for a hotel and
asked if there were other communities that have made the 80% energy efficiency workable.
Councilmember Guzman-Newton said that Boulder, Colorado is at 100% energy efficiency.
Water: There is not a requirement to get water rights for rainwater catchment up to a
certain amount. Shepard will remove, “if necessary, applicant shall apply for water rights from
the State of Utah Division of Water Rights to meet their maximum feasible catchment volume.”
Slow the flow water fixtures are already required.
Shepard stated that these are pretty cutting-edge standards and that in six months to a year,
they will need to figure out what works, what doesn’t and what they may want to adjust. The City
might want to back off on some of the restrictions if they are problematic for developers to meet.
Councilmember Guzman-Newton suggested that they incentivize water use/conservation.
Mayor Niehaus said that a builder would find it helpful to know exactly what is required. She
likes having baselines for energy and water because it makes it very clear to the developer. There
was discussion regarding what is realistic that the City can provide and still be legal
Linares stated that once Council decides what they want, staff will research the matter and bring
it back to Council to recommend changes that will make it better from a legal standpoint as well
as the standpoint of the builder and the city. It is too wide open for staff to be able to do that at
this point.
Mayor Niehaus said that there are potential flagged lots on the Resort Commercial frontage
roads that have certain site configuration requirements that don’t make sense. She suggested
that they include an exception to the siting requirements. If they aren’t built fronting directly
on the main artery, those requirements aren’t necessary. She said that perhaps staff should
have the ability to waive certain site configuration requirements if they are not applicable
because the development is not on a main road.
Councilmember Derasary stated that she listened to yesterday’s Planning Commission
meeting and read the correspondence that has come in on this matter. She is concerned with
the time pressure and there were a lot of comments about all of this moving very fast and
everyone wishing they had more time. She wanted to know if the goal was to just move the
RC zone forward or both the RC and C-2 zones. She also said that the City is still getting
questions about why they are not doing overlays and asked if that could be reclarified. She
said that she was in favor of metering and hoped to discuss it a bit more. She tries to revisit
why Council did the moratorium in the first place and how dialogues with the community say
that there should be some net benefit to the community if/when Council brings back
overnight accommodations. She said that she had a long list of comments and questions, so
she recommended that she meet with Shepard one on one because a lot of her questions are
detail oriented.
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November 22, 2019
Councilmember Duncan said that he also watched last night’s Planning Commission meeting
and said that he agrees with what was said regarding the timeline because he doesn’t think that
this is “going to happen this year, as much as we might wish.” He also wants to have a public
hearing as only two people showed up to talk at last night’s meeting. Linares said that staff
would like to have more meetings and had discussed having another public hearing on
December 10th.
Mayor Niehaus asked Councilmembers Duncan and Derasary if the feeling that this was moving
too fast was coming from citizens who are anti-hotel. Councilmember Derasary said that she
heard it from several Planning Commission members yesterday and from residents who say they
don’t know how the City is going to absorb the 38%. Linares asked where the 38% number came
from because he keeps hearing it in the community. Derasary said that it was in an article in the
Times Independent and the Sun and it was talking about all of the vested units in the City and
County and the number of units that they currently have and then the increase. Linares said that
how the state calculates overnight accommodations the number of rooms that are coming online
are nowhere near 38%. Moab’s is a much smaller number and he thinks that it can be
misleading. If you are just comparing the new hotel rooms to the existing hotel rooms, 38% is
probably accurate. He is concerned that people believe that that 38% is on top of everything else.
He will have the Treasurer Department get the correct figure for Council. Councilmember
Derasary went on to discuss overlays. Council voted not to use overlays, but people are
concerned that Council hasn’t had enough time to draw up good standards. Mayor Niehaus
stated that Council had already made that decision and to revisit it now is complicated for staff
and the Planning Commission.
Councilmember Duncan took back his turn to speak and said that he had complained about the
lack of overlays at an earlier meeting and Shepard talked him out of it because some sort of
metering could be implemented. He had also talked about a build-out capacity. The
arbitrariness of overlays is unfair to applicants and messy for Council. He believes that Council
should only address Resort Commercial (RC) zones at this time. He also talked about the
uniqueness of Moab and how everything gets funneled right through town because you can’t go
around the way that you can in other communities. He feels that when he is up for re-election in
two years, people are going to applaud all of the environmental stuff, but he believes that the
main thing that people will judge him as a success or a failure on is traffic congestion.
Councilmember Guzman-Newton clarified that Duncan wants metering and transportation.
Councilmember Knutson-Boyd said that in the interest of time, she would yield her time to
Councilmember Guzman-Newton and would speak with Shepard at a later time.
Councilmember Guzman-Newton said that she wanted to talk about metering because it
sounded like a big topic from last night’s meeting. She would love to see if they can make that
happen and to have the builds in the pipeline included in the 2020 metering. She addressed the
commercial space requirement for hotels. She would like to have the definition of what that
means clearly spelled out. She thinks a mix of commercial units would be great but wants to
make sure that what gets placed there provides more than the forgotten toothbrush. She is for
having very high standards and that it is very clearly put into code so that Council isn’t deciding
on who gets to come in or out. She went on to talk about parking. She wondered if the City was
requiring enough parking as there will no longer be any parking on the North Corridor end of
Main Street. Shepard suggested that oversized parking should also be required.
Discussion ensued regarding civic space. Councilmember Knuteson-Boyd defined civic spaces as
somewhere that can hold public events like concerts and farmers markets as well as private
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November 22, 2019
events like weddings. Mayor Niehaus liked the idea of daycare as an option in the list for civic
space or community benefit. Extensive discussion ensued regarding options that could be listed
for social civic needs and/or additional affordable housing and how to incentivize developers to
put in the kind of uses the community feels have been left out due to overnight
accommodations. Linares recommended that they let staff include both and bring it back before
Council at a later meeting.
There was discussion regarding whether they should just focus on RC zones for now or include
C-2 zones as well. It was decided to focus on RC zones and address the C-2 zones at a later date.
Metering: Councilmember Duncan said that he had spoken with Councilmember Guzman-
Newton after last night’s meeting and had made some notes. He said, “the idea would be to
create a growth overnight accommodations limit, or goal,” and gave examples of hypothetical
scenarios of how that might work. The main concern was what do to with applications that come
in that are the right project size, but there aren’t enough rooms or square footage, etc. left in that
year’s metering limit for the project size. The question was, does the Council queue that project
for next year and what is the legality of doing so? That drove the question of, if that project goes
into the queue, does it hold up smaller projects that would fit within the metering limit or
should they let newer smaller sized project go through while the larger project continues to wait
until the next year’s metering starts? Linares said that staff will need direction to be able to draft
policy for that. They will need to know how Council wants to do the metering. Do they want to
count square footage, the number of rooms, do a pillow count or count water and/or sewer
hookup counts? There was discussion regarding larger parcels and if metering would encourage
those developers to subdivide the property. It was concluded that Council wants metering and
the City will need to figure out how to make that work. Mayor Niehaus said that they are already
metering overnight accommodations in a way by having stricter requirements and she is less
concerned about metering by number and is more interested in metering by what they want to
see. Councilmember Knuteson-Boyd said that metering means that they have to have something
to measure. Councilmember Derasary said that she knew that Landmark had used other cities as
examples on what could be done but wondered if any of those cities included metering. Staff will
look at other cities that have used metering to see what might and might not have worked. She
said that people who have been writing to Council are asking if the City’s ultimate goal is to have
a thriving community that can sustain itself long-term or is it to maximize the profit for a
limited number of people in the short-term. Linares said that it is the staff’s understanding that
their goal is the community in the long-term and are trying to balance what is exaction. Staff is
always trying to make sure that the exactions can be upheld, and the takings are enforceable.
Councilmember Derasary asked Linares if it would make sense to follow up with another
meeting and there was discussion about what dates would work and how important it is for the
public to be able to attend and comment. There will be a meeting for further discussion on
December 2, 2019 at 6:00 p.m. and Planning Commission will be asked to join Council for that
meeting. A public hearing will be held on December 10, 2019.
Adjournment: Councilmember Knuteson-Boyd moved to adjourn the meeting.
Councilmember Duncan seconded the motion. The motion carried 5-0 aye, with
Councilmembers Derasary, Jones, Knuteson-Boyd, Duncan and Guzman-Newton voting aye.
Mayor Niehaus adjourned the meeting at 10:23 PM.
APPROVED: __________________ ATTEST: ___________________
Emily S. Niehaus, Mayor Sommar Johnson, City Recorder