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DRAFT the historic homes have typically been, where the garage was built separated or sometimes even later or after the home. He pointed out that this issue comes up possibly more at the staff level than at the Commission level. He noted that there are certain size lots where putting something in the back just does not work. He stated that what the Task Force decided was to acknowledge that fact and put in a minimum width for requiring it to be in the back, starting at 50 feet, which, after some questioning by the public about the practicality of that, the Task Force raised that minimum width to 60 feet. Mr. Dolan stated that after thinking about this at the staff level, staff wanted to show some diagrams of garages as to how it would work on a 50-foot lot, differing from the Task Force recommendation of 60 feet. He then displayed a slide comparing two diagrams: If the garage were to be inside the house, it would be located right in the front where it would be easy to get at, and what is left in front of the house is 14 feet of living space to do a window and a door and present something nice to the street; and then maybe have a nice garage door set back a couple of feet. He noted that there are tricks that architects use, but questioned if that 14 feet of living space really all that great relative to requiring it to be in the back and then getting the full 31-foot width of living space across the front. He indicated that this is just a question that staff is posing that is different than the Task Force recommendation. 7. Clean-up based on other proposals. Mr. Dolan stated that there were other amendments that had to made to the Specific Plan just as a matter of clean-up, based on the other proposals: The implementation section includes all kinds of things in the Downtown Specific Plan about establishing a National Register Historic District and then utilizing the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Certification Program. He noted that a Local District is not being proposed, much less a National District; staff figured it might be time to take those out of the Specific Plan because that is clearly not where the City is headed. Mr. Dolan then presented the Downtown Design Guideline amendments. He stated that these are overlaps between the policies and the design guidelines, and the Task Force asked that there be consistency between the policies and the design guidelines. He indicated that this required a series of changes to the design guidelines just to be consistent with the changes in the Specific Plan that were discussed earlier. He stated that at an earlier meeting this morning, the Task Force was accused of having now turned the guidelines into mandatory elements where they were currently just guidance. He explained that this is true in some cases because if the Specific Plan says in its policy, "Thou shall do it," then it would confuse the issue if in the design guidelines, it says it might not have to be done. He noted that whenever the Task Force felt very strongly that something had to be a "shall" and not a "should," that "shall" was extended to the guidelines just so there is no inconsistency. He further noted that there are still some "should,s" in the guidelines, and so it is a mix of both. He clarified that only a few select topics and not all were changed like that. DRAFT EXCERPT: PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES, 11/13/2013 Page 6 of 28