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Should Floor Area Ratio be adjusted for highly sloped sites? Review of recent hillside projects has indicated a concern regarding the size of homes on visible hillsides. The argument has been made that a home on a flat one acre site is less visually prominent than the same size home on a highly sloped site of the same size. Therefore, when floor area ratios (FARs) are adopted for developments, these should be adjusted to account for slope. This could be accomplished through hillside protection regulations by eliminating or discounting land area over a certain slope for the purposes of calculating FAR. A further option could require the designation of a development envelope for each site which would be a less environmentally sensitive area within which all built structures and some amount of level yard area would be contained. An FAR based on the development envelope rather than the entire lot has been another strategy for controlling visible building size. Options: Calculate allowable house size based on the entire parcel, eliminate highly sloped areas from the FAR calculation, or base the FAR on the development envelope rather than the entire parcel. How would slope be calculated? Calculating slope can depend on the specific formula used and the two points selected from which to measure slope. For example, selecting points at the base and top of a hillside may result in an overall average slope of 25 percent between the base and top, but there may be limited areas in between those points that would exceed 25 percent. Furthermore, there could be uncertainties and disagreements as to what constitutes the base or toe of slope on a hillside. The City's geographical information system (GIS) uses a grid system overlaid on a topographical map that calculates and identifies the slope within each grid. (The grid size used on the attached maps is 20 ft. by 20 ft.) The Initiative does not define how slope would be calculated, but this could be accomplished through hillside protection regulations, either by adopting the City's GIS slope maps as the official slope maps or by adopting a specific slope calculation methodology. Options: Calculate slope in a way defined through the adoption of hillside protection regulations, or by adopting the City's GIS slope maps. Process Options: The discussion of hillside regulations is related to the next item on the agenda concerning Council options for proceeding with the Hillside Initiative. Staff is aware that the issues presented above are complex and require study and discussion with Initiative proponents, stakeholders, decision makers, and others. In the short run, the Council may wish to request afollow-up staff report providing more information on potential hillside issues and their impacts on the community. If so, the Council may wish to direct staff to prepare such a report for a future agenda. If the Council decides that further hillside regulations are necessary to implement, clarify, or expand upon a potential Hillside Initiative, then it may wish to consider the public process to accomplish this Page8of9