The City of Hillsboro met on Tuesday, May 4 and made a long-awaited decision on the topic of container houses.
Hillsboro City Administrator told the council that the Planning Commission held a public hearing on Thursday, April 28 to consider the proposed A-H Alternative Construction Housing District. The commission voted unanimously to advance the A-H district to the City Council.
Stiles explained that Felix Ramirez, the developer of the shipping container homes, attended the meeting and acknowledged that he supported this method despite it delaying his proposed project. The A-H District is an overlay that would allow for alternative construction methods for residential homes, including using shipping containers, barndominiums and any other alternative construction type, in most residential districts in town.
The process requires a developer to apply for the overlay before building an alternative construction home. The developer will have to provide a detailed site plan, final proposed visuals and go through a public hearing process. The Planning Commission would have an opportunity to evaluate the proposal and weigh factors including how the proposed homes would fit into the existing neighborhood. The Planning Commission would then make a recommendation to the City Council for final action.
The council discussed it and considered recommendations from the Planning Commission and decided that rules for regular home construction all will apply as well. Some of this includes mounting the home on a permanent foundation to provide stability, having siding, roofing, off-street parking, landscaping and more.
“The intention of the A-H district is to establish a process for evaluating unique housing requests.
That process determines how the proposed home will impact the neighborhood and puts in
additional measures to evaluate safety. While the immediate request is for shipping containers, the proposed district can apply to all types of alternative construction into the future,” said Stiles. “This provides a pathway to construct alternative housing rather than just outright rejecting any non-traditional approach to housing.”
In other business, the council:
n learned that the Planning Commission recommended changing the zoning to the MB Foundation building to allow an addition to the building. The council approved this which means a garage and smaller apartment still on the property will be moved or razed. The council also learned that the Foundation plans on paving the alleyway to the end of the property as they did with the original building project.
n heard from Stiles that the largest issue the City of Hillsboro faces in 2023 is the unknown costs of inflation. He explained that employee wages need to be addressed as cost of living has continued to accelerate.
“In 2022 we provided a 2% cost of living adjustment. During summer 2021 that was approximately what the true cost of living was, but by the end of 2021 that had jumped to 6.2%. Since that point cost
of living has increased an additional 2% placing wage growth off CPI (consumer price index)
pace by 4%. If the remainder of 2022 mirrors what we saw in 2021, by January 2023 wages
would be 9.6% off the pace of CPI indicator for inflation. Obviously, it be would difficult to increase
wages by 9.6%; that translates to an estimated ongoing cost of $125,000 per year across all the
funds. However, the city should make some effort to keep pace with inflation to retain our
employees in an increasingly competitive job market,” said Stiles.
He also said that inflation creates a lot of questions for items that are used for normal operations. There has been difficulty sourcing some normally common items and that shortage also creates price jumps.
n learned that the sales tax collections for March were 12 percent above the same month in 2021. For the year sales tax is 24% higher than the previous year.
“We continue to be approximately 36% above the five-year rolling average. At the current pace, I would estimate our sales tax collections will end the year at $950,000 or more,” said Stiles.