Q&A with the Flagstaff Planning Director, Tiffany Antol, about a multi-family housing development, Towns at Lone Tree (Tract 22 of Pine Canyon).

As a homeowner in Pinnacle Pines and a full-time Flagstaff resident, I am strongly opposed to this development proposed for tract 22. The reason for my opposition should be obvious, the need for additional student housing in Flagstaff is non-existent as the current number of dedicated student housing in Flagstaff currently exceeds demand by a large margin. This is not taking into account other non-dedicated student housing where students live such as general apartment complexes, condos, single family homes, and townhomes either rented or purchased for this use. Further, with the advent of the COVID-19 and future on-campus enrollments for NAU & CCC dropping by an estimated 25% in favor of less expensive on-line classes, this need is further diminished.
I am not opposed to a more practical development for tract 22 such as affordable housing which is desperately needed in the Flagstaff area. As several groups and students at NAU have pointed out, most have to leave Flagstaff after graduation simply because the cost of housing is absolutely prohibitive for those entering a competitive job market. The vision of Flagstaff should be one of balance and need for ALL Flagstaff residents and not exclusively the domain for those with deep pockets and unlimited resources.
In closing, my question is simple: Why another student housing complex, in an area a good distance from campus, which will further burden infrastructure already deemed by the city to be sub-standard (JW Powell & Lone Tree roads), when there is already a very sizable surplus of such hosing closer to campus and closer to adequate infrastructure? Why is affordable housing, a position the city is supposedly in favor of, not being considered for tract 22 future development? Finally, why is this proposed project even being considered as it would both violate certain provisions within the developers agreement, and, does not meet City of Flagstaff criteria regarding parking.

Thank you for your time and consideration, have a good day
Ted Wojtasik
Pinnacle Pines Homeowner

What is the planning department doing to finally bring this senseless proposal to a halt? What are you doing to encourage VALEO to finally reach out to the Pinnacle Pines community? The silence has been deafening. Further . . .

In her May 15th letter to the NAU community, Rita Cheng provided a disheartening assessment of the revenue losses and budget reductions at the university as a result of sharply declining enrollment:

“Even before COVID-19, colleges and universities were facing unprecedented enrollment challenges as a result of demographic changes, shifting attitudes about the value of a college degree, and declining numbers of high school graduates. COVID-19 and the economic effects of the pandemic have exacerbated these challenges, resulting in unforeseen expenses and revenue losses. NAU is not immune. We have been carefully evaluating the impact of these circumstances on our university and have been developing various budget options. As I have shared in earlier messages, we will be financially stretched moving forward, with estimates of a revenue shortfall approaching $100 million, representing nearly 20 percent of our overall operating budget. Keep in mind that the proportion of our total revenue received from tuition, fees, and room and board has increased significantly over the past ten years. In our commitment to transparency, we will provide updates to our community on the status of our planning efforts and implementation of action steps to address the very real challenges we face, both in the short- and long-term.”

The Arizona Daily Sun article published today shed more light on the dire situation at NAU in the face of steep enrollment declines and should serve as a warning to student housing developers like VALEO that are set to add thousands of beds to the plethora of existing high vacancy student housing in Flagstaff. Clearly, now is not the time.

The Towns on Lone Tree proposal by VALEO could not come about at a more inappropriate time and in a more inappropriate location, and the planning department should put a stop to it now for the good of the city, its citizens, and the many adversely impacted residents in adjoining Pinnacle Pines and Pine Canyon.

**With NAU's projected losses of $250 million, potential loss of hundreds of on-campus jobs, and the probability of 25% lower student enrollment for the fall, how can the City justify and approve the building of yet another monstrous student housing development?

**While the other student housing developments are not operating at capacity, and two more already under construction, where is the NEED for Towns on Lone Tree?

**The City has received so many negative comments about this development from the citizenry (remember us? we are the one who live here year over year and who SHOULD be considered when making these decisions) and from civic and environmental groups.

**And here's the crux of it: It would be easy for you to either NOT APPROVE or to help us get this before City Council - because of the discrepancy in the DA. The DA is not clear cut as to make this a slam dunk approval.
Approving this project will be a poor decision with ramifications that will reverberate for decades.

DO THE RIGHT THING.

Regards,
Mindy Degraff

Who's going to tell VALEO and what is the city going to do when we have vacant, bankrupt student housing developments? What is the plan?? 62% of Towns on Lone Tree are 4BR/4BA and 5BR/5BA units which are not easily convertible to marketable or attainable apartments.
Published 5/21/20 front page of ARIZONA DAILY SUN:
Employees are facing the consequences as Northern Arizona University is making significant budget cuts for the start of a new fiscal year in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Losses are estimated from $30 million to $100 million, NAU President Rita Cheng shared in an April 17 letter to the university community. This equates to almost 20% of the university’s operating budget, she explained in another letter last week, and is a result of “unprecedented enrollment challenges as a result of demographic changes, shifting attitudes about the value of a college degree, and declining numbers of high school graduates.” COVID-19 has worsened the situation, Cheng said.

In a letter from the Office of the Provost to university department leaders, dated April 24, departments were asked to adjust their Fall 2020 budgets to schedule for “25% lower enrollment and/or personnel expenses, which will likely result in fewer faculty next year.” An attached disclaimer said these numbers and instructions could be altered.

On May 4, in a Faculty Senate meeting, Provost Diane Stearns broke down enrollment decreases by college, with three experiencing the largest changes: the College of Arts and Letters is down 35%; the College of the Environment, Forestry, and Natural Sciences, 27%; and the W.A. Franke College of Business, 22%.

“This is not a financial situation that can simply be weathered through minor adjustments and temporary fixes to our operating budget,” NAU spokesperson Kimberly Ott told the Arizona Daily Sun. “We need to make decisions that recognize this new operational reality and ensure fiscal sustainability for our institution that will allow NAU to continue to meet its strategic goals of student access and success.”

Ott said all NAU programs and departments have been asked to develop a range of options and percentages of cuts.

Union response
As employees began to lose their jobs in efforts to improve the budget, the University Union of Northern Arizona (UUNA) responded, forming both a letter to the President and Provost addressing the university’s response to such challenges as well as an online petition to stop layoffs, which had more than 800 signatures as of Wednesday evening.

The letter outlined challenges being faced by the university, including the enrollment drop, the state’s projected deficit, the loss of faculty — especially at the part-time and non-tenure-track levels — and changes to classes when campus reopens in the fall.

“This is not the time to use layoffs to address a longer-term challenge,” UUNA’s executive board told the Arizona Daily Sun in an email. “The repercussions of layoffs, particularly of those that make the least, will have ripple effects on the Flagstaff community and other communities we serve as this will add to the growing unemployment and pressures on communities already experiencing financial and health stressors.”

UUNA said the Provost predicted cutting approximately 300 full-time faculty on top of other cuts, but no other predictions have been made regarding cuts to other staff or graduate employees. The executive board also said almost every department has notified their part-time and contingent faculty that they will not be rehired.

Ott said separately, “All positions are under consideration, not just faculty.”

The union expects more dramatic cuts in the coming weeks and has called for the consideration of more equitable measures, like furloughs, pay cuts, early retirements, and sabbaticals or voluntary leave-of-absences to save jobs.

The University of Arizona adopted such an approach last month, announcing school-wide furloughs and pay cuts to account for its projected losses of $250 million.

Ott said NAU has been able to resist such “across-the-board austerity measures” because it will end its 2020 fiscal year with a balanced budget, unlike other universities. She said all options are being considered and once the university has more accurate enrollment numbers, additional actions could include options such as furloughs, leaves of absence and pay cuts.

UUNA also expressed concerns about administrators pushing for hybrid classes and to increase course caps.

“NAU Administration has long advocated for an increase in class sizes as a cost-cutting measure. They are taking advantage of this crisis to increase class sizes across campus in order to then decrease the amount of teachers they need to employ. … There have also been no assurances that increased class sizes are only a temporary measure,” the letter stated.

When asked about larger class sizes during the pandemic, Ott said larger classes “would not be a factor in a lower enrollment environment.”

Positions eliminated
Among others throughout campus, staff of the University Writing Program have already experienced the ramifications of NAU’s budget reductions.

About three weeks ago, Kama O’Connor, who worked in the program as an instructor for five years, was told her contract, along with those of more than six others from the department, would not be renewed because the positions no longer existed.

The losses in staff made up 87% of the entire program, which provides the introductory writing courses required for every NAU undergraduate student. These classes are taught by instructors like O’Connor and graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) who are mentored throughout the process.

Though O’Connor said the group had expected the program to look different in light of current economic hardships, the extent of the cuts was a shock.

“None of us could imagine a world where academics would look so bleak so quickly that we would have to take a core university program and cut it down to its wicks,” O’Connor said. “I think that surprised everyone.”

These reductions left only about three employees — who simultaneously hold leadership roles within the department — to support the GTAs to teach all incoming NAU students how to write at the university level. One of O’Connor’s primary concerns of the cuts was the ramifications for these teaching assistants, who are students themselves and often have no experience teaching. Without longtime instructors as mentors, she said it could lead to problems in the classroom and additional stress for these students.

“I see more of the benefits of having us there than the detriments of not having us there. I think what we did as instructors made the program an incredibly strong one. … Without that scaffolding, without that component where we have the people who are teaching the most at the bottom doing just that, I feel like we’re setting ourselves up for a crumble of everything above it,” O’Connor said.

Stacy Clark is a student in NAU’s Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing program and a teaching assistant for the University Writing Program. Though she has previous teaching experience and will enter her second year working with these undergraduates in the fall, she worries about the integrity of the program without as many instructors to guide it.

“Undergraduate students who are coming to NAU won’t have that full attention and full support of really highly trained professionals to guide them. And that’s going to be devastating. Writing for your classes, regardless of the discipline, is so essential to succeed in higher education and beyond. To not have fully trained staff who are running the program and there to guide us less experienced teachers is undoubtedly going to be very negative for the student experience,” Clark said.

With fewer program staff, the responsibility will fall to the teaching assistants, who may have to teach even more classes than in previous years.

“That already feels kind of outrageous to me and now the fact that we won’t have the support and mentorship to do that, it seems like they’re just trying to milk us as really poorly paid labor,” Clark said.

Like the university-wide union, this group has also created a letter calling for the Provost to reconsider the elimination of these employees.

Kaitlin Olson can be reached at the office at [email protected] or by phone at (928) 556-2253.

How does this site plan fit into the city's Climate Action and Adaptation Plan? This site is a forested tract and with the affordable housing allowance that lets the developer destroy 75% of the trees instead of the usual 50%, it creates a loss of carbon sequestration. This site has low walkability requiring a need for residents to have vehicles. (See CAA Plan page 64 "Natural Environment" and page 92 "Transportation and Land Use".)

After listening to the virtual community meeting and hearing Jeff Bauman discuss the traffic impact study in process, it seems that no consideration has been given to the potential traffic through Pinnacle Pines via Sterling Lane to Zuni/Lone Tree. Towns on Lone Tree does not have vehicle connectivity within the site plan, so the MAJORITY of the residents can only use one entrance/exit off Links to JW Powell. (See attached supporting image). Links is also one of two entrance/exit points for Pinnacle Pines. Students travel at specific and common times due to class schedules. We see this within our community that has student renters and with traffic at the CCC entrance. There WILL be congestion at this primary entrance/exit as cars wait to turn left onto JW Powell. When that is backed up, the alternative for these students will be to enter Pinnacle Pines and zip down Sterling Lane to Zuni to Lone Tree. IF the Zuni/Lone Tree intersection should receive mitigation in the form of a circle or light (which it should!), this alternative becomes even more attractive. The vehicle connectivity in Towns on Lone Tree is unacceptable; the ingress/egress is unacceptable. How can Pinnacle Pines be assured we won't have students speeding down Sterling Lane and what mitigation is there for us? We should not have to bear the cost of daily traffic surveillance or gates because of this poorly planned site plan. It seems you're doing a TIA all the way up Lone Tree to Butler, but have not even consulted with CCC or NAU regarding class times. And now with summer, online only classes and COVID-19, you can't get a realistic reading on these issues. There are other traffic/parking issues that were not addressed satisfactorily. In the winter, Links, JW Powell and Lone Tree receive a huge impact of snow play users and cars parked everywhere - no one on the city staff team was even aware of this. Also, community-wide, citizens are concerned about the FUTS trailhead parking lot. You've mentioned it can be signed for no overnight parking. This is of no help - hikers don't need the parking lot at night!!! It's the daytime use that will make this lot unavailable to trail users. I am very disappointed in the out-of-touch assessment and impact to our neighborhood and surrounding community. Please address. Thank you.

Thank you for the virtual meeting. Two suggestions based on information given at the meeting:
1. It was suggested that no one would want to drive through our neighborhood. I would suggest someone actually time that because I did. If you started from the current cul de sac, then onto Sterling and out to Zuni it took 40 seconds longer than going out to JWP, Lone Tree to Zuni. And coming back into the cul de sac, it took 41 seconds longer if you turned on Zuni and came up Sterling. I don’t think that is much of a deterrent!
2. It was mentioned that the city does not do market development or feasibility studies..or at least for that site. If we were not in this covid crisis time, that will affect a decrease in housing needs; if the university already did not have housing vacancies; and if these beautiful old trees and natural beauty weren’t going to turn into vacant buildings...I could see the city not doing a feasibility study. But I suggest you take a look at that because people don’t come to Flagstaff to see empty buildings! And why are we tying the whole Flagstaff economy to the University?

Is there a requirement that 50% of the trees on the site be retained? There is no way that this site plan could meet that requirement.

Shouldn't there be a requirement that there is a minimum of 2 points of access for all residents of this development? For safety and emergency issues? It appears that the private streets do not connect the north and south parts of the development leaving the residents with only a single point of ingress/egress.

Am concerned that the development still has not addressed the traffic issue; parking issue; and the slope development issue.
Pinnacle Pines is a private development and are streets are private, paid for by the owners and do not allow parking for anyone other than residents and their guests. How does the developer plan to make sure that students DO NOT PARK inside Pinnacle Pines property?
And how does the developer plan to address the 794 cars that will be moving through single lane streets with no additional increase in size and no traffic lights? Students living this far off campus will have a car!
The site is highly sloped and heavily treed; how do they intend to deal with the loss of environment and slope stability?