Feb 07, 2018 Planning and Zoning Commission on 2018-02-07 5:00 PM

Zoning Commission meeting for February 7th 2018. This meeting has been duly posted and we do have a quorum present and I will call us to order at 5 o 1. We are going to go into our work session and our first order of business will be to receive clarification of agenda items listed on our meeting this evening. Does anybody have I guess just to start kind of at the beginning and then we'll come back to our work session reports. Does anybody have any comments changes on our minutes of our last meeting? How about plats on the consent agenda? All right we're gonna make good time this evening. Public hearings item A. So Rayser investments by Shandrian. Anybody have questions on this item? This is a parcel up on I think on University for some restaurant pads . Questions? Nope? Okay. Then we've got 4B, Denture Search Care. It's the apartments. You have some questions on that? Okay. Do you all want to do let me back up do we want to to do like a small presentation on these items whether we have questions or not or just kind of go through? Do? Okay. Do y'all want to want to back up and then on 4A and have Shandrian just do an initial presentation on the the Rayser or are you okay with that being pretty straightforward and going on here to 4B? I am on that one. Okay. Well let's stay on 4B with Haley and we'll do presentation on on this one. Okay together. So we can go through both of those. Just for clarification we'll take those as two separate votes. So yes. Yeah one presentation with two votes. Okay. All right so there are two requests for this property. The rezoning is a request to change from community mixed-use general to neighborhood residential mixed-use and that is for the entire 11.4 acres that's outlined in red on the map. The SUP request is to allow for a multifamily use and it is only for 10.6 8 out of that total acreage so that's the yellow boundary you see. It is excluding a medical office that is existing down in the southeast corner of the property. And just to give you a reference this is I-35 here on the north, Sandbass Boulevard on the west, and Londonderry Drive on the south. So the rezoning as I mentioned would be from CMG to NRMU so here's a look of what that would look like on the zoning map. For rezoning as you know there's two criteria for approval. Consistency with the future land use plan and then the facilitation of public infrastructure. The future land use for this area is community mixed-use which is intended to provide a mixture of commercial residential and service uses. The NRMU district does fit within that. It provides for a variety of residential uses as well as commercial uses that are at a similar scale to CMG so lot coverage building height things like that are generally the same between the two districts. Looking at infrastructure in the area there are our water and sewer immediately available to the property. The red lines on the map being existing sewer and blue being the water lines. Both Sandbass and Londonderry are currently two lane undivided roads. They're both collector streets so they're intended to say two lane undivided with sidewalks. Commissioner Beck. Thank you Chair. When you say two lane undivided it's designed just for one car each way? Yes sir yeah just one lane of traffic each way with no median in between. I went by there today but it seems like it's wide enough where you could actually create two lanes each way. Is that considering all the traffic we've got over there and are fixing to generate more. I'm just wondering if that's a...and this may not be the time to raise it but is that something to consider? These type of streets are typically designed wide enough to have one lane of traffic going each way with parking and sidewalks on each side would be the ultimate intent for that roadway. Okay okay thanks. Commissioner Sanchez. Yes I was looking at the what it says upland habitat area of minimum of 10 acres in size and contains remnants of cross timber habitat. How much when it says remnants is a percentage of upland habitat which I'm assuming because we're in cross timbers it would be a mixture of cross oak and blackjack oaks is that I was trying to figure that out. To my knowledge there's no upland habitat on this property. Okay because I went up there I drove by there and there's a little that whole top area is a lot of blackjack and post oaks and and that's to me upland habitat for the cross timbers. What do you all define upland habitat? For it to be upland habitat it has to be I believe that's 10 contiguous acres so this entire property would have had to been covered in that for it to even possibly be considered upland habitat so there are a large amount of trees and they will have to meet the city's tree preservation requirements but it doesn't meet that 10 acre contiguous lump of you know habitat to be qualified as up land. Okay because what it says a minimum of 10 acres in size that contains remnants so the whole 10 acres or is it remnants within those 10 acres? Please come on up to the mic Bob. When it's talking about remnants it's talking about the whole eco region of the cross timbers region which goes up from Oklahoma down into Texas we have remnants of it in this area. Right right. It's not talking about remnants within that 10 acres it's got to be a 10 contiguous acre block of the post oak and blackjack. Correct. Okay that's and if you look at that area right there that north side from that's pretty contiguous and I mean it's not large oaks but they are post oak and blackjack oaks. I'm not disagreeing with you. No I'm a tree guy. I wish I was things were written a little different but the way our ESA regulations are written it's got to be a 10 contiguous acre block. Okay. So it doesn't fall on our map if we pull up our ESA map it won't fall in there. Okay okay. So looking at the compatibility of the request as I mentioned NRMU and CMG are very similar they're consistent in terms of lot coverage landscaping requirements and the lot dimensions and building height that would be permitted there so it's going to be a fairly comparable product in either zoning district. The proposed use is permitted under CMG but there is a limitation that would require ground floor commercial uses be developed on both Sam Bass and Londonderry. Given this area and how well established it is with multif amily and then the industrial use across Sam Bass we felt like commercials not likely to survive on the ground floor there it's not a very compact walkable environment where you would typically get that type of product. So staff is recommending approval of the request it is consistent with the goals and objectives of the Denton plan 2030 and then moving into the second aspect of their request and the reason for the rezoning would be to me Commissioner Roselle. Thank you chair real fast Haley. Yeah. And the backup it has that recommendation for the rezoning has a condition of the SUP being approved. Did my page print out weird or I don't think there's a condition on the rezoning but it does say staff recommends approval the SUP and I don't know if that was just a... It might be a trying to get to that page. Yeah so the recommendation is just kind of lumped together because we did it as one report so the rezoning recommendation is with no conditions and then the SUP is a recommendation with a condition. Okay gotcha thank you. Yeah so the SUP would be for a straight multifamily use with no associated commercial development. Our criteria for approval of an SUP is kind of a compatibility analysis between the requested use and the surrounding properties to ensure it wouldn't impede development of other properties, wouldn't generate any nuisances and would be generally compatible. So looking at the site plan for this what they've proposed here is kind of a second phase of the existing Coventry departments or apartments. They're currently accessible off of I-35. Here on this map they would be located just on the top side here so you can see there is a drive that would be connecting between the two developments so that amenities could be shared between them . They're proposing right now at 283 units that puts them at about 26 units per acre so below the 30 maximum for NRMU. It would be a mixture of one two and three bedroom units. They're proposing a total of six buildings they'd be a mixture of three and four stories in height. I believe the four stories would be here along Sam Bass and the site would maintain a total of about 38% landsca ping. You can see the way they've configured them as L-shaped buildings that each have their own courtyard. Commissioner Beck. Thank you chair. You said the density was 30 per acre for residents for an NRMU but aren't we switching it to an NRMU? We want to go from a CMG to an NRMU 12 which would have a lower density. The request is for NRMU not NRMU 12. Okay then what's on here is wrong. Yeah the request is for NRMU. Okay okay. Yeah so CMG doesn't actually have a maximum density so they are imposing with this rezoning a maximum of 30 units per acre on the property. Now by unit excuse me just follow up by unit we're talking about each apartment? Yes. Okay thank you. So we found that the request for this use is consistent with the Benton plan 2030. It does call for the provision of higher density housing in areas that won't impact established single-family neighborhoods with this being an area that has a mixture of existing multifamily and even some industrial across the street there would be no neighborhoods affected by this higher density there. The development would be consistent with the existing land use pattern and it would be required to comply with all other provisions of the DDCs parking landscaping tree preservation and all of our site design requirements and the use would generally be unlikely to generate any nuisances that you know things that aren't already in the area with the existing multifamily development. We did send notification for the request before the meeting I passed out the one response that we'd received which was a favorable request from the former property owner here on the south side. I believe the transaction was recent so he received that notice and let us know that he was in support of it. The applicant did hold a neighborhood meeting this past Monday. I attended the meeting and there were representatives from two adjoining apartment complexes that came just to see what the proposal was they didn't voice any opinions either way about it. And staff is recommending approval of the SUP with the condition that this site plan we saw here tonight would be considered conditional so a full site plan submitt al would still be conceptual. They would still do the full site plan submitt al just to make sure they comply with all aspects of the DDC and that it's generally conforming to what was presented here tonight. And I can stand for any other questions. Commissioner Beck. Thank you chair. I was just curious just as an item of interest I'm sure everybody noticed that this area was zoned this whole area is zoned CMG and I asked you about you know evidently these apartments that are there now don't have commercial properties underneath them because they were built prior to that but when I look at the future land use map and seeing what we had there why wasn't it considered to change it at that time from CMG to NRMU knowing that we had pretty much that condition there already? All the other zonings occurred at the with the citywide rez oning in 2002 and as you mentioned all those apartments that are there did predate that rezoning and CMG is generally considered the most directly compatible with community mixed-use but there are as with all of our future land use destinations there's multiple districts that could fall into that. I suspect just given the the close proximity to the highway and the mix of uses in that area that they felt CMG was probably appropriate for it. Okay thanks. Commissioner Ros sell. You sure? Go ahead. So if I understood you correctly apartments can be built in CMG and so I'm wondering if this agenda item is clear enough to understand what the SUP is for because the SUP just says to allow multifamily use but that's allowed in CMG correct? Yes so there are within CMG there are two limitations the L6 and L4 so it either has to be mixed use or have an SUP under L4 and then L6 requires specifically ground floor commercial so the rez oning is to eliminate L6 essentially because under NRMU L4 still applies so they still have to either do mixed use or obtain the SUP. It's just getting rid of that ground floor commercial requirement. I think I understand that I just I hope that the do we need to word that in our motion because it says staff recommends approval the rezoning request which I understand then it says staff recommends approval the SUP request the following conditions but that the condition doesn't necessarily address ground floor use or the L6 requirement. I don't know if that's needed or not I'm just curious if I just read this I'm not sure that's stated as clearly as possible. The SUP could would only apply if the rezoning is obtained so once the rezoning is obtained L6 goes away and there would no longer be any requirement under the current zoning for ground floor commercial so we didn't feel the need to specify that. So any SUP regardless of what the SUP is for eliminates L6 on the property? Am I understanding that? The rezoning itself is what would eliminate limitation six because that only applies under CMG it doesn't apply under NRMU so if the first request is approved that limitation goes away. Gotcha thank you. That's along the lines of where my question was going and looking a little farther ahead on our agenda our agenda item E is going to be the repeal of the requirement of the L6 and so my question is do you still have to have an SUP and CMG to do multif amily or not? L4 would still be in place even if L6 is repealed so the it would either have to be a mixed-use development or obtain an SUP. Okay but then they are putting a limitation on themselves by essentially down zoning from CM G to NRMU as far as the number of units. Yes they're imposing that density limitation then. Where they don't have that in CMG. Yes. Are they aware that this item E is coming before us this evening on their zoning and they've decided just to continue forward? Yeah the timelines for the two requests we're gonna run concurrently so they decided just to go ahead and move forward with their request and see how it goes. Okay great thank you. Any other questions Commissioner Beck ? Thank you chair. Going back to the roads again it mentions in our material it doesn't have a page under site that it says commercial mixed-use collectors are intended to be two lane roadways with parking along each side and total 73 be a driveway which is what you told me. This type of road is designed to handle between 1,000 and 8,000 vehicles per day and it's full width. Do we know how close we are to that now? Again everything that's over there are we getting precariously close to that or we still got a long ways to go? I don't recall the exact width of that right away I could try to measure that. Well I'm just gonna know is with what's there can does it handle are we getting precariously close to that 8,000? Oh as far as the trips I haven't seen any trip calculations for this. To date I'm not sure what the current capacity or use of Londonderry or San Bas is. Should we be considering that considering that there's a lot of traffic over there these roads should be able to handle it but we're building some more would it be out of place to say let's take a look at it make sure we're not going over the limit you know how we run into these problems with people say there's too many cars on the road now and I wouldn't disagree with that but as a P&Z Commission could we could we ask for that to see where we're at with a traffic analysis on the existing roads now? I'll ask staff to address that. Yeah I don't think there's any just in our you know initial discussions there there in the near future there aren't any specific plans to widen it right now I know they are looking at the light on Teasley there's the light at Londonderry where traffic kind of gets congested with folks making the left in the morning school just to the school and then at before you get to Lillian for I guess when that transitions into right before 35 in between the two apartment complexes there's another light so our engine engineering is is looking at the possibility of having that light taken out because of the timing issue because you have almost really three lights right in a row and and they net particularly in the morning and I go that way every morning it they're never timed correctly and so it really causes causes some some issues but in the very near future other than other than that it's if they're not at that at those levels yet and we don 't think we need to do that now considering that we're fixing to add to that not at not at this time in a sense it's also it were also looking at it's sort of a down zone from from the most intense that they could do today by right okay again I just want to point out under the current zoning if they did develop they would be required to have that ground floor commercial which would further increase the traffic over what would be proposed here no no I you know I don't disagree going to an NRM you is okay I'm just saying the roads that are there are expected to handle between one and eight thousand vehicles per day at the full load and when you throw in the school traffic with people don't even live there you know or how how closer do we to that now and are we so close that by adding 30 units per acre over there you know a few more with a lot more traffic are we gonna be bumping close to the limit are we still safe you need to worry about that in the future I guess is what I'm asking and you don't think we do rich no I think as we you know part of the problem we don't have a lot of traffic that unfortunately and I know that that pre-tem is working on getting that I was just trying to think just based on the current density whether or not we can determine just based on trips theoretically where they could be but we don't have any any current traffic traffic counts I'll step in here and kind of watch over me and help me under the current code the only thing that this development would be responsible for is where they actually attached to Sam Bass or Londonderry correct they don't have any responsibility from anything on Londonderry to the West and they don't have any responsibility on the Sam Bass southern portion correct so if to answer from my point of view your question the only thing that we have an ability to do something is in the width where they border Sam Bass or the width where they border London perimeter correct and it gets back to the same issue we've talked about the last several times is whose responsibility is to do that they'll have to do I assume a TIA based on the number of trips because of the number of units and then the city will decide whether they won't take the fees off of the number of units and whether we want to spend it and do improvements to Sam Bass and Londonderry or somewhere else within the area that this parcel those improvements have to be done in that area or where they're going to ask them to do perimeter improvements on their properties and that's my understanding of how that works correct and I don't disagree that I wasn't necessarily trying to dump this on the developer at all in fact I was kind of expecting the city to step in here and do this kind of analysis to see that if we're reaching the limit to what these roads can handle should we be building which I don't think we are but I just I'm curious to how close we are right now so I was really kind of expecting the city to take a look at this and not so much expecting the developer so that's that's that was where I was coming from my comment is there's a city will de facto they're going to require the developer to do a TIA and study the whole area and give the data to the city okay now we'll help or we'll pay for it now we'll help with the numbers to show where we're at that will give current traffic counts okay Commissioner yeah okay sure Commissioner Sullivan so let me get this straight we've got the numbers here is designed to handle a hundred a thousand eight thousand vehicles but we have no clue how many vehicles are there we have no clue who's going to be responsible if ever what's the point if we never have traffic surveys we never know how many cars are actually there we don't know how many cars are going to be added everybody's flying blind I guess I'm just baffled and bewildered over the fact that we even have the numbers in here because it makes no difference I think it kind of goes back to the fact that ironic right if they were to add more development to the site ie commercial which would be more even intensive than then additional residential units we wouldn't we wouldn't even be we wouldn 't even be here today they would just be able to go in as of right and so that's sort of what we looked at it's really sort of a down zone of what they could potentially build it at the max I can't I mean we just don't have unfortunately we don't have that data to say you know right now the road is at a level of service C by adding X number of trips it's going to degrade it to you know whatever a D or it's going to maintain it at a C right now we don't we're in the process of putting all of that together I'm just confused where the planning comes into play we got planning and zoning we zone but we don't plan we're getting there don't play it because nobody does any studies to tell us where we are to find out whether or not all these apartments are going to add anything to the traffic load which we know they will and at the same time they're going to take away a light which is the only thing that controls it coming in and off of streets you know all of that together makes I have a hard time where the planning is involved if I might mr. chair sure Scott McDonald I'm just to touch on that we absolutely have been having the conversations about doing a traffic study and looking at the entire city we haven't we haven't taken a comprehensive approach to traffic management we're working site by site the numbers that you have before you ultimately are set up for what the road will handle as we propose this or the applicants proposing this it's a less intense use than what is eligible by right that's why staff s confident in the fact that this isn't going to create a burden it actually would lessen some potential burden and we will we will and have already had the conversations about how it is to take the approach to traffic management across the city so we've got some some steps that we need to take and some actions that we intend to take to look at that more comprehensively we recognize there's a deficiency in our traffic management it's just the steps to get there and as we take the steps and really trying to look at the overall zoning of the city and the planning and and tying it to the dent in 2030 that 's a component of that that we will be looking at in the very very near future hope that helps any other questions on B or C for Haley on this item thank you Haley item D just for my clarification I assume we'll open this item and then we will do a vote to postpone to date certain of February 21st okay and leave open okay that will take us to E and Haley all right so very closely related to what we just talked about staff is proposing an amendment to the Denton Development Code to kind of provide some immediate relief for some some projects going on in here in town so the request is to consider making a recommendation to City Council regarding a proposed revision to subchapter 5 specifically to our limitations that apply to mixed-use development requirements for multifamily so just a little bit of background that we kind of touched on with the last project we currently have two limitations that can apply to the multifamily use that impose mixed-use restrictions on them L4 requires in certain districts that multifamilies only permitted either with an SUP as we just saw or as part of a mixed-use development unless it can meet one of these other criteria that it very rarely can being part of a master plan development or if it received approval prior to 2005 or as part of a small area plan so really those top two are what is most often seen then the other limitation is limitation 6 that permits multifamily only on the second story and above when it has an office retail or other commercial use on the ground floor along any Avenue collector or arterial Street so other than neighborhood residential streets though that pretty much covers every street type that we would see in here in the city so just to look at how these apply across the code you can see L4 applies in all of our mixed-use districts from the neighborhood residential through the community mixed use and the regional mixed-use districts L6 supplies only in CMG CME RCCN and R CCD and then the only other limitation we have is within NRMU and SUP is required so regardless of the whether they did mixed use the SUP is required in that district so staff is proposing to remove L6 from all of those districts where it applies just within the past two years 2016 and 2017 we had five rezoning cases that were applied for we've had countless other projects that have come in as pre-development meetings or just as people calling and asking about property that have been squashed because of that ground floor commercial requirement looking at how this requirement applies across the city remember it applied in the community mixed use in the regional districts so essentially all of the the purple the kind of fuchsia color and then the light pink that you see on the map is where that L6 would apply just keeping in mind that our comprehensive plan does call for a mixture of housing types because we are a city with diverse housing needs and then looking at where this limitation applies on mostly on the outskirts of the city it doesn't make the most sense potentially for ground floor commercial to be in these areas. Commissioner Ellis. Thank you Chair. So on that note when was this put into place because I was trying to get a context on you know when you look at that zoning map this limitation doesn't make any sense at all. It has been there since the code was adopted in 2002. Trying to get what was the intent because it just when you it just doesn't makes it makes great sense downtown when you when you you know when you've got those compact places but yeah boy that doesn't make any sense so yeah this is a good thing. So yeah now that you have an idea of where that applies looking a little more specifically like you just said we see this type of development where it is not required in downtown and compact walkable environments. So just some examples you know we have several of these downtown but you know on Hickory and Locust the two that are doing very well. It makes sense in those areas where people are out walking to get to these things and you see here on the bottom examples of where properties where this is specifically required on Brinker and then out on loop 288. Ground floor commercial isn't necessarily feasible in those places. The intent of that limitation wouldn't really be served well in those areas. Commissioner Beck. Thank you chair. Kind of pulling in on Commissioner Elst's comment and I agree that L6 is a pain in the butt you know in some areas but if we remove this the downtown area is a good area to use this. Do we lose it there too and they can just go ahead and build apartments in without the commercial development? That limitation does not apply in the downtown districts at all. So there's nothing requiring that that type of development occur there it just naturally does because of the environment. Okay so we don't have to worry about that. Yeah multi- family can go in with or without ground floor commercial in downtown. Can go in with or without? Yes. Ground floor? Okay. Yeah the use is permitted by right in our downtown districts. It just so happens that because of the nature of downtown we do see the ground floor commercial. Okay okay thank you. Haley if I make it's market driven the property owner decides whether they want to include that in their project or say you know what I don't think it's a viable option and we're just gonna do straight multi-family. Certainly. That correct? Certainly. Yeah and just to give you a little peace of mind if you remember back to the table L4 would still apply in all of these districts so the multi-family use itself would still either come before you and City Council as an SUP or it would be part of a larger mixed use development providing that it meets the definition of mixed use which is simply three or more interrelated and compatible uses on a property but it can be vertically or horizontally mixed. Commissioner Rossell. Thank you chair. I know you have listed here in the back of the different zones but remember serves me correctly multi- family is not allowed by right in any zoning classification in the city correct? All multi-family has to be SUP? No in the downtown districts it has a limitation but it's just a limitation related to density calculation. Okay. So it could occur in like the DCG district or in the DR2. All other areas has to come before us for the SUP or mixed use development. That is correct. Or the others. That is correct yeah. The downtown districts would be the only ones really excluded from this. Thanks. So yeah as I was saying you L4 would still apply in all of these districts so there's still that extra level of scrutiny it either has to be meet the definition of mixed use which is very specific or it would have to come before you as an SUP. We did publish notification about the requests didn't receive any responses to it and we are recommending approval so can answer any questions. Commissioner Beck. Okay well I was confused and I was under the impression we were gonna get rid of L4 and L6 you're just wanting to remove L6. Just L6. Gotcha. Just on density NRMU allows 12 units per acre NRMU allows 30 units per acre. So CMG what's the density on that? There is no maximum density in the community mixed use district so multifamily could develop on a site at whatever density it wanted so long as they could provide adequate parking for it. Parking would be the kind of natural limit. Yeah okay all right thanks. Any other questions for Haley on this item? Okay with that our item F is going to tie into the work session that we have on sub chapter 17 and I'll just ask Deborah if you're getting ready I don't know how long you think your presentation will be if we should go ahead and break and get food and get started if you have quite a bit or if we... I have like two or three more slides to go. We left at the upland habitat discussion this time that's where we're going to retake the the discussion and then after that I believe will be the criteria for approval of alternative ESA plans. So you I can wait until you are you know ready to eat is completely up to you. I just want to take a break to eat or you want to press on through and see where we go and then we have to we may have to stop you at 615 or something if we're running long and do a quick eat. Okay let's go and get started if you got don't mind. Good evening Commission my name is Deborah Vera I'm with the Environmental Services Department. Last time two weeks ago we started going over the changes made to or proposed changes to sub chapter 17. We stopped at the discussion of upland habitat and I'm going to resume with a definition because I believe there was some concerns about the changes and why would apply. Currently the definition of a of upland habitat is areas of minimum of 10 acres in size that contain remnants of the Easter cross timber habitat. We have revised the definition just a little bit just to take out the eastern part of it and just have the entire cross timber habitat. However in practicality what you will see present in Denton would pretty much correspond to what is considered Easter cross timber. So we have not changed the species we have not changed the minimum area that is required so in that regard the definition stays the same. I believe Commissioner Sanchez was concerned about providing definition if you look into 17.5 we'll see all the four type of eases defined in that section including upland habitat. Yes sir. Commissioner Sanchez. Still reading that it says areas of minimum 10 acres in size okay you're talking about 10 acres that contain remnants so it's referring to the 10 acres the way I read it that refers to the 10 acres it doesn't refer to as we were told earlier that a 10 acre remnant is we're looking at the whole cross timbers area we're looking at just these 10 acres and it's kind of confusing the way it's at least for me it is okay because it's referring to the 10 acres and the remnants are referring to the 10 acres it 's not referring to the whole cross timbers okay so it should be clarified a little bit better. Sure we can we can rework that definition such as areas typically found or habitats are typically found in areas of the Easter cross timber habitat of a 10 acres in size you want that definition to be reworks in that way will be clear. I think it'd be it helped to be a little bit clearer I mean I may be just as far as you know I may just not be understanding it but that's it seems to me it refers to the 10 acres when you're talking about remnants. Okay what we can do is I can rework the ordinance and when if you decide to make a recommendation we can add that amendment as a part of the of the motion is that something that you would like? Sure Commissioner Ellis. Thank You Chair I don't know that it has to be reworked that much but maybe I think Bob used the word contiguous I mean maybe you just need to add just a little bit clearer definition so that when someone reads it they have a picture in their mind that it's 10 acres of contiguous. Okay okay we can do that let us work out during the now on a hearing and we will provide some new language for you. So what one of the substantial changes is right now currently we require the preservation of upland habitat if you were to develop residential development meaning multifamily 2f single-family homes. Any non-residential development that will encroach into a upland area designated upland habitat they don't have to preserve the 50%. When we talk about the preservation of the upland habitat we not only look in the preservation of the tree canopy but we also look into the preservation of the habitat on the understory because ultimately we are looking to the preservation of the viability of the entire habitat ecosystem present. The proposed changes would maintain the 50% preservation of the residential as is currently stated in the code however we have staff and the COE have given the the direction to actually require the preservation the 30% preservation of upland habitat for non-residential development. The 30% we kind of landed on the 30% because we were looking at what the new tree code was looking as a preservation and they agree and they were having the 30%. Previously two weeks ago we discussed the changes to the credit section and let's say that you have a non-residential development encro aching into an upland habitat if they were to preserve the 30% that will actually make them comply with the tree code anyway so the two will actually match. But definitely this is one of the major changes policy wise that the proposed changes are you know showing. Commissioner Roselle. Thank you chair if I understand this correctly a non-residential development there is no increased measure to protect upland habitat apart from any other standard trees on the property. Correct if right now somebody were to develop a non-residential development what they have to preserve is the tree based on the tree code okay and they can't they have a minimum percentage of preservation that could be further reduced if they pay into the tree fund okay but the habitat per se is not protected. What you are protecting under the tree code is actually the tree canopy not the habitat. So if I understand correctly if a residential element goes in they have to maintain 50% cont iguous. Correct they pick which part is contiguous we don't designate that. Well part is strongly encouraged. Correct. And then the non-residential upland habitat really doesn't even matter. Correct. Can you help me understand why a more intensive use of the property there's not a stronger inclination to protect the habitat? Yeah in 2002 when the code was first draft the City Council at the moment understood that when you buy a tree lot in a residential lot you most of the time you are paying a premium for it therefore they saw a direct compensation for the making the developer to preserve those areas because they will be somehow compensated economically because they will be paid a premium for it. In residential in commercial development that is a little bit different that doesn't play out differently. The other aspects that I remember be part of the conversation at that time was that sometimes developers come with a preset site plan that they would like to to to develop and not everybody it seems or what seem to be open to tweak those site plans to actually incorporate the ESA in it. So for those two factors the City Council at the time decided to only require the preservation the mandatory preservation to residential development. However I think that we all have seen successful commercial developers who have actually incorporated the trees as a part of the plan those side seems to be more aesthetically pleasing. I think that it adds value to it when you are working with a existing established area. So that's that's one of the reasons that I think we decided to just to take an approach. However in the same spirit to not to tax developers or tag them twice three tree code and upland habitat then we we are consistent on the percentage. By meeting the 30% of upland habitat they will also meet what the tree code is looking to to have to require. So personally have have some friction with that thought process but that that friction would probably be helped defined a little bit to know what is the overlay of upland habitat in our city to commercial uses. If there's not a lot of upland habitat in zoned commercial areas then this issue kind of solves itself and it might be an uphill battle I don't need to fight but it does create a little bit of concern in my mind that there's economic reasons for our developers remarketing or or whatever it is rather than actually protecting the environment. It seems like the upland habitat the the retention of that percentage of upland habitat should be for the purpose of maintaining the habitat not if a developer can market it at an increased price or if a commercial developer doesn't care about trees. It sounds like that was a motivating factor historically I don't think it should be going forward but again it might be a non-issue and so it might be helpful if there's a way to present or if you could tell me offline how many commercial properties have upland habitat to know if this is even an issue. Well the issue would be it we one thing is develop commercial okay and other thing is vacant land that is zoned for zoning district or category that allows some sort of commercial district so those are two separate. I will have to probably go back and try to overlay the two to give you a estimate of how much is that. I will tell you that most of the upland habitat it will be on the eastern part if you take I-35W corridor most of the cross timbers are in the east part of town when you move across the western part of it the actually acreage and art prairies so you don't see a lot of trees in that area for that reason so and that's the areas of town that are more ripe for development at this point especially industrial and things like that so it will be zoning districts that allow some sort of commercial use that we have a whole slew of those that are pretty much east of I-35 corridor. And I can look as well it seems like the Mayhill reconstruction east of Mayhill is where we've seen historically there's the neighborhood behind the Ford dealership that had an up land habitat in that neighborhood I just and maybe between meetings I can look to see what the upland habitat is over on that side so those are my thoughts. Yeah I can probably look into the interactive map and turn the ESA layer for you and then see if in that way you have an idea of where they are. Thank you. Commissioner Beck. Yeah thank you chair and this is probably kind of self evident but when you say that non-residential development when it encro aches upland habitat it has to preserve 30%. 50%? Non-residential. Okay. Yes. It would be great if it was. Okay. So we're talking about just say you've got a 10 acre track of upland habitat but they're only going to affect a thousand square feet so the 30% they're expected is going to be brought roughly 300 square feet in or are we taking in to consideration that whole 10 acre track? No you're assuming that the entire 10 acres is in their site and that 's something that we have to clarify. The 10 acres doesn't have to be in one parcel owned by one owner. Those are tree stands that might be spread out about multiple land owners. Okay let's say that they are 10 acres for owners equally distributed 2.5 okay let's say that I'm owner number one I'm going in and I'm going to do resident non-residential. So what what are the calculation is going to be based on how much of the upland habitat is in my parcel? That will be 2.5 and then the 2. it will be 30% out of that 2.5 acres. So that's what you will be required to do. So hopefully the theory behind it is if everyone develops at the same type of development residential and all are subject to 30% after everybody preserve their 30% overall we will have three acres of up land habitat left from the original 10. So it's only 30% of the trees that you're directly going to impact. Correct. Of what is on your property. Right right thank you. Commissioner Ellis. Thank you chair. I actually wanted to ask Commissioner Rozelle a question with regard to what we were just discussing. What's the percentage that you have in your mind when you ask the question that you do? I mean if we're non-residential I would think you'd be equal. It's hard for me to see why a non-invasive neighborhood that's homes that they're gonna put bird feeders up and they actually would probably help with the underlying habitat more than commercial would have a steeper regulation than commercial that might not be as inclined to keep the habitat intact apart from the canopy. Because it seems residential has to be contiguous has to be 50% and they're they have the same encouragement but on the non-residential it's 30% is that to be contiguous it just keep the tree canopy and so I'm just curious about what are we trying to protect and why the different standards based on development if if we're worried about the the birds and the critters I think it should be zoned the agnostic in terms of protecting that that habitat. I guess I understand then but it's probably because a commercial development is gonna have a bigger footprint overall it might impede the development all together if you require the same just because residential and commercial they're just not the same type of development so. Totally understand it it just seems to me that I don't want to use language inappropriate but it's a it's a it's a weak protection of the upland habitat if depending on what the use is if you want to put an office park in don't worry about the habitat we don't we don't care about if you want an office park if you want houses we do care about the habitat that's what it's it's communicating to me and again it might be inconsequential to the amount of development that overl aps non-residential and upland but it doesn't it doesn't seem to be speaking the same voice from the city's perspective of what we want to protect if there 's a dual standard based on use. Commissioner Sullivan. Thank you. What is the what definition are we using for residential development in other words is this more than ten houses more than 20 houses or a single house? It could be a single house the use is residential so it could be single-family it could be multi- family or it could be two-f. Those are pretty much. What I'm saying is if an individual comes in and buys a lot in a neighborhood that's pretty well built out they're gonna be treated as a developer rather than the fact that they bought the lot they bought the trees there way too many trees because the lot's not big enough to hold the house they want and so they're gonna be held to this 50% cont iguous as a developer was which I'm sure was intended to not come in and clear- cut 20 acres of trees to put in the houses. I'm curious as to where does the home owner you know the landowner rights come into play versus again this are arbitrary contiguous 50% number. Okay well in this scenario that you that you are playing you are it there's an existing neighborhood so we are talking a inf ield almost an infield situation okay where they have been one big tract skipped from development. The chances are that there's a tree that there 's a large parcel ten acres or more who is covered you know inch for inch of tree it is not very often I will not rule out the possibility but it is very unlikely. If you are just building one house for example you can clear 50% of that habitat by right that should give you enough if you have a ten acre tract cover with trees and you are in time. I'm not talking about ten acre I'm talking about a quarter acre or half acre. Well I'm talking about it in you know in a residential area in a development that's already been developed for several years but there's three or four scattered lots and they happen to have a bunch of trees on it people like to have a bunch of trees around their house. Yeah I see that the possibility however I think that if you are on a quarter lot and you are entitled to clear 50% of the upland habitat by right that chances are that will be enough for you to be able to accommodate your building footprint, your driveway, your sidewalk. You may have some upland habitat on your backyard that possibility exists but because the 50% that you have to clear that should give you enough area for a house. So basically the city owns 50% of my lot when I buy this single quarter acre lot to put in the 3,000 square foot house and a pool I am I've got to keep 50% contiguous canopy coverage trees on my lot even though I want to put in a pool. You're gonna tell me oh sorry Mr. Salvin you're you know you've taken down 60% you can't do that. Yeah well the city will not own it because that is not the the upland habitat is not dedicated to the city or given a fee simple so you still own the up land habitat is yours. The option let's say that you would like to clear more than the 50%. There's a mechanism that you that you could go and it's called the alternative ASA plan. The alternative ASA plan you can look at it almost like a variance process. Then look at the facts you know what it is this is the last remainder making lot so on and so forth and then you can provide some mitigation if for the to it in exchange of the encroachment. So there is a mechanism where developers who actually find themselves as or consider the preservation of the upland habitat as a hardship they can pursue that option. And we will discuss the next item is the is the criteria for the alternative ASA plan so we will you will be able to see what we are looking . I just have a problem with an individual landowner being treated as a developer that's that's my concern. They're all being treated the same and they're not the same. Thank you. I think staff want to make a clarification. Just for clarification this would not apply to anything under 10 acres right because it would in order to you would need to have that 10 contiguous acres for it to qualify as cross timbers. The possible scenario is that you have an existing subdivision that had that preserved the tempers that had some of the up land habitat that preserved the 50% that they were responsible for and then you have this additional and let's let's let's say that they end up having to preserve 9.75 acres. Okay you have this small owner to have one quarter of an acre and all together makes the 10 acre tree stand minimum size. That that would be the situations. Most of the time that's when I see that as scenario playing out. It's just somebody already preserved 9.75 acres of upland habitat and then this is adjacent to a part of the tree stand and it still makes the 10 acre cut out. I see it differently. Kind of tying into the tree code since that's not before us but I know it's coming. My understanding of how the tree code has been written is once you make the preservation those trees whether they're in upland or any other those are permanently identified that those have to be preserved. So to Commissioner Sullivan's point which is I know he and I have been having sharing some of the same concerns about this is once that designation is put there the individual property owner can't remove those. Am I correct in my understanding of that? There are provisions on on nine oh I'm sorry on 17 for the removal of trees within upland habitat for this for this health of the trees okay but beyond any clearing that is advisable to preserve the health of the trees and habitat then yes that would be they would have to go through some sort of alternative ASA plan. Correct. Sure. You wanna call legal for clarification. I just want the Commission to understand and and I'm sure you guys are but just for just reminding the Commission again is you have the ESSA ordinance and then you have the tree code ordinance and so what I think there was reminding us are these regulations for ESSAs and I think a lot of the comments will be addressed today will be addressed under the tree code revisions but my question maybe to Deborah is these requirements mirror those requirements in the tree code is that correct? The proposed tree code so what we are we have been talking about be consistent making the regulation consistent throughout last time that I checked the tree code that was the 30% let's put that caveat out there and what we are trying to do is just to be consistent throughout and to provide opportunities for developers to meet multiple requirements at once and not double tag the developers with multiple preservations of things so that's what staff was trying to attain when we crafted the language. So just one more time that these revisions would make the ESSA ordinance consistent with a tree ordinance. Correct. I'm gonna backtrack because we're getting kind of down in the weeds and I want to come back to the substantive changes that we're making and I just want to make sure I'm correct on what we currently have and what we're proposing to do. Currently my understanding on residential development and upland habitat if you have the 10 acre site you have to preserve 50% of it but you also then have the option if you need to to make your project work design whatever that is you have the opportunity to mitigate up to 50% or half of that five acres is that correct you end up preserving 25% and mitigating paying into the tree fund or planting trees that 25% you need to remove yeah you are talking about the tree code you are preserving the individual trees okay now the habitat now the understory okay so if you were to have 10 acres on the upland habitat okay let's play this now that is not upland okay you can go in you preserve your percentage your minimum percentage and you can go in and you can clear the understory okay because the tree code what is the preservation of it is the tree canopy okay let 's add a wrinkle to it and let's call that 10 acres in upland habitat okay the 50% preservation is not only the trees the canopy itself but also the under story that comes with it that's the major difference between tree code and upland habitat and the other thing is a tree code allows you to further reduce your percentage by paying into the tree fund the ESA the only mechanism that will allow you to reduce your preservation would be going through an alternative ESA plan okay so back to my my question and forgive me whether I'm back and forth between the tree code or the upland habitat if you've got upland habitat 10 acres on your parcel contiguous currently you can take up to half of it out in a residential use and then if you need to take out more than that you can take another half of that but you have to mitigate it and then if I can finish my point under this you can just go to the 50% now you can't mitigate the other portion if you needed to I think the current language doesn 't tell you that you cannot reduce below the 50% it tells you that you will have to do that through a alternative ESA mechanism let's say that you have you preserve your 50 but you want to actually reduce it to 10% get rid of the 40% that you are required to do if you go through there through the alternative ESA plan and then you get a final approval from City Council you are entitled to clear that 40% because you have vetted that request through planning and sorting Commission and City Council so there's no cap on on how much encro achment you can have as long as if you go below the 50% you do it through an alternative ESA plan currently or with this correct you can do it currently or with this mechanism correct so we are not changing we are not changing that the only thing that we are changing is we are adding non-residential development be subject to preservation of Oakland habitat that's the only process that we are changing okay well I'm gonna call on Commissioner Sullivan and he's being patient I have this similar concern with the direction that this is going the same concern that we've talked about with the tree cone the concern I have is we all throw the term developer out but that's that guy over here that's going to take care of that and really it's the individual property owners that own these properties that are the ones that bear the burden of these code changes that we make and we are making city policy for the good of the public and private individuals are bearing the burden of the cost of these and that's just the fact of the way that works and so people can say it's a developer that's not how that really works the developer says it's got 10 acres of upland habitat on it that they can't do anything with or I can only use half not going to offer to pay for that portion your property is now worth X because that property is not usable it's for the good of the public the person that owns that property that has a designation on there suffers a financial loss because it has a designation that's put on their property for the good of the public that they're going to bear privately and I have a concern about that I don't think it's fair to people to ask them for the good of the public and the community and all of these things and the benefits and the reasons why we 're preserving them for individual people to bear those burdens and cost I don 't know what the right mechanism is to preserve these things and to be fair to private property owners and the city of Denton benefits I don't know how to solve that problem I get to serve for a few hours every two weeks and a few hours before to try to read and prepare all you know for a meeting and have a hopefully a logical discussion and bring up some points and then look to city staff with the 13 months of however long y'all have worked on it to go through all of those discussions to say how do we equitably solve this problem and to go a step further there's no consideration to what the values are so if you have a commercial corner maybe it's worth $30 a square foot I don 't know a million to maybe there's 10 acres it's on a corner just like this that 's the same value there's no consideration to how much money does our city lose in potential property taxes and all the revenues that come off of that site versus if it's in the very back corner and it's worth a dollar a square foot there's no mechanism for there to be flexibility to say well we have a track right here in our city that our city could have a million dollars in property taxes off of but the one back here in the back that we get twenty twenty thousand dollars off of there's no consideration of what does this really cost us how do we figure out well gosh the property owners should be able to be able to make a decision and say I want to pay into the tree fund or I want to go buy a site and give you a we don't call it a tree bank or an upland cavity habitat bank and I can buy that piece of property for a much different price and preserve that and here's a prime piece of property those are the concerns that I have when we bring these things up we don't spend any time on this commission talking about those we talk about go through this right quick and put it into place and there's not a conversation of what does this really mean when we put this in place how does it affect our city how does it affect individual property owners and those are the concerns that I have that I'd like to have some further discussion about how we address those things and what's what's reasonable and fair to individual property owners and what's in the best interest of the city and how do those two things equitably get put into place commissioner Sullivan and then I'll tell you commissioner Sanchez this is if I understand this this is for 10 acres or more is that the intent of this how many how many parcels of land within the city of Denton are undeveloped that comprise 10 acres or more and so are we making much to do about nothing I mean is that if we're talking about you know 10 acres you know is the the big you know the cutoff point you know anything over 10 acres or more I believe you just nailed it I think we're beating a horse here that doesn't need to be beat because there's not a lot left in the city now when you get to the tree code that 's a different issue okay because the tree code is going to be concerned with individual trees we're talking about contiguous stand of trees 10 acres that are together there's very few left on there and there is a mechanism it's called an alternative visa you can put in it for an alternative environmental and it'll go through the process just like through a zoning change whereas if you want to go in there develop it we had a project that came in today it had every ESA that the city has it on the piece property we did not tell that developer he couldn't do it he's just got extra hurdles he's got a run through to make his project happen this is not going to stop a developer okay it may cause him part to pause for a little bit and rethink his plan but it's not going to stop him I'd like to stop right there and if you let me just kind of thought those parcels of land how is all this going to be conveyed to them as to what they're now what the property has been designated how it's going to affect them what's going to happen who's going to talk to these people about that or is all you're just gonna kind of get it done and sneak away in the middle of the night the designation of upland habitat we are not changing okay whatever is showing on the map as upland habitat have been shown on the map since 2002 when the ESA map was created so this is not a new information why would it be new information if this changes were to be approved okay it is that if they were marketing their site for commercial development they may have that and I may have a potential solution for the mechanism that we can discuss when we talk about the alternative ESA plan let me allow me to entertain that that idea so right now we are not putting or designated new areas of upland habitat we are not what we are doing is that if those areas were to be developed for non-resident ial purposes then they will be subject to 30% preservation of but the designation we are not designated new upland habitats on people's property is not the other issue that is another wrinkle to it is the tempers the 10 acre tree stand could be spread among multiple parcels okay so for for us to do an analysis to say which parcels include at least 10 acres of open habitat on it we will be further reducing that because that's not very common chances are those are tree stand that they don't they don't stop a property property lines they they can they continue and spread out among so the analysis is a little bit challenging in that regard because we are not talking about three ten acres on one single parcel because then we will be further reducing the amount of areas that have good habitat good upland habitat that should be preserved just because we are limited to one ownership 10 acres come back I know there's a number of parcels that have more than that I've looked at them familiar with it and I guess the other point I want to bring up and kind of respond to Bob is that what you what you do when you do an alternative visa plan it becomes a political issue then it comes before this Commission it becomes before City Council and I've sat on this Council or Commission before and those things are voted down we're not going to allow an alternative visa for this particular site in a discussion so there's all kinds of great ways to talk about will you have a process well if it works that's great but I've seen on countless occasions where it comes before us and so we want to do an alternative no we're not gonna allow you to go do that that property there's not a mechanism there that mechanism although it sounds like it's an option may not work and it doesn't provide any relief and that's the concern I have when we talk about changing these things and say well you can go through that process well when it comes back no well okay you're gonna preserve 30% or 50% into question we're not going to approve that so those are the concerns that I have in in moving these forward I want you to get through your presentation we're out of time and one of the other things that I have a concern and what's going to get to the very end is the application when you go back at 35-17-2 it says within the corporate limits of the city but then further on when you read through this it says the official maps and 35-17-6 it says the official map that identifies areas designated as ESA I don't know where that map is but when it me for my purview and preparing for the meeting I just went to the city website pull up the interactive map and turn on ESA's and not only is it in the city a limit city limits of Denton it's all out in the ETJ so my question is when we do this and it says see limits limits but then it's on the map does this also apply out in the ETJ also because it shows on our map the only ESA that we have jurisdiction outside the ETJ and that is granted by the ETJ or city limits outside the city limits in the ETJ okay so in the ET J okay so the only type of ESA that the city have jurisdiction for the protection and that protection is granted to the city by the Texas Local Government Code is for floodplain ESAS the riparian buffer the water related and the upland habitat outside the city limits we don't have a make it out if they were to be encroached clear we cannot protect those the only ESA that we have some say to it is for floodplain and the reason why is a protect as a protection of water resources and that is granted by the state of Texas to the cities so to answer the question I assess for clarification not only does this apply in the city limits of Denton it also is going to apply in the ETJ for those particular items correct and that is outlined in I'm sorry 17.2 B floodplain standard of this sub chapter shall apply to all land and all development with the extra territorial jurisdiction of the city that's the only one that we would have a say I'll have some more questions about that I know we're out of time and everybody probably wants to get a quick bite I'm gonna call a recess at 620 and let's get something to eat and then we'll start again at 6 30 in council chambers and I guess we'll have to continue this at our next meeting are we voting on this tonight supposed to be it's on our agenda as a vote for City Council as is okay so based on the good evening and welcome to the city of Denton planning and zoning Commission meeting for February 7th 2018 this meeting has been duly posted and we do have a quorum present and I will call us to order at 643 I 'm sorry we ran a little long and work session our first order of business will be to stand and give the pledge the US and the Texas flags Texas flag I pledge allegiance to the Texas one state under God one our next item on our agenda will be to consider approval of our minutes Commissioner Roselle I move to approve the minutes from January 24th okay thank you chair I second we have a first and a second for approval any further discussion seeing none call for a vote on the board motion carries six to zero will take us to our consent agenda Commissioner Beck I move we approve consent agenda okay Commissioner Rizel second okay we have a first and a second for approval any further discussion seeing none will call for a vote on the board and we'll move us to our public hearing section this evening our first item will be item a and I will open the public hearing to Z 17 - 0 0 2 7 a and I will call on Shandrin for presentation good evening commissioners Shand rin Jarvis with development services the next item is Z 1727 is a rezoning request for property located along University Boulevard the request is to resign approximately two acres from a neighborhood residential mixed use 12 district to a community mixed use general district the property is located here along West University razor elementary is here on this tract and then just to give you some reference Malone Street is here and then Fulton Street is here the property is currently undeveloped and it's not platted again when we look at rezoning requests we typically consider two criteria does it meet the future land use plan and does it facilitate the provision of public infrastructure when we looked at the future land use plan we noticed that this request does is consistent with the future land use plan for this area it's designated for commercial use which is intended to promote regional community and neighbor neighborhood shopping centers CMG which is what the applicant is requesting would be a logical extension of the existing CMG districts that are located along the north side of University and also to the east of the property and it would promote a cohesive development pattern and then just to take another look at the existing zoning districts again you see the CMG along the north side of University on the south there's some inner in our three neighborhood residential three on the south this area and I intended to update the map this is primarily flat plane and so it's not really developable with developable at this point there's some NRMU 12 here on the east and this is mostly developed with offices so basically the area the this area is primarily commercial in in use and the applicant is actually requesting this zoning change in order to facilitate retail and restaurant development on the site when we look at the available public infrastructure there's water and wastewater utility in the right away of West University and obviously if when this does develop the property would need to do some extensions into the site but that is available as far as access West University is currently a six lane divided in the mobility plan calls for a six lane divided with bike lanes and sidewalks so any dedication or perimeter street improvements would be collected at the subdivision stage as I mentioned there's floodplain easter on the southwest corner of the site but there's no existing tree canopy according in accordance with the local government code we issued 11 letters to property owners within 200 feet of the subject property we received one and we actually issued 26 courtesy notices to properties within 500 feet and we received one response in favor of the of the request which that fell in the 500 foot buffer the applicant didn't did not hold the neighborhood meeting but they did contact the area HOA's who had no objections to the request so in summary CMG we filled CMG is consistent with the goals and objectives of the den 20 2030 plan it's compatible with the surrounding property in terms of permitted density in the uses that would be allowed and therefore we recommend approval so that concludes my presentation and I will stand for questions I don't see any questions thank you okay this is a public hearing anyone who would like to speak on this item please come forward at this time I do not have any cards wishing to speak but again this is a public hearing anyone who would like to speak on this item please come forward seeing none will close the public hearing and open the floor for discussion or emotion Commissioner Ellis thank you chair I move approval of a z 1727 a Commissioner Sanchez okay I have a first and a second for approval any further discussion seeing none I'll call for a vote on the board that motion will carry six to zero we'll move us to our next item on our agenda I'm going to open the public hearing for z 17 - 0 0 0 3 a we'll call on Haley for presentation good evening and as we did at work session I'll do one presentation for both the rezoning and the SUP request but it would require two separate motions and votes all right so this is case z 17 3 and s 17 11 for the Coventry two apartments as I mentioned there are two separate requests the first being a rezoning from community mixed-use general to neighborhood residential mixed-use district and the second aspect of the request if the rezoning is approved would be for a specific use permit to allow for multifamily residential use on the property you can see two boundaries outlined here on the map the red boundary is the boundary of the rezoning so it 's 11.42 acres and then the yellow boundary within that is the 10.68 acres for the SUP requests which excludes an existing office building on the south side of the property and for reference we have I 35 to the north of the property Sam bass forms the western boundary and Londonderry Lane is on the south side to look at the rezoning request first we have the existing zoning map on the left you see it's the whole area is primarily zone CMG and then on the right would be the proposed zoning map if this request for NRM you is approved there are two criteria for approval isn't of an SUP as Shandrian mentioned the first being conformance with the future land use plan and the second being the facilitation of public infrastructure looking at the first of those two components the future land use for this area is community mixed-use which is intended to promote a mixture of commercial residential and service uses NRM you we found to be generally consistent with this it's very comparable to CMG in terms of the scale of development as well as the type of development there it allows for a wide mixture of residential and commercial uses looking at the existing public infrastructure there there are existing water and sewer lines in the area that would be available for the development with possibly some internal extensions required Sam bass and Londonderry are both currently two lane undivided roads they are commercial mixed-use collectors which means that they're intended to stay two lane undivid ed but with the availability for parking and sidewalks on the side of the roads and any dedications or improvements for this development would be done either at the time that they replat that if they replat the property or when they get to site plan looking at some other compatibility factors here as I mentioned we did find NRM you to be consistent with the existing zoning in many ways a lot coverage building height landscaping requirements are all the same between these two districts and I also wanted to point out that the proposed use for multifamily is permitted under the current zoning the intent of the request is to get rid of a limitation that exists within CMG that requires ground floor commercial development ground floor commercial would probably be tricky in this location given how far it is off the freeway and the existing development pattern because we have multifamily on almost all sides and then industrial with the Acme brick plant on the opposite side of Sam Bass with that staff is recommending approval of the rezoning request because of this consistency with the goals and objectives of the Denton plan 2030 the second aspect of the request then pending approval of the rezoning would be for the specific use permit for the multifamily use when we look at an SUP request we look for general compatibility between the use that's proposed and the surrounding property in terms of no impediments to development of other properties in the area and nuisance generation potential and things of that nature so this is the concept plan that's been proposed for this development this would be the second phase of an existing apartment complex it's to the east of the property for reference on this map it would be here on the the top side so you can see this existing driveway would allow connectivity between the two phases of the apartment complex this plan shows 283 units a mixture of one two and three bedrooms that puts it at around 26 dwelling units per acre for density which is well below that maximum of 30 that they would have under NRM you if the rezoning is approved you can see six buildings laid out here mixture of three and four stories in height one of the key features of the site being that each one of these buildings is designed in an L shape with a common area with landscaping and a kind of a courtyard effect for each building so they do have about 38% landscaping overall as it's proposed we found this request to be consistent with the Denton plan 2030 both for that future land use designation and for the fact that our our comprehensive plan calls for higher density housing to be provided in areas that don't impact existing single-family neighborhoods and as we saw with this one that it's surrounded by like uses there wouldn't be any direct connectivity with single- family so it would limit any impacts that could occur there the use is consistent with the existing development pattern in the area and the site would be required to comply with all other components of the DDC in terms of tree preservation landscaping parking site lighting and those types of things and it would be generally unlikely to generate any nuisances because of its consistency with the surrounding development pattern notices were sent for this request for the local government code we received one response in favor from the former property owner for the southern portion of the tract and the applicant did hold a neighborhood meeting this past Monday and they had representatives from two nearby complexes that attended to see what the proposal was staff is recommending approval of the SUP with the condition that the site plan we saw tonight be considered conceptual in nature so they would still go through the full site plan submittal where all of the specifics of the site would be be nailed down to ensure compliance with the net and development code and with that I can stand for any questions any questions for having there you go Commissioner back thank you just as the owner here the applicant here and gonna speak to us tonight yes the applicant is here thank you have any other questions thank you having this is a public hearing so anyone who would like to speak on this item please come forward at this time I do not have any cards currently so believe it was stay the applicants here if the applicants here would you like to speak on this item I'm Josh I'm with Western Securities we've been here in Denton for since 2001 we actually did a project called Coventry we love that project we really want to improve Denton as well it's we feel like this projects is going to improve the neighborhood around the existing project and we feel like this is a catalyst for us to be able to help develop the entire area as well do you have one question for you Commissioner Beck hey you chair Josh thanks for coming down and speaking and I like what I'm seeing pretty much too I'm one of those though that always hates to see trees go and I noticed in your conceptual plan you've got some big courtyards there so I'm just kind of hoping that when you come back with a site plans final that we'll see a lot a lot of areas there that you can salvage a lot of those trees I went over and looked at them today most of them are post oak they're native trees so what's your sentiment on that if you don't mind asking this this is not our first entry into a large tree saving community we actually believe in saving as many trees as possible I want to try and create a feeling of being in a park and not having where you can see from one unit to another across the street I want to actually create that that feeling of seeing life so that's something that I really try and strive to protect ultimately that's not really viable in every situation but I want to try and do as best I can for that yes good luck to you on that thank you I don't see any other questions thank you sir appreciate you again this is a public hearing anyone who would like to speak on this item please come forward at this time seeing none I'll close the public hearing and open the floor for discussion or emotion Commissioner Roselle I motion to approve the zoning agenda item Z 17 - 0 0 3 a Commissioner Beck second okay the first and the second for approval any other discussion seeing none I'll call for a vote on the board motions going to carry six to zero that item passes and we have a Richard at staff would like to make an announcement on C before I open it and make some clarifications if there is a recommendation to approve this item based on the condition I just wanted to add a sentence at the end just so there's it's clear moving forward and that would be but shall be in conformance with the concept plan as presented I think there was a there's a discussion last night at City Council as as to whether or not they're required to comply with with the concept plan that was always our intent but we just wanted to get it on the record so so it's clear that's all thank you for that clarification condition if we get to that point and with that I'm going to open the public hearing for s 17 - 0 0 11 a we'll call on Haley for if we do a presentation or if we just take a vote on the SUP portion if there's anything you'd like me to run back through on the presentation I can okay all right well thank you for that and I will ask if there's any additional comments this is a public hearing I don't have any cards on this item so if there's anyone who would like to speak or if the applicant would like to address the additional clarification on the condition if there's any questions about that we happy to entertain that with you no okay with that I'm gonna close the public hearing and I will open the floor for discussion or motion Commissioner Ellis thank you chair I move approval of s 17 11 a with staff's condition as stated so the condition we have in our agenda along with the clarification by Richard okay great Commissioner Sullivan okay we have a first and a second for approval any further discussion seeing now call for a vote on board motions going to carry six to zero that will move us to our item D and I'm going to open the public hearing for z 18 - 0 0 0 1 and this is the item that we will need a motion to continue and leave open Commissioner Roselle I motion to move agenda z 1 8 - 0 0 0 1 postponed to a date certain of February 21st 2018 okay Commissioner Ellis thank you chair second we have a first and a second on this item and we are going to leave it open and I will call for a vote on board this motion is going to carry six to zero move us to item E we'll open the public hearing for DCA 18 - 0 0 0 1 we'll call on Haley for this presentation good evening this is case DCA 18 1 it's a proposed code update so the request before you is to hold a public hearing and consider making a recommendation to the City Council regarding a proposed revision to the Denton development code specifically to amend the limitations in subchapter 5 as it relates to mixed use development requirements for multifamily uses to give you a little background there are two limitations in the development code today that would apply to multifamily uses within our mixed use districts the first of those is limitation 4 which allows multifamily with either a specific use permit as part of a mixed use development or if it meets one of the other three criteria being part of a master plan development or previously approved as part of a small area plan the second limitation that applies along with L4 and several districts is limitation 6 that permits multifamily uses only on the second story and above when office retail or other permitted commercial uses are provided on the ground floor along any Avenue collector or arterial street if you have looked at our mobility plan those are our primary street types other than you know residential streets within subdivisions so this would apply in many locations so looking at how these two often apply together you'd see here that L4 applies in all of the mixed use districts so anywhere multifamily is permitted outside of the downtown districts L4 applies limitation 6 is added in four of the districts the community mixed use districts and then our regional center neighborhood and downtown districts as well what staff is proposing is to remove L6 from all four of those districts we're not proposing any changes to L4 it would remain in place L6 we would like to strike from all four districts where it currently applies in the past two years in 2016 and 2017 we had five rezoning request as a result of this limitation we saw one of them here tonight but there have been countless other projects that haven't moved forward because of the requirement for ground floor commercial just to look at how this applies across the city it applies in our community mixed use in our regional center districts on the map here that would be the purple colors the kind of fuchsia colors and then the areas of light pink so you can see here out on the freeway and the loop we have a large area of this we have CMG along McKinney and University and then other pockets of the regional district here on the north side of the city primarily along the loop in the interstate our comprehensive plans and notes that we have a strong need for a diversity of housing types in Denton multifamily being a key one of those especially with our universities here and requiring ground floor commercial that would work best in walkable compact environments and areas out on the loop or on the freeway is a bit onerous and not always feasible for these developments so looking at how these apply I mentioned in the downtown multifamilies permitted by right but we do often see the type of development that L6 is trying to achieve ground floor commercial as a market decision works well in the downtown where you have that compact urban environment so you see a couple of examples here on the right of how we have that development in downtown today on the bottom of the screen just to give you an example or a couple of sites one zone CMG that's on the loop and another one's own RC CD out on Brinker where the ground floor commercial would be required you can tell these are primarily auto oriented areas where people are not likely to be walking along the sidewalk going shopping at their neighborhood stores further wanted to point out as I mentioned earlier that L4 would still apply in all of these districts in any of our mixed-use districts there would still either be the requirement for multifamily to be part of mixed use so to be part of a larger development with three or more uses of which multif amily can only be one so commercial would be a requirement there or it would be required to have an SUP is like the case we saw before this so there would still be that high level of scrutiny on multifamily development in most of the city we did publish notification in the newspaper for this request and received no responses and staff is recommending approval and with that I can stand for any questions any questions for having I'll make a comment I'm glad to see this come before us because to your point we've had a lot of instances over the only the last year but prior to this on this item and I think it's a good change and I'm glad to see us clean this up and make life easier for everybody on this particular item so thank you for bringing this to us no more questions thank you Haley this is a public hearing so anyone who would like to speak on this item please come forward at this time I do not have any carts here before me to call on someone so again this is a public hearing seeing none I'll close the public hearing and open the floor for discussion or emotion Commissioner Ellis thank you chair I will happily move approval of DCA 18 1 Commissioner back I agree this is a good move I second the motion we have a first and a second for approval any further discussion seeing none we'll call for a vet on the board motions going to carry six to zero that will take us to item F at this time I'm going to open the public hearing for DCA 17 - 0 0 1 1 and we'll call on Deborah here for presentation good evening Commission my name is Deborah beer and with the environmental services tonight we are bringing forward as a public hearing the proposed revisions to sub chapter 17 and for the past two pence meetings we have been having a discussion in details about what they are my presentation tonight is going to be you know that the general concepts behind and then we will zoom in into the proposed changes to the alternative ESA plan approval criteria if that's okay with the Commission sure just a question are we going to do like a page turn of the actual ordinance is that part of your presentation no no well what I was planning and just to go over the why the changes are needed and so forth then highlights the substantial changes and naming one by one and then discuss in detail the last one perfect okay sure thank you so if you excuse me sometimes I would kind of skip between slides but hopefully you can bear with me currently the development code provides protection for four type of environmental sensitivities area those are flood plains which are further classifying to develop and unde veloped riparian buffers a water-related habitats and upland habitats the first three type of ESAs they tend to co-locate or be nested inside each other because the three are dependent on the presence for some period of time of water upland habitat those are more dry land driven habitat so why do we protect the ESAs first it really helps the city to actually meet the where MS4 permit MS4 stands for municipal separate storm sewer system that deals with the management of runoff and some water into the city having those areas that actually protects the the water bodies that filter all that pollution it is actually part of our MS MS4 permit with TCEQ that also allow us to meet our construction general permit with TCEQ when you have ESAs in your construction site and you preserve those you can actually use them as a best management practices the protection of ESAs especially the floodplain ESAs actually give us some points in the national floodplain insurance program those are program that based on how well the city managed the floodplain we can provide discounts towards the floodplain insurance owner so the better we do managing our floodplain the better insurance rate they can get so it is something that everybody benefits and the protection of ESAs is important for obtaining the sewer level ice wind city designation that we obtained in 2016 why are we proposing the revisions to sub chapter 17 first of all when the development code was written originally in 2002 many of the sub chapters had some sort of overlap and or hinges on the environmental sensitive area many of those chapters have been already revised however the correspond the citations and references were not carried through so right now we have some inconsistencies between sub chapter 17 and other sections of the development code the development community have indicated to us that the code could benefit from improving the wording and phrasing so in that way is more understandable understandable is lacking clarity in some instances with that with the implementation of with the approval of the D DC back in 2002 the ESA were the first attempt policy wise to the protection of those areas many of those policies that were written at the time were not given clear implementation of it so one one example is the clustering development it is permitted but there's so much guidance on how to go by it have been over 15 16 years since the adoption of the DDC it's time for all for us to revaluate those policies are they are they making sense do we need to change them or do we need to keep them and definitely we need to start considering new policies if necessary so it have been you know we have a fair try and if they are not working or their new things why not to consider those so this process of writing changes was better through the committee on the environment which is a subcommittee from the City Council we spent approximately 13 months with the committee going step-by-step changes changes changes we organize all the co-revisions in four different categories corrections those were typos grammatical errors or simple references that were outdated the second was language clarification and the third was language addition the difference between the two is language clarification is the policies there we are not making changes to the policy whatsoever we are adding to what is out there to make it more clear code language additions we are not changing policy either but the initial wording have no go-by whatsoever so we are adding new language however the policy is intact and voices changes during this time we have vetted these changes through different platform medias we have sent emails to the development code through the web page we I did presentations when Clarion was doing the open house meetings about the rewrite of the DDC I partnered with them so in that way everybody had the opportunity to to see the two going together we also sent a email through the project doc so anybody who has been an applicant through the development process should have gone an email about the changes and inviting them to provide comments and we I have solicited input from local and out-of-town developers consultants and so forth at this point we have got up I believe 61 comments total from the different different people so and this public hearing was also advertised through the newspaper so what what I have done is highlight what are the most substantial changes and I'm going quickly through them so stop me if you need to go over those we are proposing to create a new ESA criteria manual the ESA criteria manual is a hopefully will provide guidance to the homeowner who happens to have an ESA on site but doesn't know how to manage them and also it will provide some technical guidance for the scientists and the biologists and the one put in a restoration program for ESA so we are trying to see to to try to provide some some guidance those are common questions that we have come across over and over you know we have the homeowner that doesn't have not not much or really interested in doing the right thing and we have the more technical people we have increased and expanded the credits given by preservation of ESAs currently the code talks about giving you credits for the landscape and tree ordinance however we have expanded those credits to also give you credit for the preservation of trees we have increased the ratio on those and also because we acknowledge that Denton is within two ecoregions one on the eastern side is where you see the crust timbers on the western side is the prairie which are dominated for more herbaceous plant we also want to acknowledge that and give them credit if you are preserving those habitats as well establish an appeal process for the ESA staff determination in the past 15 years we have not have a process for which a applicant can challenge the staff determination about the presence or absence of ESA these process these new mechanism would allow that the designation and depiction of developed and unde veloped floodplain habitats and this is one of the major concern when the ESA map map was created back I would say in 2000 the designation the floodplain were designated and when we go back and see those especially in the western part of town you see a lot of switch between developed undeveloped and there's no inconsistency throughout and when you see that from an aerial standpoint the developed designation doesn't correspond to what is in the ground so we are proposing to maintain the designation what we are doing is changing the map are calling it everything floodplain ESA when the development is ready to happen we have a development proposal in our hands a staff will go out and make the determination of what is currently out there the applicant will always have the options to hire the own consultant to do it that is up to them however what we are trying to do is just to be consistent throughout the exception of roadways identified in the city thoroughfare plan from the limits of unfilled and vegetation disturbance something that comes to to your mind probably is the Ryan Meadows development where they were required to extend Creekdale through the floodplain on the southern part of the development unfortunately they we didn't have a provision to allow that to happen without them going through an alternative ESA plan this Commission have spoken and have shown interest in for that to be changed and we have incorporated what we have done is we have floodplain and repair and buffers most of the time the repair and buffer are nested inside the floodplain so we have make sure that is considered that that allowance is not only consistent through the floodplain but also within the repair and buffer and water related so that there should be a smooth pathway mitigation will be required they will have to restore that area that have been the vegetation have been removed and make sure that the slopes are consistent and they're not will not end up or resulting in erosion so but that mitigation will be approved at staff level so that will expedite it would make the process run smoothly and faster for the applicant the non-residential development to preserve 30% of cross timber upland habitat this is a change this is a major change in policy currently the DDC requires the preservation of 50% of the upland habitat for residential uses that includes multi-family single-family and do bless it however if you were to develop any non-resident ial use you don't have to preserve the upland habitat upland habitat preservation is a little bit different from tree code preservation mainly because what we're looking is the preservation of the of the habitat as a entire as a unit we are interested in in the trees but we're also interested in the understory and everything that goes with it why because for preserving that if you remove the understory from a habitat the chances are that the vi ability of the habitat to to last longer the benches so that's the reason why we while we are moving and again you have species that they don't climb up to the to the to the tree canopy they live on the bottom of that area so we are providing how the protection of the habitat as a whole and finally we are providing a criteria for approving an alternative ASAP and this is where I want to delve into more detail if you allow me back in when the DDC was first drafted the alternative ESA plan were envisioned to run parallel on the same process as an alternative development plan nowadays the development the alternative development plan comes to the planning and zoning Commission and gets the final approval before that and I will say approximately eight years ago AD Ps required the approval of a planning and zoning Commission and the approval of City Council very similar to a zoning change request that have changed and the city decide to keep to change the process for alternative ESA plan but to maintain the process for the alternative ESA plan meaning that alternative ESA plan have to go through the planning and zoning Commission get a recommendation and then move forward for final approval through the City Council however when you separated the two there was no criteria for alternative ESA plan so at this point even though a staff provide some guidance to applicant and to this body and City Council on the merits of the alternative ESA plan we want to officialize to formalize that process in that way you have a clear guidance to judge a proposal by so this is a complete new new change so this is the approval process the alternative ESA plan provides an option to address the regulations were in a flexible discretionary process utilizing the zoning amendment procedure outlines of chapter 3.4 that language have no change is the same that we currently have what is different is the criteria for approval you have heard me multiple times when I come and present before you about how staff the preferences for staff on mitigation I have always tell you that you work with what you have if you have a repair and buffer that you going to partially encroach on but you have more of that habitat go and take a look and see if you can make that habitat better it might be chances are that they will be so invasive species that could be removed that you can plant more native on it maybe that channel is already eroding if you stabilize the channel you are you are improving the chat the the habitat as a whole so my own what my first approach is work what you have and that's number two mitigation goals are obtained by preserving environmental sensitive area above the minimum requirement exchanges between different type of ESO installing pollution prevention controls and implementing best management practices or any other approaches that result in the improvement of the environment being impacted so before this I don't know if you remember Magn olia an apartment complex on Nottingham and mingle they exchange they impacted a repair and buffer in exchange they mitigated with preserving more open habitat that one they needed even though we are not talking apples to apples we try to what I call to find a common currency between the two type of habitat in that case we use the amount of trees preserve how many trees were removed by encroaching into the repair and buffer how much additional trees you are preserving so as long as we have some nexus between the two I think that that's a viable option sometimes you don't have that the only ESA that you have on site is the one that you are encroaching so in those instances because all those eases they provide a pollution control mechanism sometimes those pollution benefits could be obtained by the implementation of best management practices or some water controls so those are the we wanted to provide as much possibility as we could for applicants to provide mitigation and the last areas offer as a mitigation are linked to existing or plan open space of conserved area to provide an overall open space that language is already in the code it is under section 17.10 so what we have done many any many of that language that was in that section have been moved into this new section and made a criteria for approving an alternative ESA plan so that language is it we're just changing the position where it is in the code development is arranged for maxim izing access and utilization of the environments sensitive area by citizen that code that language is already in our code areas offers a mitigation or place either on a lot lots that incorporate permanent conservation in that language is already in the code we're just using it as a criteria for approval and the alternative ESA plan shall demonstrate that the developers alternative proposal results in a high quality development meeting the intent of the standard of the development code that is the only language that you currently have for the approval of alternative ESA plan so as you say it was a combination of options that we are wanting to provide the developers when they're contemplating applying for a alternative ESA plus you just using current language that is already in the code I just use it as a criteria so with that said we are in the process of making of actually creating the a criteria mental for ESA is not finished yet many of the comments that we have received from the development community could go into that or could guide the cut that to to finalize the content of the criteria manual so at this point the staff you have received copy of the compilation of the of the public input received I'm very happy with the with the active participation of the public there 's good good comments that I would like to incorporate some of them could go straight to the criteria manual one comment that struck me and I wish I would have thought about it when when I was drafting the comment was to actually the definition of a water related habitat I think that the water related habitat definition is not clear enough and this new definition I think will help the the applicants and professionals when assessing those if you were interested that would be if you bear with me common number 28 on the list so it's pretty much saying that we need to include clearly stated that bottomland hardwoods should be are considered water related and I think that that addition it really clarifies for everybody this is not something new we are not expanding this is currently when somebody does a is a field assessment or when staff perform those assessment bottomlands that meet that criteria would also be considered so this is just putting it right in something that we are currently doing with that that concludes my presentation I'm available to answer any questions that you might have Commissioner bed thank you chair Deborah can you go back one slide with the writing in red just once like now okay number five it says there is offered as a mitigation or placed either in a lot or lots that incorporate a permanent conservation easement restricted co venants so on so is this suggesting that if we can't preserve enough trees in the developed area that we can find another parcel of land either nearby or maybe in some other parts of the city so we can conserve a certain percentage of tree canopy and upland habitat is that what that's suggesting that leave the door open for that option to happen I have been doing development review for 18 years and doing is as for over 10 and we have had a couple of instances where developer have tried that this the size of the preservation area matters especially because you wanted to put some sort of in some sort of conservation easement so if you are talking about less than one acre chances are that you will find somebody who might be interested in do a conservation area for one acre will be hard so what I'm saying is given that the right conditions given the right layers it is a possibility have not been done however I will not try to exclude that option because have not happened yet but that provision leave the door open for that to happen and that would probably suggest that the city get involved financially to cover that causes that probably true to or are there other ways in other words if we're gonna you know well no I take that back the developer would come in to play their own part of that but we'd have to set some kind of areas aside that within the city that I guess this Commission City Council could agree on well if you're referring as a creating a mitigation bank where developers can go and purchase that right now if we use the example that the Court of Engineer uses for wetland mitigation those are actually probably owned by entities okay and they have aside those areas that provide the half wetlands and things like that and then the developer goes like they will go to any other bank and say I'm interesting on purchasing from you X number of credit the number of credits are determined by the Court of Engineers based on the proposed meeting impact so and have worked so far is a private driven market to be honest with you where they establish the the price for those units and so far so at this point I don't know if the city will entertain the idea to actually create a bank like that but I would say I will not say that it's not possible but the that option if somebody happens to have to see that as a more credible idea somebody can pursue it they could be a part of future discussion definitely okay okay thank you Commissioner Rizzo thank you chair thank you Deborah for the presentation I need to hopefully get some clarification before I ask a question can you go back to your very first slide where it talked about the reasons or the motives for this no no no one more it talked about MS4 okay so these four items listed here are all economic benefits to the city I'm wondering is the sole intent and motive behind this manual to protect the economics of the city or to protect the actual habitats found in S to the B because as you mentioned the four items that are adding value to the city you're not mentioning tree canopy critters birds any of that listed here it's all economic value so I'm wondering if you can clarify the city's motive in all of this and I apologize that one of the slides that I that I skipped was actually the six basic functions of environmental sensitive area first is to provide habitat and most of the time is is their methods to quantify that in a monotonous way to provide some because most of the time what they they do is how much it will take for us to mimic that habitat and we can make those those numbers but sometimes it is hard to quantify that so by preserving is as we are preserving habitat which is a benefit not only for the wildlife but for for for for us surface as a conduit all those these are allows that the the wildlife the plants the material to move from point A to point B it works as a barrier for example sedimentation pollutants it stops that even hydrocarbons when we have a spill and that hydrocarbons is allowed to go through some sort of grassy area all of that hydrocarbons are captured by the by the vegetation filter pollutants sediments is a pollutant source of resources and provide supply like organic matter nutrients and aquifer recharge all the vegetation that you see a lone Creek all the foliage that falls into the water those are actually the food that the creature downstream are going to use to feed from and those creatures are the food of fish and then you can see how how the chain progresses all the way to to us and it's a source of resources we have our one of the one of our sort of portable water is Lake Lewisville so the cleaner we we keep the water going to discharge into the lake the less treatment that we are having to provide to make that water portable and sink and sequest ration of pollutant carbon would be one of those that have been linked to the climate change so those are the more environmental functions that we get out of it interesting enough is approximately over 50% of the tree canopy in the in the city is within some sort of ESA so just by 50% of the tree canopy is within some sort of ESA so just by preserving the ESA we also maintaining our tree canopy for the city which is something that the community have rated highly important for them so those are the the the environmentally more driven reasons to why to maintain but there are more pragmatic uses to also preserve ESAs and those are for compliance with permitting improving our score in the floodplain management so forth so a little bit of more less quantitative and the other sides more quantitative so thank you very much I really appreciate that and and based on on those six things just to bring back what I talked about in work session it seems like we would want to protect these six things regardless of the use going into the property in the new rules it's 50% for residential and 30% for non-residential and talking to staff I understand that non-residential does have landscape requirements and barriers that they do add but those aren't creating SS those are function of some beaut ification of the property and I would say residential property owners want to put trees in their front yards and they have landscaping around there in front of the house and in their backyard and so I I think those should be equal I think especially if one of the reasons why their residential use is 50% is because developers can charge more for treating property I think that is not an appropriate reason to have an increased amount of upland habitat specifically on the property just because we assume that developers gonna make more money off of it and so I don't want to belabor the point but I do feel that I have yet to be convinced why the city is proposing two different percentages based on use when I think if we are about protecting upland habitat then it shouldn't matter who's destroying it we want to protect it so I think either non-residential you should go to 50% or seemingly because of the other points brought up in work session about the issues with residential property owners not having access to their property I'd be more of opponent proponent of dropping the residential use down to 30% but I just think it and maybe I'm missing something you can help me understand I don't understand why non-residential are allowed to tear down more upland habitat and not keep it contiguous and that they can just keep the tree canopy in line with the potential tree code provisions okay well we are starting from right now that we preserving zero on non-residential development for upland habitat to a 30% which is is an improvement okay non-residential development they have parking areas loading docks maneuvering geometry that they have to maintain to make their site plan workable okay they also are some of them they will come to the city with a preconceived site plan which it worked for them in other locations and would like to implement the same here so I see why that the 30% to the to the non- residential is given that the other side was when I was reviewing this the tree code was also being redrafted okay and the 30% was something that is where the language which I believe still there it was trying to attain so in we want to make development in that and feasible okay so we try to by maintaining that 30% consistency if they were to have to preserve 30% for tree canopy they can use the open habitat to meet that code as well so it was a way to improve of what we currently have from 0 to 30 and also to provide some place flexibility to non-residential developer and to actually trying to pass the benefit of preserving our plan and make them count towards other requirements so that was the intent behind that however if this Commissioner would like to change that percentage and make and make that part of your recommendation a staff would pass that recommendation to City Council as well so just if there's something in the code right now that you are not hundred percent if the Commission as a whole is not hundred percent what it either want to increase or actually want to make the requirements lesser let us know and make that part of your recommendation and we will pass that so I don't want to because we have not you are not agreeing with every single word of that is just prevent you to actually move forward with it with the proposed changes that some of them are really needed I appreciate the context thank you Commissioner Sullivan yes has I haven't heard anything so I'm just curious you know to state and national level there is a process whereby you can turn land over to the state into the national federal government in return you get tax benefits and so forth conservation easements and is there any provision whereby the changes to the code renders either all or a portion of somebody's property unusable in other words they can't make any changes it's a certain designation ESA whatever and it basically renders it unusable is there any thought to saying you know what you deed this over to the city because the city is telling you you can't do anything within this area you deed it over to the city the city takes it over in an exchange whether for cash or for tax benefit making a charitable contribution to the city or something of that effect whereby the land owner gets some benefit by the city effectively taking that land from them well the conservation easement most of the time they are not driven by the city they are actually institution that manage them and how they work this let's say that you have hundred acres of development you can actually restrict the development rights on your property let's say that is a farm right now with potential to be rez oned into single family and being a subdivision you can actually put a conservation easement where you say this area will not be developed more than this amount of units okay even though I'm capping that and then you're trading your development rights and by doing that you can get some tax reduction because you are your the property the value of the property no longer allows for maximizing hundred units per acre now is limited to 30 so the value of your property changes according to it and you get the benefits through some sort of tax but those conservations easements are not provided by the city they 're usually run by institution we have some in the state of Texas we have some landowners most of time big ranches that actually pursue that but it's not through city government through conservation easement and those organizations who manage them but the effect of the property owner is the same and that is that they are giving up a portion of their land not necessarily because they want to but because of these changes being made to the code require them to give up some of the land so in effect the city really is taking that land and now you have all kinds of issues going on and so you know I think there's needs to be some talk as Commissioner Roselle is talking it seems like it's sort of all faith in the favor of the city well I think the city needs to give some of that back to the homeowner to the landowner so that if they're willing to abide by these rules then deed it to the city let the city take it over and get some tax benefit for the landowner for example the flood plain is the is that number one type of visa that is larger in acreage you know because it's a floodplain if you were to developed if you were to develop property who has a flood penny a floodplain FEMA hundred-year floodplain most of that area the city would not allow you to do to put any structures to it why because when you do that you are actually reducing the the value storage you are increasing the water surface elevation and you are making condition the flooding conditions downstream of you worst okay so in those instances the city is required you to put a drainage easement on it what it means is you own the land is yours what you are doing is restricting they use the development of that of that section of your property because it is within a essay we have three type of ESA that most of the time are nested in floodplaining essay so when you put a drainage easement on your property just to meet the floodplain requirements nothing else just to you are preserving for the most time those three both of ESA so in those and that's why some of our definitions are crafted very carefully to make sure that when development happens if they're already having to provide a drainage easement because floodplain conditions then you already meeting the ESA floodplain so use us in the way that have been it doesn't work in every in every instance hundred percent but most of the time we have crafted the language to allow the developers and homeowners to actually meet multiple requirements drainage landscape opens minimum open space and so on by preserving the essay so we are look we are open to to other options but the condition that the code have been drafted with that mentality already I've got a couple more questions that we didn't get to in work session I've got a question on in regards to the page turn I guess this would be section 17.7 be section 3 standard for fill and undeveloped floodplains okay yes and as I read this it says filling of any flood plane of a stream that drains more and one square miles per unless the fill on any lot is less than 50 cubic yards or 300 cubic feet per acre whichever is greater and further on in E it talks about fill being concrete or aggregate and there's a description of what is Phil my question is thinking like I think is that if you have a lot or a piece of property that has undeveloped floodplain on it and it's considered a lot or an acre you can't come do in excess of 50 cubic yards of material on that lot anywhere the way that this is written it doesn't say it's in the flood plane it just says unless the fill on any lot is less than 50 cubic yards so if you have a lot that has undeveloped floodplain on it you can't put 50 cubic yards of material on it well this is meant they the ESA is the floodplain itself okay so this call deals with with those ESA the limitation on the field is is intended to to be within the floodplain so if your lot is partially outside of the floodplain and you are willing to put a fill on that lot but not encumber into the floodplain you are allowed the problem is when you want you decide is to go over that threshold within the floodplain this is it have two connections first by the I understand that part I'm just reading what it says okay is that if you have floodplain on there it's prohibited unless the fill is on any lot less than 50 cubic yards it doesn't say that if it's in the floodplain it just says if it's on the lot so for clarification purposes I think it needs to be clarified kind of what you 're describing is that it can't be in the floodplain because the way I read it now is that it can't be on the lot if a piece of the lot is in the flood plain does that make sense yeah I can definitely rework that lot language to make it clear okay because you at that point if you have a lot that has any floodplain on it it's an unbuildable lot essentially yes so that was one just item that was pretty straightforward I had some questions in work session I want to revisit a couple of them really quickly just since we're in public session for those that may have not been watching work session one of the things that I would like for us to take a look at and get some clarification on is back in 35 17.2 a it says within the corporate limits of the city of Denton except is otherwise specifically provided for in this subsection when you go farther into this subsection and go to 35 17 6 it says official maps it says the official map that identifies areas designated as ESA's and my question at work session was when you first read this it sounds like it just applies to the corporate limits city limits of Denton but when you go to this provision that I just brought up about applicable or official maps it actually some of this applies to the ETJ and I think you clarified in work session that it's not the open habitat but it has to do with wet yeah with a plane so cleaners yeah the item 17 point two point B it says the floodplain standard of this sub chapter shall apply to all land and all development within the extra-territory jurisdiction of the city and that is granted to the city by the state based on the protection of water resources that's the reason behind it so that's why we made the clarification upland habitat water related habitat or repairing buffer that is located outside the city limits a we have no jurisdiction over those okay the ESA regulations does not apply to those the only ESA that we have jurisdiction in the ETJ is floodplain and most of the time when development happens in the ETJ because it's floodplain that area will be set aside through some sort of drainage easement so through that through providing that mechanism on the plot itself they are providing they are meeting the protection of the floodplain ESA if you don't mind would you pull up the interactive map for the city of Denton and then go on the links where it says ESA just bear with me sure so , thank you. , thank you. So when you go over on the ESA's and hit the button to expand it the little triangle to the left would you just click on the bottom where it says ESA floodplain designations and let's light up what that entails there you go so that's everything that's floodplain okay and if you'll click on then the skip the ESA habitats but click on the one that says ESA stream buffers it is shown in pale yellow very skinny line inside the floodplain you might zoom in a little if you'll click it back off the last button we just put on there the ESA stream buffers yes that's what we're talking about that you all do regulate so not only the floodplain within all of these stream buff ers are the areas that you regulate not only in the city of Denton but then also out in the ETJ is it correct well if there is a riparian buffer okay and if you read what the regulations are between floodplain and riparian buffers and water related you will find that the regulations of water related and rip arian buffers are more stringent the reason why is because that's the last line of defense before a pollutant can get waterborne okay so you will see that the requirements are a little bit more stringent in those so if you are in the ETJ for example we will be able to regulate within the floodplain okay but we will not be able to regulate the riparian buffer okay so in some extent you would be entitled to do the requirements in the ETJ because it's just limited to the floodplain and not the riparian buffer and not the water related in some extent are a little bit lesser than what will be in the city limits okay so I could not tell them for example that they will have to work under the riparian buffer for the installation of something because if it is a permitted use within the floodplain for example installation of a utility line by open trench ing so if you were to do that in the ETJ you can probably open trench all through it okay because the only thing that I have regulations on is the floodplain not the riparian buffer or the water related I may have misunderstood what you said when you were stating that the only thing that you could do in the ETJ where the water related I'm sorry is floodplain floodplain so when you click on the button back again where it says stream buffers all those that pop up in the city limits and when you go outside into the ETJ they're nice to be on the map but you don't have any regulation of those or you do correct no I don't have and they one of the reason is the the ESA map is also a tool for us when we are considering annexations for example those are lands that are currently in the ETJ and when they are they come in they will be subject to all city regulations so in those instances when we do the evaluation it helps them understand what is it is very typical of me then when I review a proposal in the ETJ I I acknowledge the presence of all the type of ESS I made me very clear which one we have jurisdiction on however we always for example if there's open habitat even though I cannot require preservation of it I said you know if you could consider the preservation of the of the existing habitat on your property so some of them are many developers they see that as a added value to the property and they already have incorporated the preservation into it so it is a suggestion at that point but we try to at least educate the applicant of the value of the habitat that they have on site okay so when you when you turn those back off and it's just a purple those are the things they're in floodplain and then everything else that's in brown that's there in the city limits is what you're talking about as far as the authority and possibly going on into ETJ on some of those correct and for this map for example all that red stuff means that those are repairing buffer designation that have been removed why it because that is the pecan Creek going through the middle of town who have been heavily harnessed concreted in so we have removed those designation we still show them on the map but if you click on information it will tell you that there was an ESAP field assessment done and so on so you kind of have all that paper trail created so we provide sometimes we provide more information and that you know create some confusion but sometimes the more we provide the better so in that way developers can make a educated decision so is this the official map essentially or is there someplace else that you can get a copy this is this is just the interactive map if we have a paper copy it would look like just keep in mind the ESA map is amended on a regular basis the map by no means is hundred percent accurate but it's a good it's a good start it's a good indication to make us pause for a moment and say we have to reassess few things if there are questions about the presence of the of the ESAS we can do a city field assessment at no cost to the applicant and we will go we have a specific criteria for each type of ESA if that criteria is not met then we will require we will conclude that that designation should be removed we notify the the planning director about the need of changing and what area needs to be changed so we the ESA map is a living document it changes all the changes that are from time to time happen is when FEMA reissue firms which is the floodplain insurance map and they sometimes they take ten years to change those when the floodplain when the FEMA floodplain changes our boundary changes as well because in the way that we have defined the floodplain ESA it matches that boundary when somebody wants to do a reclamation of the floodplain meaning that they will do some type of exclamation to reduce or to modify the change of it that goes through a clomer which stands for conditional letter of man revision and then goes through a long more process and that is approved by the city and by FEMA when FEMA changes the boundary through the long more process it changes the definition of the floodplain with it so the ESA map is a living document that changes just I think I think you addressed those changes amendments to the map correct in there and I think it's on there 35 17 6 B is that correct with those we all the would that be the process for amendments okay I had one final question on 17.5 D water related habitat it says areas designated as wetland is there a definition for that or where do we find that and how is that determined what land those are transitional have from from my ecological I'm going to give you the ecological definition of it okay the ecological definition of a wetlands that they are transitional habitat which withstand some sort of flood condition for some period of time okay because the inundation conditions that they experience there's certain type of plant species that live there because they are they tolerate the inundation process the soils change characteristics and also they are hydraulic characteristics so you will see a watermark depicted and you see the oxidation reduction of the soil and that's where the watermark is or that so those are characteristic those are the scientific ecological definition of what a wetland is many of the people many of the comments have addressed or hinges upon the definition of what wetlands by the Court of Engineers is if you read the Court of Engineers definition all that is is tied to navigable waters to commerce to be able to promote commerce in your state comments okay so when they were so the wetlands that are protected by the core are those who are hydrologically connected to a water body that is deemed navigable okay so if we take that limited concept of it then if we go by the definition of the core more it will be less areas protected of wetlands wetlands are incredible habitats they do fantastic services as filtration devices okay so if we limit that to what the court in the way that the court defined wetlands or provide protections to it then many of the habitats that are good to maintain will be our order of protection so our definition as it is it is more broad than what other state or federal agencies define what is that in here somewhere no that's the only definition is that something that you would like to it's stuff to expand provide a definition on on wetlands I think it's necessary to define the term especially if for your discussion if city didn't has a determination of what what a wetland is which is different than what the state or the federal government says I think it needs to be spelled out here's what the city of Denton determines as a wetland for everybody to understand if you have this on your property you have for the city of Denton a wetland okay okay so I'm familiar with where your what you're defining because I see them in phase one reports it'll have a designation on it that this is on the map and if it's not on that map you proceed forward with it however the city didn't may have a different determination what a wetland is versus what's on the maps that all these people that do this for a living produce for us and say yeah this property's got a clean phase one on it and it's nothing on it you say that's wetland on it because we are creating the E-Secretary manual where all the more technical part would be would this be something that you would like to see in the DDC as a part of 17 or would you like to see that as a part of the criteria manual as I recall as I read this it says that if it's more stringent in the code and what's in the criteria manual then what's in the code prevails is that correct on how this is written so I think it should be in the actual code rather than in the criteria maybe put it in both you know thank you I got a couple more questions Commissioner Ellis thank you chair Deborah thanks for your work in this my question has to do with the alternative ESA plan so you can basically walk me through why we're considering it a zoning amendment procedure a zoning amendment procedure if you go back to sub chapter three three I believe on the DDC establishes a different processes and the is called the process the zoning amendment procedure just because requires the public hearing process before the planning and zoning Commission and City Council that's that's the reason why it's called a zoning amendment procedure because it really is nothing to do with zoning this all has to do with development yeah the zoning is not in question is just followed the steps require through a any zoning change which is planning and zoning notification newspaper public hearing before the planning and zoning Commission recommendation from the planning and zoning Commission and the final approval of City Council okay just so I understand so so going this route so it can be a public hearing is that what you're saying correct okay thank you Commissioner Sanchez yeah I worked as a biologist biologist for 30 years and we talked about habitat wetland habitat it was based primarily on the vegetation and the soils and that's what we would look at we go in there I mean you just that's the definition primarily you can't deviate from that yeah and the other question I had is when we talk we talked a lot a lot about upland habitat and preserving that you know Mother Nature did a good job here in the cross timbers fire was a big proponent of managing the cross-land timbers we've taken that out of there so a lot of these habitats that we have are very deteriorated so I it's hard for me when we start talking about little areas five ten twenty acres they're really going to be if without burning they're just going to deteriorate so I'm just wondering why are we maintaining these small areas when they really don't really see what's the word I want they're not they're not going to do a whole lot because they're over time they're just deterior ating yeah because fire is a big part of the understory I mean the grasses are a big part of the understory and that's what would carry through the fires through the through this habitat and as and as I see a lot of areas you don't have a lot of vegetation on the ground on the ground on the surface you know a lot of has just deteriorated you have just invade invasive grasses so you're just maintaining primarily you're maintaining the woodlands you know but even those it's hard for me to see how we're maintaining upland habitat without managing them somehow yeah well so and that that brings a very good point in nature if if this were not within the urban setting okay fire is a big management tool okay this is how habitats they renew themselves that's how invasive species are control and so on sometimes you need to even open up the canopy to allow the understory and the juvenile to be able to reach out enough sunlight to grow so these areas are should be managed and I want to use carefully the word managed okay if you see all the all the permitted uses within all the top of the four type of ESA some sort of management provision is allowed removal or of invasive planting of native pruning up to 25% of the canopy of upland habitat for the health of the habitat so these eases are meant to be managed that is different from manicuring the ESA okay it's different perspective so that's why I wanted to use the word management carefully if you if those are you needs to be intervene to actually restore them make them better you are allowed to do it by right okay because sometimes you need it repairing buffers if the if the watershed have been urban ized for example you are putting more runoff through those through those channels that if it's not been dealt or if it is a watershed that have been developed under you know long time ago where none of the floodplain standards were in place probably those those channels are eroding already and the vegetation might be gone because that's the way that the creek adjust the channel adjust to the changes so in those instances by all means go there and if you can do it you are entitled to do it so yeah those those eases are meant to be in some level managed if they need to thank you for answering all of our questions I don't have anymore this is a public hearing I don't have any cards on this item but anyone who would like to speak on this item please come forward at this time if you'll give us your name and address and please an old hand at this he's already got a card filled out thank you Lee certainly good evening my name is Lee Allison with Allison engineering group didn't in Texas I'm here to speak on behalf of the Denton Community Development Alliance as I get into it I'd like to put the emphasis on community development we're not the developers Alliance we're not here to try and get the city to redact all its rules so developers can come in and do what they want but we're here working on behalf of the community and the property owners and the people who maintain property and manage property and live in property and work and play here to have a community that develops providing opportunities similar for the undeveloped elements of the community that the development commit elements had when they came here and in general we not sure where we stand on this particular ordinance when it when I worked on ordinances or items similar to this we usually start with with before principles and practices we we have I had the word in the head top my head a minute ago and now I forgot it but what are the guiding things we know we want to keep the water quality in Lake Louisville it's a it's where our drinking water comes from that's a fact a principle a policy is that we don't want development to degrade the water quality in Lake Louisville is and then what are the practices we provide protections against what would degrade development practices that would degrade the water quality and maybe we provide incentives for those practices that might help improve the water quality above what it is today certainly we don't have a Boston Harbor issue or a Chicago issue where we got meat fats floating on top of the river allowing it to burn across town and and destroy the rest of the city the DCDA submitted 43 comments to staff those are included in the 61 in the list that you were given our concern is that in that list what is missing is a column there's not a column in there that shows the staff comments related to responses to our comments how they might have been addressed or thought of or whether they were good or not good or should be included in the TCM or whatever there's that's there's just nothing there related to the staff's position secondly related to that the draft ordinance you have tonight is the same draft ordinance that we were given the comment on a couple of months ago so apparently our comments were not very impressive because it made absolutely zero changes in the ordinance that's being presented tonight again when it comes to policy I believe Deborah stated there was only one policy change in the overall ordinance and that was increasing to require commercial properties to be subject to the upland habitat prepers preservations and that's the only one that we saw that that was addressed or thought of in all the comments we had and I can't say that 's a movement in the wrong direction just saying that's the only policy statement that seems to have been addressed in all this and when it comes to practices we don't see that there are any changes a couple of things that we have most interest in and one of them is the process the fact that has to go through a zoning ordinance ESA's oh man I'm going fast ESA's are land characteristics not land uses the council can hear a plat if it wants to it has the authority to delegate plat approvals to PNZ this could be kept going to council it could have public hearings but with the zoning ordinance is subject to the supermajority rules and the neighbors opposing and I've got a couple of examples of ESA's I wouldn't do one for a client unless I get paid in front because they got very little chance of getting through because of the zoning process and I think there's other processes that could do that when it comes to the 50 cubic yards of fill on a piece of land that's less than a half inch over an acre we have meaningless offers of how you can get into the developed floodplain because it's not worth getting into for that little mountain so could go on and on but I'll obviously stop thank you I have a question for you yes did you have any meetings with city staff on your 43 comments or did you submit the comments and no follow-up meetings to talk about them Deborah and I met on December the 22nd and went over them I hand my comments were mostly handwritten at that time and we discussed them and she explained to me the history of the why they're using the zoning ordinance and not another mechanism to bring those items before counsel and then I wrote up all of the comments and submitted to her on behalf of DCDA after that okay but did you have any follow-up conversations of what have we done on item for aid or whatever it's just these are the comments and then there's no follow-up of no Deborah did help me become aware when it was going to come as a workshop item but we had no real discussions back and forth or with our group regarding the merits of any any particular item that was brought up okay Commissioner Ellis thank you chair hi mr. Allison can you share with me how you would like to see the procedure would you like it to have its own procedure as far as an alternative ECA yes a the alternative ESA is fine it's just that instead of going forward as a zoning it could go forward as either a subdivision variance or just like an alternative development plan does now it's just that the council could say for I believe they can and I'm not gonna ask you to chime in now mr. Flores but you'll give the final say so I think the council could say we're not gonna delegate approval of alternative ESAs to PN Z and it has to go to City Council well I was just gonna make a comment after after you finished but maybe if I can have Deborah come up because I know we discussed this because there's been some talk about what the process or appeal process would be Deborah would you mind explaining the difference between designation of an ESA and then approval of an alternative plan the designation of an ESA is determined by a field assessment okay we have we have the E SA map which is a first chance to to to look into areas that should be protected if the ESAs if there is questions about the validity of the map as is shown the applicant has the right to request a field assessment either staff will do it at the applicant request or the applicant can hire a consultant a biologist to do it and what it does is go through a criteria of vegetation of soil and hydrology okay and we look into what is in the back what is about the bank and so on so it is a the criteria that we use is the same very similar to what the Court of Engineers have been used when we did our research we research not only state of Texas but nationwide and so on so this is the typical criteria that a for example a wetland delineator we use okay so after we go to this to the side we do the assessment or the applicants submit their assessment through a third party we review it if we concord with the with the conclusions either the ESA is there or the ESA is there but not as shown is moved around or the type of ESA is different then we will issue a memo to the planning director to request the change the officially change of the map I guess my question is to be more specific is the the appellate board or the board that would that would hear the the appeal for one for for ESA determinations and two for alternative plans okay the new process proposed for appealing and again this is completely new is it would be through the zoning board of adjustment process meaning that there will be a public hearing advertisement and all that and it will be the applicant will have a chance to make their case a staff would provide a recommendation and then that's how the appeal of a staff determination of what type of ESA or the president of the ESA is going to be okay the difference between that and the alternative ESA plan is that it goes through the planning and zoning Commission and City Council now is the alternative is that process any different than it is currently no no it is is is follow the same so the only difference the only change to the ESA ordinance is the additional appellate procedure before be zoning board of adjustment correct for ESA determinations at the outset correct okay and mr. Allison I 'm not sure that helps or answers clarifies in any of the questions you had not at all he says they're still not in my mind still not a zoning issue and when you're looking at the presence of an ESA and staff determination that can be appealed via the zoning board of adjustments again you're back into the zone but I've never really had any issues with that then once it's established that there is an ESA and you want to modify that ESA then you have to go through the alternative ESA problem because the alternative ESA is not addressed whether it's there or not it's how do we deal with the one that is there and then that gets run through as a zoning process and the real issue with the zoning process is not rather P&Z and City Council hear it not whether there's a public hearing or not the real issue is driving the super majority requirement I've had instances where staff is recommended approval and because of neighbors public opinion that drove a super majority council voted against it I had a previous P&Z member come to me one time and say why don't y'all put that retaining wall there you should have moved it way up closer I said because you wouldn't let us you know you wouldn't approve that alternate ESA and I won't go further into that but that's the kind of things we're dealing with with that type of the process the alternative ESA in general is not an issue with it it's the actual process with the not even the public hearing is the potential of the super majority as you would for land use versus modifying land characteristics FEMA doesn't have to go through a zoning process to change the maps and yet we have to go through that to let us do things that FEMA would allow us to do that the city doesn't even allow us to do and it's kind of like well just like the National Flood Insurance Program do our ordinances help set a maximum insurance rate here yes what are the insurance company charging here should we relax our ordinances to let that maximum come down I've seen that with fire a good reason to have ordinances is to keep your maximum rate down but if the insurance companies aren't charging anywhere near that rate anyway are we realizing that economic benefit are we really accomplishing our goals maybe Deborah if you could explain the rationale behind having it before PNC versus MUE originally the alternative ESA plan and the ADP follow the same process it was meant for to go through PNC and City Council the then that the ADP were process change and ESA stand following the the original procedure the reason why PNC City Council of retain is they feel that they want to have the ability to hear those cases as a public hearing I correct me if around if there's any other procedures current procedures outline in subchapter 3 that go through public hearings without the super majority that's there's not so that would have been for for to take the super majority possibility out of the context of the hearing then a new process will have to be crafted and spell out in subchapter 3 and then sub chapter 17 will have to say this process the alternative ESA plan will follow this new process well I'll just chime in and I'm a recognized Commissioner back that was one of the things I mentioned in work session that's a concern of mine as well is that it's it's great to offer that as an alternative kind of a lot of the discussion that we had but at the end of the day it becomes a political decision as to whether you're going to get an alternative ESA plan granted or not it's not a criteria if you do these four things it gets approved it's you can do all these things and we still may as a body not approve it and so that's one of the concerns that I shared at work session I want to just bring back here at this point to Commissioner back thank you chair Lee first of all thanks for coming up and making your presentation it makes me a little bit more aware of what's out there and you know you and I usually stand on opposite sides of thing but I have a lot of respect for you and as a result of that I am kind of disappointed here that how many of these suggestions that are here did you say were yours about 30 or 60 percent of them listed there now other people may have commented on the same thing but we submitted 43 comments that got included in that full list of 61 by us and others and I think you should have a fair hearing on that I know in the past we've talked about the tree code we talked about doing workshops on that because there was a the devil 's are in the the devil is in the details and we haven't had that yet either and I hope we do because I want to hear both sides the argument I don't want anybody to be railroaded so would workshops as much as I know staff would like to see this go forward I kind of like to see it go forward too but at the same time I'd like to make sure that everybody's had a fair hearing so workshops with that benefit you where we can all sit down and hear your griev ances along with staff that would be appreciated and I'd also like to say in the last year the staff across the board has been making noble efforts to try and correct a lot of things and fix a lot of things and thanks for saying I get up talk about the one or two things we have an issue with versus the thousands of things that are going great but yes that we have appreciated okay well that'd be something to consider them thank you I see no other questions thank you this is a public hearing anyone else who would like to come speak on this island please come forward at this time seeing none will close the public hearing and I will open the floor for discussion or a motion Commissioner Beck thank you chair now as I mentioned mr. Allison for the most part I have no problem with this revision there's a lot of good stuff to it but on the other hand and I've heard expressed with commissioners in the in our work session too that some more discussion is probably needed on this so I wouldn't be reluctant to putting this off a little bit longer I know it's been 13 months never know you're eager to but I want to make sure that both sides are heard and there is counter arguments to the concerns everybody has here that I'd like to present to and get them out there in the open and have that opportunity so you know if we consider this a motion to move forward I wouldn't be opposed to that I'm not gonna make a motion at this time okay you mean Commissioner Ellis thank you chair yeah I mean I have some of those same thoughts we we have too many unanswered questions I think and too many things that that I guess haven't been addressed whether we haven't had enough time together to to to address them or not but it does seem like we need more discussion just to get those things answered so that that we can move forward with a recommendation most of this I like there just seems to be a few questions out there and in concerns that that haven't been answered yet and I think it's been lack of time both of our work sessions the last two meetings we've literally run out of time in the middle of your presentation so I don't know how we can fix that if we can if we can move that to another work session or how we do that but we need some kind of uninterrupted time to be able to I think get to the bottom of some of these concerns so that we can give a recommendation I don't think we're there tonight Commissioner Sanchez yeah I know we we spent a lot of time discussing this and I'm still kind of confused this whole thing since this is the first time I you know I'm relatively new again but I think we need more time to discuss it that was I think one of the things we said at our work session is that we need a little bit more time so I'd like to see this postponed and have another run at it and see what comes out of the more understanding staff is willing to do a and another work session we can either have a regular work session of an hour just for ESA or we can have an early work session or we can have just a work session not right before the regular P NC sessions in that way there will be more time for discussion if that's something that you would like to to do this is a public hearing we already notified so if you can determine that a date to continue and then between now and that day to have the work session meeting with you the staff is perfectly fine with that and then I have the 61 comments I have answers for those the the reason why that those were not reflected on the draft that you were reading is because those were the changes that COE have heard and was vetted through it however that doesn't means that you can make a proposed change to the to the language and that as a part of your recommendation when the public hearing is done so we will provide answers for those for you 61 comments right now if you have a specific questions please please please send it to me and I will make sure that those items are extensively discussed during the work session items some of you have sent me questions by email and those have been answered as well so please take the chance to send me those emails in that way I can really tailor the work session to address those comments or those questions to your question I guess I'll give some thoughts and feedback so the the backup that we had with all the comments the process went those went to the COE and they chose essentially to not from October of 2016 through I'm sorry August of 2013 of 2016 through August of 2017 so those are the the 13 month abetting process that we did with the COE when we have finished all those comments those were the the draft posted online for public input so the COE have not seen those comments and we were hoping that after going through PNC we collect your input your recommendation whatever changes you are proposing and forward those to the the City Council as a whole and showing what the COE have proposed what the PNC is now proposing and then show the list of public input that we have received if necessary we will provide a written a response for every single of them I went through them I have responses so we can do that so in that way everybody who has been involved in the process from the get-go can see the changes throughout and City Council can make a final recommendation or a final decision well I think that would be a good step for us to have I know for this Commission and a lot of times we sit up here and one of the first questions we ask when it's a private have y'all had a neighborhood meeting and this is a neighborhood meeting comment to me and when we have those come to us the first thing we turn around to the developer of all these things that were brought up in your neighborhood meeting what you do about them and usually the reception is we didn't do anything with them is not received well and I think it's good just from the city standpoint when we ask people to do that even though it's not mandatory it's highly encouraged go have a neighborhood meeting hopefully there's some resolution there if there can't be we understand we want to hear both sides of it and then this board or Commission can make a determination and move it to City Council I think that's an important step for us as a city to lead by example that we ask other people to do that and I think we should do that too to be able to say hey we got 60 -something comments 20 of them we addressed 20 of them we didn't agree with and 20 of these we'd like to throw up here and you guys can bat them around and decide which direction you want to go on them and I think that's something that should be incorporated to your point of kind of next steps how we move this forward I'd like to see it continued like to see these comments addressed so that we can come back and say okay we see the processes has moved forward and I think one of the other comments I would give the difficulty that I have when at least for me personally is I know there's a tremendous amount of effort and work that goes on behind the scenes to get the ordinance to place to bring it here before us and it always seemed like there's been a tremendous amount of time and then we see it and y'all vote on it and move it and I'm like what's the process for us to review it what's the process for us to get to people that send emails telephone calls add those things in there versus you see it it needs to move to the next level there doesn't that's an issue that I personally have when we have a lot of these changes I think a lot of things clean up lives are good in here there's some things as I pointed out tonight that I read it I go well the intention may be this but that's not what it says it needs to be cleaned up so that it is very clear you can fill or not fill and how you do it and some of the other things I brought up and don't want rehash and I think those are the things that need to happen when these things come to us as a commission is to have an opportunity to review them make comments to their suggestions and changes get it good and hopefully move it to City Council but when it does get the City Council hopefully it's been very well vetted very clean and they can look at and go you know this looks great there's two things on here we do different and let's vote on it versus it gets to City Council and there's 60 questions and people are coming and going none of this has been addressed and it turns into a bog and those City Council spends a lot more time on these things than we do and I think one of the jobs is us as P&Z Commissioners is hopefully to clean it up and do as best as we can here and move it to them that they can look at and go you know what the folks that we appointed that board did a good job and we know we're gonna do our piece to it and approve it not approve it change it or whatever and so those would be some of my thoughts I know you pose a question and we're still open and so I'm gonna recognize Commissioner Beck to throw out some other things and hopefully we can get something put together on next steps for us thank you chair actually you pretty much said it all what I wanted to do was kind of encapsulate what we probably should do is set a specific work session either prior to a regular work session P&Z or maybe even on a different day I know I'm retired here so I can pretty much do it anytime but it makes it difficult for the other ones work so that would have to be taking consideration right Andrew so but we it needs to be distinctive needs to be at least an hour I would think you know maybe a little bit longer and prior to that if you would send us your responses to the 60 questions so we can mull over them plus we need to have Mr. Allison and others in his area his field of expertise come there and defend their positions on that and I think that way we get a good rounded deal so I think if we just kind of if I can get a nod from everybody here if that's okay I could make that motion and we can move forward does anybody see problem with that process as I just line laid out I think the only point of that is just a timeframe right I would suggest we want to get it done as soon as possible probably 21st two weeks two weeks has had enough time for everybody we've seen a lot of it there's just just a smaller stuff now I'll call on make sure that we can we can get it done because that's about a week turnaround okay okay so maybe have a work session start like at 4 o'clock or even 3 o'clock okay and date certain of the 21st with prior to that with the responses from Deborah on the 60 questions and it includes Lee and other members of his group that want to have their inputs it from from Lee you wanted no actually I want your response you said you had responses for all that's all we want in an email okay and Lee just needs to be there to defend his own positions okay but by the time he gets there will have read your responses to it so we can anticipate what he's gonna say so that's my motion okay commissioner Ellis thank you chair I guess just to maybe clarify that you know you've got that spreadsheet with all the questions in it and if you just add another column that just says why or why not this is already addressed here you know that would that would be really helpful you know we want public comment and obviously you know you're not going to take all those suggestions and incorporate it I'm sure but I think you know whoever made the comment certainly should know why or what your response is to the comment and we certainly would love to see that you know just it doesn't have to be long and drawn out just this is why or this is where it's located or this is why we can't do that or this is how it's addressed or or what have you that would be really helpful thank you do we need to continue the public hearing to a certain day we will thank you Commissioner Roselle so first I just wanted to second or echo everything that the chair said including the appreciation for the amount of work going into this I don't I know for me it's it's not overlooked this seems like a lot of work and certainly our my feedback and our feedback hopefully is not belittling of any of those efforts but I think there might be opportunities to as chair said strengthen the efficiency of this process but with that I will second the Commissioner Beck's motion to continue this item to date certain February 21st with a additional allocation of time for work session okay we have a first and a second do we have any further discussion or is there anything legal or staff needs to add to our motion okay seeing no further discussion I will call for a vote on the board to continue to date certain of the 21st motion to continue carry six to zero that will take us to our I think our final agenda item this evening is going to be our project matrix Commissioner Roselle thank you chair I have two things that I would like to bring up for maybe action items in the future the first is recently brought to my attention that we have a downtown implementation plan of 2010 that speaks of eight tenants for planning the downtown area one of those eight tenants is form-based zoning for the downtown development I would like an update if that is still in existence if that's been amended if the overarching plan for downtown is still the downtown implementation plan 2010 what do we as a P&Z Commission need to do to fulfill the approved P&Z and council plan for form-based zoning downtown and maybe second to that what is form-based zoning and an education of that if we need to proceed forward with that I don't know the accuracy of that because that downtown implementation plan also talks about forward in parking and now we do reverse parking downtown so I don't I don't know the accuracy of that document but I would like information about that downtown implementation plan of 2010 that's the first thing the second thing is Scott McDonald talked earlier about traffic planning and the future of that and I think the Commission has all said kind of today in different ways that we do a whole lot of zoning here and I think the planning portion of our responsibilities could be strengthened and I think one way to kind of step into strengthening the planning is to really figure out what's going on from a traffic standpoint it seems as though that's always a recurrent issue and especially considering the council's momentum from yesterday talking about bike sharing I just think that as we as a commission try to plan one of those purviews is mobility plan and so I think to help maybe guide council and come together with them on that effort I'd be really interested in figuring out that piece of our planning responsibility in terms of traffic and I think a broad stroke would be good but I think it could include biking and roads and proactively what where are we able to proactively look at road I know a lot of roads and mobility plan have bond tie-ins and they're all prioritized but it's it's very rare that we ever proactively look to increase a road construction it's always retroactively and if that has to happen why those type of questions I'd love to know more about so that we can as a commission be more proactive in the planning aspect of this of this job certainly in fact well one thing that we've been starting to put together is just the number of applications that are pending platting site plan some that may not come to public hearing and just sort of generally looking at what's I mean there's all sorts of things that go into a TIA but broad picture what are what are the trips generating and then starting to look at that on a citywide basis and trying to really basically tie into what you're saying you start to plan for these types of things so I'll prepare an item and then have some of that backup so so so we can have that discussion that sounds great and maybe it would be also helpful to clarify our general role in guiding council and some of these things the the idea of the bike share decision that happened at council yesterday seems like it naturally should have come through the commission charged with working through mobility plans and so I don't know if that is our purview I know they had discussion about permitting which is apart from us but we didn't provide any kind of insight that I know of to council about mobility as it comes to to bikes maybe they were using old report or old minutes but I don't know where our responsibility falls from like an actual legal perspective of what's been charged to us to counsel them and direct them for and so maybe that would be helpful just to know like what what we can do within those bounds that sounds great thank you commissioner Sullivan yes seems the last two meetings or so we've spent a lot of time and looking at residential zoning in our 1 2 3 4 6 in our MU 12 in our MU and that the one place that we seem to be caught up on a lot is why don't we have an NR 5 you know we've spent last meeting I don't know how much time cussing and discussing the uses and abuses of overlays and we come in here and we vote for an overlay and so which could have been avoided because of point 2 density and I'm just thinking that you know that's not the first time that that's happened there is one I think one or two meetings prior to that I'm just wondering why don't we have an NR 5 that would catch those that are kind of leaking over a little bit that we don't have to employ an overlay to accomplish the goal in the very near future as part of the DDC update you will see that in fact one of the one of the the the ways that we're going with this now is actually to kind of go back to where we were and not regulate by density but by lot size I had made a statement yesterday at City Council on those Audra projects where the surroundings subdivisions were at like a 4.3 or 4.4 density and the reason is that it is because the minimum lots at that time were 10,000 square feet so divide 43 by 560 by 10 and you get 4.3 or depending how you around 4.4 and so it's really caused a problem and now we have a multitude of overlay districts that aren't the best to to manage you know moving forward 10-20 years from now and so that's where we're now looking at looking at those lot sizes and then trying to really fit everybody in and not make anybody really non-conforming over 0.2 density or anything like that with that if I just may add at the next work session what Ron is actually working on is sort of a public engagement plan we're going to be moving very swiftly in the very near future with with the modules for the DDC update and so within that plan will be in that engagement plan will be community meetings subcommittee meetings P&Z and so that way before we finalize that we can kind of get it out there to everybody and then have have a discussion of do we want to hold you know separate meetings or how do we want to proceed moving forward and so we wanted to get that to wanted to get that in front of you sooner than later and have that discussion okay with that at 855 I will close us this evening and thank you everybody for all your time and efforts