good evening and welcome to the planet zoning Commission's work session for
January 9th 2019 I will call the work session to order at 339 one point of
clarification for the agenda is on the work session we are going to switch item
one and item two so we will come back to the agenda items but first we'll
receive the work session reports starting with a presentation and
discussion regarding Robert's rule of order
hi y'all my name is Trey Lansford I'm a deputy city attorney here with this here
in the city attorney's office it was my understanding that this was asked for by
committee members just kind of an overview of Robert's rules of order not
too long ago late last year the City Council actually asked for the same
presentation and so we brought in Richard Hayes who is a local attorney
here in town and who is a certified parliamentarian and so who better to
teach you Robert's rules of orders than a certified parliamentarian so we have
that video and I'll show that video now and then following that I'll be available
for questions if you have any
I started you know having been a chairman of the board of the chamber president
Kiwanis president of the bar Association you think you know something about
parliament procedure after you let a number of community groups and I really
started learning parliament to procedure about 15 years ago when my wife asked me
to come up to Ryan High School and to help their farming to procedure team and
I said no not gonna do it she said look I'm begging you just come down here one
time to help the kid I was not doing you chew my ass out every time I get home
late and I'm just not gonna I don't need more abuse in my life she says come one
time that's all I'm asking just one time so I go and there was young man there
who had read Robert's rules over the summer and he had like a photographic
memory so he would would be having a practice and I would say something says
well that's not right Mr. Hayes if you go on page 172 it says so-and-so and I
went so I flip open the book sure enough he was absolutely 100% correct he's an
MD now and it taught me I need to learn more about parliament procedure I didn't
know there were a number of organizations the National Association of
parliamentarians the Texas State Association of parliamentarians there's
a network across the nation and now through those organizations I started
learning more about it you'll see under my name it says professional registered
parliamentarian it when you join the National Association of parliamentarians
you're a member to be a member you have to take an exam so you can't just pay
dues you have to take an exam show minimum proficiency and then they have a
credentialing process you can first become a registered parliamentarian and
then a professional registered parliamentarian that I do wrong here so
there's only about 275 people in the nation that are PRPs professional
registered parliamentarians we all have different niches some do labor unions
some do PTA some do churches some do political some do governmental and so
there's nuances to each of those various areas so what is prime procedure it's
the basic rules of democracy it's how groups of people come together in form
and then I'm talking just starting with a mass meeting where you think hey it'd
be a great idea if we had a Harley-Davidson club here and didn't so you
get a bunch of enthusiasts together and then you meet a couple times decide if
you're gonna have an organization an appointed committee prepare your bylaws
and ultimately adopt those and then once you have your bylaws adopted you know
how large your organization perhaps it's gonna be who the office what the officer
positions are and whatever one's responsibilities are and then how to go
about conducting your business I have to hit that next every time or am I just
hitting the wrong button all right so I want to talk a little bit about the
history of parliamentary procedure I could be a lot of the confusion in the
parliamentary world is because there are many parliamentary authorities and to
give you a great history lesson the first parliamentary man in the United
States was in 1801 by Thomas Jefferson now anybody remember what Thomas
Jefferson was doing in 1801 he was the vice president and what is the main job
of the vice president presided over the Senate when he realized there were no
rules and so he prepared the first he called it the manual parliamentary
procedure its parliamentary was his choice of words because a lot of it was
drawn from the English Parliament the second major publication was by a man
named Luther Cushing in 1844 it also had like the Jefferson manual dealt with
deliberative assemblies of a legislative nature a Senate House state Senate
state houses and there were both excellent works and then finally in 1876
Henry Robert at the time he was a major and he realized that those legislative
rules didn't necessarily apply very well to community organizations so he started
with the Jefferson manual he reworked it trimmed it down changed some of the
rules and came up with the pocket manual it was called a pocket manual to the
social it could fit right in your pocket of your shirt well over the years many
parliamentary authorities have evolved they have some similarities but they
have any differences and the main challenge I see on parliamentary
procedure is we watch C-SPAN all the time and we see him do something and
then we come back to our local organizations and we say man I saw how
to do that on C-SPAN and it's wrong because they're using the Jefferson
manual at the US House and Senate and most organizations these days are using
a different parliamentary authority so this is a little cartoon about you know
the teacher saying the past in council hadn't run so well and void problems in
the future we're going to start using Robert's rules you know this is Robert
here's Mike makes right is compared to what the rule is but here is the
dominant parliamentary authority for the United States it has about 90% of the
market share it is the parliamentary authority that the city of Denton has
adopted so what kind of rules governing assembly now I made a couple little
tweaks from the PowerPoint that was sent out to you in advance but we're gonna
start at the top there's a lot of state law that governs city councils then you
have your charter you've adopted special rules of order called city council rules
of order or rules of procedure then your parliamentary authority Roberts rules
standing rules which are more administrative in nature and then
custom now since Roberts rules is your dominant is your parliamentary manual if
you go right above that and it says city council rules of procedure and in
parentheses I say special rules of order what you've done is you have tweaked
Roberts to fit your particular needs it's a consequence they take precedence
and supersede what you read in Roberts so as with all law parliamentary law has
general rules has exceptions to the rules and exceptions to the exceptions
and most people know one of the three so that's another thing that causes
confusion is people saying different organizations operating in a different
parliamentary authorities and then knowing either the law the exception to
the law or the exception to the exception so this is your when you when
you go back to your council rules of procedure that's in your section two
point two nine of your code of ordinances this be 12 says okay you're
gonna use Roberts rules of order latest edition now we're on the 11th edition
about every 10 years the authorship committee comes out with a new edition
and they don't totally change it what they do is they have had circumstances
that have arisen that require more coverage so for instance in the 10th
edition there were three sentences on electronic meetings it was just
starting to come about to really have electronic meetings by the time we made
it to the 11th edition now we have three pages and I would expect from the 12th
edition comes out probably around 2021 we'll have a greater coverage on that
issue but your basic rules are gonna stay the same so how do we get home
before midnight this seems to be a non goal of most governing bodies okay so
it's not unique to the city of Denton but you know one reason I always thought I
couldn't be a member of the City Council is I'd slit my wrist I've had to sit up
there that long so one of your goals if you could is how do we not only operate
better as a group but how do we get it over and done with I mean just get it
over and done with so I want to give you some ideas the first thing I want to
suggest to you is everybody should have a notebook now I know y'all gone all
electronic won't encourage you to still have a notebook that you can keep next
to your laptop and in there you're going to have I say first your contacts of all
your council members key staff and you can even put your board members and
stuff under that tab or you could do it further down like where you see nine ten
eleven you want to have a calendar of any important events and that will have
to be updated regularly on that tab then you want a copy of a corporate charter
your council rules a procedure what I'm referring to is the motions chart that's
this little handout I'm going to tab for your agendas and minutes any financial
records that you think are important to you especially the budget then your
committee members and then all of our various boards and other organizations
that are in the city carry this around with you because invariably what I see
in organizations is you're wondering who's supposed to be done what and
that'll help you all right so let's learn all the vocabulary the first thing
we do when the mayor of the mayor pro tem begins speaking is we convene the
meeting it means come together so normally it begins something like this
I want to welcome everyone here tonight and convene the meeting convene just
means come together immediately thereafter you need to establish a
quorum so we heard the mayor pro tem today say a quorum being present we will
now come to order we determine a quorum first before we come to order most
organizations say I'll call the mean the order do we have a quorum so we want to
figure out if we have a quorum first then we're going to call the meeting to
order different organizations do it different now one expediter when I
looked at today's agenda I didn't see an item on there maybe you already did it
the approval the minutes of the last meeting I didn't see it maybe it was
escaping me I thought maybe about me under the consent agenda yeah generally
they show up on the consent agenda every so often we'll have three or four sets
of minutes that will be beyond consent at a time so generally we approve the
minutes at the next regularly scheduled meeting but consent agenda is a
wonderful way to do that if you're at your Rotary Club you know the way it
should handle happen or if you're at the another organization you just say the
minutes haven't been mailed down in advance are there any corrections to the
minutes crickets crickets crickets there being no
corrections minutes stand approved is prepared does not require a motion we
call that unanimous consent so that's a little bitty time saver it does not
require a motion or a second so let's talk about some of the rules of speaking
we want to be recognized before you speak address always the comments to the
mayor or the mayor pro tem not to other council members why do you think we do
that it's one way to keep the corn we don't start getting personal or you know
heated so we direct it to the presiding officer whoever made the motion has the
right to speak first under Roberts we have default rules on how long you can
talk the default rule is 10 minutes each time you speak and you can speak two
times on the same day on the same same subject holy cow that's a lot of time so
we all have adopted under your City Council rules of procedure limits for
outsiders but you have not done that on yourself so I don't know if you consider
that an issue but to again to keep the meeting running what I see in large
organizations especially at conventions is they will put a total time limit per
item they'll say these items are all items who shall not exceed 20 minutes
and you're gonna or you can put one speech per person not to exceed three
minutes so you might just consider that you shall not speak more than twice on
the same question on the same day that's a very reasonable rule and you don't have
the opportunity to speak a second time until everyone else has had the
opportunity to speak we've all been to meetings where there's just one person
that is just dominating that particular meeting you know they might talk three
four or five times that doesn't mean they don't have valuable things to add
it's just it delays the meeting generally the remarks should be limited
to the merits of the pending question this the word vocabulary word here is
germane has to be germane to whatever the immediately pending motion is we'll
talk about that a little bit more in a minute you should alternate between those
in favor and against now this is another hard thing that governmental bodies have
doing you might have five people that are in favor of it and all five want to
give their two cents worth on why they're in favor of it and the other two
don't speak if we wanted to expedite our meeting if there's no one who's speaking
against it then there's real really no reason why we need to hear why all five
people are in favor avoid the personal remarks don't ever question motives and
don't impugn people's character if you make a motion you can't speak against it
but after the debate you may have changed your mind and say well that
wouldn't a very good idea so you can vote against it and then in closing
debate it requires a motion a second and a two-thirds vote to close debate or if
the designing officer says is there any further comments or we don't have any
other lights you know y'all use the touchscreen if there's no other lights
then a motion is really not necessary that you would again be using unanimous
consent this is when the motives of a member of the body is questioned is the
proper response for somebody to say point of order and we saw this very
dramatically if you'll recall when Jeff Sessions was they were having the debate
on the US Senate floor on whether or not he should become the Attorney General
the United States and one of the other senators started haranguing and saying
some things and what happened the presiding officer just on his own
initiative called a point of order that one of our rules of decorum is we do not
disparage or speak ill of other members of the body okay so that was a good
example of that point of order anytime you think there's a rule that's not
being followed because you have millions of rules now don't you state law charter
your code of ordinances your rules of order of rules of procedure your Roberts
rules of order so you have all kinds of rules so that can be used anytime there
is a perceived rule violation okay how to handle a motion so the first place I
want to take you is on the front of your handout and this is prepared by the
National Association of parliamentarians it is said that if you can learn these
two pages front and back you'll know about 50% of everything you need to know
about parliamentary procedure so that's kind of nice it seems that I can know
half on the front you'll see procedure for handling a main motion and after you
have risen or you have punched your button and sought recognition and you're
recognized then you have these six steps so first a member is gonna make a motion
what's gonna happen next somebody else is gonna have to second it then the
chair is gonna state the question it is moved and seconded to approve the
contract with so-and-so debate it finally you're gonna vote on it the
chair put put is a word of parliamentary art that is it has a very specific
meaning in the parliamentary world when you put a question you're putting it to
a vote and then the chair will announce the results of the vote so if you go
down the little page here you can write your one two three four five six on here
if you're wondering what happens what happens a lot of times is when normally
get a motion 90% of the time we get a second about 50% of the time the chair
will state the question we're pretty good about debating it I'd say 98% of the
time we debate things when they're debatable sometimes we debate things
that aren't debatable and then the chair puts the question to a vote we're good
at that sometimes we assume there's a motion just like that unanimous consent
we don't have a formal what does the chair say in unanimous consent what I
gave you while ago are there in the corrections to the minutes crickets
crickets crickets there being no corrections the minutes are approved or
if there's no objection to the approval of the contract the contract will be
approved crickets crickets crickets it's approved so we use unanimous consent so
if everybody is chimed in that they're all in favor of the contract then it's
really easy for the charity's unanimous consent in which since you're a
governmental body everybody's gonna punch their keypad and give us the
result it was pointed out the last time we had like a lot of discussion about
preliminary procedure in this body that we have kind of a custom or a practice
of having debate and then kind of seeing if somebody wants to entertain you know
if someone wants to make a motion right is that a problem that's the antithesis
of parliamentary procedure again and governmental bodies the basic rule is
have a motion on the floor you have a motion on the floor then you can focus
the debate you know exactly what you're going to either vote you're gonna prove
the contract you're gonna disapprove so if you wait till all of it is then you
kind of read the tea leaves and it says well it looks like there's five people
against this then someone may say well I'll make a motion to disapprove but if
you'll I would encourage you again if you can discipline yourselves the mayor
will read the agenda item say this is the next item someone could make their
motion then debate it then we're gonna use some of those other rules to help
expedite your meeting alternate between those in favor and those against once
you run out of one side don't recognize the others okay that will save you an
incredible amount of time so if you'll make your motion first to direct the
direct the debate and then alternate so everybody doesn't have to speak I know
you're on TV but what's the goal get home before midnight that's the goal all
right now how do you obtain the floor in the work session we are raising hands at
the council members you're gonna press your touchscreen in larger assemblies
let's say you're a convention or something like that normally you'll
arise an address and then after your recognition you'll give your name
identification and you'll remain standing until you're recognized once
someone else is recognized you can go ahead and sit down so what's our pneumonic
for the front page here remember we said there are six steps first step is what
make a motion then I move that don't say I motion that I move that I move to
adopt the ordinance dealing with so-and-so I move that or I move to then
we have the second there's a set second step then the chair is going to state
the question now this is something else that we see is not used dramatically
correct but it is moved it's present tense not it has been moved now if you
say it has been moved that's not the end the world we can figure it out but it's
moved and seconded you know to approve the contract then we're going to debate
it we're gonna put it to the vote and this is that last step step six on
announcing results the eyes have it the motion is adopted and the treasurer will
issue the check you know to pay the bill I want you to see here this has three
parts to it announcing the results of the vote so it's very clear what just
happened which side had it what happened that is the motion is adopted or lost
and the effect you know we will enter into a contract if you look at the
bottom in the middle here it gives you those three steps when it has under the
chair announces the result of the vote so it has three parts to it every time
which side has it whether or not the motion is adopted or not and the effect
and then immediately thereafter move the next item of business is you know agenda
item for B remember it may be knows have it the motion is lost the check will not
be written next item of business is so what are our six steps motion second we
state it now in the parliamentary world that mss that's miss and the fourth the
last part there debate a vote and announce is diva that's miss diva that's
mnemonic I used that term a while ago so if you're trying to remember that you
could write mss DVA and you'll know your procedures okay methods of voting in
your council chambers you know someone is going to have made a you have to
puncha your keypad devote I mean to make a motion someone else's has a little
place on there to make the second if you want to debate you have a place to do
that and then you have a place to touch either for or against so you're not
doing electronic what we would technically call electronic voting
because you're all together at the same time but you are using electronic
device to indicate your preference so what you're doing here is you're having
synchronous voting you're going to sink on this meeting everybody's in the same
room the same time everybody's voting at the same time that's different than
asynchronous where you try to vote by email for instance some organizations
allow that their bylaws so allow
in voting we're talking about voting methodologies lots of y'all ever do a
voice vote even on simple things are you always use keep it we occasionally use
hands especially if we're voting in here that's only okay option for and in your
work session minutes you always record how everyone voted someone doing that or
just put it in past well during work session will get in census but we don't
actually vote items on the regular meeting or special call meeting that we
vote on it is recorded who voted which direction okay all right we use raising
hands or a rising vote normally when their two-thirds vote is required you
know the older story called division of the assembly in the great days they
would literally be in a room and those in favor would go to one side of the
room and the O's that against it would go to the other so this is rising votes
diva voce is the Latin phrase that means you know by vocal doing it vocally so in
our special community organizations who might say those in favor the motion say
I have those opposed say no and then which side has it is how we would do we
already saw a couple examples of unanimous consent when you did that
especially when there seems to be no opposition y'all use the concept you
announced consent when you do your what yes consider Jenna exactly and unanimous
consent doesn't mean everybody's in favor of it it just means no one has an
objection that's what that really means that's why we say if there's no
objection the contract will be approved
so you'll see the third check mark there can be used without stating the
question or putting it to a formal vote
that's my remote sir yes I offer a footnote there is a form of unanimous
consent where everyone is in favor is there not that's called approval by
acclamation you can do acclamation yes all right so now we're going to learn a
little bit about motions I want you to open up your handout and you're going to
see over on the left hand side it says ranking motions we have a total of five
classes of motions three of those classes are called ranking or in the
ranking area starting at the bottom main motions main motions bring substantive
business before the organization we have subsidiary motions and then privileged
motions so there are 13 ranking motions so we have main motions subsidiary and
privileged those are the three classes ranking motions and I just told you
there were 13 in individual motions under there one for the main motions seven
subsidiary and five privileged now interestingly when you go to your City
Council rules the procedure you already carry these around hard copy was you
just use it all electronic
it's not a trick question electronic okay until I build my folder second under
the section G consideration of ordinances resolutions and motions when
you get down to subsection 10 says order of precedence of motions so that's what
this is talking about we're nothing about ranking motions it has to do with
precedence we'll come back to that and then the other two classes are on the
right hand side of your handout non ranking motions you'll see these are in
alphabetical order up there incidental motions and then motions that bring a
question again before the assembly so since they have no rank putting it in
alphabetical order was as good as any now there are about 84 different
parliamentary maneuvers that you'll see in Roberts rules you'll see that if we
only have 13 ranking motions and you look across the way maybe we have
another 13 or 14 where are all the other maneuvers well if it's not on this chart
on let me give you the good news to you guys on motions are bringing a question
again for the assembly there's only four of those so generally they're gonna end
up being an incidental motion generally okay there's your chart now let's see
what else is on this page up in the top left hand corner it's called pertinent
facts you'll see it gives you the definition of four of the five classes
of motions underneath it it says meaning of symbols because some of the maneuvers
have a symbol out next to them in the bottom left hand corner types of
amendments over in the right hand side you'll see notes for footnotes and then
the bottom right hand corner forms of voting so this is a cute cartoon what is
motion sickness okay so now we're going to go through some of those specific
motions and the first the lowest ranking motion is the main motion how do we
make a main motion I move that or two I move that or two now let's look at our
parliamentary chart for just a minute and you see all these columns on here
every parliamentary maneuver has what we call eight standard descriptive
characteristics six of the eight lend themselves pretty well to chart format
the other two do not so what you'll see in your chart here is in the first
column is is an interrupting motion can you just interrupt and if there is a
what there can you interrupt the letter I thank you second column tells us
whether or not that motion needs a second the third is whether or not it's
debatable the fourth is it amendable the fifth is what kind of vote is required
and the sixth was can you reconsider that particular parliamentary maneuver
the general rule on main motions is that majority vote majority rules y'all have
adopted a under your counsel rules of procedure you have tweaked that rule a
little bit so this is one of those special rules of order this is under G
again we remember a while ago we were talking about G so consideration of
ordinances resolutions and motions and what does the slide say here y'all said
an affirmative vote of four members is necessary to repeal any ordinance or
take any official action in the name of the city that would be like adopting
ordinance so what if you only have five people at the meeting what happens so
you have varied Roberts because once you determine you have a quorum five would
be a quorum then normally three out of the five could pass it so there are some
positive to this you know it puts when you have a low turnout one night it
protects those who are absent from those being present adopting something that
others may decide was you know ill-advised or not fully developed you
also have another rule talking about tie votes and if you have a tie vote so you
have six people there then it automatically goes to the next council
agenda so what normally happens on a tie vote in parliamentary law does tie vote
is a lost vote so what y'all done is since you're having to do substantive
business that's what this is this particular area of your rules are
dealing with substantive business then we know we're gonna have to still deal
with the issue and if it's a tie vote then we'll kick it to the next agenda
comes from breaks do our boards and Commission says can you go back also
follow the a tie vote and say if they do say P&Z has a tie vote that's going to
be a tie forever and ever does that move up to council or does that stay in the
committee and and die so your specific question dealt with which body planning
and zoning okay the answer that would be no that's how I read your the rule says
under be general rules it says well that's not the right section what it
says under authority number one pursuant to the revisions of section 2.07 of the
Charter the City Council hereby enacts these rules of procedure for all meetings
of the City Council in the City of Denton so I see it as written it's just applying
to council and so any other body border Commission that would have a tie vote
then that vote would die be a lost vote be a lost vote okay there's actually a
provision in the rules of procedure okay it's yeah you have a whole bunch of
rules on committees don't you it's it's the last it's h4 in the rules of
procedure and it basically it mandates all these rules of procedure 2-29 apply
to all the boards and commissions and committees and so we they have my
previous action council has okay he's applicable to them they're not
referenced in the general to 29 but we do make it applicable okay and where did
you say that was it's the provision right before it's up section 9 okay okay
rules of procedure board Commission and committees members shall comply with
revisions of this of article 2 is chapter 2 of the code of ordinances copy
we provided a copy of these rules of procedure which shall govern operational
procedures of the boards and Commission so I stand correct thank you
council member that yeah I just have a question about that I mean like on PNC
if it's a tabo or actually they voted down that still doesn't prevent the
council itself from bringing that matter up correct generally it would not okay
because the council could basically overrule PNC and bring it before the
council well council might deny the let's say a rezoning in a piece of
property that didn't you know preclude it from coming before the council you
know they're making a recommendation to the council okay and then council will
take the final action on that item okay
council member my question to follow up on that so if PNC isn't a tie vote and
it's forever a tie vote how would that recommendation come to council if it
doesn't ever it would essentially be no recommendation so it would eventually
come to us is no recommendation well it's not they're not in favor and they're
not against it so at some point if it keeps getting hung up in PNC and I guess
the council becomes aware of it you could request it be put on your agenda I
mean after a little while it seems that body most of those bodies are organized
to have odd number of members so at some point they ought to be able to break the
time unless someone keeps abstaining or someone keeps being absent but normally
it'll work its way through have y'all had a an example of that word just kept
me month after month it was time of time oh well there was a recusal and so I
mean it eventually worked itself out but I'm just kind of going through the the
process okay so let's go back to your example if that were the case perhaps
you might consider adding to the rule if it's ends up a tie vote more than twice
then what do you want what do you want the result to be and automatically kicks
it from the board to the council or it's now it really is lost and you can decide
okay thank you I just wanted to add that there's a work
session coming before you I believe it's next week about this specific issue and
some of the recommendations the staff is making to address the tie vote provision
so thank you okay if you want to kill a motion look at your parliamentary chart
second from the bottom you'll see postpone indefinitely this is your
lowest ranking subsidiary motion this is the killer motion so what you do if
someone says I'm able to postpone the motion indefinitely you're now voting on
whether or not to kill it so if you pass the motion to postpone indefinitely what
what's the practical effect of that you never took a vote of the main motion
that was before you passed postpone indefinitely so you this is what Congress
does all the time they can say well I was for it and because I didn't vote
against it but yes you voted to kill the motion but you never took a direct vote
on the motion in that case could a motion to reconsider bring it back from
purgatory all right now look at postpone and definitely y'all have a rule that's
again it when yours a special rule that supersedes Roberts Roberts with the
asterisk there so see Roberts is what that means and but y'all have adopted a
rule that at the next regular scheduled meeting someone could make a motion to
postpone I mean a motion reconsider so long as you put it you know let somebody
know in advance so it can be on the agenda to comply with the open meetings
act so what this rule tells you is is we only reconsider under Roberts
affirmative votes only that's what that asterisk means so how many of you people
actually have a rock okay now I want to wait just give you these for a moment you
know I wanted to tell you one of those vandal parts of Roberts that is most
people never use in the back we have these tinted pages this takes every
parliamentary maneuver that I mentioned to you while ago Richard if you could
step behind the mic all right we're gonna stay in the camera range stay on
camera you'll see it has all those maneuvers but let's go to postpone
indefinitely it's in its item 61 on page 23 in the tinted pages and when you see
an asterisk on your chart if you will slide over to whether or not it can be
reconsidered what does it say affirmative vote only affirmative vote
only all right so we don't reconsider negative votes to kill it okay now
that's but y'all have adopted a different rules I'm just giving you a
distinction in your rules so this is a killer motion if you want to change a
motion we do that by amending now look on the bottom left-hand corner of your
parliamentary chart I gave you types of amendments I'm going to tell you there
are five one way is to insert a second way is to add insert means between
existing words and it means at the end we can strike out words we can strike
out and insert words or we could substitute those are the five ways that
we amend so here is a practice pointer the rule is you have a main motion on
the floor a primary amendment can be made and a secondary amendment can be
made a secondary amendment amends the primary amendment we do not allow a
tertiary amendment so it gets too confusing at that point if many options
need to be considered Roberts gives you an option it's called to create a blank
and then you can take all kinds of suggestions and then whichever
suggestion first is a suggestion that receives a majority vote then you can
fill the blank but as far as amendments primary and a secondary the secondary
amendment has to be germane to the primary amendment and I have some
examples here at the end I'm gonna go through amendments a little more
thoroughly yes ma'am councilman welcome there's a if somebody has an idea for a
tertiary amendment could the could the body decide to postpone the meeting
with the primary and secondary amendment to postpone that to another time where
and in which case with the tertiary amendment when reconsidered would it
still count as the tertiary amendment or then would it be okay so your idea is
we're starting to brainstorm now we have several ideas and maybe the suggestion
is we're gonna postpone the main motion and the adhering amendments to be taken
up at the next regularly scheduled meeting yeah okay maybe even a better way to do
that is refer it to a committee let the committee study all these different
alternatives and then bring a recommendation back from the committee
might be another way to do it okay if you think there's going to be many
suggestions just go ahead and say I moved him in the say the motion is I
move to order pepperoni pizza and someone makes that's a main motion
primary amendment strike pepperoni insert sausage secondary amendment
strike sausage and insert anchovy okay and someone else wants to have vegetarian
okay so we're getting all these different suggestions so maybe in that
case since we're trying to order the pizza for lunch that may be impractical
to send it to a committee or to postpone it so in that instance the better thing
to do might be to create a blank take all the suggestions for the kind of pizza
you want and then we start voting on them in the order in which they're made
and the first one that receives a majority maybe we never make it to
anchovy because we're gonna adopt the earlier item now filling of blanks is a
very technical area we have different rules for money names we do in the order
in which they were suggested for distance we have different rules because
what we do and like distance of money we start with the least likely suggestion
to be adopted and work our way so if someone says I moved to sell City Hall
for a million dollars and someone else said and sometimes I want to create a
blank and the first suggestion will be a million and then somebody else's well I
think we shouldn't sell it for less than two million if someone else's well I
don't think should be less than 10 million so we get all those when you're
trying to sell what would be the least likely the one million well the least
likely to be a million that is you'd rather get you prefer to sell it for as
high now if you're the buyer you say now move to buy the new City Hall then you
want to start with the lowest okay that mean that is the most likely way we
always start with the least likely so there are different rules for filling
different kinds of blanks and that's a whole nother day okay we want to send it
to a group for study we commit a refer if we want to delay action to the next
meeting we move to postpone I move to postpone the item to the next regularly
scheduled meeting or you can postpone it to later in the same meeting so
postpone can be used both ways same meeting or or another meeting but it
can't be beyond the next meeting you can't postpone something for a year
they'll be like trying to kill it wouldn't so you would do your postpone
indefinitely if you want to change the rules of debate you can limit or extend
limits of debate and you can see what we're doing here is we're working our
way up the chart and and the next one is the previous question so if you would
look at limit debate and previous question what vote is required for both
of those two-thirds and the reason it's two-thirds is debate is a basic right
of a member of a assembly so if we're gonna take away that basic right or
limit it in some way then we're going to require two-thirds vote so do both of
those require second limit debate or previous question yes and requires the
two-thirds so here is what y'all have under your council rules of order when
the previous question is moved and seconded it should be put as follows
remember put is that word of art shall the main question be now put if you're
gonna make a suggestion here on something I'm not sure the main question
now be voted on instead of put that's just a technical term there should be no
further amendment or debate except that nothing here in shall allow the previous
question to be called prior to at least one opportunity for each council member
to speak now if you were gonna look for time savers this is another this is a
killer we're gonna let everybody speak on every issue
the other thing by closing debate I move the previous question it stops
debate on all these lower pending motions but it allows you to make these
higher ranking motions this is one of the most abused motions I see because
lots of times organizations are not requiring second server or two-thirds
vote if you want to set aside something temporarily because something else of
urgency is arisen what are we gonna do for the highest ranking subsidiary motion
we're gonna lay it on the table now in the Jefferson manual lay on the table is
a killer motion so we watch C-SPAN and we see the US House of Representatives say
I move to lay the motion on the table they're killing it lay on the table does
not kill a motion what motion kills it postpone indefinitely that's the killer
motion so lay on the table not a killer motion requires majority vote now we're
gonna move over to the right-hand side of your parliamentary chart under
incidental motions if we want to enforce a rule what are we gonna do make a point
of order if you're not sure if a point of order is in is the appropriate
maneuver to make and you want to be or maybe you will be more genteel about it
what can you do make a parliamentary inquiry you could ask the presiding
officer do we have a council rule that prohibits making personal attacks
against members you're making instead of saying the person is out of order just
because they did it you can make a parliamentary inquiry now once the chair
makes a parliamentary ruling like someone says point water state your
point can't attack council members the presiding officer says point well-made
if you disagree with that parliamentary ruling then you can appeal from the
decision of the chair so on the right-hand side since this is an
alphabetical order you'll see appeal there does it require a second yes and a
majority vote you'll rarely have the need for division since you're using
raising hands or the keypad voting what happens when you're at a convention the
chair says all in favor say aye and then the nose all opposed say no the
nose always seem louder and there have been a lot of studies on this and most
of the time the eyes had it and so if you disagree with that because we use
our ears on a voice vote then you can have a rising vote use our eyes again
we're not counting we're just looking we got 8,000 delegates if you still can't
tell then you could do some type of counted vote what did I tell you while
ago if you had a parliamentary question what do we use yeah we don't ever use
the word question in the parliamentary world you don't say I have a question we
either make parliamentary inquiries or we make requests for information so if you
want to be very technical now no meeting runs perfect we see lots of people say
well I have a question on so and so but technically we would say request for
information if you want to do something that your parliamentary rules don't
allow that is your City Council rules of procedure or Roberts rules we can
suspend the rules guess what we can't suspend we can't suspend state law we
can't suspend our corporate charter okay we can't suspend those you can only
suspend parliamentary rules and under your rules again instead of it being a
majority vote aren't me excuse me a two-thirds vote y'all have a specific
rule that allows four votes to suspend the rules so you made a little bit
easier if all seven people are there if only six of the seven are there it's
still two-thirds just like go to your chart the last item says suspend the
rules you'll see that if you want to write on your chart suspend the rules
right between the and rules the word parliamentary
reconsideration this is on that the fifth class of motions motions bring a
question again before the assembly and this is your specific City Council
rule of procedure rule as with Roberts it can only be made by someone who voted
on the prevailing side but y'all allow it to be made at the next succeeding
official meeting of the council and as we talked about a while ago you have to
let it be known that you're gonna make that motion so it can be agenda so how
do you do that your rule says let the city manager know so we can get it on
the agenda all right now we're gonna talk about amendments how many ways did I
say you could I mean well ago so we add what does that mean at the end so if you
will say I move to amend by adding then everybody in the room knows this is
going to go on the end same thing if you insert and they know it's going to go
between words so I move to amend by inserting pepperoni after the word the
main motion is I move to order pizza for lunch so you know I move to amend by
inserting pepperoni between order and pizza councilmember well sir whatever
would be considered a proper to amend by inserting the words anything but yes
you could that's right get new carpet in City Hall anything but red or something
okay then we can move to strike out and insert and substitute substitution is
when you have so many changes that are going on it's instead of taking like
five different little amendments we're just gonna take a whole new paragraph in
place of that which is there so let's give some examples here I already tell
you this one main motion we order pizza and the motion is to amend by adding with
pepperonis mushrooms and bell peppers now where does that go at the end that's
what that means if we're gonna insert main motion I mean that we order pizza
someone else's own a man by inserting pepperoni after order so the amended
motion read that we order pepperoni pizza I'm using pages because it's real
easy to understand when if we took some of your agenda items it's a little more
challenging and I think sometimes it gets the better of you know city
councils as they're trying to make amendments our strikeout insert and the
motion was that we order a deep-ditch pizza someone else wanted to make it so
you can see we would strike out and insert
amending the amendment so remember we have the main motion we have a primary
amendment and then now this is our secondary amendment secondary
amendments amends only the primary amendment that second bullet says it
cannot be applied to a secondary amendment what was the word we used while
they go for that you cannot have a tertiary it has to be germane to the
the secondary amendment has to be gene germane to the primary amendment so main
motion is to buy a computer someone else wants to amend it by inserting Dell so
if adopted it would read I moved to amend the amendment by striking Dell
inserting Apple once you have a secondary amendment floor you have to
vote on that and if that passes then you have to vote on the primary amendment
and then you vote on the main motion as amended so this would not this is an
incorrect example what's wrong here why couldn't we put a cost limitation well
we were our primary amendment was what type of computer what brand were we
going to buy so your secondary amendment has to do with branding this has to do
with dollars once we decide to adopt Dale and now it just says I moved to buy
a Dell computer for the executive then you can add a second primary amendment
to put a dollar limitation cost on it so we're not mixing apples and oranges
there this is a nitpicky question but just to understand but if you included
the cost with the with the Dell amendment wouldn't that be wouldn't that
mean a Dell computer not to exceed a thousand dollars as opposed to if you
just included it at the end then it would be any computer whatever kind and
you have flexibility in how you word it but again we're not gonna amend insert
Dale here and then add cost over here it needs to be all in one location that's
your example that you just gave I see we're not gonna have three primary
amendments yes and we wouldn't say at a cost not to exceed a thousand dollars
and then had from best buy yeah now on the vendor and where we're gonna go by
so here we're gonna add at the end pepperoni mushrooms and bell peppers
here we're going to amend the primary amendment by striking what pepperoni in
inserting sausage so if amended it would read the primary amendment would read
adding the words sausage mushrooms and bell peppers if the sausage secondary
amendment fails then we're back to the primary amendment which would be
pepperoni mushrooms and bell peppers so in this example of the last bullet we
assume that the secondary amendment passed and then the primary amendment
was passed so the main motion now reads as you see there so let's look at
graphically okay now there are lots of ways to find out more and let me
encourage you to go surfing when I told y'all did I started trying to find out
things so of course I go on internet and type in parliamentary procedure and the
next thing I learned there's a million YouTube's out there on parliamentary
procedure there's another organization called the American Institute of
parliamentarians they not only use Roberts but they use what's called the
standard code or now the AIP code under the AIP code the motion lay on the
table is a killer motion so that's another example that's mainly used in
the medical communities and in the AIP you're tested over multiple parliamentary
authorities as compared to the national you're just doing Roberts now let's do
some questions I have about eight minutes left it looks like questions
customer bricks just for clarification because you said lay on the table so if
we say I've heard it on our council move to table same thing same thing same
thing so we're using it as a killer motion now when do we use the motion to
lay on the table because something else of urgency has risen when you
temporarily set aside the item under consideration the theory being we're
going to later on take it from the table so if you go back to your
parliamentary chart if you look under motions that bring a question again
before the assembly the very first one is take from the table so if you were
going to table it and try to kill it you can see how that doesn't work very well
if we can take it from the table and unkill it so it's just the wrong
maneuver for the desired objective so just saying in the future if you want to
kill it I need to postpone indefinitely and so if you do if it does get moved do
you have to because we do a date certain and is that with a postponement that is
postponed definitely versus postponed indefinitely so in definitely is the
killer okay so go over here to your subsidiary motions go forth from the
bottom and you'll see it says postpone to a certain time or indefinitely see
you say I mean to postpone it to the next regularly scheduled council meeting
that would be for later consideration or I move to postpone consideration of this
motion until 4 p.m. you know this afternoon you could choose a time today
council member I spent thank you thank you Richard for presentation and then
also would you be so kind as to email the updated one because I do like the
example yeah those couple of slides if I can do that thank you be happy to and
then let me tell you one other excellent
instead of this
if you want to carry one around carry around the yellow one it covers about
90% of everything you're going to ever see and you'll see the print is larger
and there's a lot of white space in it it's designed to be much more user
friendly this is written for like a sophomore in high school and this is
written for a sophomore in college this the eleventh edition is written to cover
the very very very technical and there are many other technical resources
there's a book that Robert wrote called parliamentary law it's a red hard bound
you know leather book and it is much more thorough even than this but he
wrote it in 1923 and it is still gold and so the practicing parliamentarians
all keep parliamentary law around for when an issue comes up but 90% of the
time you can use this book has a pretty good index you'll see at the back it has
some gray pages not as many it has an excellent table of contents and you
ought to be able to read this front and cover in an hour unless you're really
getting into it so this is a very quick read if you tried to read this it will
put you to sleep
endlessly fascinating topic of tabling so first of all I take it that tabling is
like postponing but just within the confines of one meeting right when you're
postponing it's to another meeting if you post excuse me if you lay it on the
table it can stay on the table up to the next meeting so if you run out of time
that that was my question it comes up as unfinished business at the next meeting
that was now there's several ways that things can become unfinished business
you have items on your agenda and you never reached them or again the your own
an item and then someone says I moved to adjourn you know it's 1 a.m. in the
morning that would come up as unfinished business all right we want to practice
just for a minute make and I'm gonna call on Deb you're gonna think of a
motion to make okay not too hard a motion and then Don you're gonna make
an amendment to the motion and you don't know what the amendments can be yet why
because we haven't heard her motion yet okay chair recognizes councilperson this
is not real I moved to sell City Hall for $3 crickets crickets there being no
second the motion will not be considered okay that's how it normally work it
doesn't die for a lack of a second it's not considered so this time Gerard
you're in charge of making all the seconds okay make your motion yeah I
moved to sell City Hall for three dollars thank you chair I move you just
say second second it's one word yes second you could go so far as to say I
second the motion just say one second second so what would the mayor say it
is moved and seconded to sell City Hall for three dollars now what would happen
are you ready for the question that's the immediately pending question and we
debate and at some point or right off the bat
councilperson Duff seeks recognition and your motion is make a motion to make it
$100 all right so you I move to amend by striking three and inserting 100 that
was very clear okay I moved to strike three insert 100 Gerard second it is
moved and seconded to amend the main motion by striking three and inserting
100 so if adopted this is what the chair says if adopted the main motion read to
sell City Hall for $100 again we would debate this primary amendment and let's
assume that it passes so the main motion now reads to sell City Council for
$100 City Hall. City Hall. Yeah, not City Council, excuse me. All right, fair, fair. Yeah, I'm seeing the headline of the paper already tomorrow. The council has moved to sell themselves. All right that's
essentially how we make a motion and we amend it so I always say I move to strike
and insert and so it's very clear that way you're not leaving it up to the
chair to know where you want to insert your proposed language because this is
an easy one with dollars but sometimes we have other words so where does he put
it does he put it at the end stick at the middle do they put it between this
word or put it over here between this word so give direction that way everyone
knows exactly what's happening all righty well thank you all for having me and if
I can ever be of assistance to you I wanted to give you two other things if
I get them that I wanted to suggest you do on your parley chart we already wrote
in suspend the rules and we we wrote in the word parliamentary rules and if you
slide across to the column that says vote what did we see while ago y'all have
adopted a special rule of order it says it takes four votes so write for under
vote you can just strike through two-thirds and put four and then
depending on how many people are at the meeting that could either be 57% or
two-thirds or unanimous if there's only four people there the other change I
want to give you is over on notes under note for this has to do with let's where
we find footnote for on the chart anybody find it reconsider so dot on the
bottom right here and a reconsider you'll see a four out in front I want
you to come up on the right hand side where it says notes and you'll see in
the second sentence that says this motion can be made only by one who vote
on the prevailing side we know that's true and then from there on down I want
you to line it out and you're going to insert no later than the next meeting
since you've adopted a special rule on that and remember it's no later than the
next meeting but only if it's first you first notify the city manager so you can
comply with the open meetings that so those are the three additions I would
give you to your chart okay well thank you so much and if I can ever be help
y'all let me know
all right riveting as that was I'm sure no but I did want to follow up that was
back in August and I'm sure y'all all aware last December the City Council
took up the tie vote issue it came before them December 18th I believe it
was Julie was the one that spoke that night they passed an ordinance that
changed the rule that said that if there's a tie vote it'll be brought up
here a second time and if it's a tie vote again it will then go to council as
a recommendation of denial so for those of y'all that it wasn't answered that
but I did want to bring that back so that was passed last December and it had
a 14-day kind of time wait period on it so but it would be effective now so
that's now the tie vote provision that y'all specifically are operating under so
I think one of the other one of the other questions that was kind of thrown
out to us ahead of time was when is it appropriate to call the question to kind
of cut off debate and move it move for the group to vote on the underlying
motion our rules of procedure actually cover that specifically as you heard in
the video council has directed that all boards and commissions if you don't have
a special rule you follow the council rules of procedure so under that under
seven point twelve part twelve specifically you can't call the
question until everybody has had a chance to speak at least once but then
after that is when it is appropriate and if that is done it takes a second and a
two-thirds vote to cut off debate so with that I will stand for any further
questions pressure back thank you chair thanks tray a couple of things when
we're through with the public hearing agenda item and the chair closes it to
the public and then calls for either a motion or commentary I think is it the
first one to the button that gets the recognition sometimes my friend next to
me Tim beats me to go for motion I'd really like to speak on it I wanted to
get some debate out there before we even consider a motion to vote so is it just
a matter of whoever pushes the button first then and if he pushes it first for
moves to approve or deny whatever then we have to go to a second before any
commentary typically the recognition will be in the order that it is requested
okay there is some discretion on the chairs part but typically that's the way
it goes now that said as mr. Hayes pointed out in the video the standard way
is to have the motion first and debate followings okay so so it's not in other
words it's not wrong to have it that way to have the motion on the table first
and then the debate and discussion as you have the motion on the table okay but
if I were to hit the button that wanted to discuss it first right then we would
probably do that before we would move to make a motion on approval or denial it'd
be up to the chair but yeah okay well wasn't what Mr. Smith picture was isn't
what what mr. Hayes said he said that technically no debate is supposed to
happen until there's actually you have to get them a motion on the floor to
actually have a debate I wasn't sure I heard that though that's why yeah it
seemed he was strongly suggesting that when the public hearing is closed a
motion happens and then we debate that motion and that's fine but me I just
wanted to be clear on that so okay Larry move faster and then the only other
thing that is that's standard practice under Robert's rules I'm kind of as he
mentioned the rules are supposed to be here to help not here to hinder and one
of the things that a lot of especially local governments is that they've kind
of gotten away from what was the standard of motion followed by debate
and even I mean I'm sure most of y'all watch City Council you know that a lot
of times even though in the debating first before they have the motion but
technically under the rules the motion should come first okay the only other
thing I had was it indicated that to postpone and definitely killed it can
kill yeah and what makes me ask didn't we postpone indefinitely the tree coat
thing because I sure didn't and I seconded it but I didn't intend to kill
that Richard did trying to recall it seemed like we postpone indefinitely but
my thought was we're gonna bring this up later not kill it I've got to go back I
don't remember if it was postponed indefinitely or table indefinitely it
was it I've got to go back and I think I might motion I'm pretty sure I think it
was postponed postponed till date uncertain which is which is which is
post I remember Jerry mentioning this it's not it's not indefinitely it's
postponed definitely but we just don't have a date correct okay it's a death so
we didn't kill that it's coming back next month Christopher Smith what is
Robert's was water because that's one thing we have had especially when we had
that they're really late media a couple months ago whenever we have you have a
public hearing occurring what's Robert's was waters what do they what do they say
on public hearing and discourse between you know the person speak the you know
the citizens speaking at the mic to us you know as the Commission what's the
what's the traditional standpoint of making it efficient to make sure that
the public gets all their comments in without so no that's what ended up
happening one point in time as we had it was getting pretty late and he got to
the point where he just said hey look Commission's just hold off on any
comment back to you know citizens unless there's a clarifying question and then
wait and we'll address all questions at the very very end as Robert's reward or
typically a lot of that's gonna be in the discretion of the chair as mr. Hayes
pointed out a lot of times when you're trying to do stuff like that if you just
decide you're gonna set a time limit on certain items or something like that it
can help but that would be at the discretion of the chair in the body not
directly right directed directed time right directing time and I mean there's
there's decorum rules that councils you know yeah passed about how you're not
supposed to it's not supposed to be a one-on-one conversation so much as the
person standing here supposed to address you all and stuff like that but that's
more decorum related than it is time management related
Chris Charles thank you chair Trey we don't have any procedural rules on
addressing public and a public hearing do you not that's what I'm asking you oh
you're asking me yes well we have the rules that council passed regarding the
like open mic provisions they passed those last year because they wanted to
have interaction and so well I don't know those as well off the top my head
yeah my question is pertaining to public hearing items not not open mic because
we don't have open mic here all right okay but we have public hearing
discussion so do we not have any procedural rules in place for I mean you
would you just fall to the default at that point y'all don't have y'all don't
have special rules I'll put it that way right yes so we would default to council
right what are those rules those rules that you can ask clarifying questions
yes ma'am so I found this extremely helpful I have a couple questions some
were addressed by the other commissioners how does someone actually
call a point of order and do they need to be recognized prior to doing that is
that they can just interject point of order is that can you tell me more about
calling a point of order if it's gonna write a point of order can be called at
any time in that meeting up to the next meeting so it doesn't have to be done at
that exact moment but if it if you move on to the next meeting and it hasn't
been called you considered to have waived your objection to the point of
order I was thinking more specifically if if there is a personal interaction
between two commissioners that that's of not a good nature can any one of the
commissioners just say a point of order or does that have to come from the chair
or no it can come from any of them yes sir and they can interject they don't
have to be recognized right they can just interject right one order and that
kind of shuts down puts pause on that what's gonna show you and then you'll
recognize the point of order and and see what they believe was the because the
point of order just is kind of like standing up and saying objection then
you've got to say okay well what is your point of order what is your objection
perfect and I mean sometimes it's more obvious than others obviously but then
it would be up to you know you to decide if there was a procedural problem got
you that's helpful and then the other thing is when there is a vote to
postpone indefinitely or definitely how does that work with keeping the item
open or closed can it happen while the public hearing is still open and if it
does that it remains open or doesn't need to have the public hearing closed
and then postpone and renoticed how does that work well if you were to open the
public meeting and postpone it definitely and you can do that one of
two ways you can either postpone it to a date certain or to an event certain and
a lot of times council has done that in the past where they'll say look we need
more information we need a report that says X it says we're gonna postpone it
to an event certain and that event is receiving the report on X and so in that
way you can keep it open without postponing it indefinitely but it's not
to a date certain either and if you do that it would we recommend go ahead and
open the public meeting and then if you're going to continue public comment
and have it again you would postpone it during the public meeting without
closing the public meeting and that way it doesn't have to be renoticed but if
for some reason or after the chair closed the public meeting then it's
determined you know we probably should go ahead and postpone it that's still a
possibility this has to be renoticed right bring back the item certainly yeah
if you wanted it if it were renoticed then then yes you could bring it back two
more questions as the chair if there is routiness in the audience what do I do
routing this in the audience yeah there's some heckling recently okay and I
don't know like do I call a point of order on decorum what how do I stop any
potential heckling you can request that the audience quiet down and if they
don't tip I don't I don't know do y'all have an officer here in the evenings you
can ask the officer to have them removed and then lastly there's I think City
Council has a decorum slide that's posted before the meetings right they do
they do that before the the open mic session open mic right okay I was
wondering if it would be helpful to have that same sort of disclaimer to our
audience that City Council is something we could look into yeah I know they do
that before open mic but yeah that's all the questions I have super helpful
Commissioner Smith yeah one I did bring up after one of those meetings I did
bring up they do have that slide because there were there they did get to the
point where some of those public hearings where we've had people said you
guys are a bunch of crooks it's like I saw this thing Friday I haven't seen
this project yet why am I a crook all right in it so the we can do we can do
an event sir I never I never knew we could do it an event certain so like the
right I guess just to give an example we had a case where at university right
there in front of that that subway at their university in 288 there was a
storage facility that was being used as a an auto repair shop and we end up we
end up voting on to postpone until a date certain and said well you know will
month be enough time for you to get this done for him to get these certain things
that we could have just said we want to postpone this to event certain of you
removing the cars off the lot which is what we were specifically postponing it
and giving him time to do so we can do an event that would be a good that would
be an example of something saying to a person coming to get a something
approved by or a recommendation to give it to be so to counsel by putting a
zoning commission we could say we're gonna postpone this item until event
certain of you are moving cars off a lot we can do that it'll be harder in a
situation where you're dealing with a third party member of the public like
that than it is like well then certain can't counsel asking staff hey go get
that and bring it back so it's better to ask a little more captive than so it's
better to do it just for just for internal matters rather than more so yes
okay thank you I do not see any other questions thank you very much for happy
to help feeling them the next item would be to be provide clarification on what
type of discussion is allowed during work session do not know who's
presenting on this one I know these items were on have been on the list for
quite a while and I so I don't even know how it was brought up I'm just trying to
trying to clear the back backlog I think yeah I think we can just do it like a
Q&A real fast on this this is possible well this ought to be fun they're gonna
be all for Richard mr. Ellis thank you chair well actually just to answer your
question Richard I brought it up a hundred years ago because yeah because
it seemed like we were having quite a discussion in work session and then much
less discussion out in the public sect I think that's changed since I had brought
that up on the matrix a hundred years ago but I definitely was asking for
clarity mainly from legal about what is it that we should be discussing in work
session and what should we be saving for public meeting that that was the that
was my that was how it originally started and it was probably 2016 but so
I'm glad we're getting to it honestly that's kind of broad well I think
there's been situations where we're almost coming to a point where we
understand every vote in here and then we get the public session we're like
we've already kind of discussed all this and the public is not having they have
an opportunity to hear this but I think to your point it's like we walk in we
get a presentation there's no discussion we're ready to vote right after
presentation that's what you're kind of alluding to where the public's not
actually being privy to our discussion on the item right yeah thank you chair
yeah I guess my point is is how much are we supposed to be figuring out in work
session and is that even written anywhere is that you know I'll take a
swing at it while Tracey's looking at okay thank you Matt Grindman with the
city attorney's office I've represented a number of cities and it's done a
little differently in every city I think just as far as best practices that it's
within the discretion of the Commission how they want to do that you can get as
much into as much detail as you want to at the work session the best practice
I've seen is to really go after the facts and the details in the work
session answer questions about the project and then your feelings about the
project what you've you know that kind of thought is better up safe for a public
hearing type of session where you can talk about that to me work session is
let's answer the questions let's figure out what exactly the project is and get
that type of detail in this meeting and then go to the open session with the
public and talk about that a little bit more how you actually want to vote and
explain your vote at that point right and I guess I'll kind of support what
Mac said if you go to the like the procedural rules when it talks about the
called workshop meetings work sessions same kind of thing is that it talks
about when they're supposed to be set stuff like that but in there is that the
purpose of the workshop meeting is to discuss or explore matters of interest
to the city some other things it says these meetings are to be informational
and normally no final actions taken so really the work session is for you to
gain information you that you can ask questions but your debate especially
among one another is more so for the final when it comes to you before for
the final action in the open session that in the evenings
your shoulders thank you chair okay that helps a lot especially yeah the way it's
written there because back then that is that kind of was what was happening is
most of the debate was happening in here and it just felt wrong then we would get
to public session and as chair said then we'd get there and we'd hear the
presentation again and there would be little discussion sometimes because we
just had it in here and it seems like this should be more clarifying gathering
I guess is isn't it put it right I mean that's it's almost what you just read
there informational gathering informational gathering yes ma'am okay
thank you Mr. Beck thank you chair now for me work
sessions always been to clarify to make sure that I understand what staff has
reported that I've got that straight so I'm not making an idiot of myself when I
get out in the public session but usually if we work things out in here and then we
don't discuss it much out there it's usually been when there isn't much
public input anyway when there's public input that that they bring those kind of
things up so that those those kind of debates I think do happen but for me
work sessions to make sure I understand what is being presented to us that we're
gonna be taking to the public session yeah and I remember back when you
probably brought this up we would get checked by city say we need to wait to
talk about that and it was kind of ambiguous of why we were being told to
wait on some things and so the clarification is extremely helpful do
you have any other questions on what we can talk about during work session or
what we should talk about perfect in this work session yeah in this work
session yeah perfect that brings conclusion to the work session reports
item two the next item for business is work session one clarification of agenda
items and I think we have a couple clarifications I'll ask Richard to
elaborate on under consent item 3a that item is being pulled and will be placed
on the next the next meeting
the only other the only other correction Haley will be handling public hearing
number public hearing 5b Cindy and home sick with pneumonia and so Haley's
Haley's filling in just to reiterate make sure everyone heard consent agenda
3a is being pulled and agenda item 5b is being presented by Haley not Cindy and
I'm sorry one more there was a correction to the minutes that we that we
handed out today just to make sure everyone has that
mr. Beck thank you chair yeah just a minor deal I noticed that in the one
that we're eliminating the day that fp 18025 fp always meant final play it to
me but when we go down here in the works it's preliminary play it so yeah it was
a that was that was the error so is it a final pad or is it a preliminary it's a
final play okay okay thank you mr. Smith thank you
sure like whenever we vote on this both the consent agenda I guess since it's already
gonna be there's gonna be announcements that there's amendments to the agenda we
don't need to vote saying I make a motion to approve the consent agenda less
you know item a we just like motion to prove the consent agenda and that's it
because it's already been removed by staff I think so the chair is gonna make
it clear I think before the vote that this is not I'm a that's okay so we can
say motion still this motion to approve consent agenda correct commissioner
Ellis thank you chair with regard to approval of minutes since we have this
now in front of us are we just approving minutes we don't have to mention the
change correct correct it'll be the minutes as presented here perfect I'm
already feeling our sessions going more smoothly now this is good so that brings
us to consent agenda items B does anyone have any questions on item 3b the final
plot from Haley
seeing no questions we'll go on to item 4a items for individual consideration I
will invite Julie to present
good evening I'm Julie Wyatt give me just a minute while I pull up the
presentations
right okay this is PE 18 3 symbiosis edition this might look a little
familiar to you we looked at it earlier this year the the the subject property
is located near Dallas Drive on Johnson Street as you can see right here it's
outlined in yellow there was a plot approved for this property a final plat
approved in July of 2016 as part of that plot there were some public
improvements that were reviewed were reviewed and those included perimeter
street improvements storm drain extensions and a sidewalk and and that
plot was never filed so now they're coming back for a an extension of that
final plot and I know over the summer we actually talked about another extension
for this one so so our analysis for the request is based out of sub chapter 16
of the debt and development code section 35 dot 16 dot 12 dot 2 dot f states that
if a final plot is not filed within two years of approval it becomes null and
void unless the planning and zoning Commission grants an extension for good
cause as I said before final plot FP 16 it was approved in 2016 so it was set to
expire in July of 2018 at that time the owner requested an extension of that
plat he believed that there were economic factors that would make the
project more economically feasible in the future this Commission did approve
that extension a six-month extension to January 11th of 2019 on November 30th of
last year we received a request from the applicant for an additional extension
again citing the same reasons that the construction costs associated with the
development of the site had not been feasible up until that point but he
expected those factors to change however in that intervening time staff has not
received any documentation that there was further progress made toward
completion nor did we receive any communication from the applicant between
July and November so based upon that staff recommends denial of the request
there have been two extensions or there has been an extension that was approved
and since that time there have been two updates to the criteria manuals for
public improvements particularly in terms of right-of-way widths and also
pavement sections and since there has no not been any further progress toward
completion we do recommend denial a denial of the request would would
essentially mean that the final plat expires as well as the preliminary plat
and so they would have to start over apply for a preliminary plat civil
engineering plans and a final plat to ensure that that development would meet
current standards so I'll stand for any questions
Krisha Sanchez okay so they got just one extension right okay so I know when we
had this discussion I think one of the questions is was it six months was in
enough or should we go kind of full year or something if I remember that
discussion so I guess my question is and you've said he at this point they have
not met with you at all since since that other than submitting the extension they
submitted the extension and actually the the developer came by to meet with me
today and he should be here tonight so he should be available to answer maybe
some of more questions that you would have regarding his plans and the
proposed development I guess my question is also projects within the city itself
and because of all the infrastructure that's involved that they have to take
care of what's your is that make it harder for for those projects to go
through as opposed to projects outside I mean to achieve as opposed to more
projects in the periphery of the city where it seems like they're building a
whole lot and things go move a lot faster as opposed to projects inside the
city where they have to deal more with existing infrastructure I don't know
what the surrounding municipalities with their specific requirements are or the
county I will say typically a municipality does require concurrent
public improvements with any development so it's not out of the norm for the city
to require those public improvements associated with the development and
often those are meant to serve that development so for instance in this in
this instance the sidewalk would serve the development those street
improvements and then especially that drainage would be something that would
be needed to serve that that property and a any uses on it
okay I guess I miss on what I guess I'm getting that is is it a little bit the
we're talking about denting itself I'm just saying that the projects that we
see going on the periphery to me seem to go pretty quick now the ones in internal
within the city and well they're both in the city but one of us in the
periphery is it a little bit more difficult to achieve those kind of
projects I mean being that you're there playing because of the fact that they're
in in the interior part of the city I think I understand you're talking about
infill versus infill right um you know I would say each each site is unique they
all have their special circumstances associated with it on the on the fringe
of the urban core often there are water and sewer line extensions that that are
needed whereas maybe in the internal there aren't their water and sewer may
be available so it Richard may want to weigh in but I really don't see um I
don't see necessarily a break or a difference between because every side is
unique no the only thing I would say and even with this one I don't recall there
being a large you know substantial utility extensions I don't think there
are a lot of public improvements associated with this I would call
quickly I think the main were the storm sewer extension right and I think he
also mentioned tearing up the road or something and then having rebuild that
section of the road I can't remember exactly well if a road within the city
of Denton doesn't isn't developed to our current standards which is a certain
width certain pavement thickness and curb and gutter and sidewalk then then
any development adjacent to that road has to complete that section so those
rules are applying in this case and that the that perimeter street improvement
would be required as a result of the development okay
Christian back thank you chair so help me understand why this is before PNC
tonight simply because they haven't acted on this and you're letting us know
because they haven't acted on it we're gonna kill this or if they come forward
asking for more time well they have come forward asking for another extension but
they haven't provided you the necessary documentation well they haven't they
have not moved forward with board progress on the development so the
development contracts any of those requirements associated with the public
improvement part to get it to plat filing and ultimate development so so
this is before you tonight because it is at the Planning and Zoning Commission's
discretion within sub chapter 16 that you can vote to extend an expiring plat
for good cause so so tonight you'll vote whether to extend that plat or or allow
it to expire essentially or extend it with with them but the applicant will be
here to stay this case okay all right thanks
picture Smith thank you so you it's in the backup and it says in the in the
applicants letter as well but what do they mean by economic factors do you
does do you guys see ever made that clear what he he's referencing very very
vague term of economic factors and of course we can ask the applicants not but
I never know city staff knew that I am not aware of what his meaning is behind
that so okay and if we were to if we were to give him another extension what
would city staffs recommendations be for that would be six months would it be
I'll confirm in the code but I think it allows for two six-month extensions if
I'm not mistaken unless I'm thinking of a different different section of the
code but we'll clarify we'll clarify okay thank you
Krishna Alice thank you chair so this is expiring January 11th I think right and
it's gonna follow the old criteria manuals yes it would follow what was
approved in 2016 and seeing no movement in securing financing and going forward
with anything just kind of blaze that okay thank you commissioner Burnetta and
I just wanted to clarify so so the economic factors were vague was the lack
of completion of the you know public infrastructure is that a factor and then
postponing it is the process the way the debt and development code lays out for
for projects within the city is that once a plat is approved they still can't
move forward with with construction they then have to get a plat filed and in
order to get a plat file they've got to do certain have certain contracts
executed as well as bonds and and other agreements associated with those public
improvements so they have to go through that portion and then that plat can be
filed to allow them to move forward with development we're gonna look through the
code and make sure that we're giving you correct direction so well before the
regular session I'll have that answer for you sir
Krisha Burnetta so when we discuss the the two extensions are the two
extensions limited by time like they asked for six months before they could
have previously asked for a year would they have been eligible for two years or
simply two extensions I don't I don't think the code is that prescriptive in
in how this can move forward but I want to verify to make sure that we we give
you good information so hopefully the code will will tell us I do not see any
other questions thank you Julie you are up next to that moves us on to public
hearing item 5a z 18 - 0 0 1 1 a and Julie why it's presenting I have some
handouts for this one so I'm gonna I'm gonna hand on a commissioner back and if
you'll pass them along
we received some additional neighbor response this week so I wanted to make
sure you had all of the available information
okay
okay all right so I'm presenting to you the 1811 agave ranch so the request
before you is to rezone the property from rural residential 5 to neighborhood
residential 4 and also an initial zoning district designation of nr 4 on
approximately 92 acres of land subject property is situated on the in the
northeast side of town it is outside just outside the loop off of FM 428 also
known as Sherman Drive so under current zoning there's actually a split zoning
on the subject property adjacent to FM 428 is is an RD 5 zoning district to the
east of that is an RD 5x district that was annexed at a later time so so they
essentially followed the same rules that that kind of rural residential minimum
5 acres but but there is a distinction and that one of them is sort of a
place-holding zoning designation and one is is an actual zoning designation so
here is the current zoning there are there's a there's some surrounding
zoning districts I just want you to take a look at as you get closer to town you
have in our for adjacent to the subject property the south as well as across FM
428 there is CMG at the corner of the loop and FM 428 that's supposed to be a
commercial center there across FM 428 a recent nr 6 was approved with overlay
conditions and then where where the school property is that's an nr 2 so we
kind of have a variety as you go further out you've got that RD 5x that is once
again that place holding zoning designation once that property was
annexed into the city so they are proposing to extend that neighborhood
residential for and to zone the entire property with that neighborhood
residential for that's the proposal today so here is their proposed concept
plan I'll say always with a word of caution that if this is a concept plan
you know as if the zoning is approved it would be you know they could develop in
accordance with that that zoning district the densities and the use is
permitted within it so as they're proposing and on the 92 gross acres of
land 368 homes generally kind of a mix of lot sizes with some drainage areas
want to take a quick comparison of the use is permitted under current zoning and
then the nr 4 which is the proposed RD 5x as I said before is one of our
agricultural our rural agricultural uses so it does permit residential uses a
couple of commercial land uses particularly those that you typically see
in agricultural areas things like equestrian facilities a bed and
breakfast with a limitation kennels veterinary clinics so those are the types
of uses you see in RD 5 as well as some institutional uses and our floor is one
of our residential zoning categories so it's primarily focused on that that
residential component with with single-family dwellings permitted attached
single-family dwellings with an SUP duplexes have a limitation but they are
permitted so so and then some institutional uses those are typically
required with an S or require an SUP associated with it the general
regulations that's the development scale RD 5x the minimum lot size is that 5
acres minimum lot width of 200 feet maximum lot coverage of 15 percent I
believe you can go over that for an ag use for something like a barn in our 4
is a minimum lot area 7,000 square feet for subdivisions under 2 acres of
course this is a 2a this is more than 2 acres so if this was approved all they
would have to follow is that maximum density of 4 dwelling units per acre
maximum lot coverage and that's all impervious surface is 60% maximum building
height is 40 feet so the criteria for approval for zoning cases is laid out
in subchapter 3 of the Denton Development Code the first is does the
proposed rezoning conform to the future land use element of the Denton plan so
Denton plan 2030 calls for calls this a rural area the intent is to maintain
that rural character along the city's edge with development of farms and
ranches and very low density rural residential and conservation
development the proposed and our four does not meet this this the intent of
this future land use designation but we also want to make sure that we look at
our comprehensive plan as a whole you can see that there are other future land
use designations very close to this oh sorry there is community mixed use that
kind of conforms to that existing zoning pattern at the corner of the loop and FM
428 low density resident low residential near moderate residential to the
southwest you can see there's there's a mixture of future land use designations
in that general area so when when a request does not conform to the future
land use designation we kick to a whole other criteria for approval and it
allows a little more scrutiny on the property and on the project and that's
section thirty five dot three dot three dot a these are listed here and they're
they're they're described in detail in your backup as well as our analysis we'll
go over we'll go over some of these together in the in the presentation so
for criteria one and two it really talks about what are the existing land uses and
zoning and what is the impact to future development so this subject property is
located in an area that is there's here's the subject property here that's
near rural but but urbanizing areas as we've seen with recent zoning cases as
well as development so all of these yellow dots are either recent zoning
cases or or or recent development and you can see that there's a lot of a lot
of growth pushing toward the north side of Denton and and that includes the
northeast side of Denton so so as that interior part of our city has filled up
it's really pushing toward that urban fringe and so we can see that
contiguous growth pattern emerging and that's something that our comp plan
talks about as we want to see staged growth you don't want to you know you
want to see the growth move outward in an orderly way and and it's really
showing it's really showing that pattern as we're looking to this growth and and
this seems like pretty explosive growth we we we have started planning for that
potential and and we've done a traffic study and we're going to go over that in
more detail in just a few minutes so this is also adjacent to existing in our four
districts so the proposal wouldn't be isolated it is an extension of that
existing zoning pattern and our four could also create a transition area and
buffer those those rural areas you can see out to the to the north and also the
east of the property from you know that that FM 428 corridor and that that loop
to a court loop to two 88 corridor and especially a lot of that development in
that area. Commissioner Smith. While you're on the slide the Hartley field
neighborhood that is down there it's it states that it's in you know I'm looking
at the backup states that's in the city of Denton but we don't have a zoning for
it it's it's a tendency but it's an ETJ so there's we have no we have no density
on that site whatsoever. The part that is doesn't have a color is is in the ETJ so
we don't have any zoning authority or land use authority within that property
the the north side of that Hartley field neighborhood it does or that those
properties right there those are within the city and they do have that RD 5x
designation so if they did want to come in with the additional densities they
would have to apply for initial zoning. Thank you. Criteria three talks about
adequate public improvements and we kind of went by the went we looked at these
and in a logical manner we're gonna start with transportation first so the
applicant provided trip generation numbers for their proposal and that per
their analysis that would generate 30 about 3,500 trips per per day per a 24
hour weekday AM peak of 280 and 368 as a result of this development and and the
surrounding developments in that slide we looked at earlier the city
commissioned a transportation study of the northeast sector of Denton and and
and we'll look at the next slide will show what that what the preliminary
results of that that study showed but it essentially their their recommendations
are to provide more east-west connections toward that northeast part of
the city also additional travel lanes on existing roads particularly FM 428 and
improve the intersections I know that that that upcoming improvements to that
loop 288 and FM 428 intersection are coming especially as part of as all
these developments are coming in and those would include that dedicated right
turn and signal at loop 288. Commissioner Beck. Thank you chair before you get off
this slide the 3,500 trips are being generated solely by this 368 or is this
in conjunction with the shorthand that the ITE manual shows for single-family
homes is is that single-family homes typically generate 10 trips per day so
that's kind of just the shorthand I think it's probably there's probably
decimal places in there but generally that's what their studies have shown
okay and then the peaks the am and the p.m. peaks represent evidently people
going to work and coming back from work right those would be those hours where
people are commuting hours and this this would be it in in addition to what is
already yes sir okay and it's a lot and that's why the city looked at that
transportation study because we we looked at all of these cases coming and
we thought you know this is a really good time to start collaborating with
our engineering group and and really start looking at what what could go out
there and and how we should plan for it we're trying to be proactive and what we
see in that that corridor so here's the draft here's a map from the draft
transportation study once again it hasn't been fully completed but but we
wanted to show you this today and so we looked at this entire sector here so
this kind of fuzzy gray line is the study boundary and the methodology that
we that we had the the the consultant use to to come up with this plan was to
assume kind of a four dwelling units per acre residential development out in that
area plus some areas of commercial nodes especially where you've got especially
on our arterials in our intersections and so based upon our that methodology
they they've looked at these general roads that that need to come in this
this pinky red is our subject site and you could see this is Hartley Field it
may not be it may be a little too fuzzy but Hartley Field as as a result of
potential development out there they're recommending to straighten that out to
to realign that it will actually bisect the subject property and and then we
continue on to allow that east-west connection more connectivity more places
for people to get around thank you chair staying with what's being proposed go
back that one slide again you the traffic signals says dedicated signal at
loop 288 that wasn't there a traffic signal also dedicated or proposed that
long road where it intersects with Sherman I thought there were gonna was
gonna be a light there and because you've got traffic coming out at Hartley
Field where it does now that's a lot of the concern of the people that live in
there and having it there allows him to get on to FM 428 then you've got to deal
with the intersection itself down at the loop so there was no traffic signal
other than the one at loop 288 I am not aware of any traffic signals at long
because in discussions with engineering the the long the separation between long
and loop 288 there's there's there's not enough distance there to really have
that light there and that's why they liked that alignment of Hartley Field
because it allows that separation allows for and more just a better flow of
traffic if that goes through then we could see a traffic light at that
intersection they are looking at all types of interventions to to make that
work and to get the traffic flowing through that they've thrown out some
some some ideas things like signals or maybe even a traffic circle something to
get the cars moving through that area efficiently and safely okay thank you
I'm also just to point out that FM the the study recommends that that FM 428 in
this piece would go to a four lane divided and then with a and then they
are recommending even a bar above that to preserve right of way for a six lane
divided roadway for some time in the future that Hartley Road alignment would
be as as proposed kind of kind of short term and long term short term a two lane
undivided it would be an arterial but that but to preserve that right of way
for a four lane divided road to accommodate future growth for it alright
we looked at other public improvements water and sewer specifically there is
water near the property and there's a 54 inch water line they can't tap into that
and directly adjacent to the site so they would have to extend either the 12
inch from the south or the 12 inch from the north and extend it across the the
the the frontage of the site they would also have to do sewer extensions that
red line is is the newest the nearest sewer and they'd have to do a lift
station to make sure they got the sewer there we'd also talked to Denton ISD we
wanted to see if there was if there was capacity within the schools they do have
a formula that they use that based upon the number of homes and what sort numbers
of students that those generate and right now those the schools within the
attendance zone do you have adequate capacity for the for any increased
enrollments associated with the with this subject property and then upon
development upon platting and then building permits any the developer would
have to pay a parkland dedication fee upon platting and then a park development
fee with each residential building permit I should also back up and say with
transportation roadway impact fees would be associated with every building permit
which would go toward those system wide public public improvements we also looked
at the consideration of character and land use when you look at a 360 degree
view of this site you know it's there's still a lot of rural area around there
but that existing growth particularly to the south of the subject site suggests
that that stage development along more major arterials at the urban periphery
is appropriate and particularly zoning districts like like in our four where
it's residential development so you keeping that those existing uses there's
there's residential uses around there so keeping that that same use but a little
more density than what what you see out there now however when we look at in our
four there are a couple of uses that are inconsistent with what we feel is out in
that area and though in particular duplexes and single-family attached which
are town homes so staff would recommend that if if if approved that an overlay
condition be put on the zoning to to net those uses out that way it would really
only be a single-family neighborhood notification was sent out so it's a
pretty prominent location within the city of Denton we've received quite a
few letters in opposition we've received a total of 23 responses 20 of them are
outside of that that 200 foot boundary so the the areas in red are showing
opposition we have one in favor we're at 13% opposition within that 200 foot
boundary so based upon staff's analysis of the request and the and the the
overall didn't plan 2030 and the criteria for approval staff recommends
approval of the request with the overlay condition that duplexes and
single-family dwellings oh attached single-family dwellings are not
permitted and I'll stand for any questions Julia may one clarifying
question in our four from the city's perspective is considered low density it
is what are the low density zones in our one which would be essentially one
dwelling unit per acre in our two two dwelling units per acre in our three
three and a half dwelling units per acre and then in our four is the four dwelling
units per acre do we have so in our six that could be centered moderate yes sir
and then MU MRM you 12 would be moderate would be moderate mm-hmm what's high
density residential anything above 12 dwelling units per acre I believe that
the Denton plan 2030 has that up to 12 dwelling units per acre is that moderate
density anything above that would be considered higher density and I'd risk
of talking to tertiary that might be better reserved for the public I do want
to ask this is being recommended by the city not because it meets the future
land-use map but because you went to these secondary seven criteria and it
looked to meet those correct I have a concern about the ongoing approval of
other such property for instance commercial or mixed use we're we are
potentially proving a lot of homes without any support structure out there
so they're all coming back into university basically for groceries and
gas and all this and it doesn't seem by those seven criteria is that a strip
center that could provide them a McDonald's would be likely to be
approved by the city and so I'm trying to think through maybe the city's intent
of how we we are looking in it from a planning perspective of all this land
that right now seems deemed only be housetops and I would love your input or
the city's input of of where that balance is going to be considering the
approval criteria listed so the comprehensive plan was adopted in 2015
and I really think it probably contemplated a bit slower growth within
the city of Denton it really did call for stage growth and filling in the
center part of Denton before we go to that urban edge that periphery and it
just happened it seemed to have happened a lot faster than anticipated and so I
expect we kick those same questions around on staff because this whole this
whole area to the north really was just deemed rural and so how should it grow
responsibly and with in keeping with our vision and so I think we're probably
going to have to have future conversations associated with our future
land use map and and maybe start start looking at where we're going because we
got we got there a little sooner than we expected yeah I just wonder what what
mechanisms we have apart from updating the flume to actually provide these
residents direction because I'm sure a lot of this feedback comes from fear of
the what-ifs are gonna happen I can I can imagine that seeing all this being
rural but us improving non rural I guess this is low density but non rural
activities it's hard for any of the residents to know what's gonna happen to
the next property or so without using the future land use and using these
criterias I don't know how we can I would like to know how we can better
serve the citizens to know what the city's intent for planning perspective is
actually going on and I don't know how to do that I'm looking at Richard you
may want to weigh in on this yeah it might be good if we had the and we could
probably bring this back maybe even for the next not necessarily this agenda
item but but this discussion and it might be I can also see maybe if pre
Tim can also attend one it one of the things when we when we approached the
that traffic analysis we wanted to make sure we were linking the two were in the
past you know there was this mobility plan and we often question because
you'll see these squiggly lines all over the place that don't really make sense
and so as we started looking at that we wanted to make sure that as we grow
things are being planned for properly and and so looking as we started mapping
and seeing where the transportation network is that's where we started
looking at okay what makes sense where should those commercial areas be what
are the distances between where we know we have some commercial property now at
the loop but then what is the next major intersection how can we start and so
that's kind of that approach that we started with transportation and and I
shouldn't say what you're gonna see shortly after the DDC and zoning map
update will be that will be the update to the 2030 plan and really you know we
started to I want to take Julie's thunder but she started really doing an analysis
really part of this project of what do we have left in this kind of inside the
circle and there's not much left but also if we're going to continue to grow
let's let's try to let's not wait and kind of let's not wait and see let's
let's be a little bit more proactive but also now starting to if this is where
the growth is gonna go do we wait for these road improvements or do we or do
we look at a different way to fund them yeah and real quick and then the other
commissioners seem to have things if we know it now I'll ask for it if not if we
can have it for the public hearing is oftentimes we talk about road
improvements signal lights if there's any timelines to do things that we can
provide the citizens say a signal light will be at Luke 288 and Sherman in nine
months that would be super helpful for both us to know and for the citizens
who are here or who have responded to kind of understand oftentimes it's a
little ambiguous and it's on mobility map but we don't know when the bond any
of that so if do you have any timelines at any of the infrastructure not right
now okay I suspect we will within honestly hopefully next week we'll start
that discussion that was a meeting I had earlier today is is really looking at
all of all of the development that we have all of our transportation needs and
really where where is the growth occurring and how can we that was
something that the city manager really wanted to make sure that that we were
moving forward on rather than kind of what's happened in the past where we
where we kind of just kind of sat back and waited for the for the impact fee
money to come in well by that time it's kind of too late and so now it's really
looking more proactively and how can we address this once we get that formulated
I think that's what would be better better off to answer these exact
questions both for the Commission to make informed decisions but also for the
residents so they have an idea of what what what to expect sir
Krister back thank you chair and kind of jump into that same conversation there
about what to do this and I'm gonna probably have to lean on Richard here
because in the DDC the rewrite committee I think we were actually looking at
giving this a new zoning designation of suburban corridor which would entail
mixed use stuff and I was going to raise that tonight too that as chairman
Roselle state we're putting in houses out there but we're not we're not building
commercial uses that they can benefit from without having to come into town or
go to the Golden Triangle and law so is that I mean I know we're just looking at
it in the the rewrite committee but I mean isn't that a possibility too that
this is going to conflict with filling these houses that if we zone this that
suburban corridor this sets outside of that even if it is mixed use mixed use
is really talking about putting some commercial stuff in there which it needs
out there and I think we if I may yeah it's really as I was a little more
strategic I think as we start to really you know I think what helped with this
area in particular is the transportation study because rather than just really
just making some general assumptions of let's zone it this we were actually able
to really look into all right well how was this network I mean it because it
doesn't exist and so what makes the most logical sense and if you see where
I guess I'll call it Road F if you will really looking at well unfortunately it
it bisects this property as it as it continues west we're trying to align
these where they where they run boundary lines so we're not we're not cutting
through the middle middle of properties but that's that Stark Farms to the south
to the north DISD owns that owns that property whether they'll ever develop a
school there who knows it may come sooner than later but those are and so
we're looking at also who owns the property and so we can understand what
what reasonably to expect there is it you can go back to even the zoning map
because there is it there's a lot of commercial sort of right at that at no
now that's undeveloped so there is there is some available commercial within that
CMG but I think it's just looking at that at that space you can get it getting a
better understanding of how it can best fit as we as we start to rezone it do
we have the right away already for this Hartley Field extension no no okay
Mr. Smith nature just what is the latest on the DDE I know it's off-topic but it
really is German I promise where the latest in the DDC where we close to set
on getting the DDC rewrite back to us we should have the public draft the 12th
around around the 12th February next month and then that and and how far away
is that from being approved I'm just thinking it from the standpoint of of
this this item in light of what Commissioner Beck has brought up how if
we if we something it'd be two months and then there's brand new brand new
ideas for zoning around this area that we just approved or I suspect we're
probably looking at May okay at the earliest all right thank you
Mr. Cole
so should we wait and to see more definite the infrastructure situation or
I mean because they're all right I mean we're jumping into this not knowing you
know what's going to you know it seems like we're okay in this before it needs
to be I mean and and with and with it I mean I don't want to say don't you know
don't do it or to do it we looked at it as at this point where we're just I don't
look for the lack of a better kind of changing the color of the map to allow
the residential but at least it gives us the idea that took to plan because now
we our assumptions are kind of what we what we thought it might be and if I can
interject Chris recall I think that question would be great to be held in
public session and I think we can all weigh in on that exact question
Christian Pernetta so one thing I'm really curious about is you know we
talked about the traffic that was generated right in that area right so
it's about 3,400 trips and I guess my question is how centralized is it to
that because because as chair mentioned there's no grocery stores in anywhere
around there right so if there's 3,400 trips that are coming in well they're
gonna hit 288 and they're actually gonna have to go pretty far out or they're
gonna have to go down Sherman all the way to the Kroger on University which
creates a lot of traffic downstream that we don't have a count on right there
until we have things where people can go like I said just get a gallon of milk or
something like that do we have any idea of what the impacts would be because
because like I said from that area I don't see where anybody's gonna be able
to go get some basic necessities outside of that specific spot on University it
makes no sense for them to hit any other direction um you're right there aren't a
lot of services out there and a lot of retail I suspect that as more rooftops
come in that area that their retail will will probably fill in that corner there
that corner there at at the loop and 428 has has been zoned commercial for many
many years and hasn't developed so I you know I I can't I can time will tell but
but you're right there aren't aren't a lot of a lot of retail options for them
in that in that area right now thank you great I don't see any other questions
thank you Julie Haley the next presentation long sure should be for
dinner let's go ahead and break at 555 for five minutes to grab some food we'll
meet back here at six thank you for that break it is now 603 will reconvene with
item 5b Z 18 - 17 B and Haley will be presenting this is a zoning case for
lakeside place the request before you is kind of twofold it is a request for an
initial zoning designation of NR for on approximately 86 acres of land as well
as a rezoning of approximately six acres from NR 2 to NR for so looking at that
breakdown you can see here the hatched area being the larger portion that's
currently RD 5 X so it's got that initial placeholder zoning recently
annexed into the city in November and then the six acres is this little far
northern corner of the site that's currently zoned NR 2 so the proposal
would be to take this to NR for and you can see the surrounding areas a mixture
of low density residential districts with a little commercial development or
commercial zoning across the railroad tracks so when we look at a rezoning we
have two primary criteria for approval the first being rather the rezoning
conforms to the future land use element of our Denton plan 2030 the second being
if the proposed rezoning facilitates the adequate provision of infrastructure so
looking at that first criteria the future land use map designates this area
for low residential that is an area or a designation intended to promote single
family housing with lot sizes ranging from one home per acre up in our more
rural areas to up to four units per acre closer within the city so this NR for
district does have a maximum density of four units per acre so it does fall
within that range and therefore is consistent with that future land use
designation the second criteria being the adequate infrastructure so this
site currently has an 8-inch water line I apologize it may be a little hard to
see here but this dashed line is a newly installed 8-inch water line that would
be available to the site and then they have a 10-inch sewer line here at the
northern terminus of Creepdale as well as an 8-inch sewer stub out here at the
I guess that'd be the eastern end of Creepdale looking at transportation
things get a little more complicated so our mobility plan shows two roads kind
of bisecting the site one of those was intended to be an extension of Hickory
Creek that would curve up north of the floodplain and then the other was the
extension of Creepdale to connect these two end points that we have today so the
applicant has done a kind of an early traffic impact analysis they needed to
do a little additional work on it as they move forward with plotting the
property but what it gave us some good ideas of what needs to occur in this
area so the applicant through that TIA has agreed that they will provide for
the improvements on Hickory Creek and will extend Creepdale to match the
mobility plan the TIA did reveal that it makes a little more sense in this area
for rather than realigning Hickory Creek this way to go ahead and keep it on its
more current path go kind of straight through the floodplain and eventually
connect this with Brush Creek now that is kind of a larger endeavor since a lot of
that road is in the county currently so much like Julie just discussed with that
kind of regional traffic study our engineering department is looking at
kicking off a similar study very soon for this Ryan Road Hickory Creek area to
kind of pull all these groups together the city the county and really determine
what's the best plan for these roads in this area as we move forward
I'm gonna interject real fast and then looks like Commissioner Beck this might
be a little too soon but given what happened this morning on Hickory Creek
I'm really sensitive to what's going on here I have a lot of thoughts on it but
but to maybe make it more pointed what's the time delay in just changing where
that road should be in the red dots to this new idea because I have some
serious concern putting any more traffic on that road as it currently exists it's
it's it's a it's a nightmare it's a danger so what's are we adding years to
a timeline of Hickory Creek to get that taken care of or what do we what are we
talking about in timeline of these the intent the red dash line is what our
mobility plan currently calls for through their TIA and then through this future
study that Preetam and his team are hoping to kick off very soon the plan is
to just scratch that off the mobility plan so imagine that red line is no
longer crossing the property here they wouldn't be dedicating the right of way
for that roadway along the floodplain instead they would be accommodating the
improvements on their frontage with the intent that Hickory Creek would punch
through in some alignment through this general area to connect with Brush Creek
and make a more direct East West arterial on the south side of the city
someday. Commissioner Bec, did you have anything?
If you can just touch on the two CIP projects. Yeah yeah so in addition to
that study there are two projects currently in the planning for CIP to
widen the existing Hickory Creek to a four-lane divided roadway so it's kind
of being handled as a two-phase project I believe that's East and West of Teasley
that would bring the four-lane divided up here to River Pass and part of their
TIA called for this property as they move forward with platting to coordinate
with that and try to figure out how to get that four-lane divided roadway
extended a little bit further than what the CIP plans intended. Gotcha but as
soon as they cross the road tracks it's down to that two-lane road again. Correct
that part being in the county is currently outside of our control but it
is something that our engineering department is coordinating with the
county on. So as I mentioned that the TIA they submitted well fairly thorough
wasn't quite enough yet because we don't have a conceptual layout for the
subdivision so as they move forward with preliminary platting the applicants
aware that we'll be asking them to update that TIA once they know their
their ultimate plan for the lot layout so that we can look at these
transportation improvements more closely at that time and as I mentioned the site
also recently annexed into the city and through that process DISD is contacted
and they have confirmed that the schools in this area would be able to accommodate
the additional students that would be expected to be generated through this
project. Notifications were sent regarding this case as you can see here
on the map we received two responses in favor one of those came in since the
agenda was published so I have placed that at the table for you to review but
you can see those two properties one being north of the site and the other
here along their western boundary. Staff is recommending approval of this
request as it's consistent with the surrounding properties and consistent
with our goals and objectives from the Denton plan and meets those two
criteria as they were described here and I'm happy to stand for any other
questions. Mr. Beck. Thank you Chair. Haley the fact that there's three active
gases on the site is that was that not brought up because this is the zone
change request that the gas site locations will be? It's expected that
since the site annexed into the city it would comply with our standard gas wall
regulations in terms of notifications. Okay but we'd be dealing with it more
detailed should this thing go through? The standard process for a site
like this would be once they get to the preliminary platting stage we would
ensure that they have the proper notifications and setbacks and things of
that nature on the plat. It's typically not something that we would deal with at
zoning but okay. Not that you may know this just curious do we know if the
developers have been talking with the gas well operators about? Yes there's
actually a gas well plat that covers the site so they've been I believe Eagle
Ridge is the operator and they've been in correspondence with them throughout
this process. Good thank you. Any other questions? Great thank you.
Next item is 5CZ18-0023 and I'll invite Julie Wyatt for presentation.
No. All right so this is Z18-23 Worthington Treffport. So the request
before you is a rezoning from regional center commercial downtown to an ECI
employment center industrial zoning district on approximately 8.7 acres of
land and that's this site right here and a change in the zoning from regional
center commercial neighborhood RCCN in this location to that ECI as well. So the
request is to to go from those regional zoning districts to ECI. The current
zoning as I said before has those regional commercial zoning districts on
the subject property. It's a total of 16 acres but there are there are two lots
with those separate zoning designations. Surrounding the subject property from
from the the western boundary toward I-35 you see a lot of regional zoning as
well as it started to go to that ECI district. So across the street there's ECI
and those have been recent zoning cases. There's ICG to the south and to the
west of the subject site is NR2. The proposal is just to extend that existing
ECI to the subject property. Here's the concept plan they're really looking to
expand the existing development. This is the existing development on the the
southern part of the site. They're not looking to change that what they want to
do is add some storage uses to the to the north portion of the site. Always my
word of caution this is not set in stone if they if the zoning were approved they
could develop with any of the uses permitted within ECI at the scale
permitted within that zoning district. So the criteria for approval as I said
before is in step chapter 3. First does it conform to the future land use and
then second does it does it is there adequate provision of public facilities.
So first let's take the debt and plan. This area is is within a business
innovation future land use and and there's quite a bit of business
innovation around it. The intent is for those well-planned large-scale office
and employment uses. It can also include supporting uses such as retail hotel and
and residential. So as we see often we have we have quite a bit of business
innovation as a future land use within the city of Denton and we see a variety
of zoning districts. ECC and ECI are our primary zoning districts within that
future land use but sometimes there are also those those commercial and that the
uses associated with ECI are consistent with that future land use designation.
They have a they have a broad array of light industrial warehousing and
employment type uses as well as those supporting commercial uses. When looking
at the public improvements we looked at transportation that the applicant did a
trip generation for the proposed use. It's a pretty low-intensity use as far
as traffic so it's anticipated to to generate 95 trips on that undeveloped
portion because that's the portion that they would develop in association with
the requested zoning. The peak hour would be 20 trips so that that doesn't reach
the threshold of the TIA. Typically engineering wants to see at least a
thousand trips generation generated a day before that TIA is done.
Commissioner Beck. Thank you chair. Does any of this, is all transportation pretty much going to be coming off I-35? The concern we're seeing from homeowners is that it's going back behind. So when we're looking at this information it's reflecting on what's coming in from I-35, not from the back side. Is that right? Correct and we'll talk about that. So so yes it you know that the streets the street that the the subject property is on it
connects to I-35 it also connects to University so the anticipated traffic is
from those two areas. Additionally there's a railroad track on the on the Western
property line and and there's there's not going to be a connection for this site
between between this site and those residential areas. Be sure and bring that up in the public area. Other findings associated with this so it is it is a
logical continuation of that surrounding zoning and use pattern. That that area
sandwiched between the railroad track track and I-35 really has developed with
employment type uses that set back off of I-35 so this general area is those
employment uses then those those parcels that have the frontage of I-35 we're
seeing developed with commercial uses those uses that want the visibility of
highway of a highway corridor so this this rezoning is a continuation of that
use or that that zoning and land use pattern. But we like in the last one we
want to take a 360 degree view of the side and we want to look not only what's
in front of the side but what's behind it and and there is a very low density
single-family neighborhood adjacent to the side and and the dent plant really
calls for sensitivity to these to these areas so we looked at that we wanted to
make sure that was a part of our analysis and what we really determined
that because of that railroad and actually it's elevated it's actually on
top of a berm it is the the site is physically separated from that
residential neighborhood and it won't it won't connect to that neighborhood. The
industrial uses within ECR are our lower impact our our light industrial uses
they're not those heavy industrial or those those uses that cause a lot more
off-site impacts and and it's actually nets out some of those higher intensity
commercial uses that are within the existing zoning districts for instance
under current zoning motels would be permitted so this would actually pull
out some of those uses that would would would also generate commercial type
impacts. The development scale in ECI and the existing zoning is compare
comparable so anything that would be built on the site visually would would
be somewhat similar and then there when when it develops there will be design
standards associated with it so things like a minimum tree canopy of 30%
screening at the right-of-way all of those elements associated with site
design those would apply to any development on the site. Commissioner Beck would
can you address any noise impact here again that seems to be one of the
concerns that this may develop more noise is that um you know and and when
you look at those uses that are in RCCD and RCCN and ECI I believe they're
comparable in the maybe generation of noise light all of those kind of off-site
impacts you typically see so the you know the good news about this site is
there is a regional drainage area on the west side of the property so that is
anticipated to remain so if you actually look at their concept plan right now
there is this drainage area and so the the western part of the site isn't
anticipated anticipated to develop and once again the site has to be 30% tree
canopy so there will be those those that landscaping that will help mute things
like light and noise. Commissioner Smith. When you say storage use are they saying self
storage uses or storage use of their materials and their product and that kind of thing?
Right now they are anticipating a trucks and the applicant will be here. Not under
what I understand the applicant will be here so they may be able to provide you
more information. And the applicant is also the owner of
the property meaning that it's not I guess I shouldn't say that the applicant
is the one who's actually gonna be the one who's building and managing that
property it's it's it's their own property they're just trying to make an
addition to their property that's not already allowed in their zoning so
they're not changing the zoning and then selling it to a developer that kind of
thing we've seen in some cases. It is it's my understanding and they are here
that the applicant doesn't currently own the property they did get owner
authorization for the current property owners but they are in contract to
purchase the property in order to expand their existing business on it so the
applicant would would be the developer in this case as they presented to the
staff. So this is just a snapshot of the comparison of the uses so it might be a
little hard to see but RCCN is the first column RCCD and then ECI so when you
just look at the zoning districts RCCN and RCCD are intended to provide
regional shopping regional commercial development as well as high high density
residential so it does have residential uses ECI actually nets out those
residential uses residential is not permitted in ECI they both they all
three have comparable commercial land uses ECI does does not permit things
like motels and movie theaters so it does have a little bit different mix of
those commercial uses but it does allow things like offices industrial land uses
ECI has has more industrial land uses than do RCCN and RCCD but as I said
they're more of our lighter lighter industrial light manufacturing
distribution centers veterinary clinics so and then and then as you can see the
general regulations here the lot coverage is pretty consistent across our CCD has
a little bit higher lot coverage our CCD also allows buildings of a hundred feet
ECI only permits a maximum of 65 feet so it actually would reduce the amount of
height that good people would be permitted in that in that instance
notification was sent out the applicant did have a neighborhood meeting there
were a few neighbors who were concerned and we have received some letters in
opposition and you can see them there in red due to the the way that the 200
buffer foot the 200 foot buffer falls we have 1% opposition but but you can see
those those letters that we received right there so based upon the criteria
for approval that it is consistent with the future land use designation of the
subject property and there is adequate infrastructure staff recommends
approval of the request and I'll stand for any questions I had not seen you thank
you thank you at this time that will close our work session at 625 we'll take
a 10-minute recess and reconvene in council chambers at 635
good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the plan and zoning session
for January 9th 2019 I'll convene this meeting at 634 the first item on the
agenda is to stand give the pledge allegiance to the US and Texas flag
Next item for business is to consider approval of the plan and zoning
commission meetings from December 12th. Commissioner Beck. I move to approve
the minutes. Commissioner Smith. Second. We have a first and a second any notes on
the minutes? Scene 9 will call for a vote on the board.
Motion carries 6-0 with one recusal. The next items for for business consideration
is the consent agenda agenda please note that item 3a has been pulled from
this consent agenda so we'll only be hearing or voting on item 3b
Commissioner Smith. I move to approve the consent agenda. Commissioner Burnetta.
I second. We have a first and a second any discussion? Scene 9 will call for a
vote on the board.
Motion carries 7-0 next item is 4a it's an item for individual consideration PE
18-003a I'll call Julie Wyatt for presentation.
Good evening I'm Julie Wyatt senior planner with the City of Denton. I'm
presenting PE 18-3 so the request before you is to consider an extension of a
previously approved final plot the subject property is located off Johnson
Street just south of Dallas Drive it's that property outlined in yellow a plot
was a previously approved on July 13th of 2016 that approval included a review
of perimeter street improvements storm drain extensions and also a sidewalk
over the last summer 2018 and the applicant requested and received an
extension of the plot for six months that plot is set to expire on the 11th
and so that's why they're here today is to request an additional extension so
just a little bit of analysis per Denton development code sub chapter 16 if a
final plot is not filed within two years it becomes null and void unless the
planning and zoning Commission approves an extension for good cause as I said
before the final plot was set to expire last July at that time the applicant
asked for an extension he believed that changes in economic factors would make
the project economically feasible in the future and the planning and zoning
Commission did approve that extension for six months to expire on January of
this year in November the applicant requested an additional extension once
again citing the same causes construction costs for public
improvements in the and the anticipation that that economic factors will will
change in the future however the city has not received any of the required
documents like the three-way development contracts any of the bond payments that
would be required for public improvements or communication from the
applicant to demonstrate that there's been further progress toward completion
so since the plot was approved in 2016 the city has approved two updates as to
their criteria manuals to address changes to public improvements and that
includes things like right-of-way widths and pavement sections staff has
request the has reviewed their request for extension and since there hasn't
been any further progress toward completion we recommended the denial
their quest additionally because due to those changes in the in the criteria for me criteria manuals we
want to make sure that the development is up to date on the standards that the
city applies if you if you approve it if you don't don't extend the the plat and
the and the plat extension is denied the applicant in order to move forward would
be required to submit for a preliminary plat and final plat and seek approval of
both of those things that we would also review the engineering plans against any
updated standards and ensure that development would meet those standards so
the applicant I believe is here maybe not so I'll stand for any questions I
don't see the applicant oh okay the applicants in the hallway he's close by
and I'll stand for any questions perfect thank you Julie we do have a couple
questions Commissioner Pernetta I didn't see the length of the extension requested
and they did not request a specific amount of time so when we go to that
section and the development code there aren't any specific requirements in
terms of how many extensions or those at length of extensions that could be
granted so it is it is at the Planning and Zoning Commission's discretion thank
you I do not see any Commissioner Smith thank you sure it's partially a question
for staff and really more for a question for Richard in regards to the preliminary
plot that was filed will the preliminary plotting procedures be changed with the
DDC update that is coming probably the next six to nine months or so not say
I should say the process could there have been criteria or items in that
preliminary practice plot that could be changed by the DDC update coming up
could you think of anything that off the top your head that your material changes
now like that wouldn't be something like if the you have another extension got
past the new DDC update and then by that point in time we'll work with such a
know what that point timing almost a three year three years from the from the
approval of the preliminary plot they'd be working off of something that might be
at a date to the DDC no no no okay thank you and the applicant is here now so I
do have a question for the applicant is Jim Dewey here if you just state your
name and address for the record good evening chairman members of the
Commission I'm Jim Dewey with JDJR engineers 2500 Texas Drive suite 100
Irving Texas I came before you six months ago to ask for a year's extension
and at that time explain that the project had come in a little bit over
budget due to some public infrastructure that was required for some off-site
drainage and some things that were not anticipated when this project was
started and that the owner and developer was really working on getting financing
and should have everything put together before this date I also was told that if
we've come back that the developer needed to be here to talk for himself
and fortunately he is here they has made a lot of progress nothing has been made
in terms of submittals to the city so Julie and staff there was nothing
submitted city so they have no way of knowing but there has been a lot of work
behind the scenes and working to try to get this project started he seriously
wants to get this project going we are asking for another extension we would
like a year but we know that even six months would would be acceptable it's
simply about getting the project started from a financing point of view we're not
trying to change the project we don't want to change the project so we don't
really want to have to start the process over with a new plat it's certainly we
could certainly do that but at this point we hope that y'all see that maybe
there is some really serious work going on and the plat would be recorded prior
to the end of this next extension so at this point I'd like to turn over to
side and sorry he is the property owner he did purchase these properties three
years ago to do this project he owns the properties it's not in his benefit to
own them forever he wants to develop them and and move on down the road so
I'm going to introduce you to side and sorry and he's going to kind of explain
what he's been working on sure we pause real fast
kisser pretty and Smith you have questions for the engineer or the applicant
which would be better for applicant Mr. Smith would think you're just I guess I
should clarify do you have better information about the what his work has
been done since we gave the extension or the developer of the developer okay the
way for the developer thank you and if you could just say it's your name and
address for the record good evening respected members of the council my name
is said I'm sorry syed ansari and the address is 10209 Savoy Drive in Plano
Texas
kisser pernetta do you want to ask your question yeah the description that we
got on the request for extension was that there were economic factors that
you were hoping would be resolved within six months and those are kind of
vague I was wondering if this was an issue of costs or financing or if you
could give us a little bit more insight into what would be resolved by this
extension yes actually it's a mixture of both you know if you look at that street
Johnson Street it's a bunch of single-family old homes that we purchased
took out about three homes out and combined them to make about 1.8 acres of
land to put in two buildings essentially making about 52 apartments for students
and if you look at that street it's when you drive into it in order to you know
we could see the future as a developer I can see that you know that place is
going to change a lot the city of course has it has that same idea and it's it's
now things rezoned as the as a as what do you call it a downtown district so
but many of the investors who are looking at it with us couldn't we're not
convinced so the people who are with us at that time and we originally purchased
it had some questions and this thing we were exploring different options and now
we are also looking at building something cool for the students like
using containers you know there's container construction is very popular
in Europe and it's it is popular in both California New York Canada and places
like that so we thought bringing something like that might be pretty cool
for the students we were exploring and doing all this in these few years like
two or three years and we decided to just stick with the traditional
construction for now and I have a new partner on board who is here actually
with me and we've decided to go forward with it as you know with the student
housing it has to be timed correctly so we plan to open this for residents in
2020 summer fall you know to be ready in summer so it can be ready ready for
occupation in fall so if we started with our building plans today it would
probably take us about six months to get all the approvals for actual the
building plans and get it ready and if we start construction and in summer of
2019 we will kick and have this place ready in 2020 fall so that's that's our
plan so the extension that you're seeking would just be a short term like
just a few months or we would like it to be at least a year so that you know we
don't we're not back here requesting another extension we are going to be
working on the plans and getting those ready
that's all I've got for now. Commissioner Smith. Thank you chair so I guess to say that we were only
privy to as much as the staff knows the staff has had nothing updated to them
since we last gave the extension so what I've heard what you said but what
exactly have you done since July when you say we've been doing work doing
behind-the-scenes what does what does I mean I have a few plans that we have
been working on I can give them to you for to look at you put them on the seat
of little fields section right there you can actually open them up and put them
there and they'll put them on that screen yeah you might buy turning it
sideways so we could see it upright or is that the right way kind of looks
like there's riding that's up and down
halfway around yeah it's where it's so this is the container building that we
were planning and it's actually we could have about maybe about 80 80 to 90 units
makes it a little more feasible but there's always risk when you do
something different to new you know symbiosis homes does zero energy ready
homes and that's what we build and so I I try to do personally something very
different from what's normally seen in the market so this is something that we
were developing here's a one and two bedroom apartment complex I mean a flow
plans and this was actually done by an architect in Seattle contain builders
who have a lot of experience probably about 15 years of experience and doing
containers based on this thing and we they were working with our architect Jim
Dewey for you know consulting with them about the details of this land the
second question I had was for what you just said to Commissioner Pernetta was
that really you need another six months to get the documentation and that you
need for your final plot and then you would need about a year to build and be
ready by by summer of 2020 so you really don't need a year you read really need
more like six months to get your to get your final plot in so that's that's
that's realistically it's not not a year it's it's really six months and then
whenever you really think about it we've already given a six-month extension to
something that already allows you two years I know there's been complications
with the project but to two and a half years is pretty good amount of time to
if it's people working diligently to be able to secure financing or find a
remediation for the utility of that that lot for whatever needs to be done so
sounds like it's much more like six months and that's that's that's the
basis I'm going to take it off of so thank you for my questions
Mr. Beck thank you chair thank you mr. I'm sorry I don't know that I spelled it
right but I got the pronunciation Mr. dude who came before you said you had
done some serious work there already but all you're showing us are plans on paper
I don't see any physical has there been any physical work that's actually been
done in this area or are we just dealing with plans at the site we've not done
there's no whole lot we just removed the three houses that were there in the
other thing you know the houses where they're sitting there when we bought
these whole homes we started buying them about three years ago and some of them
were rented and we removed them and some of them had we had to do some
remediation and so on because they had asbestos and stuff like that we got that
done to get it ready for okay but there's been no breaking of ground to do
new construction correct okay I'm not getting any feeling of confidence here
that this thing is really moving along like it should be and as Commissioner
Smith pointed out I think ample time has been given to get a lot further than you
have this far it still doesn't sound and correct me if I'm wrong like you've got
your finances in order here too that you're not gonna be running into
problems with this down the road is that sound about right I mean it's are your
finances locked in or are there still some negotiations going on we do
actually with this project because it's targeted towards students every time we
miss that time timeline of one year to ready to be ready to build it everything
the thing slows down you know if I miss summer of this 19 then we will be
looking at next year we wouldn't be doing anything to live well I think the
extension is just to get you started somebody correct me if I'm wrong on
staff we're not looking at you completing this we're looking at you
getting started on it and then the time it takes it's the time it takes but I
don't think we even see you starting physical construction within the next
six months by summer of this year actually what I'm talking about is the
time it takes we have to time to finish it by the end of summer so that it's
ready for occupation if I have this ready by summer 2020 2020 right okay the
other thing that bothers me mr. Ansari is your site plan you're talking about
changing it from one type of building unit to another that doesn't set well
either because we need to see what you're proposing here I hear you talking
about crates and we know what they are we've seen those come before us but it
seems like if you're gonna change things we need to have a new site plan
presented to us before we proceed with that this is something internal what we
were as partners discussing what to do but we need to know are you gonna go
forward with okay you're not changing it you're not changing the site plan you
presented to us earlier yeah we are not changing it we've decided to go with the
traditional construction okay yeah just stick belt with masonry what is as per
the standards the city is approved yes okay that's what we've decided to do
all right thank you sir
at least one clarification they're not allowed to do any on-site construction
till the Platts filed and what we're here tonight asking for is to extend the
limit to file the plat so we couldn't do any construction at this point until we
file the plat so okay that's right so there's nothing that could be happening
on the site until we get past this process now and to be completely honest
with you the reason that we don't want to go ahead and file the plat is should
have something changed they were looking at some alternative designs going back
to a different and it may require to change in site plan which could affect
the easements and different things that are shown on the plat right so now that
they decided to go with what has been approved there would be no changes on
the plat okay so it now that they've decided to go forward mr. Ansari even
came in today to see if he could get permission to file the plat now or next
week or something to avoid this meeting or get going but there's a couple of
things required that the city is requiring before we can file the plat and
what those two items are is they want con actual contracts and documents signed
and executed for construction of the public improvements and on this
particular project although it's a small project we do have some substantial not
substantial but significant public improvements in that we have been asked
to improve Johnson Road and because it's just a little two-lane asphalt road we're
having to build curb and gutter on one side and put some concrete in just in
that one little piece and then because there's no drainage out front we're doing
stormwater detention to keep the drainage the same as what is currently
there but for some reason didn't has the only city I know that has this code is
you can do detention but you're not allowed to do detention if you don't
have an underground outlet so when we first pros to detention we were just
letting the water back out into the street bar ditch like it's going down
that could not get approved so we ended up having to go like 400 feet down
Johnson Road in the middle of the road and put in a storm drain even though
we're doing detention and so there was kind of quite a lot of there's some
public improvements here okay that need to be that have to be signed off on and
those contracts submitted and they certainly weren't in a process a point
to be able to do that to record the plat but now that they're moving forward they
can get bids on that work I've already got bids but get those contracts in so
that we can record the plat okay and so so you know I understand your
frustration and what has happened right but we're at a point now where they don't
you know they need to be under construction by the summer but you know
they still have to go through a building permit now that they've tried it decided
not to change what is on the approved site plan development plans they can
proceed with getting their actual building the only thing left is the
building drawings and you feel like you need an actual year to do all that or
you just asking for a year to be safe well I never like to speak against the
client I'm representing but I think I think a six months if the plat they
can record the plat by this July at the latest which would be six months and I
think that would be sufficient okay because waiting till six months I mean a
year from now they're not making the deadline they're trying to make that so
they can record the plat by July and if they'd only have a building it doesn't
it's not really tying them to the building permit they may not may or may
not have the building permit right but I think I feel I feel like getting a six
month extension would is a reasonable time reasonable okay very good thank you
sir Commissioner Ellis thank you chair just one
question is the project financed what is your question is the project financed
financed that would be a question I'm just an engineer a part of it may be a
finance but we are trying to do it internally meaning do you have your
investor secured that's right Mr. Sanchez so what do you think is your
biggest problem we're talking about two and a half years what has been your
primary problem for the two and a half years that has taken this so that has
taken this long I would say the location location yeah I I can see the future
like I mean I can I can foresee what is happening you know that's what that's
how I got interested in it but I've not been able to convince a whole lot of
buyers who would be ready to buy there but now I hear that there's more
development taking place which is in line with what we are doing so that's
it's a good sign but I guess I'm talking about specifically what is it your
financing that has been a problem is it all the requirements that the city has
has that you think has imposed on you or what what would you say because I mean
two and a half two and a half years is a long time and so there must be one issue
or one or two issues that you're really struggling with and I don't think you've
communicated that to to us yet I guess you know initially it was some internal
discussions among investors that delayed the project as we were not sure that it
was financially a viable project because the project also became very expensive
because of all the public improvements we were doing to this so it is just not
you know a plane apartment complex that we build we were also doing a lot of
public and by the cost went up quite a bit so the whole project became very
expensive so that that that was one of the reasons why it got delayed a little
bit
mr. Pernetta a few questions I think was some for staff so in terms of what we're
voting on here right now my understanding is that right now before
we even get to the final plat being submitted there are public works that
would have to be completed by the developer before we can get to that or
okay all right so with any with any plot once a final plot is approved they then
start the the the process for the public improvement so within that process there
are the the development contracts as well as a fiscal surety there's also
something called we do a hold harmless so that it allows developers to move
forward private the private improvements concurrent with or prior to the public
improvement so all of these the so that the contracts the fiscal surety and the
hold harmless would need to be completed prior to the plat being filed once a
plot is a is filed then they can start moving forward with the public and
private improvements so with this denial if there were to be a denial there are
there were updates to the to the coats right that would have to be accounted
for for the plat that weren't in place when it was previously when it previously
came before us correct well our engineering has really committed to
updating those criteria manuals on a yearly basis to ensure that our public
improvements and the and the and the the requirements associated with those are
are up to the best practices so since this was approved that we've had a
couple of updates to our criteria manuals and I expect as as we move forward they
will continue to look at those and make improvements upon those if if if there
wasn't an extension granted for this plat he would have to come back again
with a preliminary plat civil engineering plans for public improvements
and then a final plat and those civil plans would be reviewed in accordance
with those new requirements in the criteria manuals and the other timeline
we've been given was that they were targeting having this done by summer of
2020 which is you know a year and a half a little bit over than that a little over
that away if they had to start the process all over again would meeting
that timeline be extremely prohibitive or could that still be done I don't know
when the construction side typically a preliminary and final and I think
they've probably done some preliminary work because they've they've gone
through this process with this before a plat typically takes a couple of months
to get through the review and to the planning and zoning Commission
preliminary and final plats can and civil plans can be reviewed concurrently
so they could stack those applications on top of each other of course the
approvals have to come in order so preliminary plat approved civil plans
and then final plat so it if they wanted to be under construction by this summer
it would be it would be a push but it certainly could be done we typically see
development contracts taking a couple of months because they do submit them to us
and we review them to make sure that they're accurate and make sure that
they're they have all all of the the the parts of the contract are filled out in
accordance with with the ownership and and and the requirements of the city and
so and it does take a couple of months to get through that contract phase but
that could certainly be pursued while they're also having their plats reviewed
so so it could be done within within a six month time frame but they would it
would be a they'd be moving on it so okay thank you that's all right
mr. Smith thank you chair mr. sorry back front of the mic there just to just to
go off of Commissioner Ellis's line of questioning because I don't I don't
think I got a definitive answer from you you have secured an investor for the
full dollar amount that needed to go forward into this project yes thank you
okay so I have a question kind of piggybacking on that back on July 11th
we were told that the main holdup for not having this filed was funding yes
you're saying tonight that funding has been secured yes so I'm now curious as
is the the reason that the project hasn't moved forward moved it's shifted
it was funding but now there's a different reason for an extension the
extension was for six months we we have funding now actually the gentleman here
mr. Bilal he's he's the one who's coming in as the new investor sure
that the looking back over the minutes of the meeting that we were at in July
the extension was for that reason yes you've met that reason yeah but yet
you're not moving forward with the project I'm trying to connect the dots
of we provide an extension for funding funding happened yet you're back for
another extension why are you back for another extension if the reason it was
postponed to begin with is no longer an issue we recently got the the funding it
was just in the last month that we got this funding so yes like the planner
said even processing those documents that are required the contracts for the
public improvements and the assurances and things that are needed takes about
two months just getting those to an approval process so if they started if
they could have submit those today we couldn't file the plat for another two
or three months so now that they just started I mean they need to get to get a
sick if we get a six month extension we're going to July okay they've got to
submit all of this information that is required before we can file the plat
within the next couple months at the very latest in order to make that
extension because the city is still waiting on contracts for the public
improvements actual contracts that he has signed the city's signs and agrees
to get a contractor and start that work they were not even close to that until
they get funding and unfortunately we asked for an extension to get funding we
did get funding in the six months but not in time to submit contracts three
months ago so that we could have filed it a month or two weeks ago so those
contracts now been submitted post having funding received no they're going to
start getting those together now we haven't so how recently did funding get
acquired we turn days or it was in December can you be more specific I'm
more specific like the second week of December okay okay I have no other
questions I don't see any other questions so this is an individual item
so it's not a public hearing however the chair will entertain a motion or
discussion on the matter and just just for clarification the motion put forth
should include the proposed duration of a renewal if if you're proposing that if
it's denial obviously there's not a timeline
mr. Smith thank you kind of go against even when our work session was about
which is about parliamentary procedure that we don't have a motion on the floor
but I want to have discussion first is that just kind of let everyone know that
what I'm thinking before I make a motion I guess well we learn nothing we're all
idiots okay there's like two hours I've had cookies since then so forgot the it
it does sound like they've they've secured the funding they need they didn't
the timeline didn't work out to get it the most I would ever want to give would
be six months I think that was my my biggest thing is there any is there any
inhibition to them getting them continuing on and having their project done the
answer is no then six months from now if things are not what were that fight on
plaque can be filed then it would be a hard hard no for me to ever give them an
extension again that's actually something I was busy with legal about and
so I'd like to hear what everyone else's thoughts are and baby talking talking me
out of that but that is my that is my thought process right now is that the
timeline worked against them at this point so so we have several people
wanting to discuss I will say having a motion on the floor kind of centers the
discussion so if there is a motion be happy to hear it but until then
commissioner Beck okay the monkey bone back of Commissioner Smith's comments to
be honest with you I haven't felt a whole lot of confidence from the
developer that things as concrete as they need to be on the other hand though
I'm reluctant to say no to somebody that's still willing to try this and I
feel like if we do go forward this it would be a strict six months with the
understanding that we have that final plan and hand and things start because
after that as far as I'm concerned I think most Commissioners would agree it's
it's been way too long now as it has been already so Commissioner Smith I make
a motion to this would be a motion to adopt a denial so I actually would make
them I move to give an extension of a date certain of the first planning and
zoning meeting of July I don't have the calendar in front of me to tell you what
that date would be
it's July 17th I move to move to approve the proof extension of this until date
certain of July 17th 2019 we have a first Commissioner Sanchez like second
it thank you and commercial center per netta for any discussion yeah that was
actually going to be something I was going to suggest because I'm my reading
of the minutes was that they came for an extension earlier in the year they could
have asked for a year or actually last year they could have asked for a year
they got six months so by doing that we would be granting them in effect the
extension that they could have asked for the first time I'm good with this
Mr. Sanchez do you have any more discussion going to add no pretty much
I think one of the things that I would say is because it's the reason I would
approve it extension is because it's it's what they call interior within the
city and I think a lot of times those what's left is a little bit harder to
develop than either easy stuff has already been developed so I think
sometimes some of these areas that are left if we want to get them developed we
have to hit be a little bit more considerate about the developers simply
because those areas are kind of more unique than other places so I that's why
I would give the extension but I would like to say is you have to get on the
ball and get it taken care of because this isn't going to continue
crucial thank you chair I'm gonna be a no vote on the extension I'm just not
confident in that financing secured financing is the problem in my opinion I
also respect the updates to our finance our our criteria manuals were two years
into that plus this just stalls it in in old manuals and and I'm not on board to
do that we have a first and a second for an approval of an extension for six
months to a date of July 17th is there any more discussion on the item
Commissioner Pernetta yeah I would like to ask staff per Commissioner Ellis's
point now about the updates what specifically are we looking at you know
that we would be freezing for the next year and a half of who to approve this
um a lot of the changes do you have to do with those right-of-way wits and and
just just you know additional technical improvements to to what the engineering
group reviews I don't have the specific items in front of me but they do try to
keep them updated to ensure that the industry standards are met so so
basically street wits and things like that nothing regarding environmental or
anything and that would provide not environmental be issue no it wouldn't
be it wouldn't be an environmental it would be things like the drainage water
sewer and streets those those public improvements are typically what we're
looking at okay thank you sure let me just add a part of that part of the
updates to the the transportation criteria manual were those street wits
but also the thickness of the concrete I know there were some issues with some
rights of way that were just not holding up and so that was one of the one of the
items that prompted prompted that that update so there were now sort of in an
annual basis for for updating those if you recall I think was right before the
end of the year they had brought those forward for consideration just wanted to
clarify that thank you the only point I would make is sir for my opinion is I'm
with Commissioner Sanchez and Smith I think it was who said the six months is
kind of the end I feel like Commissioner Ellis not very confident this project
moving forward it seems like there's a moving target of reasons why it hasn't
happened however I'd rather see something developed sooner rather than
later so this gives the opportunity for it to be developed in a shorter term
timeline so with that I'll call for a vote on the board
motion passes 6 1 the next item for business is public hearing 5a it's z 18
- 0 0 1 1 a I'll open the public hearing and call Julie Wyatt for presentation
all right good evening this is the 1811 agave ranch so the request before you is
to consider a rezoning from rural residential 5 district to neighborhood
residential 4 district and an initial zoning designation of in our for
neighborhood residential 4 district on approximately 92 acres of land the
subject property is situated on the northeast side of town it's there
outlined in yellow it's just outside of the loop north of Hartley field so the
current zoning on the side actually has a split zoning our D5 is adjacent to FM
428 Sherman and then our D5 acts is the our place holding zoning designation it
follows the regulations in our D5 but it it's one of those zoning
designations that is there to hold hold the property once it's annexed into the
site if you'll just take a little closer look at the existing zoning pattern in
the area there is in our four to the south of the subject site as well as
across the street you may remember there was a rezoning across FM 428 in this
location recently that in our six was approved with an overlay I believe it
was to restrict the density to a four point six seven dwelling units an acre I
think somewhere around there so as you get closer to the loop at loop it gets
it it pulls in more of that commercial zoning so you've got CMG and that's one
of that's our community mixed use so it does allow a lot of those commercial
uses to serve the surrounding community to the south there there are a lot of
neighborhoods with that neighborhood zoning so they are proposing in this on
this slide to to rezone the subject site to NR 4 and and you can see what that
would look like if it was approved here's their proposed concept plan I
would I would just look at this as a concept it is it is a draft if the
zoning was approved they could develop the site in accordance with that zoning
both in density and scale and in use so so as this is shown the total land area
of 96 acres is is developed with 368 homes with some open space area for
drainage here in the south just a comparison of the of the uses permitted
in RD five and RD five X versus in our four so so our RD five is is a rural
district it's our rural residential district and so it it it has residential
uses single-family agriculture it does permit manufactured housing
developments commercial uses are are a few of them are permitted but typically
those you see in rural areas things like a bed and breakfast with a limitation or
equestrian facilities veterinary clinics so those types of uses in our four has a
lot of residential uses it primarily is one of our our main residential
districts in the city it does permit agriculture attached single-family
dwellings which is also known as a townhome duplexes with the limitation and
then those single-family homes it doesn't really permit commercial uses it
does allow veterinary clinics with the limitation but it really is primarily
primarily a residential district both districts have institutional land uses
some of those are permitted by right under current zoning under NR four they
would typically be permitted with a specific use permit the development
scale for RD five and in our four is the minimum lot size and already five is five
acres in our four it does allow seven thousand square feet a square foot lots
for neighborhoods under two acres those neighborhoods over two acres just rely
on a maximum density and that's four dwelling units per acre lot coverage and
in our four is a maximum sixty percent and that's all impervious surface within
the city of Denton and then building height would be 40 feet so the criteria
for approval is in such after three of the Denton development code the first one
does it does it meet the future land use map of didn't plan 2030 the future land
use map shows this area is a rural area the intent is to maintain the rural
character along the city's edge with development and farms and ranches I'm in
very low density writ rural residential and conservation development the proposed
in our four due to the density associated with it does not meet this
future land use designation so then it kicks to another criteria another set of
criteria for approval and those are also in sub chapter three of the Denton
development code and there are seven criteria they're listed here they're
also listed in your backup with some analysis associated with which with each
we won't go over every single one we'll just go over some of them and we'll
combine some of them just as a discussion so the first two criteria are
the existing land uses and zoning and impact to future development so so as we
look at this property it is near rural areas there's a lot of surrounding rural
area but it is it is urbanizing from the core of the city out so the map here
kind of shows what kind of development this city has seen in in recent years the
yellow dots represent recent or future or current developments all the way from
from the Kingsridge development you saw recently and then and then across the
loop so as you can see there is a lot of development pushing north in the city a
lot of the interior of the city has filled up and now it's starting to push
to the north so we're seeing that all across that all across that loop area
and this really is showing a contiguous growth pattern we are seeing that stage
development filling in interior and then moving out outside of the loop however
this you know this is a lot this is a lot of development it's a lot of new
residents to our community and so staff really wanted to make sure that we we got
our hands around and understood what the traffic concerns were and so there has
been a traffic study that is currently under review we're going to go over in a
minute but just to just to lay the groundwork on that so we also looked at
the existing land uses in zoning it is adjacent to existing in our four so if
this was approved it wouldn't be an isolated zoning district it would be an
extension of that existing zoning pattern and if I proved that in our four
and the development associated with it could provide a buffer area for those
outlying rural areas to the to the Sherman that FM 428 as well as a lot of
that that intense development that is that is permitted and probably something
we'll see in the near future at that intersection of the loop and FM 428 we
also looked at the public improvement section public improvements associated
with with the proposed development so the applicant did do a trip generation
analysis based on the proposed number of homes they they estimated that there
would be a total of about 3,500 trips per day within a 24-hour period with an
a.m. peak of 280 and a p.m. peak of 368 we talked in the work session that
really is that that commuting time when everybody's gonna be going to work and
when everybody's coming home but beyond that we really wanted to understand not
just this development but all of those developments on that northeast corridor
so there was a transportation study commissioned by the city it is being
reviewed it's it's in draft form right now and just on a top-line assessment
they are proposing more East East West connections to allow more connectivity
you know FM 428 it really is the spine that takes you in and out of Denton and
that and it is kind of the only the only option you have so with more East West
connections there would be a diff additional connections and other ways to
go proposing additional travel lanes on existing roads and also to improve
intersections also with any development roadway impact fees would be paid with
each building permit and they would they would contribute to previously identified
improvements namely the dedicated right turn at loop 288 and FM 428 and also a
signal at that intersection I know that's something that that part of our
community really wants and needs so here is a draft a draft map that was taken
from that study and and and staff collaborated with engineering we we
looked at at at the number of cases and the number of inquiries we got from this
area and we realized that that we didn't have the capacity to move people around
if all of those were to move forward so so we collaborated with engineering and
then and then they hired an outside consultant to create this study and and
we used a methodology we kind of just assumed blanket to see what if this
whole area developed with four dwelling units in a an acre as well as some some
targeted some targeted areas for commercial development that were
centered around along intersections to to create a node of commercial and mixed
use activity so so here is the map that they that they have proposed this this
gray line is the study boundary so you could see it took in a lot of land the
subject site is in red I drew that so it's probably not to scale and then and
then the yellows the yellow lines are the proposed streets and and just for for a
discussion point the subject property here is Hartley field the the the study
indicates that the best placement for for this East West connection would be to
align Hartley field and bisect this property extending beyond 428 and then
and then tying in to the West this would be an arterial and and it would improve
the mobility of the area we also looked at water and sewer there are 12 inch
water and water lines to the north and south of the property if they if if it
was approved and they did move forward with development that one of those lines
the north or the south would have to be extended across the frontage of the
site so that would be up to the applicant sewer extensions there is
sewer to the south that would have to be extended across the property and a lift
station would be required there we also talked to Denton ISD about about this
proposal and based upon their formula there is adequate capacity within those
schools that are within the attendance boundary of this property currently they
have adequate capacity and then with any development there is parkland
dedication fees paid at platting and then a park development fee paid with with
each building permit so they would contribute to our park system we also
looked at the consideration of character and land use so this is a rural area and
so but when you look around the entire site you see that this staged development
that that is coming forward and these cases that are coming forward are moving
down our arterials and and they're coming to that urban periphery and so so
development on the in these locations may be appropriate and especially
something like NR4 where the uses are our single-family residential uses which
are consistent with a lot of the the uses we see out there so it wouldn't
introduce any any new uses that may be incompatible with those those those
residents however there are two uses within NR4 we felt weren't compatible
and those were duplexes in townhomes we felt like those were just adding just a
new type of residential development that really isn't something that maybe we
want to see in this area so if you recommend approval of this staff staff
recommends that an overlay that restricts the duplexes in townhomes to
really make this to really ensure that this would be a single-family
development notification was sent out this is a pretty prominent part of our
city and so we've received quite a few letters three of those letters are
within that 200 foot boundary we we have 20 additional that were outside of that
20 foot boundary or 200 foot boundary but you should have all of those letters
and I know I gave you all a bunch tonight a lot of reading but but those
opposition did represent 18% of the land area so based upon the criteria for
approval the overall goals of didn't plan 2030 and our analysis of the site
we recommend approval of the K of the of the in our four zoning district with the
condition that duplexes and townhomes not be permitted and I'll stand for any
questions and the applicant is here thank you we do have some questions
Commissioner Pernetta yeah just a few questions so that area just to the I
guess the southeast of that Hartley and everything that's ETJ right so that's
not zoned correct yes sir and and above that all the striped area that's the already
five axis just pull placeholder right now is with all that being placeholder
can you refresh my memory why did we zone that strip that kind of green strip
like it's on what I'm looking at as already five and rather than just leave
that as a placeholder that was annexed earlier it was a part of a much earlier
annexation and so it did receive a zoning district with the it was probably
with the 2002 citywide rezoning so because of because it was an it they
were annexed at different times okay and we're talking about the future land use
you know looking at what's going to be I don't want to talk about what's what's
riding along you know what Sherman becomes because I think in the work
session we discussed the need for probably some infrastructure and some
shops and things like that as far as the rest of the striped area the already five
x with the stuff that would be I guess to the to the east of it what is the what
is the ideal land use for that zoning for the already 5x zoning yeah because
because right now what we're saying is along Sherman it is currently zoned already
five we would be moving this to you know to NR for would we be looking for things
just inside that to be in our for or are we looking for less density what do we
know I think as as as property owners approach us we will look at each site
on it on a case-by-case basis and do an analysis to make sure that that criteria
approval would be would be well just to analyze in relationship to that criteria
for approval it is also something that as as we move forward and as we continue
to plan and grow and and look at our vision for a city you know we'll we'll
have to we'll have to look at that as as we move forward what we wanted to do in
particularly with transportation is to look and see how we can can help the
mobility of the area because I know that is a big cause for concern there's
there's there's not a lot of a lot of connectivity and so I don't have an
answer for what we envision there right now other than to look at that future
land use and if someone came forward with a with a rezoning request to look
at that case really hard and make sure that it met any criteria that we have
within the development code yeah and that's kind of what I was concerned with
because I it feels like if we make this you know in our for we would be kind of
laying the groundwork for a lot more of it to be along that and I just wanted to
make sure that we weren't going to be moving away from what the vision would
be by doing this well look at everyone individually okay thank you
Christopher back thank you chair thanks Julie can you go back to the concept
plan sure and if you could and this may be more something that the developer or
the applicant described but can you the green and blue area okay that's green
area and drainage what's that orange area they will have to I can't read it
very well they do have these are these are a variety of lot sizes okay but but
it it's not you know this isn't so this was just conceptual and this was drawn
before we informed them that there would probably be an arterial going through
there okay their site well then I'll wait till I'm trying to pick his brain in all
right thank you commissioner Sanchez when we talk about RD five that's a
holding position right as I understand it I'm sorry when you it's a holding
position it's when you when you bring something into the city then you put it
RD five and basically hold it there until some request is made well we have
really two parallel tracks to RD five there is we actually have a zoning
district RD five and that's that green you see right there so that is their
zoning RD five X you're correct it is that place holding it follows the rules
of RD five but yes they're the same thing but slightly different okay so
because I just wanted some if they if you look at it then I guess I was just
trying to figure out that when you change it from Marty five to two in our
four it goes from basically one acre per one structure per acre to four structures
per acre right it doesn't matter if it's an arty if it's an arty five in or an
arty five X right an arty five in arty five X the minimum lot size is five
acres and then it goes to one acre four per one okay okay so that's so they're
basically the same thing as far as number of structures right I mean already
five yes sir I mean already five and already five X yes sir okay and we talk
about that being at one time it's rural it was a rural district or it's
considered rural district outside 288 but that was because during the 2030
plan it wasn't it was kind of considered that there was going to be a whole lot
of development up there right so that is that why it's pretty much considered the
didn't plan really wanted to see staged growth within the city and so they
really wanted the interior to fill up and then to move out and so so comp plans
or should be updated every five years so we're actually coming up we should we
should be updating it so um we have grown a lot faster than I think we
probably anticipated so we really have filled up a lot of those a lot of those
especially larger tracks within the city in order to get those those
subdivisions those larger residential subdivisions so now we're really
starting to see that development push out to those to those northern areas it
was not anticipated all this growth was an anticipated and therefore you know a
lot of people are being shocked especially in North Denton is what the
growth in order then I used to live in North Denton I mean for years nothing
was happening there and all of a sudden that growth is just blown up when I
started here five years ago they was like oh that's never and now everything
was in the south and I think a lot of people waking up and saying what what's
happening here but it's just the growth that's that wasn't anticipated and I
just wanted to mention that is that basically it wasn't even in the 2030
plan it wasn't anticipated that was gonna happen and now you're looking at
you're having to go back and look at all these roads mm-hmm that we weren't even
accounting that we weren't even accounted for or people were thinking
well we don't have to worry about that but now it has to be considered
mr. Beck thank you chair Julie let me put you in a spot here a little bit okay
would it be safe to say that the future land use map our concept plan is more of
a concept any kind of legal tool of any kind it's a policy document it's a
guiding document for us to look at as to guide our decisions so you it's it's
different than zoning and zoning is the law zoning is how you develop so it is
that policy document now our zoning should reflect what our vision is within
the comprehensive plan the debt and development code allows us to look a
little more broadly and and not just not be have a myopic view of the future land
use map but also look at other criteria if we if we feel that a case is meets
that additional criteria so you're right it is not the law like zoning is it is
that policy guiding document no other questions for you Julie thank you this
is a public hearing anyone wishing to speak can do so we just asked that you
fill out one of these blue cards to do that and we'll add you to the queue but
first to present will be the applicant Lee Allison Lee as you know you have up
to 20 minutes since we have more than one speaker listed here I may take 20
minutes just trying to figure out how to get my slideshow on here this needs a
little help and then for you to state your name and address for the record
I will do thank you there you go sir right there there we go I'm learning
that's faster than last time good evening I'm Lee Allison with Allison
engineering group with this with me this evening or Todd price John Heilman and
Rick Rushton the applicants the the developers and also Schaefer Harris and
Sue Allison from our office as usual staff has done made an excellent
presentation and we're just going to kind of jump in to try and supplement
what they've done not try and repeat I hope and save a lot of time and not use
those 20 minutes there were a number of responses turned in you have them in
your packet in the forms of emails and forms well we did as best we could we
looked at the address we tried to see which piece of property they were
representing and that they might own one of the nearby properties and live in a
different place but if not we use the address 11 of the responses had no
address so we couldn't get those but that's a scattering of where the
responses came from throughout the area summary of them we we counted 32
responses some of those responses might have come from the same address two
people from the same address separate responses 21 of those associated with
traffic 18 with an I call urbanization in other words the city of didn't growing
that's what cities do otherwise if you're not going to grow your didn't
County infrastructure needs were for drainage to there was an adjoining pond
I'm talking about the one in the south eastern part of the property we'll talk
more detail later someone had a concern with the duplexes somebody mentioned
crime and density somebody thought we're getting a DAX abatement need a stoplight
at hardly field road green areas somehow they got thinking we're looking at 800
homes not 368 in the future land use plan altogether there were 29 that were
negative or I would label them opposed to were actually in favor and one was
neutral we tried to address them the traffic there is a master thoroughfare
plan we started out with one master thoroughfare plan years ago we had
another meeting with staff months ago and had one set of ideas and then staff
initiated their own thoroughfare study and now we've got another one we're
working on so the city's updated it we've met with the city and when we do
get into this we will prepare a detailed traffic impact analysis that that fine
tunes our development to mesh in with what the city is already done
urbanization that's abuse municipal responsibility there's due processes
associated with it long-term planning 2030 plans plans that need to be
updated today regarding what's happening master planning then we get into the
zoning planning and building permits neighborhood meetings and public hearings
this is where we are today as far as infrastructure following the city's
master planning process to accommodate growth and we will certainly contribute
our proportional share of that CCN that's a certificate of convenience and
necessity it's not just the city limits the city has a responsibility to provide
water and sewer service within what's called their CCN and that goes almost
up to 455 to the north for example for water and wastewater it's shared with
Bolivar Water Supply Corporation and they have some for the electric
department as well it's not near as big but they've got responsibilities for
that the adjoining pond to the southeast the Domsons we're working directly with
them too because that pod actually straddles the property line and we're
working with them in any design efforts that will go there but we haven't gotten
to design yet drainage there was two comments about drainage one of those
sites actually is on higher ground about 15 feet or so higher than ours so we're
not going to be draining on them another was concerned with pollution as you're
aware we have detention requirements and with that comes I swim water quality
provisions as well so that'll be addressed as we go along duplexes will
restrict with the overlay crime and density I said master plan that's really
general government master planning for police fire number of policemen needed
location of police stations patrols etc that's really beyond our capabilities
tax abatement there's not any to be clear stoplight at Harley-Field Road
that will be addressed with the master thoroughfare plan I'm not trying to
imply there's one included in there that'll just be addressed at that and
there's other ways to manage that traffic through there green areas yes
green areas are needed and I think it's good to our spot applications but also
as you'll see on another exhibit the massive floodplain just north of us
there's great opportunities for green spaces in the city 800 homes 368 the
maximum future land use plan it primarily is a placeholder when this area
was that strip was annexed and zone is the already five the already five was the
old axe which ag which was the old placeholder and now it's just coming in
as already 5x to make sure it's known as a placeholder some of our features
we're gonna include perimeter fence along the arterials particularly Sherman
Drive that's not required by the code it'll be a common fence with
architectural features don't want to say it's gonna be a monolithic masonry wall
but it'll be a nice architectural fence it's not going to be a typical wood
privacy fence we don't want it open to the backyards and we want it installed
with phase development not by homeowners so instead of getting built as each
house gets get built it'll be constructed with the sections and it'll
be HOA maintained if need be this is something we could add to the overlay
restrictions amenity centers there'll be a recreation area with meeting rooms
swimming pool outdoor sports court and we're proposing a one acre minimum we've
probably got closer to one and a half or two total in our development this helps
I say helps her we've heard some concern about entry-level housing and the size
of the lots well what keeps it from being entry-level housing is when you
add amenity centers and you add perimeter walls etc that drives the price
a lot up and if you're probably aware typically your market home values four
to five times what the lot cost is so as you drive the lot cost up you're driving
the home price up which gets you out of the entry-level housing market so this
is not an entry-level development detention ponds if needed we like to
make those multifunctional I like to put a basketball court in the bottom or a
picnic pavilion when an HOA can use its detention pond for something other than
utilitarian purposes they're more likely to take care of it and look after it and
be sensitive to it we like to put some landscape trees in there and we allow
for the volume of the trees for the volume of the pond the existing pond in
the southeast corner we're going to design joint with a neighbor it's a
great area for picnic park we'll do some detention there could be fishing and it
also acts as a buffer to the existing developments to the south and east of us
we've had some meetings with other neighbors one was a buddy and Bessie Lou
Dobson they're the owners of that pond to the southeast working with the design
on them and I believe they're in favor of this
Susan Smith was very gracious to meet with us she has the property to the
north beautiful stock tanks on there concerned about what was coming over
there in the way of drainage and we have committed we met with her and her
engineer we have committed to involve them in our design and analysis
particularly related to drainage from day one with a preliminary plant Mrs.
Smith is not in favor of this project and we haven't won her over and I don't
want to sit here and speak for her and say that because we've met her that that
we've changed her thoughts on anything another person we've met with is Ron
Carter he's not expressed in writing favor war opposition but he's a major
landowner to the east of us and we want to coordinate with him as far as
connectivity and planning drainage and other things towards that property and
we will with other property owners as well but those were the major ones this
is kind of what's going on in the area I think it's interesting the bright green
is our agave ranch DSD has bought this property across from us no commitments
to what's going there this area was recently rezoned in our six here is the
tech center the stadium in the water park right here this dark space is
actually owned by the city of Denton it is a booster pump station at one time
when Lake Ray Roberts was constructed and the main line was run down 428 it
was going to be a low-pressure line and there's be a booster pump here instead
they made high pressure from the lake so that's fully pressurized line and that's
not needed as a booster pump but I have no idea what the plans for it might be
at this time and over here in this dark area pardon me is land that the city
purchased for the purpose of developing a wastewater treatment plant to serve
this area as it develops long term in the future so even though it was owned
RDX it's certainly not anticipated this area will remain on septic systems as
you would with rural residential development what triggered a lot of this
was developments here in the in the 90s before the bust came would be bringing
wastewater this direction over to this plant when it comes to some of the
commercial activities there's commercial land already zoned here but it hasn't
developed because the lack of demand commercial areas here you can find some
commercial I believe over along King Row McKinney Street over to where 77
interlinks sex 288 and there's a large amount of commercial available at the
corner loop 288 and 35 that hasn't developed yet one of the primary
obstacles of developing to the north north of the loop has been the lack of
water and wastewater particularly wastewater it's going to take
developments to come along to accomplish this these dots on here are what's online
now is the master thoroughfare plan the red dots are primary arterials the green
dots are secondary and the black dots are collectors and this blue hatched area
along here is floodplain we've worked some alternative VSAs together
environmentally sensitive areas this is a great opportunity for the green spaces
the green belts park trails and bike trails that bring some connectivity
across the city so that's what's going on around us as we look at this in a
holistic picture and not just an individual site per the city's thoroughfare
plan in our meetings with with staff we've determined at that meeting that
these two blue lines would be where the arterials generally come through our
site the green area is where our amenity center would be as a result of this
we've got a new concept plan it's not that much different than the one you saw
earlier that staff was presenting the differences in the lots you saw were the
lighter gray were the 50-foot minimum the darker gray were the 60-foot
minimums and the odd color orange ones were larger odd shaped lots that were
not rectangular but but worked very well in there here we've got we didn't show
it extending out to the east but here we have the arterial road coming through in
discussions with staff we're looking at a roundabout that could also be used as
an entry feature and work with our amenity center this is the pond of the
southeast I was discussing where we'll work with the Dobson's on it Mrs. Smith's
property up here a lot of this area I'd say this area in general drains to her
ponds so she's certainly concerned about keeping those full and about having
quality water in there we've talked with staff and they're going to be visiting
with text out about putting a traffic circle or roundabout at this point rather
be a roundabout or a signal this arterials it extends to the west and as
it comes back to Hartley Field Road that might be a better location for a light
than at Hartley Field Road so this area would empty out at this location
primarily instead of these areas to the south because of the offsetting
intersections so what and when I say work in progress we're still going to
have to sit down and meet with the city and see what's going on with the
thoroughfare plan we're going to have to work with mr. Dobson on this mr. Carter
on how we connect with his property here these property owners to see about these
connectivity roads and of course with mrs. Smith on on how the you know we're
not going to build the arterial day one and this will be our first phase this
northern section but putting our wall up here taking the drainage across and we
certainly meet city criteria but we want to work with her on how we get that water
over to her property or do something else with it it's gonna be a ranch style
amenity center existing pond is or proposed detention future are two
arterials two text on drives in our four zoning for 368 streets for future
connectivity to the east 376 lots are shown by the way again we hadn't
fine-tuned this yet it's in progress but there's only going to be 368
detentions to be determined we're still working on that the green areas are
pocket amenity areas in addition to the main one the home builder that's looking
at this right now is Kay Hovani and homes that's an example of one of their
homes that one's around 3,000 square feet and there's another one at about 2600 I
think I can't read that well and I'll be glad to respond to any questions at this
time thank you for your presentation we have a couple questions
mr. pernetta yeah actually this is more for Julie he mentioned the area just
below where the school where the district is purchased property was zoned
in nr6 did you say that was nr6 with an overlay it does overlay to restrict the
density like like 4.6 somewhere around there it's a little over four dwelling
units per acre okay thank you that's that's the clarification
Christian back thank you chair thanks Lee for your presentation guys usually put
a lot of thought a lot of work into these things I appreciate that and I
know we're dealing with a zone change request here but I'm sure a lot of
people are curious if everything gets approved and moves forward how long are
you looking at before people are ready to move in to this can you give us a
rough idea this summer to fall because we got to get all the designs done and
approved as far and go through the planning process so I would say 18
months before we're ready to start building homes out there from now
building building homes yeah it'll take after that another two to three years to
build that and we're doing this in two phases thank you chair mr. Allison thank
you you mentioned in your presentation something about adding the perimeter
fencing to an overlay what did you mean by that staff has recommended overlay
restriction that will require no duplexes and no single-family attached if
it was of interest to the Commission because perimeter fences along their
materials particularly loop 28 and I may need I mean for 28 I may need some help
Julie but I don't think they're required in the code and we're willing to make
those a requirement so they would be a consistent and not like we have on loop
28 now where there's the backside of some privacy fences built individually
and falling over at different times and to be HOA maintained as well not
individual and that would be something we could include in an overlay in sub
chapter 5 there is a residential mixed-use protection overlay and it does
talk about in screening and landscaping so let me get to that so the applicant
may consent to the imposition of increased setback landscaping screening
or buffer requirements allowing the borders of such existing residential
uses or to the input imposition of additional use or performance based
restrictions upon the proposed underlying zoning cast classification
and use designation so that sounds like a yes yes I'd like to add and I might
have a question for Julie as well and then mr. Beck as far as the upcoming
zoning that's underway and the mixed-use residential or the mixed-use corridor
along 428 here's why I need help from Julie my understanding is that's more
dense than what we're proposing and it still allows single-family residential
in that so I don't know that that would throw our plans off any really and I
kind of feel like we waited for staff to complete the traffic study we were ready
to come last September October and I kind of feel like I'm in that vortex in
the drain you're kind of waiting for everything to stop spinning and let's
settle down and get going but appreciate it anything else the only question I
have for you is there's 92 acres which provides 368 how many acres do you
anticipate not being developed in terms of pond roads amenity center like what
the 92 acres what's usable develop oh my goodness when you take the roads and
everything out I mean might just to be clear I'm trying to understand what the
lot size is gonna be it's not gonna be quarter acre lots oh no no so I'm trying
to understand like they're gonna be like six thousand would be the smallest and
they could be up to eight maybe a couple in there in the ten thousand range
perfect that's the only questions we have at this point I'm sure I would stay
close so this so this is a public hearing I do have some cards that will
go through as just a reminder to both the audience and the Commission audience
numbers have four minutes to speak at the end of four minutes you'll hear a
ding we just ask that you wrap up your thoughts pretty promptly after the bell
and then for the Commission if you have if the audience has questions that are
needed to be addressed by staff and we just jot those down and have the
applicant and staff come up at the end instead of going back and forth between
resident and staff that'd be extremely helpful for the pace of this because we
have several cards that being said the first card I have is for Sharon Krimmer
or crimev I don't know Kramer if you just state your name and yes I will
address all right Sharon Kramer as many of you up there know and my address is
three five seven four pine trail before eight one one system came in I lived at
2900 Hartley Field Road is the easiest move I ever made I just changed the
stationary and stayed in place I am bred and born and raised and reared and
careered and raised my family in Denton Texas so I've been here 65 years and going
and I've lived in my now pine trail residents prior Hartley Field Road for 40
years so I've seen loop 288 come in and adjusted to that and I know that change
is inevitable I know that growth is inevitable unless you work really hard at
the end at the gym and never eat as many M&Ms as I do and I know that what you
guys do all of you guys and is inclusive is often thankless is often done in the
face of rancor is often done in the face of slick myopic presentations and you
guard the vision of Denton and I appreciate that you keep in mind that we
want a livable community that we want a diverse community that we want a vibrant
community I'm catching my breath not only because I'm speaking in public all
the 100 years of teaching school happily means I'm used to seeing 25 and 35
ninth graders and you may get homework at the end of this I don't know in fact I
do have homework for you to do that is to come out with me some morning and my
very friendly dog and take a lovely four-mile walk down Hartley Field Road
Hartley Field Road is a county road it is a blacktop road there's no dividing
line there is no shoulder there is really very little maintenance and I'm
catching my breath because my notes that I wrote I'm kind of abandoning when I saw
the traffic study I thought I wish I'd seen that I couldn't get all the stuff
to pull up from the city you're gonna have a road emptying a traffic road
carrying commuters onto Hartley Field Road by the looks of the map it's less
than 150 feet from my mailbox my mailbox gets hit regularly regularly when I take
my city trash cans because I pay for city service because they have to go
down to the Green Belt which is just a mile down Hartley Field Road which didn't
come up in any of those plans the Green Belt has been expanded north and I didn't
see Clear Creek Heritage Center mentioned in those plans so come drive
around with me come see that area Hartley Field Road can't take a city trash
truck and an oncoming car that's when my dog and I step off into the pasture four
or five feet growth is inevitable change is inevitable you read my letter I grew
up at a dinner table hearing my dad who was a developer and a builder and whose
homes are 60 years old talk to someone who lives in one of them they're still
standing they're still strong they're still functioning we've all lived through
Savannah on 380 we've seen what got built I have friends who live there
there's slapdash and we've also you've seen the paper today we've all seen what
happens to traffic on 380 428 can't bear the traffic with a light at the loop
which is a good thing because I had to break for a car running the stop sign
and I'm done that's okay thanks thank you very much
next card I have is for miss Susan Smith
hello and thank you for listening to my comments my name is Susan Smith my
address is 7736 FM 428 and I'm one of the closest neighbors directly impacted
by this proposal on the north side and I have several concerns and I think you
guys have already gotten my sheet where I outlined in it a little bit more
detail so I'm going to try to go really fast and hit the highlights I too
understand that Denton must grow but what I'm wondering is why we can't have
planned growth that incorporates necessary infrastructure to protect our
safety and why can't we have growth that reflects the plan that Denton has
already approved and laid out for us in their comprehensive 2030 plan from what
I'm hearing today I think you guys are abandoning our 2030 plan and I hate to
see that happen by approving this plan as proposed you're also establishing a
dangerous precedent for all the growth in the future you've already approved
high-density housing for Stark farms across the street that's 400 plus homes
now you're adding another 368 homes plus all the other traffic that's on 428 does
this not mean that every future development that comes up has this
precedent to go by and gets approved just because the last one did that's
what I'm hearing about this plan because of Stark farms is this really what we
want and it raises a couple of issues the most important being as Sharon so
succinctly said the insufficient infrastructure for our traffic and
safety we don't have the current infrastructure you can create you're
creating a very dangerous situation on what's already a very crowded road it's
dangerous for all of us that travel it now I can only imagine what it's going to
be when these other two developments are built out to take a left turn on 428 is
very hard I understand that you're going to put the traffic light at the loop and
that's great and a center turn lane but I really think we need a traffic light
to get cars in and out of this development and that may be what mr.
Allison said I'm not sure but I would say that that has to be done before the
development starts I think we need to make those improvements whether it's
road widening center lane traffic light before you start the development and I
know Andrew you told me that was happening over on Bonnie Bray the
traffic study I saw by the city it's going to be an increase of 60% on that
road so if you could get that done before the development starts I'm also
very concerned about the character of the development that you're abandoning
our 2030 plan I don't understand why we have to have this high density in a rural
area why could we not make a compromise and make some of the lot sizes a little
larger even 60-foot lots would make a difference and have some open areas and
some green areas some walking trails something that ties it back to the land
that's around it our our 2030 plan encourages that and I see us getting
totally away from that 70% of the houses are 50 foot wide postage stamp lots with
their 12 feet from wall to wall to the next house this is not consistent with
our neighborhood or with our 2030 plan so in closing I would really ask you to
consider where we're going give us our infrastructure before the development
starts consider larger lot sizes more green space more open space and remember
that when the development is finished the developers and builders get to leave
we the people that live there are left with what they've created so let's try to
make it better you're by this vote determining the future of Denton so I
really hope you'll consider how you do it because we're all depending on you to
do that thank you
thank you mr. Smith the next card I have is mr. Richard Wells thank you no yes
that's the one thank you very much and if you just state your name and address
yes Richard Wells I live at 3830 Washington it's an Aubrey address it's
about four miles north of the loop okay so pretty much part of Denton the 2030
plan has been let me start by saying I take a more holistic view and I'm kind
of thinking as far out as I can most of what I've heard today is like next year
the year after a little bit so some of what I would talk about is is further in
the future and the 2030 plan says the single most important component of the
land used element is the future land use map and it serves as a guide for making
development of rezoning decisions and I don't think the decision to go ahead
with this is quite in keeping with the 2030 plan it also states in part revise
zoning districts and procedures for rezoning decisions to require
consistency with the future land use plan to guide all future development as
an extension of preferred growth concept so I don't believe that it fits
that also I do want to talk about transportation because 23 I think you
said of the letters were concerned with transportation the Denton County
thoroughfare plan which is partially based on information from tech start
and the Nash the Council of Governments was adopted in April 18 2017 says that
2014 study shows that peak traffic in the morning on FM 428 from loop 288 to
FM 2153 is now at level of service F which means that traffic congestion for
that roadway is high and the travelers now experience severe delays and travel
time that's 2014 so that means between loop 288 and 2153 also the study Denton
County thoroughfare plan recommends completion of the outer loop which if
you'll look at the top of this up here I think I can point it out to you I'm not
okay well I'm not sure how to do anyhow that loop is the S you all probably know
this and this is where I'm kind of thinking about the future one of the
recommendations is 2035 one is 2040 that will be completed it's a great case
study if you want to look it up on online it recommends anything from six
lanes to 16 lanes it comes in at 2153 it goes through all becomes in 2153 it goes
along Shepherd Road it goes bisects goes along Shepherd Road it goes across the
green belt and then it goes out mile I'm to catch I 35 in that study the
Council of Governments is accepted it says that 20 that FM 428 will then have
to be six lane feeder road from 288 out to this five miles out to the city so
thinking of the future we got a real traffic problem here also the Denton a
study says that this is an important bicycle to think about bicycles and
other forms of transportation in Denton the only Northeast artery for bicyclists
is 428 I'm not a bicyclist but I see them out there all the time and I think
this construction is going to be a problem with that too I think that the
the the staff study and the what came from the developers is nice on the
figures on how many students will be going to the schools but with that RD
six zone down there you can probably double it or triple it it also talks
about traffic you can also probably double that or triple it outside the
loop a study that Aubrey did said that a normal two-lane road that's not divided
can handle about 12,000 trips per day we're already way above that so so 428
cannot handle this that's that's the bottom line on that I'm surprised that
we're going the city staff talks about a buffer zone well in our four is not a
buffer zone in our one it might be a buffer zone but to go directly from RD
five one house per five acres to four houses per acre is a lot different than
in our one would be thank you
thank you mr. Wells next we have Gretchen is it a cock for you to state your name
and address for the record I'm Gretchen I cock and my address is 7617 FM 428 I
live directly across the street from and I like to say I agree with everything
she said and the gentleman before me I'm sorry I'm not as prepared and eloquent
but this is kind of blindsided me I didn't get a notification in the mail
until about a week ago and I'm a horse trainer I run an equestrian facility so
agriculture is my way of life and to have that many homes directly across the
street from me doesn't fit with my dream or picture of my neighborhood that's all
thank you very much next card we have is Katherine Adams Huff Huff Hutt have you
to state your name and address the record thank you commissioners thank you
for the opportunity to speak my name is Katherine Adams Hutt I live at four or
five six eight elm bottom circle in Aubrey and I want to speak to oppose this
proposed a change from rural residential to neighborhood residential planning
going with 92 acre lot 368 houses we've heard this ad nauseam today it's a very
extensive density obviously we talked about the traffic issues but I urge you
also not knowing about the Denton plan for 2030 before tonight I admit now that
you've heard I've heard about it I cannot believe that this is considered
consistent with that plan this is an agricultural land the plan was for pace
development this is not pace development it's immense development to say this is
consistent with the Denton 2030 plan is to suggest that President Trump's style
being a president is a lot like every other traditional president style it's
just not true not being judgmental it's just not true I also urge you to think
about the adverse impact on the intent of this intense suburban development on
the world nature of this of this area surrounding Aubrey where I live Aubrey
calls ourselves the horse capital of the world or at least of the country to be
the horse capital of the country we need horses we need an agricultural
environment that supports horses and cattle being part of Denton this is part
of what people look at Denton to be it's rural it's agricultural it's respected
it's admired this would not be consistent with that approach either I
breed and raise cutting horses and thoroughbred race horses I love my
drives through Lexington Kentucky because they're beautiful with pastoral scenes
nice fences horses and pastures large pastures nice homes modest homes large
homes even but certainly what we're planning to do in Aubrey and Denton and
North Denton is to turn Lexington into Plano we're turning Denton into Plano
and I don't believe that we want to do that I also will tell you that my
property is in largely a floodplain and a floodway many of the boundaries that I
see on this slide above me are going right through floodplains and floodways
those are going to be expensive to build and I can tell you my land is still
underwater from the floodway released from Ray Roberts to Lewisville today and
three years ago four years ago I was evacuated by the National Guard this is
a flooded area we can talk about green belt but when it's flooded it is not
passable so this is the area you're talking about I I know you know this
area but I urge you again to walk this area with us as we do every day we love
this area we love our land we love Denton and thank you very much for your
time
I only have one more card here for speaker so if anyone else is wanting to
speak we'd be happy to hear hear you if you if you would we just ask you to fill
it off a card or come down after Tina harborson harborson
I live at six six seven zero Green Valley Circle just north of the Clear
Creek area and I have a problem with this for the transportation problem first
and foremost I had a daughter who got her car totaled on the loop and 428 and
she still has she still cannot drive that area because of that plus all these
people that have the horses with the horse trailers out there that are
carrying a lot of weight and you have to people are going 60 70 miles an hour out
there and you have to come to a stop so they can turn to go to their property or
continue on and a lot of these people do not stop and they will rear end you you
need to go look at all the accidents that have been done on that road it is
um it's gotten to the point where I actually go out of my way and take 21 64
so I do not have to deal with 428 and that is my biggest deal and thank you
very much
is everyone wishing to speak yeah come on if you just state your name and
address I'm Grant Icock 7617 FM 428 Denton Texas our property is across the
street basically from the top part of the red so just to the west and like
the lady before me just said we would we would need a turn lane for one house
because we do pull trailers in and out people and there's actually a guardrail
on the what would that be the east side and people will pass across the solid
white line in between the guardrail and a horse trailer already so yeah that's
oh and actually last year we had a car crash into our pipe fence the guy almost
died the car went in flames and everything it was 2 in the morning I was
just over a year ago so anyway again the road definitely needs infrastructure
first thank you thank you
this is a public hearing be happy and welcome any feedback you might have
please just come forward and state your name and address if you do speak we ask
you to fill out a card just for our records my name is Vicki McGovern I live
at 3110 Hartley Field Road and that little slide that was just up there I'm
just down that line from yeah see that little line that very first line we live
at the end of that road we're new to Denton County actually we've downsized a
move to Denton from Valley View we had a 60 acre ranch right off outside of the
Lake Ray Roberts area and I was very involved with the planning and zoning
committee there because we did the very same thing we created a comprehensive
plan that allowed for gradual growth in that area and and the proposal on the
table was five acres to one acre down into more highly dense properties right
now as we come out of Hartley Field Road I can tell you that it is extremely
dangerous just to turn left on to 428 because you just come up over the the
ramp there by the water park so you can barely see the traffic and some people
come flying over there so without a doubt the traffic and impact is going to
be great especially with that high density housing and then just to hear
that another high density area was planned just sort of down and across from
that right near that water park so I think the infrastructure is going to be
extremely important and I would like to highly urge the committee here to
consider a less dense as we start to develop north as we start to grow our
properties our property actually is seven acres and a lot of the other
properties right in that neighborhood are also five and seven acres as well so
thank you very much
is there anything else I wanted to speak on this item so we individuals have one
opportunity to speak so if it comes up we might be able to call on you but right
now it's one per individual seeing no other individuals want to speak I'll
close the public hearing and now we'll turn it to the dais for any questions
you might have staff with the applicant we want to address those or open up for
discussion amongst us on the item commissioner Beck thank you chair I want
to thank everybody for coming out tonight taking time and speaking
especially the people that are going to be affected by this area you were all
very well informed and very articulate so we appreciate that zone change
requests are probably one of the toughest things we as a commission deal
with and I appreciate Sharon Kramer's comments recognizing the difficulty we
have doing this sometimes especially in an area where we got higher density
developments moving in close to existing homes of lesser density so I'm gonna
kind of read from my notes here if the chair will allow and I'm gonna you're
gonna hear me say some things that y'all have already mentioned so pardon my
redundancy the common concerns are legitimate ones were increased traffic
noise and the potential for increased crime proposed worries for existing
homeowners yet everyone understands that we have to grow just not in ways that
impacts their neighborhood we're seeing developers going out of their way to
ease these concerns for those that they build around but invariably they'll
always be those who simply don't feel that they go far enough and I understand
that in this case we're being asked to change zoning that will allow the
development of four houses to an acre adjacent to properties that may have no
more than one home to several acres the rural atmosphere of this region region
does face a threat to it with higher density development but as the city
grows this area is in the sights of developers and city planners to address
housing needs where fewer infill areas exist within the city proper there of
course will always be traffic increases with any new development in the ability
of roads and other infrastructure to handle this influx is critical often
however it requires new development to demonstrate a need for improved traffic
conditions especially when we're dealing with state highway like we are with FM
428 these improvements on this road have to be approved by text that city of
Denton doesn't control that and we all know that that process seldom moves at
the speed needed to meet new development noise and increased time will also be a
factor with any type of growth and to single it out in some cases over others
is often baseless rather than block any new development to avoid this the city
will have to meet the demands of this kind of growth by enlarging our police
force and fire departments and using practices that reduce noise during and
even after development normally I have no problem improving zone change requests
to allow these types of developments because it does fit a need for this area
in the future and will serve as a transition to a lower density area
surrounding it to what eventually could become more dense with commercial
development and even some multifamily dwellings the rewrite of the dent
development code I think was touched on briefly here and I sit on that sub
committee is scheduled to be released later this year they're looking at this
strip of Sherman Drive north of loop 288 as what we call a suburban corridor it's
a new zoning designation that will have a mixed use for the land that includes
the type of development that we're currently seeing along the University
Drive in teething lane in South Denton development that would actually I think
serve the residents in this area where you don't have to drive four or five
miles to go get a gallon of milk having said all this however I am reluctant at
this time to prove this zone change request for three reasons the housing
market has slowed tremendously over the last six months and the demand for new
housing is lacking we have currently approved the NR6 zoning on the west
side of Sherman Drive that will out six houses to an acre depending on how they
are priced will determine how fast they sell I've been informed by some realtors
that suggest unless new housing is priced under $300,000 the demand for
housing will remain low or even stagnant the bigger homes in an NR for district
are likely to exceed that 300,000 price range secondly the large existing lots
that currently occupy the east side of Sherman Drive really can accommodate a
zone change request that puts four houses on one acre we do need to
sustain this area for the larger lots and provide a sense of country now and
in the future in my opinion any further housing development this area should
stay on the west side of Sherman Drive creating neighborhoods that will blend
in with the existing Beaver Creek addition that's to the west of there and
ultimately find their way over to the North Locust Road there we can better
accommodate the roads needed to handle the additional traffic this development
brings in with it because we don't have to deal with textile and lastly we need
to do everything we can to widen streets and roads that will be expected to
handle new to develop before that development begins we too often put the
cart before the horse and staff has heard me say this in numerous times and
in so doing it creates adverse driving conditions for existing and new
homeowners FM 428 is on the drawing board to be expanded to handle the
future growth the city sees for this area it makes sense to wait until
textile is willing to at least set a date for construction before we starting
further development here and put people's worries about traffic volumes at
these I understand the traffic signal that's going to be put at loop 288 and
Sherman Drive but the volume of traffic that will be generated with new housing
subdivisions of this size will still have to contend with the Tulane Road so
at this time I cannot approve and I'm going to recommend denial of this
sudden change request but I have no problem in the future with building one
or two houses per acre on it thank you thank you mr. Beck I want to be okay
clear are you moving for denial you putting a motion in okay with the
motion on the floor do we have a second kisser Cole I second motion for denial
okay any discussion on the item Commissioner
Pernetta is there any other discussion on this item kisser Alice thank you
chair I guess just a couple of thoughts clearly growth is coming to the area and
our plan does need to be re-looked at it's five years old now and and in that
area is changing and development is happening and will happen I do have an
issue with density on this side of 428 basically because of what's already
developed there in the Hartley field area I understand the development that
we've we've done on the west side and I agree with Commissioner Beck that the
higher density belongs on that side I'm not so sure right now it belongs on on
the requested side that we're discussing tonight those are my thoughts at the
moment Christian Sanchez I know we've talked about the 2030 plan and as it was
mentioned it was done five years ago but things have changed change things are
changing rapidly I think especially with the economic situation that we have
today that and and then is really growing fast I have I guess my issue is
we don't have really control of you know they write they do a 2030 plan but who
really runs that and I think developers go out there and look for areas where
you know there's some infrastructure without development there's no
infrastructure the developers are the ones that create that so if anything
ever is going to develop on the south side you're going to have to have some
development and I kind of look at the area I drive up there for 28 because I
go through Aubrey pilot point constantly almost on a weekly basis every other day
but we talk about having bigger lots seven eight acres well if you're going to
put 368 acres I mean homes you're going to take up a lot more land than what's
being required I think for what's being asked for to develop 368 acres on 98
acres as opposed to expanding that so I have a real problem I see urban
development all over and we see it here in Denton and it scares me because where
all these people coming from that's what I wonder I also see all these large
apartment complexes and that's scary too but we have to house people moving into
Denton if Denton wants to grow if we don't want to grow then we're gonna have
to they're gonna they're gonna develop further out from Denton but they're
gonna develop and we see that on 380 several years ago I used to drive that
on a regular basis also because I didn't go up to bottom and when it was a
two-lane road and when it became all of a sudden you started developing and and
the houses came first and then the road came second and that's how it happens
even here in Denton we have people complaining all the time hey you're
putting houses and there's no roads so my concern is we always put the cart
before the horse but is that the nature of the beast until until we all get
together and change that it's going to continue so I don't know if I have a
concern that if we don't start if we don't develop anything if we don't spend
time and start developing these areas the infrastructure is not going to just
happen by itself so I'm leaning towards voting for for the for the for the
motion Krister back thank you chair I just wanted to remind everybody to
regardless of the outcome of the vote tonight if the denial holds up or it
gets approved this still moves on to the City Council this isn't the final spot
here so if it doesn't come out to your liking that's where they're gonna make
a decision so you'll need to come back and force if that's the case so I just
wanted to be sure y'all were there where they thank you Commissioner Pernitta
just kind of just a few things out here I want to thank everybody for coming out
usually when we hear discussion of safety and everything there's euphemisms
involved and then we know that they're talking about other things I know y'all's
area pretty well I like to hop on my Harley and ride out to our Aubrey and
sometimes kind of cut off on those little country roads so I can see the
horses around there I also know what the traffic's like on there because being on
a motorcycle you don't get a lot of respect from people driving along that
way so I know how I know how dangerous it is I think in the in the work session
one of the things that I had a concern about was the traffic impact because I
think they said something is something about 3,400 trips a day and there's a
lot that that impacts it's not just around you guys because you know those
number of trips a day mean that people are gonna have to go shopping and right
now that means that they're gonna have to go all the way down to Sherman to
Kroger on you know on University which means that it impacts traffic well into
Denton I don't know that I agree with the NR4 where it is I think right now if
we're gonna do put anything out there I would prefer to see mixed usage so that
way we could have an infrastructure for people to you know to to come out we do
know that it's going to be growing there is growth inevitably coming if we were
to approve this today we would probably see it not until like 2022 so it'd be
like three or four years down the road and at that point you know I'm not sure
what's going to happen we know the density is coming I don't know that I'm
comfortable with that density in that spot when there's some other places
where it'd be better equipped to handle traffic and people still up in the air
on how I'm gonna vote on this but I want to thank everybody for coming out and
giving us your time and your voice. Commissioner Smith. Well I don't I don't
agree with the the density on this project I believe that that as you as you
do add more and more folks this corridor does gonna create a lot of issues and I
would rather see a project that is closer to like a country lakes the
country lakes division that's out in Argyle or like something that's like
Lakeview Ranch out on 380 that's a little bit a little bit less dense you
know then you get into conversations about what's economically feasible with
construction costs and the and the limited space it's allowed but I won't
be able to vote for an approval to deny on this project because I think as
Commissioner Sanchez has already mentioned that and I full 100% agree
with is that sadly enough in this day and the way that development works in
the city the cart does lead the horse that if there are issues with Hartley
Field and getting a stoplight out there or having expansion on your blacktop
road or getting getting safety I have clients live out there in Hartley Field
Road I have to leave at you know 8 p.m. in the dark and try to turn left to get
on 428 to go to my house down in Oakmont I know it's like it's a scary turn and
that that development that change isn't gonna happen unless there's a real
economic reason for the city to go out there and build it and so while I did
not make a motion to approve because I was waiting to kind of feel out and see
what everyone else is gonna do before I said something I am gonna say that I will
not vote for a for a denial of this project but thank you commissioners
before we call us to the vote I was gonna say summary with my thoughts I
have a lot of chicken scratch notes here that hopefully I can get through in a
cohesive manner about the way I'm currently thinking about this project
the first is to say I don't live in the area but I am sometimes a cyclist and so
parking at an auditorium and going to mom's cafe and Aubrey through Elm
bottom and is not rare and so I understand the roads and the narrowness
of some of those roads and the beauty of some of those streets once you get back
into some of the ones off the beaten path like wildcat and stuff so with that
as a commission I often like the opportunities when we get to plan a lot
of times we do zoning and on the plan zoning Commission we don't do a lot of
planning we get to hear cases and we get to rezone and plat I think tonight is an
opportunity where we as a commission get to plan that we get to either reinforce
what the city has said five years ago or seemingly kind of changed direction of
the development of that land going forward and and though whatever's
decided here I don't think we can save the horses in Aubrey or all the horses
there's gonna be development out there I just question if and in our for
development is actually smart planning for the area and so and I think it's
twofold is it smart planning for the residents understand the future of what
their land holds because as right now every piece that comes before us is
going to be this one-off and the residents won't know what what conditions
or what we're looking at to meet that so how our residents and citizens have
been to know exactly what would get approved or what we see the area doing
in terms of development so I think there's some ambiguous there for the
residents and there's ambiguousness right now for the developers to understand
what projects the city wants to encourage and I don't think approving
this solidifies or reduces any of that ambiguity to the way our city needs and
and wants to grow I tend to agree with mr. Wells that although I guess the city
views in our for as low density it doesn't seem like a buffer into horse
country it seems like an aggressive step especially when you think of when I
drive down I 35 W and you crest over and you see has lit and those houses I don't
necessarily know if that's the best thing for North Denton but one of my
biggest concerns I said in work session is right now that area that the city is
just rooftops and I don't feel that sustainable good planning I don't know
if the residents want a strip center McDonald's out there but I don't think
smart growth doesn't include some sort of corner store or gas station or
something and if we have houses being butted up to 428 it doesn't allow for
any sort of smart growth their centers along the way it just forces a ton more
traffic all the way down Sherman to University and so I just think there's
ways to improve that so the things that I will say is I think tonight I would
like to see and we can talk later about this from a commission standpoint what
to do about the future land use map it's clearly not accurate I think there needs
to be an update however there's people years ago that was set in these seats
before us that decided that the plan was rural I wasn't in those
conversations that's what they decided who am I to go back and say whatever was
talked about decided I'm going to change there needs to be an entire new committee
to re-update the future land use map that gives us better direction city staff
analysis even said this doesn't meet the current future land use map so we used
alternative criteria and so that's not a mark against the city it's more should
be a precipice of updating some of the records and I hope to to see what kind
of progress we can make and and considering like Commissioner Beck said
we have some some things coming down the pike in terms of updates to that
planning I'd rather wait five six months and have the development come back in
terms of what the city has been updated to desire rather than using something
that I feel is a little outdated so all that being said two things well three
things one I don't know the record but 29 written responses from the city might
be a record so I appreciate residents speaking up it helps frame the
discussion I say it often y'all being here providing feedback phone calls
whatever it is helps us understand the situation especially if we don't live
there so I appreciate you responding and coming out I appreciate the city staff
for looking through this and even the presentation looked like it took a long
time to develop so I appreciate the work and moreover I don't know if another
developer other than Allison engineering group could have presented a better
case for the property and so certainly when he was presenting I thought man
this looks like a really good project the presentation was was flawless and I
know from previous work if a development was to be made for that team I think
it'd be great tonight however I can't support the the motion so that's my
piece I'll step off my soapbox and what I do is restate the motion because it's
a little cumbersome to make sure we all understand how we're voting the motion
on the table is to deny this request what that means like Commissioner Beck
said is they can still proceed to council if they choose if they do I'd
say show up back at council because council can override us with a super
majority but the motion on the table is to to deny the request so a vote for yes
is to decline a vote for no is to not decline is there any questions on how
that is going to work okay with that let's vote on the board
the motion to deny carries five to so at this time it's 845 on a call of recess
for five minutes to clear the room of those who would like to leave we'll come
back at 850 thank you for allowing that brief recess it is now nine o'clock will
reconvene with our next public hearing item it is item 5b z 18 - 0 0 1 7 b I
will open the public hearing and invite Haley for presentation good evening this
is Casey 1817 for lakeside place the request before you is twofold it is for
an initial zoning designation of nr4 on approximately 86 acres of land as well
as a rezoning from nr2 to nr4 district on six acres so to look at that a
little more closely you can see on the map on the left the hatched area is what
is currently already 5x those 86 acres were recently annexed into the city a
council approved that back in November and then the six acres that was
referenced is this far northwestern corner of the property that's currently
nr2 so you can see on the proposed zoning map that the nr4 would be
generally consistent with other zonings in the area it's kind of a mixture of
nr4 and nr3 at this point in time as well as on the other side of the railroad
tracks some commercial zoning as well as residential so with a rezoning we have
two primary criteria for approval the first being that the rezoning conformed
to the future land use element of the Denton plan 2030 and the second being
that the rezoning facilitate the adequate provision of infrastructure so
looking at each of those in turn now the future land use map within our Denton
plan 2030 designates this this area and all of the area shown in yellow here on
the map as low residential as we've recently discussed low residential in
our future land use plan is classified as anything between one and four dwelling
units per acre so we have the zoning districts in our one in our two in our
three and in our four that all fall within that so the requested in our four
district is consistent with that future land use designation that second
criteria we'll look at a little more closely so the first aspect that we
looked at was water and sewer utilities it's maybe a little hard to see on your
map here but there is a faint dotted blue line here and that is an existing
newly installed water line that would be available to serve the site and then
there are sewer lines subbed out at either end of Creekdale so we have one
here on the northern side of the property as well as another one here
that would be available to this site looking at transportation we'll look a
little more closely here because there's a lot going on in this area the
applicant did provide a traffic impact analysis for staff to review as part of
this request some of the key findings of that were that a need for improvements
on their frontage on Hickory Creek Road as well as the need for the extension of
Creekdale to connect those two points at the northern and the western edge of the
edges of the site the TI also included several other recommendations such as
the relocation of the proposed alignment of Hickory Creek Road on our mobility
plan so if you look at the map here this red dashed line is what the mobility
plan several years ago envisioned being the logical alignment for Hickory Creek
Road so through this traffic impact analysis it was assessed and discovered
that that's probably not the most logical place for this road to go a more
logical and likely alignment of the road will be a continuation straight through
this area as it is now along the subject property and then somehow crossing the
floodplain and connecting over here with brush Creek most likely that's all still
highly tentative as Julie mentioned with the last case there the city's
engineering department and planning department are trying to work together
and do some be a little less myopic have some bigger picture studies of certain
regions of the city so much like we did on Sherman Drive we're looking to kick
off fairly soon a study for this Ryan Road Hickory Creek part of the city to
look at some of these more regional scale of transportation improvements
that are needed because as you all may know this this portion of the Hickory
Creek Road is actually a county roads this would be a joint venture between
Denton County and the city to try to realign this road in the future the city
currently does have two CIP projects underway for Hickory Creek that are in
their very early stages and that's to widen the existing road particularly the
section from Teasley over to Riverdale which is here just east of the subject
property to a four-lane divided roadway so another component of this TIA was the
need for this project to coordinate with that city project and try to figure out
how to to get that widening done through the subject property there is a little
vacant gap you can see there between where the mouse would pop up for me it's
not cooperating but between Riverdale and where the subject property would be
there's a little gap there that would need to be addressed as part of that
coordination the TIA will require some updates as this project moves forward
however at this point in time that there wasn't a conceptual plan presented with
it so until staff's able to look at the TIA in coordination with the actual lot
layout and proposed street alignment we can't fine-tune a lot of those
particular off-site improvements so that will be forthcoming as this moves into
the preliminary plotting phase if the zoning is approved staff did contact
Denton ISD and found that the schools in this region that this property would go
to could easily accommodate the students that would be generated by this housing
development so notifications were sent regarding this request to the 200 and
500 foot buffers you can see on the map in red and blue we received two written
responses that were provided to you one in your backup originally and one just
before the work session today and those are shown in green on the map they were
both favorable responses the required public hearing notification signs were
posted on the property as well so staff is recommending approval of this request
we found it to be compatible with the surrounding land-use pattern consistent
with the goals and objectives of the Denton plan and that it meets the two
criteria for approval as discussed and I'm happy to stand for any questions we
do have one Commissioner Ellis thank you chair Haley just for clarification you
said Riverdale a couple of times did you mean Creekdale or Creek I may have said
I'm sorry River Pass Creekdale crosses through the property River Pass is the
termination of the current project okay thank you sorry about that no other
questions at this time Haley this is the applicant is here as well perfect is the
applicant Obra new sir right you might butchering that okay are you the
applicant yes perfect you to state your name and address record yes thank you I'm
Abra Nusser and I'm at 180 State Street in South Lake Texas seven six zero nine
two I'm here representing four star development tonight and this is an
exciting project we're excited about it it's called lakeside place I'm just
gonna run through a couple things with you we held a neighborhood meeting in
September prior to the annexation beginning no negative comments during
that meeting just some existing concerns about cut through traffic to the north
nothing specific to our development but just existing traffic concerns at the
annexation public hearings they did have some significant discussions with staff
and City Council about the neighborhood traffic programs that the city has to
address their concerns the annexation was completed in November 2018 and a
traffic impact analysis as Haley mentioned was conditionally or
preliminarily approved it's not actually required until platting time when we
actually know the lot layouts and street alignment so we'll get into that more as
we move forward so zoning now then platting and then building permits so
four star is big into building sustainable communities with a true
sense of place it's a residential and mixed-use real estate development company
with decades of investment and development experience they have a lot
of pride in creating neighborhoods with outstanding amenities and green space as
you'll see here in a moment so just to kind of zoom out this is in what we call
the wishbone of Denton it's a property that is just kind of left to be filled
in if you will this is an aerial of the subject property there's a lot of great
natural areas on the property that we're proposing to preserve and as Haley
mentioned it is designated low-density residential on the future land use map so
different from your previous case this one is consistent with the comprehensive
plan didn't plan 2030 so we're proposing to comply with everything that's
envisioned for this area it would be in our four maximum four dwelling units per
acre there's no lot sizes established at this time no lot counts established at
this time we're simply wishing to get it entitled for a real estate transaction
at which time the lot lay out and civil improvements could begin so this is a
kind of a concept of what we imagine the lot area to be so we as you can see
we're proposing to keep a significant amount of open space and green space if
you're familiar with the property at all although it's tucked away quite a bit
it's a very scenic area here's some pictures for you we're proposing to keep
this so it's going to be a very attractive different type of product
that will allow the community members who live there to experience the nature
that's currently on the property and it's going to be very scenic and very
special so we're excited to preserve a good deal of the property and so next
steps finalize the zoning plat the preliminary plat will come before you
where we can discuss lot layout road layout and those types of things and
building permits I do have one clarification from the work session just
to clarify there are no gas wells on the subject property so any setbacks and
whatnot we would have to maintain but there are no gas wells on this property
and with that I will stand for any questions we do have one Commissioner back thank
you chair thank you mr. sure I appreciate that and I really love your
product here but I'm surprised here you say there's no gas wells because when I
pull it up on the map there's three active gas wells there but what I'm
seeing with your development and what I was glad to see is look like that green
zone would cover them all that they would be isolated because of that but
what I there is a gas well up here that one's been capped I know but you've got
one in the North sector yeah there's there's a gas well to the east and a
gas well to the north there's no there's not okay I need to go back and look then
I apologize but I could have sworn I there was three of them two of them more
close down there Highland Village or Highland right here is Calvert paving
corporation yeah and this is where cattle graze okay well I'll go back and
look at the map and I don't have access but if that's the case great because I
just out of as a matter of record I have a hard time proving things that were
homes are going to be in close proximity gas wheels because I do approve a lot of
problems but they're not there great and if they are it looks like your
development may even take care of thank you so much Mr. Sanchez
yes you have any idea how many acres of those are going to be how many acres of
green space roughly half of the property about property I would say over 20 acres
well over 20 acres of green space and preserved area okay okay it's kind of
in planning we call almost conservation development where you try to cluster the
lots to have as much open space as possible it's really interesting in the
Denton development code and tracks over two acres in size it allows the market
to have this type of design flexibility to preserve these beautiful areas so I
commend you on your Denton development code so I don't see any other questions
thank you thank you very much this is a public hearing if anyone's wishing to
speak on the item we certainly do so you just come down and state your name and
address for the record Tommy Calvert I live at 5299 Settlers Creek Road Denton
Texas this plan is adjoining my property on the east side this part of the
property that's being developed and my property was in my family's farm since
1946 and I'm not totally opposed to the plan but I would be happy to work with
them to see because I have Thistle Hill on the north side of me and Ryan ranch
on the east side of me what I have now is trash I have water overflow so I ask
you to take into consideration these plans before you look at them that you
look at some of these things that some of us landowners having to deal with
today like says been in my family over 70 years it was farmland is still ranch
land I still have cattle on it I'm gonna continue to have cattle on my portion of
it but I don't need to be flooded and I don't want trash coming down the creek
as I do have now so I ask that you have them to work with us landowners left
also in addressing your comprehensive 2030 plan I'm the current president of
the Denton County Farm Bureau here and I had a look at that plan a while few
years ago and I looked at the stakeholders that you had involved in
that plan I did not see any one of us that live out there in the ETJ that was
in on that plan who was involved with people that would not be affected by
that plan I ask you look at that when you go back to that plan involve some
of the stakeholders out there that live out in ETJ they live in the rural what
used to be rural areas to be involved with that as we could help with that
planning because we had no involvement we have no say so I have no say so I'm
not in the city I'm in the county in my portion of this property that just got
annexed but we try to keep it green space I tried to keep some rural area
out there it's a beautiful area we border on Hickory Creek my other concern
will be traffic as any of you ever drive Hickory Creek Road we've got Thistle
Hill we've got Ryan Ranch down the road now we got all well you know we've had
accidents we had a fatality just today out there on Hickory Creek Road take in
consideration that cart before the horse thing how fast can that cart pull that
horse you know I mean it can't because it's what we're having happen today and
didn't and I grew up here when school here been here all my life fourth
generation I I'm not against growth I'm totally for it but I'm for more planned
growth where we look at it before we do but don't put that wagon in front of
that horse let's work put that horse around the front the streets out in our
area like they said they're going to expand Hickory Creek Road from Creekdale
back that will be good but from Creekdale I mean from Creekdale back
west I don't what you're going to do you got a creek to cross you're going to
build an enormous bridge I farm that land down in the creek it's in the flood
plain a lot of that's in the flood I like what they're going to do with this
and keeping a lot of that green space I think that's very very admirable but just
think about the infrastructure with the streets and what we have to deal with
out there as far as the traffic the trash the water overflows but I'm not
totally opposed to them I think they've got a good plan I look forward to seeing
is move along think about us stakeholders out there in that
comprehensive plan include some of us in that plan bring some of us to the table
let us help you plan that future for those rural areas that previous one that
was ahead of us I understood where those people were coming from they had no say
so you know we've none of us had any say so over the years about what city did
my grandfather told me one time it's coming it'll be here and it is it's
there now but you know we'd like to be a part of the planning of it thank you
thank you very much
here's your else thank you chair I just had a quick question sir sorry I was
just curious if you attended the neighborhood meeting that they had no you
know what I did not get a notice in the mail I got a certified letter about two
three weeks ago that's all I've got and in the past with Thistle Hill Ryan ranch
I received no letters whatsoever so somebody falls down on her job
occasionally on here because I don't receive a letter but no I didn't tend
that because I didn't get a letter to the other day my sister who owns part of
the other property did not receive a letter so well maybe yeah after this
discussion you can exchange numbers so that you can stay in communication with
like say I'm not opposed to the to their zoning and the development just want a
city to look a little further into the streets and infrastructure that we got
out there because it cannot accommodate much more traffic out there right now
so I hope I answered your question thank you I think as a point ETHJ wouldn't
have received any letters previously now that he's annexed he'll be on the mail
endless this is a public hearing anyone wishing to speak may do so good evening
my name is Patricia Clark I live at 768 Ryan Road and I'm in that I'm the top
white slit that's undeveloped and Ryan Road can barely cover and handle the
traffic that we have up there now when my mother was living she gave the
right-of-way and the sidewalk that takes the children to run run elementary which
was named after my uncle and we gave that land so I development is great I
love that part of didn't we just again I think the the card is pulling the horse
until Ryan Road is able to handle the traffic that it currently has I don't
see how by enlarging and completing creekside which is the way in and out
of the other development it's just going to increase the amount of traffic that
there is and it's it's not going to it's going to be a danger with kids walking
plus I'm really it was surprised to see that the school district said they could
handle the schools because the Ryan Elementary School is closed to the people
that live in the district in the housing development behind them and those
children are now having to go to Sam Houston elementary so I don't see how
they think that a new development with that many homes is going to be able to
fit into it so I'm not opposed to it I also did not get a notice about the
community meeting I did get a registered letter about this meeting so I
appreciate that part of it so thank you thank you
anyone else wishing to speak on this item seeing none I will close the public
hearing and open it up to the dais for discussion or motion to Commissioner
Smith I move for approval of this item primarily based upon the fact that just
like we saw at the last the last project we saw that the biggest issue was that
trying to push out in the more rural areas and that we first need to focus on
some of the big infill and this is going to be a good infill project for our city
so motion I move to approve Commissioner Pernetta I said we have a first and a
second any discussion so before we call this to a vote I have one point that
I'm gonna make and it's that I live in this area and I take River Pass and
Creekdale and Andrew Avenue often from Forest Ridge down to Kroger and all
that and the expansion of Hickory Creek is only gonna make that pass through and
cut through through the neighborhood more lucrative to me and I imagine others
it's it's pretty well traveled but my major concern is increasing that pipe so
to speak to four lanes and then immediately ending it at the railroad
tracks is just going to encourage if not promote more traffic through Hickory
Creek flood area and me personally that is my most despised road in the city and
evidence of this morning were two kids unnecessarily lost their life on that
ridiculously dangerous Street I decided prompting one more road one more car on
the road anywhere near that so until the city can definitively determine how to
get rid of that Street being driven on I'm just gonna have an issue approving
this project it looks beautiful I'm all for cluster development I just in my
heart cannot put put any more cars on the road until Hickory Creek's better
solved so with that I see any other discussions I will put the vote to the
board
the motion to approve carries five to congratulations the next item for
business is item 5c z 18 - 0 0 2 3 I will open the public hearing and call Julie
for presentation
right okay this is I'm Julie Wyatt I just want to go on the record that
Commissioner Cole is recusing himself inside him so he's gonna leave okay the
room we'll invite him back to close thank you so I'm Julie Wyatt senior
planner with the city of Denton and I am presenting z 1823 so the request before
you is to consider a rezoning from regional center commercial downtown and
regional center regional center commercial neighborhood to employment
center industrial on a total of 17 or eight 16 acres I'm sorry the subject
property is located on the northwest side of town it's situated between a
railroad corridor as well as the I-35 highway north of University um here's a
map of the current zoning so half of the subject property has a zoning designation
of RCC in that's that regional center commercial neighborhood and then the
southern half of the tract has the RCC D so it's a total of 16 acres the
surrounding zoning pattern includes ECI to the east across the street of this
from the subject property we've got ICG to the south that's one of our industrial
zoning districts our seed CD a little further to the south to the west of the
subject property as it is a neighborhood and that has the NR to zoning
designation and then across the highway you're probably familiar with the razor
ranch and there's a lot of commercial development across the highway the
proposed rezoning is to just extend that existing ECI that's across the street
and take in the subject property so this is a proposed concept plan they're
really looking at a storage use they're looking at at at truck storage and this
is not a final plan this is really just a kind of a concept for you to see what
they are proposing if the zoning were approved they could develop with any of
the uses permitted within ECI at the scale that's permitted in ECI so keep
that in mind as as you're thinking about this case just to take a look a little
closely at this concept plan this is the southern portion of the tract there are
no changes currently proposed for this this is it's two commercial buildings
and they have tenants in it the proposed development is really for that northern
tract there is a kind of a regional detention pond several tracks take
advantage of this detention as as they're proposing they're not proposing
any changes to that drainage pattern the criteria for approval are in sub
chapter 3 of the Denton development code and that is does it conform with the
future land use map and didn't plan 2030 and are there adequate public facilities
to serve the development so first we'll take a look at Denton plan 2030 the
subject property is and within a business innovation future land use
designation is as you're well aware that is for those well-planned large-scale
employment uses and the supporting retail hotels residential those types
of commercial uses a place where somebody could get lunch or work or live
close to where they work I see ECI is one of those zoning districts that that
really conforms well to the business innovation future land use because it
does allow some of those industrial in office uses to to support the commercial
intent of business innovation or the employment intent of business innovation
but it also allows a broad array of commercial uses to allow that
supporting development to occur transportation that the applicant did do
a trip generation analysis on the site and and due to their proposed use of
storage it would not generate a whole lot of traffic and they're proposing
they're anticipating about 95 trips within a 24-hour weekday peak hour of
20 trips so due to that volume of trips they wouldn't it wouldn't trigger a full
TIA you generally have to get to a thousand trips before you do a full TIA
it is nearby to I-35 and West University so there's a lot of access to the site
however it doesn't connect to the neighborhoods to the West and that was
something that was really important to us as we looked at this case is that
railroad corridor really does sort of cut off this site from that neighborhood
and I think that's important when we want to be sensitive to our neighborhoods
other findings we considered was that this was a logical continuation of the
surrounding zoning and land use pattern the existing land uses surrounding the
subject property include commercial development along I-35 where they want
that visibility from a lot of traffic kind of transitioning to more employment
uses as you get further off of I-35 so between that railroad corridor and 35
you've got that that blend of commercial and employment uses so this proposed
zoning district really does fit well within that existing pattern but once
again we want to be sensitive to that relationship to the nearby residential
area so once again that physical separation with that railroad addition
that railroad is is is is elevated so that so that it does sort of mute those
those visual impacts of any development on the site industrial uses that are
embedded within ECI are generally our lower impact so they wouldn't be heavy
industrial those types of uses that create a lot of pollutants or those those
off-site impacts the the proposed zoning district and the existing zoning
districts or the current zoning district have comparable development scales so
that a development on the site visually would would be similar to to for those
adjoining properties and then design standards within sub chapter 13
particularly the tree canopy right now the site doesn't have a lot of trees on
it but when it develops it will be required to comply with all the site
design requirements and one of those is planning 30% tree canopy so so those are
important factors to consider so just to briefly look at the current uses the
probably the most important thing is that under current zoning there are
residential uses permitted things like townhomes multi-family with an SUP ECI
kind of takes out those residential uses it really is for those employment and
commercial developments they all of those zoning districts do have certain
commercial uses that they permit they're a little variation but they do have a
variety of commercial uses ECI does fold in more industrial uses but once again
those are some of those lower impact the light industrial or the the warehousing
distribution centers so things that create fewer off-site impacts general
regulations once again is that development scale it's pretty comparable
across those zoning districts RCCD does allow buildings to be a hundred feet ECI
only allows a 65 feet so that actually would reduce the building height
notification was sent out and the applicant did have a neighborhood
meeting there were we received five letters in opposition and I apologize I
did not give you one of them or some some writing or some email that I
received in work session so Kathy passed it out earlier so sorry about that but
with with where the 200 foot boundary is very little of that opposition actually
counted toward the that percentage you know that that we look at when looking at
a supermajority so there's only 1% opposition within that 200 foot boundary
so based upon the criteria for approval the future land use as well as the public
facility staff does recommend approval of the request and I will stand for any
questions thank you Julie we do have a question
commissioner Pernetta so I just wanted to make sure that we recapped anything
for an any because I saw majority the concerns were traffic concerns from
neighbors any traffic that comes out of that would be minimal and it would be
going out to the opposite side toward 35 along the access road and there was
concerns about lights or whatever based on I don't know which slide it was but
it looked like there was a mock-up with showing there so proposed I guess
structure would be more toward the east and you have some separation between
that and you said the tracks were raised they are I don't I don't know how tall
but they are raised probably ten feet it's there there is some some great
change there with the railroad so there'd be a barrier there that kind of
natural okay cool that's all I really had thanks thanks I don't see any other
questions thank you this is a public hearing if you're wishing to speak we
just ask that you fill out a card the first individual will be the applicant
and as Amy said you have ten minutes good evening commissioners I promise not
to take ten minutes I do have a brief presentation for you I'm Amy visit with
Northbridge consultants 212 South Elm Denton 76201 I'd like to start by
clearing clarifying a question that came up during the work session which was is
the person is the applicant also going to be the person that owns and develops
the property in the future and I represent the owner of 2401 Worthington
today which is the southern half of the property that has already developed with
two commercial buildings that I'll show you a little more detail on that in a
moment they currently have 2501 Worthington in
contract with the intent to develop and own it and operate it into the future I
want to start by just giving you a brief overview of what's already on the ground
and when we did have a neighborhood meeting there were some misunderstandings
or that that we were building this from scratch and so I want to make it clear
that 2401 Worthington is existing today it is two multi-tenant warehouses on
roughly eight and a half acres and each warehouse is over 30,000 square feet and
there is a hundred roughly vehicle parking spaces and 50 semi truck
parking spaces this was built in 2007 here's a picture of it in case you'd
like to see what it looks like the expansion which both of these properties
are contemplated in the zoning just because we felt like it was important to
present a cohesive development so that you can see the big picture and rezone
the entire property since it is intended to be uses that are complimentary to each
other so and the the concept plan that Julie had up on the screen is we've
we've modified it slightly so I want to point that out and we do want to expand
the use to the north and it will be would be primarily truck parking and 84
spaces this would be on a flex base so it would be pervious so it would have
minimal impact on drainage and 11 vehicular parking spaces which would
service the a small warehouse building which would be located on the far
northeast corner of the property and that would be a tenant space as well that
would be similar to those to the south and the purpose for this development is
really that we see the demand in the transportation logistics cluster that
exists in Denton and specifically I'll point out Peter built produces up to a
hundred and fifty new semi trucks a day there are many vendors and suppliers who
have to move those trucks out of Denton and across the country and they often
have to be staged and stored for a certain amount of time before you know
they're stacked and then they're hauled out all at once or a number of them at a
time and what what we found is that it's very difficult for those transporters to
find space to park those trucks today that's an appropriately located space
and we feel like this is appropriate with the surrounding industrial uses we
do anticipate anticipate that there will be some single tenant users as well that
park their trucks there when they're not on a route we did hold a neighborhood
meeting when Julie mailed out the 500 foot courtesy notifications she gave me
a call and because a few of the residents and ranch estates were notified and she
had heard some concerns from them so and we went ahead and mailed out an
invitation to everybody within ranch estates and that was our intent anyway
we went property by property in CAD to make sure that we pulled every address
and we held a come-and-go neighborhood meeting and we had three in attendance
although they were clear to us that they were representing multiple neighbors and
and then I had an additional four phone calls and or emails and as well what we
really heard from the neighborhood meeting I want to try to address
directly what we heard and and how we want to be respectful of the the
neighboring single-family neighborhood and we heard that they have concerns
about the drainage the noise and visibility of the site and encroachment
in general on their neighborhood by industrial and commercial properties
and which is not necessarily specific to this project but we wanted to hear we
heard it and understood that to be a concern of theirs and then mobility as
well specifically Windsor Drive and they had heard that the Windsor Drive would
come underneath I-35 in the future and potentially tie directly into their
neighborhood and they were concerned about how that would open up access from
our site to the west and I do want to point out here I've got the zoning map
up here the Ranch Estates is a part of that NR2 zoning designation there's a
very clear barrier there in terms of zoning at the railroad site that I do
think serves as a protection from encroachment from from the east of that
property in addition as you saw with the future land use plan it is intended to
remain low-density residential into the future Windsor Drive we obviously have no
control over with our project but we will state for the record that we don't
want Windsor Drive to connect to their neighborhood and have no need for any
connectivity going west over the railroad tracks also want to talk about
their concerns regarding drainage as well as their concerns regarding nuisance
in terms of noise and visibility so I'll address drainage first as Julie
mentioned there is an existing regional detention pond on our site that we're
looking at expanding onto and we can't get anywhere near that so we're gonna be
hundreds of feet from the railroad and much less from the neighborhood and we
did visit with some neighbors about what would make them more comfortable with a
project as it relates to noise and visibility and we offered to plant
trees along the backside of the site and and in order to memorialize that the
developer it will commit to a type C landscape buffer which is six trees and
25 shrubs every hundred feet along the backside of 2501 the railroad does
create a very significant visual buffer as well and it's while standing from
from the road over here Marshall Road and you really can't see anything except
greenery unless it's winter which then you may be able to see the top of a
building that is all I have and I'd be happy to answer any questions we do have
one question to mr. Beck thank you chair thanks so there's no new warehousing in
this development you're just developing the parking for the trucks that utilize
the warehousing that's already there we do intend to put a small building in the
front here the northeast it's roughly 6,000 square feet okay and that is
primarily because the the storage use of truck parking is an accessory use and we
need to have a primary use on the actual lot okay these trucks will be parked
there for a few hours to a few days days at a time okay would there be some of
these truckers live out of their trucks so would there be situations where they
park their truck and run their engine for a while to keep warm and is there
would that be allowed and if it is I'm gonna defer to the developer and
property owner on that so that they can speak to how they address it on the
existing property where there's 50 truck parking spaces in the back today so they
already and they have some experience in that and they already have some okay I
wouldn't see it being a big issue there might be a few but I'm just curious if
that was something they are here and can speak to that question if you'd like
all right thank you Chris relis thank you chair thanks Amy question the only
thing I I'm concerned with with the zoning change is one item that it opens
up what this can develop down the road not saying that you would do this but
it opens it up and that's an electric substation is there a would you be
willing to eliminate that with approval of this I am going to defer to the
property owner on that as well but I'll let them answer that question for you
okay I appreciate that thanks there's other questions for you appreciate that
all right thank you we have several cards to to complete and then we might
circle back backgrounds to some of the commissioners requests of the developer
first card I have is Rebecca height there's two names listed here my name is
Dan height I live at 3800 Hampton Road I did not receive the invite to come to
the meeting and I understand why because her red circle excludes me I'm on the
north side of that red circle at the back of the subdivision and I'm at the
very peak of the triangle where their their plan comes down to and they also
excluded several other homes that are back there as well and so this is we
heard about it when we got the card so quickly I'll say because I had to be
quick right so 25 years I've been driving by Ranch Estates I've always
dreamed of living in Ranch Estates several years ago I finally got the money
together and I bought a house in Ranch Estates it's been kind of a series of
unfortunate events since that time the city approved a house trailer being
planted right in the middle of our subdivision text dot took away our turn
lanes got one of our residents killed almost got me killed exiting the
subdivision with no notice that 380 had been opened up it's been trying right
now that area that she's talking about you can see it very clearly yes the
train track is elevated their property is elevated higher so she may have stood
down there once I stand down there all the time those lights that come on from
that property are blinding to our side over there the noise that comes from one
of the whatever plant that is the booms that happen all night throughout the
night and wake you up it's already bad it's already bad so now we're going to
have a I'm assuming a facility that's running 24/7 with the same kind of noise
or worse noise maybe more lights so I'll just I'll hit each one of those points I
am definitely a fan of progress I get that area over there somebody owns that
wants to develop it and what their plan is looks pretty good but we do have some
concerns she said there's no connection I believe but there is a plan connection
which I found out about through this process of researching this that the
plan connection goes through my house so another part of unfortunate events for
me but is that true so we can definitely verify that okay so there is a plan
connection and the the person that's developing it acknowledged that before
the meeting that absolutely if that comes through they're excited to use that
right through the middle of our subdivision so here come the 18
wheelers through our subdivision I appreciated your question I think that
was one I hadn't thought about them running those trucks throughout the
night but we missed the neighborhood meeting the building is a higher
elevation than the tracks pointed at us we already have drainage problems in our
subdivision so I'm hoping that maybe they're going to improve their drainage
so that we don't get more drainage down in the subdivision because we already do
have a lot of problems the noise the light the hours of operation they sit in
there during their 24-hour day they're gonna have this many vehicles right does
that mean it is a 24-hour operation so I would like if I'm gonna ask for
something I would like there to be some consideration I get that area over there
I get this this plan fits that area but think about us and I probably shouldn't
even be the right one speaking because I'm a newbie to the subdivision I'm not
the 50-year residents that have lived there all these years but maybe limiting
the hours of operation limiting the noise limiting the lights limiting
something that will affect us long term and definitely if there's a future road
planned through there how's that gonna affect us it's gonna be gonna be pretty
tough so just considerations on those points and we have a couple questions
for you please yeah Christian back thank you chair thank you mr. height for your
presentation a couple quick questions these lights are talking about it do
they come from that warehouse they do not come from that warehouse over there
the other night and so they have their existing warehouse there's one setting
just to the south of it and the lights are on that building okay so but I assume
if they're building a big trucking yard it's got to be well lit you can't have
millions of dollars worth of trucking equipment out there without and I'm sure
it will be but we do have requirements and this could be something that you
could probably get with the city on so I don't want to go there but there are
restrictions on light impacting neighborhood area so I definitely check
on that and when this development goes up I'm sure Amy's aware of it that the
lights can't you know have a negative impact but drainage I again don't see
how drainage from that area could impact Regis state you do have that railroad
track that's elevated so are you saying that drainage is coming from the
commercial area on the other side of the railroad track I'll have to I'll have to
verify that okay we do get a lot of drainage I don't I have never gone up
into those fields to see where it gets through okay but it does come underneath
the railroad track further to the north into the back of my property but not from
this not from the facility okay but I'm assuming that property being at that
elevation that water has to come our direction but maybe it's diverted to the
south before it gets down to see the topography I have to I have a check and
I believe I think you misquoted Amy they have nothing to do with Windsor Drive
coming through there and I think that's the road you think about yes they
weren't pushing for that and they don't anticipate using that if I understood her
correctly but yes I understand your concern I would be concerned too right
through finding out about this and doing the research I discovered the future
plan for the roads definitely confront that when it comes through thank you so
much thank you thank you and Dan I appreciate your pain this card is filled
actually Rebecca height and Dan it's just like a Dan is an afterthought so
Rebecca height I feel you but next up is Rebecca height if you're wanting to
speak
thank you for your time I'll be brief one thing I do want to touch base on is
there's semi trucks that are coming through all the time and they're coming
we're right on 380 and with the redevelopment of the construction we
have rock haulers that come through very aggressively and then we have the freight
trucks coming from the opposite side of the interstate where the industrial side
is and they often get lost coming into our subdivision and that's one thing
that I am concerned about because this is going to be moving trucks and it is
going to be freight so how is this going to take place and what happens when they
get lost in our subdivision we have a one well it's a two-lane road with no
center stripe oftentimes they get stuck on our dead-end road because you'll
notice on the red square we're the house with the pool and it's a dead-end road
so oftentimes people get stuck on that they back up they go through our yard
they tear up our yard it's not safe it's really not safe when we try to exit off
of our subdivision on to 380 we're fighting the semi trucks and then I'm
curious how are they going to get out of their area have you guys been in that
area where the hotels are and where the industrial areas how are they going to
have the mobility to come in and out and where is that flow of traffic going to
come in and out so they're going to be accessing onto the access road where you
have people coming in already where it's already backing up right there to get
back on 35 but then if they come down 380 and they try to cross over where QT is
to get on to Windsor that's going to be backed up where is the in and out going
to be it's going to create massive traffic jams so that's just one thing I
would like you to consider of what's going on in addition to the noise and
the trucks and just overall I'm concerned about our safety to be honest
with you and that's all thank you thank you very much
the next card I have is Ann Smith
I'm Ann Smith 2013 Cindy Lane so here's the deal you all have it's an exciting
time in Denton I've been here since 1981 and I remember talking to a lot of
people saying when will didn't grow when will we get bigger when will we get a
big restaurant and then we got chilies we're done so anyway the thing is what's
happening here tonight is we're talking about black and white stuff we're
talking about zoning we're talking about streets and all that kind of stuff but I
have the 2030 plan and my name is Ann Smith I'm not Nancy Pelosi I did read
the 2030 plan right here and I have a few things that I want to point out
because the main thing here in this book in this plan has pictures of people has
names of people and it has the zoning people talking about people talking
about Denton talking about vision and and that's what you guys are your vision
your visionaries you protect us and everybody here we've been here since 630
and everybody here has talked about safety and and pulling out onto a road
and almost getting hit we had an 18 year old just about a month ago you know young
driver and the light was green at 380 and Cindy Lane and so she starts to pull
out she gets t-boned in the front not totally at her I mean this is 18 years
old if it would be your daughter your granddaughter you'd have a stroke we have
people in Ranch Estates that are elderly and these people we're fighting a lot of
things in Ranch Estates and these people are becoming very anxious about do we
have to continue to fight for where we live now another thing that we're doing
in Ranch Estates we want to die there because it's about $7,500 a month just to
get into assisted living and most of the people that are elderly own their home
it's cheaper to die in your home and now even though this isn't part of 0023 what
we're hearing and I do have a message from one of the council people that I
emailed and talked to her about the Windsor connection and you see and she
said I recall the discussion of Windsor so it's not just a figment of our
imagination and the thing about Windsor is Windsor going across 35 down the
pasture over the railroad track and it's going to go through their their home and
Ranch Estates only has four streets and Hampton Road is the east-west street on
the north side that it's it's not a two lane street it's a one and a half lane
street and we have no sidewalks and no shoulders so when we take a walk it's in
the street so the situation is that this development that they're wanting to do
a rezoning is the trucks are going to be in a pasture and there the trucks can't
go in a in a pasture without some kind of surface underneath them that's that
will maintain their integrity so they can get in and out so is it cement or
is it gravel and we are in a flood zone Ranch Estates is in a flood zone so the
water is going to come down to us I know that the engineers can create pools of
water and that kind of thing but you know how water works water will go to
the lowest point anyway I'd like to close with some words from the 2030 plan
Denton people say that the top strength in Denton is the character of Denton
totally agree think about think about we want to be Austin isn't that what I've
heard we want to be Austin well who do we want to be who do we want to be do
what character do we want to have oh dang okay so I'll leave you with this
then you don't get to choose where you're born but you do get to choose
where you live and we choose to live here everybody in these seats tonight
choose didn't because we want to serve we want to live and we want to raise our
families here thank you miss it we we actually have a question
okay back thank you chair thank you miss Smith for your presentation and your
passion for the city didn't understand that and I'm you know heard several
stories since text out widen 380 of the travesty that's on there and affected
some of the ranch estate homeowners this particular development though I mean
you're gonna have these kind of developments or that was zone has been
zone like that that was part of the 2030 plan as the future land use map showed
that being that way then so we knew that was going that area what we try and do
here is make sure that in situations like yours that it doesn't reach over
and to ranch estates and from what I've heard there shouldn't be that kind of
connection now yeah Windsor if it comes across text that's gonna be involved with
that too so that's gonna slow things down a little bit but that's a whole
nother battle that we need to fight when it comes across and make sure that y'all
don't suffer over there as a result of that but besides that this area that
we're talking about rezoning the zoning is similar in nature and if we don't do
this one you're gonna have something else there that's gonna have traffic
getting to it from 380 and on the service road so I'm not sure what the
it's about encroachment to it's it's about the noise it's about vision but
it's and the water but it's also about encroachment because as you see in the
pictures ranch estates is an island yeah everything around it is commercial and
one question we had was that it seemed natural for these trucks to go on the
south side of 380 where all that is commercial so I don't know why that
didn't happen well when this comes back to us in the form of site plan and
everything we'll definitely keep your thoughts in mind about lights and noise
and dirt stuff like that and make sure that they're following the guidelines
that we've set forth on that and encroachment and yes sir thank you thank
you we have one more card it is for Jim Poryot Jim and his wife Peggy are in
Panama City to the Denton planning and zoning committee from Jim and Peggy
Perot 3801 Hampton we are asking miss Anne Smith to read our letter as we are
out of town on the meeting date yesterday we received an alert this was
dated December 28th yesterday yesterday we received an alert concerning the
change of zoning requests for property adjacent to the railroad tracks we live
at the corner of Marshall and Hampton and we are within 500 feet of the
property in question we have lived here for 42 years the project name is
Worthington track truck port we will refer to it as truck port we drove to
the location and realize it is a truck port with well over a hundred trucks in
three block in a three block area there are also 50 truck garages additional
rented to various customers to truck maintenance why we didn't want to
increase the truck traffic on University I think this is the really big important
paragraph right here why would didn't want to increase the truck traffic on
University Drive less than a mile from razor ranch and growing commercial
properties such as Cavender's and Duluth Trading Company there are five hotels
within a thousand feet of the truck port and we wonder if that would be a good
neighbor for the hotels two weeks ago I and my family were involved in a
collision eastbound on University Drive when an 18-wheeler moved from the center
lane and collided with our car he was wanting to turn left onto Mesa Drive
which this is what we're talking about his insurance is paying for the car
damage but has been great it has been much worse than property damage please
drive out to University Drive to Mesa and see the truck port also try to turn
into in or out of the quick trip and you will see what our concern is about
traffic in that location Ranch Estates is a popular residential neighborhood
please keep it safe safety that safety would not include a truck port between
us and the rest didn't thank you for reading that I do not have any other
cards but this is public hearing so if anyone's wishing to speak you may
certainly do so by stepping forward and if you could just state your name and
address for the record
my name is Paul Carr I live on three eight zero five Hampton Road now our
home is probably not the oldest home out there but I think I am probably the
oldest person out there with except my wife was six years older than not six
months older than I am she turned 85 so we built a home in 1972 because we were
enamored with the space we were we were looking for a place that had some some
room for our children to grow we raised a family out there two daughters and a
son who have now gone on two of the daughters still live in Denton our son
chose the Navy route and is in the DC area you know I know this particular
agenda item here doesn't really deal with what I came out here to understand
was going to talk about and that was a Windsor Road I can't see any need for
another road and access into Ranch Estates especially one from the east
from an industrial area because I can visualize what's going to happen if that
happens as I say I'm on Hampton Road and that would be a disaster for us and for
I think probably at least eight or ten other homes on the Hampton area which is
not it's not good the other thing though that I do really am concerned about is
drainage from this new property I don't know if you all remember but several
years ago there was a company who wanted to put several manufactured I wanted to
build manufactured homes up in about the same area that we're talking about here
there was a study made I think probably by your previous members of the count of
the group here and they decided that no that would not be a good idea because of
the drainage problem presented by all the concrete up there I can't see
anything but concrete with this facility so I would implore upon you to please
look at that aspect because if it once was determined that drainage is a
problem I can not see that's been changed I can only see it being hindered
with this thank you is there anyone else who's wishing to speak on this item
Christian Smith thank you chair cast out question miss beset Amy is pervious
surface correct yes and the developer have an idea of the making pervious
surface by the way I put up gravel what kind of pervious surface of the yes I
Lee Allison is our engineer on this project and he can speak more
specifically to it I believe he's still here and but it's a flex base so it
would not be gravel per se but it would be pervious there's a small if you look
at the at the concept plan that's in front of you the area shaded in yellow is
all that would be concrete and impervious that is correct okay if I could ask mr.
Allison just to come down and just describe pervious surfaces for a quick
second just to hopefully dispel the drainage issue we're worried about good
evening Lee Allison without engineering group 2154 North Elm Street pervious and
impervious a pervious service allows the water to penetrate the surface gravel
grass paved creek things of that nature an impervious surface is very tight such
as concrete or asphalt I think the biggest aspect here particularly with
this site is the existing detention pond I had worked on another project on this
exact same site we're going to put concrete on the whole area and that
detention pond is already designed to accommodate this site fully developed
condition the water does go for example that's where the pond is this area above
this drains around and comes between our pond into here and then our pond
releases and then it goes into the culvert under the railroad and across
then there's a drainage channel here it goes through and somewhere in Rancho
States there's a floodplain most of the water is coming from up above and that's
where the real problem in that and that subdivision is but this detention pond
was designed to accommodate this entire area in yellow fully developed okay
thank you that helped mr. Beck so thank you chair so the water that drains out
of the detention pond goes into an underground culvert no sir it's above
ground it is above ground this little closer but that's a depressed pond right
it goes over ground then it goes through a pipe here underneath the railroad under
the railroad and then it goes into an open stock tank here then when it leaves
the stock tank it comes out into a channel that comes across here and gets
into this floodplain and goes south so it's all above ground though it's not
it's all about there's not a storm sewer system does that flood over does that
handle the water does I have not really studied this area it's a shade it's a
zone maybe Amy can answer that we okay got an attention because that's a
legitimate concern I was thinking it was underground but it's above ground yeah
can this can these I can pull up the floodplain map and kind of show you how
the water trap is a little bit if we could hold the audience counts back so
let the applicant and then if we have questions we can pull you back down to
the mic
okay maybe I just hit the wrong one okay
maybe I can't pull up the floodplain now before you but let me just give you kind
of a general and the the area above ranch estates you'll see there's a pond
up there and the floodplain cuts through that pond and down through ranch estates
right basically through the middle can we turn the camera on
okay no you're right so you can see that it is and it comes from the north and
comes down through the middle of the neighborhood my understanding from our
neighborhood meeting is that the pond that is north of ranch estates was added
sometime in the last few years and the intent of that pond was to control the
flooding of ranch estates and we heard from the neighbors that it has been
improved since that point in time and that our site and as Lee has mentioned
has a regional detention on it that's intended to hold enough water that if we
paved that entire site it still would not cause flooding issues and we intend
to only pave a very small percentage of it does that does that help address that
yeah it really is gonna depend upon what kind of rainfall we have whether it
floods or not they're in the floodplain so it's always a risk that there's okay
you said the applicant is here too that we can talk about the trucks I do yes
the developer and owner are here okay and come down and speak about the the
policies related to the truck parking with with the chairs permission floors
yours thank you chair the question I'd asked earlier about trucks parking there
and leaving their engines running can you address that yeah this this property
we as she stated own the current truck ports property we manage the property
ourselves those are rented to some of them are rented to a company that has a
facility right across the street the parking spaces are in it some of the
parking some of the truck parking spaces right at the rear portion of our
project okay are rented to that company and then and they just stack trucks in
there that are staged for work at their other facility and then they maybe go
back there before they're sent to haul some are rented to individual truck
drivers who live in live in or near Denton and they can't park those trucks
at their home right and so they they leave a vehicle parked there they come
there they park the truck and leave in their their vehicles until they have
another truck to another route to go on often times they aren't even hauling a
trailer it's just the track of portion of the so the norm is that there can you
please say your name sorry Alex pain I'm the owner of access realty group also
one of the owners of this property and at Northbridge management is our is our
management arm that manages the property thank you chair for bringing it out so
there is there an issue then with motors running mostly we don't I mean I don't
know that we specifically have anything that states they can't can or can't stay
in the property I don't think we've found it to be an issue it's not a truck
it's not a truck stop or you might find trucks leaving them they're running and
sleeping in there we've never heard that that's being done on our property would
there be any consideration on your part to make sure this didn't happen when they
open this up I don't want to put any restrictions on you but yeah I mean we'd
certainly be willing to put something in our lease that these can't leave in
general yeah you don't you don't stay there overnight or leave them it running
for extended period of time I mean that's a that's a management issue that
we'd be willing to add I don't know if that's a zoning related matter but okay
just thought I'd bring it up to because there's a little ginger here okay well
thank you sir yeah real quick Alex while you're up here I have two questions that
I don't think have been answered is is the operation at 24-hour come and go or
is it gated at what's the hours of operation there's a gate and I'm sure
that our clients have the right to come and go at any hour of the night just
because of the nature of their business if they are individual truck drivers they
may get in from a long haul you know at four in the morning and so I don't think
that we could restrict that but it's not I think some of the concerns that I've
heard about the noise and and lighting are from our neighbor to our south
which is Ed's Co. manufacturing and they run three shifts in a day and do keep
late hours and I have heard that you can create some loud boom but it's also
zoned heavy industrial our properties zone light or what we're requesting is
light industrial and and that's really only if only an issue that we were
requesting that zoning because it's we could go build a commercial parking lot
there with our current zoning that's an allowable allowable use to operate a
commercial parking lot the reason that we requested a zoning change is because
we can do it in the form where it's a storage use and not have to require us
to build to make the site 100% concrete we want to put pervious surface there
it's more economical for us and then it also improves our drainage and so we
could operate a concrete commercial parking lot there because we have one
now and we could build we could you know the current zoning allows for 24
operations such as a hotel as you can see that those exist to our to our East
that so we're not proposing those types of uses that actually would impact more
their neighborhood work because some of the folks that came to our neighborhood
meeting said well here's what I can see and they're showing me pictures which I
saw a three-story hotel you could see a clip of one of our buildings but this
site to the north which is really the site in question that site is I just
measured it's from the back edge of where we're going to develop to the
nearest neighbor it's about 650 feet away and so I just really feel like with
that and our you know proposed buffer there's gonna be very limited impact
whatsoever on the neighborhood the other question I had is based on the current
operations and the future is the expectation that all exiting traffic
would just go out Schuller to the the access road there I mean that's the
that's the straightest distance and easiest route to get to I-35 if I'm a if
I'm a truck driver unless I'm going westbound on 380 I wouldn't see any
reason to go down Mesa Road even still I might still go out to Schuller to the
service road just because it's an easier an easier shot as far as speaking to the
the concerns about connectivity you have to understand sometimes mobility plans
get created and they're just very simple let me just draw the quickest route
between A and B and they don't really take into account existing conditions if
you were to align our road to tie into Hampton Road or to align Windsor Road
where they would propose it to come over and get down to Hampton Road which I
don't know that's to me is news to us it benefits us in no way no one from our
ownership group said we were in support of that and so it just really doesn't
it doesn't make or break our project whatsoever again it's all it's news to
us the before it to do that it would have to cut through our detention bond
you know in order to do that I don't think they would I don't think they
would want to actually construct it in that way and so you know I really think
it's a non-issue there I appreciate the response and as we just saw from the
previous item that mobility plan is changeable Hickory Creek looks to be
changing as of this evening we do have this looks like one more question
Mr. Sanchez and you do have trucks already parked there in the back right
yes so that's that's how many trucks 50 50 there's 50 spaces 50 spaces and if I
if I remember correctly there was also some trucks already parked in that lot
yeah so that we don't own that lot the current property owner I think made a
deal with one of the guys across the street to just put some trucks there but
it's it's not something that we're involved with I think it's my
understanding from talking to the property owner that they're terminating
that that arrangement until such time that something gets worked out I guess I
guess my thinking is I mean 50 trucks I've already been there and I don't know
how long they've been there but they've been you know people have been coming in
dropping them off and I don't know how how what impact has had on on the
neighbors but it isn't it's already been there that use has already been there
right so I don't I guess my point is there hadn't been that much noise or
whatever as since nobody has been called or reported of we've never heard from
anyone yeah of that issue being that being an issue yeah I'd like to just add
if you know I think time to rebut some concerns or questions but I think there
was someone that mentioned Margie mentioned a restricting an electrical
substation we'd certainly be okay with that I mean we have no obviously no
desire to do that so we would we would restrict that use no problem let's see
I think I hit on I think I really hit on most of the items and I don't want to
reiterate but that the drainage is over improved for what we're doing and so I
really hope that I do understand their concern between the between the pond
that was pointed out to the north of that subdivision to that subdivision I
think has improved as well as the widening of 380 there was a bridge there
that created a kind of a stop damn and that when that bridge was widened I
think that's alleviated some of the backup that can occur into their
neighborhood so I mean I I would expect that maybe things are better I don't know
I don't live there but I can assure you that we have no intent of of making I
know the issue worse and quite frankly state law prevents us from doing so and
just to just to speak to the neighborhood I'm a local business owner
a resident of Denton my business is in downtown Denton we do quality we try to
do quality work work on quality projects and not be someone that's just going to
come in and and do something in this town to make a quick buck and exit we
want to be able to see these folks that you know these meetings or at the
restaurants and just say hey we want to be good neighbors and so I really would
would urge you to support our plan which is just you know trying to in some ways
improve and get things that really shouldn't be imposing on neighborhoods
there's a there's a trucker that parks on on 377 across from my neighborhood go
heading towards Argyle he leaves his truck park there on textile right away
you know leave his car there's doing I don't know how he gets away with it but
these guys have to have somewhere to leave their trucks and they kind of put
them anywhere they can and unless these kinds of facilities exist for them and
so anyway if there's no other questions I do not see thank you Julie I have a
couple questions for you first is more confirmation when this comes back for
preliminary final platting they will have to meet the city's requirement for
drainage and attention of water to what their plans develop so they cannot
develop unless they meet all technical specs to make sure any drainage impact
they have is considered by them correct yes sir it will be reviewed by your
engineering department and make sure that it meets all of engineering found
that based on the development there's an overflow into that that culvert under
the railroad that would have to be fixed before building absolutely okay and then
the other question I had is this question I'm gonna just ask for an
educated guess the Windsor extension we are 15 years out 20 years out will it
ever happen I don't know what the timeline is but I talked to our I talked
to Preetam our transportation engineer about where that was gonna connect so
here's Windsor here and of course my map doesn't provide me with so Mosh branch
is about in this location right here it's intended to actually connect with
Mosh branch or track to the north so it is not intended or planned to connect
with Hampton so so hopefully that helps answer that question I just I don't know
what the timing is on it I didn't expect you to but I kind of wishful thinking
yeah I think yeah as Richard said not anytime in the near future because you
have to expand 30 that it's a mess that's all I have I don't see any other
questions at this point and I want to this time officially close the public
hearing kind of extended that a little bit and with that I will open up the
dais to a motion or discussion Commissioner Smith I'm gonna move to
approve this item it looks pretty clear that exits would be toward to Shuler and
then on to the exit to the access ramp from there the future land use map fits
fits the suitability for this we know that the with the city code for site
plan and final plotting that the the light pollution and the drainage items
would be addressed so I have I've got nothing to even point out that could
possibly hold against the applicant before this project no matter when the
windage is developed it's not it's not their responsibility and then I do feel
for you guys in the neighborhood I really do it's you know the the traffic
issues you guys have a 3d I grew up out at Naylor in 380 so I'm basically like
you but just on the other side of town and I almost got got killed by to my
trucks probably on a weekly basis getting out of Prairie House that area
and so it's just not the applicant's fault and something needs to be done
about it but it's not it's not mr. Payne or mrs. sets responsibility to do it so
I will move to approve it will accept the applicants offer to memorialize a
type-c landscape buffer on the backside of that as well as a point Commissioner
Ellis suggested having a overlay restriction eliminating the use of an
electric substation are you open to a friendly amendment to amend I'll amend
to make my motion to approve the me approve the item with the type-c
landscape buffer on the backside per the applicants requests as well as remove
the electric substations per Commissioner Ellis's request thank you we
have a first customer back second and I'd like an opportunity to lay out my
reasons why and I can do that now or go for it okay yours I again thank you all
for coming down and we do empathize with what you're going through there I've
been here since 74 and I remember when raised ranch and what was the school
that was out there was pretty much all the yeah so and thank you was pretty
much all there was out there and I feel for ranch estates now because it is
located in an area where it's changing and not necessarily to y'all's benefit
and so we're gonna be doing battles with developers to help protect that
because it is an area that's been here a while needs to stay there needs to be
protected and the PNC is gonna make sure that it it doesn't get encroached upon
to the point where it's hazardous but the issues that y'all pointed out the
drainage the lights and noise and Windsor Road those are all things not
associated with this applicant or this developer those are totally different
things and attached to them and so it's hard to hold them accountable for that I
would recommend that issues where trucks are driving into raise a ranch and the
light issue with that one 24/7 three three shift that you get with proper city
people and complain because there's room for that they could probably put up some
signs to discourage any kind of trailer tractor to come down Hampton Road down
there how much that help I don't know but I'm gonna have to go along with this
too that area was zoned for this type of thing and it's been that way for a while
so thanks Chris Ellis thank you chair just a couple quick comments thank you
all for for sharing your concerns and your concerns are valid the request on
the table is reasonable for what already exists in the zoning that's currently on
the property and what's currently happening with the property it doesn't
mean your concerns are not valid and I will bring something up in concluding
items so we can get some of your mobile mobility questions answered so thank you
all for wasting your concern Commissioner Sanchez yes I would also like to thank
you for for expressing your concerns because because of the rest that when
you drive up Mesa Drive in that whole area it's already pretty well developed
and when I was looking at it I didn't see a whole lot of issues I also went
into your into the area into your neighborhood to see what it looked like
and as Mr. Payne said I did see just the tops of his warehouses and so there is
some other buildings there that you know kind of sorers you know sore on the eyes
but but his his buildings as I as I looked out that direction I didn't they
weren't that prominent because of the railroad track so I'm gonna voting I'm
gonna vote for it and but I'd just like to say that I understand your concerns
noise pollution but then I also saw the railroad track there and I thought wow
that's you know that's a lot of noise so thank you so first and a second the
only points I would make is I used to live at Selwyn strangely enough my best
friend through high school lived on Lariat and so I was in Rancho States
every weekend and so I think it's a it's a kind of a hidden gem of our city
that's often forgotten because of its isolation but I appreciate all coming out
and fighting for the character and the values of it it seems appropriate
across the railroad tracks to have the the current use be expanded by by a lot
so I'm before it however still I'm interested in commissioners all this
mobility thoughts on on what she has to say about making sure that major
thoroughfares and great access to your neighborhood is still protected from the
north but to Commissioner Beck's point 380 is a disservice to that neighborhood
and I don't know what the solution is there it's it's text dot related but I
wish you the best and fighting for for some better safety there with that
because we have a first and a second for approval of this I will call for a vote
on the board
motion carries 6-0 with one recusal congratulations at this time I'll
invite Commissioner Cole back in for concluding item if he is in the hallway
and can hear me if not can someone's peek out Christian backer someone
the next item for business is our plan and zoning project matrix I'm going to
first turn it over to Richard and then Commissioner Ellis is on the board
sorry just touch on a couple items as our list is whittling whittling down we
have Roman slated to come next meeting if you remember we had moved that I
think you had requested it so we want to make sure you were your tenants for
that I'm trying to get pre-tim here on information on roundabouts it sounds
like we may want to maybe perhaps broaden that and so I'll talk to him
about I know we had him talk in one instance on transportation we may want
to just round that out no pun intended and and and and push that date I'd like
to I know we had the already 5x conversation geared more towards kind of
out where we were just talking out west of University I think it might be more
beneficial if we really look at this holistically and and start to talk about
what what areas we should really look at as being maintaining rural and just
looking at it maybe a little bit differently but also in conjunction with
the annexation process if you remember we had the Creekside pre annexation I
think it was the first one the city ever did and I know when that rezoning came
here you know a number of the commissioners felt sort of backed into
the corner of hey we really never had any say in this we are getting more of
these now coming in these requests in one regard at least my opinion is I
think it's it's nice because we kind of know what to expect rather than having
these large parcels annexed into the city and then we get into these big
battles so at least we can kind of know up front and also plan and and look at
what those future impacts can be even before we would agree to even annex these
properties and so I'd kind of like to frame that conversation in that regard
the only other I wanted to mention I know I know we've talked about it with
Denton ISD and we're starting to include some of those if you notice at
least in this this the items tonight we included the student generation numbers
Julie did reach out to to ISD and requested that they attend maybe one of
our work sessions and just talk about how they how they calculate student
generation rates and sort of some of their expansion plans and so I know they
have a consultant a system with that so Julie's sort of handling that she's sort
of the the the ISD liaison at least in our department so I just wanted to let
you know that that's kind of in the works and one other item because I know
we had a couple of rezoning tonight one of the items that that we that was
brought up last night at council was was having a looking at a cost benefit
analysis as part of these rezoning applications and so just sort of kind of
a prelude to that you know that's something we'll we're trying to again
build on what we have now a lot of this I think once we get the the DDC update
there's gonna be a number of things changed with respect to just the two
criteria that we have now for rezoning making sure we look at it a little bit
more broader and and provide a little bit more of a thorough analysis again
making sure we're doing what's what we're required to do with it within the
code and so you'll start to see that and one thing we've been really trying to
push is making sure we get more to that capacity to serve so we really have an
idea of what what they're what they're producing or what we're what they're
taking whether it's generating sewer water and whether or not we have that
capacity and where we're heading so that's kind of just where we're heading
down the line because I know that was one of the concerns from from that first
item but that was all ahead awesome thanks for the update Christian Alice thank
you chair okay so in light of some discussion today can can I request that
the city maybe reach out to Ranch Estates and plan a meeting about future mobility
through there when I looked up the map earlier you know well we were having the
discussion I mean clearly there is a plan for some of the roads in there to
connect and reach out to 35 I think it would benefit greatly if the city was
proactive with that you know vocal group of the community and give them some kind
of information about what what that future is please then as far as stuff
for us also in light of conversation today can we get a emailed copy of
current capital improvements happening right now I know it's been a while but
we've had a list of roads that you know are on the plan or currently under
construction currently being what have you it's been a long time since we've
seen an update like that so that's one request and then in the near future can
we get maybe engineering in one of our work sessions to discuss what is
upcoming with road improvements you know I don't know how that can be done I know
we kind of touched on that but I just I just want facts like hey this is what's
coming down the pike in the next five years you know this has been approved or
you know just some kind of a list we can have so because this is going to come up
again it comes up every time and I just don't think we have the working
knowledge of what engineering has right and and I think that was sort of that
first step even that the Sherman the Sherman study that we did where rather
than engineering off doing their analysis we're doing our analysis where
we actually it's kind of nice we're working together and starter start
out starting planning and really sitting down and saying you know how do we want
this area to develop it is it's a it's a fresh piece of paper to start on but
that might take a little time but yes but also I mean it's we definitely have
there's things in the future works we just need to know about them okay thanks
Christian back thank you chair and maybe we need an update on the mobility
plan - I think the last time we had is when Andrew and I first joined the PNC so
a lot of members haven't I've got an old map of that that shows everything and
some of that's probably changed so it would be good if we were all updated on
that so when we get confronted with these kind of issues like Windsor will
be a little bit more on top so maybe a presentation on the mobility plan yeah
because what what they're what they're really looking at is really I'm kind of
going back to this master thoroughfare plan part of that if you remember the
the updates to the criteria manual not this last one the last year's where they
changed the the right-of-way sections and really went to more context sensitive
design and so rather than having a bike plan over here this mobility plan here
really bringing those under the under the umbrella of one of one plan and so I
think you'll see things are starting it's kind of exciting they're starting to
come together so we're looking at updating this master thoroughfare plan
in addition to that there there's parks has a study going out or a plan for for
planting trees within rights away and within so all of that will sort of mesh
together and so as as this is as it's starting to move forward I'll just make
sure each of those respective plans or the progress of them are brought to
brought to brought to the Commission I'll include it on the list so it's on
there and we know that just have the mobility part of it at the top of the
list that'd be appreciate thanks Richard have a couple things first maybe as a
sort of praise for the city thank you Julie and Haley y'all do great
presentations and they're clear and they're easy to follow you set the
standard for those presentations every time I see all his name I'm thinking
okay this is gonna make sense to me so thank you with that some developers
present better Lee Allison always has great presentations and I would I'm
curious about how that can be more often the case I don't know if the city preps
them for that presentation or anything like that it's helpful maybe he's just a
better salesman and maybe he should just stick that maybe that's how he gets
business I don't know maybe he doesn't want to sell his secrets but it's tough
when when Julie and Lee are on a project to deny that because they're just so
thoughtful so thank you for that with that the new slides look great I don't
know I think City Council is the one who made that happen but the new slides I
noticed they look good and they're easy to refer to so that's awesome
lastly I really appreciate Richard I'm gonna put credit to you but it's probably
and honestly your staff is with you but the matrix we had it four pages at one
point having it down to five items is awesome it's super helpful and having
the I know to provide economic impact for like financial viability of projects
is former chairs strange lifelong endeavor it never happened I'm sure
there's a lot of work to do that but I think that would really go a long way and
trying to assess these projects and and really the benefit to the city that
they're bringing so I affirm continuing that work to get that on there and with
that can I formally request your idea of DISD coming to present if we can get
that on the matrix let's let's have that as a target and then the two things
actually have questions about is one are they allowed to read a letter on behalf
of someone else if they've already spoke I don't know the rules on that it didn't
seem like a big deal tonight but I don't know okay not the answer I was wanting
the other question I have and this is kind of the elephant in the room for me
is the rural flum area of the Northeast Denton is I think just gonna be a
continual combative area and so I don't know if if we just wait to the DDC
rewrite comes out I don't know if it's way there's a way to rush a new future
land use map into iteration but me as a commissioner I want as you said it's a
blank paper let's steward that really well and I think having this cast of
rural is not helpful the development department it seems because it's not
going to be future land use they have to have these seven criterias and I just
really like to examine and highlight and how we as a commission can get into I
know the work that that Larry and Margie are doing on the subcommittee but is
there any opportunity for the commission to get involved to really start helping
plan that corridor I'm not expecting an answer but I'm gonna pose that and put
out in the ether for conversation let me think it through maybe it's it's late
because I'm gonna regret tomorrow but the thought came to me you know we've
we've typically have used small area plans for for neighborhoods sort of in
town this might be something that we want to consider moving outside of the
down you know typically where we look at small area plans and really kind of
moving it out of the outside of the loop because there might be there might be a
benefit of of having a growth boundary I mean that some cities do that and making
sure that we preserve what once you once it's gone it's gone right but that's
really more of a policy policy discussion but I think I don't have a
problem coming back at you know in a work session in in in a couple meetings
and just kind of going back through with what a small area plan is I mean if you
look at the comprehensive plan and you'll kind of look at that appendix in
the back it lays out kind of the criteria for for the small area plan and
it's just that where the comp plan is kind of this broad policy document
guiding and if you really want to dig deeper dive a little deeper that's kind
of them that's kind of the tool to do it so if we want to look at it and
incorporate drainage transportation and all the above it's kind of that's kind
of go back I think it's you know rather than just responding and reacting to
zoning actually doing some planning and so that's something I think we can put
together and just come back at least for a discussion if that if that that works
I would appreciate that I'll add it to the matrix that's acceptable I see no
objections so that's a unanimous consent so I see no any another talking points
for the matrix with that I will close this meeting at 1039