Jan 10, 2024 Planning and Zoning Commission on 2024-01-10 5:30 PM

>> Good afternoon and welcome to the city planning and zoning commission meeting for Wednesday, January 10, 2024. This is our work session and with a quorum present I will call us to order at 5.35 p.m. First item on our agenda for work session is citizen comment on consent agenda items. I do not see anyone here for that so we'll move to clarification of tonight's agenda. First is the minutes from December 13. Any questions on that? I did talk with Kathy. There was one catch, the recess timing, the vote and the recess were flipped but she's gone ahead and corrected that so I just want to make you all aware of that. Okay. Consent agenda. We've got two items on consent. Is there any questions on that? Okay. Questions for individual consideration. We've got elect chair and vice chair again for the commission. Questions? Discussions? No? Okay. Next is 4B, I'm going to go ahead and ask me to come up and give us our summary on that one, FP230036. Hello there. Good evening, chair, members of the commission, Mia Hines, associate planner. This item is a final plan for Denton West Joint Venture which is approximately 13 acre property located at the northwest corner of Ryan Road and Teasley Lane. At this time the plan does not meet all of our criteria for approval so staff is recommended denial however we have no objection to the requested extension which in this case would be granted to January 24, 2024. Any questions? Thanks Mia. Any questions? Okay. Appreciate it. Thank you. That's our very short suite agenda. So we will go to our work session report then for this afternoon. It's 3A, PZ23-221, receive a report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding updates to our criteria manuals. Hello there. Hello. Welcome, thank you commissioners for having me this afternoon or this evening. I am Brett Bourgeois, the deputy city engineer here at the city of Denton and I am going back again this year to present the updates to our criteria manuals. So a little bit of an agenda for the presentation. We're going to talk about our public outreach plan, a little bit of background about the criteria manuals and the process going through this year, talk about some highlights of the changes that we've made to the different criteria manuals and what our next steps are going forward. And this is a very technical document so we have technical experts on all the different areas here in attendance to answer any questions that you may have. So our plan that we have this year got shifted a little bit, got a little bit delayed, but we started with a developer town hall in September where we proposed the, we presented the proposed changes to the development community to receive feedback from them, we published the updated document online in November, solicited public comments from the community, from the engineering firms, anybody that could access it. We presented to the Texas Society of Professional Engineers in November and showed them all the changes we wanted to make and received comments from them. Now we are here today at the planning and zoning commission and then we go to the public utilities board, or sorry, take that back. On Saturday it gets published in the Denton Record Chronicle, the notice for the public hearing and the newspaper on Sunday. And then we also have the public utilities board later this month prior to going to city council in February and the plan adoption or plan effective date on March 1st. So this is our annual updates, we've been doing this now for a couple years. This was a very big update that we did. If you review the document, it's now one document instead of four or five separate documents. That was a big change that we did. We decided to combine everything into one, simplify it, mirror what we have in the DDC, make it a more cohesive document where we have one introduction, one set of definitions, one set of policies, one set of procedures, and that's kind of the big goal of this year's update. Compared to last year, what we did this year, is that last year we had some very large discussions over several months with all the city departments and representatives from all the departments. This year we found that was a not the most efficient way to do it, where we had lots of people that were not, did not need to be involved in the conversation and it was taken up a lot of time. So this year we identified key stakeholders in each of the key categories, key departments. We knew areas that we didn't get to address from last year. We had tackled those, we knew changes that we wanted to make going into this year. We tackled those. Once we made all the major updates, we then got all the departments together, showed them what we were proposing, what we were thinking, to have a discussion, easier to have a discussion of proposed changes than asking a group of people of what do you want to do. So we took a different approach this year. We found it to be a lot more efficient for the city time-wise, it's a little bit more labor intensive for the individuals having to spearhead each different section, but it was, I think, a more successful process overall. So once we got all that done, we sent it out for public comment in November, it's been online ever since. We have, we've officially announced that we had closed receiving the comments in end of November. We're still receiving comments, we don't receive too many, most of them are from internal staff that want to make additional changes as they do further reviews of it. So we're addressing all those comments the best we can. We've done a series of public outreaches. This is part of it, newspaper publication, and then we're going to go to city council in February. So kind of a quick overview of it, with the Denton Development Code, that kind of sets the policies, the procedures, kind of the guiding document for the city, the criteria manuals or the technical document for the city. That tells you how to design, what the requirements are we're looking for in the designs, looking for to meet the, what the city needs in terms of infrastructure and the requirements. Just up down from that, we have the specifications that tell you, okay, you want to put in pipe, this is the type of pipe we need, this specific one, or this type of valves, or this type of asphalt we want, this is how you compact it and how you utilize it. And then the standard details show you this is what it's supposed to look like to be connected, how the connections are supposed to look, how the roadway cross sections are supposed to look. Just typical sections, we know that there's always variations to it based on existing conditions or site constraints, but those are typical sections to get people working in the right direction. This is another slide kind of showing the hierarchy within different documents, so it kind of goes down, works its way down. Now back to the actual updates themselves. For the solid waste updates this year, the big one was, one of the big ones was we had a, the container enclosure requirements was a very large table, and the feedback that the solid waste folks received was a confusing and hard to decipher their container requirements. So they revised that table this year to make it simpler and easier for developers and folks to understand and interpret. We've also provided details or information on the routing of the solid waste vehicles through the different communities and through the different areas. Require a minimum 30 foot turn radius for the vehicles and a 50 foot clearance space in front of the container enclosures to be able to access them. And one of the things we actually had to add was that you cannot put parking spaces around the swing gates of the containers. People had parking spaces parked there, they cannot open the gates up to get to the containers because the vehicles were blocking them. So we said, we put in requirements in there, changed the details saying you cannot park around the gates. Over to the stormwater design criteria, this one actually probably had the biggest set of changes to it. The big one is the first one is that we are now requiring, or sorry, we are recommending that the stormwater runoff developments over one acre in size have, does an 80% capture other total suspended solids of their stormwater. This puts us in compliance with iSwim, it's a recommendation through iSwim. We are wanting to make this requirement next year, we want to, we discussed internally, do kind of a recommendation rollout before we do a full adoption of it. And the reason we're going this route is because the EPA, as they update their standards, is going to make this a requirement that everybody has to get on board where they like it or not. So we are already going in that direction where we need to limit the stormwater, the pollutants or the suspended solids out of the stormwater going forward. We also decided that we need to implement a stormwater facility maintenance agreement. So we have a lot of private detention ponds, underground detention ponds, underground storage, different things that developments install that they're responsible for, but there's no way to make them do it. So what happens is that we get a heavy rain event, they call the city manager, we go out and we fix it, we maintain it, but we have detention ponds that are not being maintained that are no longer functioning as flood control features. They have vegetation growing on them, we have debris in them, they're not adequately being taken care of and it's additional costs on the city and a lot of times we don't have right of entry or access to those because they're in private properties. So this is in alignment with a lot of the other cities in the metros. I know Fort Worth, we use Fort Worth as a go buy for this where they require developers to sign off an agreement saying we're installing this, we agree to maintain it, we agree to keep records of it, we have an O&M manual for it, etc. So we put that into this year's criteria manual as well. Another one that we added is that when you look at a site, the site naturally drains at different outfalls or different kind of mini drainage basins. So when they develop a site, they're required or you're supposed to keep your drainage going to the same site. So if your site, half of it drains to the east and half of it drains to the west, you don't want to take that east side and dump it over to the west side because then that messes up all the drainage further downstream. You can do that and we added that, you can do that but you have to do a timing study to see if that additional flow is going to cause downstream flooding. So we can allow it, just got to show that it's not going to cause problems. Before we didn't have that requirement so people could drain differently on their sites and we had no way of knowing if we're accidentally causing flooding somewhere else. The last one is that we also added guidance as to what is an adverse impact to communities downstream. It wasn't defined. So we said okay, well you cannot raise the flood level downstream of you, it's got to be zero. So we defined as to what is adverse impact because the floor is very vague, it just led room for interpretation. People would argue, well it's only a quarter of a foot or a tenth of a foot, well you're raising the water and somebody else's property by a tenth of a foot, that's an adverse impact to them. So no matter how small it is, we defined what it is that's acceptable and not acceptable. For the-- >> Can I stop you right there? >> Yes. >> I just want to see if anyone's got questions of the two he's presented so far. Commissioner Pruitt. >> Thank you Chair. And for new members, this is one of my favorite days of the year. I will try to be kind and nice. I think you answered one of my questions already. It sounded like the 80% requirement is a recommendation but not a requirement in I-SWIM and so that's why it-- that's why us requiring I-SWIM standards previously did not put that into play as well, right? >> Correct, yeah. So we are-- we generally follow I-SWIM but in this situation we did not explicitly say you need to do the 80% reduction in suspended solids. Now we're saying we recommend you do this and we've told the development community that this is going to be-- we want to move this forward next year to be a requirement and there's like I think 28 different I-SWIM mitigation measures on how to reduce total suspended solids. So it's not something that's new rocket science, it's available, there's lots of options to choose from to whatever fits their site. >> Yeah, okay. One thing I haven't seen in here or elsewhere is sort of the opportunity for regional flood control systems to make it easier for, you know, smaller infill parcels to be developed where entire entrapment or catchment of it within a small parcel might be prohibitively expensive. Is that something we're looking into or other thoughts along those lines? >> So for a regional detention facility, that'd be a capital project, it wouldn't be something the developer would want to put in because it's not benefiting just that one development, it's benefiting a large portion of the community or the city. So we do have one regional detention pond that's going in right now, we do have plans approved as part of the 2023 bond that went through for another regional detention pond to go in. We're actually discussing with one of the developments, Hunter Ranch is discussing putting a regional detention pond in for their development. So we are working on that direction. I don't think, I don't know if Mike can speak more to it, but we don't have any defined criteria. It's just basically taking the local detention pond and sizing it, and so we're looking at those types of requirements. >> And then a couple things on solid waste, I don't remember if it was last year or two years ago, there was an increase from 10 feet wide up to 13 feet for single enclosures, and it looks like this year they're going from 10 feet deep to 11 and a half feet deep. So that's, we've gone from basically 100 square feet to 150 square feet in two years. That seems like a short time period to say, hey, we need bigger enclosure. Are the dumpsters getting bigger? Are the, I just don't understand why there's so much of a change within a short time period, if that makes sense. >> Yeah, Adrian can actually answer that. I believe it's to do with the bollards that are required to go in front of it, where we don't account for the width of the bollard to be installed, so it actually took away a half a foot of our dumpster size, enclosure size. >> Yeah, Adrian Hill, Solid Waste Operations Manager. The reason we added that extra foot to the back, the rear of that enclosure, is because everybody's putting that decorative brick around it. So every time we're catching it with the lid of the dumpster, and we're tearing up the enclosure. >> Okay, just on the top of it, because the lid is stopping around. >> We added that foot so we can scoot that bollard a little bit further away from the back of that wall, so that the lid doesn't catch it. >> Okay, thank you. >> The reason we went wider on the enclosure is because the way they're building the trucks now, they're putting the hydraulic lines on the outside, instead of inside of the... >> Yeah, I do recall that. Everything's bigger in Texas, so pretty soon we'll be driving our houses around. And then I noticed in the language on the table, it now stipulates front load, but I've seen language in the past about side load enclosures. Is that just because we want to require front load going forward? >> Yeah, that's correct. I think to keep up with the older part of Ditten, they currently have side loads. As we go forward, we want to keep everything front load, just standard on sizes. >> Okay. All right, thank you. >> Yeah. >> Anybody else on the two we've discussed so far? Okay. Thank you. >> Yep, thank you. All right, so for the transportation criteria manual, unfortunately this year we were very short staffed on the transportation side. We do have more transportation staff now, so expect more of a technical improvement next year in the criteria manual. For this year, we basically went through and we reorganized it. The transportation criteria manual historically has been kind of our, I called it our Frankenstein document, where every time we needed something, we just added to the bottom of the document, just added to the bottom of the document, so it didn't actually have any logical coherence in terms of the way that you read it and applied the criteria, it was kind of all over the place. So we spent a lot of time reorganizing and restructuring the document, so as a designer or an engineer or a developer, you'll follow it, you'll follow the steps appropriately, so it makes it easier to actually implement. Some of the things that we did change to it though are things that we did know about. One of them is, we actually had a developer come forward with us about this, is when you have a roadway, a roadway's crowned, so it's got a high point in the middle and low points on the sides, so that comes down, and then to get up the driveway, we have a requirement for a driveway slope, but the change in that slope was not mathematically possible to meet based on the housing foundations, so we had a developer come to us and say, "All your houses you're approving are not meeting your criteria, so you need to address this." And so we actually, so we went back and ran the numbers, oh yeah, once you actually run all these numbers out, we can't make it work, so we did address that and we changed their slope requirements to allow that transition to happen, to make it all fit. We did add a Q&A analysis for our driveways, our gated entrances and drive-throughs to make sure we're not stacking vehicles back into oncoming traffic, we did put some requirements on turn lanes to consider other types of transportation, trucks, volumes, crashes, because we did not include that, so people are saying, "Well, we're not required to consider these things, we're just required to consider vehicle traffic, not truck traffic or truck stacking." So we had to explicitly say, "No, you have to consider these things also." And then we also put in some information on the separation of driveways, so that was a one that was a very interesting conversation, because what is engineering best practiced when you measure the distance from the intersection to the closest driveway? Some engineers say it's from the center intersection, some say it's from the edge of the right-of-way, some say it's from the edge of the curb, we didn't clarify what it was, and so we decided to go from the back of curb to the closest driveway. And we did that because if you measure from the middle of the intersection, you might have intersections that have three lanes, a right-turn lane, left-turn lane, where you can't be 50 feet. Okay, well, your 50 feet is now right on the edge of the roadway, so we said you got to measure from the edge of the curb to the driveway, so we defined what that distance is that we want to be measuring. And the reason we chose the curb instead of the right-of-way line is that anybody can go out there and see where the curb is and pull a tape off to where the closest driveway is. You might not know where the right-of-way line is because we might have a sidewalk easement, we might have utilities there, so the curb is the most visually easy one to find that anybody can go measure and define it that way. For the water and wastewater criteria manual, the big ones, some of the big ones we had was we did not want to have manholes placed in sidewalks, ramps, driveway approaches. That's not allowed by ADA. It creates a tripping hazard, slipping hazard, and then also when you have to open those manholes, access those areas, you take out the driveway, you take out the sidewalk. It creates problems, so we said, "Can't do that." We provided some additional guidance on the size of the water meters the way it was written before. We had lots of developers questioning or being confused into what water meters are required and what sizes to order, so we corrected that information. We put a minimum requirement, minimum separation of the sewer manholes so the manholes before get pipes literally running up right up against them. We want five feet away so we can actually service the manhole if anything happens and not having to take a utility line out of service. Then we also said that our lift stations need to be able to withstand the 100-year flood instead of the 25-year flood, and that goes along with our FEMA CRS certification, which is our community rating system, where it's critical infrastructure. We want to protect that from failing and flooding at times because you don't want to have sewage flooding and backing up into the system. This year what we did, and we know that the street light criteria manual just got adopted I believe in October this year, well, since we had that little bit of a delay in getting some things sorted out, we actually worked with our DME and rolled in their criteria manual into ours as well. We took their criteria manual as you got adopted in October, added to the overall criteria manual for the city, and here's some of the major highlights of that. So we discussed that any roadways except for residential local streets with a 30-mile per hour less speed limit required to have a lighting study done on them to make sure we have the proper placement and spacing of the lumineers and the lights. Residential roads are going to be spaced every 250 feet, we provide requirements for cul-de-sacs and intersections, and we also discussed what are the approved lumineers and hardware and bolt patterns for the city as well. And one of the things that we added- I have a question. Yes. Sorry. In terms of the recommendations for whatever the materials are, are you guys offering a range of prices for the developers so that some developers that maybe aren't as evolved as others have a range that they can select these within? Mr. Thagan, next time, raise your hand so I can call on you please. Thanks. Sorry. Thank you. Aaron Benyon, engineering supervisor with DME. So to answer your question, Commissioner, we have kept it standardized. Part of that was through discussions with the city manager and also a consideration with inventory because we have to store and maintain supplies for each of these and then also have staff trained on how to replace them. So right now there is one style that's used for major roadways and thoroughfares and one style that's used for new residential developments. There are a couple of styles that are now, I guess you could call them legacy, that we still maintain that have been installed around the city, but we're not installing new. So basically there's a residential light and then there's a regular streetway or roadway light. Any other questions? One of the things that we added this year, so before it was never formally written down and documented, is that we had a variance procedure. We actually changed the name this year to deviations, design deviations. So whenever a developer wasn't able to meet the design requirements within the criteria manual, they had a process so they can submit what their alternative design was, explain why they couldn't meet it, and then it would go to the subject matter experts for review and approval or being denied. So we actually added all of that explanation as to how the whole process works, who reviews it, the required documents that need to be submitted, the whole process for it. So they can design, they can go away from the criteria manual as long as they show that their site is exhibiting some sort of hardship they cannot meet, and that whatever propose that they're doing is not going to detrimentally impact the city or the infrastructure that the city's going to be receiving. So then everything goes through the different subject matter experts to make the determination if they're okay with that deviated design. So we added the whole discussion in here. We included the form for them to fill out and the whole review process if they're not able to reach the answers that they need to get to. I do have a question on that process. Mentioned in there was if it is denied, they can go back, but then I didn't see what the actual process was. Do they go back to who? They go back to the same subject matter experts. They can go back, they can provide additional information and have a meeting discuss as to why they can't do it a certain way or why they need to go some other different direction than what we're recommending or what we want to prove. The goal is not to prevent sites from developing, it's to make sure that sites are developed and that whatever assets the city receives so that the city can maintain and manage and doesn't detriment the community as a whole. So it's just a continued conversation. There's not another body that they go to to appeal or anything like that? Correct. With this one, because we actually had to work with our legal on it, who do you appeal to? Because you're talking a very technical decision by an engineer that has to be reviewed by another engineer and who can you appeal to? You have to appeal to an engineer in that expertise to review it. So there was no real clear appeal process. We had to have that conversation and go, okay, well, we need to just work together and find something that we can all be amenable to. Okay. Understood. Great. Other questions? Commissioner Cole? Thank you, Chair. Okay. Also, as the municipality has grown and expanded, a lot of these big areas have Corps of Engineer flood control, lakes, all that. How's that working with you guys? That relationship, are you now that that's all a lot of that's in the city limits now where it wasn't before? How's that working? Usually we don't encroach on the Corps of Engineer land because they are kind of the big dock on the block and they kind of get their way in terms of their flood control and what they need to have for their green space or their flood control features. So we kind of have to go with what they recommend. We don't have a lot of sway to change what they need, unfortunately. Commissioner Thacker? Thank you, Chairman. You talked a little bit about there not being a formal appeal process at this point. What is done on our behalf in regards to educating the different engineers or in terms of what the document says, where they can find this, that, or the others? Is there any type of, I don't know, I can think of as education process, but where they have some type of retreat where they come in and they're able to kind of go through the document so that they understand it better before executing a plan or executing a project? Yeah, so that's a good question. So this document, what the goal for the city staff is to do is that we do have a review team that reviews all the plans that come in. Our goal is to create a training program to train them on the new process that we have, the new requirements that we're going to do and that we have in this update, and then every project that comes in has a development facilitator associated with them that explains to them the process works, how it works, and then we're always available to answer any questions if they're not understanding something or asking for clarification. We can answer emails, phone calls, we can meet with them, so we have open communication with the developers that come through and their engineers, and a lot of the engineers that we work with are repeat engineers, a lot of the same firms, the same designers, so they're familiar with our criteria manuals and what we're looking for. Anything else, Commissioner Prut? Thank you, Chair. Sounds great. You know, I think we're moving in the right direction with trying to understand some sort of appeal process. You know, we all need to figure out how to make things work, especially in some of the fun areas of town where you've got roads that change names seven times and end up next to where they start, but I will say this is my third year going through this process with planning and zoning, and each of those three years we've been short some team members on the transportation planning and traffic engineer side, so I hope that gets rectified for next year. There is one thing that I saw that I really want to better understand what the impetus for changing that was, and that was the reduction in the TIA distance between the site and the school from a mile and a half to half a mile. I guess I'm not exactly sure what all that entails and why we're looking at reducing that. Good evening. Carina Maldonado, transportation planner. So that was actually to correct an error in language between the DDC. So the DDC is what triggers the requirement for a pedestrian TIA, and that requirement was at a half mile. So when that requirement was triggered, they would then defer to the criteria manual for what all that would include, and when that was included, I think there was just a misunderstanding of the written number, and it was then written as a mile and a half versus a half mile. So it's correcting a discrepancy, continuing the same practice that we've probably been following for the last year anyway, right? Yes. Okay. And then, you know, I'll just say I look forward to future improvements. I think we're growing fast. Stuff is getting built faster than we can stay awake and recognize it, and the importance of where these streets go and what gets built is going to be with us for generations, so thank you. Yeah, and one of the things that we wanted to mention, and like Fred mentioned earlier, is that we've actually received feedback from the development community and the engineering community that we're doing too many updates too quickly. So we want to get these documents to a good stance, we know we're going through a rapid series of updates yearly right now, but once we get them to a point that we're really happy with them, our goal is to scale back and probably do every five-year updates only and accrue a large number of comments and do them at one time, because we're getting comments from developers that they don't know what criteria manual to follow. This one was this way, it's changed to this now, we've got to go back and revise this, and it's causing lots of turmoil within the developers and capital projects and our design team that's trying to keep up with the updates as well. So we're cognizant of that, we understand it's growing fast, that's why we're working very hard to make these documents as best as we can to leave them alone for a while. Thank you, Jeff. Sorry, just one more thing I had forgotten that I had remembered before. Basically on the pedestrian TIAs, I don't have any detailed questions of it, but I guess what I'm wondering is, that's required of a development to understand whether onsite or offsite improvements are required. Do we do a pedestrian TIA in corridors where we have a capital project for a street that the city is building? And the reason I ask that is that right now we have the sort of paint by number sidewalk widths based on the mobility plan color, and it doesn't strike me that that's always exactly what the context needs. So I'm wondering whether in the future a pedestrian TIA for capital projects would make sense to make sure that we're building the right thing, does that make sense? >> Yes, I think I'm following you on that. So on the development side, yes, that's something that's required. I will note that that is still something we're evaluating because we do have to consider the proportionality of what we're asking for. So what we'll consider is that there might be a small infill site that has just triggered a pedestrian TIA. They'll have to hire a traffic consultant and evaluate connectivity when they can't actually do anything about it. So staff is trying to understand that and offer some relief. So for the larger developments on the development side, we do ensure that they have that bike ped analysis as part of their TIA. For the smaller developments, because we cannot enforce that, it's become a little bit too much. So we just ensure that they're complying with their proportional share of sidewalk connectivity per the mobility plan. And so for the second question about capital projects, I do understand that in the past, especially with funding that's very old or tied to a bond, that there might not be the sidewalk connectivity that we desire. There's a little bit more strings attached to it, so it's a little bit harder to go back and kind of fix the past. I can say that for projects moving forward, including the projects that were on the latest bond, that is a priority. Engineering services, capital projects do coordinate with transportation services to ensure that we include the elements as part of the bond that will look at bike ped connectivity. So when we do get to the actual design step, it's an active coordination between groups to make sure that we're getting that context sensitive sidewalk with. Because, of course, what you see on the mobility plan is shared use paths pretty much everywhere. And that just means that those ten foot or greater paths are serving bicycle and pedestrian connectivity. That there might be constraints in terms of ride away width, taking homes, existing lane width. So we do look at the context, we do look at is it more appropriate for on street bike and a smaller sidewalk? Is it near downtown so it needs to be wider? Those are things we are considering in capital projects is including that. So the answer to that is yes, we're looking at it. I think there was a third question related to which colors what or what are we doing? >> No, no, the colors was just to drive home the point of that was, when I read the documents, that's what tells me how wide the sidewalk should be. >> Yeah, and we will be bringing that item specifically back to the mobility committee because that has also come up in that board or that commission. And so we'll have some more discussion on that as about the context of a roadway and what to use. >> Sounds great, thank you very much. >> And thanks for all the work on this. >> All right, so to kind of go back over the next steps, like I said before, this is being published online on Friday or Saturday and then Record Chronicle and in the newspaper on Sunday. Notice for the public hearing, we're going to the Public Utilities Board in a couple of weeks. And then we're going to be going to City Council at the end of February for a work session and propose adoption. And another summary of our outreach that we've done and we're working on. And if you have any questions, myself is available as well as all the technical experts to answer any additional questions you may have. >> Excellent, thank you. Other questions that have not yet been answered? Okay, thank you for the report, the update, the work put in this to make things better. >> Thank you very much. >> Awesome, appreciate it. >> Okay, with that, that is the end of our work session. So I'll go ahead and adjourn us at 611 PM and we will reconvene in council chambers for our regular meeting at 630. >> Good evening and welcome to the City of Denton's Planning and Zoning Commission meeting for Wednesday, January 10th, 2024. With the quorum present, I will call us to order at 630 PM. First item on our agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance to the US and Texas Flags. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> On the Texas flag, I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state, under God, one and indivisible. >> Thank you, next item on our agenda is approval of our minutes from December 13th, Commissioner Villarreal. >> Move approval. >> Commissioner Smith. >> Move second. >> Got a first and a second for approval, any discussion? Okay, let's vote on the board, please. >> That motion carries 6-0, that'll take us to our consent agenda this evening, Commissioner Villarreal. >> Move approval. >> Commissioner Cole. >> Second. >> We've got a first and a second to approve the consent agenda, discussion? Let's go ahead and vote, please. >> That motion carries 6-0, that will take us to our items for individual consideration. Our first is for APZ 24001, which is elected chair and vice chair of the commission. Commissioner Villarreal. >> I would like to nominate Chair Margie Ellis for another term as chair. >> Commissioner Pruitt. >> I will second. >> Thank you, there's a first and a second to nominate me as chair. Any discussion or other nominations? Okay, let's go ahead and vote, please. That motion carries 6-0, thank you. Commissioner Cole. >> This is for vice chair. >> Correct. >> I nominate Tim Smith. >> I second. >> Commissioner Villarreal. We've got a first and a second. >> I accept. >> For our vice chair, Tim Smith, to remain vice chair. >> Okay, any other discussion or other nominations? Okay, let's go ahead and vote, please. That motion carries 6-0, that will take us to 4B, FP230036. Mia is here for presentation of that item. Good evening. >> Good evening, Chair, members of the commission. Mia Hines, Associate Planner. This final plat is for Denton West Joint Venture, which is an approximately 13-acre property generally located at the northwest corner of Ryan Road and Teasley Lane. At this time, the plat does not meet all of our criteria for approval, so staff is recommended to denial. However, we have no objection to the requested extension, which could be granted to January 24th, 2024. Any questions? >> Thank you, Mia. Not seeing any, thank you so much. Commissioner Villarreal. >> Move approval of the extension request to a date certain of January 24th, 2024. >> Commissioner Pruitt? >> Second. >> We've got a first and a second to approve the extension request to a date certain of January 24th, 2024. Discussion? Okay, let's vote, please. That motion carries 6-0. That will take us to our Planning and Zoning Commission matrix, and I will turn the floor to Tina. >> Thank you, Chair Ellis. So, first item for business, City Council action since the Planning and Zoning Commission last met, we did not have anything to report on. So, moving on, special requests from our recording secretary that in order for us to just be able to monitor quorum that we have in advance of our meetings, if you could kindly please respond to the meeting invites that Kathy sends out, that's what we use in order to be able to keep up with quorum. Of course, you're also more than welcome to email her directly, but also with us now being down one commissioner, with Commissioner McDade stepping down, we just, you know, we get a little more conscientious on making sure we've got quorums. So, if you can help us with that, I know we greatly appreciate it. Speaking of Commissioner McDade, so we greatly appreciate him for his service on the Planning and Zoning Commission and wish him well. As it relates to our area plan projects, as you know, provide updates on those from time to time. So, wanted to make you aware of a schedule change because this involves your schedules. So, previously we had a joint meeting with City Council in the Planning and Zoning Commission that was scheduled for February 20th. That date has now changed and will be March 19th. So, we're retooling a couple aspects related to that project and so we wanted to push that joint meeting out about a month. So, that is after spring break. So, hopefully there's no conflicts with any of your schedules. But again, that's March 19th. And usually we have those midday. I would anticipate this will start at 11 and lunch will be provided for that. As it relates to the Northeast Area Plan Project, we continue to work on that. And I know our consultant is working on preparing the draft document for us. So, we're waiting to receive that. So, hence why we have not had any engagement or meetings or anything of that nature in discussions on that particular project. And then also we continue to move forward with the downtown plan. And so, we're also doing a little retooling on this project as well, adding some increased public engagement efforts, particularly as it relates to the Quaker Town Park Master Plan and the memorialization associated with that. So, I would expect in the next several weeks to be able to share with you more of an updated schedule on that because of some of the public engagement that we'll be working on with our consultant. So, that concludes my report and happy to address any questions. >> Thank you. >> I guess one more thing, my apologies, I realized I forgot to address. Within the actual matrix itself, the second item on your list which is provide an overview to the commission on decisions that affects debt and sustainability goals, that has been, that date has changed. So, we currently have that slated now for February 28th. I know there were some of you that were more interested in the scheduling of that item. And then, also, we added to the matrix on the back page, and this was a request of Commissioner Villarreal that as we have requests that come forth, particularly with extensions, now that state law has changed and the applicant can request multiple extensions, we have updated our staff report to include that information on the report. So, we'll go ahead and keep this as an ongoing item, much like what we did with Commissioner Smith's request on reporting on the TIAs. So, just so, also serves as a good reminder for us. And now, that concludes my report. Thank you. >> Thank you. Is there anything to add to the matrix? Okay, any concluding items? I just wanted to also thank Commissioner McDade for serving with us and dedicating the time that he did for us and certainly wish him all the best. With that, I will go ahead and adjourn us at 6.38 p.m. Thank you very much. [BLANK_AUDIO]