Oh, we didn't know about the meeting.
Oh, alright then.
Welcome to the meeting at 5.32 p.m. with the Pledge of Allegiance.
Ta-da!
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.
I honor the Texas flag, I pledge allegiance to the Texas,
one state, under God, one and indivisible.
There we go.
Alrighty, our first order of business after that is to consider approval of the December 16th minutes.
I motion approval of the December 16th minutes.
Second?
I second.
Thank you.
Any discussion, questions?
Call the question.
All in favor of approving the minutes?
Aye.
Any opposed?
Any abstain?
Nope.
Can't abstain, I think, in this committee.
Alright, now we elect a Chair and a Vice Chair to the Zoning Board of Adjustment.
I nominate, do I have a motion to nominate or do I nominate?
Nominate.
Okay, I nominate Member Lane as a Chair of the Zoning Board of Adjustment.
Thank you very much.
I second.
Thank you very much.
Any discussion?
Thank you.
Call the question.
All in favor?
Aye.
Any opposed?
Any abstain?
And I would like to nominate my Vice Chair, Connor, as to continue as Vice Chair.
Second.
Thank you.
Alright.
Any discussion?
He's been doing good.
All in favor?
Aye.
Great.
So have a wonderful year.
And then I think I cycle off.
Connor will fit.
Alright, do we get to cycle off?
Unless you're a holdover.
Unless you're an ultimate, then you live here.
Yeah, then you would never cycle off.
It was an ultimate parole.
Just for asking that question, we're going to make sure you just stay here in this room
until the next meeting.
Now, we're going to receive a report and hold a discussion regarding the Zoning Board of
Adjustment composition, procedures, powers, and duties.
Alright, so trying to go through this fairly quickly.
I know it's not the most lively topic, but since we have new members in a new year, Hillary
and I thought it would be good an interest to go through briefly kind of what the board's
function is and answer any questions that you all may have about items that might come
before you this year.
So we'll run through just really quickly what is the Board of Adjustment, what's the composition
of the board, some of the procedures that you all follow that may be unique to other
boards, and then the powers and duties that fall under you all as the Board of Adjustment
under state law and local code.
So the ZBA is a body specifically authorized under the Texas Local Government Code to hear
and decide things relating to the strict application of a city's zoning ordinance, as well as to
consider appeals to administrative decisions.
So specifically, if you're interested, I gave you a link in your backup, local government
code, Section 211.008 is where Zoning Board of Adjustment is authorized.
State law says we have to have at least five members.
They have to serve two-year terms.
We are allowed to have alternates because as a quasi-judicial board, it's very important
that items come before you within certain timeframes, so we have to be able to achieve
quorum, and then it does require that all cases be heard by 75% of the members.
For us, we have seven regular members in the city of Dentonville, two additional compared
to what state law authorizes, and then we also have three alternate positions for the
board, so up to ten members to ensure that we can hopefully always get at least six of
you in a room when we need you.
So if you know anyone who's interested, you can see we do have a couple of vacancies,
so you can tell your friends on council that we have a couple of vacant spots in our current
roster.
So city council, as you all know, does appoint these, and you do serve in staggered two-year
terms.
District four and the first alternate, is that right?
Yes, these are two vacancies at the moment.
Who appoints the alternates?
I believe anyone on council can appoint them to the alternate positions.
The places are to the...
Yes, each council member gets their one specific appointee.
So as we noted previously, 75% of you will have to be present to hear an item for us
is six members, because it's based on the seven regular members, not the total of ten.
Similarly, we have to have concurring vote of 75% of you also.
If there's only six in the room, all six of you have to agree.
If you are going to reverse an administrative decision, decide in favor of something that's
regarded otherwise by our zoning code, or authorize a variance to our zoning code.
We do have to follow the Texas Open Meetings Act, so that's all the basic things like posting
our agendas, providing notice of the meetings, assuring we have quorum.
But as I mentioned, you all are quasi-judicial, so some of the things that apply to you all
that may not apply to like the Planning and Zoning Commission or the other boards are
that you will see that the chair does have to swear in witnesses when they come before
you all.
That's not something you would see at Planning and Zoning Commission or Historic Landmark
Commission or some of those other boards.
Your decisions can be appealed to the courts directly, so unlike where P&Z decides something
and someone disagrees, the code may say, "You can go appeal that to council."
For you all, they're next office court if they want to disagree with something that
you all decided, and they would have to do that within ten days.
Quick question.
Could somebody that, I mean I guess that's not necessarily party to this, but is affected
by it, sue us for a decision?
You have to have standing, don't you?
So, people who are affected by a project but not like the direct applicant or within the
notice radius can certainly appeal to you all for a determination, like an appeal of
staff determination, and so if they didn't like how that decision went, they could sue,
but whether they could sue in court over what we did for the developer for their own project,
I don't think they'd have standing.
Okay.
Good to know.
You know, it's a good question, and we did have one decision some years ago that I'm
curious to know how this would fit into that.
There was an applicant who wanted to grandfather in a guest well in an apartment complex, and
we voted against that, and that applicant did go to court, and it ended up being there
was a settlement and all that sort of thing.
Would someone living there be able to, would they have standing?
To do what?
To sue.
You know, let's say we had decided the opposite way, and then somebody living in the apartment
complex didn't like that decision, would they have had standing?
That's an interesting question.
I think, I think they might be able to bring the suit, but I think that the city's defense
would be that they didn't exhaust their administrative remedies.
They need a counselor first.
Right, okay.
Counselor.
That's just sort of my knee jerk.
That seems kind of my thinking.
So they would be better off coming before us, and then that should be...
Yeah, you always start as local as you can.
Even the other side too, right?
The other side as well should appeal to us.
Well, they would have.
That would have been their appeal.
I guess if that's the case, if say, it's like we approve something and then somebody comes
up and says, like, gives us new information that we didn't necessarily have, or brings
the fact that this is an effect on them, and then we agree with them, what does the original
applicant do in response to that?
They would receive notice of the ZBA matter and we would invite them to come and talk
to us about it, is sort of how I'd handle it from a practicality perspective.
From what I've seen, it's not going to get that messy, but you know.
Never know.
Is it 10 business days or 10 days?
I believe it's just 10 calendar days.
I believe so.
That's the difference.
Yes.
That's the difference.
Before you advance to the slide, can I do a little reminder of walking quorums?
Absolutely.
Okay.
So another element of the Texas Open Meetings Act, which we are subject to, is that if there's
less than a quorum, y'all do not discuss public business.
So that means three of you shouldn't get together and chat.
I have that backwards.
Four of you.
You shouldn't be in a quorum outside of a public meeting.
Right.
And a walking quorum can happen if three of you meet and one of you emails a fourth member.
Right.
No daisy chaining.
Right.
Well said.
So just a reminder that like one-off conversations, I can't stop you from doing them, but like
a reminder to not daisy chain them because that can be taken together.
You can talk about what you think, but don't talk about what other council members think.
Yeah.
I mean, that's certainly a good idea from like a golden rule perspective too.
Interesting like if we sat here and emailed or texted a missing member and said, "Hey,
are you on your way?"
That could be considered.
I mean, thankfully because we're in a quorum, I would say it's okay and especially because
we're not, it's the kind of business that you're talking about.
So four of you talking about throwing a birthday party for Kate's dog or something, I don't
care.
Just be careful what you discuss in that email or text chain.
Yeah.
So it's just a gentle reminder to be mindful of that.
We have few enough cases and few enough controversial cases that it's not like developers are going
to be like, "Hey, how are you doing?"
There's more of those poor souls that have to pay $24,000 to get a property line moved.
I have a question then on that because I worked for elected official previously and my cell
phone and my email was all subject to being taken.
That's why you have sitting email addresses.
Oh, yeah.
If you do have issues with it, please let us know.
Yeah, I just get it via Gmail.
It happens.
Because communicating just through your sitting email makes it much easier for us to argue
on your behalf if there's an open meeting or open records app.
Request that, "Hey, they do other city business through this email address.
We don't have any reason to ask for their email."
So we're not going to send them.
Oh, we're fair with the officials for way too long.
I don't do squat.
You can always call us.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I forget which political consultant sent emails or the devil.
Text, don't do it.
Yeah.
Don't contact your cell phone.
All right.
So Texas Local Government Code is also what defines the authority that you all have.
So they break that into four categories.
One is hearing and deciding appeals of administrative decisions.
So pretty much any decision that a staff member makes in an official capacity can be
appealed to you all.
We see a handful of those come before the board.
The second category are special exceptions to the terms of the zoning ordinance if that is
something that's required by the zoning ordinance.
Our DDC at this time does not address special exceptions.
It was something we previously had in the code.
When we updated it, we took out those provisions, so we no longer have to worry about that one.
Third category is authorizing invariants to the terms of the zoning ordinance.
So obviously you all see those on a semi-regular basis, usually for things related to like the
numeric standards of the code, setbacks or something of that nature.
And then the fourth is kind of the catch-all of any other matters authorized by the zoning ordinance.
So in the DDC, specific to you all are the termination of a non-conforming use and then
appeals and variances under our sign code.
Yes.
So let's say that I am a developer and I own a property that is R2 or R3, and I say that I want
to stick something that is not conforming with that zoning designation on the property.
I bring this idea to development services.
They say we are not going to approve that.
You're going to have to go through the process to get the actual underlying zoning changed.
Is that a decision that I can say, well, rather than do that, I'm going to appeal this decision
to the ZVA board?
I would -- I don't know.
I'm thinking if someone is just saying we don't want to do the process, that that's probably
not an appealable argument because they're not following the proper process.
Yeah, no, because that is sort of vague.
And it is very vague in state statute, but I would say if we told them you have to go
through our zoning compliance plan process, which is our site plan, and they did that,
and their plans did not meet code, so we ultimately said, you know what, you're not
submitting plans, you're not doing the things we're asking you to, we're denying this
application, they could appeal that denial to you all.
And if they had a reason why they thought that the non-conforming use should fit on R2,
even though our zoning code says no, they could make that argument.
But at that point, I am -- at that point, it's like, I think what you all typically do
is like, look, you can ask counsel for it.
We're going to say we can't support it for the following reasons.
If you want to do that, that's up to you.
Yeah, like if they're proposing a land use or something that just does not fit in the
zoning, we would tell them your choices are to go through a zoning change application.
Right.
Or you can go talk to someone in counsel and see if they want to take a code amendment
through the development code review committee process to add that use to the code.
Exactly.
Yeah, ZBA doesn't have the right to change something, does it?
No.
No, we just have to decide whether or not things fit this criteria.
Well, a slight asterisk on that is that if you're called on to make an interpretation
of whether something is or is not the thing, your interpretation becomes how that definition
is applied.
We did that once with Southeast Denton.
We did.
And it was -- it felt good.
We finally did something.
It felt really good because it was way back, you know, 1920s, and it was different kind
of lots, and we approved the thing.
And I can't remember what it was.
It was a private home, for one thing, and it was --
It was more than whatever.
I don't remember now the number of people in the lot or something.
Yeah, I think it was supposed to have such and such on either side of it, and they didn't
have it.
Yeah.
We've done things like that.
And generally what we don't do is, you know, people coming to seek forgiveness rather than
permission.
Yeah.
We don't like that.
Like a guy builds a barbecue that's too close to his neighbor's fence.
Yes.
And thinks that he can come here to get the appeal.
Would not find a very friendly audience.
No.
Hypothetically, if I, like, had a, you know, say, a chlorine plant.
Oh, yeah.
You know, hypothetically.
Oh, yeah.
But so that wouldn't be a procedure that would be desirable or likely to go well if, say,
I want to build, you know -- in R2, I just come with some, like, in my neighborhood in
that area around, like, Denton Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, I come and say I've got this R3
lot and I want to build a barbershop on it or something.
That would not be something that would be desirable to take through the ZBA process.
And if I chose to do so, it would not likely succeed.
ZBA can't bury the land use as authorized in the zoning district.
So if it was that, they would need to change the zoning to something that would permit
the commercial use.
Okay.
So that's just -- that's flat out not a different law.
And that would be a PNC.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
What I was going to say is just that staff has a role in all of this because, you know,
we're very unlikely to approve -- I mean, we do once in a while, but -- or at least we
dig into it -- that every once in a while, most of the time, staff will recommend or
not recommend.
And that's taken very seriously, right?
Right.
All of these bodies.
Yeah.
And we'll get into some of that as we go.
Yeah.
Because the one time I was here, we had, I think, recommendation -- or was it sort of
neutral on the bill?
I can't remember if the Pitcherick parking lot was recommended or not.
We were -- I believe our official recommendation was denial, but we kind of gave you the caveats
of here's how we could see it making sense.
Okay.
So we tried to be --
Oh, yeah.
The last thing we approved.
Yeah.
No.
The last thing we approved was --
The setback.
Like it was more of a line change.
Yeah.
The lot with --
Yeah.
It was making the deed and plot line line up.
Sorry.
One final question on my topic.
Is that something that comes out of state code or that is something that comes out of state
code?
For the land use, I know for a fact it's in the DDC.
I can't recall if that is --
Right.
There's a general principle that variances and your ability to grant them operate like
a dimmer switch, not like a light switch.
So you can change where on the spectrum something like a setback requirement lands, or you can
increase the number or decrease the number, but you can't take a no from a yes.
Because generally speaking, because the no to a yes or yes to a no is more of a legislative
decision that's more in a P&Z council's approval pathway.
In a state definition?
Where the principle of the dimmer switch comes from.
Yeah.
I'd have to do a little bit of research, but it's just one of those subtle law kind of
ideas.
Okay.
Yeah.
So it's the localities to have these boards, like as per what they're saying, and these
boards are defined.
Well, in this case, these four items are what state code officially says ZBA can't do, right?
State code says.
And has a similar list for planning and zoning.
Okay.
And so I guess it's like precedent, but like I guess does our -- so we sort of went against
like a little bit against staff direction, like on my first meeting.
So is that considered precedent with like, if we make a different decision, could somebody
go back and be like, why did they have previous decisions of ours?
I think it was a very similar situation, right?
Possibly.
We'll have to do the same topic.
Very specific.
I mean, that's so unlikely.
I like a little bit like legal stuff is sort of interesting.
Yeah, it's cool.
I'm not worried.
Yeah.
I think it would boil down to whether y'all agreed that this second case was factually
similar enough that it should follow along, because we left the subjective criteria to
y'all of whether hardship was presented.
The more objective criteria staff was in alignment with.
So I guess appropriate to some of this conversation.
Diving into some of these specifics, I just -- so for appeals of administrative decisions,
that first item that state law says comes before you all.
It also specifies who can appeal a decision.
So an appeal that is not related to a specific project, application, or address can only
be submitted by very broadly, someone agreed by the decision, so they can prove why they're
agreed and provide that appeal, or an officer, department, or board of the municipality that's
affected by the decision.
So not likely to happen, but perhaps another city department is -- the fire department
really disagrees with something planning says.
Technically, they could come before you all in a field.
Hopefully, we would all work it out like grownups amongst ourselves and not have to bring you
all into that, or say we did something, made a decision with a property that's right on
our city boundary and another city feels like that negatively impacts them.
I believe that would fall within that umbrella.
Okay.
And then the second category are appeals that do relate to a specific application, address,
or project, and that list allows for either the person who filed the application and we
said no, or we provided them an interpretation they didn't like.
The person who owns the property could have made an appeal.
Someone who owns property within 200 feet that is agreed by the decision could make
an appeal, or again, another municipal department could do that.
So just a couple of examples that you all may remember where you can go back and watch
the cases if you just get really bored and need something to watch.
In this instance, we had a zoning compliance plan that staff approved for multi-family
development, and in this case, the neighbors brought the appeal to you all because they
disagreed with staff's approval of that application.
The other case, hypothetical bleach production in a residential area.
In that case, staff said no, you cannot do that here.
That's an industrial land use and this is a mixed use zoning district that doesn't allow
industrial uses, so that business owner brought that appeal before you all.
So you say other municipalities, so UNT or TWU, they would not come before us if they
disagreed with the city.
So we take a pretty deferential approach with what we ask UNT and the other school you just
asked TWU to do, so if they really didn't like it, I think they could.
There's already a lot of abbreviations and acronyms in the work.
There's an acronym limit.
I'm just going to trust you to hold down the college acronyms.
Let's be honest, they don't want to be in the press fighting with everybody, so they
work it out.
To be fair, UNT has protested items before council for specific use permits.
I can think of one where UNT showed up and protested and the council said no.
It can happen.
So this structure sort of doesn't give renters very much rights.
In that hypothetical case of the tenant of the apartment building, they have very limited
recourse under this state law structure.
I suppose maybe for the project specific, I see where you're coming from, because those
all do specify honor.
That wasn't the top one?
Under the general appeal of the decision, so say someone, if those apartments were built
and someone renting there disagreed with, you know, maybe they applied for a permit for
a fencer in a dog park or something and they said no, a renter perhaps then could be considered
a person agreed by that, maybe?
We take a pretty broad approach.
So, yeah.
It's challenging with renters.
Yeah, and I'm just sitting here trying to decide how much.
So in my personal opinion, as Hillary Negron, not as city employer, oh no, actually, I'll
just go ahead, more due process is better than less due process.
And if we can accommodate someone who might have a good argument or whatever, we might
go ahead and take it, but I can't think of the time that has happened.
And they would fill out a card and come and speak to us, wouldn't they?
Yeah, certainly, I mean, in any of these instances with the bleach production, we were not checking
people's addresses at the door and say, do you own or rent the property that you want
to come speak on this item?
They might not be able to speak on the item.
And that would be sort of an internal decision among city attorney's office and development
services of how we wanted to proceed.
And that's because it's information that's valuable to people.
And it's also, it's really difficult to get renters to speak up on their own behalf, if
they don't.
Right.
So there's a number of policy considerations as well.
I know.
I mean, even people 500 feet don't get notice on that one.
They find out about a freak out.
So with appeals, the other important thing to know is just very time specific in terms
of every aspect of them.
So once a decision is rendered, the appeal has to be submitted not less than, not later
than 20 days after the date the decision was made.
Once that happens, all other proceedings related to it are just put on pause.
And then we have to get you all to convene for two meetings to hear and then decide the
item within 60 days of the date of that application being filed with us.
So that's why on occasion, if we're not able to get court with a regular meeting, but we
have an appeal that's in process, you might see Carly blowing up your email like, hey,
here's a survey monkey.
What dates are you all available?
And then we're holding two back to back meetings if we need to get it done within that timeframe.
Those have to be open, heard, closed.
Open, heard, closed.
Yes.
Okay.
Because we did something wrong once, I remember.
We had an opening once.
Yes.
Heard it.
And then pause it for the first.
I mean, we're sorry right now.
We still have quorum.
We have three.
Okay.
We don't have quorum for making a decision.
Sure, we have.
Okay.
Just some other items related to this.
If you do read the city code, we built it to align with Texas local government code and
all of those timelines.
Our DDC also defines the minimum written content.
So we try to make sure that the person providing the appeal has given you all full facts, everything
that code sections that they think we've misinterpreted, the reasoning behind it.
We take whatever other documentation that they may want to provide and pass all of that
along to you all as a complete application.
And trust me, we do set it.
There's occasions where Hillary and I are like, so we don't feel like they're making much
case here to help themselves.
So we try to toss them actually like, hey, before we accept this, can you all give some
additional thought to this?
The board's going to want to know the answers to these questions.
So we try to bring you as complete of an application as we can.
You will find on appeals staff will not make a recommendation.
The code does require that we provide you all the facts.
We provide you the analysis of how our decision was made.
The applicant gives their rationale and then it is up to you all to make that decision.
There are criteria for approval in the development code.
There are 13 very general criteria like does this align with a comprehensive plan?
Things like of that nature that technically do apply in an appeal.
And then it also states that you all should weigh the facts as stated in the application
and presented by the appellant and the director, as well as the requirements and intent of
the applicable standards.
So you'll find that we'll try to give you as much background information as we can as
to why the code requirement is what it is so that you can weigh that in your decision.
You as the board can either affirm staff's decision, reverse our decision in whole or
in part, amend the decision.
And if you feel that it's necessary for health, safety, welfare of the city, you can also
attach conditions.
So you might say we reverse staff's decision, but we're going to put these caveats on here.
And then again, that decision that you all make can be appealed to a district court within
10 days.
And this is the big one on appeals.
Your decision is binding on our future decisions.
So the fact that in that previous case, you all said bleach production is high impact
manufacturing, we concur with staff's interpretation.
Anyone else that wants to produce bleach in the city of Denton, that's how we'll classify
that land use, even though it's not specifically listed in our table of uses.
And that would continue to apply until someone else decides to appeal that decision and then
take it to our city council.
So here our council amends the code.
Variances are the second category that you'll see.
So just a couple of examples that you've seen.
There we have our very recent lot width example.
So that's the more typical thing that you'll see as a variance or those numeric standards
because we do have very strict, you know, this is the maximum height the building can be.
This is the minimum lot width depth, minimum setbacks.
Those are things, especially in the older parts of town, you'll see are somewhat common
to come before you all as variances.
The other example on the screen is that parking example.
That's a little more unique.
You don't see a whole lot of those because in a lot of those more performance standard
type things, you'll see that the development code offers people a lot of flexibility typically
or gives staff a lot of flexibility.
In that case, they had existed the limits of staff's flexibility.
So it came before you all.
So in this case, the variance can only be used if the strict application of the code
would create an unnecessary hardship or not allow someone the ability to develop their
property in a way that would be common for other properties in that condition or if there's
unique conditions associated with the property.
And in both of these cases, you all found that there were unique circumstances and found
the ability to grant that variance there.
And again, that last bullet is what we touched on earlier.
You cannot use a variance to allow a use in a zoning district where it's not currently
allowed, and it can't be solely to alleviate inconvenience and financial burden.
For variances, you will find that staff does provide you a recommendation on those.
The code gives us the criteria and authorization to do so.
A variance is specific to that property.
It does a transfer, and it will expire after 24 months.
So if someone's coming before you all or in the case of the lot with, for example, if
he failed to follow through with the plat that he was seeking to do for that property
for two years, that variance would expire and he would be back here asking for it again
if that...
Or the new order would be.
Or the new order, perhaps, if they decided to walk away.
Again, appeals on a variance would go to court.
There's that 10-day limit.
And then the variance can be suspended or revoked if it's determined that there's failure
to comply with any terms.
So if you all attach conditions to a variance and then our zoning inspectors go out and
find that someone has violated those, we could suspend or revoke that variance.
Would it come through here or would it just automatically?
I believe that is a staff-level revocation and they could appeal that to you all.
All right.
We'll go through these in detail.
You'll see them regularly, but we can send these slides up to you all just so you have
them handy for future reference.
So I wanted to make sure you had the criteria for approval.
So again, it's looking for things.
Is it something specific to the conditions of the property?
Would there be any harm or detriment to public welfare if the variance was granted?
And one of the key ones, I think, is C, when you're looking at numeric standards, is it
the minimum needed to accomplish the purpose?
So if someone comes before you all and they're like, "Well, I can build my house," you grant
me a five-foot relief.
But really, I'd like you to grant me a 20-foot relief for the setback just because.
It's like, no, you can have five.
You prove you can do it with five, five is what it is.
So again, you'll see these in every case when we bring the variance before you all.
We'll make sure that you all have these conditions handy.
This is one of those other categories that the DDC throws to you all.
It's not something I would hazard a guess that we will see done ever, probably.
Maybe, but I've been here nine years and I've never seen it stupid.
So the DDC does speak to if a non-conforming use is going to be amortized, meaning counsel
is going to say, "We're buying you out.
We're getting rid of you.
You've got X amount of time to get off of this property and stop what you're doing."
That schedule would come before you all to decide.
So it's, again, not something I've seen counsel do, but it is something that falls into the
bucket of ZBA's authority if we ever need to do so if a non-conforming use becomes so
problematic that counsel decides we're going to end it.
So basically, if I'm hearing this right, it's when the city buys a property and they're
vacating.
Not necessarily that we're buying it.
I could provide an example here.
Sure.
So the city of Dallas has had a number of cases of very polluting land uses that were
not authorized to be in the areas that they were in, technically, but for legacy reasons,
the city didn't particularly care about the communities that were nearby those uses.
So Shingle Mountain is quite famous.
There was a decades-long campaign by neighbors there to get the city to say, "Hey, this doesn't
comply with your zoning," because it didn't.
And eventually, the city finally comes and says, "Yes, okay, so this doesn't comply with
your zoning.
You have to clean it up and get it out of here if you're just doing this."
I think that would probably be an example of this.
The closest that I've seen to this would be when I saw city council basically annex a
piece of property because the person went against the agreement of non-annexation.
That's a different idea.
I mean, that's the most similar thing I've seen.
So there's so many things that are going to happen before this process.
The staff goal is to make sure it never comes before.
Yeah, that's why it doesn't come is because it gets sold.
Yeah.
First of all, if it's a non-conforming use that doesn't seem to be hurting anyone, it's
going to keep going.
A huge financial burden on the city.
It really would be.
And if there's a use that is non-conforming and is causing problems, then staff will work
with the owner to remove non-conforming.
That was the tires.
There was somebody who was doing outside storage that didn't quite work.
Yeah.
But not eventually at all.
It worked its way.
It never came across as VA.
Yeah, for the most part, we can work with most people.
The Shingle Mound is a great example.
If there was something so offensive that it was causing environmental hazard or something
of that nature, perhaps.
This is one I doubt any of us will ever have to worry about.
We're pretty fortunate we don't have that many noxious uses in the city of Denton that
we would need to go to this level because the state does provide pretty robust standards
for how the city has to go about essentially paying for any value that they can prove they
have left in their property.
Especially eminent domain.
No.
I've been around long enough to remember.
What?
Basically, you have to stop and you have to do something different with the property.
So we have to pay them for the lost property.
I've been around long enough to remember when I guess somewhere in California kicked out
of Sriracha because people's eyes were burning and all kinds of stuff, and one of our city
councilors went on a campaign, "Let's have them come here!"
And everybody at Denton was kind of like...
You know, like Dallas Magazine or something, the e-magazine.
They wanted to come to Denton because, you know...
He was never really leaving California.
That was a whole other thing.
I know, yeah.
So that was a mess.
We haven't reached the end of our fun that quickly.
You sure?
Let's see.
Just a couple more slides.
So last topic I'll cover with you all.
And again, this is really intended to be kind of that summary that you all can refer to
in the future if you need it.
It's just sign code variances.
Another pretty common case type to come before you all.
Our code does give us 45 days to get these processed once they're submitted.
So again, sometimes you'll see us calling on you for an off-schedule meeting if the
quorum is not going to work at a regular time.
In this case, it specifies that you can't grant a variance to the sign code solely to
authorize a sign type that's not allowed.
It's similar to that allowing a use that's not allowed.
You can't just flip that switch.
And it can't be just for personal convenience or financial hardship.
It has to be something related to the property itself.
We approved a hospital variance.
That was fine.
It didn't be before I was anywhere near it, but approved at Horrible Bucky's.
Yes.
So in this case, again, you've got pretty strict criteria that we would look for you
to find that it meets, again, related to something unique with the property itself,
something that would create an unnecessary hardship.
And we have to be able to say that it wouldn't violate the spirit and intent of the code.
So just more recent examples for you all to think of.
Like the Old West, we saw that in the property next door in one meeting where
TxDOT was requiring the relocation of their signs.
They'd been there for decades and didn't meet the strict numeric standards of the
code as it's written today.
But again, because of the unique situation they were in with TxDOT and being
forced to relocate, you all were able to grant the variance.
And then one thing you all denied was the Plains Capital Bank here close by that
didn't have a compelling, unique reason related to the property as to why that
sign needed to be internally illuminated in that close proximity to residents.
So in that case, that variance was not successful.
And then the one type of special exception we do have in our code, I mentioned earlier,
the zoning code does not deal with special exceptions.
The sign code allows two conditions where there is a special exception that the
board can grant.
And that's if there's a visibility obstruction, which I hope we don't feel
like because of the math and calculating what that obstruction is from a 0.6 feet
in height at a parallel plane and all of the things in that definition just blow
my mind.
We've done it once or twice, but it doesn't come up often, thankfully.
And then the second is for medical emergency signs.
So that one, I think I've seen one or two signs that have tried to come forward
with that.
So that's a unique case as well where it does authorize for the emergency treatment
signs to have some flexibility compared to the rest of the signs.
It wasn't near a residential neighborhood.
It was where there was a lot going on.
Was it Med Park?
It was across from CVS and my vet.
And it barked the backyards with trees or something.
I don't remember.
And they needed a second sign because people comes from one direction, couldn't tell
them without.
And it was an emergency.
So again, we don't see them very often, but those two you might see come before you
in terms of special exceptions instead of variances.
And they'll have different criteria than the variance would.
It has to strictly meet one of these two definitions in those cases.
And with that, that's all I wanted to cover.
But we're happy to answer any other questions.
You'll have asked a lot of good ones so far.
Yeah.
Hillary, anything you think we missed?
Yeah.
Okay, that's good.
We've got a rocking CBA right now.
Did we make your brain work?
Yeah, it's all good.
The engagement always makes us happy.
It's good to know you all take the role and the power seriously.
But yeah, I'll have Carly send out these slides to you all so you have them as a reference
point for two other members as well that weren't able to join us.
Let us know if you have any questions.
Raising capable successors.
Thank you all.
Would you like to close the meeting?
Oh yeah, I guess I have to close the meeting.
So to close the meeting, I just say that meeting is adjourned.
Thank you.
Do you want to ask?
Yep.
Sounds good.
Okay.
All right, thank you all.
Of course.
Thank you very much.