Good afternoon and welcome to the, I will call to order the planning and zoning work
session here at 5.03 p.m., or 5.02 p.m. on February 12th, 2025.
Our first item of business is, is any, I think there is no, there is no consent agenda.
I do see some members of the public here.
Is there any, there's no consent agenda items, so I don't think there's any public comment
on consent agenda items.
So any, any questions, clarification for the one item that we do have on our regular session
for, I think, well, what's giving me pause is we have a lot of work session items.
So if you want to be very brief and just, just hit the highlights, I think.
I can do that.
Mostly the whys are we seeing this, because it's kind of strange.
It is a little strange.
Julie Wyatt, principal planner with the City of Denton.
You have on your public hearings tonight and a replat of a, of the, of high school addition.
It was originally four lots, they are replating into three lots.
It does meet all the technical requirements.
So staff is recommending approval of this replat.
You don't normally see replats on public hearing items, and there's a really specific reason
why this is on the public hearing, and that it is a residential replat.
So the Texas Local Government Code, Chapter 212, states that properties that were zoned
where no more than two dwelling units per lot are considered residential replats.
There's a public notification provision to these residential replats.
Normally we do that, that public notification after they have been considered and approved
by the Planning and Zoning Commission.
The Texas law allows that.
This one is a little different, and it's that a variance was needed in order to seek approval
of this.
Due to the age of the lot, the deed history of the lot, one of the lots is not wide enough
to meet the minimum zoning.
It went to the Zoning Board of Adjustment in December, and the Zoning Board of Adjustment
did approve that variance for the lot width for this lot 5R here.
And so per Texas Local Government Code, we did have to send out notification prior to
the Planning and Zoning Commission.
So it really is just that formality related to that.
And so we have sent out the notification, and we are recommending approval tonight.
I'll be happy to answer any questions.
Any questions?
Seeing none.
Okay.
Thank you, Julie.
Thank you.
So next we'll move to our work session reports.
First item is 3A-PZ25053 report and hold a discussion regarding updates to the residential
development and rental housing data presented end of last year.
Good evening, Commission.
Haley Zygursky, Assistant Planning Director.
Let me get the presentation pulled up here.
So this will look familiar to most of you.
So I did want to provide an update.
After we had our December work session where we went through the multifamily and single
family housing data, a question was raised that did make us realize that there was a
fairly significant error in our data, so we want to revisit this and make sure everyone
has the most up-to-date and accurate information, and then we will pass this along to City Council.
So what has changed in the presentation is fairly limited.
It only affected a few of the slides, and it was specific to the multifamily unit counts
and the data that we originally pulled from DCAD.
The 2020 multifamily number that was kind of used as the base for the analysis, we originally
quoted as 4,550.
Turns out there was an error.
When we paired that data with our GIS, anything that didn't match on an address or a complex
name got booted out, and we did not realize that those were just totally taken out of
the data set.
So we went to find a different source that would not create that issue for us.
Thankfully, Economic Development helped us out, and they pointed us to COSTAR, which
is a commercial real estate database, so we have fairly high confidence in that data.
The new 2020 starting count that you'll see in this presentation now is 17,459 units that
existed in 2020, so fairly significant change in that part of the data only.
Anything else related to single family, rental rates, and things of that nature is all the
same, so that will look very familiar to you.
So again, this request was kind of multi-part from PNZ and council, so we wanted to roll
it all into one presentation to give to you all that covers all these various questions
related to our current rental housing, multifamily development, and how it compares to what the
comprehensive plan anticipates that we need, and then this presentation will be shared
with city council as well.
Just reminders about the data, you will see if we totally reran this in a month or two,
it might look a little bit different because our permit and project data is fluid, depending
on what's been submitted, what's been approved.
The housing data that you'll see comes from various sources, and they all differ pretty
significantly in some cases in their estimates.
You'll find that we mostly rely upon Denton County Appraisal District and American Community
Survey for most of that data, and you'll also find some distinctions if you go trying to
look into this yourself and how people classify those land uses.
For example, multifamily, our code considers five units or more on one lot, many sources
consider that three units or more, so there are some of those discrepancies, not everything
can be compared apples to apples.
So we'll start just with the city population growth, so this, again, this slide has no
changes from what you saw in December.
Again, the comprehensive plan in 2020, we were at just under 140,000 people, that plan
projected that we would have a 3.19% growth rate and have about 229,000 people by 2040.
What we're seeing through the American Community Survey is much higher than that.
We're seeing a 4.4% growth rate from 2020 to their latest 2023 numbers that they've
published.
So as of 2023, we're at 158,000, so that's actually an 18,000% increase just in that
three-year period, so again, that would be a 4.4% growth rate annually.
If you project that out to 2030, if we would keep going at that pace, that would put us
at just over 331,000 people, which is a 73% change from what the comp plan anticipated.
So likely we're somewhere in between that, hopefully we don't go much higher than that,
but that is where it looks like we're at today based on the American Community Survey.
The comp plan also gave us projections as to how many housing units of various types
we would need by 2040 to keep pace with that 3% growth rate.
So you see there the table from the comp plan, they projected about 20,000 single-family
detached units would be needed, just over 11,000 multi-family units would be needed.
If we apply that higher growth rate, those numbers grow significantly, so you'd see that
would change to 34,000 single-family detached and just under 20,000 multi-family units.
Again, this information has not changed from what you all saw previously.
This is just to give you a snapshot of our college and universities and how those are
growing because we know that does have a huge impact on our housing across the city.
So both UNT and NCTC have seen relatively steady growth over a four-year period.
TWU has had some slight decreases, but relatively stable populations on all of those campuses
and overall, it averages to a 13% growth in a four-year period.
So looking at the total of housing just in that same period from 2020 to 2023, the red
highlights do show you what's changed.
So that's the row that has the new data that we pulled from COSTAR as opposed to DCAD.
So you can see with single-family, the percentage of our city's composition of housing in 2020
to 2023 decreased slightly, went from 62% of our housing being single-family to 58%.
Multi-family did increase from 35% of our housing composition in 2020 to 37% as of 2023.
That same information just presented graphically for those that prefer bar charts to a table.
And then just looking at that analysis slightly differently, the percent increase over that
time for single-family was 10%.
Duplex looks high at 125%, but if you can see here, that's such a small percent of our housing
stock that it really isn't as drastic as it seems.
But that does change from what was previously quoted to be a 26% increase in multi-family
units from 2020 to 2023.
So that's a snapshot of what's built and on the ground, and then we'll build upon that
with what's in the queue.
Before we do that, one of the questions that council had asked is how, their thought was
we seem to have a lot of multi-family.
How does our rental rate in the city compare to other college towns is what we see abnormal.
So again, we've used American Community Survey to look at that.
And we found that from 2010 to 2023, we've stayed relatively constant.
As of now, 52% of our housing is renter-occupied units, and that could be single-family detached
homes, townhomes, apartments, any type of rental unit.
So for comparison to see, is that an abnormal number, we looked at other college cities
across Texas, and that's the table that's shown here in orange.
You can see we're on the low to moderate end of that spectrum at 52%, with the range being
from 49% to 71% with San Marcos having that higher end of the spectrum.
So now looking at housing projects that are in the development queue or in construction.
Starting with multi-family, the map here just shows you the locations of those projects
that are either in construction, and those are the kind of peach color on the map, or
those that are in review somewhere.
So the teal are those projects that have some sort of approval, so they have some project
that is vested somehow under state law that we presume will continue moving forward.
The purple are those that may or may not happen, they don't yet have any form of approval.
But for the sake of this analysis, we're just going to assume that all of those come to
fruition with the unit counts that we have in review today.
So again, just revisiting those numbers from COSTAR, 17,000 multi-family units in 2020,
in 2023 that increased to 22,000.
If we add together all of those that are in construction and in review, you would see
we'd add 4,000 units roughly in construction, 8,000 in review, that would be an increase
of 16,672 total units since 2020, since our comp plan took that initial look at our population.
So that would be a 96% increase, so fairly substantial growth in the multi-family sector.
So revisiting the comp plan briefly before we tie all this together at the end.
The units that were estimated to need by 2020, again, the comp plan with that 3% growth,
if you add in triplex and fourplex to that multi-family count to make it more comparable
because our permit data under the building code lumps those uses as multi-family, we
would have needed about 14,262 multi-family units at a 3% growth rate.
If you apply the current higher growth rate that we're seeing, we would anticipate needing
24,680.
To verify how accurate those might be, we looked at another source, which was the 2021
affordable housing needs assessment, which was a very targeted look at the city's current
housing stock, the growth that we're seeing and how we anticipate we might need more housing
and the horizon up to 2040.
And that actually came in fairly close to where that 4.4% growth rate puts us with a
ballpark of 25,000 units for rental needed in the city by 2040 to meet our population
demands.
So we'll do the same glance at single family real quick before we tie it all together.
Again, just a map showing you where these projects are at in the city.
The yellow dots indicate those that are actually under construction, so they have lots, the
plat's been approved and infrastructure or houses are being constructed.
And then the blue dots tell you the projects that are in development.
So again, based on what DCAD tells us, we had 31,800 units starting out in 2020 when
the comp plan started looking at this and projecting our needs.
In 2023, that had grown to 36,000.
We have 7,041 lots in construction.
Again, that means the lots are platted and available for someone to build a home on.
The timeline of when those get built is anyone's best guess.
Some subdivisions take several years, some move really quickly.
And then the units that have a plat or an entitlement case or something in review would
equal another 26,090 single family lots.
So total, that's just under 14,000 units in increase or a 44% increase in single family
units since 2020.
So that demand projection for single family, again, the comp plan's base for just single
family was just under 20,000.
If we add in townhomes and duplexes to make it again more comparable with our permit data,
that would have put us at a need of 22,800 units by 2040.
Applying the higher growth rates, we would anticipate needing 39,500 single family detached
townhome or duplexes by 2040.
Again, we went to that affordable housing needs assessment just to vet the data, see
how close we were to the target that they anticipated.
And for ownership units, they anticipated that we would need roughly 50,000 units by
2040 to meet the city's demand.
So that actually quite a bit higher than what we would anticipate with the current growth
rate based on the trends that they were seeing when they did that assessment.
So comparing all of that now to see how is the current development meeting those needs
that we anticipated with the comp plan.
For multi-family, again, we've had that 16,000 or so units of growth.
That is 117% of what the comp plan anticipated we would need by 2040.
So in just a quarter of the time, we have exceeded what the comp plan anticipated we
would need.
If you apply the higher growth rate we're seeing though, we're only at 68% of that being
met so far and 66% of what the housing needs assessment called for.
So it seems like we're on pace to either meet or exceed the goals for multi-family.
For single-family, with roughly 14,000 units that have been added or are in development
since 2020, we're at 61% of the need called for in the comp plan.
41% if you apply the comp plan's numbers with that higher growth rate.
But only 28% if you look at the housing needs assessment.
So that tells us that we're on par with that number for single-family.
Because again, we're roughly a fourth of the way through the time period that it was
looking at.
We're at 28%.
Hey Haley, can I stop you just for a second?
Yeah, absolutely.
Could you explain a little bit more on the 117, is that, does the comp plan take that
lower number, the lower base number too, is that?
The comp plan just applied a 3% growth rate across the board.
So it looked at what housing we had in 2020, what percent of that was multi-family and
said, oh, we'll add 3% to that and that'll be the demand we anticipate by 2040.
So that's why it comes in on the lower end of that spectrum when we're actually seeing
much higher demand for rental housing in the city.
But since our numbers were off initially, was that split already kind of below?
So the number that was off was the units that were actually on the ground.
The comp plan's numbers were based purely on the American Community Survey.
So it did not affect the comp plan base numbers.
Okay, thanks.
So just to help us draw some conclusions from that, what we can tell from all of these various
data points that we collected is obviously we're growing and so is our student population.
So we know that student population being kind of fluid with the school year is going to
continue to affect the rental housing around the city.
We are comparable to other Texas cities, so it's not that we're seeing an inordinate amount
of multi-family development or rental housing development in the city because we are comparable
with other university towns and how we serve our student population.
Again, we saw varying widely those growth rate projections.
We know reality will probably be somewhere in between those, but it does tell us we need
to keep monitoring that over time to see which one of those trends is actually turning out
to be closer to the truth.
We know that there will continue to be this demand across the board in ownership and rental
units, so we need to keep monitoring that.
And we know that based on the comp plan and that needs assessment and our development
trends, we should be on track to meet or exceed those unless something completely unexpected
happens that really would skyrocket that demand.
One thing that we did note is that with the current rental rate being as high as it is
and our university population growing and the needs assessment telling us we really
need like twice as much housing for ownership as we do for rental, we may need to monitor
the types of projects that we're seeing and really, you'll hopefully be able to encourage
more of that units available for ownership opportunity to help meet that need as well
as the rental need.
So things that you all can do as the Planning and Zoning Commission and as the staff is
continuing to be thoughtful in our consideration of all our applications to ensure that we
are seeing a diverse housing stock being developed to, again, provide for that ownership and
rental opportunity.
When we are considering new multifamily entitlements, paying close attention to how those align
with the comprehensive plan's recommendations and whether or not they're really in locations
that would help foster continued neighborhood growth and have adequate services versus some
of the requests we see sometimes that are a little like isolated, one-off, not likely
to develop into a neighborhood over time that would have the services and the compatible
uses around it.
Continuing to monitor those trends, like I said, this really shows us that we probably
need to consider updates to our comprehensive plan and our housing needs assessment over
the next five years just to continue to monitor where we're at and which, you know, if their
growth rate is continuing as rapidly as it is at this moment, how that could affect those
anticipated needs and our goals for the future.
Continuing to look at ways to incentivize and remove barriers to infill development
will be critical.
You'll get a snapshot of that in our next work session as well and one of our initial
ideas on how to approach that, but that will come with potential updates to our comp plan,
the DDC, as well as other tools that we have for like economic incentives and impact fees.
And then continuing to encourage housing near the universities, obviously that student housing
population isn't going anywhere and is likely to keep growing, so ensuring that they have
rental opportunities closer to the university would potentially help us provide ownership
opportunities elsewhere in the city in our single-family neighborhoods.
So I know I went through that quickly, but you all have a lot on your work session agenda
and you have seen this before.
So happy to go back if we need to to touch on anything if you have any questions.
Any questions?
Commissioner Patron?
Haley, just to clarify, the student population growth, is that based on enrollment data?
Yes.
So I will say there's the caveat of we don't know how many of those students may be commuters
not living in the city.
We were not provided that breakdown from the university.
Okay, so just overall enrollment data for fall or is it by semester?
I believe that was annual enrollment data, so we don't actually have 2024 data yet.
Okay, thank you.
All right.
Thank you, Haley.
You're welcome.
I do have a couple of questions.
I'll try to make them short.
Oh, sure.
So one, on the enrollment data, is that full-time or all students?
Because I guess I would expect full-time students to be more in need of local housing than commuting
students.
I believe.
Yeah, I don't have any notes for myself saying.
My understanding is that is all students annual enrollment.
Okay, thank you.
I guess one question I have is on the growth of the multifamily versus single family.
I think over the past five years we've seen especially single family home costs spike
dramatically and incomes have not risen at that same pace.
So is a somewhat of a shift toward multifamily expected in that sort of an economic situation?
Possibly.
I don't know for sure, but I would say from discussions with our community development
team and just some of the developments that come in, I think the rental rate for multifamily
has probably also seen a comparable increase over time.
So I think it may all even out in terms of how much the housing is costing.
Okay.
Tina may have more to add on that subject.
I was going to say the only thing I was going to add was that all the more reason why we
work on trying to make sure we've got diverse housing stock opportunities, because we also
people or we also realize that people are in different stages of their life in terms
of what they want for their housing.
So just making sure that we provide those balanced housing opportunities.
And to that point on the duplex spike, I guess you would say in 2022, I'm guessing that's
mostly some of these horizontal multifamily type developments that we did and not necessarily
individually plotted lots.
I'm just trying to understand as far as rental availability versus flexibility toward small
or homeownership opportunities, right?
So the horizontal multifamily product is still considered multifamily since they're all on
a single lot.
Duplex under the zoning code means two units that are attached that can be on one lot or
on two separate lots if someone wanted to flat down the building line or the firewall
between the two halves of the building.
And then permit data also considers that as a separate use because it follows under the
residential code instead of the building code.
So all of our data considers duplex separate from multifamily.
So the horizontal is firmly in the multifamily camp, so it shouldn't influence that data.
Okay, well, I'll have to go look at the map again to see where 1800 units went if they
didn't go into those properties.
I don't believe the -- I don't believe our map breaks out duplexes.
I could try to get that more detailed information for you.
I can look it up later.
That's fine.
I'm trying to think of any large scale duplex projects, but none come to mind.
But we can look into that if that's something you'd like to know more about.
I guess just if there's a way to double check whether the majority of those were on individual
lots or large properties just to confirm because of the IBC versus IRC and zoning thing.
For it to be considered as duplex, it would have had to have been an individual lot with
the two units on it.
And I understand that from a zoning perspective, but I think when you pull permit data, those
lots with more than one building, they would still get IRC permits.
Maybe I'm wrong as far as the process, but.
My understanding of the way our permit data does separate duplex as its own category,
so we're able to isolate that.
It's where you get into the triplexes and up that it, under the building codes, all
becomes multifamily.
So I think we have pretty accurate data in there because they are able to isolate that
permit type.
Okay.
But yeah, if you're curious about where those are located, I can certainly go back and try
to look at the projects.
Yeah, it doesn't have to be a big formal thing, but I'm curious.
Okay.
Lastly, I know I'm taking up time here, but is staff interested in trying to make this
information a little bit more apparent to the public given the fact that there was some
press on the first release?
I don't know what would be appropriate, but it's a pretty big revision to the multifamily
data.
I don't want to suggest something that would be problematic, but if there's a desire to
say, hey, here's a correction in case that was nervous to you, does that make sense?
So we have kept the city management office and city council abreast of the fact that
we were making changes to this, and our plan is to issue, as part of a Friday report coming
up, this to city council, and then obviously wherever that goes from there.
Okay.
Well, it's nice to say we can always talk to the city manager's office to see whether
or not we want to issue any news release because I believe the headline was something along
the lines that we've had a 303% increase in our multifamily development, and as you can
see from the corrected numbers, that is not the case.
No.
It's actually 96%.
96%.
Thank you.
Still significant, but not 300.
Right.
Not 300.
Okay.
That's all I have, but I see one more question from Commissioner Padron.
Sure.
Haley, on the point under the side said, given the uncertainties, it's encouraged to increase
housing near the universities.
How do you all define what near the universities mean?
Is it based on walking distance?
Is it based on a specific commute in a vehicle?
How's that defined?
We don't have, I would say, a firm definition.
We do have in our future land use map kind of the area around those that's considered
a compatibility area where we would expect to see more of that student housing clustered,
so that would be our first line of looking at that, is just where that future land use
category is kind of clouded around the university centers.
Okay.
Thank you.
All right.
One more from Commissioner Riggs.
So the comp plan kind of spelled out like we should have this kind of growth in single-family,
this kind of growth in multifamily, and even with the revised numbers, we're still seeing
growth in multifamily outpacing the single-family.
So if we want to meet the plan's goals and monitor that and then us as a board, what
are some things that we can do in order to monitor that and, I guess, keep more in line
with the comp plan?
Sure.
I would say for monitoring purposes, now that we have kind of this baseline, I would imagine
our goal is to revisit this on a periodic basis.
Like we mentioned, we know we'll have to update the comprehensive plan, because clearly the
projections are off.
So that's one thing that we'll be keeping in mind as well.
I would say for you all, it's just applying a thoughtful analysis to all those projects
as they come before you.
With single-family, we have a lot of single-family zoning in the city, so a lot of those don't
necessarily have to come for zoning entitlements, but you can see those on the agendas in the
form of plats and things like that.
But more often than not, multifamily does come before an SUP or a PD or some sort of
zoning entitlement, so really just applying a thoughtful analysis to those would be the
best thing this body could do, I think, and making sure that, like I said, it's going
in a place that the comp plan recommends and it's not going somewhere where we don't anticipate
that it would have those neighborhood services and connections and things that would make
it a meaningful residential community in the future is probably the best we can do, but
happy to have Tina chime in on that with her thoughts, if her microphone allows.
There it goes.
I'm starting to make my hands warm.
So I concur with Haley's response.
The only other thing I would ask is that the commission not look at this data from a standpoint
of denying projects necessarily, because you're thinking that, well, we're already exceeding
what the comp plan might have initially recommended, because even we were having some challenges
with duplicating the data.
We did use the American Community Survey data, but even we -- Haley, correct me if I'm wrong,
but we were looking at a comparison of the data in the comp plan for 2040 versus what
was published in the 2030 data, so -- or as soon as the 2030 plan.
But again, it goes back to, you know, what does the Conference of Plan recommend in terms
of land uses, where residential developments are seeking a zoning entitlement change?
Is it consistent with the plan's recommendation otherwise continuing to monitor where we're
seeing those growth patterns occurring?
I think Haley's point earlier about when residential uses are being introduced in an area, I would
encourage you look at it from the standpoint of could additional residential uses be added
to really form a neighborhood long-term occurring there, recognizing that it's going to have
to give the incremental growth, but -- because I think that that's important instead of having
isolated residential development, and to me it doesn't matter whether it's single-family
or multi-family or one of the duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, if it's been isolated and not related
to any other services that could support people that are living within those areas.
You also have to balance that with -- keep in mind is that you typically have to have
the rooftops first and the residential units before you can attract commercial development
to certain areas.
So again, it just comes back to having that balanced perspective and being thoughtful
in your considerations, particularly when zoning entitlements are being requested.
But again, I would ask you not use the data from a standpoint of cooling the development,
because obviously we know we do have housing demands and considerations that we're also
trying to balance, you know, particularly with the next item that we're going to talk
about of how we can encourage some additional townhome development happening within the community.
So I hope that helps.
Thank you.
Yeah, and I'll just add -- feel free to correct me, please, Haley, if my data is old, but
I think I heard from some other staff that the average single-family home size that's
going through permitting now is about 3,000 square feet, and the, you know, American Community
Survey and other sources show average family size continuing to go down.
So we've got a little bit of a hole in the middle there that we can plug with something.
Any other questions?
All right.
Thank you, Haley.
Thank you.
I will ask, is dinner here?
Should we take a short break?
Let's take a five-minute recess and grab food so that we can do a working dinner here before
the regular meeting.
We will continue with item 3B, PZ25057, Receive a Report, Hold a Discussion, and Receive Direction
Regarding Townhome Development Regulations in the City of Denton.
Matt?
Julie Wyatt, principal planner, is also presenting on this topic, and so you'll hear from both
of us tonight.
Tonight, we're speaking of townhome regulations.
As a reminder, this is not a review of everything townhome.
This is a targeted approach with a few key requirements that we've observed have potentially
are hindering townhome development here in Denton.
So to begin, we want to get everyone on the same page of what is a townhome.
So we define a townhome as essentially a single-family home, like any other here in the Denton, except
that that building can extend from one side lot line to the other side lot line.
So that has shared walls with adjacent townhome units, with the side yard setback being observed
on those end units.
These can come in groups of three to eight townhome lots.
And just as a reminder, they are different from condos, in that a condo is owned -- someone
can own the space or the unit, but not necessarily the land.
That is owned by the association.
While in a townhome, the owner of the townhome lot owns both the land and the dwelling unit
that the townhome is on.
They typically have rear-entry garages with alleys to access in a public street, and they
generally require an HOA for maintenance of the shared building features, like the roof,
and any common lots.
And I'll turn it over to Julie.
>> All right.
So why are we talking about townhomes?
Haley teed this up flawlessly for us to talk about townhomes and that residential type
tonight.
But we also have policy support for this type of residential development.
The Denton 2040 Comprehensive Plan, the Design Downtown Denton, and the Affordable Housing
Strategic Toolkit, all identify townhomes as an important residential and housing type
to meet our residential goals and our housing goals within the city of Denton.
They fit well in infill areas, they contribute to neighborhood vibrancy, and they can provide
an affordable option for home buyers.
We also have support within the City Council's strategic initiatives.
Within those initiatives, they also talk about infill development, which townhomes can fit
well within, as well as building capacity for developers and property owners to increase
their ability to produce affordable housing.
And then finally, all of those funnel into our regulatory documents, our Denton Development
Code.
The DDC allows townhomes in a variety of zoning districts.
It allows it in our moderate density residential districts, as well as our mixed use districts,
and even in one of our lower density districts, our four with a specific use permit.
We also have some townhome specific DDC requirements.
And as Matt said, this really is just a limited discussion, kind of targeted discussion.
We believe that the zoning districts which allow townhomes are appropriate at this time.
And what we're really going to be talking about tonight is some of those design considerations,
and we'll go over those in just a minute.
Now we're going to bring Matt back, and then I'll take us home.
All right, so we're going to get more into the benefits of a townhome that Julie introduced
for us.
So for the individual, the benefit of a townhome is that it's an alternative form of homeownership
to the typical single family detached home.
That's because it offers a ownership option for those at different stages of life, such
as new home buyers that are trying to get their way into owning their own home, because
it's an entry option, a more affordable option for them there, as well as a viable downsizing
option for the more experienced homeowner who still wants to own their dwelling, their
residence, but don't need as much house or don't want as much house to take care of and
still stay in the same neighborhood.
For us at the city, the benefits of a townhome is that this is a suitable land use type in
a variety of contexts.
With the right design requirements and features, townhomes can work well in urban areas like
our downtown, as well as our suburban areas.
So those residential neighborhoods are more of the outlying areas here in Denton.
Another benefit that Julie mentioned is that townhomes are an excellent option for infill.
So those vacant lots in our existing neighborhoods that can't quite support single family detached
homes are a great option to support townhomes.
And the benefit there, an additional benefit there to the city, is that any existing utilities,
water, sewer, electricity, are already there in place.
So nothing new has to be built there, nor does the city have to be responsible for maintenance
of any new things, because utilities are already in place.
So when we look at what is actually getting built in regards to townhomes, we see a different
picture to the support and benefits that we just talked about.
So as a city, we'll meet with anyone that has an idea for building or redeveloping something
here in town.
Those meetings are called pre-application conferences.
And so since 2020, so the last five years, we've had about 25 of these pre-application
conferences regarding townhomes.
Yet when we look at what gets built, we've only had in that same period two projects
meet the requirements and regulations that we currently have in place for townhomes under
the base zoning districts, or about 177 units.
Really, when we compare that to other housing types that are built in the city that Haley
talked about in length, single family and multi-family get built in a substantial amount
here in the city.
And so the requirements of those are working and working for us.
Do you want to keep in mind that as we think about townhomes, the comprehensive plan, as
Haley pointed out, does call for over 10,000 projects in need of over 10,000 units of middle
housing types, of which townhomes is included over the next 15 years.
So overall, this paints a picture of that there is an interest in building townhomes
here in the city of Datton, but our regulations are shown to be getting impeding the development
of these types of housing.
And so now Julie will kick it off with what we're going to be going into specifically.
Okay, so as I mentioned, we're just going to talk about a few design considerations
related to townhomes, specifically townhome lot size, maximum number of units in open
space.
And we're going to come back with some recommended actions and have a discussion.
As we were preparing this presentation and looking at the information, we really had
a couple of questions that framed how we were thinking about this.
First is what is the minimum number of townhomes or development area that would be needed to
require a common open space for that development?
And then also, should the project location impact the types of open space we see on these
projects, whether it be a common private open space or private just on an individual lot?
So those are kind of what we were thinking about when we were putting this together,
and now we'll get into it.
So as I mentioned, we have a lot of zoning districts which do allow townhomes.
We've got our moderate density residential as well as our mixed use.
You could see by the colors on the screen that reflect all of these different zoning
districts.
We allow townhomes from a zoning perspective in a lot of different areas within the city.
And that's a good thing.
We do have a lot of opportunities here.
But some of our regulations seem to be getting in the way of that development.
So first of all, I'm going to talk about the lot size.
Right now, the Denton Development Code requires that all townhome lots be a minimum of 2,000
square feet.
As we're looking at this, we've realized that's kind of a one size fits all approach.
But Denton is diverse.
We have a lot of different types of areas, a lot of different types of neighborhoods.
We have suburban areas and we have urban areas.
Suburban, think low density, maybe cul-de-sac streets, distinctive neighborhoods, separated
land uses.
We also have urban or mixed use areas where we've got higher densities.
We've got a mix of uses, walkable environments, and uses closer together.
And Denton has infill opportunities throughout the city.
So both in our urban and suburban context, we have opportunities for that infill development
that is called for in our planning documents.
So I want to look at the lot size related to the two different contexts.
So on the left side of the screen is a townhome development.
It's a great townhome development within the city of Denton.
It's on the north side of town, so it's a little bit outside of our main urban area.
And the lot sizes are about 2,100 square feet per townhome.
And you could see that the picture on the bottom of the screen that the townhome lots
have the little front yards for that private open space.
We also have the other end of the spectrum where we've got near our downtown, near our
downtown square on the right side where we have lot sizes that range from 900 to 1,650
square feet.
And these have very limited private open space, in that the building takes up the entire lot.
But it's within that downtown walkable context.
And so that private open space isn't necessarily needed for those lots.
And then we have a mixture.
We have another townhome development on the south side of town that has a great mix of
lot sizes.
It's also nested within a single-family neighborhood.
So it's kind of that development we want to see.
But there are some lots, the ones with the red dots, are less than 2,000 square feet.
And so they would not be able to be built today because they don't meet that minimum
standard.
So given the variety of Denton's neighborhoods, this one-size-fits-all approach is something
that we feel like is limiting our townhome development.
And so we're going to have some recommendations for that.
Also want to talk about maximum units.
This is within our Denton development code, and it can be sometimes a challenge to apply.
And that requirement is the maximum number of townhomes allowed on a site can be no more
than the number of single-family homes that could be developed on that site.
Now, keep in mind as we're talking about this, townhomes often have other fixed costs that
maybe single-family doesn't have, things like alleys or fire suppression systems if the
building is large enough.
So it can often maybe increase those costs.
So we're going to do an exercise, and there's two ways we're going to approach this.
And I hope I explain this well.
If I don't, give me some questions.
So we're going to look at an exercise, some examples of the project size.
So we've got a three-quarters of an acre development, a one-acre development, and a three-acre
development.
When we apply that 2,000 square foot minimum lot size, which is what the code requires,
to that gross acreage, we could get 16 lots out of the three-quarters acre, 21 lots out
of the one acre, and 65 lots out of the three acre.
But when we apply that maximum density requirement, those numbers in red show how that limitation
affects those developments.
And that, for example, in an R6 right here, on a three-quarter acre development in R6,
you could only build five townhomes.
So you're leaving essentially 11 townhomes on the table.
And you can see, for those of us who like maps, we also have it mapped out here where
we've got the four units in R4, five units in R6, and eight units in R7.
And this is a three-quarter acre site here.
So you could kind of see how that would play out.
What does that mean?
Well, this is limiting, just limiting the number of possible units, and that reduces
our capacity to build this housing type.
It has a greater impact in infill areas.
When we were looking at this presentation, we were kind of talking about, well, what
do people do with that remainder area?
Because if you're in R4 and you can only build four units and three-quarters of an acre,
what do you do with the rest of it?
Well, the code doesn't prescribe that.
But one could imagine that it could be potentially used for open space, or if it's in a larger
development, something like streets and alleys, or maybe detention area.
So the code doesn't necessarily prescribe the area, but it does impact that number of
units.
And it's often a greater impact in our infill areas, because especially maybe a lot that
doesn't need to extend a street.
You still could not build those additional units on that lot.
We also looked at, in R4, R4 also allows duplexes with a specific use permit.
So if you obtained a specific use permit for duplexes in R4, you could potentially get
more dwelling units for a duplex than you could a townhome in R4.
So what does that mean?
It really is a disincentive to build townhomes versus other residential land use types.
Because one could get additional units with some other residential use type, like a duplex
or maybe an MN, a multifamily.
All right, and then finally we want to talk about open space.
The code requires that any development of 10 or more townhomes must set aside 5% of
the land area for common open space.
When we look to see how that applies, we've got an example here on your screen.
This is that urban townhome development that we've looked at earlier in the project or
in the presentation.
The development area is a little over 21,000 square feet.
And when you do the math, it's about 1,000 square feet that they would have to have had
as part of common open space.
And that's about the size of that green block there.
What that tells us is that smaller projects really don't yield enough usable -- enough
space in that 5% to really be usable.
We did another illustration to see if we could kind of show what those -- that space would
look like.
So we've got -- we did an example of 10 townhomes, 50 townhomes, and 100 townhomes.
So thinking about the land area that one would need in order to build these types of developments,
we anticipate that 10 townhomes would need about 6/10 of an acre, which would yield about
1,380 square feet of required open space.
And that's about the size of that red square here.
And just to give you a comparison of scale, this entire area is about 2.6 acres.
So just to kind of show you about what size area we're looking at, 50 units would yield
about 6,900 square feet.
That's a little more usable space, that area in blue.
And then 100 units would yield about 1,400 square feet.
So what we observe in this is that for those small developments, that open space really
is just too small to be usable.
Also, when you have open space that is commonly owned by the townhome development, it has
to be maintained by the homeowners.
And so with the fewer number of homeowners, those maintenance costs increase per homeowner.
We don't require open space for single-family developments, only for these middle-housing
developments.
And once again, like our other regulations, it does limit our ability to develop infill
lots.
I also want you to keep in mind that open space can be a really vital part of any development.
So I don't want to say open space is bad.
But that project design considers not only the site characteristics, but also the location.
So we also looked at our parks 10-minute walk to a park standard.
So we have a standard within the city of Denton that parks wants all residents within our community
to be able to walk to a park within 10 minutes.
They have a map in their parks plan that shows those buffer areas of the parts of our community
that have a 10-minute walk to a park.
So we can see that a lot of the areas in yellow, which do meet that standard, are within our
infill environment.
They are within the parts of our city that we want to encourage that additional infill.
So that is where that location comes into play.
There is a time and a place for amenitized open space for developments.
But we want to make sure that it's in the right place.
And often our infill environment is not necessarily the most appropriate spot.
So just to remind you of those framing questions and what we were thinking about, we were thinking
about the open space, not only for what size of development or community should have that
open space requirement, but also that overall project location and how that affects where
we want our open space.
And so now I want to talk about our recommendations.
So broken it up, first talk about lot sizes.
We are proposing to decrease the minimum townhome lot size in our mixed-use zoning districts
to 1,000 square feet with those associated reduced dimensions.
And that would allow, given where our mixed-use districts are and the types of context and
development patterns we want to encourage in our mixed-use district, we feel that the
1,000 square foot lot size is more consistent with that type of development pattern and
that more fine-grained development.
This supports our policy documents and it supports infill development.
It also can increase our neighborhood vibrancy.
It makes more walkable areas, right?
And it would build capacity.
It would allow more infill townhome development, particularly in our downtown areas as opposed
to the 2,000 square foot lots.
We're also proposing in terms of density to just go ahead and remove that limit to the
maximum number of units allowed in townhome developments.
It's not a regulation that we apply to any other residential development within the city
of Denton, and we feel like it's just working against our policy goals to build that capacity
for townhome development and promote affordability.
And then, finally, with open space, we're proposing to modify that regulation to require
open space for projects of three acres or more with an exemption for those larger sites
within half a mile of a public park or open space.
As I said, open space can be a really vital part of a project, and especially some of
our larger projects, we would want to see how that open space could be used as an amenity
for residents, but we also want to make sure that we put it in the right places.
And so having that exemption within a half a mile of the park would still allow our community
members to have that recreation and social space, which is what we want in those open
space in the communities, while still also encouraging those infill sites to be developed.
And with that, I will be happy to answer any questions and get any feedback from you on
the proposal.
Thank you, Julie and Matt.
Yeah, thank you.
Questions, lots of information there, questions about the proposal and/or the previous regulations
and what we've seen, Commissioner Prado-Crujillo?
So I like what you're saying.
With this last one, the open space and having an exemption with half a mile of walking distance,
how would we take into consideration the actual walkability of that half mile, like sidewalks,
intersections, you know what I mean, it's great if there's a really great park across
the street, but if I have to cross four lanes and there's no sidewalks.
So how can we take that into consideration as well?
That is a tough challenge.
When we look at it, our proposal was really just looking at it as the crow flies and less
taking into consideration those real site-specific elements just to allow it to be applied more
evenly.
But I'm certainly open to any suggestions or recommendations.
Tina may also want to chime in.
I'll pull up the map.
I think that's a great question.
I think some of the market aspect might also influence where somebody acquires property
and is interested in building that infill development, if they're relying upon that
open space, then they may be looking at, okay, what infrastructure improvements are there
today?
If there are voids within that infrastructure, then for our purposes, from the city's perspective,
then we would look to say, okay, especially if we're starting to have quite a bit of residential
development, what can we do to fill those voids and getting that on our sidewalk repair
program?
Okay.
But it's no different than the challenges that we have today, right?
So somebody comes in and is interested in doing a residential development.
They like the property because of its proximity to a public park, but there are voids within
the existing sidewalk network that are there.
So the residential project, if the zoning is in place, then is in place, then they're
able to go ahead and move forward with that.
But again, we have the voids there.
So we just, we work to fill those in, so it'd be no different than the status quo.
I think my only concern is that if we're doing this measure specifically as a affordability,
you know, yeah, just to make it more affordable, like we're saying, townhomes are more affordable.
It's a starter home for families that are starting or they can't afford these bigger
homes that we don't impact a certain demographic more so than another.
So just to keep that in mind.
Commissioner Roox.
So just to follow up on that is, so with an exemption, would an exemption have to be given
by council or did it just automatically go?
You want to address that?
Well, I'll try and you can grab your.
So tonight's really just a work session, just to kind of get your feedback to start this
discussion.
If the commission feels comfortable, we can start working on those actual changes to the
debt and development code.
And at that point, we would just write that into the code.
So if a project met these specific guidelines, then that exemption would automatically be
given.
I would agree.
And other communities that I've worked in, especially where we've tried to encourage
infill development, we've written those exemptions within there.
Yeah, because where I was going with this, if it had to be approved, then we could maybe
do a walkability analysis to go with it.
Commissioner Pugon.
I just want to second what Commissioner Badoe-Carrillo said about like considering the walkability.
The half mile, is that equivalent to the 10 minute walk?
It's probably a little larger than the 10 minute to a walk.
It probably depends on how you walk.
Probably not a 10 minute walk for me.
But it's average.
Yes.
Okay.
And then I have a second question.
So with the reduction from the 2000 square feet to the 1000 square feet, can you go over
again approximately how many lots that could fit or how many units that could fit?
You know, it would depend on the project.
So it would -- I mean, we can -- let's take a look at our little infill example.
I think this is -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.
This is 14 lots and about 21,000 square feet.
And it would -- you know, the end unit lots would always be a little bit larger just because
they have to meet those setbacks.
So there still would be other requirements like setbacks, like fire, you know, all of
those other regulations would still be in place.
I just have one more.
Go ahead.
So of the 25 that you guys have had, like the pre-application meetings that you mentioned,
only two built, like were there any other barriers other than the three that you're
proposing recommendations for that kept those others from actually building?
Just curious if there's other things that they listed.
That is a great -- and this -- that's a great question.
And this is going to be an ongoing conversation.
You know, we are -- right now these are the really targeted ones that seem to be the biggest
barriers, but we're always continuing to look to refine our codes and make sure that they
meet the needs of the community.
So this may not be our last time to talk about it, but we're just -- this was a -- taking
a scalpel to it and taking out the thing that was probably most problematic.
Go ahead.
Is it possible to see, as far as affordability, what the pricing differences could possibly
look like on an average?
So for example, single-family home on average would be this pricing structure, but by comparison
we could kind of take a look at what a townhome would be.
I think we discussed, you know, what affordability actually means, and so it would be great to
kind of delve into that a little bit more.
Sure.
Go ahead, Commissioner Riggs.
So like, for instance, looking at these pre-application conferences, we had 25.
Was something else able to be built, just the townhomes didn't work in that situation?
Sometimes it's -- the lot may just be a really challenging piece of property.
Often something else does get built, maybe -- or a different developer, maybe that developer
goes away because they build townhomes, so it's going to go somewhere else or go to someone
else and they'll build it with something else.
Because I just have to say, I kind of like the 2,000-square-foot minimum, and going down
to 1,000, I'd like for there to just be something so you don't just have a whole bunch of tiny
little lots everywhere, you know.
So I have a few questions, as you can probably imagine.
One, I think the Commissioner Riggs question about 2,000 versus 1,000 kind of blends well
with the question of what is the pricing difference between those, you know, how many square foot
of a two- or three-story townhome do you usually see on a 2,000-square-foot lot, for instance,
that sort of thing.
But to get some questions and some direction from me, I think, in general, the proposals,
I think, look fine.
It's been a long time coming, and I really appreciate this.
I remember asking staff about the townhome requirements in the 2019 code before we passed
the 2019 code when I was not on this commission, and it's always rubbed me a little bit problematic,
so glad we're taking a look at it.
So questions on open space.
I understand the concern of is it really accessible to a park and that sort of thing.
I don't know that it makes sense to write it in the code this way, but for instance,
the Trust for Public Lands park map, right, that Gary's team on parks uses to assess location
ability of new parks, it does pull sidewalk locations from OpenStreetData and do some
of that assessment, so it's not just a blanket circle around each park, essentially.
Like I said, I'd be fine with some code that gave staff some flexibility in, hey, look,
this is half a mile away, but you have to walk across I-35, so no, right, versus us
needing to get into the weeds on every application.
The other thing with open space, maybe this is opening too much of a bag of worms, but
to me, to that question of will this area develop into a walkable area, regardless of
whether Connecting Sidewalks is there today, and maybe they come in in a few years with
CIPs, there are different ways you can build a townhome, right?
Many of them can be alley access, other times they can be front access, and that creates
a very different walkable vibe and expectation, so if it makes sense, maybe there's a way
to work in, hey, if it's rear-loaded, then you get some relief from open space as well,
and/or because of our drainage requirements, maybe we even start thinking about, hey, you
can have rear-loaded alleys that are somewhat permeable, right, or swales, or something
like that, to reduce the drainage access issues, and then maybe the people just have to wheel
their carts down to the street from the alley so that we don't have the 20-ton trash truck
problem.
I'm just thinking out loud, right?
I'm not saying that that's a specific thing I want to see, but I know I've heard in the
past that rear-loading is a challenge because of our detention and drainage requirements.
And then a couple questions on sort of the zoning.
I understand staff said that right now you feel like the locations of where we allow
townhomes is sufficient.
I'm going to disagree a little bit, just to help the commission think through this, and
I'd like to hear some thoughts from the commissioners.
And this somewhat touches on the concern for impact to existing communities being equitable.
So first of all, am I correct in thinking that prior to the 2019 code, we actually allowed
townhomes by right in NR4, which was transitioned to R4?
It's just it had site-specific standards.
I'm looking to Haley because I've forgotten parts of the 2002 code she's looking.
It's a good question, I don't know.
So I appreciate hearing a follow-up from that.
I may have looked at it wrong, but that was my impression when I read the old code.
So in my view, part of the reason that we haven't seen as many is that we eliminated
a lot of the land in the city that allowed them, right?
And that was what is now R4.
A nitpicky thing that we may want to look at is the minimum lot depth, because I think
for a 1,000-square-foot lot in, say, R7, that would be 12.5 feet wide with the 80-foot minimum
lot depth.
I'm not sure that's exactly the form and function that you're going for.
So maybe just look at that particular requirement and see if that needs to be adjusted.
And then I guess getting back to the R4 thing here, so R4 is in blue, correct?
Correct.
Okay.
So when I look at this map, if we're going to say, yeah, disallowing them without a SUP
in R4 was a mistake, then most of the land area in the walkable core of the city is southeast
Denton and east of downtown.
That's a problem.
Likewise, there's a lot of land near walkable areas, be it the universities or future walkable
areas along Elm and Locust north of university that is not even R4, it's R3.
And I would think that we would want to see more townhomes in those areas that are relatively
close to parks, relatively close to businesses, et cetera, whereas most of our existing R6
and R7 land is not close to the core, right?
It's the newer subdivisions that have come in the last 15 years.
So I'd be interested in potentially expanding it to R3 just because I don't want to set
a bad or put together a set of restrictions that results in a concentrated redevelopment
of an area simply because the other areas near desirable walkable areas are not R4 or
better.
>> SUP and R3 and -- okay, SUP and R3 and R4.
>> Okay.
I must have read that wrong, then.
I apologize.
Still, the concept goes, right?
The difficulty of getting an SUP versus getting a zoning change is not too much different.
You pay $8,000 less when you're paying $100,000 to your lawyer anyway, and the public hearing
process is very much similar.
So functionally, when I look at this map of where they would go, with no by right in R4,
we take out all the blue area, and we won't get them in the core of Denton.
We'll get them in the outskirts, right?
And then I think if we include the blue area, then we need to look at including the R3 for
equity concerns.
So those are my thoughts.
Sorry, I talked a lot, but -- >> No, I want one follow-up.
So as we're proposing, we would only recommend reducing the minimum lot size down to 1,000
square feet.
In our mixed-use districts, that's MN, MD, and MR.
So leaving the R6, R7, and R4 at the 2,000 square feet, because those are typically found
in more suburban contexts.
And just, you know, our mixed-use districts are intended for more of that fine-grain,
walkable environment, which is why we're recommending that reduced lot size in those districts, particularly
also if you can see, it is kind of small, but the MD is this bright green, the MN is
the olive green, and we've got a lot of what we probably all consider downtown in areas
that are actually in our design downtown plan that are MN.
So that's why we included that, and then MR, because once again, those are supposed to
be those regional walkable areas.
So just -- and you are correct.
If this is the direction that we go and we do reduce -- it is approved that reduction
in lot size.
There would have to be associated lot dimensions modified, too, because 20 by 60, which is
what we require, does not equal 1,000.
So Matt had to point that out to me.
Thank you, yeah, I really appreciate that, and the clarification of the thousand square
feet for the mixed-use zoning districts, maybe that alleviates some of the concern, makes
sense to me.
In similar way to Commissioner Padron asking for what does the price difference look like,
one of the reasons I think we don't see townhomes right now in MN districts is because any time
you find an MN plot of land, if you can squeeze an apartment complex on it that's three or
four stories, that will make you more money.
So I'd like to see a pro forma between what a townhome development would make versus what
a garden style or urban apartment complex, depending on the context, would make, just
to make sure that we're not aiming at the wrong target, if that makes sense.
So that's all.
Anybody else have additional?
Well, and I guess if I can just add a follow-up real quick.
We can look to see, I'm not sure if we've got the skill set though available internally
to be able to do a formal pro forma.
Again, our whole goal with this was to take a very targeted approach.
Understand your concerns regarding the zoning districts.
One of the reasons why we did not make any recommendations on changing zoning districts
to either increase the liability of townhome or address SEP requirements or anything of
that nature is because we know later on the Development Code Review Committee is on their
wish list is to be able to talk about missing middle housing.
And so we figured there would be a more comprehensive approach addressed at that.
We were just, this was something that we're seeing that, why are we not getting more townhome
developments?
We felt like the existing open space requirement in that 2,000 square foot, particularly in
those MN, MR, and MD districts were problematic.
So hence why we were trying to be more focused.
So I would just ask that we not, maybe not lose sight of what we're trying to accomplish
in the short term and being able to address some of those bigger picture items in terms
of what zoning districts that these uses are allowed in, in considering expansion of those
when we look at all housing types, if you don't mind.
Thanks.
Commissioner Prada-Crea.
I'm hearing what you just said, but before that, I was gonna just say that I would be
curious how many more, how much more could be built out if we did include R4 and R3 in
terms of affordability in those, in those areas.
So kind of just echoing what both of y'all said, but I understand what you're saying,
Tina.
Mr. Riggs.
I guess, can you go back to the initial recommendations from staff?
And then what was the last one?
Actually with the clarification, sorry, with the clarification, I'm actually good with
all three of those, but obviously addressing the concerns everyone else has.
I know we're running up against time here.
Can we just get a quick read of the room and on those three proposals?
Sounds like we're mostly in agreement that we would support those, but if there's any
of those three staff recommendations that you have issue with, please just go down the
line and highlight them or say no issue.
So Commissioner Carrillo.
I don't have issue with any of them.
Okay.
And I'm fine with the recommended changes, Commissioner Petrone.
I'm fine with the recommended changes as well.
Thank you, Julie.
Thank you.
All right.
At 6.28 PM, I will conclude the work session portion of our meeting and we will reconvene
in council chambers in two minutes.
Thank you.
Good evening.
At 6.34 this evening, I will reconvene us.
We did have one work session item that was still pending.
It's a short one.
So without objection, I'm going to continue that to the end of the regular meeting after
concluding items.
Okay.
Our first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. and Texas Flag.
If you stand.
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.
Under the Texas flag, I pledge allegiance to the Texas, one state, under God, one, indivisible.
First item is item 2A, PZ25051.
Under approval of the January 29th planning and zoning minutes, Commissioner Patron?
I move to approve the minutes of the January 29th planning and zoning meeting.
And Commissioner Riggs?
Second.
Let's vote on the board, please.
That passes 4-0.
The next item is one of our one public hearing.
Item 3A, AFP24-0011.
Julie?
Good evening, Julie Wyatt.
And I am presenting AFP2411.
This is a replat of four lots in the high school addition.
It is replatting those four lots into three lots.
This is a residential replat, so it is a public hearing, and it does comply with all of our
requirements, and so staff is recommending approval.
I'll be happy to answer any questions.
Now we'll go ahead and open the public hearing, just so I don't forget.
Any questions?
Okay.
This is a public hearing, so if you have something to say or any questions of staff or the Commission
for this replat, you're welcome to come down to the front.
If you didn't fill out a blue card, that's fine.
Just fill out one afterwards with the secretary just having your name and address for the
record.
Hi.
My name is Kira.
I'm just kind of wondering why there is a need to replat it as, what was it, two plots
instead of three?
Sure.
Can we get an answer?
Yes.
So the property owner, one of the lots was never actually developed.
So this lot in this area has a long history.
It was originally platted in 1917.
Very quickly after it was originally platted, the lot boundaries were changed by deed.
So all the lot boundaries are actually by meets and bounds.
It originally had one lot here, one lot here, and then two lots right here.
Well, I can show you the original plat.
So this is the original plat.
But this lot five was never actually developed, and it became the part of the backyard of
lots four and three.
And then part of lot six became part of lots one and two.
So they are just really replatting to get the lot boundaries to be configured correctly
with the deed boundaries, essentially.
So not really changing any developed lots.
It really is just kind of cleaning up what's happened over the years.
And Julie, is this a common owner between these lots?
Yes.
It is one owner who owns all of the lots.
Yes, sir.
Yes, correct.
Oh, no.
Sorry.
One and two.
Those are different owners.
Sorry about that.
Yes.
Any other questions or comments?
This is a public hearing.
Anybody to entertain or listen to the resident's feedback or answer questions on the process
of platting?
OK.
Seeing none, I will close the public hearing.
Any questions or a motion from the commission?
Commissioner Pedron?
Move approval.
Commissioner Riggs?
Second.
OK.
With that, I will call for a vote on the board.
And that item passes 4-0.
With our abbreviated meeting agenda this evening, that takes us to item four, planning and zoning
commission matrix.
Tina?
Thank you, Chair.
So, with respect to the matrix that's included in your packet, so we added an item and I
think hopefully by the end of our work session, we'll be able to remove this, but at the end
of your matrix, or I guess on the first page, discussion regarding applicable statutory
procedures and administrative implications when quorum is not achieved, so we will actually
have that on our agenda this evening and take care of that after our regular meeting.
I also added, oh, one other thing you'll note is, and we're going to go ahead and keep this
language on our agenda, but for this evening, if you were to look at page two of your agenda
at the end of work session reports, we did add the language in the event the commission
does not finish their work session prior to 6.30 p.m. that you have the ability to return
to work session.
So, we're going to just keep that as standard language on your agenda.
So, just wanted to bring that to your attention.
That way, if we have items on the work session that we need to make sure that we need to
get through and if we've got a short regular meeting, then we'll just tack those on the
end and be able to keep our work program moving forward.
In terms of council action, there were no zoning cases or projects that required council
action that this board has, or excuse me, that the commission has seen previously, so
I have no report on that.
And that concludes my report.
Thank you.
Any additions to the matrix requested from the commission?
No?
Okay.
Any concluding items?
No?
Okay.
Well, then with that, I will pick up off the table the work session report item 3C, PZ25-054
receiver report and hold discussion on the statutory procedures and administrative implications
for the Planning and Zoning Commission.
I will also close that public hearing and close the regular meeting.
So, you're welcome to stay if you'd like to, but the regular meeting portion has
concluded.
That's 642.
All right.
Good evening and welcome back to work session.
So this item, as you noted, is just to go over some of the procedures related to what
happens when we do not have a quorum for the commission.
Seems timely since we are down a couple of members at the moment to review that with
everyone.
So, just a reminder, as we see tonight, a quorum is four out of seven PNZ members present
for the meeting.
So, we'll go over procedures as it relates to PLATs and then entitlement cases.
So for PLATs, as you've probably heard us refer to numerous times now, there is a state
statute in Chapter 212 of the Local Government Code that requires action either to approve
or deny the PLAT be taken within 30 days of its submittal.
There is an allowance for an extension to be granted for administrative PLATs that can
be done by staff.
For PLATs that require PNZ's ultimate approval, that extension does have to come before you
all.
So, if we are not able to take action due to whatever factor, whether that's we mess
something up or there's not quorum for a meeting or whatever the reason, regardless,
that PLAT becomes automatically approved.
That doesn't matter if there's any errors on the PLAT.
It is approved in the form that it was at at that time.
That's why if you look on our website, you'll see we have submittal schedules that tell
you down to the day when you can submit a PLAT, when you can resubmit a PLAT, and all
of those are built around the calendar that you all approve for yourselves each year so
that we make sure we can always get PLATs to you all within 30 days, and we try to also
account for as close to 30 days as we can when someone gets an extension to give them
ample time to work through issues.
So if quorum is not achieved, PLATs that were on your agenda as consent items with a recommendation
for approval, we really wouldn't have to take any action in those cases because the PLAT
was going to be approved regardless.
So those we don't worry too much about, we can go ahead and send those an approval letter
the next day saying due to lack of quorum, your PLAT is automatically approved.
If there was a PLAT that was recommended for denial or that had requested an extension,
you will find us scrambling in the office on the day that we don't have quorum, calling
the applicants and talking to them about the pros and cons of withdrawing their PLAT so
that it does not have automatic action taken on it.
So some of those considerations that we would go over with the applicant would be if there
were errors on the PLAT, they would find themselves having to pay for a survey or to go do a replat,
then pay for submitting that replat to us and going back through the process all over
again to correct the errors that could have been fixed had they withdrawn the PLAT and
let it come back to you all at your next meeting.
So that's increased cost and increased time on the applicant's part as well as staff's
time.
We also keep in mind that the approved PLAT does vest the development.
Under state statute, there's vesting provisions that once you have that approved document,
you can build what's on that approved document basically.
So if it's a residential subdivision and there were lots on there that didn't meet
dimensional requirements, they would be vested.
They could proceed and develop those lots, but then they'd get to building permit and
what if the houses don't meet setbacks?
Or what if someone tries to get financing for their lot and then it's a nonconforming
lot and the financing company is like, "We're not comfortable with that."
So there's a lot of considerations that we try to help people think through to encourage
them to withdraw their PLATs if they choose to do so so that we don't have those automatic
approvals when there are errors on the PLAT.
So again, all of that just comes down to delays in the project timeline which does impact financing.
So more often than not, financing for projects is tied to getting a PLAT approval.
So the applicants really do want that approved PLAT.
They don't want those delays associated with replatting.
So more often than not, they'll agree with us, withdraw their application, they send
us something in writing and we consider the PLAT withdrawn and then they can resubmit
it to us for your next meeting.
For zoning or just any form of entitlement case, so zoning, specific use permit, plan
development, alternative ESA plans and comp plan amendments, not being able to hear something
on the date that we've noticed it for creates pretty significant delays related to notifications.
Our notifications for the city include a letter to everyone within 200 feet, postcards to
everyone within 500 feet, posting in the newspaper and signs posted on the property.
The signs can presumably stay where they're at but the rest of that process gets redone
if we have to re-notice because we weren't able to meet.
So those newspaper notices have a 17-day lead time, well actually more like 20 if you account
for the time to get it to the newspaper and then to process it but the state code says
something kind of wacky to the effect of you have to post it the day before, the day before,
the 15th day before that results in us calculating that as 17 days.
So typically if you look at your calendar, that's going to push someone back to meeting
dates.
So it is a pretty significant delay on their timeline.
There is again money associated with that, notification cost by our ordinance are passed
along to the applicant so they get a little frustrated when they pay for those notifications
more than once.
It's also going to push back their city council date and there are some months if you look
at council, they only meet once so it can cause pretty significant delays if we hit
that summer timeframe or around the holidays where they might be waiting a month or two
more to get to council than what they would have had.
So again, just inconvenience on the applicant's part but also the citizens if you think about
receiving a second letter telling you about a case that you may not have understood the
first time or if you came out to, drove to city hall and tried to attend the meeting
to find out that it wasn't going to be heard.
Just that public convenience factor there that we would want to take into consideration.
That's really all I have for you all.
It's a pretty quick report, happy to answer any questions and we can, we do have a series
of boot camps planned for you all just in the coming months that we'll go into more
detail about the procedures and stuff related to these processes but just wanted to cover
this one specific facet tonight.
Any questions?
Commissioner Riggs?
So you're saying it's kind of important for us to have quorum?
It's very important.
Do we know who we're at on filling the other two spots?
No.
The most recent nomination to the commission was not approved.
I have one question and whoever from staff feels qualified to answer it.
I think sometimes we understand delays but as members of the community serving on this
board we haven't gone through the process of obtaining a construction loan or an option
on a property and certain rate locks.
That's all foreign to us.
Can you just summarize how impactful those delays can be if they miss one of those financing
deadlines?
Not in the number of dollars but just in what the process is.
It can be significant delays for them, right, because if there are, so for example, if they
were locked in at a certain percentage rate with their financing institution anticipating
that they would be closing on X date but then come to find, and they needed that plat approved
but come to find out that plat is not approved and therefore it's going to delay them to
Y date and oh by the way the interest rate has gone up and so they're, so then they're
subject to that increased interest rate and having to lock in at that rate.
I mean that's an example of where there's implications to the applicant from that standpoint
not to mention if they're having to pay any additional fees to have the paperwork completely
redone, work with the title company that's probably involved.
So that's why we're always very conscientious of making sure that we can achieve quorum
because we know that there are financial implications much bigger than the notice implications,
the fees that we might assess some money so we're always sensitive to that.
Even when if we as staff make an error in a notice, we hate when that occurs.
We feel about yay big when that occurs and so because we realize that there is potential
implications and costs to the applicant so we do all we can to try and minimize any additional
costs or increase as a result of an administrative error that might have taken place.
So hopefully that helps address some, I mean you were great kind of framing that up from
your perspective.
Thank you, I appreciate that.
Just one other question because I'm not aware.
You talked about the automatic approvals that happen, is there any difference as far as
how those plats are filed with the county that could impact the applicant in the future
so it still gets the same stamp, same signing, everything's the same?
Yeah, everything would proceed as normal.
Okay, thank you.
With no more questions, Commissioner Padron?
I feel like in the past we may have had some sort of discussion regarding contemplating
virtual participation.
Is there any movement with that or if that would be a possibility in the near future?
So I'm going to answer that very brief because we're probably getting off topic for our posting
but that has not been completed yet so it's still in the works.
But I do believe under state statute virtual participation wouldn't help with a quorum
for the meeting anyway.
Oh, thank you.
Yes, thank you.
You're correct.
Thank you.
And just one more point on this item, I will say given our two open seats, if the commission
could go through your calendar invites because that's an easy way for the city secretary
to track expected attendance and make sure that those are updated for all of your dates.
The more, as Hailey said, that the last minute nature of this really puts a strain on staff.
So the earlier that we can give them advance notice about a potential issue that we may
have, even if it's just a tardiness issue, the easier we can move around times or try
to adjust something on the way.
Anything else on this item?
No?
Okay.
I will also say I'll take the liberty to pick up item 3B from our work session just to clarify
because I was trying to get out of the work session room to get over here not having people
waiting too long.
I will clarify that my hopes to see are just that, their future hopes to see.
I don't want that in any way to slow down the process of making the recommended changes
by staff.
And I wanted to check specifically with Commissioner Padrone because I know you had asked for affordability
data, and I had asked similarly for some pro forma needs between the townhome and multifamily.
And so I just want to understand, is that something that we need to see before staff
moves forward to craft the language, or is that something that we'd like to see at a
future date as we assess further changes to make townhomes more accessible?
I think for me, it would be fine to see that at a future date to talk specifically about
the accessibility of townhomes.
We did receive public outreach regarding support in townhomes, and one of the reasons that
was listed was affordability and access to home ownership.
And so it is something that I would like to see in the future, but it's not necessary
for this first step.
Okay.
Thank you for clarifying.
Any other comments on that?
Okay.
With that, I will close the work session of the Planning and Zoning Commission at 6.54
p.m.
Thank you all.