Oct 21, 2020 Planning and Zoning Commission on 2020-10-21 4:30 PM

>> Ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the planning and zoning commission work session for October 21st, 2020. Seeing that we have a quorum, I'll call this meeting to order at 432. Please let the record show that at this time, Commissioner Anderson is absent. And with that, we'll just go ahead and jump right into our work session reports. The first one is to receive a report and hold the discussion regarding the trails concept map for future identification, renovation, and expansion of facilities and trails. And I will assume let Gary Packins take it from here. >> Thank you very much. Let me go ahead and bring that up. It doesn't look like it's showing. Share screen. And there we go. Okay. Thank you very much, Gary Packins, Director of Parks and Recreation. We have a few other staff members and a consultant on board, Dr. Joseph Walkers from University of North Texas. He's been helping us on this plan for the past 18 months or so, really volunteering at this point in time, well past any support that he's had financially. And then Drew Huffman, who's an Assistant Director of Parks and Recreation, and Heather Gray is our Business Manager. So we've been working on our Parks, Recreation, and Trails Master Plan for about 18 months. We had the staff member that was kind of our key point. He went to another job and then COVID hit. So it really took a pause there for a number of months. But during this time, we've been working on the Trails Plan. And it's really a chapter, but it's a large portion of our Master Plan just because the amount of information that we've been working on. So we wanted to spend a few minutes, go through what we've been working on, and then flip over to a GIS map and just kind of walk you through some of the trails and then gather as much feedback as we can. We plan on going to council in November and scrubbing everything back up if we need to make adjustments and then eventually taking it to council later in 2021. So overall, trails and really in DFW are number one requested recreational resource across most cities in DFW and obviously very popular. People of all ages and abilities can go out and use those. So it's a really way, not just for recreational, but also for personal transportation, going to various places if people are depending on that resource for transportation. Our existing trails, we're going to talk a little bit about the current trails network and then also a series of new trails that we're looking forward to, not just surface, but water trails, as well as equestrian trails and a few others. So from a multi-purpose trail, they foster obviously physical activity, their multi-purpose recreational assets for physical activity and health and wellness, transportation for people to go to work, get to school, whether it's college or elementary, and then obviously mobility just to create connectivities and opportunities between neighborhoods and parks. One major component is what we're calling a side path, and that is to help improve non-motorized mobility as well. This is typically designated whether it's 10 feet, 8 feet. We're shooting for 10 feet as much as we can to provide that separate path for safety so people aren't on street as much as they can. Sometimes we have to be on street just because of the way that the road is and the width of the right-of-way. So currently right now, we have about 21 miles of trails with inside our park system. Where we're at right now with our plan is we have about 32 miles that are planned for future development, and when we say future development, that's probably 25, 40 years at this point in time, long term, pending obviously a revenue stream to help offset that construction. We have a series of trails planned for creeks that are following the greenways, and that's another little 21 miles of trails that we have currently and 17 that are planned. And then side paths, we have zero on here because when we started, we didn't have any, but May Hill's been completed, Vintage is getting poured right now, and some of Bonnie Gray's getting poured. So there's another 130 miles of trail opportunities that would be called side paths. Then connectors, these are various areas, and a lot of these are under our text dot roadways where we have those major pinch points for major intersections, connecting one trail to another. Our paddling trails, and these are the easiest one to build because it's just using existing waterways. Obviously getting people into the waterways is the majority of that expense, and then signage or buoys identifying where the safe places to go are, and it's really a marketing campaign as well to get people out using your water activities, your waterways. So right now we have about 30 miles of those planned, and realistically long term, we'd love to see a trail around Lake Louisville, which would be 100 mile paddling challenge going around the perimeter, and we actually have some discussions tomorrow planned with Texas Parks and Wildlife about paddling trails. And then equestrian trails, and this one is really still up for grabs. We don't have anything designated for horses, but we found a few areas that might be ideal for that. It's obviously a lot of flexibility in the planning, but that's just a high water mark that we could focus on some areas and get some equestrian enthusiasts interested. So overall, we have a plan that would link 18 of the parks together through trails, and those are connected just for parks. We also have additional businesses, schools, city assets, downtown being a major one. The train stations and the train stops would be another significant opportunity as well. In total, we have 210, actually probably a little bit more at this point in time, in proposed miles of trails, and that's everything that I just talked about, including equestrian and paddling trails. About $60 million in estimated capital construction, and that's in today's dollars. And then that does not include the side paths along the roadways. And then about $550,000 in estimated maintenance, and that's just a ballpark figure. So obviously compliance considerations and concerns, obviously inclusion to make sure we're making sure that everything is accessible to all abilities. We're looking at safety measures, whether it's call boxes or lighting or even some sort of a patrol system, various types of surfaces, and then signage. So inclusion, obviously, this is a big one. Whether you're on a bike and you have some barriers, inability challenges, or in a wheelchair, or you're, you know, anyway, we want to make sure that it's easy for you to get around, get back and forth on the trails. A lot of our trails, obviously, are crossing roadways, and we need to make sure that they're safe and for people of all ages and abilities to to meander through our park system. Whether it's a bridge, an intersection, a sidewinder when you're going through an S curve to get across the street, slowing traffic down, not just for the people, but for the cars as well. Obviously, there's safety concerns from both. And obviously, people on a bike are going to get hurt more seriously compared to a car. But we need to figure out where we have those major cross points that are safe for everybody. As I just mentioned, this is South Lake, and this is one location that one of our public meetings someone had expressed is those trail crossings, getting from a park into a neighborhood is a big challenge for us. Looking at call boxes for safety and finding out where those key locations are. We've even talked about putting chargers in certain areas. So if your phone dies, you could pull over for a little bit and charge it just so you have that ability to make a call in case of emergency, even if you just wrecked on your bike on your own and you broke your ankle and you can't do anything and your phone's dead, at least try to have the opportunities for people to charge phones. Crossing alert system, similar to what we have right outside here, where you hit a button or if it's maybe automatic where it's motion-censored would be an opportunity. So when someone's coming up to an intersection, that light could automatically start in allowing traffic that there's a potential cross coming up. From a trail safety, we've had, there's like any of our parks, we have issues and challenges and opportunities that we need to figure out how to make the best out of. One opportunity is obviously you can have police officers on bikes, on a bike patrol, or you could have park rangers where they're just trained volunteers, they're not badged, they don't have authority, but they're the eyes and ears out on the trail system. So if they see a maintenance issue, if they see illegal dumping, or if someone just wants to stop and talk to them about a concern or issue they have, it's an eyes and ears out on the road that we can communicate with people. And that could be a volunteer type of situation, or it could be various paid positions or combination thereof. From a CPTED standpoint, crime prevention through environmental design, we did one of these on Quaker Town Park this summer, and that is something that we'd look through the planning when we do all of our trails to make sure that we have adequate safety measures in place, and we don't have any built in barriers that would create opportunities for inappropriate activity. Hey Gary, can I interrupt you real fast? Can you provide an example of a CPTED? I'm just trying to grasp, what does that actually look like at Quaker Town? What do y'all think of? So one example at Quaker Town that came up in the report was lighting under the bridges, the two bridges that we have, so people can't hide under there, and someone crosses the bridge at two o'clock in the morning, walking home from work, and someone's hiding in there, and then just jumps out. I'm just kind of eliminating those opportunities where somebody can hide, where there's bushes really close to a road where someone can hide in a bush, that type of activity, just to improve safety. I appreciate that. And Commissioner Beck, you have a question. Yes, Chair, thank you. Gary, while we're on this topic, and since Chair brought it up, how for these various lights and these various sensors, I assume this is wireless and solar powered? You're talking about the crossings? Either the crossings and these, the under bridge sensors and other lights and charging stations and all that. These are wireless and solar powered? Yeah, so we would obviously try to use wireless and solar power wherever we can. Obviously, if we have an eight mile trail like the DCTA rail trail, we can't afford to run electric down that whole stretch. So we're going to be dependent on solar power whenever we can. If there's opportunities that it makes sense to go ahead and wire it in because we have electric right here, then we can look at that for sure. Thank you. You're welcome. Commissioner Perneto. Yeah, and a question on this one. So when we're talking about trail safety, I do see that there'll be patrols and monitors, and we talked about lights. One of the things that I'm just curious about, and I don't know what our options are, there are always going to be areas that are susceptible to something. I have a lot of friends who are women who like to go walking but are nervous about walking by themselves, even during the daytime. Are we going to have any infrastructure for camera monitoring, that kind of thing, in areas where we identify as possibly dangerous or something like that? We're actually talking about something similar to that today for illegal dumping. We have that activity going on throughout the city and trying to figure out how we can put cameras in certain places that we could monitor it live and see when something's happening. Same situation here, and Dr. Walker or Drew, please chime in, but if we have areas that we know maybe we've had frequent issues or it's a pinch point where we have some concerns, we could definitely put roving cameras in there to try to help deter that activity and try to improve that safety ability. Gary, this is Drew Huffman, Assistant Director of Park and Recreation. We are looking at those. In fact, like Gary said, we had a conversation earlier today about that, and I've already reached out to tech services to see what our options are. We've given them options of what we've looked at, and then maybe they know something that we don't being in their tech services in our parks. Especially on remote areas, whether it's a wildlife trail or DCTA trail, those areas of concerns, we can try to prop up something even that's just, "Hey, we have this remotely. We have five of these. We can deploy these in the matter of an hour and get those out on the trail to try to help improve safety as we see challenges happening." Great. Thank you for that pause in the presentation. I think you're good to go. Some existing concerns, obviously erosion, especially when we have gravel or dirt trails along creeks where we know those are in the flood plain. Those are areas that may want to look at putting concrete so we could get a backhoe in there, get it cleaned out, and get it reopened fairly soon. Sometimes right-of-ways and easements may be needed to help improve that as well. Obviously, flooding is a challenge for us, and a lot of these trails will be in the flood plain, and then lighting, as we talked about, to enhance safety. We currently have a number of solar-powered lights that we put out the dog park, and we're getting ready to put them in some other parks as some pilot projects to see how well they're working. Trail tread surface types, I've mentioned a little bit. Concrete is the most expensive. It's obviously very permanent. We don't have to do a lot of maintenance on it other than maybe some concrete heaving and various cracks. The soft trails, this one here is similar to what we did at the dog park. We put a concrete apron to keep the crushed granite in place. It does still move. We can put a sealant on the crushed granite to try to help that and reduce the movement on it. It's much more affordable. It's porous. It allows for water to penetrate through it, but there is some maintenance to it, especially if you have any topography. Nature trails, again, if it's dirt or natural earth, if the natural earth is constructed well and it's compacted, you won't have as much movement. Obviously, if it just rains, it will be muddy and you may have potholes in various areas, but this is very affordable. We could go in there and maybe have a master plan to have X trail would be concrete, but in order to get it started and get people out in the park right now, we go in and put crushed granite or even millings left over from road work to allow people to get in there sooner. And then elevated boardwalks are probably the most expensive, and these are probably areas where we have a crossing or we have a lot of water that's in place and we just can't really get a permanent trail, for example, out of Clear Creek. Obviously, various types of signage, letting people know where restrooms are, where major intersections are, trail maps, businesses, how far your destination is to the next, to downtown, wherever it may be, is critical in providing and improving safety measures as well. And then I'm going to go through some of the inventory we have. Some of these slides you can't visually see, but it was just to kind of give you a mindset and I can walk through the map here in a second. So this is a list of our existing trails in regards to the surfaces, the length, whether it's internal, it's along a creek or a linear park. So we have roughly 41 miles plus Clear Creek. So that's constantly changing. We've been GPSing all of our trails, so we've been modifying those numbers and trying to get really down to a strong number that we feel really good about. Some projects in motion that have trails at North Lakes Dog Park I had mentioned, Mayhill is completed for the most part except for a last phase. Razor Ranch is a future park that was built by a developer and will be turned over to the city. Along with the land, there's a loop trail along that property. Vintage and Bonnie Bray are under construction. Hickory Creek as well. McKenna Park is out to bid. As we speak, there'll be an entire concrete loop trail going around the perimeter of that park as well as a new parking lot. And we're master planning Southwest Bowling Green and Villages of Carmel. Overall, this is kind of mentioned at the very beginning, but the five core areas of trails, whether they're creeks, internal park trails, side paths, paddling trails, and equestrian, total of 210 miles of new trails. Some of these trails may never happen just because of challenges and what forth that we don't know about at this point in time. Some of them are on private property that we need to get easements or buy land long term. But this plan is to get us in motion so we can start seeing what the opportunities are and then chipping away at it. Just because of a trail has 10 phases doesn't mean we're starting at phase one and ending at phase 10. Those could be going back and forth based off of road construction, property opportunities, easement opportunities, funding in certain areas through our parkland dedication and development ordinance. So there's a lot of factors that impact that. Hey, Gary, I think we have a question for Commissioner Smith. Thank you, Chair. Hey, Gary, how are you? How much of the park expansion and strategy is on private land or would need to have some private intervention with easements? I don't have a hard number. The paddling trails are all on public. The side paths are all on right-of-ways. Some of those right-of-ways may need to be purchased for that road expansion. The internal parks obviously is on property that we currently own. Where we have the most crossing of public and private is the creeks and drainage areas. So we're assuming we're following the creeks as much as possible. And I'll show you a couple of those here in a second. It might give you a better idea. But I would say that would be the area that we would have the most challenge in regards to having the challenge of having to buy property or easements. Got it. And have you guys given any thought or work into trying to connect in the already existing trail that is along the DCTRA? Yeah, whatever. The A train, trying to connect it into where that KD trail is to where it can be much longer to one continuous loop that's more regional rather than just city style. Yeah, so the goal there is to connect that to the downtown and then over to Mingo. And then you can take Mingo all the way up to Clear Creek and then jump on the Texas Parks and Wildlife Trail, the green belt, and take that up to Lake Ray Roberts. Got it. Cool. Thanks. And then hopefully you can go all the way to Dallas. Yeah, hopefully. So internal park trails, you know, mountain bike, mountain bike park trail, which I'll talk about here in a second. McKenna, you know, completing some existing trails we have like Demia, just creating an entire loop around that parcel. Just some little amendments to Joe Skiles. So people who go out there and walk in a circle and be off the street. Unicorn Lake, Briar Cliff, you know, more continuous loops. So not only do we have planned internal park loops, but we also have regional loops within the city that you might want to go on a four mile trail. You could take these trails and you may be on a side path in a park on a road, a combination of types of trails, but there will be different lengths planned that you could go on a different adventure, you know, every Saturday if you wanted to. And then our creeks and drainage. We have these broken out into phases. They don't typically relate to what engineering might have for their roads. We put together phases just from a manageable standpoint to get an idea where major barriers are, major cross streets, just to kind of give you an idea of from here to here, it's this month, just to help with our planning. We did throw in some fiscal years based on what we know is in the works or what we anticipate being completed, whether it's Hickory Creek, Cooper Creek, Pecan Creek, and Dena in those areas. And then some additional side paths, Mayhill, Bonnie Bray, Hickory Creek Road, Mingo Trail, which I just talked about, you know, even visioning a trail along the 288 loop, you know, some of that that's a long term vision, but we wanted to get it out there so we could at least start having conversations as the city is is working on all of our plans, whether it's updating the 2030 plan, our Parks Master Plan or working with TxDOT. The paddling trail, obviously coming down from Lake Ray Roberts, following the green belt, we had one dam removed earlier this summer. There's another one at the confluence north of 380 that needs to be removed. So there's some infrastructure challenges there, but we're pretty excited about the long term opportunity of creating more paddling adventures for our community and then could be a launch destination. And this is, I had mentioned earlier, whether you're coming down the Elm Fork and you're coming through and meandering into the lake or you want to go from site to site and you want to follow the course and the outline of the lake itself, there's about 30 or so places where you could launch from right now. So the goal there is how can we work with all the cities on Lake Louisville to to create that type of opportunity and with the private businesses. And then equestrian trail obviously is trying to find places where people could bring a trailer in and have horses and cohabitate with general trail users. Trail connectors, this is what it is and this picture in the background is trying to figure out how we could get under 35 where the railroad tracks are at Locust where we can use those types of opportunities to get from one point to another and get under or over top of major roadways. These blue dots are some of the major connectors that we've identified with TxDOT where we need to work with them where they're doing some planning, whether it's expanding the highways or installing frontage roads to make sure that we have opportunities to have safe connections and crossways for people, whether they're jogging or on a bike. Mountain, we've met with a couple times with our mountain bike group within the city. We have a pretty strong group of enthusiasts. We've recently agreed have a memorandum of understanding with our utilities department to use some property that is not foreseen for what it was originally purchased for. And this is out on Hartley Field. There was original plan for a wastewater treatment plan out there. I think they're gonna be putting a pump station there. So we have plans to put out a about a five to seven mile mountain bike trail out towards Clear Creek. So we're gonna be going out in November trying to design that and get an idea of how much effort that would be and then see if we can get volunteers to come out and help build that. Especially trails whether it's a single track like we just mentioned or a pump track up here in the right corner that are fairly small but provide a lot of activity for various skill levels all the way to an ATV trail. We don't have anything planned for that but we have had people ask about four wheelers and motorcycles for off road activity. Taking our trails and really focusing on some educational opportunities. You know bringing the cemeteries really to life and keeping the memory of those people in our cemeteries whether it's veterans of our wars or founders of our community or just you know any family member trying to get to a point where we can preserve you know a biography of each person that you could go find online. It might be scannable with a QR code or it might even be censored with geofencing where you're walking in it and something pops up and say here's a revolutionary war veteran. Here you can learn something about that person. And then you know taking the opportunity to memorialize again our military at Ernest Dallas Park, our history trail on DCTA, nature trails we can learn about trees and flowers and bugs and animals and then even the Denton Walk of Fame. And then 100 Cole Ranch I know there was a lot of work on this over the past year or so. We have 50 plus miles of trails that are planned for that development whenever that happens. So that's something we'll be working on when time allows us as that development continues to move forward. Funding is going to be the big opportunity for us to find funding so we can build this you know quicker. Whether it's Texas Parks and Wildlife, North Texas Cog, Council of Governments, or it's just general fund appropriation or bond program. How can we use our money to expand that with grants to really allow us to get more projects done quicker. And then partnerships we can't do this without you. So whether it's a residence, volunteers helping on the trail, local governments, DISD, Denton County, universities, students, funding opportunities, Cog I had mentioned, local interest groups, Dorba or maybe a future Little Dorba for you know Denton County, homeowners and associations, private businesses, bike shops have been very influential so far and very supportive. Texas Parks and Wildlife, Army Corps of Engineers and so on. So that's the PowerPoint in a nutshell. You know Dr. Walker, he's on the phone. He's done a lot of this work and he's the one that really should be doing the presentation because this is really thanks to him and all the effort he's done for us. And then Drew obviously and staff have put a lot of work into this as well trying to set a vision for Denton for the next 25 plus years. So I'm open for any questions. I can bring the GIS map up and kind of walk you through a couple trails as well at your convenience. Commissioner Beck. Thank you Chair. Hey Gary we briefly touched on this at one of the public meetings but we have one of our major goals is to connect various elements of Denton with the lakes and say downtown for instance and that seems to be up and down Mingo but you know the entire time I've lived here we've been trying to do that. It seems like the oh I forget the commission that's in charge of railroads. It's obviously not the railroad commission because this is Texas. Whoever it is that is in charge of railroads there was some bottleneck. Do we have any light at the end of this tunnel in terms of getting easements on that railway easement right away? At this point in time we haven't specifically worked on Mingo. You know we'll be working with engineering whenever that road is expanded and we might have to go I guess it'd be north west to that side of the road. Obviously when you're driving down Mingo it looks like there's more than enough room to put a 10-foot trail in there between the road and the railroad itself. So that's something that we're going to you know if we get the master plan approved continue working with our engineering group and as the roads are expanded I don't know where Mingo sits right now in regards to the priorities with everything else going on. I know we've had communications with TWU about some of the plans they're doing and trying to plan for that as well on Mingo. Getting all the way out to Clear Creek it could maybe just go to loop 288 and then everything would be on street from that point in time just because of the traffic load is a little bit less when you get out there but you know I see that as a major connection from Dallas to Lake Ray Roberts and for those people that want to drive along take a long bike ride or the like marathon bikers that's a major opportunity for us. I think there's a lot of will from many stakeholders and debt for that to happen but I guess my question was more to is this aspirational at this point or we actually have partners in. Somebody tell me who the commission is that oversees railroads. This is aspirational obviously we need to aspire to set goals and put our flag in the ground and say this is what we want to work to and start chipping away at it. In our minds if we don't get it on paper and get people to start getting excited about it we're never going to get there. So here's the vision how do you want to get there and do you accept this and then here's the challenge we need to figure out how to fund it we need to figure out how to make it work and start working through those. That's why you know we definitely need to make sure that people understand that this isn't a five-year plan. This is you know 25-40 years and some of these things may never happen just because of the very issue that you mentioned but I think there's opportunities for some low-hanging fruit and then there's some ones that are at the top of the tree that are going to be a little more challenging to figure out how to get to the fruit. All right thanks so much. Thank you. Gary real quick can you hear me? Yes sir. On in the case of Mingo just from all the different this is Dr. Walker by the way on all the different cities and even in different states where I've worked on these types of projects the long-term potential for safety for Mingo as well so if you approach it from the railroad's perspective the last thing they want is a trail by that train where a child could end up getting killed by a train so the highest likelihood would be to expand the road closer to the railroad track you're more likely to survive an interaction in a car than on foot and the side path would be on the opposite side of that road away from the railroad so yes there's a great open space where you could fit a trail but it also puts people closer to the track and that's the last thing the railroad's ever want to do. Again just due to safety in the history of that it's never worked out well so when Mingo gets redone it's highly likely that you would expand Mingo towards the actual drivable section towards the track and then take the other side to put in your 10 foot side path away from as far away from the train as possible basically. Same issue with 377 if we want to try to connect Denton all the way down to Argyle and Roanoke and all points south the same situation down there as we have in Mingo as well. If you'd like I could just send a quick two or three minutes and walk through the map just to kind of give you a sense of the map and the trails. Sounds good. Okay. Hey Gary while you're opening that up this is Drew I know this committee probably more than any others really realize how fast Denton's growing. In our side of the house over in operations and planning we go through each and every single development and especially on the residential side we're working really hard to get as much property as we can along those floodplain zones for free. So really in just the last two weeks we secured almost almost 120 acres from either an internal department or a developer coming into the city of Denton and that's along the Hickory Creek over in the new where the new body break bridge is going in. So I just kind of wanted to point that out that you know this is our goal and we're really working towards it and we're really looking at every little bit and little bite we can take out of this plan and make this thing happen and you know make our dreams come true with this master 12 plan. So I just wanted to make that point let you know. So this is our GIS map and we're working to get this online so the community can see it. They obviously the outline of the city the blue bubbles that you see are the 10 minute walk. I think we came and talked to you maybe a year or so ago about that and our goal is to get green space within a half mile or a 10 minute walk of every resident and keep up with that growth. This is this is a hundred coal ranch you can see all these green dots here these are neighborhood parks city parks pilot knob which we have a conservation easement with hunter ranch on that one eventually we'll have just about 100 percent connectivity there whenever that's built. So that will kind of take care of itself but what we need to do is find property in these other areas that that have houses obviously you know in the core of our city a lot of this is university but to get make sure we have green space there and that doesn't mean we have to be the owner of it that means we need to have make sure that we have public access to it so that may entail some joint use agreements with the various entities it could be a church could be a university but our goal is to increase that 10 minute walk but ultimately these lines of various colors are the different trails so for instance this pink line let me let me turn off our 10 minute walk here so it's just a little clear. Okay so this pink line right here is our DCTA trail and that goes all the way down into Corinth that we still maintain even outside of the city limits as you can see that trail comes up here and then mingo starts here and mingo would go all the way out to clear creek and then we have to get across the creek and take the green belt north. Starting up here obviously we have miles within clear creek the idea is to have a trail along clear creek itself that would go from clear creek west along at least to Sherman if not past Sherman at some point in time that would get into the ETJ into other cities so that's a long-term connection opportunity and then the development that may happen up on the the Carter property up in the northeast we looked at putting a possible a linear trail in there along the floodplain that would connect that neighborhood this is the mountain bike proposed mountain bike location that we were talking about cooper creek obviously it starts right now basically at north lakes and goes north up to north point park and then it starts heading east through some city property through city parks and then through some linear parks there are some challenges where it gets narrowed that we might have to go on road so those are obviously quick wins where we can go on road or we have an existing on road path and taking that all the way to the lake this section here is where there's a lot of private property that we'd have to work through so whether or not this happens is still would be up in the air pecan creek specifically starting at fred moore park or the katie trail and here it's for the most part it's government property it's you know whether it's city dedicated parkland or city land or county land there's one development that's kind of in the middle here that we've had discussions to put about five miles of trails in there if that development would move forward so that's obviously still up in the air and there's still a lot of opportunities for that to move forward or have challenges but then we get into the landfill and we're on the north side or the east side of pecan creek that's underutilized right now that would get us the army corps property into the lake so this one is probably the easiest linear trail for us to do just because it's primarily government property hickory creek starting down basically at old alton bridge you can go a little bit southeast of old alton bridge but then there's a significant amount of army corps property there's some city parks there is some private property through this that we have to work but there's also a lot of opportunity to go on road and then back off road so we can work around some of those private property issues if it was for the short term and then long term you know maybe there's an option to purchase at some point in time that could take us all the way up and connect with university trail and then hickory creek has a few kind of spurs off of it as well and then you have hickory creek road that'll eventually turn into brush creek and go over to 35 and connect over to hunter coal so there's a trail plan for along there vintage is already under construction here and then bonnie bray would be another major crossroads there that would eventually go all the way up to 77 and potentially go under 288 loop so that just gives you a snapshot again a lot of visioning here and a lot of things have to happen to move forward partnerships funding obviously construction you know purchasing of land all those things have to happen for some of these to fall into place for sure but our thought was to get it on paper get everyone's vision going in the same direction and then put it put it into a plan and then start moving forward and figure out how we can chip away at it so that that's it that's the the trails chapter in a nutshell there's a lot of information there for just a chapter thank you to dr walker and staff for all they work all the work they've done obviously we're not done yet we're still looking for feedback if you have ideas or thoughts today or you want to share something down the road please feel free to reach out to us we're always up for ideas and this is a very dynamic opportunity with a lot of challenges but then i think we're at a great point to try to make it work too obviously the best time to do this would have been 20 years ago but the second best time is today so that's kind of where we're at as part of our parks and recreation and trail system master plan i certainly appreciate it gary for the presentation is there any questions before we go to our next agenda item i do not see any again thank you very much thank you before we go into our next work session report i just wanted to let the record show that commissioner anderson has joined us happy to have you here uh and then we can move on to item 2b and this is to receive a report regarding outcomes of city council work session regarding plugged gas well issues etc listed on the agenda richard who is presenting this item this evening this will be hayley oh fantastic thanks gary she's getting ready now hayley whenever you're ready the floor is yours all right all right good afternoon everyone so this is just an update to let you all know about a discussion we had regarding plugged wells with city council yesterday during their work session so i'll just run through this briefly and you all feel free to to jump in if you have any questions or i'll try to remember and take some pauses so that we can address things as we go along so just a little background on what what led to this there were two separate council member requests for work sessions regarding plugged gas wells the first was regarding risk and public protections and the second was regarding what sort of incentives we could could possibly introduce into the code to encourage the plugging of wells so to start off with this is kind of the status of where we're at today within the city we have 38 plugged gas wells and 22 in our etj there are some limited code requirements related to gas well plugging primarily relates to inspections so we do require that an operator give staff notice of when they intend to plug a well our inspectors are then able to go out and monitor that that process as it occurs we require the location of the well be provided if we don't already have it on file as well as requiring that they follow all railroad commission requirements and provide us copies of those plugging reports for our record so that we know the wells were plugged in accordance with state standards so again back to those initial requests this is broken down into three topics so we'll cover risk and then public protections and then the incentives with regard to risk staff both in environmental services and within planning did some research into this topic preparing for the work session and we found that there were kind of three primary categories where risk could occur the first being with orphaned wells and then with groundwater contamination and air emissions and we'll look at each of these briefly in turn so with regard to orphaned wells this is it's a term that the railroad commission uses essentially for when an operator has has left a well in place but they have not plugged it so the wells considered orphaned and abandoned at that point but is not properly plugged so there there could still be some activity occurring there the railroad condition or railroad commission maintains the database of all gas well locations across the state this includes those orphaned and abandoned wells as well as active gas wells and within the city of denton the city maintains a similar database so our gis team updates this every time our inspectors tell us that a well has been plugged so just looking at the map here if you go to the city interactive map and turn on the gas well layer that you see here you'll see that plugged wells show up as kind of a darker red diamond whereas active wells are shown with the brighter red circle and there's a drop down menu on the side where you can can see the legend for what all of these symbols mean but this is just one of the tools that we offer to inform the public of of where these wells are located as well as developers when they come in to to develop a property it's important to note that according to the railroad commission although we have many plugged wells within the city there are no orphaned wells within the city of denton and the state does maintain a program where they they set aside money to to go in and plug these orphan wells over time to ensure that they do eventually get plugged and in accordance with the standards looking at groundwater contamination i think it's important to to look briefly at the plugging process itself which is designed to prevent this exact concern so this is something that the railroad commission regulates the city is preempted from from regulating this process at all it is a below ground process in the city under house bill 40 only has regulatory authority for things that occur above the ground this graphic here it may be hard to see but this is from a document that the railroad commission puts out that summarizes the plugging process essentially it's a series of cement plugs put into the ground so where there is a groundwater strata there's a hundred foot plug that's required that is set to start 50 feet below the the start of that water and 50 feet above it so that there's a hundred foot of total depth of cement preventing gas or oil in some instances we don't have much of that in denton from intruding into the groundwater layers these standards have been in place for many decades it's the same standards that the state uses when they go and plug wells this is what developers are required to follow and they file a plugging report that shows the depth and the the top and bottom of each one of these concrete strata as they set them so again collaborated with environmental services on this work session and we did some research into what studies have been done oh i see a question there from commissioner beck yeah commissioner beck i wanted to stand thank you thank you chair thank you haley i want to stay on that slide just for a second um so um i i was uh at a meeting at ut austin um just recently where they were doing simulations of exactly this exact thing um uh and the this is this the the it's germane because uh they were finding that these plugs degrade under conditions of micro fractures which we've been having throughout texas and oklahoma due to the fracking and where the plugs are not stable so my question is um four plugged wells and if you're going to come to it just tell me you're going to come to it but what is our inspection process to make sure that these kinds of plugs stay plugged and do their job um so the city's inspection process um again we're we basically don't have authority to regulate anything that occurs below the ground um so the best we can do with the plugging process is ask that they provide us documentation that they've met the state standards that's the plugging report that i referenced that shows um again it just documents what the cementer on site has done where they've put the top and bottom of each of these what type of concrete mixture they use that sort of information is on there um so we obtain a copy of that form and our inspectors um go on site throughout the plugging process to make sure that that everything seems to be going um as planned they you know they check in with the railroad commission who also monitors the process and then they make sure that all the equipment's removed from the site um they do a survey to ensure that all radioactive uh containing materials are removed from the site and that sort of thing but but we are very limited as a city into as to what we can regulate with respect to this process um so mostly what they look for is the above ground cleanup of the site so for a real quick follow-up um does either do either we or the state or the county periodically monitor to to make sure that these are stable that i'm not sure of it would be a state um a railroad commission uh program if there was one i'm not aware of one but that's not to say that one doesn't exist but it would be through the railroad commission if it did okay thank you all right so uh this was kind of the the the key study that we found that that informed this topic um specific to texas with related uh relationship to groundwater contamination um this was a study done in 2011 it looked at a 16 year period with data uh from uh groundwater contamination incidents across the state they've they found 211 incidents of contamination um during that time the study reported that there were over 250 000 producing wells during that 16 year time frame during that time 140 000 wells were plugged and would have fallen into uh into the incidents that they were looking at what they found was only one of the 211 uh was a contamination incident related to plugging um they did find their largest sources were from waste management and production phase releases of materials on site um 30 were from orphaned wells which again are those wells that have not yet been plugged but have been abandoned in place so this was the only example we found specific to texas that documented um how how often groundwater contamination is an issue and then moving on the the final risk topic that we explored for this uh was with regard to air emissions um again we did that that sweep to look for any studies that might inform uh this issue specific to texas and did not find any um that's not to say there aren't any but we did not come across them um the primary air emission that we found information related to was of course methane since these are natural gas wells and the most informative um again with respect to to how often is this a concern uh was one from 2016 that looked at four different oil and gas basins across the united states um that particular study surveyed uh wells that were on public property they found 119 plugged wells and 19 abandoned wells that they could go out and monitor for methane emissions and they found that one out of the 119 plugged wells was a positive source it was a very very low amount of methane that was emitting from that well that one was positive whereas eight of the 19 abandoned wells were positive sources for methane and then um unless there are any questions on any of that material we'll go on to the next piece i don't see any hayley all right um so the second topic that council asked us to look into were public protections um so looking at this from the perspective of what could the city do to raise awareness and inform people about this topic and ensure that people are protected um we found the primary tools that are used are within respect to inspections uh setbacks or easements required around plugged wells and then surface mark marking of the well locations um so again as i as i mentioned earlier just briefly um the city does have an inspection program that covers both active and plugged wells um the once the inspectors are informed of a plugging operation they go out and monitor the process and we do require copies of those railroad commission reports be submitted back to us so that we can close out the well log in our system and have a record that uh that state standards were followed daily spot checks are done during the plugging process and our inspectors closely monitor the restoration of the site the state has requirements for this uh but typically our inspector will will coordinate with the property owner of the the surface property and ensure that uh that their standards and the operator's standards are on par and that we're monitoring to make sure the site gets back to a condition that is amenable to them um oftentimes a property owner will ask that the gravel be left in place for example so that they can go do something else with that area of their property once the well is gone um and then of course our inspectors do that survey to ensure that any equipment that contain naturally occurring radioactive material has been removed from the site before we close out uh that that well record and then we'll look at setbacks and well marking a little more closely so uh as part of this uh preparation for this i i did survey area dfw cities that have gas well ordinances um i looked at 42 other cities around the the metroplex um and kind of what their standards were and how denton compares to that um so one thing that we touched on yesterday with council was that um up until our most recent overhaul of the gas well ordinance we had just kind of a standard statement in our ordinance that said that no structure could be built over and abandoned well um i believe that was kind of inadvertently left out when the overhaul was done in 2015 and hasn't been added back to the code since um and that is something that council advised us that they would like to see put back into the code um so again looking at how we compare to other cities 34 of the 42 that i looked at did have a requirement stated almost exactly like this that simply said no structure can be built over and abandoned well nine of them did not have a requirement for that uh seven of the cities did actually require a a fairly small setback around a well the most common was a five foot radius so a 10 foot total uh circle around the plug wellhead other common or um other numbers that i saw again there were only seven of them so so very few but uh 10 and 20 feet were also utilized um and then several of the cities uh 10 out of the 42 had a requirement that there be a physical marker placed on top of the ground um and that and i'll i believe in all of the instances was a pipe that was four inches in diameter was stamped with the well id and the gps location of the well and was set at a height of four feet above the ground commissioner beck do you have a question yeah christopher beck thank you chair uh these these were the the north texas uh comparables essentially is what we're talking about correct yeah the specific cities you see here kind of are are more more close to denton uh comparable cities the search i did included you know south of dallas um and and kind of all over the metroplex but these were the closest to denton and and did you happen to look uh sort of more nationwide at pennsylvania colorado some of the other gas producing states at what their general uh characteristics were so i i did look fairly generally across uh the country uh colorado does i don't recall the numbers off the top of my head they do have fairly robust requirements um i believe in the realm of more than 100 feet uh from a plugged well pennsylvania i don't recall but i believe they also had a similar uh setback again those being very different formations um that that you'd be producing from uh than the barnett shale um but for this year we tried to stay local to dfw and look at things that would be a comparable formation to us okay thank you so much and then uh the the final topic we covered with council was with respect to incentives so council had asked us to look into what types of zoning or land use incentives could be could be put into place to encourage developers to plug wells as they look to develop properties um so i wanted to start with kind of showing where where we're at today so when there's a gas well site as you're familiar with we now have a 500 foot reverse setback what you see here is an example of a site on wenser so the pad sites outlined in purple the the blue line here shows that 500 foot um reverse setback radius so if we were looking at the site adjacent to the gas well that's approximately 10 acres um within the 500 foot reverse setback 9.35 acres of that site would be encumbered so for protected use uh were to develop here they would have that to contend with and have very limited area that they could develop um as you're familiar with from the recent updates we did provide for a process for them to go to zba and seek a variance that could take that back to 250 which is our minimum reverse setback and that's what's shown in red however once the once these wells are plugged and this site is remediated and according to state standards those setbacks go away so what's shown here is just a hypothetical if we were to introduce a 20 foot radius on either side of a plugged well which is a number that we got from a couple of recent um muds that have gone to city council um that had plugged wells they they voluntarily established a 20 foot radius around those for nothing to be built uh that that kind of tan circle that you see around the red wellhead is what that would look like so so this site in this example would regain the use of almost their entire property um if these wells were plugged so that's just an example of kind of the inherent value of plugging the gas wells is that all of that land then becomes available for development with protected uses even if we were to establish that no build easement comparable to what we've seen in other cities even going on the upper end at 20 feet it would still be a significant increase in the amount of land available some of the other things that we discussed with council again we're just a summary of some of the flexibility tools we have in the code today these are things that that anyone could use that we could either um you know they they could apply in scenarios where a well is plugged or we could look at expanding these if there's interest in that so the minor modification is kind of for those dimensional standards um as a first step instead of going to directly to zba to get a variance from some of these uh setback standards or building coverage we have the minor modification where you could request up to a 10 reduction in those criteria which for a setback is often no more than one foot um and that could be approved administratively so this is a tool that we already have that we could potentially expand um if if the council directed us to for plugged wells cluster subdivisions is another flexibility tool built into the code already um it the way it's written it is specifically geared to areas where they're preserving open space um particularly environmentally sensitive areas it does require 30 percent of the land area be set aside for open space um so this is something that could um already be applied in this scenario but we could certainly look at clarifying the language and the intent statement for that to specify that that this isn't something we encourage if you plug a gas well is to pursue this option where you leave more open space available for community use but you can in return reduce the minimum lot size for residential development some of the other tools we offer sub chapter seven if you look through the code covers landscaping and site design as well as parking is another crucial element of that so for multi-family and non-residential protected uses this would be where a lot of the flexibility would be found in the code today for example we have alternative landscape plans that can be pursued if the um the specific requirements for where we require landscaping and how much landscaping um is is infeasible for a site they can pursue that option we also do have some parking flexibility baked in again for the multi-family and non-residential primarily so those tools would be available today and we could certainly look at expanding any of those if there was interest in it and then the final element i wanted to touch on is just an example of how we've already created a toolkit such as this with that administrative waiver that was introduced when the setback was increased from 250 feet to 500 feet so this is again something we could model after for plugged wells to create kind of a gas well unique flexibility toolkit commissioner beck do you have a question yes thank you chair hailey i'm i'm unclear um can uh do the existing standards or any of the proposed standards um allow parking lot to be put over we have that sort of we we lost that that that provision in our current ordinance but were we putting previously were we putting parking lots on top of uh plugged gas wells so the way the the code was worded previously it just said no structure could be built over a well the ddc typically defines a structure i believe our previous codes did as well um that essentially it's vertical improvement so so something such as paving typically isn't considered a structure a fence or an accessory building or something like that would be a structure so i don't know of any specifically but in theory there could be a parking lot over a gas well for example um once it's plugged um we do try to encourage as much as possible that those plugged wells be located if it's a residential development within an hoa lot um but currently we have no standard to say that that you have to make sure the plug well is any certain location or that there's nothing over it so anything we add to the code would be improving that situation okay thank you and then we did explore some new options with council um you know in lieu of expanding the existing options in the code we could look at instead of adding density back as council initially was interested in since we don't strictly require density limitations on development we monitor based on lot size so the way we could could accomplish that is by allowing a certain percentage of the land area within a residential development to you to have smaller lot sizes so similar to clustering but but kind of tailoring that to these areas and just allowing a certain amount of that within a development and we'll look at an example of that in just a second some of the other things that came up that we don't have in the code today that we could look at adding would be parking reductions for for the lower intensity residential uses single-family duplex and townhome for example we require four spaces per unit that is that is higher than a lot of cities in the area that only require two which is was our standard up until about two years ago um and then also for residential development some things that we we thought might be considered would be for example adding a requirement that the well be within an open space or allowing reductions to the minimum amount of required open space if you do plug a well and put it in that area as an incentive or modifying minimum unit sizes or building height would all be examples of things that that may help incentivize a developer to plug a well so looking at that lot size example this just shows r4 and r6 so the standard for r6 for example 6000 square feet if we said if you if you plug the gas well on the property you can have uh 30 of your land area developed with lots that are 30 smaller this is what that would look like those lots um 30 of them could go down to 4200 square feet and they would gain nine lots in that example um so this didn't seem like a very high number to us so before going to council with this we did approach the dallas builders association that's the regional represent representation group for all of our major home builders many of dentons builders are a member of that so we went to them for some initial feedback on would this sort of thing even be an incentive would it be enough incentive to pursue plugging a gas well they they did not feel like it was their take on this was that given the current market demand for kind of standard size lots with standard building pads that allowing some of the lots to be smaller wouldn't necessarily help anything for them um instead they they said that the bigger incentive for a developer would be of course looking at offsetting those financial costs that they would incur by plugging a well they specifically indicated that waivers to our park fees our tree mitigation fees or even development review and impact fees might be more of an incentive for them to help with that financial burden um hey hayley how much does it cost to plug a gas well um that is there's not a set number it's kind of situational specific to how the well was initially drilled um you know how uh what the pressure of the well is for example could play into that there's many factors um i did find in researching this that the railroad commission um has kind of an average they publish for each district based on the cost they incur through that orphan well program and that it was in the ballpark of about four dollars and 30 cents per foot of depth that has to be plugged in the well um so i looked at some examples of recent well plugins for example um in the dreary track that we recent recently saw a preliminary platform i think it worked out to be about thirty three thousand dollars just for the actual cementing of the well um that number from what i could tell on the railroad commission site did not include um removing equipment from the site any remediation that might have to occur from contamination that could have been on there um so thirty thousand and up probably would be a fair estimate for that gotcha thank you um so we we posed these questions to council so i kind of run through uh the guidance that they left us with yesterday um with regards to number one they they were all unanimously in favor of adding back a prohibition against building on top of a gas well many of them even said they would prefer it go beyond structures and also include paving and other improvements so that the well is strictly left in an open area um with respect to number two um again there was general consensus that we we should establish some sort of no build easement um the the gist of uh the group or the majority of them um thought that 20 feet seemed reasonable but they wanted us to find a way to be as flexible with that as possible um so the goal of that easement again would be ensuring nothing's built there but also ensuring that access could be maintained to the well if for some reason there was a casing failure and they did have to go back in and and redo um some of the cement that that radius would leave um in theory enough room for them to get in with equipment and do that um but council was encouraging us to find a way to make that flexible so instead of saying the well has to be exactly center could we could we say you you provide x amount of area within the easement but you can offset it you know to one side for example if they needed to to work within their development um so we'll be exploring options with regard to that to see um you know how how that could be worked around um and then with respect to incentives they kind of left uh left staff with direction to to explore the existing uh options in the code look at how to expand clustering and things like that uh to be more applicable in these scenarios but they were not in favor of the financial offsets that the dallas builders association requested um so we will we'll be exploring all of these things in the future and that is my last slide so i will um i'll stop sharing this and then we can open it up for discussion and any recommendations that you all may have christner back thank you chair um hayley um so you early on in your presentation you sort of indicated say on that example at windsor and i'm not asking you to bring it back up because i think we can recall it that they gained back the use of that property based on our reverse setbacks and uh no longer being in play uh because it's a plugged well and even with some of these uh other restrictions that council was interested in you still are gaining back the majority of that property so how is that not the financial incentive i guess my i'm i'm trying to understand why we need additional financial incentives other than just getting the land back in use that that's a fair question um that's that's kind of the direction that a lot of council felt like as well um but in the the spirit of encouraging this as much as possible i think uh they were interested in if there were other things in the ddc that we could just for example clearing up the applicability of clustering to say that yes this is this can be applied in this scenario if you're still following the open space guidelines um that's something that we could look at um but i i think in general they were kind of on the same page as you is that regaining the land in itself is probably going to be a market incentive enough as we've seen with some recent developments sage work for example uh plugged well to facilitate that development um we had recently a subdivision on ryan road that did the same thing um and then the jury tract like i mentioned off of i believe that's off of highland park road uh was another recent example so i i suspect that is the case but they asked us to pursue you know just seeing what other flexibility we can find with the reason oh yeah sorry to interrupt i apologize it does seem like developers are choosing that option on their own to get the land back so i i mean there there i think well you know this is me personally i think there's lots of room for flexibility we can build into our zoning laws to for you know clusters and other things that are appealing it feels like maybe we do those for other good reasons and maybe not for gas wells um so anyway thanks hailey um hailey just uh to to um speak real fast and i think tim smith uh christopher smith was next um i 100 agree with commissioner beck on this uh that graph the the windsor property you showed highlights it pretty clear to me that uh if they want to use the property they got to plug the well um so it i'm not shocked that developers want a lot of financial kickbacks or help for the thirty thousand dollar plus cost it's going to be but it it does seem that there is an incentive built in to use of land um with that um i did have a question about um the the setbacks on the the 20 feet when they did the the air emission um that risk the with the i think you i don't know what i'm saying the air quality emissions from the site were they doing it like directly above the plug or did they go out 20 feet and and measure it there do you know um i believe it was was fairly close to the well head like you know like you said probably directly above the well head or within just a few feet of it um i don't recall a specific radius being referenced there um 20 feet my understanding is that um primarily was driven for for access to the well site um and speaking to our gas well inspector um in the past um he had indicated that the type of rig that they have to get in uh if they do need to re-cement the well or if there's a casing failure for example um does does need a fairly large area to work around um and and kind of a 40-foot circle seemed sufficient for that um again that's that's no scientific data to support that that's just the general uh kind of rule of thumb that he spoke to and then um again a couple of the the muds that have recently gone before council offered that as as their standard um so just for consistency that was our recommendation to council was that we stick with that 20 feet that we've already established okay gotcha commissioner smith um a couple things i'm i'm the uh i agree with uh commissioner beck and chair roselle on the getting access back to that that piece of property that just kind of does seem to find chance and if i do see where the builders are coming from there that you know in this in the property you showed us that example correct me if i'm wrong but that that that well that they're going to plug is not on their their their property it's on the property next to them and so i could see that being hey we want to develop our property but our neighbor has a well and that that kind of being maybe a conundrum in their mind but at the same time it's you know you should if you want being that land back that's on you one thing that might be a dumb question or a dumb suggestion and i don't know how it can be built into the code but something where if there was a plug gas well ordinance that had setbacks that would force any property that was going to develop that because most of these properties that are going to be in that area probably aren't already zoned correctly and they'd have to come before a zoning process that they'd be forced into doing a pd just because of the provisions that are within the pd of having a codified site plan that's within that zoning so that if it comes in front of you know the plan zoning commission in front of city council to be rezoned to be developed into a residential property that the pd and a site plan would be solidified there so that there's some oversight on how that site plan we've built and then proximity to a gas well i don't know if that if there's ability or if i'm just sound like an idiot now but uh any feedback on that haley no no i understand where you're coming from with that that's something we could we could certainly look into um again not sure how feasible it would be but we can we can talk that through and and talk with cynthia about it and see see if we can find a way to work something like that in to ensure there is some extra oversight okay cynthia just from island notification is that that's something that can be done is that is that is there a legal ramification on that commissioner smith are you asking whether we can require someone to zone the property pd if they have a gas well uh if they have a gas well or whether they're within a let's say the gas well ordinance says if your property is within more than 30 of your properties within 250 setback 10 or 50 foot setback from plug gas well you're requiring you're requesting a zoning rezoning you have to go pd that's something certainly something that we can explore okay all right thanks for your all right you're very you're very robust i appreciate or or encourage thank you okay thank you uh christner beck thank you chair um so commissioner smith's question about the pd makes me think at various stages when we're doing development as we've recovered this land and regardless of what sort of right of ways and easements and setbacks that we put in place um and maybe you know again maybe this is i can't i don't know this is a development or a legal question but is it something where at these various stages we could require development around a gas well to re-monitor to go out and retest because this this goes to my very first question at this presentation is you know you know i actually have firsthand knowledge of people doing real world work on plugs that are breaking and and you know we didn't have fractures you know 20 years ago but now we do and if those fractures are uh microquakes are breaking the plugs then it behooves us to go and make sure that those plugs are continuing to be safe for the surrounding neighbors and so is this something where we could have a an additional rider of some sort that said you know if you're going to develop at you know a plat or a engineering plan or or whatever that we could require you to rebook excuse me to re-monitor the current conditions to make sure that they still met guidelines i don't know who would answer that um looking over at richard i'm not sure that we could require that um we could maybe explore that option yeah i don't know if that would fall under house bill 40 of regular again i don't know this would be above ground for the most part obviously you wouldn't the inspectors you know all that below ground stuff it had been was done presumably this would be whatever components were above ground that would be in our purview i think we can look into it the only question i would have i guess probably more for for legal is whose responsibility is it is that the the surface owner or um did that individual who did the the well still have mineral rights that it would could could or would be their responsibility i think we just have to have to run that down well i'd appreciate that if that isn't you know if we could stick that in somewhere i think that would be interesting just that way we know whenever we're developing whatever path we take we know that it continues to be safe thank you hey hailey can i ask a question you mentioned i think i heard this right um some of the data you got from the cost to plug a well is from the orphaned well program like is there there it seems like there's some sort of funding for the state to find orphaned wells and proactively plug them am i understanding that that exists correct so it's a a program the railroad commission has i'm not sure what the source of the funding is but they do each year go out and and wells that they know have have been orphaned there's no contact for the operator the operator's gone out of business um whatever the case may be they do have funding to to then use that to go in and make sure that those wells are are plugged correctly um but it is a state program i don't believe it that funding would be available for for any private use um well i was i mean obviously it's it's not probably for this commission's uh conversation but if there's an interest in the state of texas to plug wells that aren't being used then maybe there would be some sort of um cooperation between private use and whatever funding exists at the state level for orphaned wells to help pay for the plug-in if a developer could petition the state to say you and i are aligned to get this plugged instead of it leaving it here i just don't know if there's another if there's better financial mechanisms to to um for for developers that aren't our responsibility if we can't touch below ground and the state can then it seems like this should developer should go ask the state for money yeah i'm not sure if that's a possibility but i can i can try to find out uh just my two cents any other questions for hayley on this topic commissioner alice thank you chair you know what i don't really have a question i just wanted to thank hayley i know you put a lot of work into this so thank you very much it was great great information yeah and i think you got pretty good direction i'm i'm certainly on board with the incentive is you get to build on more land when you plug the well so that that's that's a good incentive and then i guess i would just offer my two cents about um the radius that you talked about um and that's seeing if if you don't need it all the way around maybe look into if if it does have have to be accessed because the plug fails i mean maybe you do need a radius you know i don't know if it was all just on one side if that would give them enough you know whatever would have to come in there again um but anyway just food for thought um when you're researching that yeah that sounds like you can too thank you yeah thank you very much for your work any other questions okay hey like commissioner alice said thank you for the hard work i know you've done this presentation a couple times now so uh thank you for uh presenting it to us yep thank you uh moving on with our agenda the uh we get into uh the actual meat of the agenda it looks like we have some postponements but uh richard is there any other clarification of the agenda that we need to be aware of no the the only thing i'll add is the items that are being postponed the public hearings we would looking forward to open those public hearings um and then continue them or or postpone to a date certain uh great and these are all three of them the staff is recommending these postpone they're not applicant recommendations these are staff requested okay so open public hearing and uh take a motion commissioner beck thank you chair and richard i asked you about this on email but but just for the commission's sake we are notifying everyone that made a comment because we received a number of comments correct so yeah so any any comments that we would have received uh via um the online form i think that you get copied on um through through the email in addition any direct emails that we get um we usually keep a a spreadsheet of any contact that we've had um or anyone that that's submitted comments or folks that uh when we sent the the mail notice uh requirement under um 211 if we have those contacts then we would we would either email them call them whatever whatever whatever whatever they provided us we would we would reach back out um so yes that will happen that's awesome thank you so much so uh we'll start with item two minutes is there any um feedback or edits that need to be made to the minutes okay seeing done we'll go to item 3a it's our one item for individual consideration uh surprise it's hailey uh it's 3a pp 20-0021 all right just one second let me get this pulled up we thought we'd give julia break and turn it now into the hailey show yeah all all night so all we got is hailey tonight all right yeah so just briefly uh this is a preliminary plat for the woodlands on mckinney street so you can see the property location here uh this is ryan high school for reference uh this is trinity boulevard here on the um the east side of the property um staff is recommending denial of this request as it doesn't yet meet all of the established requirements of the code um those were all outlined in exhibit two of your backup um however the applicant has requested an extension to the november 18th uh meeting and staff has no objection to that i'm happy to answer any questions you all may have on the plat chris sir beck thank you chair hailey in general um i'm i'm not familiar with the the levels of infrastructure that we have to service that area do we have i mean if if there was a development anywhere close to this kind of development do we have sufficient infrastructure generally to connect in and support that in terms of utilities um i as far as i know yes we do they'll be tying in on mckinney and trinity for um water and sewer um this site um does have a bit of history that some of you may not be familiar with it came through um i believe it was a year and a half two years ago now for a specific use permit to permit uh the the manufactured housing development there were some very specific conditions tied to that sup for mobility improvements so they will be dedicating right away for the future post oak boulevard that will come through this area according to our mobility plan but more specifically they'll be making improvements on mckinney um so there are left turn lanes required as part of the sup to to get access into the site here and there are sidewalk improvements required to ensure that future residents here can safely get to the high school specifically so those those improvements are required of them but in terms of utilities yes there there is capacity to serve awesome thank you any other commissioner pranetta um yeah and just this was the property where there was a big concern about a bottleneck bridge like right by that right is it is am i thinking of the same one yes i believe so um richard feel free to jump in if i'm speaking incorrectly but i believe it was up here at mills and trinity um it was where there was concern um so i believe also as part of the sup that there was some funding required to help with improvements on trinity boulevard as well correct even further up actually on in um that lakeview states i can't think of the name of the neighborhood um but on lakeview itself there were some traffic calming measures that they were required to put in place or at least fund i should say um as part of that sup okay thank you i remember completely now it was the bridge was washed out okay christopher was this the development that led to our 2 a.m meeting yeah i believe it was uh we all remember that night uh any other questions great uh so that moves us into the public hearing uh 4a is uh being postponed uh 4c and 4d are also being requested to be postponed uh like richard just said we'll open the public hearing and uh take a vote uh so the only public hearing that we need a presentation on this evening since we'll hear the other ones at a future date is item 4b pd 20-0006 and this is hayley zugerski's item chair if i can just clarify uh for yes for item 4a we will not need to open that um since we will be bringing that at because it is a date i'm certain we'll just we won't need to open that thank you all right so this item is a planned development for texas health resources you can see the location here on the map so this includes the the main hospital campus as well as an adjacent lot with several medical office buildings that is owned by the the hospital entity currently it's all zoned mix use regional or mr district and they are looking to rezone the entire 38 acres to plan development and just for reference this is scripture street on the north oak is to the south of the property and we have bonnie bray here on the east and i-35 bounding it on the west this is just a look at our current and proposed zoning map so again all mr today and they would be looking to to make all of this a planned development still relying on that mr is the base district so this is a little unique compared to pd's where we normally see kind of a blank slate with new development in this instance the site is fully developed today so what you see here on the map the green is all the landscape area that exists on the site today the existing hospital i wanted to point out this area in blue that you see on their plans labeled as current expansion they do have plans approved to add a new tower to the hospital this would be i believe a women's women's care facility so that project will be getting underway very soon the improvements associated with this there was a pretty even balance between what they were removing in terms of parking and what they would need to add back so it was kind of a wash there was no net effect there on site that's how they were able to move forward with this and then the area in orange i wanted to point out this is a building there's an existing building there today rather that will be demolished and then a new medical office building or medical clinic will be established there in the near future that's a plan again that's already improved so they show it as a current redevelopment on their site plan so with the adoption of the 2019 ddc there were some changes in the code to parking specifically for hospitals that that negatively affected this site and then the changes to our landscaping as well those combined to create some some non-conformities on this site that would make it very challenging for them to develop in the future since the site based on our current ratios would be vastly over parked they wouldn't be able to expand parking and the hospital staff sees parking at a deficit already with people having difficulty when they visit finding a place to park there so they know in the future they're going to want to add more parking so this pd is intended to set the stage for that future expansion and redevelopment of this campus once the pd is established any changes to it changes to the site rather will either fall within the category of a minor pd amendment or a major generally speaking major would be if they were to add a building that would increase the square footage of the existing building by 10 percent or more that would trigger major so you would see those changes come back to you to update these plans as they go along christopher smith oh lost him oh there he is hit the wrong button uh hailey would uh would that be like a um what parking garage be included within that is that made that's i don't know if parking garages are counted in full square footage of the building or not yes i believe that would be a significant enough change to to trigger um a major amendment um but it would ultimately depend on the the scope of what they're proposing each time they come in to make changes but something that large i would expect would fall into the category of major okay thank you um so the the pd standards document um if you look through that you'll see it did propose some restrictions to the uses that are permitted with mr mr is one of our more permissive commercial districts um so with this pd they're narrowing the scope of that to to ensure that this site remains a hospital campus so this is the list of uses that they're proposing have permitted some of these you'll see are are more specific than what the code has we group medical uses into either hospital medical clinic or medical office they wanted to specify that some of these were specific things that they expect to have on site such as ambulatory or outpatient care facilities rehab facilities and senior care facilities so they've proposed new definitions that would be specific to this pd and then they also had a list of accessory uses that that are typically seen with a hospital that includes the helipad parking garages as well as storage and laundry facilities on site and then some of the other key changes that they're making with this pd relate primarily again to landscaping and parking so with respect to landscaping they did they are they are seeking to have some of the specific requirements for right-of-way screening and internal parking lot landscaping waves so that they can maintain their existing parking lots as they are the overall landscape area and tree canopy requirements would be the same as mr so 25 and 30 respectively but this again would allow that large existing parking lot to remain in its current state without them needing to go back and take up spaces to add internal landscape islands at the ratios that the code now requires but the the landscaping requirements the code would apply for new parking lots parking is one of the critical elements that they're they're looking to update here so our hospital services category requires one space for three patient beds as the the code standard for a minimum our code does allow you to go up to 125 of that as a maximum but it still doesn't get this hospital where it needs to be what they see as a reasonable ratio for themselves is a maximum of five spaces per one patient bed so they could go lower than that but five would be the maximum that they would intend to provide per patient and then for medical clinics and medical offices they're looking to change those from our ratio of 1 to 250 for clinics and 1 to 450 for offices to be one space per 200 square feet for each of those so this is just how that compares again a pretty significant increase for the hospital ratio and then a fairly minor increase related to medical clinics and offices with respect to our front parking design standards the code again is is very specific geared more towards standard commercial development like you might see at the mall when you have over 100 spaces in front of a building the code requires pad sites be left for development at the primary entrances and intersections so we would expect that with commercial development doesn't necessarily fit for a hospital campus so they're looking to waive that standard to ensure again that they can keep their large existing parking lot in its current state bicycle parking the code requires one space per 200 vehicles again that's not necessarily something that you would expect to see at a hospital they do intend to provide some bike parking but they're looking to decrease the amount and have that at one space per 100 vehicle spaces and then they've introduced some new standards specific to a parking structure because they do intend to eventually develop one of those on site so they wanted to set some standards for themselves to state that that would be no more than five levels and then it wouldn't be located along i-35 or in front of the main hospital so it would have to be kind of on that eastern side of the campus more towards bonnie brayer scripture most likely so as you've seen before we do have the general criteria applicable to all applications these were all outlined in your backup but just briefly it is consistent with our ddc standards they're not proposing any phasing at this time they'll be coming back to amend this as they as they make their path forward for the hospital campus and future redevelopment we would not expect since this is an established campus that there would be any significant adverse impacts with them expanding or redesigning and there is infrastructure in place today to serve the development we'll go through each of the six pd criteria briefly so the first being compliance with our comprehensive plan this site is designated on our future land use map as regional mixed use this designation was applied at our major intersections along the highways where we have these arterials intersecting them and have high accessibility that we expect to be able to support a regional draw so you see here on the map this includes the razor ranch area as well as the hospital specifically this designation in our comp plan does note that major medical facilities are appropriate in these regional mixed use areas because denton does serve a wider area so again with this being an existing development consistent with that designation we saw that the permitting the future expansion of this site would be within what the comp plan seems has deemed consistent and appropriate for this area criterion two is compliance with the ddc so as you could see in their standards they are proposing to follow the ddc in every way except for those specific deviations related to parking and landscaping and those are intended primarily just to allow them to continue to grow and expand this hospital campus to meet the needs of the city so we saw no concerns there with respect to compliance with the ddc the third criteria is looking at whether there's a greater building design amenities or connectivity proposed again this is unique with it being a fully developed site their new development would follow the building design standards of the code other than what they've called out for landscaping they would meet still the overall landscaping and tree canopy requirements of the code and the only modifications would be again to facilitate the redevelopment of some of this area and allowing them to expand parking to meet their needs criterion four is not applicable as there's no residential development as part of the pd and then criterion five speaks to whether a non the non-residential uses are appropriate in terms of location again given the highly accessible location of this it's kind of ideal for a hospital campus so there would generally be no issues with this use expanding on that site as it already has well-established access off of i-35 and oak which is a primary arterial and then bonnie bray as a secondary arterial future expansion of this site would be appropriate given that prominent location and again any of those major changes they make would come back before the pnz and council and then the sixth criteria is with respect to the provision of public facilities to support the development again being fully developed you can see here on the map with the blue lines being water red being sewer they have adequate utilities to serve the development and then they did provide a mobility exhibit that shows their their access points you can see here they have adequate access off of both the frontage road as well as oak and scripture to the north and south and then they do share access with the adjacent development here to have access points along bonnie bray as well public outreach was done according to our standard so we sent the 200 foot and 500 foot notifications we've received no responses given the the nature of this area they did not hold a neighborhood meeting but we've received no negative feedback regarding this development staff is recommending approval of the request as we found it to meet all of our criteria and once it gets through pnz its next stop will be city council on november 10th and i'm happy to answer any questions uh commissioner smith thank you chair so hailey you said that the most reasonable place for them to put a parking garage then if this was changed would be on the east side of the property um along bonnie bray can you go to the quick site map there and kind of show the property and what the property boundaries would be around that area and then as you're doing that you can so bonnie bray's expansion can you remind me our primary arterial i think and then where we are right now in that expansion sure so looking at their site here since they they added standards that would say they cannot add a parking garage in this area they said they restricted themselves from putting it along 35 or in front of the hospital itself so really given kind of the unique configuration of their site that would leave them assuming this this existing redevelopment wouldn't go away here on this parcel would leave them this general area this existing women's center is what's being relocated to this tower so to my knowledge they haven't identified a use for this but this this is an example of an area they've indicated they would be looking to redevelop and find a new use for um but based on their standards here or here would be the most logical locations okay and then uh on north bonnie bray um it's a primary arterial correct um if i'm remembering the mobility plan correctly is a secondary arterial um but in terms of the bonnie bray project uh the roundabout scripture was recently complete and i don't recall the dates but i think last time i saw this um the portion adjacent to razor ranch was generally slated for 2021 2022 completion um on the north end but this area has largely been completed with that scripture roundabout that was prioritized and look i know i know just for all commissioners sake another word this is a this is a a zoning case it's not a we're not approving a you know a parking garage but going up 1500 in parking space from currently zoned allowances is quite an increase and there's no way they have the space to put you know to build 15 000 or 15 1500 more parking spaces and they currently have now on flat level ground without building a parking garage so hayley really my my last question would be if it's there's a parking garage there is there when a construction like that occurs whenever there's a major i think you called it a major pd amendment that comes through is there any tia now tia stuff that goes through whenever those types of projects come before us again um so there there could be for the the current hospital expansion for example um they were they were able to document that the because they're offsetting an existing use but and just relocating it essentially there was no net increase in trips so if they were to propose you know a new facility of some sort on site if they if that initial analysis and trip generation showed that there would be a significant increase then a tia would be required for that but it would be looked at on a case-by-case basis depending on what they're adding so if they're demolished the existing women's center and build a parking garage there it would probably kick off a tia um i don't know that a parking garage itself would if that was the only use because the the parking garage wouldn't be inherently driving traffic to the site necessarily um if they were adding say new medical office buildings or adding a new tower to the hospital those would likely trigger the tia um the parking garage um probably wouldn't and it might be seen as kind of alleviating some of the traffic that they report currently circles the site looking for for parking during the day actually so yeah but you know if you got a parking garage just over there that is no one's i mean people are entering the hospital hospital campus from body brain now yes uh but the majority of that parking is along 35 and the majority of that parking is coming in off of what is that west oak down or not west oak uh yeah west oak down there and off of 35 frontage road so if you're everyone's parking on the east side of the property you're going to be driving everyone to be pulling in off of body braid more than likely so i don't know that the fact that just the ability to then build a parking garage of course with the pd major amendment but not having a tia that comes along with it that's a little scary for me so okay thank you it could be a requirement um again our engineering team would just have to look at that and see if they have any concerns with with potential rerouting of traffic or anything of that nature could we can we can we somehow make that a requirement by passing the zoning um richard what are your thoughts on that no yeah i think the only difficulty again is looking at it the the generator would be the bit the number of beds that that that they're adding so if that's the case then then yes um it would be required but if they're not adding beds i don't know that they would go through again the expense to build that larger parking garage but um if they were adding again measurable square footage or converting uh an area um that was adding new beds of course that would be something we'd be able to to see when that if they if and when they did come in for the parking garage um to be able to ask those questions and and look at requiring that well i mean if this i mean i mean we're only one thing is just addressing the elephant right here that there this is a this is a rezone to be able to get themselves ready for a some sort of parking reconfiguration i mean moving the existing the existing women's facility to where it is on the on the site plan what hailey just showed us if there i don't know how many beds are actually increasing it by to that new place but it's not enough to warrant a 1500 increase in parking spaces and so there's obviously plans and works and i'm sure the applicant's going to be on and we'll love to hear from them later on but i mean this you know you don't you know you're not expanding the hospital by that much to require this much it's not proportional so um okay thank you well and i before we uh move on i just wanted to point out part of the i think the driver for that ratio they used is because the site is substantially over parked by our standard today so a part of that would just be kind of bringing their current parking into conformance um so you they would increase parking on the site by that much um a part of that number would be taken up by the existing parking on site today which is significantly more than what the code allows that the one per three patient bed ratio okay i mean are they i mean are they at where are they towards that maximum now of a one per three bed i mean are they are they are they currently do they currently have less than the maximum more than the maximum and non-conforming i think that's a minimum three per one bed is a minimum correct is it um the current requirement is is one space per three beds that's the minimum you can only go up to 125 percent of that without making your parking pervious yeah um so the ratio that they're at um i was trying to pull up the plan i believe it works out to where the one or i'm sorry five spaces per patient bed is pretty equivalent to what they have on site today actually um so that would apply to new moving forward they could add at that ratio but again the way they've written it that would be the maximum they could add they don't necessarily have to add that much um okay could you maybe could you maybe report that in uh in meeting of what their current ratio is right now that they're their minimum their minimum the minimum is obviously one per per three beds but their current parking right now is what the ratio is per bed right now i'd like to see that number you can do that 13 minutes from now i think commissioner beck is second in line thank you chair um my my questions are very similar the existing zoning uh precludes them building any parking garage right now uh it's this hypothetical on the old women's center um so the code does not necessarily prohibit parking garages it's fairly silent on them actually um but they are they are permitted and parking within a structure as the code is is written today doesn't count against you it doesn't count against that maximum um so they they could add a parking garage on site today um what they couldn't do is expand the surface parking um because they're already over parked so so if they if they tore down the women's center because they have the new women's center coming in and they put a parking garage as commissioner smith was suggesting and i i think we all agree that it's probably got to go there right uh then there's nothing about the zoning that precludes them from doing that so i guess then my question is i'm a little confused why we need to rezone if they can already do if they can already expand the parking so i my understanding of parking garage is just an option that they are considering um again the hospital campus is is rapidly growing and they don't necessarily know where they'll need to be five ten years from now so this is just building that toolkit for them to be able to to have the flexibility to redevelop the site as they need to in the future they've not expressed to city staff that yes 100 we are going to do a parking garage they just wanted to ensure that they have the option to do that and set some standards for what that could look like that's not to say they wouldn't do it the the challenge they've run into um thus far is for example with the women's tower the city's initial response to them was sorry you can't do it you're already over parked so they went through some pretty significant analysis to show us that what they were adding with that new women's tower would actually decrease the parking on site slightly and not increase the degree of non-conformity so this is just to avoid them having to go through that hurdle each time and and get to a point where we have to say you stop you can't add any more physical you know on the ground parking spaces on site um but that's what's setting the stage for that but that's for surface parking right so they if i mean if their only option was to make a parking garage they could under the existing zoning build a parking garage yes if i'm remembering the code correctly we don't see parking garages that often i believe the way the code is worded is that parking within a structure doesn't count against your maximum so it still counts towards the minimum you're required to have but if you go over and beyond that it wouldn't um since they're already non-conforming to parking um that is something i think we'd have to talk through maybe consult with our our city attorney's office on because that is a tricky situation um but in general if they were conforming and this was a you know any other site in the city a parking garage wouldn't count against your maximum parking okay thank you commissioner alice thank you chair um hayley do we have any development standards for parking garages no the the only thing in the code is that is that statement essentially that it doesn't count against your maximum um we don't have design standards for those so that is one advantage of this pd is that they've they've set those ground rules that would prohibit a parking garage from appearing in in front of the hospital where they have the large parking lot today okay and they're requesting it to be no more than five levels is that what correct you said and how tall of a structure is that anybody know that roughly i'm guessing less than 50 because i think i think those plates within a parking garage are typically seven seven feet maybe okay it might be taller on the ground floor depending what what services you have in there but i would say definitely not above 50 feet and if they do decide to build that they don't have to come do they have to come before you as to where and and or can they effectively just build the parking garage under today without the pd they or under under this well with yeah with the pd with the pd i believe it would just be limited to the to the area that hayley indicated where it couldn't be it couldn't be um along along i-35 okay and i guess my concern is that you know we have residential property on bonnie bray towards where you're saying most likely a parking garage would go so that's my concern um just in how tall in front of it in front of these homes would would this structure be um because that's where you know it looks like now where there's just existing parking lot and then that women's center um i guess it just depends where they would put it but that would be where my concern would lie where would be what we're putting in front of these houses that are there that where there currently is not a large structure yeah so once the pd is established anything they change would either be a minor or major amendment the code has some some criteria for what falls into the major amendment category those are the things that would come back before you and city council so again depending on what they're proposing at the time this would most likely come back before you all if it's a major change to the site um but even even if it were a minor amendment that staff could review there there are criteria in the code for if you're within so many feet of residential um you know height limitations stair stepping uh buildings and things such as that that could apply depending on where they were proposing to put it okay okay and that was my kind of where i was going with my initial question so there would be possibly some measures that we could take to ensure that possibly um it trying to think the width of bonnie bray may already exceed the separation for that true um but okay all right let me think on that thank you uh kisser smith nature hailey there's it says online there are 255 bed hospital now so five spaces 1275 spaces so do you know if you there's any space number that you can remember off the top of your head and how many spaces they have currently i couldn't find anything quickly in the staff analysis i didn't when i was talking when i was emailing you back and forth about this earlier this week i i didn't take into consideration the amount of spaces they had currently and where that was so yeah let me um i'll see if i have that data with the tower expansion that they recently did um it it should be in there okay all right appreciate it any other questions for hailey commissioner prunette i don't know if i saw your hand a while ago or not okay i don't want to miss you and hailey just in preparation um to kind of commissioner ellis's point in terms of the residents across the street there's medical building six on bonnie bray that looks to be about 50 feet right there and then the the property that is in question is set back more west than that kind of imposing building already um so i'm just wondering if you know the height of that building that's actually on bonnie bray there's a way to find out i don't i can try to find out before um yeah i'm looking at just a google street view and it looks every bit of 40 feet but um i'm not i'm not sure yeah just i believe there are some forestry buildings over there which would be roughly 40 feet um yeah i can see if i can find out more specifically yeah okay any other questions for hailey on this item great uh thank you hailey for owning the agenda tonight uh without any opposition or is everyone ready to just go at 6 30 we have two items to get through this evening so i don't know how hungry everyone is but i'd be kind of um inclined just to get this at 6 30 and get it going okay i'm going to see that in agreement so what what mr col a pit stop that's right uh so let's take five minutes at 6 26 i'll close the work session we'll get back just after 6 30 and we'll do the um normal meeting thank you good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the planning and zoning meeting for wednesday october 21st 2020 seeing that we do have a quorum i will call this meeting to order at 6 33 the first item of business is to provide a pledge of allegiance to the u.s and texas flag the commissioners can unmute them if they'd like to join along with me to to do this i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all honor the texas flag i pledge allegiance to the texas one state under god one indivisible next item of business is the consideration of our minutes from october 7th chair will commissioner ellis i move approval we have a first commissioner smith second we have a first and a second for approval any discussion on the item seeing nine i'll call for a vote via roll call christopher cole aye christopher smith aye christopher prunetta aye christopher anderson aye christopher beck aye christopher ellis aye chair is also an aye motion carries seven zero the next item of business is item 3a our items for individual consideration this item is pp 20-0021 and i'll invite hailey zygurski for presentation all right good evening this is item pp 2021 this is the woodlands on mckinney street which is a manufactured housing development you can see here it's located with mckinney street on the south side and trinity boulevard on the east side staff is recommending denial of this plan at this time as it doesn't meet the established requirements all of those were outlined in exhibit two in the backup however the applicant has requested an extension to the november 18th planning and zoning commission meeting to have time to work through those requirements and staff has no objection to that and i'm happy to stand for any questions great thank you for the presentation the chair will entertain discussion or motion commissioner smith make a motion to uh postman or to uh yeah approve the extension until date certain number 18 20 we have a first for approval and extension to a date certain of number 18th commissioner beck i'll second that we have a first and a second for an approval of the request for an extension to date certain of november 18th any discussion seen none i'll call for a vote via roll call commissioner cole aye commissioner smith aye commissioner pernetta aye commissioner anderson aye commissioner beck aye commissioner ellis aye chair is also an aye motion carries seven zero the next item of business is our public hearing items the first one is item 4a dca 20-0001e staff is requesting that this item gets postponed to a date certain so the chair will request a motion to that end commissioner smith make a motion to um postpone until date uncertain correct correct commissioner pernetta i'll second the motion we have a first and a second to postpone this item to a date uncertain any discussion seen none i'll call for a vote via roll call commissioner cole yeah commissioner smith aye commissioner pernetta aye commissioner anderson aye commissioner beck aye commissioner ellis aye chairs an aye and just for clarification commissioner cole was that a aye or a nay an aye i said yay i'm an aye okay just wanted to verify uh motion carries seven zero next item of business is item 4b uh pd 20-0006 uh and i will call hailey zagorski for presentation and open the public hearing all right good evening this is item pd 26 for texas health resources so the request before you is a rezoning for 38 acres it's currently zoned mr and they are seeking a rezoning to pd the base zoning district would still be mr you can see the property outlined in yellow on the map it's bounded by i-35 on the west scripture to the north bonnie bray on the east and oak street to the south this is just a look at what our our rezoning map looks like today with the current zoning here on the left of mr and this is what it would look like if this rezoning to pd were approved so i wanted to first walk through the site this pd is a little unique since the campus is already developed today there is the existing hospital as well as medical office buildings throughout the site as well as an existing women's health center there are some current improvements that are underway the area shaded in blue is what they're calling phase one expansion for the hospital which is the new women's tower and then the area that shaded in the orange color is a medical office building that is currently under redevelopment the existing building will be demolished and a new facility is being built there some of the features on this site such as parking and landscaping were rendered non-conforming with our 2019 code update during the work session there was a question regarding existing parking on site what i was able to find based on the state after this tower is added the site will have 1029 parking spaces as it is today just for the hospital campus so the hospital lot generally ends somewhere in this area it doesn't include this is a separate lot over here with some of these out parcels the hospital itself has 1029 spaces based on the code requirement that we have today of one space per three patient beds only 504 spaces would be required so that hopefully gives you an idea of where they stand and the degree of non-conformity that was created which would mean that they they could never make site improvements that would expand that non-conformity so they couldn't add more surface parking to this facility again some of the landscaping features are also non-conforming such as the parking lot landscaping some of our requirements for right-of-way screening and things such as that so this pd is really just intended to set the stage to allow them to begin redeveloping and expanding this campus maintaining some of the features that they have on site today but also ensuring that they can can add parking to meet the hospital needs as they move forward so they've provided in your backup some standards for the proposed pd as well as documents showing existing conditions looking at the standards one of the things you'll notice is they are restricting the uses permitted within the mr district so this list here are the only uses that would be permitted on the site if the pd were approved so all the typical medical uses that you would expect as well as some supporting uses such as daycares and wellness facilities as well as recreation they do also permit some accessory uses such as helipads parking garages and storage and laundry they're introducing also some new uses these are things that could fit within one of the general categories in the code today in terms of medical clinics or offices but they wanted to specifically call these out as they are things that they expect to see on site and that's an ambulatory or outpatient care facility a wellness or rehab facility and a senior care facility and then looking at the specific deviations that they are proposing as part of this pd with respect to landscaping the code is fairly specific on the screening that has to occur at the right-of-way and how often you have to have landscape islands within a parking lot they're proposing to to modify that and the driver behind that is allowing that existing large parking lot to remain in its current state but to allow for landscaping to to be more in line with the code as they move forward so for for some of the areas where they're they have very limited space between the right-of-way and the parking they're proposing to reduce that to one screening element instead of two that the code requires and then internal parking lots islands would be applied to new parking lots at the same rate as the code for parking ratios this is the perhaps the largest change that they're proposing with the pd the hospital services use currently requires one space per three patient beds they're looking at a maximum of five spaces per one patient bed as their ratio and then medical clinics and offices require one to 250 and one to 450 respectively they are proposing a one space to 200 square foot ratio for both of those uses so this would be an increase above the code requirement for all of these but as i noted before and we talked about at work session some of this is simply to make up for the difference in the over parking that's on site today and then allow them room to expand in the future for front parking design standards the code requires that for for lots with more than 100 spaces which is what they have at the hospital today that there be out parcels provided at primary entrances and at intersections that is not something that you would typically see with a hospital so they're looking to waive that requirement and allow the existing front parking to remain in its current state bicycle parking the code requires it a ratio of one space for 20 vehicles they're looking to to decrease the amount required and have one space for 100 vehicles which is something that seems fairly reasonable at a hospital and then they're introducing standards for a parking garage as we discussed at the work session the ddc allows for parking garages but doesn't provide design standards for those so they are providing some limitations on what that parking garage could look like and where it could go they would limit it to no more than five levels and then they would limit the location that it could be in so that it wouldn't be located along i-35 or in front of the main hospital building in terms of our general criteria for approval we found it to be consistent with all of these they are consistent with the ddc and always except for the standards that they propose to deviate from and as this is an already developed campus we would not expect to see any significant adverse environmental or fiscal impacts if they continue to expand and redevelop and then we'll look at each of these six criteria for the for the pd in a little more detail the first is compliance with the comprehensive plan this area is designated as regional mixed use this is a designation that applies along our major highway corridors where we have major intersections and we expect due to the accessibility to have uses with a regional draw it is typically applied for higher intensity commercial or residential uses but the comp plan does call out specifically that our major medical facilities are our uses that fit within this designation so the subject property is already developed in accordance with the comp plan in that aspect and this proposed pd would facilitate the continued growth of this of this campus to meet the growing needs of the city the second criteria is compliance with the ddc again as we looked at with their standards they are only proposing to deviate from a select few items related to parking and landscaping to facilitate future development of the site and ensure that that they don't continually run into the hurdle of their parking being non-conforming as it is today so they are proposing to meet the ddc in all aspects except for the deviations that they've specifically requested criterion three is with respect to building design amenities and connectivity again the site is already largely developed anything that they develop on the campus in terms of building design would have to meet our ddc standards as they're not requesting any deviations from that the modifications with respect to parking and landscaping would not be expected to have any significant negative effect and they're still proposing to meet the minimum landscape and tree canopy requirements these modifications would just allow them more flexibility in where that goes on site criterion four is for residential uses which we don't have with this pd and then criterion five is rather the proposed non-residential uses are appropriate in terms of their location again the site is already established it has high accessibility off of four roadways with i-35 and oak street both being primary arterials bonny bray being a secondary arterial so they have adequate access to the site it is an appropriate location for them to continue expanding the hospital operations and just as a reminder any modifications they make once a pd is established would either be considered major or minor things such as building expansions by more than 10 would come back before the pnz and council as major amendments and then our final criteria is with respect to whether there are adequate facilities to support the development again the site is is developed so they have utilities in place as you can see here on on this map and then with regard to accessibility they do have adequate access to the site the blue circles are their major access points that are on on the hospital property these other blue circles that are not shaded are those access points that are off-site but they do have connectivity through the parking lot with these adjacent properties and then the yellow are their kind of minor access points notification was provided regarding this request in the newspaper on our website and through mailings we received no responses a neighborhood meeting was not held and staff is recommending approval of this request and their next stop will be city council on november 10th and i am happy to answer any questions thank you hailey for the presentation commissioner smith thank you hailey uh thank her thank you chair thank you hailey for uh for looking up uh those numbers on um the parking spaces so they're already grossly over parked by quite a lot um do you know how many new beds they're adding into that expansion they're building on you happen to know that um i believe the total beds they're relocating 48 beds from the existing uh women's facility so i don't believe i think it was a very minor increase in like only four to six beds being added most of them were relocation okay and if and if they had 48 beds in that old building if they even were to repurpose that for something else it'd probably be just another 48 beds in the first place so you know all together you're talking about maybe at most after they they redo their women's shelter women's uh facility they're probably going to add maybe the most couple they're the parking spaces aren't going to be maxed out basically it's uh it won't be a big issue it doesn't seem like um and then kind of looking at the site plan again if you could pull that up one more time just to point out i think for all commissioners just kind of as i've thought more about this since we talked about it on work session uh i would probably make a case and i'd like to hear from applicant whenever they get to visit i think that um right there it's fine it looks like where that mo b1 really where mo b3 is right down there that medical office building three that seems like a smarter place to put a parking garage in the first place anyways um i don't know why you would put it all the way down there where that existing women's center is just so far away from the main hospital that it would make more sense to put it somewhere where they can even connect with the sky bridge like you see a lot of hospitals in the area do the parking garages so and it's got that accessibility to that one road there that connects the west west which is larger two-lane road that would then connect to the i-35 so that probably ends up being a smart place to put a parking garage if they're actually going there so okay uh mr smith uh this is uh chad anderson with hdr uh part of the applicant team i can i can maybe help address some of that so so thr owns the the land that those mo b1 and mo b3 sit on but those are land leases so they actually do not own the buildings uh the existing women's center building they do own and the plan is to demolish that once the new building is online and uh as you mentioned there's a there's currently a nice long sky bridge between the existing hospital and the existing women's center the idea would be that um that they would want to relocate a majority of the staff parking and create a staff lot surface lot at this time where that current women's center is uh they'd have to add a new elevator and stair etc at the end of that that uh sky bridge but the idea would be able to provide a convenient parking and access for staff because right now staff are taking up um much more of the front public parking than then they really uh would like them to the last few months aside obviously parking census from the public has been somewhat down because visitors haven't been able to get into the hospital that that aside under assuming normal operations uh it was taking away a significant amount of parking from the public so anyway that's the thinking is because those buildings are land leases um you're right from a physical location it would make sense but eventually where that existing women's center is would be the most likely candidate for a parking garage unless something changes with those land leases uh in the near future i will say this the parking garage is not something that's on uh i wouldn't even say it's within a 10-year horizon um it's just we're just trying to help them identify as this campus grows and develops and becomes you know denton is a vastly or fastly growing uh city county that this is going to become a larger hub as far as a regional hospital and so we're just trying to help them cover all their bases and thinking what could be some uses that they they're going to have to think about in the future and if this uh the idea is that when they eventually need new beds they that mob1 would be torn down and that's where more beds would go and at that point you really would need to to increase significantly the amount of parking for both staff and for public so it's it's a very long-term vision um at this point but we're just trying to kind of really think through all the scenarios in which to help them make sure that they're they're accounting for all the future possibilities thank you mr anderson i appreciate it yep is there other questions for staff or we have the applicant commissioner beck yes uh thank you chair hailey can i see uh slide five again i'm sorry to make you put it up and down again it's a yo-yo presentation not a problem this one yes so i something that this this second go around on the on the presentation um is there so you made the point that um they're they're tightly or more tightly uh detailing their pd than we would otherwise require of them we would have a more loose definition of medical facility and whatnot is there any danger in over specifying say for instance i mean say in mr anderson mentioned a 10-year plan if there was if for some reason they didn't put a senior care center in there and they wanted to put a an imaging facility uh is there any danger in that we've specified there has to be a senior care facility now they don't have room for an imaging facility so this list would just this specifies what could possibly go there it doesn't specify necessarily what has to go there this is just the list of possibilities of things that they they saw as reasonable that that may go there in the future or might already exist there this in no way says that they have to provide each one of these individual things on site so it's not limiting no not at all and this is based on you know we we do work all around the country and we're just trying to think of you know what we see what we see health care providers doing throughout the country such as you know a hotel i mean we md anderson's a good example right they do a lot of a lot of cancer treatments where people come from all over the country and are there for weeks or months at a time and that there's a hotel on on campus right so i mean don't immediately see that's not something that i would immediately say oh they need a hotel but 20 years from now you know we just we don't know what the health care environment will look like and so we're just trying to think what are what are some possibilities in the future that that we just want to account for that is by no means saying that there will be a hotel or that it would ever happen thank you thank you hailey any other questions for hailey commissioner alice thank you chair hailey just getting back a little bit to this parking garage so the way we have the pd um i guess the way this is going to be written is they have the ability to build that garage with without anything i mean unless they would go over 10 of five stories or you know i mean there would be no reason that we would have any control over them building the garage so my question is with the concerns that we kind of raise can we put anything further in here that says at least the garage has to be reviewed in some you know the concern is as commissioner smith brought up with increased traffic off of bonnie bray you know right now those are not major entrances but if the garage is there they're going to be used more as well as as residential home protection um that that i had brought up earlier i just don't know if if we can put something in here that gives us a little bit more control over that or if that's even appropriate or if that's something that even maybe staff had already discussed so um i would love your thoughts on that yeah so the the way the code is worded um there's a list of things that very specifically are considered major amendments that have to go before pnz and council and then there's a blanket statement that any other change um significant change that the director thinks should be reviewed by pnz and council can be can be essentially sent to you all in lieu of being a staff approval so something as significant as a five-story parking garage even if it didn't fall within the precise details of what it specifies or a major amendment i suspect would be something that the director would would see as significant enough to come back yeah okay i'm sorry i was even going to say if you want to suggest just to clarify so it's it's clear moving forward even if it is 10 years down the line that for purposes of constructing a a standalone five-story parking garage would be considered a major amendment right because the way i i read this is if it's in here today we're they're not really amending it we're already saying they can build a five level parking structure aren't we yes so we're not amending it we're already we're we're putting it in there right now well a pd is is twofold so there's the text and then there's the map um so the map as it as it's in the pd today is just existing conditions so modifications to that map or what would trigger them uh coming back to to establish the things that are written into the text okay but yeah i would probably love the text that richard suggested i think would would it would make me feel better if it was in there okay the only other thing if i may add chair um and i know we had the the question and work session about um a tia being required and and how that's typically a tie tied to a um a use or expansion thereof in this instance um there would most likely i shouldn't say most like there would be a um a traffic analysis done but more so on access and and how uh how that's how that's done not necessarily trips but making sure that um that that that is looked at so that could that would be a component of it great thanks for that clarification any other questions for hayley do we have any public comment great i'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing and uh we can continue discussing or put a motion on the table christopher smith um no i'm not going to make a motion i'd actually like to uh hear some discussion first according to what margie had said that um if anybody would be no thoughts about putting in something that would uh pertain to having that that parking garage come back i like your discussion about that before i made a motion uh sure i can jump in there i'm not i'm not in favor of adding any more language for a parking garage it's going to be set back behind a medical building it's going to be accessed off a primary arterial it's the biggest possible street we have in our city it doesn't seem to be a five or ten year timeline on it um i'm not going to hold them to their word but even if it's a two-year timeline to build five stories the entire corridor is 40 and 50 feet tall as it is um so i don't i'm not i'm not too inclined to add additional conditions that they come back for a parking garage i don't know what we would do at that time except to make sure the entrance is wide enough and maybe try to put some aesthetics around what material they can use um but it seems like for the service of our community our county especially the northern uh residents of our county if we have a growing hospital and we can have a staff parking to provide easy access to serve our community i just i just i generally out of principle don't have an issue with the parking garage going there especially if i look at the city where other parking garages are there's a parking garage on on highland that is 60 feet tall off a one-way street um so i just i just don't have any issue uh to commissioner smith to your point to hop in there i just don't have any issue with um allowing a parking garage on this approval but christopher i think you had your hand up oh thank you chair i i echo what you just said um i have no i i have no desire to put any conditions on them i mean this is a thriving medical center and i spent 20 years working in medical schools hospitals medical centers all over north america and there's nothing out of the ordinary here i'm thankful because i live in west that this is where i'm going to go if i have a heart attack and stroke and i want a thriving hospital area you know there was a time here when these people didn't do cardiac catheterizations they got a thriving cath lab you know and various other things but i mean i'm thankful to have it here and i don't see any point in giving them any further conditions not putting placing any further conditions on thank you mr cole uh christopher i also want to go to christopher beck real fast than than to you christopher yeah thank you chair uh mine's short uh i actually kind of favor the parking garage um because it'll it takes the pressure off of the the pervious and impervious surfaces and the other reason that we changed our code to to have the new standard that makes the hospital not conforming they don't have to actually be i mean they're not going to change but we don't have to make them be even worse in terms of the reason we put those ordinances in place so i am actually kind of in favor of the parking garage thanks chair uh commissioner alice thank you chair i feel like i was painted in a bad light and i just would like to clear it up i am not against this at all this all makes sense i was simply trying to ensure that if they were going to build a five-story parking garage that we as the city could at least see what that looked like since there are again single-family homes right there i'm not against the parking garage i simply wanted to ensure as richard said that it would come before us and be considered a major amendment when it was built that's all i wanted in there that was just for for neighborhood protection is all i am not against this facility it is fantastic and it should be expanded and improved and i'm happy and in support of it commissioner alice i appreciate the clarification one one follow-up to that are you okay with the city staff and director of development to use that position's discretion to bring it before pnz it seems like that's already codified that way or are you wanting a additional language that it must be brought back and heard and then the pnz could deny or prove a parking garage in the future no i would be okay with staff looking at it the way i read this the to me it looks like we're giving them approval to build a five-story garage or five level garage wherever they would like to build it and perhaps that's not the case um so i would richard can you clarify maybe my understanding is incorrect if if they elect to proceed with the parking garage sometime in the future that would be reviewed by the director and they would have the discretion to bring that to a commission or approve or deny it themselves can you it would it would go through a process of whether it be a determination would need to be made whether it's considered a minor or major i'm given where they are with parking now i'm guessing if they were to build a five-level garage there would be some additional growth with the hot with the hospital we would just have to look at at what they're what and how they're expanding if it's tied to that it would just be a judgment call depending what it is that they're they're proposing and how they're proposing it but but they to commissioner alice's specific point would they have by right ability to go build a garage or they would actually be reviewed prior to approval being granted it if it's a minor amendment no it would just be it would be a staff approval um one of the things i think we need to look at too is um you know when that may happen and you know people make different interpretations all all the time um but i think if you if you just look at the code and definition of building i don't know that a parking garage would fall under the definition of building under our code it's not a a structure for habitation um but again it would all depend um if it's connected to the building um if it's a stand there's a multitude of of of scenarios okay uh commissioner smith what i get for trying to just stem out maybe a friendly amendment later on down the road with the with a motion but i'm gonna go make a motion for approval um as uh as recommended uh commissioner anderson i second the motion okay we have a first and a second for approval as uh staff has outlined uh any discussion on this item commissioner ellis yes since i don't have any support i will give up what i was trying to get accomplished but i will say for the record that i do hope that um we keep tabs on that as a staff when it does come time that they are building a garage thank you commissioner ellis any other discussion seeing none we'll call for a vote via roll call commissioner cole aye commissioner prunetta aye commissioner anderson aye commissioner beck aye commissioner ellis aye commissioner smith aye chair is also an aye motion carries seven zero next item of business is item 4c s20-0003 i'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing but staff is requesting this item be postponed to a date certain of november 4th chair will ask for a motion to that end commissioner smith make a motion to uh postpone to the date certain number fourth we have a first commissioner prunetta i'll second the motion we have a first and a second for a postponement to a date certain of november 4th any discussion on this seeing none i'll call for a vote via roll call commissioner cole aye commissioner prunetta aye commissioner anderson aye commissioner beck aye commissioner ellis aye commissioner smith aye chair is also an aye motion carries seven zero the next item of business is item 4d aesa 20-0005a i will open the public hearing and staff is also requesting that this item is postponed to a date certain of november 4th commissioner prunetta uh motion to postpone to a date certain of november 4th we have a first commissioner smith second a first and a second any discussion on this commissioner beck it just occurred to me november 4th uh everybody be on your best behavior on november 4th when we rediscussed this so thank you it'll be calm commissioner beck it'll be calm thanks jim like the eye of the hurricane um he is non-partisan by the way that's right aren't we all uh we will uh vote via roll call commissioner cole aye commissioner prunetta aye commissioner anderson aye commissioner beck aye commissioner ellis aye commissioner smith aye chair is also an aye motion carries seven zero the next and final item on our agenda this evening is the planning and zoning matrix i will turn the floor over to richard for any updates and then to the dais for discussion you're muted richard sorry about that yep uh keeping with the uh um november 4th meeting date we will have a robust uh agenda um we're we're still working through just a number of plats obviously um rezonings and then the items that were continued but in addition we have two big work session items um the mobility plan which i think we'll still be able to have at that meeting as well as parks is working through their update uh to the park dedication ordinance as well as the park development fee ordinance um so gary we'll have gary back again at our next meeting uh to give to give an update on how that works um before i go into i guess council council action if if there are any questions yeah commissioner beck thank you chair hey richard um is this is this mobility plan the the final draft or uh the the public has no more opportunity for feedback my understanding is the public the public will have opportunity to provide feedback up through the you know up until council adopts it um but but this is just giving that what what they've done to date what they're continuing what they will continue to do and then how the process works for updating updating the mobility plan okay uh yeah it's just i i don't know about the rest of the commissioners but i'm getting a lot of citizen feedback on elements of the mobility plan so thanks richard yep all right richard council updates just just quickly um at last night's meeting um the alternative esos for ryan high school and eagle cove were both were both approved as was the text amendment for the tattoo and piercing uh parlors in mn um the other public hearing that we had on the mockingbird residential um if you if you recall uh it was a vote of seven zero to deny um the applicant had added some additional uh conditions uh at at the meeting um unbeknownst to staff there was some concern that council had uh with those conditions being brought forward to them without the knowledge of p and z and so it was voted that they remand that back to p and z for consideration so that will be coming back on the 18th of november it will be an individual consideration item but one of the other directions that council gave was to go ahead and notice it as it as it would be public hearing so we will we will meet those requirements that's why it's coming back on on on 11 18 but wanted to let you know that that will be back back in front of you great christian alice thank you chair so richard on that note did staff review or you're going to review the conditions i guess we will review the other the conditions um i i think in addition they probably need to have another neighborhood meeting with with the conditions that they were adding it was a limitation on the number of lots um that that could technically be built there and so um we'll see how that goes i guess on the 18th okay thank you great thank you for those updates any other items that need to be added to the matrix or clarified okay great seeing none i'll go ahead and close the meeting at 7 11 thank you everyone thank you