pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under indivisible with liy and justice for all Madam Secretary can we please do roll call of course chair Carmelo Kendo present Vice chair member Philip lantry present member Russell Alexander present member Nanette Douglas present member Don griggsby present and then I have alternate Don streer present and alternate number two Daisy Snider present thank you Mr chairman we have a quum okay can we get approval of the minutes held on March 19th if everybody's read them and are okay with them I'll make a motion to approve I have a motion do I have a second second I have a second all in favor I I all oppose All Passes first order of new business is ordinance number 20 24-28 PUD 23-5 good afternoon Commission Tisha Manning zoning manager that item will not be heard tonight we're going to continue that meeting um that item to the next Planning Commission meeting which is going to be in May okay thank you so then the next order of business would be ordinance number 20 24-29 cda2 24-3 thank you chairman um Commissioners Dave Tomac with the city manager's office um so so basically um what we looked at doing is streamlining a couple of processes you guys went through your Land Development code reorganization a couple months ago um so we're now we're taking advantage of looking at specific sections upgrading them to kind of how we do things now um and taking advantage of some opportunities to stream line things you know as the city grows um sometimes the extra steps in the past have not been a big deal um but as the city grows to be more efficient um we're going to try to make administrative things approved by administrative staff and items that need your policy Direction and Council decision um then would come to you and and you have more time to actually spend on them um in this particular particular ordinance we're looking at easement vacations and final plots um easements are required for anything from like drainage um utilities for like your um telephone lines cable things like that um or for just construction temporary construction easements um easements themselves are not um real property they're just restrictions on property um so it's not like we're we're actually approving any kind of asset we're just releasing restrictions that were what we consider special purpose so Jack will correct me um if I get too far off the the accurate route um so what we're asking you to do um tonight is to recommend the ordinance where we would allow the city manager or their designate um you know so a lot of times that the city manager is not available you know be the community development director or I'm the assistant we could review easements and actually release the restrictions um like an example um Jack Brack road is being extended to the East and they're going to be buying about four Parcels of land and those four Parcels of land all have what we call a standard 5 foot uh drainage utility easements on them well if you're going to put a road through there you no longer need that because now you got ride away um so instead of taking it through the process and having it go all the way to city council your city manager would be able to release those easements and then obviously the new ride of way would be recorded and and it would fit more what's going on um another another one would be um we've got a a road project on Neptune where there's some utilities being relocated um in some cases the utilities were recorded on private property they're not on the on the right of way um now that the road's being widened however those easements no longer belong in that spot they're being relocated those easements can be vacated and new easements can be recorded um so a lot of those kinds of things can happen without having to go all the way through to the city council for that decision um statutes are pretty clear about when you can releasee easements if there's no public purpose so it really um there's still guidelines in place to make sure that the staff does it in the proper way um in addition to easement vacations um we also have a process for subdivision plots um right now and we're not changing the process um you get a preliminary subdivision plan where they show you kind of the graphic layout of lots um they show you kind of What kinds of houses they're building or what kind of commercial development can be considered um you know where access points are all that kind of stuff and Council approves a preliminary subdivision plan the next step is to go to a subdivision construction document where the engineers and the surveyors actually lay it all out and they build the infrastructure according to that preliminary approval if there's any minor changes those can be adjusted any major changes they would actually have to amend the preliminary subdivision plan so there's always if it's if it's not substantially in compliance with the preliminary subdivision plan they can always amend that and bring it back for approval if they get through the subdivision construction process everything's been done in accordance with the preliminary subdivision plan the final step is what we call plat Subdivision plat and that's where you record it um with the clerk uh the clerk's office um and again it's substantially in compliance with that preliminary subdivision plan and now the subdivision construction plans which have pretty much kind of put everything in place right now the final Subdivision plat goes through your city council um what we're asking for in this ordinance is that your development Review Committee actually approved the final plot as long as it's substantially in conformance with the preliminary subdivision plan approval and the statutory requirements um so again it's pretty much at that point an administrative task um there's no real policy decisions being made um other than staff confirming that it's consistent with the preliminary and they've got everything on the plat that's required by the state um they do that anyway before it goes to city council you just don't have the additional step of taking it to city council for final approval so other than those two items um this ordinance has a lot of little clerical cleanups um you know in in the past you've told people to apply to the Department of Planning and Zoning well that department may not exist anymore it's got a different name um so basically we got rid of all that and it's whatever Department designated by the city manager um and other little cleanup items like that um we've tried to make sure that it's all consistent with what we do today um I think it's consistent with your strategic plan goals we're trying to make things efficient we're trying to ensure good development patterns um we're trying to give you all a chance to breathe when you get a bunch of development so you can focus on policy as opposed to all these other small steps um I'd be happy to answer any questions we obviously recommend approval if you have any specific questions or or need to discuss something I'd be happy to to to answer those questions um I think it is a public hearing um so you might have to take public input from the massive crowd that's come to might take a little while yes so do we have any questions for the city so is this supposed to greatly improve the time the turnaround time for it yes ma'am so for easan vacations it actually can uh save up to 60 days oh of of time because you got to get you have to advertise and get on the council agenda um for the easement vacation um this could be approved by the city manager and then it's just a document prepared by the City attorney that could release it and get recorded in the uh and the uh clerk of the court records um so the only reason oh I'm sorry oh then for the plat I was just going to say um that extra step actually could save at least two months maybe even three months from the time to get that plat recorded and which allows um folks that are investing in the community to move quicker towards building permits and things yeah because cost goes up if time goes up usually yes ma'am especially when you're just waiting for a meeting to occur right and um I guess when you had said something about the a hearing but usually the hearing isn't necessary at that point in time any longer mosts are on consent agenda statutory that that hearing has to happen because it's written that way okay exactly most most of final plats are on consent agendas and so basically you're just waiting for that thing to be scheduled right for easement vacations it's it's uh required um I think public hearing for the vacate right now um which means it has to be noticed ahead of time and that adds a little bit more time um so that that step would go away okay I just have to ask a really stupid question don't anybody laugh at me easement vacations I know it's not a vacation is it I just like I'm just I don't know that word is that technical reason for that term vacate I can't answer that it's just the word that it is well I mean you're vacating abandoning you're basically yeah you're vacating the vacating a a restriction vacating it control all right yeah but that's that's that's a great question because it's certainly not a vacation that I've ever seen so I love the origination of words so okay thanks I do agree that uh the um change to the vacating easements should be more streamlined and easier yeah um I I'm a little bit confused about some of the language in okay in the ordinance that's changing so maybe you could clarify that a little bit absolutely um so I'm looking at uh this is the the final decision section for the subdivisions yes so for the final plat so 2.4.6 um e E2 I guess yes final decision yes and it says approval of the preliminary subdivision plan by the city council shall act as a delegation of authority to the development Review Committee to approve the final plat in substantial accordance with the approved preliminary subdivision plan um there's the one exception to that is for minor subdivisions minor subdivisions are like four lots that don't require like um public infrastructure that they can skip the preliminary subdivision plan process those still have to go to so that's why they're still that's why they still go to city council because they're skipping that was essentially my question question is why um yeah they um the idea is city council should make the the initial decision and then we should be substantially in compliance from that point forward for minor subdivisions since they don't see it UPF front there one approvals actually at the end before they plot it okay um and then further down in that paragraph uh it says the city council shall have the option of approving the final plat as presented or requiring additional information or revisions yeah there's um there is a um suggested change for that sentence um it because that's it's a little bit uh it should say for minor subdivisions okay comma yeah the city council so if we can make that one change to the ordinance and then I think there's another change I'd like to recommend once we get through discussing all of them um that has the deal with the the easement vacations because I think we added the word construction to the easement U but we we'll get to that later after you get all your questions the only issue I see with this or I'm trying to forese is I know that this would be on the consent agenda and it would already let's say the uh preliminary plan would be approved already right yes um well in the earlier slide it said uh if they made any substantial changes right and so what my question is is how do you determine what's substantial and not substantial what would be major what would be minor what what designates those two yeah so your code already covers that in a couple of different sections but if if you were to change the location of your your roadway connections that would be considered substantial because connectivity of the roadways would be changing and then Council would have to take a look at that and make sure that that's still compliant with the plans um the other thing is is fill so if if during the construction um process plans all of a sudden you had lots that laid out adjacent to to existing properties where you were saying you only had a foot and a half a fill and now you're going up to five or six feet well we need to take another look at that because that might affect buffers you know so so things of that nature would generate a requirement to amend the preliminary plan um there was a case where instead of doing a culdesac um or instead of doing a connected roadway um with like a an interim fire turn somebody wanted to do a culdesac well because we have requirements for connectivity that would have to go back and be approved by Council so kind of major things that would be changed if you got to move a lot 10 feet um but still meet your density requirements and all your lot requirements that's minor you know and once this once the surveyors get out there and lay out the flood uh planes and all that kind of stuff if it shifts a lot or two those are minor um as long as it doesn't impact the densities yeah and the reason I bring all this up is because you know when you approve a preliminary there's a lot of things that change or can change oh yeah yeah when you start surveying the property and and you got to come in with your actual construction plans you may see areas that get tweaked um there's a difference between tweaking it shifting it a little bit and totally re redesigning it so adding Lots or density would that also be considered a major only only if it went beyond a certain percentage I think it I think your code's like 10% now or something so um once you start increasing the number of lots to where you're actually going beyond what it would be an administrative approval then you would have to come back to council yeah because as you know I mean some some subdivisions uh are affect the neighboring communities a lot more than others yep and so I just want to make sure that you know anything major is not going to be overlooked and you know that it would still have to be reviewed by city council yeah and that public would still have a chance to weigh in on it if so if had single family detached lot and single family attached lots and all of a sudden you changed out all the single family detached lots to attached lots and reduce the lot wids that would be considered substantial and especially this helps them because now you get all of this simple stuff out of the way that it doesn't take up all that time so whenever those situations come up there's more opportunity and time to to deal with that so right right and it's and like you said the statutes are the ones that are dictating that or the codes rather so right and and and the reason you do that with the preliminary subdivision plan is because you've not really invested a whole lot at that point so if when you're doing your construction plans you find out you've got to significantly change it you go back and amend your preliminary as opposed to waiting until your final plat when Council may not like some of the changes you were going to make and now all of a sudden you got a construction plan package that's been approved a lot of folks don't do bonds right now they actually build out those improvements and then you bring a final platin Council says wait a minute that's not consistent with what we approved and then you got problems you know so in a way this process forces all that to be done with the preliminary plan so so to to be clear they could they add additional lots and units they could the pr you could if you if you had a subdivision that's like a um 120 lots and you give your staff an administrative approval of 10% you could add another 12 LS it wouldn't be substantial enough to increase the density beyond what that zoning would allow but if they did increase the density beyond what the zoning would allow then it would definitely have to go well Not only would it come back for prelimary yeah but you would probably get a recommendation of denial because obviously we're not going to allow it to go against what the zoning requirements are either okay any other question questions for the city you think the public has any questions at this moment we'll close the city comments and open up for public comments you should since there's no public comments we'll close it to the public and give yourselves the last chance to speak amongst yourselves there would you like there is one change if you go down to section 2411 and you look where it talks about um it's under D3 where it talks about the easements um we did add construction easements to that um I don't think we had to but I think the city attorney's office felt like construction easements is going to be a big part of the ones that we release because those are temporary anyway yeah I I agree with that as well and other than that you've got the two changes that we talked about I noticed that we uh where it said his or he yeah we just said referring to the city manager we had to get rid of those as well it's amazing when you make a woman your city manager what you find when the other big one was Department of Planning and Zoning I mean that name's probably changed six times since they wrote this initial code so we just got rid of the name of the department that you submit the application yeah gotta be inclusive okay that's right okay thank you sir thank you than you Dave at of this time uh if everybody's content would we uh anybody like to give a motion all right well um I'm not sure what this falls under is this this isn't really any of our categories is it it's an ordinance right right it's a it's a they're just seeking a a motion for approval or approval recommendation of approval to uh to approve the ordinance that proposed all right well then I would like to recommend approval I'd like to make a motion to recommend approval of ordinance 2024-25 the easement PL process with the conditions the city requested the extra conditions well just the extra modifications well just the modifications that they've made yeah I have a first do I have a second second I have first and second all in favor favor I I anybody opposed pass sir 5 Z next meeting Madam Secretary next Planning Commission meeting is going to be May 21st 2024 6 PM do we still have the one on uh do we have the one no that has actually been cancelled okay but I appreciate you guys for working that out with me so do I have a motion to cancel andour so moved we have a second I'll second all in favor I I adjourned