City Council - Regular Meeting

We have a few people in the audience, and hopefully a few more watching us on our YouTube channel. Our invocation tonight will be given by Councilman Tony Stewart, and I will lead us in respect to the flag. Please rise.

Let us pray. My gracious Heavenly Father, as we gather here for this meeting tonight, we ask that you unite our hearts and minds in a common purpose. We ask you grant us wisdom to work together effectively and the humility to value each person's perspective. We ask that you guide our discussions and decisions so that they may honor you and serve our shared goals. All these things we ask in Christ's name. Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible,

The minutes of our July 27th meeting were distributed. Are there any corrections or additions to the minutes? I make a motion to approve. First by Mr. Newton. Second. Second by Marshall. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Those pass unanimously. Thank you. have two items of old business, and the first item is request consideration of an ordinance to annex and zone to PDD, which is a planned development district approximately 9.36 acres located at 305 Edgewood Drive. Mr. Coon?

This item was before you as a referral at the July 27th Council meeting. The Planning Commission considered the request at the August 4th meeting and unanimously recommended approval. Planning Development Director Maurice McKenzie will provide the overview for you. Mr. McKenzie.

Thank you. If the applicant wishes to annex the 9.36 acres in order to build a 15-lot custom home subdivision, The requested zoning is PDD, Plan Development District, and as you know, that requires specific development guidelines to be outlined in a document, and that's included in your packets this evening. Just to give you a little bit of overview of what we're looking at here, most of the lots will be over 15,000 square feet in size. None will be below 10,000 square feet in size. There's a couple that are in that 10 to 11,000 square foot range, but again, most of them are over 15,000 square feet. You can also see the layout of the subdivision in your packet as well. The development pattern along Edgebrook, when you look at that, there's a mixture of densities across the street from it. You have a subdivision that averages around 8,000 square feet per lot. You also have another subdivision development across the road that has a mixture of townhouses and patio homes. So you have higher density across the road. You also have some larger lots along Edgebrook Drive as well. And again, you have the PDD document in your packet, but just to give you a few specifics as to what it states. Again, 15 lots with a total density of 1.6 lots per acre. The minimum lot widths are 85 feet. which will accommodate driveway access to the rear garages, which is an element in the PDD document. You have a 50 foot wide landscape buffer along Edgebrook. They are currently conducting a tree survey to ensure that there's the adequate preservation and replacement of established specimen trees in On the piece of property, there's a 10-foot-wide landscape buffer surrounding the perimeter. You'll have sidewalks, street trees also included in the development. And also, all dwellings will be constructed on crawl spaces, or if they do have raised foundations, they'll be at least 12 inches in height with an average of 24 inches above adjacent grade. So you'll have that. as well and since this request is coming in they applied prior to the approval of the unified development ordinance which is also before you this evening we wanted to state first that it's going through the traditional PDD process but we didn't think it would be prudent for them to submit a document that did not meet the characteristics and would avoid meeting the elements of the proposed UDO. So as a staff, we compared the proposed guidelines to what the applicant is submitting to us and it closely matches what would be approved under our new UDO guidelines. You have varying house designs, basically anti-monotony. You also have garages set in a manner that is different than what our current guidelines allow, so it does closely match what the proposed UDO will require moving forward. This did go before the Planning Commission at their August 4th meeting, and they unanimously recommended approval. And this comes to you tonight as a recommendation of approval. And if you have any questions for me, I'll be glad to answer those. Also, the applicant is in attendance, and they can provide you some more specific details about the project.

Thank you, sir. At our last meeting, we did get a chance to have the applicant come before us before we pushed it to the Planning Commission. I think we had pretty good discussions there. But at this particular point in time, I want to open it up to our council questions. So we can entertain questions. Ms. Roberts? Jeff?

I asked the question last time, what does this closely mimic in our new UDO going forward? I know it doesn't come under the UDO, and it was said it came under the SR, the Suburban Residential. And when I did a comparison, I think the biggest thing that I see are the setbacks. The setbacks under SR are considerably more, and I know it doesn't have to, we're not making it fit into the SR, For example, front yard under SR is 40 feet, whereas this one is 15. Under SR, going forward, it's 10 feet on the side yard, and it's 7 and 1 half feet in the document. Although the plat is in conflict with the document. The plat says 10 feet, and I realize that's a preliminary. And the rear yard under SR would be 30, and under this it's 15. I see that as the biggest difference. And maybe there's some tradeoffs. And the biggest one that I see, maybe it closely more mimics the setbacks under a conservation design, but it doesn't have the open space requirement of 40%. But the biggest thing I see maybe as a trade-off is a low impact development, the LID techniques, which are the pervious driveways. And I would like for someone to expand on maybe other LID techniques being used here, pervious pavements, maybe rain gardens or infiltration practices for runoff. But I see that as the biggest trade-off.

Mr. Roberts, I love the engineers. Mr. White's here, along with the development teams here. I'd like to speak to some of those technical questions that you asked. But I did want to point out, and I almost pointed out during Mr. McKenzie's comments, was that this is different in nature of any recent ones we've approved in five years, that individual lot grading to occur at time of construction, as part of that, what you referred to, the low-impact development process. So you're not coming in here and just creating every home site, engineered home site like much of the subdivisions around it were actually created and built out. This is being done uniquely different from that. And also just give some context as well. I know that Tom is on the UDO, but these are conversations that we've also been guiding this development team for i would say about eight months now and so yeah it does happen it ends up on the same agenda tonight but it also has been eight months conversation on this new business a different business concept or a business model if you will for this type of development and of course in your packet you can see the difference in homes that are being provided i think the base presentation was a million plus but with that mr robertson mayor maybe Mr. White to answer some of those questions for you or Mr. Curtis to answer some of those technical questions for you.

Let me also say I have never felt like density is an issue with me as long as it's done correctly. I feel like they've done a very nice job of it's a little denser than what would be allowed under the coming you know i don't have a problem as long as it's done correctly in a very good manner and i think it has been but i'd like to address the LID let's talk to some of the mad experts on Mr. Roberts' questions thank you Wesley White with Ridgewater Engineering we're here in Anderson so yeah we've met preliminarily like you said we've been meeting with staff and we've talked with

stormwater and engineering as well about the low-impact developments. As you mentioned, the driveways, allowing those to be grass medians in the middle of those, as well as things like the rain cisterns to collect as much of the rainwater as we can, leaving existing vegetation, as staff mentioned. So really limiting the grading is one of the biggest features that we're doing. That way we don't have to reestablish the controls there. There will be the green space in the middle area, which is the largest area we'll be disturbing at one time. So that adds that green parking there to assist with some of that as well. There may be some additional stuff. The statement of intent kind of spells out that we're going to use as many as we can. Some of that would get with stormwater once we get into the design side of it.

Well, you know, we all realize that Cox's Creek has an issue already. We don't want to make it any worse. And I feel like you've got adequate area to retain water.

Yeah, and that's one of the issues that stormwater brought up as well as the flooding. Design normally requires we address the two and ten year. We've already talked through addressing the hundred year storm and detaining it on our site. That's the only part we can address is what's on our site. We can't But we won't be adding to any of the issues that are already there for sure if anything improving.

Yeah, that's our goal Just for people who are just an audience and listening to talk a little bit Define pervious surface For the general.

Yeah, so pervious versus impervious your pervious is your grasses your wood area your landscape areas and Impervious is your rooftops and your roadways. So the roadways, those will all be directed to the detention area, and then the roofs will control those with, like I said, the rain cisterns and piping those directly too. So that will help with any potential for erosion.

One more question. It didn't say, or at least I couldn't find it. What is the approximate open area left on the site? I'm not sure. I couldn't find it. I might have missed it, but I couldn't find it.

I don't think it's listed, to be honest. But I think it incorporates the area in the middle, all the landscaping, then the perimeter, and then the detention area.

I noticed the document did say, and this is the guiding document, a 10%, somewhere it says 10% open area.

Yeah, I think we're well over that.

The intention is to follow the preliminary plan? Yes, sir. Not to... if it's let's just say the open area is over 10 and it does look like it is maybe it's 20 right yeah the intent is not to change it to reduce that open debt yes sir mr stewart

Maybe there's a question for David. David, do you know what's a typical, I know we've been developing a lot, you've got the one on Shockley Ferry that's going up. What would this closely resemble? Because I know there's some that's going up, you know, before we were looking at adopting and, you know, the houses are right up on the street, right up on the curb.

we said hey let's you know they're following a note we don't want it to look like that going forward and correct and i just want to see what what would this closely resemble that we've done recently uh stonebridge uh to the quality level um that you're individually custom building these homes and there's stonebridge phase two that's already been approved and and moved forward and they are moving forward with that so this would be very similar to stonebridge phase two as well um and i think both unique products and that you have a custom built home each one's different done by the owner with only lane disturbance for that lot at a time uh so the the ones that we we previous approved and you'll have 50 houses 200 houses and so forth A lot of those have been on 7,000 to 10,000 square foot lots, and of course what they do, the technique is that they come in and engineer each lot, masquerade the entire property for the lots, and then individually sell them all. And so this is unique. I would compare it to Stonebridge phase two. And I know Mr. Curtis in his presentation said that, I mean, it's 15 homes, that the starting price could be around a million. And so you're talking about depending on the finishes that person chooses and so forth. But I think it's also that we've gotten across the entire scale of availability and housing and we kind of have not gotten up to this top top range and i think getting 15 homes would be helpful for that

I know it was mentioned that all the houses would be built on slab or maybe have a false 12-inch minimum foundation. Well, some of the pictures I look here, to me, appear to be crawl space. I don't know which one it's going to be.

Yeah, the intent is for all of them to be on crawl spaces, but with the... accessibility issue. There's garages and things like that in areas where they may be no less than 12 inches but what's called a raised foundation.

What we own, who would maintain the streets and the subdivision? Would it be us or the homeowner association?

We're still in that conversation with Mr. Kirk a little bit about a piece. I know he mentioned it at one of the meetings about potentially gating it or not. So if it was gated, it would just be private. It would be private property and everything. But in this case, I think it's 0.21 miles of road. It would be deeded to us if it's not gated. The infrastructure would be.

Or the same way we would do it. All subdivisions, pretty much.

Yeah, the same process we do all subdivisions. Same process. You know, I guess the city standards or whatever.

Yeah, either way it would have to be. So even if he said, hey, I want to gate this thing, and it ends up being essentially private infrastructure, it would still have to meet all the city standards across the board on that. All right, thank you.

Mr. Holder? So real quick, Mr. McKeon, I apologize. I missed the work session or the last council meeting. The developer's going to... not clear cut, for lack of a better term, going to develop as he goes?

That's correct. The developer's presentation is that we'll first get the plot approved, so forth, but they'll be individually developed. Ari has a client looking to move into, and has chosen a lot, to move in there. You start with house one and you would just provide the infrastructure for the roadway, the infrastructure for stormwater, the base infrastructure for power and so forth, and then you would get to the house lot that would just be wooded, and you decide to buy that lot and custom design your home, and now you're just building on that one lot, and each other lot that's not sold yet would still be not great.

And just a quick question. So the whole site, as I've been reading through number two on this, you know, our tree ordinance. So the whole site will get a tree survey and a tree ordinance. I mean, and once it complies, then each lot won't have to go back through a tree ordinance, right?

Yes. Speed it up.

yeah well i think that's you're mostly right so the the entire site would have to go through the tree survey they're doing that right now each individual lot that wouldn't necessarily have to um and i was just just texting with our folks over here the setbacks, the narrower setbacks actually are done on purpose to give a little bit more flexibility for house siting in order to save trees on the site. Not every site has the exact same number of trees. Am I saying that right? Yes.

In the fly-by garage is one of the other reasons why we have the narrower setbacks.

Hey James, would you come up to the mic?

So part of the reason, you brought up the narrow setback, so part of the reason is because we're doing all fly-by garages, so there will be a driveway located on one side of the house, so that's, I mean, you're gonna end up with, on one side of the home, you're gonna end up with way more than that setback, because you've got, you know, 10 or 12 foot drive, plus some space off of there, because everything, all the garages are rear-loaded, right? So there, it's not, we're not just doing side-entry garages, we're doing rear-loaded garages, so... The intent would be, you know, we hope that some of the architecture feels like stuff that you would see, you know, Augusta Road area and Greenville, places like that where you have rear-load garages, nice architecture on the front of the homes so, you know, you're not just seeing like a big box that's a garage out there.

But to answer your question directly, yes, each lot will have to, the development as a whole has to meet the tree ordinance. Each individual lot will have to meet the tree ordinance as well, as far as preservation of trees and tree planting.

Like, for instance, if one lot has not, the way that we survey, or he hasn't surveyed, he brings it to us, there's one that doesn't have a tree on it, he obviously is going to plant trees. And then there's one that there's, You couldn't build a house on it unless you trimmed or cut down some trees, then it'll meet the guidelines. So with that, Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to approve this PDD document to annex 9.36 acres on 305 Edgebrook Drive.

First by Mr. Holger. Second. Second by Mr. Newton. Anybody? Mr. Newton.

Yeah, I'll speak. If this were to pass, it would come into my area, and I think everybody up here knows I've been somewhat hesitant for development on the northern side of my district. I know we've had lots of projects proposed over the last several years, but I want to thank the applicant and staff for working this one. I do think this is what people... you know, if they were to see development, this is what you want to see them. You want to see a high quality development. Uh, again, you know, the lot sizes are larger than, you know, kind of what's across the street. Um, you know, again, you know, my concern and the, all my concerns have been addressed in regards to water. Um, again, you know how, you know, they're, they're clearing the lots, not just doing the mass grading, which I'm, I think everybody, I mean, everybody up here, everybody in the crowd, everybody hates that. Uh, nobody likes to see that. This is a much better process. So again, I mean, You know, as we continue to grow, I mean, I commend council and staff for, you know, keeping that focus on high-quality development, and that's what this is. So I've got no hesitation as well.

Mr. Pickens. Anything?

Any further discussion? Mr. Stewart, when you exit out of the subdivision, I know it's like you've got the aisle in there and it's kind of hard to see. So when you come out, is that, if I'm coming out, can I turn right or left or am I going to have to turn only to the right?

No, it'll be a full access. The road is actually, Edgebrook is a county-maintained road, so we'll go through the full permitting. We've positioned that already preliminarily with proper site distance, so you'll be able to pull left or right. Coming out and turning either way with cars coming in from there? Yeah, that island you're talking about will be far enough back that it won't impact that at all.

Any other questions, guys? First and second, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously on the first reading. Our second item, old business, requests consideration of an ordinance to adopt the City of Anderson's new unified development ordinance and official zoning map. Mr. McEwen.

For cities, South Carolina Code Title VI Chapter 29 is known as the Local Government Comprehensive Planning Enabling Act, and this empowers local governments to enact zoning and land development regulations. In April 2025, the City Council adopted the City of Anderson's Comprehensive Plan. We entitled that Plan This City, which outlined the city's goals and visions for future growth along with policies to make that vision a reality. The city has worked to develop a new unified development ordinance to consolidate land use, zoning, and subdivision regulations into a single, more modern regulatory framework to help meet the goals of the comprehensive plan. The city has simultaneously prepared an updated official zoning map to reflect the regulatory intent and spatial boundaries of the new districts. I'll turn it over to Planning and Development Director Maurice McKenzie for additional background and overview. Mr. McKenzie.

Thank you. As Mr. McEwen mentioned, over the past few years, especially since the adoption of the comprehensive plan back in April of last year, the city has been working with House of Levine Associates on creating new guidelines that will replace our existing zoning ordinance. new unified development ordinance, combined zoning ordinance, subdivision regulations, and related land use guidelines into a streamlined document to better and be a tool to match the goals of the comprehensive plan that was adopted last year. And along the way, we've kept you all informed with providing some draft information. We've had a couple of work sessions throughout this process. Again, it's been a long process, but we're getting to the end of it now. uh if you go back three years to 2023 you saw the need to adopt some guidelines that would really work to improve the community appearance so three years ago we worked to get a head start by adopting the sign code and tree preservation and landscaping guidelines Those were implemented at that time, but those will be incorporated into this new UDO. That's where they're actually intended to be in the first place. But again, you saw the need to go ahead and add those two chapters in advance of adopting the full guidelines. So those have already been in place for some time. regarding the adoption process for the unified development ordinance we did have a public open house back on june 4th to collect community feedback and the plan has also been available on the city's website for review and comment for several weeks and we received several comments from citizens we also had comments from a local non-profit land conservation advocacy group upstate forever so we compiled those comments we've worked to incorporate those where appropriate and then moving forward last week on August the 4th we did have the official public hearing with the Planning Commission to obtain input and although there were several people at the meeting we did not get any public input at that meeting but the Planning Commission ultimately recommended approval of of the request to adopt the Unified Development Ordinance and the zoning map. So we come to you tonight with a recommendation of approval for the Unified Development Ordinance and zoning map. But before we turn it over for more discussion, we do have John Housel with Housel Levine with us. And I'd like to turn it over to him to provide us an overview of what the UDO is and the zoning map.

Mayor and City Council, it's nice to be here again this evening. I've appeared before you a few times over the last few years on a couple of different matters, and it's always good to be in your house. Again, John House Hill with House Hill Levine Associates. I think some of the comments from our city council member on the far end were most appropriate when he closed out his statements on the previous development that you just reviewed in first read, and that was the city wants to focus on development, but it wants to focus on the right kind of development, and the focus needs to be on quality development. But as you stated, this would be a type of development that you would drive by and say, that's the type of development we want to see and hear in Anderson. The approach we took for the zoning ordinance update or the UDO, the Unified Development Ordinance, which combines your subdivision code and your zoning ordinance, was predicated on a couple of different things. The first thing is to begin to put in place implementation through regulation of your comprehensive plan that this community spent two years writing and adopting and putting into place through vision workshops and interviews and focus group discussions and community forums. And that was adopted about a year ago, a little more than a year ago. And the UDO is meant to begin to implement that. The main premise of the UDO is to ensure the DNA of Anderson stays intact, your character, your sense of place, your unique identity, your quality, who you are as a community, as you begin to make it a better place to development and invest. so that you get the types of businesses that make you continue to thrive, so that you get the types of residential developments that make your communities, places, families continue to want to be in, and the types of residential diversity of housing product that you can age in place, and as you grow over, you can continue to call Anderson your home as you move from a single-family detached structure to maybe something else. all the way from that down to your thriving downtown district. So I'm going to go through pretty quickly what is an encapsulation of 280 pages of text. So we will not be reading this offer going through every single sentence because we'd be here way too late. But after I go through my presentation, we can open it up to any discussion, of course, and get into the weeds as much as you possibly want to. If you need to interrupt me to ask a question along the way, I'm one of nine kids. I'm used to being interrupted and asked questions. That's just part and parcel. As I go through this, Maurice, Andrew, David, anybody else who works so closely on this, feel free to jump in if I've missed something. So again, we're going to go through the process, the purpose, and the goals of the UDO, and some of the major changes and highlights that were done to each chapter. Again, as Maurice indicated at the beginning, in 2023, the city chose to expedite a couple of different things. So it expedited some landscaping regulations and some signage regulations. And that was done about two and a half years ago as expedited amendments before we got into the wholesale amendments that we're going to be talking about this evening. You see the timeline in here where this project really kicked off in full effort in the spring of 2025, and here we are now at the end of or in the middle of summer 2026 for adoption. The UDO or Unified Development Ordinance is a combination of two cities' existing documents and that's your current zoning ordinance and zoning map and your current subdivision ordinance. So it's a combination of these two things because they really dovetail and have to work hand in hand. So the trend across the country and best practice is to combine both of these traditional documents into one UDO. So it's easier to reference and inconsistencies then begin to get eliminated. uh... one of the main purposes of doing this again was to begin to implement the comprehensive plan uh... in contrast to the comprehensive plan the comprehensive plan is visionary it is aspirational it is policy driven it does not dictate what you can and cannot do with your property The zoning ordinance is regulatory. It does establish the rules to which you can use and develop on your property. The two go hand in hand. Planning is policy and what you'd like to establish, and zoning are the rules by which you have to play. And so that's the difference between the two, but the importance of the two and how they work together. Some of the comprehensive plan goals that were sort of the north star as we worked through the zoning ordinance were to implement the comprehensive plan, encourage diverse housing types so that you didn't evolve into a community that was just or disproportionately only single family homes, but to provide the type of housing that would meet everybody's needs from grade to grade. To revitalize the commercial areas, we use the term third places. What that means anecdotally is your first place is where you live, Your second place is where you work. The third place is where you're not at one of those first two. It's where you hang out, where you spend your time, where you recreate. We want to make sure all three of those places are healthy and thriving. To make sure your mixed use and commercial areas are active. To make sure screening and buffering requirements are what they need to be to continue to protect your residential areas, both your existing neighborhoods and your new residential developments yet to be developed. To make sure that they are maintained proximity to other areas but are protected from non-residential impacts. to improve pedestrian and bicycle mobility and infrastructure, and to simplify and expedite the permitting and approval process. Part of being business friendly is to not be in an onerous place with which to get work done. That means you can have a very high standard of quality, but you make it a friendly sort of partnership approach type of methodology to invest and develop. The overall structure of the UDO has these 11 chapters, general provisions, district standards, uses, general development standards, parking and access, site standards, tree preservation, subdivision standards, review and decision making procedures, nonconformities, and then the definitions section. We made sure at the beginning of this project that we weren't changing things for the sake of changing things. We only calibrated things to make them better. If something wasn't broken, we didn't try to fix it. If it worked for Anderson and for all parties involved, we left it in place. If we only had to do minor revisions around the edges, that's what we did. If we had to make more wholesale changes, we did those that were appropriate based off of feedback and input. The first thing is district standards or district establishment. I will say at the onset for people watching and for the city council, I think you may have heard me say this before. Zoning is a lot. It's a lot to get your head around. 300 pages, but it's really broken down into three areas as easy to sort of understand. The first one is districts. districts uses and standards. What can I do on my property and how big can I build or where can I build? So it's zoning districts, what you can use your property for and how you build district by district. The second thing is development standards or standards of general applicability. What does a parking lot look like no matter where it is in the city? How is our trees preserved no matter where they are in the city? uh... how a signage handle no matter where it is in the city these aren't district oriented uses necessarily but they're design standards how should things be designed then the last piece is administrative how do you go about getting something done how do you go about getting something reviewed and approved so you can actually build something those are the three pieces so we went through the different districts uh... we updated the district framework uh... we established historic overlay district for specific standards and established new plan development processes i'll go through these pretty quickly The districts largely stayed the way they were. We renamed them so the naming wasn't related to the size of the lot. We gave it more characteristic naming, that's what most cities do. So they'll talk about things like rural reserve or single family or mixed residential or downtown or commercial areas. But gone are the naming of districts that are aligned specifically to a lot area or size. We created a couple of new districts. We created a new districts for park and institutional uses, excuse me, public and institutional uses and a district for parks and open spaces before you didn't have those. We created a mixed residential district to accommodate some growing need for different types of residential duplexes, triplexes, garden courts. We didn't want these to begin to propagate all over the community in established neighborhoods. So we created a district to where they could go to provide those options. Vulcan dimensional standards talk about the widths of lots, the area of lots, the setback for structures, and the heights of buildings, impervious surface coverage, lot coverage, things like that. What we did here was a lot of these stayed the same. The ones that changed, changed just to sort of calibrate to what was on the ground. You had some zoning districts in place where what was on the ground for existing neighborhoods didn't meet the standard they were supposed to based on the zoning that was in place. So we sort of right-sized standards with the community of character you already had. So we weren't looking to sort of a draconian change in everything, but to sort of right-size the lot areas and lot setbacks and sizes. What you see on the slide right here before you, this is all the different districts that you have in your existing zoning map. So this is sort of the kaleidoscope of colors you can see here. Yellows are residential, reds are commercials, purples are industrial. But you get a sense of what it is. We updated the neighborhood commercial district standards to reflect a compact, walkable district. that serves a better transition into your downtown, your central business district. This is a real priority that came out of the comprehensive plan and people who stated this. They still wanted to have those small-scale, appropriately designed, proximate commercial and mixed-use areas near residential, but they had to fit that residential character. It couldn't be something that didn't fit in. We also took a look at bulk and dimensional standards with regard to step backs and buffering. And this is part of the endeavor to make sure that single family areas were not unduly impacted by adjacent non-single family residential development. So if you're near commercial, if you're near industrial, if you're near multifamily, that there was a setback, a buffering, or a step back treatment that prioritized protection of those single family residential areas in close proximity. We did take a look at the historic overlay district. We codified your guidelines to make them requirements and not just guidelines. A guideline is suggestive. You don't have to do it. A regulation is a regulation. You have to follow it. So a trend right now is to take things out of guideline fashion and make them regulations if they are the guidelines you typically insist on. So we were able to begin to do that. And we were able to establish standards for setbacks, height, walkways, fences, driveway construction, surface parking locations and we just tied these standards back to design guidelines documents of your historic districts here in Anderson. It will help keep your beautiful old stuff beautiful and old and accommodate reinvestment. We did make a change to the planned development overlay district. Right now, you rezone to the planned development district, so it becomes its own district. National best practice, and what we're a big fan of, and it works infinitely better going down the road, is where the underlying zoning remains. and you have a plan development overlay on top of that underlying zoning. So if you seek relief, the standards you seek relief for is that underlying zoning. The overlay of the plan development gives you the latitude to be more creative. But if something were to happen with that plan development and it weren't to happen, that underlying zoning would remain. And so you're not creating a new district, you're creating an overlay on top of an underlying district. And over time this works much better. the established objectives for protecting consideration of approval, comprehensive plan alignment, traffic impact analysis, overall placemaking, identity, integrated design with identifiable centers and edges, compatibility with adjacent land uses, landscaping, conservation, and visual enhancement, social gathering spaces, we'll get into this in a little bit, and then historical and cultural impacts. use standards so that's sort of like lot size lot area zoning districts. So this next thing is uses. So we modernized your use table. Use tables can sometimes get a little bit unwieldy and too prescriptive. And one thing you all probably know up here in the dais and everybody in the room behind me is the marketplace is changing fast. and new uses pop up that two years ago didn't exist. And if zoning is too prescriptive in terms of how it's narratively laid out, you're scratching your head saying I don't even know how to categorize this proposed use. So we took a look at modernizing your land use tables. One of the biggest things we did is we removed conditional use permits. And we did this by reinforcing and establishing supplemental standards. So it used to be that if you wanted a drive-through, it was a conditional use. Maybe yes, maybe no. You've got to come to a public hearing and make your case. You have to get a conditional use permit in order to do something like that. But now what we said is it's permitted in certain districts, provided you meet these design criteria and operational criteria. And if you meet them, you can do it. If you don't meet them, you can't do it. So we were able to remove sort of the ambiguity of conditional uses, the onus of having these procedures and public hearings around conditional uses. We created standards, supplemental use standards, and certain uses require you meet higher standards and those are all in the code and I'll go through these in just a little bit. So allowances, we removed conditional uses and we required uses to comply with supplemental standards. Supplemental standards, and I'll go through here. So here's some of the different standard tables that they look like. If it's omitted, you can't do it. If it's a P, it's permitted. If there's a supplemental standard for every district, it says the section of the code that is supplemental. So what you see right here, these are neighborhood residential uses, single family, two unit, three unit, four unit townhouses. If it's yellow and highlighted, it's new. So we've designated some of these new different types of residential uses and the districts in which they can operate. As we begin to go through other ones, here are multi-unit dwellings. You'll see in that first column up there under dwelling cottage court, you'll see under supplemental standards, you'll see 3.04a. You'd have to go to that section of the code and it'll say these are the development standards if you want to do that type of use. So we've created these and getting back to this notion of we want new development, we want it to meet quality standards and be a quality version of what it is. You can see as we go through a larger table, these are commercial uses. And this is an example of a portion of the table that goes through all the different uses that are allowed in the commercial districts. If you see a P in the column, it is permitted in that zoning district. And if you see a number underneath that second column over supplemental standards, you'll see a page number and a section number there. So if you see that reference there for that use in that district, you have to flip to that section of the ordinance. It'll tell you specifically the standards that have to be met for design criteria. It may be distance from an adjacent residential lot. It may be additional screening requirements. It may be material or construction requirements. But for that specific use, you may have additional standards. And rather than debate this every time it's proposed, we develop standards so they can be done more quickly, more business friendly by establishing a higher quality standard at the forefront. It's one thing a developer likes more than anything else is fair certainty. You want to know what the expectations are, right? Time is money and ambiguity is rough. And if everybody knows what the rules are and the rules are fair to all parties involved, those are easy to navigate. And that's what we've endeavored to do here with this code. Principal uses, there's principal uses, there's accessory uses. Here's some example of supplemental use standards. Minimum lot sizes if you're proposing certain uses, even if it's bigger than what might be in the district, for that use you may need a slightly larger lot for buffering. Proximity or distance to residential adjacent properties. Allowed operations, how long is it all night? Does it stop at 10 o'clock? Where do the driveways have to go if it's a drive-through? And then screening and operational requirements. The two examples we gave here that are in the code is drive-through, has queuing space, screening, standards for how loud the menu board can be when you're ordering, proximity to residential. Rather than debate this all the time, we said these are the standards. The one you see below that is the diagram for a gas station canopy. where it can go, how close to the property it can go, what the lighting levels are, et cetera, et cetera. So we try to put these standards up front. If any developer proposing these knows what the expectations are on the front end. There's also accessory use tables. So there's a primary use table, that's what I just went through, and an accessory use table. Accessory use is exactly that. It is accessory to the primary use of the site. And you can see here like a drive-through facility. You might have a restaurant that's the primary use. The secondary use is the drive-through facility that works with that restaurant. So we have separate tables for accessory and temporary uses and the same thing applies if there are more stringent design requirements for these uses. It is called out here in that section of the code and then those requirements are put into place. An example of that is detached accessory dwelling units. where we talk about the parking that is required, the dot design that is required, the size it can be, the size it can't be, the fact that it has to be built on site, not something that gets wheeled in and plopped down in somebody's backyard. But very specifically to maintain quality but streamline investment while protecting the integrity of Anderson, we've created these design standards for all these supplemental uses. Chapter four is general development. Again, general development talks about not district standards, but everything that is not that. Building and design standards, things that have to do with open spaces, fences, screening, and the vision triangle we did not change. We did take some of the guidelines that the city has used and codified these into regulations on building design. And I want to say this, so if there's any architect or builder in the audience and for the people on the dais, the objective of having design guidelines or design standards in a zoning ordinance is not to dictate design. It is not to try to dictate what an architect needs to come up with or a developer has to design to get approval. It is meant to establish a threshold of quality. We've all seen developments come out of the ground like, man, how did that get built? It just missed the mark. And then you can drive by the exact same type of development where the quality is exceptional and you notice it right away. So we've tried to create things, whether it be building articulation, building material, combinations of materials, and different standards for multifamily and non-single-family residential development. So the design is left up to the architect and the developer. Provided they meet certain criteria, it will ensure at least a minimum level of quality that isn't assured right now. One of the things is to take a look at exterior building materials to identify different tiers of building material, but then leave it up to the architect and or the builder to put that combination of materials in practice to provide a design that they are comfortable with, but it meets the criteria of quality for the city. The other thing we have in here is what we're calling social gathering places. This came directly out of the comprehensive plan. The city has open space requirements for larger developments to have open space, but what we heard a lot of places is that these open spaces weren't activated. They were unused open spaces. And there seemed to be a lot of consensus in the comprehensive planning process to try to activate these places for the city as a whole, as well as the residents who may be most proximate to those open spaces. So we identified several different types of components of amenities that could go into these open spaces to help activate them, get people to use them. And this point system is generated to begin to activate these open spaces. And you get different points for different types of amenities to activate open spaces to make it a healthier, more active, more engaged, more socially inclined community. We took a look at outdoor lighting and developed some more contemporary standards. Lighting technology has changed dramatically in the last, geez, I was going to say 10 years, but even the last five years has gotten infinitely better. So we updated your outdoor lighting policies. These are two things, to provide a minimum and maximum level of light for safety and security and ambiance, to prevent spillover lighting onto adjacent properties, especially residential areas, and to minimize light pollution into the night sky. And those are some of the main things you sort of shoot for. Parking and access we went through and updated your parking standards. You don't want not enough parking, but you certainly don't want too much. You just have seas of parking or asphalt. So we modernized your parking standards based on the current trends across the United States that have been pretty well established and have proven to work over and over and over again. We didn't just take a national snapshot, but also looked at the region and your neighboring communities. We established standards for public sidewalks, trail connections, and bikeway improvements. We made minor updates or hardly any updates to some of the driveway and loading requirements. We did add a thing called a traffic impact analysis. The one thing residents often comment on when a larger development goes into place is the traffic impact on the neighborhood and surrounding area. So we added a requirement for a traffic impact analysis for development that generates 100 or more vehicle trips in a one-hour period, includes 50 or more residential dwelling units, projected to generate 1,000 or more vehicle trips daily. Development is proposed as a planned development and faces or changes to existing development bring it above the threshold. So all this is doing is for the larger developments of potentially higher impact. The onus is on the developer to establish a traffic impact analysis to answer all the questions and mitigate where needed any impact on the adjacent area. in the city's street system. It evaluates the level of service, that's LOS, and it has to be reviewed by the city engineer. We took a look and updated your vehicle parking. Again, this is pretty standard stuff, whether the parking lot is in the front, the side, or the rear. What the different design criteria is for public parking lots and private parking lots throughout. We established minimums and maximums. We added the ability to staff to provide some staff level adjustments where appropriate to prevent variations from being needed in public hearings for very, very minor considerations. And again, here's another example of sort of a parking lot location, stall and aisle dimensions, some of the graphics that you will see in the code. We require that development provide pedestrian access to the adjacent public sidewalk system if there is one, as well as other access requirements. And then we have different standards of whether the parking is in front of, to the rear of, or at the side of proposed development. We also put a thing in here about bicycle parking, and we began to make that required for developments above a certain size so that if somebody is going to ride their bicycle there, they have a safe place to put it on a rack or get from the street and or sidewalk or trail onto the site to where they can park it. So again, they're not very onerous. They're not difficult to comply with, but this way, Walking and biking doesn't become an afterthought but something that is proactively brought into the design of the site. One of the things, if you recognize this graphic, this is pulled in from your Parks and Recreation Connection Plan. We do have trail connection requirements if your development is in certain proximity to this trail system. To maximize this, we want people who are in developments near here or adjacent to this to provide access integrated into their development system so that people can ride from the development safely and connect to this trail. Uh, chapter, uh, and Maurice touched on this, uh, chapter six and seven tree preservation, uh, signs and landscape standards. Those were addressed in 2023. Those are the ones that we had, yeah, you had asked us to expedite. So we've held a couple of public hearings on that. And those amendments have been made, uh, in this comprehensive, uh, updated and creation of the UDO. We did go back and make a couple of tweaks to a couple of things, uh, that we needed to base off of two years of seeing in action or a year and a half and seeing in action. So minor, minor tweaks, but nothing of substance. Subdivision standards, and again, this gets at when you're beginning to lay out public rights of way, cul-de-sac dimensions, street curves, lot configuration. It's not zoning of a site. It's different. It often requires design of public areas and rights of way, which sometimes is not part of the zoning order. So it's part of the UDO. So major subdivisions are considered to be five lots or more, and it's approved by the Plan Commission at public hearing. Minor subdivision, if there are four lots or less, can be approved by the director, the planning director. And alternate subdivision design, conservation, motor courts, and green courts are now defined as to what they are, the design requirements to get them approved. We do have subdivision standards now. Maurice touched on this. We have requirements now. And I think it was referenced in reference to the development that was before us on the agenda. But we've established anti-monotony standards. Even a beautiful new house loses some of its luster when there's 15 of them in a row that look exactly the same. So there are anti-monotony standards for developments now where you can't have the same exact house across the street or side by side. There is residential park space that is now required. New roadway design standards that show how often you can have intersections or what the street widths need to be. And this thing called the connectivity index. We started developing this years ago. It works really well. And it goes to intersection node to block length to cul-de-sac or roadway stubs. And it gets at neighborhoods that work better for the car, the bicycle, and the pedestrian, and is better when proximate or adjacent to an existing or proposed future residential development that may go in next to it. These things now won't be afterthoughts. They're planned when the first guy comes in. chapter nine is review and decision making procedures as fun as all the previous eight chapters were this may be the most important most people only engage in zoning when they have to nobody's doing this for fun nobody is diving into the zoning ordinance for just chuckles right they're doing it when they had to get a development approved they need a variation for an addition they're looking to get a open up a new business so they only engage in the zoning when they have to If you're not literate in it, it's not a fun journey necessarily. So this is the chapter that begins to say how people get things approved, what they had to submit, what is considered, what the approval processes are, what the public hearing requirements are. This is a very important chapter. So we identify all the different review and decision making bodies that are involved in this process, the general procedures for each type of approval, the application type, enforcement after the fact, We have several different flow charts depending on what you're applying for to sales, what you have to apply, what you need to submit, who you see and what that sequence looks like, if it's approved or denied, what that loop looks like. And then we have a review and decision making procedure overview for every different type of thing you could possibly request from the city that involves subdivision zoning or development. So we want to make it as easy as possible. And again, it's about fair certainty. The more staff knows how to process it, the better. The better elected and appointed officials know how it works, the better. The better developers know how to navigate the code, the better. This removes all that ambiguity. And then chapter 10 is nonconformities. This is pretty straightforward. Every code has a nonconformities chapter. Anecdotally, this is referred to as things that are grandfathered in. You know, Jimmy's Bar, you'd never be able to build that now, but it's been there for 80 years, and everybody loves it. It's in the middle of a neighborhood. These are things that were legally established. That's important. but no longer conform to zoning because the zoning has changed around them. So they are legally non-conforming or grandfathered in. There's non-conforming uses, uses that shouldn't be there but legally were established and so they're there. And then there's non-conforming buildings. a building that may be too close to a property line or a lot line. You couldn't build it there today but that building exists. It's a non-conforming structure. So there's non-conforming uses and there's non-conforming structures. This chapter of the code addresses all of that. And the bottom line is you can't, exacerbate or intensify an existing nonconforming thing. Ideally, you want nonconformities to go away over time. They don't always, but sometimes they do. The one thing we put in here for an amortization, amortization is to see something go away over time, and that is junkyards. There might be some legal nonconforming junkyards, but there's an amortization clause to see those go away. Billboards and junkyards are the two most amortized things in the country. And then here we are at adoption. So that was as quickly as I can go through 280 pages. But we can open it up. So again, it's been a real journey. Planning has to come first, right? Policy has to come first. This is who we are. This is what we want to achieve in the years ahead. Now that we know that, what zoning do we need to help us get there? You really can't have these documents at odds with one another. They need to align and dovetail as much as possible and that was sort of the starting point from this. you know, right-sized along the way through a lot of output and a lot of hard work from residents, business owners, focus group discussions, and your staff. So with that, Mr. May, I'll turn it back over to you for any questions you might have.

I appreciate it. It has been a three-year journey. And I would say that even I think my fellow council members will agree with me, I've become a little bit more literate in regards to zoning and UDOs. more than I did before. And again, we've heard a lot. We've asked a lot of questions. We've all dove into some of the fine points of the document that we are about to entertain on first reading. But I'll open it up for questions, comments. Mr. Pickens, then Mr. Roberts. Jeff.

On the tree preservation, so we've had some developments that have come up in the last three years and I don't know, legally I guess they've abided by the tree preservation. but I've also heard from folks that didn't go to any of the meetings that we might not be going far enough if we were to adopt this now and then say in three years we decide you know we need to amend it I mean we're able to amend this constantly over and over again

Yeah, so it's just go through the amendment process of referral to the Planning Commission, Planning Commission hearing and recommendation from the Planning Commission and back to you just as it's being adopted. And that's going to happen. I mean, there's going to be things in here that as development evolves, we may want to change maybe some of the signs, maybe some of the trees and landscaping, but different areas, and we would make amendments to the code. and then it would be codified and it would go online and built into the document process.

I can say too, probably, and I think Matt brought this up a little, we struggled, if memory serves me right, correct me guys, on the first discussion on the tree ordinance, would we go so far as to do it on individual lots?

Yes, it was to require a permit to remove trees on individual lots.

Yeah, we struggled with that, and we decided that we said no on that one. You know, so, but as you mentioned, I mean, we can always, but, you know, that was, I mean, we talked a lot about trees and canopy and learning new terms and so forth, so good questions.

Then Hurricane Helene happened and we lost life. Yes, that's true.

Don't like trees, doesn't apply to that.

John, early in this process, you said something that stuck with me, but as a council body, we have to have a vision of where do we want to be, what do we want to look like. So you almost have to step back from that and analyze where are you right now, and then secondly, put into place the procedure to get to where you want to be. So this has been a journey. And I could think of a couple of adjectives that describe this. And it's going to be generational. This is a generational change and historic. This will change the look of Anderson. I think for the better. I do have one, it sort of falls under the administrative category. And please everybody understand, this is not a building code, this is a development code. But in the building code, we're under the international codes, there are some exemptions from permitting. And I'll just give you a couple. One-story detached accessory structures that don't exceed 200 square feet. So these, and fences not over six feet. Both of these are addressed in this development ordinance. So these things could fly low under the radar, not get noticed until they're built, and then there could be a problem. So I would say that we administratively need to have maybe some better informative. We need to inform the public better maybe because these things can get missed. Talk a little bit about that, John.

I mean, what have you seen across the country and how municipalities address?

Yeah, it's an excellent question. And there's a couple of different things. Enforcement is everything. We work in a lot of communities where it's the single biggest issue that they have. And I'm not saying that's the case here. um but if you have a for instance a roadway and the posted speed limit is 30 miles an hour and people go bombing down that road at 80 every day all day and the city does nothing about it then take down the 30 mile an hour signs or or enforce them right but when it comes to things like fences or or sheds of that size those are pretty small right a lot of people do it and they don't know they simply don't know So what some communities have done is they've made a pretty, you know, campaign just so you, you know, if you're pouring a foundation or if you're putting in a fence, we just want to make sure where it is and it's on the property line. So it's a $5 fence per fee, a fence permit fee. You got to come in and get it at the counter. You can get it in 10 minutes. You need to plan a survey with a hand-drawn line showing where your fence is going to be on your plan of survey and what type of fence it's going to be. six-foot board on board, three-and-a-half-foot picket, whatever it's going to be, and the person at the counter looks at it, they sign off on it, you pay them five bucks, it goes into the defense file, the instructor or the inspector knows to go by in a few weeks and take a look at it. So it's not about hard enforcement, but it's about just tracking it. And it's five bucks, or at some places it's free, you just need to file and get the permit, but it's issued on the spot in a matter of minutes at the counter. But you want to make sure that you avoid it going up in the wrong place, the wrong type of fence when the person just, they didn't know. They're not trying to get away with anything. They just don't know. So things around fences and sheds and things that you see pop up that are most problematic, I think staff can probably identify those. You know, you've got a sign out front that says, you know, turn your radios down, no modified exhaust. We're starting to patrol for these things. Just know, you know, be noticed. So that's a courteous thing to do for folks. You're not trying to bust people. You're trying to prevent it. So a little bit of a campaign around something like that works extremely well.

Yeah, I'll give you some data on that. So far through June, we've had 4,000 inspections. Out of that, we've got 2,900 building inspections and 1,091 code enforcement inspections. and so when we do have our step out there working hard on that and um we will as we continue to grow to build our staff for that but um you have great point um all those come from complaints so you know you have somebody putting up and we get those putting a large maybe it's unsightly fence or whatever on the property line uh the neighbors submits a complaint and we go and sped that uh so we have mostly those based off the planes, and then riding around as well. So they do come in.

I would imagine that part of it is education, the education process. I know with our narrow streets and bike lanes, Bellevue, on trash day, it doesn't help a biker if they're limbs in the bike lane. And that's, I think, just education or a different drop point or somewhere. But I would challenge the team to think about how we have some type of marketing campaign in regards to education on certain things.

Yeah, I think you zero in on the most common stuff. I mean, the parts of the code that you have to address is pretty nuanced, and most residents aren't doing that, right? But they're putting in pools, they're putting in fences, they might want to put up a shed, you know, do some campaign stuff around the stuff most commonly done by residents, I think.

Related, not the same issue, but in terms of building and codes inspections, let's just say residentially, for example, commercial's a little more intense, but you have three inspections. You have a footing inspection, you have a framing and rough-in inspection, and then you have a finals inspection. And that gap between rough-in and final, there are a lot of things that can happen. they could put vinyl siding on the house unless there's not a checkbox somewhere in an application that that's not allowed. I'd hate to see a builder get to the end, he's got vinyl siding on the house, and uh-oh, that's not allowed. So I think there need to be some intermediate steps or checkboxes somewhere along the lines.

Here's one thing I would suggest. When this gets adopted, is plan a Realtor 101, developer local home builder 101, but have a form to come in and say, hey, come on in on six o'clock on Tuesday night, we're gonna run through what the new standards are for residential development, for multifamily, for townhomes, for something, I mean, just to run through the basics. And we've got a new list of allowed and not permitted building materials or the combination of materials for new construction. And you can do a little bit of a, we've done these before and we've helped staff do these before, where it's just a little new zoning code 101. Bring people up to speed who are the biggest users of the code and just make sure they know what's going on.

I think that's an excellent idea.

Yeah, I mean, I'm going to piggyback that on a little bit. I've always thought that if I wanted to build a house in the city, the first thing I'm going to do put an option on a lot, and then I'm gonna go look and see what I can build on that. When I come to the city to pull my permits, I've always thought when I sign in, they should say, okay, you're gonna build a house. This is the package. This is what you get. Well, if I'm gonna build ABC, if I'm gonna open up an ABC business, whatever kind of business in Anderson, the first thing I'm gonna do is try to get open as fast as possible. And if nobody tells me that I can't use the same sign out there, it's been there for 55 years, how am I supposed to know? All I'm going to do is change the letters. And it's a nonconforming sign, so I change the letters. The next thing you know, you've got to pay $30,000 to have a pedestal sign put up. So it's because nobody told them. Even though they pulled permits, business permits, all along the way, Should they have known? Absolutely. Should they have asked? Absolutely. But if we can get in front of the game before they even think about opening the business, this is what you have to do. And I think our staff has done a good job with that, with economic development. working with developers that are gonna build houses and other hotels that come to town. We've done a good job of that, but we just gotta go another step and continue an educational process because you know my biggest i don't know about my fellow council members but number section two and three no six and seven that's my biggest headache trees and signs that's more i get more phone calls about trees and signs than i do the fire not coming the trash not being picked up i get more calls constantly about it and you know if they had asked before they put the sign up then it'd be a different but you know this building's been here 60 years and we're using the exact same bill the sign that they used 60 years ago um like you said i think

Also good points for all of us. But the main thing is, is there a way that we can put this on a searchable database on the website? Because a lot of this is education and everything else. If we're just able to search one word and pull up chapter six, I mean, is that what's going to happen?

Uh, better than that, uh, we were kind of holding out on you on this for a second, so I was, I was whispering to make sure we could share some information on that. Um, but, uh, Mr. Strickland will, uh, provide an answer to the direction we're headed on that.

Yeah, no, so this is definitely, um, cats out of the bag now, but, uh. We are redesigning our website right now. We have a new brand, trying to basically wholesale change our entire website, kind of how we interface with the public, with folks who are using our website for various things. And probably the number one thing people come to the City of Anderson, sc.com, is to look at development standards. So we are actually going to partner with our good friends at Halsey Levine, to integrate on the homepage of the website an AI search function. A, for our entire website. Say I need to come and learn about how the city of Anderson handles trash pickup. I search up, hey, I live here, what's my... what's my trash pickup schedule you know boom it comes up immediately without having to look through a bunch of pages but b the the development standard zoning ordinance search function that integrates our new zoning ordinance new zoning map gis maps or our geographic information system so everything will be able to be geolocated but also pulls in databases externally as well. So I can basically say, I'm in the city of Anderson, where can I build a Taco Bell? It pulls up a map showing relevant locations throughout the city where I can build a Taco Bell, but also the relevant development standards for And that's, you know, across the board development-related questions. So really excited to get that out in the public. We're in the very early stages of that, so can't give too many more details because I don't even know them. But that is the direction we're headed.

Yeah, no, we met with Andrew and a few other folks to demonstrate it. It's something we developed about a year ago. It's now being subscribed to by cities across the United States and some in Canada. It'll work with your GIS. It'll pull in all your zoning. It'll be able to read and pull in commentary from your comprehensive plan. It'll be able to pull up renderings and graphics. It's the only navigable AI custom built thing like it that exists that integrates fully with GIS mapping. A couple of patent pendings on it. But it's a pretty remarkable tool. You could go into it and you don't need to know zoning or building. You can talk. Taco Bell is nowhere in the comprehensive plan. The words Taco Bell are nowhere in the UDO. But someone might say, where can I open up a Taco Bell franchise? And this will figure out what a Taco Bell franchise is, what its requirements are. It will answer only from your code. It will not give general answers. It can't. can only give answers from your zoning ordinance, from your other adopted documents, or your comprehensive plan. And it'll say Taco Bell is considered a fast food restaurant with a drive-thru as a permitted use. For the drive-thru component, you will have to have additional use standards that have to be met for a drive-thru. It'll give you all of them. It'll locate the property. Or you can say, where can I build one? It'll show you a zoning map, and it'll only highlight all the properties where you could build one. Or you could say, I owned this. What all can I do with it? It'll give you everything. So it's called Euclid. It's pretty remarkable. That was a good question. Cat's out the bay.

Anything else, guys?

Mr. Mayor, we've worked on this a really long time. And... There's been a lot of work by our staff, by this council, by the community in coming up with this. So, you know, I make a motion that we request we adopt the City of Anderson's new Unified Development Ordinance and officials on the back. Second.

Thank you. First by Mr. Harbin, second by Mr. John Roberts. I'll open it up to further discussion. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously. Thank you. We have one item of new business, and that new item is to request consideration of purchase radios for the fire department.

This item is a capital purchase request from the fire department, and it was included in our budget item within the fiscal year 26-27 budget out of the capital replacement fund. Chief King, we'll go over this item for you. Chief King.

Good evening. Thank you. This is our second phase and final phase of replacing the radio technology that's used by our firefighters, both on apparatus and the individual portable radios that they carry. A year ago in July of 2025, a similar amount of money was approved to purchase the 43 portable radios that were needed that each firefighter and command officer carries uh in performance of their duties and uh tonight we're coming to you for again uh the round two of that 203 thousand four hundred forty five dollars for the purchase of 21 mobile radios, these are the radios that are affixed and mounted in the truck, and seven additional portable radios as well. This will complete our fleet, both of what's current today, plus two radios for the additional apparatus, engine number four and the rescue truck there to be delivered. in October and the seven portable radios, those are being purchased in anticipation of both of those apparatus come online. All of these units are multi-protocol, multi-discipline radios in that they work on the state's Palmet 800 interoperability system that both the police and fire department work on routinely as well as the county MS system, the sheriff's office, but they're also capable of working on the public works motor turbo system so that we can connect with public works in times of storms or the county fire department's VHF system. So instead of having to have three radios, both either in your hand or mounted in the vehicle, all of these are in one device. So again, tonight is just our request for our second final phase of replacing radio technology in the fire department.

Thank you, Chief. Any questions, any comments for Chief?

mrs stewart where are we purchasing these radios from these are coming off state contract from p25 solutions so they'll come uh through rock communications in pickens county uh via p25 solutions and that's where the previous ones came from same same dealer uh we've had very limited issues we had one that was uh Damaged at an incident scene, quick turnaround, use of a loaner, and quick turnaround on getting it repaired. So we're happy with it. And the bid also includes the installation. So rather than to backlog the city garage or another vendor, they'll do the installation of the radios as well.

Mayor, I'll make the motion to approve the purchase.

First, I have Mr. Newton. Second. Second, I have Mr. Horvath. Any further discussion?

Real quick, Mr. Mayor. So, Chief, I've always wondered, you know, I've always, it makes me happy whenever we can work with other agencies. around the state i know that you've sent people to the coast you've sent people to lake hartwell you've sent people a lot of different places we have a crew in central right now okay i mean and you know i get updates about it and it makes i mean i'm like god that's great that you know we're able to help somebody in need because they've helped us in the past with public works and other arrangements that we've had How do you, do you use their radios? Because your network is on proprietary here.

Great question. The radios that we've, the ones that were purchased in both the mobiles a year ago, and Chief Reeves is in the back, he's wearing one. Now, these are multi-band, multi-protocol. So essentially, they're capable of operating on most any system radio. VHF, 800 system, UHF, any one of those. In the year that we've had them, there was a warehouse fire, White Horse Road in Greenville, there was immediate call, hey, we need coverage, come help with the fire crews. Jumped on the truck, initially went, and instead of having to, what would have been, stop somewhere, pick up radios, they were able just to immediately go on board with Gantt with the turn of a knob. And within a couple of hours, they sent them into downtown Greenville, hey, we need you to cover a station. And Greenville's on a separate system. They were able to just turn a knob and go to that system. But you don't have to travel far to do that. Again, our public works is on a separate system. city-owned system. The Anderson County Fire Department operates on a VHF that was a third radio. So again, simply just traveling within our own neighborhoods every day, we had to have as many as three radios. And now that's down to one. And it's simply just the turn of a knob and the radio selects the appropriate system that's installed on it. We're taking on an upgrade in the next week. Clemson University has just purchased into a new system where we're adding theirs into these as well before football season comes along.

It used to be a very limiting factor, though, and that was, so it was identified during 9-11, the incident, of course, across the country, but particularly in New York City, where there was just complete communication failure at the first responder level. And so out of that recommendation report from Congress was the interoperability. It took a very long time for technology to develop, and then it was quite expensive. But everybody's getting there now. And then even recently, as far as when we were getting all those hurricanes three, four years ago and deploying to the coast, it was a very limiting factor where we would have to request from Columbia where we were already deployed, forward deployed, during the storm, the request for interoperability radios. And so now the great, great example of the Whitehorse Road incident is just go on scene and switch to the proper channel, the zone, and we're connected.

That's interesting. Any other questions, comments, or questions? We have a first and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That passes now. Thank you, Chief. I would entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. First by Mr. Newton. Second. Second by Mr. Pickens. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? We'll stand adjourned.