Planning & Zoning Committee - Regular Meeting

Agenda is approval of minutes. I get a motion to approve. Move approval. Second. All right. All in favor?

All righty. Minutes have been approved. First item today is a framework plan. Um I know staff is available. Hi Kim, please give us an update. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Kim Spril. I serve as the zoning administrator in the department of planning, engineering, and permits. We do have a real quick PowerPoint presentation to go over with you guys. Um, so the plan that is before you today is the Pratt Ensley plan. Um, and just a quick reminder, this is two communities. It's the Pratt community and we have Central Pratt, North Pratt, Sanduski, Smithfield Estate, South Pratt, and Thomas neighborhoods that are included in this community. And then in the Ensley community, we have the neighborhoods of Ensley, Tuxedo, Wyom, Dolomite, Sherman Heights, and Oakidge. So, that kind of gives you an idea of the areas that we're talking about today. Um, and just to reiterate, you guys have probably heard this at least 20 times in the past year. Um, the goals um of our citywide resoning to align um the goals outlined in the comprehensive plan with the city zoning ordinance and with the updated zoning districts. um to consolidate our zoning ordinance from about 600 pages into about half of that. Um to downzone our inactive or vacant heavy industrial districts to either I1 or even a lesser zoning category. Um to expand our mixeduse districts to create

a more walkable community in key targeted areas. and then to implement our urban neighborhood in um these areas. And urban neighborhood is the new district that the council adopted last year that allows for um some of that targeted missing middle housing that we did not previously have. Um so a lot of you um a lot of folks have asked us questions about Q conditions. So, just to hit on this real quick, any properties that the city council reszoned as an individual request from a property owner and where the council did add Q conditions to that zoning, those are not being changed. Those are remaining because they were individual cases that were decided by the city council. So we have carried over those Q conditions into this framework plan resoning. And then I'd also add we are not adding new Q conditions. That is not part of this process as well to add new Q conditions to properties. So for the Pratt Enley plan, the community engagement began in 2024. Um the planning team hosted four community meetings in September, October, and December of 2024. And then in February of 2025, they held the final meeting with the Pratt Ensley community. And they did receive a vote from the community to support this resoning plan. And then on November 19th of last year, this plan went before the Birmingham Planning Commission. and the planning commission held a public hearing. All property owners in the Pratt Ensley

communities and within 500 feet of the boundary lines of the Pratt Ensley communities were notified. And the planning commission did vote to approve this resoning plan and recommend it to the full council for approval. So, just to go over in each community since that November planning commission meeting, we have had two updates in each of the areas that we want this committee to be aware of. um the Wade Sand and Gravel property that's located in the Pratt community. It was not all entirely zoned I4 and it was recommended at that planning commission meeting that that property be zoned all of their properties be zoned I4. And also as a result of that planning commission meeting, it was suggested that the planning staff amend the I4 zoning district in the city zoning ordinance um to clarify that heavy industrial uses are permitted in I4 and to add a special exception use in I4 for landfills. And so if if you guys remember right after that November meeting, we presented those amendments to the planning commission, they came before this committee and they were adopted by the city council. So this was feedback we received from the community that they wanted to see. Um so both of these items have been completed um per their request at that planning commission meeting. And then for the Ensley community, we just had two small updates to the plan. If you guys are familiar with the property on the bottom left corner, that's the old JCCO building. That's

kind of, if you look at it, it's almost in the middle of nowhere. It's um it's zone D3 in a sea of current MXD zoning. Um that's recommended to go to I1. And there's been some interest in this property to maybe serve a community development type function. And so we have recommended instead of D3 to change this to D5. That would allow the possible uses to be permitted by right without having to go through a resoning process. And this property is not contiguous to any other single family residential. It's adjacent to the Ensley work site and it's down the street from the new Alabama Power Substation and the wastewater treatment plant. And then the second property, if you look in the packet, um the color packet, this is a list of all of the Q conditions that will be carried over as part of this process. On the very last page, you will find um photographs of the properties that are located at 3891 and 3899th Court. In 1988, this property was reszoned to QM1 and there were four Q conditions. Um, while we were going through the QE conditions, we realized that this property was never developed and it is adjacent to single family residential. So, it's our recommendation that we do downzone this property to D3, which is what is adjacent to it, since there's no current use or planned use at that site.

Um so that is the second recommendation for the Ensley um community and those are it those are the only updates that that our staff has made um since the planning commission meeting. We do have the large copies of the maps. If you have any specific properties that you'd like to look at or if you would like for us to point those out on the larger maps, we can. Um, but our team's here if you guys have any questions.

Thank you, Kim, so much. Um, you answered a lot of the questions that I had going into this committee meeting. So, I appreciate you anticipating those questions. Um, particularly in terms of how many community meetings y'all have had and any changes since the community meetings. Um, so, thank you for doing that. Um, I'm going to open it up to committee for any questions so far. Yeah, just so I understand correctly, other than the than the one well two properties on the last page of our packet, these other properties that are listed here with Q conditions, those would remain the same.

Yes, sir. That's correct. Okay. If it was QM1, it'll just change to QI1, right? So, the Q conditions will all remain and just transfer to the new zoning classification. Kim, I think there were just two that as I was looking through this.

Hey Kim, there were two um addresses that I was looking at uh prior to meeting. Uh one is 428 court F. Um I see that it was uh originally or previously QB1 and that move is now to D3. Just wanted to uh understanding the reasoning behind that. It's this one right 42H court F. That should just it should be QC1. Yeah. So that's just a typo.

Okay. And the other one was uh 1915 19th Street Ensley,

the QR to the QMUM. So the properties around that one were going to mumm. Um and so we wanted to be consistent. We didn't want a spot in the middle of that block to have the Q to be QD5. Um, and we we felt confident that since the Q condition limits the uses to student housing or housing for the elderly, that would eliminate any mixeduse uses um that could be in that building unless the property owner came before the council to try to reszone that property. Thank you. Those uh those were my only questions. Any other questions for my colleagues? So, um, so just to confirm again, uh, the last public engagement meeting with the community was, I believe, I just saw February of 2025.

That was when the planning team um, presented the final maps and they took a vote on those maps. I will say at the planning commission meeting in November, we did have a large turnout from the community and we were able to answer a lot of their questions at that meeting. As you guys know, it's difficult sometimes when you have the community engagement meetings. You start off with a large group and then it dwindles. Um, but then at the planning commission public hearings and then as you guys know when we have the city council public hearing, we do have because they receive the notice in the mail for the meeting, we do have a much larger turnout, but we were able to answer ahead of time any questions um that were relative to the maps. Um, and if you recall, the biggest issues from that planning commission meeting revolved around the Wade Sand and Gravel site and concerns over the landfill designation.

Right. Okay. So, um assuming the this committee recommends moving forward, um it would go we would see an item on the council agenda setting a public hearing for consideration of of this. Yes, sir. Um, based off our calculations for advertising to get the letters out to all the property owners, I think we calculated it would be early to mid July when we would schedule that public hearing before the city council.

Okay. And we have um at least three other framework plan resonings in Q. Is that correct? So after this one, there's just one left. The southern area. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. The southern area. Uhuh. The infamous southern area. Um, okay. Got it. All right. I think we're good. Thanks, counselor. Any questions? All right. Someone want to make a motion?

Yeah. So, I'll make a motion that we um advance this to the full council with a recommendation for approval. Second. All in favor? I any opposed? All right. Motion passes.

Uh so, the proposal to reszone the Prattton Ensley communities uh framework plan has been approved. All right. Next item on the agenda is a resolution for the adoption of the updated 2026 division G multi-jurisdictional hazard mitigation plan. It's a mouthful. Um I know that that item is in our packets and does someone from staff want to give us some notes on that? Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Tracy Hayes and I serve as one of the deputy directors in planning, engineering, and permits.

My name is Andrew Dolman. I serve as chief engineer in planning, engineering, and permits. Yeah. And what this is is a resolution. Um FEMA has us to uh adopt formally adopt our hazard mitigation plan every 5 years. And when we do that, it keeps us eligible for local, state, and federal um mitigation dollars. And this is just a replacement to the 2021 plan. Wonderful. Thank you.

Thank you. Any questions from the committee? Um so you know I don't know anything about the division G uh the hazard mitigation plan. So is division G you know specific to municipalities or I assume there's since there's a division G there's probably a division ABC and so forth. So, division G um includes Jefferson County and Jeff and and city of Birmingham has adopted um the hazard mitigation plan that the state has adopted and we fall in that division G category. Okay. I mean the area. Okay.

Division G area. All right. So, it's a a zone um a district if you will. Yeah. Each division Yeah. Each uh counties are in divisions. So, yeah. So in our division G is Calhoun, Clay, Clayburn, Jefferson, Ra, Randolph, St. Clair, Tallaladega. Right.

Um so are there were there significant changes um for this 2026 plan from the 2021 plan? No, sir. Okay. Gota. All right. So, uh, Council Woods, I would just ask if you could, uh, forward us a copy of the plan. It's very large, so I'll send you a link so you can download it. It's only 2,000 pages. Yeah, that's fine. Okay. Thank you.

All right, Mr. Chairman, I'll make a motion to um recommend this to the full council for approval. Second. Thank you. Thank you. All right. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion passes. All right. All new business is the next item. I got one thing. Yes, sir.

Um so been texting with attorney Bernard. Um, if you guys would please send the council a copy of the amended data center ordinance as it would appear in city code. Um, I don't believe that was in the agenda packet. So, um, that would be appreciated. Would you like the the actual version that will go in each section and chapter of the ordinance or would you like the easy to read version that has everything on one page for each type?

Ideally, I would appreciate the long and technical legal version. Um, and while we're discussing it, um, you know, I know one of the amendments that was included in the summary was allowing for the use of of fuel cells. Um, so I'm particularly interested in, you know, whether or not a definition explicitly stating what a fuel cell is. We did add the definition to our proposed definitions. Great. Yes, sir.

Awesome. Yep. So yeah, um I think the council uh would be interested in, you know, being seeing, you know, the the easy to read version, um which I think it was in in the packet and but the also the the ordinance as it would appear in city code would be helpful too. We can send both versions and the easyto read version is does have changes struck through in red and additions in red so it will stand out when you look through it. All right. Thank you.

Thank you, Councelor O'Quinn. Um, any other items for old or new business? Seeing none, we have a motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjurnn. Second. All right. All in favor? I I