Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right, okay. Yes, you definitely have a quorum. You only need four of you, but you are lacking your illustrious chair. So do we have a motion? It sounds like it's already decided, but I need an actual motion for who's going to be our acting chair.

Make a motion for Jennifer to be our chair for the evening.

Is there a second?

Second.

Who's taking the claim on that one? Okay, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Nay. Sorry, you are outnumbered four to one. It is all yours.

All right, welcome.

Welcome to the Planning Commission.

Can I get a motion for approval of the minutes dated June 16, 2026?

I'll make a motion that we approve the minutes June 16, 2026.

Can I get a second?

Second.

Okay, all in favor?

Aye.

Okay. Oh, yeah. Sorry, I didn't start at the top. Please stand for the pledge.

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

It was so unpatriotic of me, you know, right after the 4th of July. The shock of being elected. Goodness, I know. Being on the spot, that's what did it. So do I need to start over again, or am I okay just going to the public hearing?

You're good.

Okay, okay, so number two, item number two, we have a public hearing. It's a general plan amendment from high density residential to industrial heavy manufacturing. And do we have somebody here to speak to this?

And may I encourage? Yes, that's what I would encourage.

Okay, so we. Two through six. Two through six? Yes. Okay, all right, okay, go.

So we've been in communication with the city regarding the possibility of annexing this 120 acres into the city. It's out at iron Springs road, just north of, of a subdivision Frank Nichols did in the county. Uh, when we looked into this, we did a zone change in December with the county. And as we got looking at all this stuff to prepare for the annexation into Cedar city. We noticed that the general plan between Cedar City and the county just didn't make sense. And that's what we're here to do is just set the stage so we can bring in some industrial buildings right in this area off of Iron Springs Road and move forward. So there's a hodgepodge of existing general plans out there. No, this is Van Trust Realty. They're out of Salt Lake. Okay. A big national firm. Okay, thank you. I mean, just to give you a little bit of background, Randall, Don, we've been heavily involved in behind the scenes, working with potentially putting in the 30-inch sewer line in Iron Springs Road. Sure. Just, they have a lot to offer to this community, and talking with Kent, the city engineer, I think it's very important that we as a city, and I'm putting my city hat on and not the county hat, we do what we can to annex this property into Cedar City, and we don't miss the boat like you did with BZI. That's a big boat. Okay.

I don't understand the missing of the boat. What happened there? Maybe that was before my time.

It's a long story.

Okay.

I'll be quiet. It's a long story and there is a possibility that it may still happen, but there's be some hoops. We got to jump through.

So basically the city has what we call our annexation policy boundary, the area we want to have annexed into the city when it's ready. BZI is in that zone. They're in that area. So we would prefer companies, businesses, whatever, you name it, come into the city when that happens. If you look at our general plan map, for example, where the color is, that's where we want people to come in. The county... And the city are almost competitors sometimes when it comes to these kind of things. And BZI was a little not right next to it. But that's the fear. We didn't get them in. And so some of that means they don't come up to our standards. We obviously don't get the tax revenue if you want to look at it from that perspective. It will make it harder as our boundaries, our actual boundary gets closer to them to bring them in if they don't quite meet our standards. So fixing it now is easier than fixing it 10 years from now.

Gotcha. Okay.

It's the same thing with this one. Don, thanks for bringing that up because in case you think from the map that was shown to you earlier that we're just drunk people running our zoning here, it looks like there's a lot right next to each other, but if you zoom out, you can see the bigger picture as to why the zoning is different.

This is the property here.

Yeah. It looks like a lot until you zoom out and go, okay, it's just edges getting close together in the same location. We promise we're not drunk most of the time we do this. Um, but yeah, so that's the area. And so this is one of those, the county already approved the zone change. The neighbors were notified back then, um, that this is the kind of stuff that was coming in.

And I think it was, I want to say it was November or December, uh, planning commission in the county and nobody objected.

So the county at this point is being much more cooperative than they were with BZI. Different leadership. It's helpful. And so the city does want this in. We've had to get a little creative. But yeah, the general plan and then the eventual zoning is a must for them to be able to do what they want to do.

So I mean, the end game is here in four or five months. When we bring in the annexation, the development agreement, the zone change, because we'll want the zone, we want to have this general plan change done. And we can do all this simultaneously. Because the city's growing. The county's growing. The city's growing into that county area. And just talking with Kent and Randall, it makes sense that if these businesses are going to come to this area, they can get services from Cedar City. They already control the sewer. They can work out an agreement with the Conservancy District and so on.

Mike, can you show me Nichols' project?

Frank's project is right here.

So he's going to remain in the county?

Yes.

Okay. All right.

And so a lot of the, I'll just be quick, a lot of development standards that the county has is because you see a lot of the flatter ground out there. So one of the things with BZI, which was a sticking point, is curb, gutter, and sidewalk. Why would we put curb, gutter, and sidewalk clear in this flat land? We're just going to channel the water somewhere where it doesn't need to be. Can we do open ditches? Well, you can do that in county. You can't do that in Cedar City. But that's something we could work on as we know that properties want to come into Cedar City. I'm more than willing to sit down with Kent. And we've had a little bit of discussion about it as making it more feasibility to make sure the engineering works as we're growing further west or further north, flatter lands.

So can you show me for us?

BZI?

Where's BZI? BZI is up here. That big new building? Yeah. Okay. Okay. And our annexation goes to that BZI building currently?

It goes right there.

That's our annexation policy boundary map. It's a long title, and it basically means that's where we'd like to get to potentially in the next 20 years. How did the Nichols project not?

Well, we're not there yet. They're just saying this is the future.

So the actual city boundary, I want to say, is right around this area, right in here. So where we currently are is right there, but where we want to get to is right there.

Okay.

But we can't do islands, so if there's one that doesn't touch the city, we either have to annex in stuff with it to connect it, or it doesn't come in. So in this case, we've gone a tad creative, and it required the county's permission to essentially annex in the road as well, from Iron Springs to connect it. So it'll be a little bit of a weird looking flag. All right.

And the county would have to agree.

That hasn't happened yet. Well, now I kind of, now I have my bearings. Now you're as confused as the rest of us, but no, no, I have my bearings.

Okay. Any other questions?

That helped a lot. Comments? Thank you.

Yeah. I think that's great. And How does the city feel about all of this? Is this in line with the progress that the city would like to see?

I believe it is. I mean, we do discuss quite a bit about following the general plan. We hear that I don't know, once or twice a month sometimes. But I think when we went through this general plan back in 2022, we knew port 15 was gonna grow, and it certainly has. We thought there might be potential for commercial out there. We've seen some of that happen already. So some of this stuff is on the map. It's a little bit arbitrary, but it's more of a vision, right? Well, that's changing out there. There's more demand for the manufacturing out there. To Mike and Randall's point, it's already zoned for manufacturing in the county. If you look at the exhibit, if I can go back, this half here would be preserved for light industrial where we start to get closer to some homes. So I think we've kind of considered the whole picture and staff is fairly supportive of it. Fairly supportive of it.

I know so right now There's a road dedication subdivision that the counties have proven Which will create four lots if that makes sense because right now it's it's two giant lots across Iron Springs Road, but when this is approved here shortly I mean that we just got the owner to sign it they'll have they'll have basically have this lot one two three and four and And then as they subdivide, we'll have to figure out interior roads at that time to these back parcels. So that's why we want to split it as heavy and industrial heavy manufacturing close to Iron Springs, and then these will just be the light industrial.

Okay. All right. Anything else? So this is a public hearing, so we'll open the public hearing. Anyone here to speak to this? Okay. Well, seeing as there are none, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing and entertain a motion or further questions or discussion.

I'll make a positive recommendation for items two through six. with regard to the Iron Springs Road, 5500 West, approximately 800 North, for the general plan amendment.

I'll second your motion. Okay, we have a motion and a second. All in favor?

Aye.

And any opposed? Motion passes.

I thought we were going to be here for two hours on that.

I know. Done. Done. We've got to get things done. Mike, do we have any 30-inch sewers in town? Tom? I'm sorry.

Do we have any other 30-inch sewers?

Isn't 30 huge?

It's going to cover a lot at some point.

Okay.

And it's better to go over than under. Well, I agree. That's just huge.

It is. It absolutely is.

No, that's fine.

For sure.

We've got smart people. Thank you.

That's true. Thank you so much. Okay. Let's see. Item number seven. This is another public hearing. 1133 South Main Street. Do we have somebody to talk to us about that?

Yes. Thank you. We have one piece of property there and it's divided into part of it. Oh, state your name. My name is Theron Roberts. Okay. I'm the manager at Standard Plumbing Supply. Okay.

I didn't know that. Yep. How are you?

Good.

Good.

I haven't seen you in years. Been a while, yeah.

You need to get out more. I need to go buy plumbing stuff.

Anyway, we've got one strip of property there and half of it is residential and half of it's commercial. I don't know why half of it's residential. There's one access to it.

You're about to be enclosed by Smith's?

Yep. Circle? So we want to make that all commercial property, all one piece of commercial property instead of having half of it residential and half commercial.

OK. And let's see. What's on the general plan?

So the general plan is highway services, so it's already planned to be commercial.

Right.

OK. With no access to it other than the necessary or existing place.

Yeah, just the one access.

Correct. OK. Any questions? Anyone?

You know, 24, 25 years ago, Steve Brown showed me this property and urged me to buy it. It was $50,000. And I said, what can you do with it? It's not even on the main street. Yeah, I was wrong.

And Standard thanks you for being wrong. One little note for you, because for his own changes, as we kind of discussed on the last one, notifications are required. Okay. We missed one, if my information is correct. We did get some information earlier, and then just barely. It was forwarded to me at 5.07 p.m. You did a delivery to the person that was missed?

Yes.

And verified that Mr. Dillon's store understood the information and had no issues with it?

Yes.

Okay. So... This is one of those things that's kind of foundational for your ability to do anything is people get adequate notice. We have in the past typically required something in writing but not necessarily statutorily required. We just have to make sure that everybody has notice and if they want to come in and complain, they can. So there is a slight risk if he comes in and disagrees with you that he'll have 30 days after the council approves the zone change to have it sued and undone. But if that's what he told you, you're probably safe. But it is a jurisdictional requirement for you that everybody has to have adequate notice or waives it. And it sounds like we may have that, at least verbally.

What is the land used for now? Just storage and weeds?

Yes, it's all part of our yard, so it's storage.

OK. So the neighbors to the east would Appreciate it.

Yeah. It's all fenced and try to keep it up.

Very good.

Really, looking at the big picture, I don't see that it makes any difference either way, because it's going to get the same use. It kind of cleans things up if it's commercial, doesn't it? Yep.

It'll allow us to maybe put a lean-to or something on it so we can...

Yeah, that'll be the biggest one. His building permits right now wouldn't be allowed for him. I mean, sure, to have a place to sleep, in which case you need a life and get away from work. But yeah, if he wants to add to his commercial business with a building permit, this has to be changed.

Oh, okay. Very good. All right. Well, seeing how this is a public hearing, we'll open the public hearing. And do we have anyone here to speak to this item? Okay, well, then we'll go ahead and close the public hearing and entertain a motion.

I'd make a positive recommendation on item seven.

Okay.

Second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second. All in favor?

Aye.

Okay, any opposed? Okay, motion passes. And that... Being said, I think we can adjourn this meeting. I think we're done.