Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, and welcome to the June 4th, 2026 meeting of the Town of Chapel Hill's Board of Adjustment. It's now 630, or a little thereafter, so the meeting will come to order. Mr. Taz LeGue is serving as staff to the board this evening, and serving as the board's attorney is Mr. James Baker. Mr. LeGue, would you please call the roll? Mr. Fishkin?

Mr. Warshaw? Here. Mr. Garza?

Here.

Dr. Wartman?

Present.

Mr. Bartow?

Present.

Mr. Weiner? Present. Mr. Grasky?

Here. So with six members present, the chair declares that the quorum exists for the conduct of the board's business. And the first item on our agenda is approving tonight's agenda. It was emailed out to the board on Thursday, May 28th. I'm assuming everyone has had an opportunity to review it. And are there any objections, amendments to tonight's agenda?

Move to approve.

Dr. Wartman moves to approve. Do we have a second?

Seconded.

OK, great. Mr. Garza seconds. Mr. Legu, please call the roll. Mr. Warshaw?

Aye. Mr. Garza? Yes. Dr. Wartman? Yes. Mr. Bartow? Yes. Mr. Weiner? Yes. Mr. Grest?

Yes. All right. Unanimously, the agenda for tonight has been approved. Do we have any announcements either from the board or from staff this evening? Nothing from staff. None from staff. Nothing from the board. Good. Seeing none, we'll now proceed to a review of the minutes from our last meeting, which, if you all will remember back that far, was October 2nd, 2025. You should have that in front of you as well. Are there any questions to the way those minutes are drafted, amendments?

Move to approve the minutes.

Dr. Wartman moves to approve. Do we have a second? Second. Good. Mr. LeGault, can you please call the roll? Or I'm sorry, call the, yeah, the roll. Mr. Warshaw? Yes.

Mr. Garza?

Yes.

Mr. Wartman? Aye. Dr. Wartman, excuse me. Mr. Bartow? Yes. Mr. Weiner?

Yes. Mr. Grassley?

Yes.

So it's the prerogative of the chair that the motion carries in the minutes from October 2nd of our meeting. will now be added to the official record um with our housekeeping portions behind us and no pieces of old business in front of us let's move to our pending petitions are there any petitions before the board no good seeing them will now turn to our first order of new business on our agenda that being a dimensional Variance for 700 bowling wood drive Mr. Lagoutte, would you like to present the staff's report?

Thank you, Mr. Rassi. Due to technical concerns, there are no staff presentations this evening. But I'll briefly ask before I begin that the materials that were shared as part of your agenda this evening as well as the presentation that you're about to receive from an applicant be entered into the record.

So moved. We'll do that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Grassi.

Mm-hmm. The board this evening is a dimensional variance for a property located at 700 Bolandwood Drive here in Chapelville.

As the applicant was explaining, they're asking for a variance to their street setback. The generally political setback in this zoning district, R2 zoning district, is 24 feet, and the applicant is asking for a reduction down to 6 feet. to allow for the construction of a new office building in their apartment complex. With that, I will hand things over to our applicant of the evening, Mr. Ryan Alston, who is representing property owners in .

RYAN ALSTON, Okay, very good. Thank you. Hey, Mr. Alston. Good evening. Can I ask you if I want to just run some quick things by the board real quick? So I just want to make sure that all of our board members here tonight, that none of them actually have any kind of a third-party conflict with this matter. Has everyone had an opportunity, if they so choose, to see the actual property?

Good.

All right, so with that behind us, and have you been sworn in? I have, yeah. Let's swear the hint out. Mr. Alston, when you swear or affirm that the best of your knowledge, the best of your knowledge tonight is the truth, the whole truth, not the truth. Thank you very much. All right. Well, first of all, welcome, Mr. Alston. It's nice to see you. And we're looking forward to hearing your presentation.

For the Stratford Hills here in Chapel Hill, so I've prepared some slides to hopefully explain a little better than I could just setting up your talkies. So our request for this variance is an 18-foot variance. The current setback is 24 feet. So our request is for an 18-foot variance. And there's going to be six feet remaining from the actual setback. I do have an illustration later on in the presentation that shows this setback. And primarily, this is going to apply to the face of the building only. And so, the statutory authority here is the 160B, I'm sorry, 160D705B. Okay. This is Stratford Hills Development. It was, let's see, I'm not sure what happened here. Stratford Hills Development, it was actually, it was established back in 1972. Okay. I think maybe I leaned on this. Okay. So it was established back in 1972. And So we're proposing a new leasing office in the area shown. So let me see if I can point this out. I don't know if this is going to work. So currently, we're in front of you here. So this is the Stratford Field of Development here. And this is the area in question. It's a small area. along goldenwood drive where it's this is such a constrained site very tight site we took a look at this this site is bound by resource conservation district it is bound by 100-year floodplain as well as various So there's a lot going on in this site. So what the owner did was he went and got a survey because based on our initial, as we looked at this site and we evaluated multiple areas where we could actually set the leasing office, what we realized was this was essentially the only area that we that worked the best. The rest of the areas are heavily constrained. And what you will see in the next couple of slides, you'll see what those constraints look like. But the survey, what we show is, if you can see it, I think on the white picture, it's not.

Mr. Alston, I've enabled the laser pointer feature in the PowerPoint. So you can use the mouse to show a pointer there. Works much better. Yeah.

OK. So what we did was we had the surveyor locate the existing string. And they went out to the site, located the stream, and they located the top of the bank. So because this was a town-located intermittent stream, what we did was we said, OK, well, let's just go out and locate the center line. Then we locate the top of the banks. And what we did, we offset that 50 feet. So there's a 50-foot offset set required. So we were able to set our building here based on that 50-foot offset. So as you can see, and maybe the survey may not illustrate it very well, but the next couple of drawings, what you will see that it's going to illustrate some of our issues. So we're going to go to the next drawing. Next illustration. Okay. So on this drawing, I am showing all the constraints on this site. On this site, what we're looking at are There was a 100-year floodplain in here that is a very heavy constraint. We did get the surveyor to locate the actual 100-year floodplain. There is a resource conservation district which pretty much outlines the floodplain plus three feet. Then we also have intermittent, ephemeral, and perennial streams. So the perennial stream is the Bowling Creek. So it is a live stream. So we're looking at our site is right here where you see the star. So we looked at multiple sites on this parcel. to set the leasing office that would not be constrained. And quite honestly, there were constraints in all of them. And this one was what we found as the most optimal. And I'll explain why here shortly. So we evaluated five locations. around the site. So out of these five locations, the first one we took a look at where the owners really wanted to place the leasing offers was number one. So that particular footprint was the first one that we actually looked at. And we realized, once we took a look at it there, it was constrained. And it's in the floodplain. Try to get above the floodplain. But then there's the resource conservation district. We had issues there. And so we explained that to the owner. We talked to the town. And they said it's best to look at other sites. So we then started looking at some other sites. We then went to site number two. appeared to be buildable but then there's a there's an intermittent stream coming up through theirs in which we have to have an offset of 50 feet plus that is going to require many retaining walls and And then we looked at site number three, which was we thought was our best option site number three What we found was it was in a good location, however, there's a Duke Power easement running right through, right next to where we were going to set the building. So we have constraints of having to set the building over on that site with the utility easement. And then we looked at site number four which we just we also had Designed a dumpster pad back there and really that it's in the back of the development the the the owners wanted to be things that they were hoping we could find was have visibility because it is a leasing office to the To the to the development So that was one of the areas that we had constraints as well, because in addition to some of the setback issues we had there, which we would have had to ask for a variance as well, we had the dumpster enclosure, which is in process of being approved so we also had that issue so that left us with site number five site number five we selected that and then with site number five we still have all the constraints We had the, now comes in the constraint of the setback, 24 feet. So now we have a 24-foot setback, and it was such a small area that we had that was developable that we couldn't even get a small, very tiny building there because it was heavily constrained. So therefore, site number five, There comes the variance. That's why we ask for the variance, because it meets all the constraints. It's good visibility. There is a intermittent stream. However, we can offset that and get outside of the intermittent stream. It's outside of the resource conservation district. It's outside of the floodplain. It's outside of all the areas that are constrained. So that was the optimal location for us. So this drawing, I think this was in the package. You can't necessarily see it. But what we were showing is the optimal footprint, what we want, the desire. So we're showing the 24 by 36 building with the porch on the more of the northwest side. So the porch is outside of the, it is not facing the street. But our plan is to provide a couple of parking spaces right in front of this area and tie into the Bowlingwood Drive and have handicapped parking, et cetera, for this. And there is a stormwater requirement, so we'll have to figure out the stormwater piece. because of the proximity to the street. We feel that there's no issues with site triangle. We feel that this is a good site. So this is, again, this is what we're proposing if you can see this. And what we said here in this illustration was that we may be able to slide the building 10 feet plus or minus to the right or to the left. If we go too far either direction, we're either going to get in the RCD or we're going to get into the boundaries of the intermittent stream. We're going to get into that area. So we wanted to be able to place the building in a location that does not give us those type of restrictions. Therefore, again, the variance request. So the variance does not touch any protected resource, as I mentioned. It's not encroaching into the RCD. We're not entering the intermittent stream or its buffer areas. We're not building within the 100-year floodplain. And we're not altering any site drainage or creating any site distance hazards. So we feel that the street setback variance is what keeps the building out of those protected areas, which is what we're trying to accomplish here. Taking a look at the general statute, the unnecessary hardship. So strict application, so let me read it since I don't have it quoted there. I did print it out so I could mention it here because I do not know the statute by memory. And you all may be more familiar with that statute, of course. But I would say that the statute says that unnecessary hardship would result from strict application of the regulation. So what we're saying here is that we're satisfying that particular statute as far as unnecessary hardship, because the strict application of the 24-foot setback prevents us from having a functional and a visible leasing office. So we see that as a necessary hardship. The buildable envelope is crushed by the RCD surveyed stream buffer, floodplain, and the existing development. This development was built back in 1972, back when The developable areas and the restrictions and the regulations were totally different. So we see this as an unnecessary hardship. Therefore, again, the 18-foot minimum relief, we feel that that is, again, what we need. And we feel like we're satisfying this general statute. The next one. Conditions unique to the property. So if the hardship results from conditions that are peculiar to the property, such as location, size, or topography, we could request is a basis for granting or may or may not be a basis for granting a variance. But we feel that these conditions are unique to this property. So and these are specific to 700 Bolingwood Drive. The RCD overlay, the survey stream, and the 1972 development gives us a very narrow envelope to develop. And if you look at the properties surrounding this area, they don't share the same constraints. So we feel that finding two is satisfied as well. The third, the hardship did not result from actions taken by the applicant or the property owner. So we didn't self-create this hardship, or the property owner did not self-create this hardship. All the constraints that I mentioned earlier, the 24-foot setback with the tight envelope that we had there, and the applicant really taking the initiative to go ahead and get a survey and try to figure out exactly where we can put this building. We feel that that hardship is not self-created and that finding three is satisfied as well. Number four. So it says here that the requested variance is consistent with the spirit, purpose, and intent of the regulations such that the public safety is secured and substantial justice is achieved. This is a very small structure. It's a 24 by 36 there. We are asking for 18 foot variance, which leaves six feet from the right of way. And so we feel that we're getting outside of all of our restrictive areas. And so I think that's a good thing. And then we're not impacting any traffic that we know of. Obviously, we will study that a little bit more. There's no drainage impact because we are offsetting our 50 feet from the top of bank from that intermittent stream that's behind the site. And so as per the survey, so once, actually once we used the, whenever we used the town's GIS, I believe that the ask was a little smaller. I think it was only eight feet at that point. Then we went out and we actually located it on the site.

We realized that, okay, this site is very, very tight.

So that changed things slightly. So finding four is satisfied based on our survey our study here. So the summary of findings. All four findings are met based on what our research, our design, we feel that It's an unnecessary hardship. It's unique to the property. It's not self-created. And it satisfied the spirit, the safety, and the justice based on the general statute 160D705D. Actually, it's D. I think I said it had B in there, but I believe it is D. So our request is that you grant the 18-foot variance for this site. And based on our due diligence that we've done and our updated site plan and survey that has been performed, so that is our request. And that is all I have. Now, accept questions if you have any.

Thank you, Mr. Alston. Appreciate that. Yeah, and thank you for the presentation. Very thoughtful, very thorough, and well done. I'm sure some folks up here on the board will have a question or two. Who would like to get us started?

I can. Thanks again for being here tonight. I just have one quick question. And honestly, I don't know if it's going to waver my decision too much one way or the other. But when you were going through all of your proposed locations, the first four obviously had some pretty serious problems with them. And then we got to this fifth where you feel like it's kind of the best fit. Were there others beyond that that you looked for? Or did you just kind of get to five and say, this is the best we're going to get. Let's stop here and apply for a variance?

We looked at the entire site. We looked at it from the constraints of grading. How could we make this work? And quite honestly, we tried to look at everything outside of the constrained area. If I go back to give you a visual.

Sorry, can you speak into the mic a little bit more?

I'm sorry. No, it's OK. So yes, so we looked at the entire parcel. And based on that entire parcel, we could not really locate anything that worked. And we did initially pursue site number three, which is then the Duke Power easement came up. And so then we had another hardship. And the owners, of course, they wanted to be as visible as possible. So the best two options were number five and number three. And currently, they're in one of the residential units. And where they started was, let me show you here. Where they started was at the, and you can probably, you can barely see it, but there is, actually, I can barely see it. There is a pool down here. And I believe I am close to the pool. There's a pool here. And it's a fitness center. And this is at the property right now. And that's where they initially had their leasing office. But it's in the floodway. So it floods. And there's two or three feet of water in there. So that's what made us have to look for it. So we initially started in number one, which was the option one that I mentioned initially. We started there. But even before we, that's where we started. And then after that, we realized we had to look at other areas. So as I looked at, or as we looked at the areas on this parcel, we kept in mind it needed to be buildable, obviously. So that eliminated everything on the south side of this site. If you look at it, it eliminated everything. So we tried to find something else that would work. So it had to be buildable, and we wanted it to be visible. So as we looked at that, we realized that, OK, along Bowlingwood, these are the optimal sites. You could get some visibility. So number three and number five became the top candidates. And then number three, we had to eliminate that one just because of the Duke Power easement. Thanks. Yes, sir.

I have a quick question. Okay.

So you just mentioned they were, to summarize, working out of a residential unit. Just for clarity's sake, you mean that they're operating, they're leasing operations out of a residential unit at this time due to the pre-mentioned hardships of some of the flooding that occurred? That's right. Okay. Appreciate it. Yes, sir.

Yes, Mr. Bogdanoff.

So I just have a follow-up. I want to just make sure I understand this. So basically, currently they're operating out of the residential unit for their leasing office. Prior to that, were they operating out of the, I guess it might be marked as the clubhouse? The fitness center, right, the clubhouse. Yeah.

That's where they were operating. But that was flooded? Yeah, it's in the floodway, actually. So you have the floodway, you have the floodplain. So they're literally in the floodway. So there was two feet of water in there. So they had to move out of there. So they moved out of there. I'm not sure exactly when they moved out, but I think it's been a while back. So that was the reason they moved to one of the units.

I think that answers pretty much everything.

OK. Dr. Wartman? Why is it not feasible to continue working the leasing office out of a residential unit?

I don't I will say that based on what the owner has told me is that they're trying to they want to lease they want to have a dedicated leasing office and the unit they're in building 10 which building 10 is one of the and I don't think you can really see it on here building 10 is one of the first two buildings so let me see if I can get a photo that shows Unfortunately, none of my photos show the actual building. But if you come out of the driveway of the, let me do it this way. So the initial building that we were looking at, there's two buildings across from it that are, like I said, are residential units. There are actually people staying in those units. What the owner conveyed to me was they wanted to have a dedicated space where they could lease their units that was separate and visible from the rest of the actual apartment units. That was the best case scenario. And with all the constraints, they found it very hard to do that. But again, that was a temporary situation that they're in right now. It's a temporary situation. Because again, they started in the fitness center for their leasing space. Then they moved to the residential unit. And they have handicap access, all that good stuff. And I don't know. If that is an optimal type situation for a 202-unit apartment complex, having it leasing it out of one of the units, and they would like to use that unit as well, is what has been conveyed to me. I think that that was never the plan, is what I would probably say on that one. It was never the plan to stay in that residential unit long term.

So my question was, is it not feasible for them to continue operating out of that unit? And the only response you gave me is that that wasn't their plan.

Not long term. I don't think it's feasible long term. I do not have maybe an explanation of why it's not feasible for that unit. I don't know if... I guess it's allowed. I don't know. So I'm not 100% sure. That's something I would probably would like to follow up with the owner on. And I don't have them here, so I can't ask them that. So when the owners initially came to us, the goal was to find a space that allowed them to have their new customers come that's more isolated and visible. The unit in building 10, it is an end unit, I believe. It's an end unit, and it is at the beginning at the first couple of buildings. It is across from the current building. or the old leasing office. It is across from that. So there's a couple of buildings right across from the driveway. It is across from that in the end residential unit. So I would say that... That may be an option, but I would say that also that for a apartment complex, it is great, it's very good to have a dedicated space where you can have potential tenants visit and it's very visible and it's isolated from the rest of the residential units as you may have Domestic issues going on in the apartments etc. So I don't I don't think it's the best case scenario but It has worked for them since the building flooded so I think that Having a dedicated space is a much better option What's the size of the proposed building again say 24 by 36 Thank you. It's a very small building.

A brief question for you, or maybe not so brief, but you're talking here about coordinating with the town's planning department. Can you tell me a little bit about what they advised you? It says you worked with them on finding a site. Did they come out with you to do the surveying, or what was that process like?

No, no. So the way that it worked was we initially determined the first site. That was in the RCD. And so what we were, so some of the towns that I've worked in, the cities that I've worked in, we can develop in the 100-year floodplain, but we just have to be above the base flood elevation of however many feet. Same here. However, we then had to deal with the resource conservation district, which initially we did not see that. We didn't see the resource conservation district initially. And so that was the location that the client had. So hey, we have this location here. Can you see if it's an option? And so once we did that, I presented it to planning. And once I met with him, I had a pre-application meeting. pointed out that that's going to be a very tough sale with the rcd and to look at other options and so that's when i looked at other options for the site so they gave you guidance in terms of the rcd and the floodplain and and they were sort of is what you're saying is they they were able to tell you this is out of bounds this is inbounds is is No, no, we actually, we looked at the GIS and we tried to determine it from there. And so, and we read the standards and we saw that the floodplain, and they did point us to it, the RCD is three feet outside of the floodplain. They did point that to us, point that out to us. And so with that information, we realized that we needed to keep looking

Thank you.

Do we have any other questions from the board?

Yes. Yeah. Thanks for the presentation. I think we addressed some of my questions around what they've been doing without the leasing office. Can you tell me a little bit more about the parking spaces and the access? You only said a couple. How frequent is this going to be trafficked? There didn't seem to be a lot of space left over for parking at the site you've chosen.

Understood. There's not a lot of space. There's lots of parking in the development. There's even street parking. So let me see if I don't have an illustration of the parking. We haven't gotten that far yet as far as design, but I did lay out a couple of spaces to see what it would look like, because that is something that we will have to do. So let's just use the survey drawing. And so looking at the survey drawing, there is sidewalk along Bolingwood, and there is parking along Bolingwood. And our plan was to get a, because it's pretty flat here. It's pretty flat out here. We were going to get a driveway, cut a driveway in, and park in the yard. Since this is technically the, you have the building facing Bowlingwood, but the porch is on this side, so this is where everyone will enter. So our plan was to get a couple of parking spaces on this side. That was the plan. We haven't totally laid it out, but again, we did take a look at it, and just look at some options. Now, but looking at the parking requirements in the development, there's There's lots of parking. I mean, one could park across the street and walk to the leasing office, and there's no issues because there's a lot of extra parking, overflow parking in the development.

Okay. And so the floodplain, can you bring up the map again that was showing where the floodplain was?

I'll bring up this one.

It seems like you're right on the edge of it still. Are there any concerns about the future flooding, especially given how bad flooding is going to be? A 100-year floodplain now is happening with way more increasing frequency.

I agree with you. And the floodplain changes over time. And obviously, it probably won't get better. However, we're close. We're outside of that area. So we can't predict the future. I can't tell you that it wouldn't get worse. But again, I could move it all the way to the top and the floodplain could could still grow over time. But I would say that the only thing will be above the base flood elevation. And that's the base flood elevation today. So that's going to, that may change in 20 years. When you say the edge, we're actually outside of the RCD and the floodplain, which is actually at a higher elevation also. But again, I mean, depending on how things go, I couldn't promise that that would one day be in the floodplain. Can I do one more?

Could I see the other slide where you had the other options that you were looking into? Yes, sir. So are there no options on, I didn't see anything developed on the northern edge of the property along Bolinwood, kind of above 3 and 4 and past the buildings. Yeah, up above there. Were those areas considered at all and further away from the floodplain?

We did not consider those areas.

No, there's a property setback along that northern edge, but...

So we did not consider those areas. So that would be getting pretty close. And I'd have to look at the topography. I'm pretty sure. I recall we looked at those areas, and I'm looking at, well, I see an intermittent stream actually going through the, let me show you here. There is an intermittent stream here. So I think what you're probably saying is maybe in this area here.

But on the west side, maybe on the other side of the road? On the other side. And kind of in the rear of that side of the development?

Behind the buildings? We did not look at that one. Now that is, I believe, and I have to zoom in, but I believe that area, I believe that falls back down. So I'd have to take a look at it on.

So a grading or elevation issue that would require retaining wall or second level?

Yes. And also, again, it was one of the things we were looking at, too, is visibility. That, we tried our best to meet all the requirements, but at the same time, in those, trying to meet those requirements, visibility was one of the requirements for the client. And we realized that it was a, what we thought was a hardship. So, I think that we could have, I mean, we looked at a lot. We really spent a lot of time trying to find the best, the optimal location on this site. And there's, This area was pretty much it. Those, you know, being bound by these streams and all the requirements for the setback requirements for the intermittent streams, I mean, there's 100 and 150 feet requirement from a perennial stream. It just depends. 100 feet in some cases, 150 feet in other cases. You know, so, and then you have the ephemeral stream, which are just basically dry ditches. Didn't have any issues there, but The town did go out and they mapped all of these. And so what we're using is the town's map, overlaid the streams that the town identified on the GIS layer. That's what we were able to do to make this exhibit. So I believe that we exhausted what I would call all the best options for a leasing office, which, again, we did want to have visibility. So all of these were pretty much exhausted.

then back one more to the uh other sites this one yeah and so i was looking at number three just kind of southwest of there in between the two driveways it looked like there was some space but i think there's um there's a grading issue there where it's a dry ditch in between the two driveways it seemed like was is that space at all buildable are you talking about here yeah there's a small space between the two driveways um just south i think of where three is and I would be curious if that's also in the, it might also be in the Duke easement. I didn't see that labeled on the map.

Well, yeah, we didn't lay, we don't have the Duke easement labeled there. But if you were looking at...

It's along the whole road on that side of the road? It is.

If you're looking at the GIS or Google Earth or something like that, you're going to see those poles, those power poles there. And so Duke Power actually has an easement there which restricts where we could build and it's and there is it it is on an embankment yeah and so uh one of the other issues is once you do that you got to figure out where do i put my sem uh for stormwater that's that's the other issue obviously there's a lot of options there but it becomes very very difficult to design okay and that's those are all the things we we looked at but Even number three, that was the option I had spoken with Josh from the town about, and then we had the Duke Power easement issue. And so, yes, we looked at a lot of options here. Okay, thanks.

Any other questions? I have one quick question. Yes, sir. They ask the hard questions, I ask the obvious ones. Just confirm for me that the only option that you've satisfied all the setbacks, the stream setbacks, the floodplain. The only setback that you're asking for a variance tonight is the street setback. Is that correct?

That is the only setback. That is correct.

And how many stories is the structure?

It's just one story. It's a single structure. A single story structure.

Okay. That answers my question, thanks. So with no other questions from our board, and I don't see any public in attendance, I would entertain a motion from the board to close the evidentiary hearings and move into deliberation.

So moved. Second. Dr. Wortmann.

Thank you. So we have a motion and a second. Taz, could you please call the roll on that one?

Mr. Warshaw?

Yes.

Mr. Garza? Yes. Dr. Wartman? Aye. Mr. Bartow? Yes. Mr. Weiner? Yes. Mr. Grasty?

Yes. So with six votes aye, zero votes nay, it passes. Ms. Dashing, you're welcome to sit down if you'd like. We may call you back up. I'd like to exercise our right to reopen evidentiary if we need to. But we are now in deliberation. So who would like to kick us off?

yeah i think this was i mean when i got my orientation for board of adjustments this was almost like to the t the example case of a variance you would approve you know someone wants to build something on their property there's a stream that runs through it they looked at the other spots it wasn't something they did i feel like with all their due diligence, it, to me, feels like a clear approval. There were obviously some questions about could they put it here, could they put it there, but I don't know how much of that delineation is our responsibility. I think that it's their property, and if this is the spot where they need it for their business, as long as it fits all the four criteria, then we would almost have to approve.

We would have to approve if it met all four. So I'm hearing your position on this. Anyone else have an additional thought or a contrary position they'd like to express? Mr. Barton?

I was actually really pleased by the presentation and how it really just got to the elements and broke it down really well. The only thing I was sort of satisfied with in the questions is we've got sort of I was thinking more about the hardship. And in that case, they had an office. This office was built in 1972. I guess it was the clubhouse. Situations have changed, kind of got destroyed by a flood, and none of the fact that it was built in the 70s and got destroyed by a flood can conceivably be their fault because just the rules were different, the ownership was different, and nature is nature. So I think basically you've just got a very solid case for even the... Hardship exempt the hardship portion of this because you did have something and then things outside of your control sort of Messed it up. So yeah, I mean, I'm very happy with how this has been proven.

So yeah Anyone else I Was trying to think on the hardship one too, and I think everything you just said was correct I was trying to think if there's any other reasonable case for the hardship just having the negative impact that's stated. I think it's clear that you want to have an office that is separate from the residential buildings to run your business and to have new tenants come, review, go over paperwork, or for current tenants to come and work. I don't think it makes sense to have them come and Existing apartment that could also otherwise be leased So there's economic harm as well in terms of that's taking up a space that would otherwise be rented out and is the purpose for it I'm still I am left wondering if there isn't Alternate space. I feel like you've done your due diligence and looking at the GIS and going all through the site You've clearly looked at some other areas that you would even prefer that had even greater risk to being closer to the flood floodplain and are trying to thread the needle of all the pros and cons I was also trying to think about number four and the reason for the setbacks you know there's a road safety issue there is a character at the neighborhood issue if this had an abutting neighbor or a character issue where putting something that close to the road was going to cause something dire against the intent of the setback i think we could argue against it but also across the road this is just within the boundaries of an existing development already that has buildable surface a parking lot across the way so i don't see really an argument for it ruining the spirit of the neighborhood by encroaching but it is a large encroachment so i give i'm i'm deliberating on that thought too that it six feet is not a lot of distance away from the road um that's the one thing i'm chewing on but

Do we know how much of a variance they would have needed for four? We forgot to ask that during the questioning, but does anybody know? Is it in the materials? I know he said if they went with four, they would also need to apply for variance, but I didn't hear how far that would be. Did you guys, anybody catch that?

There was an encroachment. I think they've landed on this site because it, It was less of an encroachment here? Well, they were only making one encroach.

I think that is also, that's one of the intermittent streams, if I'm looking at the map, too. So I think it's like right along one of the water lines that they would be closer to. I don't know, but I don't think it's the, maybe it's RCD. Is RCD only applied to the perennial streams, not intermittent?

I do not know the answer to that.

RCD applies to intermittent and perennial.

It's just a different width of buffer. Got it, okay. Do you know the widths offhand? Just curious.

Yeah, so the buffer for an intermittent stream is 50 feet. Okay. And for a perennial, it's 150 feet plus that idea of three feet above the base flood elevation. Okay. Thanks.

Dr. Wartman?

Move to adopt Resolution A and approve the variance.

Seconded.

We have a motion to approve and a second to approve the variance. Mr. LeGue, would you like to take a vote?

Mr. Warshaw? Yes. Mr. Garza? Yes. Dr. Wartman? Aye. Mr. Bartow? Yes. Mr. Weiner? Yes. Mr. Grasty?

Yes. So six ayes, zero nays. The motion is approved. Variance A is approved. Congratulations. Thank you for your presentation, your time, and the dedication to your clients. I think you did them a big service in your preparation.

Thank you, sir.

Yeah. Appreciate that. OK. We've got one other thing to go over tonight, and that is board composition. I don't know if you all are aware of this. You will be if you look around. We're missing Judith Miller.

She was appointed to the OWASA board last month, and she's no longer with us.

So it shakes things up a little bit, but we have a plan. So, Mr. Lagout, would you like to get up? Are you going to give us a staff presentation? Or do we need a staff presentation?

No staff presentation is necessary, but I'm happy to kind of talk through the dynamics of open seats and things of that sort. Go ahead and do that very quickly.

And then, just quickly, I'll have a thought on how to get us through this.

So there are a handful of openings and opportunities here. I'll just kind of go down the list. So Dr. Wartman's term is ending as of the end of the month. And he is eligible to be reappointed to a second term as a regular member. David Nam, who currently serves as an alternate, was serving for a partial term. You may remember. relatively recently joined the board his first partial term is also ending as of the end of the month and he is eligible to be reappointed to a full term as an alternate With Miss Miller's recent departure from the board. There is a regular seat available and it is Town convention that alternate members current alternate members are eligible to be reassigned to serve as regular members and So either Mr. Nam or Mr. Weiner would be eligible to be reassigned to Miss Miller's now vacant seat. There is also an alternate seat that is vacant. That seat is typically reserved for residents of the town's ETJ, extraterritorial jurisdiction. and the responsibility for filling that seat typically lies with the Orange County Board of County Commissioners. If they do not exercise their right to fill that seat within a prescribed amount of time, the right to fill the seat reverts to the town council, and that seat can be filled by any resident of the town. So that's four seats. If either Mr. Nam or Mr. Weiner are reassigned to Ms. Miller's seat, there would also be another alternate seat available for appointment from the pool of applicants.

Thank you very much for that.

So if I may, I have a way that I think we might be able to get through this pretty quickly. I think there's really two things we need to do tonight, or two motions I might suggest that someone make. And I might suggest that that first motion reappoint Dr. Wartman to his seat. that we appoint, that we reassign Mr. One or Two from alternate to permanent, that we reappoint David Nam to a full term as an alternate. Does everybody follow me on that? I think that might be a great first motion, if we all agree with that, and then we can deal with filling the one, possibly two additional alternates in a second motion with some deliberation. So if you all are cool with that, if someone would make a motion.

Sure, I'll make that motion. So first motion. If you want to read. Sure. Let's see. So I'll start with the motion to reappoint Dr. Wartman to his regular seat.

Second.

Do we want to do it? Can we do it all in one motion? OK. Yes. Keep going.

Then to continue with the motion that we reassign Mr. Weiner from an alternate seat to a regular seat and reappoint Mr. Nam to his full term as an alternate.

Second. So we have a first.

We have a second.

Can you go ahead and call the roll?

Yeah, and I would just clarify, for the two reappointments, the technical action that you would be taking would be to recommend that council make those reappointments. For the reassignment from an alternate to a regular seat, um that's an action that you are you're essentially making that action on your own and staff would then implement that that reassignment um and i understand that do we need to reflect that in the language anywhere in this motion um you can clarify the language of that motion to say recommend the reappointment with that change you can continue with your motion

So to clarify the language there, that we recommend the reappointment of Dr. Wartman to his regular seat, all other aspects of the measure as stated.

And also the recommendation to reappoint the alternate as well. Pardon me.

Also rephrasing as a recommendation to reappoint alternates.

All right. So I think we better get that second again. Who would like to?

I'll second that recommendation and those alterations.

Thank you. Now let's take a vote.

Mr. Warshaw? Yes. Mr. Garza? Yes. Dr. Wartman? Aye. Mr. Bartow? Yes. Mr. Weiner? Yes. Mr. Grasty?

Yes. So that motion passes 6-0. Congratulations for your reappointments and ascensions, as it were. Now we move to the next piece of business, which is so we now have the opportunity to name two alternates. We have in front of us in our packet seven applications. Two of them we can take off the table because we've just assign those people positions. So we're left with Randy Herman, Burt Bennett, Trevor Leatherwood, Peter Minaloff, and Julia Chamberlain. Has everyone on the board had an opportunity to look at those applications?

Good.

Does anyone have, did any of those applications rise to the top as someone that we would clearly think would be well qualified and serve well as an alternate?

Mr. Grassi, if I could just interject for one moment. I had an opportunity to tell at least Dr. Wartman about this before the meeting, but it's standard practice for staff liaisons to just reach out to applicants before a meeting just to confirm that they're still interested in serving. Fair enough. I reached out via email to all of the applicants. They all expressed that they were still interested. The only person that I did not receive a response from one way or the other was Julia Chamberlain. But it was based on one attempted contact is the caveat I'll add to that.

When did you try to make that contact? This was about two weeks ago.

Two weeks ago. And she did not return the correspondent's email or call? That's correct. There was just no response. OK. Thanks for adding that. So I'll just state my question again. Did anybody jump to the front as someone that they'd like to advocate?

I could speak to my own interest in Randy Hawkins Herman. His background in commercial real estate as an attorney seems like it very well fits the domain in which we operate, and his knowledge of the legal framework would I think make him a natural fit to transition into a board like this.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on Mr. Herman's application and potential contributions?

Well, I'd like to say that I do reiterate your point. I think that Mr. Herman, for me, is the candidate that I feel would probably serve us best because of his background, both professionally and otherwise. anyone else uh let's do like one at a time i suppose so is there anyone else that you think elevates up or would someone like to nominate mr herman i'll nominate mr herman okay we have a nomination by mr weiner do we have a second

Just for clarity, is this nomination for the alternate seat or for the replacement seat for Mr. Weiner?

This is for the alternate. For the alternate seat. And this is a recommendation to town council. It's not to appoint. Yeah, I didn't learn my lesson the first time they told me this.

This is a recommendation, not an appointment.

I'll second.

We have a second. Mr. LeGue, would you like to take the roll on this?

Mr. Warshaw? Yes. Mr. Garza? Yes. Dr. Wartman?

Yes.

Mr. Bartow? Yes. Mr. Weiner? Yes. Mr. Grasty? Yes.

So with six votes, it is our recommendation to the council that they appoint Mr. Herman as the alternate. We now have an opportunity, though not necessarily an obligation, to have a second alternative. But staff, as well as myself, kind of think it's a good idea to have as many folks in the wings as we can. You know, incidents prevail and people can't show up. So with that, I would suggest maybe we discuss a conversation about a second recommendation to town council. This would be an alternate as well. Same conversation. Anybody coming to the top that you all are excited about?

yes i i was impressed with julia chamberlain's application she has experience in government and urban planning environmental science across the board it seems a wide spectrum of the skills and education and some of the things that we are considering when adjudicating and i also like having some diversity on the board

very true agreed i i would like to recommend her for appointment uh provided that we can get in touch and confirm she's still interested do you think we could give it another shot or is in your opinion taz is it worth it to continue to to reach out or should we just move on

It has admittedly been a pretty light attempt to contact her, so there's plenty of opportunities to continue to try to contact Ms. Chamberlain. There's also, as was expressed earlier, there's no urgency, so you all could also... Wait for later There's also the opportunity to just make the recommendation I can then reach out continue to try to reach out to her before Council acts there is always that the awkward I think That's probably the most awkward option to make a recommendation to counsel And then not know for certain whether the the person is interested Well my recommendation would be that we try again reach out to her and being that it's not urgent We can revisit it the next meeting.

Yeah, I think that's a great idea Since it is an urgent and it sounds like there's at least two potentially three folks that would would approve her if she did want to do it and Let's table this conversation until we hear back from the potential applicant. And thank you, Taz, for reaching out to her. Appreciate it.

I suggest that we make no movement then on that final spot.

Yes.

I don't think that requires action on the part of this board.

I don't think so, but I'm glad you said it out loud.

And sort of just a clarifying question, that final spot, is that technically preference for like a ETJ resident spot?

Yeah, so that's the... It's a seat that is technically reserved for somebody from the ETJ or the joint planning area. The responsibility, it's kind of a right of first appointment that goes to the Board of County Commissioners. But if after receiving notice that that seat is vacant, they don't make an appointment within a prescribed amount of time, the town council kind of gets that responsibility or that opportunity to appoint any member, any town resident.

Do you know where we are on that time scale and how long they have to appoint?

Yeah, it's a 60-day period. And so there's been no action in the time that...

Starting when, though? Like, where are we in that?

We're well past it. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Like 365 days. Hey, I haven't been at any meetings lately. Okay. So I think with that, we have reached the conclusion of our business tonight. Can I ask one question?

You may. I see that our next meeting is scheduled for September 3 of this year. Is that correct?

That's right.

This means that the... Tonight's applicant will not receive a decision from this board and town council until September. So they won't be able to move forward with their project?

That could be correct. It depends on their timeline. And so I'm actually glad that they're still here today. We can go ahead and do a meeting sooner, or we could notice a special meeting if necessary. Obviously, the ordinance you've adopted, or the resolution you've adopted directs staff to draft a decision for you all to adopt. And so to that end, we could explore moving that up. after speaking with the applicant with regard to their timeline and your availability as early as July.

Do we need to make an official recommendation to do that?

Well, no, you don't need to make a motion to do that. We have general rules. It's just that there are no pending applications before this board other than that. And so that is why with summer break. But in light of the circumstance, I actually thank you for calling this to the attention with regard to the calendar because we would want to do it sooner rather than later, even if it's just a five-minute meeting.

Right. I'm just trying to be responsible to the residents of the town. Do you know when they would... Do you know when your clients would plan on breaking ground for this project by any chance?

They want to break ground ASAP. They've been trying to find an area. That's why we work so hard.

They want to break ground ASAP. Okay. Must we meet as a council to... TO APPROVE THE DOCUMENT THAT STAFF PREPARES?

YES, BECAUSE THIS IS A DECISION YOU MUST MEET IN A REGULARLY NOTICED MEETING.

we can't approve the amendment or what we just approved at this meeting? There's the minutes, the second approval after it's redrafted?

Well, the reason it's drafted is because we actually have to prepare per statute a written decision with findings of fact and conclusions of law. And because we didn't know which direction you were going to go, the reason we do the directing staff to create an order is essentially to, uphold the decision and make it enforceable. Got it. So that's why we have this two-step process. Sure. Understood.

Thank you. Thanks for raising that point.

Okay. With no... Can we... I'm sorry, Tom. Can we ask staff to expedite?

Well... Do we need that? We just asked that question. We don't need to specifically ask you to expedite, do we?

Yeah, it's not an official order of that sort. What I can do is, after this meeting, poll members and relevant staff and just figure out what, if any, date would be an option for a meeting before the September meeting.

I think that would be appreciated if you can get to it. Yeah, that would be good.

All right.

Sorry about that. No, it was a great point. I'm glad you made it.

With no further business outstanding, it's the chair's prerogative that we officially adjourn this meeting. Thank you for your attention and attendance.