Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay. So it's 05:30, and I'll go ahead and call this meeting to order. Miss Martinez, could you call roll, please?

Madam chair, Solasar Garza? Here. Vice chairman Munoz is absent. Commissioner Miller is absent. Commissioner Hedrick?

Here.

Commissioner Budd is absent. Commissioner Cantu?

Here.

Commissioner Teichelman?

Here.

Commissioner Esparza? Here. Commissioner Jackson?

Here.

We have a quorum present to conduct the meeting.

Thank you. And could you read us the rules for public comment, please?

Yes, ma'am. Citizens will be allowed to attend and make public comments in person at the city planning commission meetings. The public is invited to speak on any agenda item and any other items that pertain to the planning commission. Comments are limited to three minutes. If you choose to speak during this period, you will not be allowed to speak again when the specified item is being considered in order of the agenda.

Thank you, ma'am. And right now, I'll go ahead and open up the public comment. If anybody has signed up to speak, move forward. If not, then I'll go ahead and close the public comment and move on to the approval of absences for commissioner Cantu for 01/21/2026.

I'll move that we approve the absence of commissioner Cantu from our last meeting. I'll second.

I have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Moving on to the approval of minutes for 01/21/2026. I have a motion.

I motion to approve the minutes.

Second. Second.

I have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Moving on to consent public hearing discussion and possible actions for item a.

Thank you, madam chair. For the record, Andrew Demus with Development Services reading in, tonight's consent agenda, which consists of one sole item, item number two, a replat of Cane Harbor Bay, Lots 30 R And 32 R Block 38, which is point six zero acres. Staff has reviewed the plat along with the technical review committee and deemed that it is compliant with the Texas local government code as well as the unified development code. Staff recommends approval.

Okay. Thank you. Commissioners, do we have any questions for staff on item a? If not, then I'll go ahead and open up the consent public hearing. Anybody has signed up to speak on item two?

If not, then I'll go ahead and close the consent public hearing and entertain a motion or further discussion.

Make a motion to approve. I'll second. Second.

I have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed? Motion passes. Moving on to public hearing discussion possible actions for b c and d. And I think we're going to do them individually, or did you want to try to just just do b and c and then d?

I can read them both into the record, and then you can do one motion. They're they're essentially they're they're sister projects

Okay.

With each other. So, starting with item number three. This is a request for a sidewalk construction waiver, which is allowed under UDC section 3.85 and various other sections. So, I have a quick presentation ready for you. So the requested plot, which is also item number four, it's a replot of Laguna Vista or Laguna Shores Vista.

It's one lot at the corner of Rex Lane and Laguna Shores Road. As you may know, we'll get to the aerial. Laguna Shores is a kind of develops a piece at a time, which means as development occurs and replats occur, that is the time in which we ask for extension of bike lanes, extension of rights of way, and in this case, extension of sidewalks. Now, the catch with that is that it only happens as property are replatted. So, as you can see, to the north and across Laguna Shores, Caddy Corner, those lots have already been platted and already, obviously, constructed.

So the question we start to ask the staff is, is this the start of a sidewalk network, which some of you have heard me say many times in previous discussions on this very issue, or is this one of those items in which we're not going to see an expansion of a sidewalk going further to the south as properties are to the north also, as properties are already platted? It is the latter of those two scenarios. Meaning, we will not see the expansion of the sidewalk network to the north unless the city comes in through a bond project and expands those sidewalks. So what the applicant has requested is a waiver from having to construct the sidewalk on Rex Lane, which obviously will not continue going to the East or to the South. So as I mentioned, there are applicable procedures outlined in the Unified Development Code as how does one ask for a waiver and what is the criteria we go through when reviewing those waivers?

So, I won't bore you with the copy and paste of the text because it gets a little into the weeds. But, essentially, we're answering the question of where is the sidewalk coming from, and where is it going to? In this case, it's coming from nowhere and will be going nowhere. So, why are we gonna require to build it? So, that is where we give the applicant the option to ask for a construction waiver.

Again, why we're here tonight. So, the nearest sidewalk that it would connect to is approximately 4,000 linear feet away, quite a bit, closer to the a mile away. It did not qualify for an administrative exemption. So, way back when, we did create a procedure within the UDC that said there are obvious common sense scenarios in which we would not request the extension. They would not have to come to Planning Commission.

The catch is you have to check every one of these boxes. And as we go through UDC tax amendments, we'll be reexamining this and asking the question again, how can we even more make this a common sense progress? The one catch here is 75% of the block frontage is improving, does not have a sidewalk. There are some portions probably going further to the south that do have sidewalks, but this would never connect to it. So that is why we're here today.

Second, Laguna Shores is on the roadway master plan, which is another disqualifying factor of why we have to go through the formal process. Factors that are applicable for granting consideration is is this a detriment to public health safety? It would not be, because again, it's coming from nowhere, it's going nowhere. The conditions that create the need do not apply to other properties in the vicinity. This is a corner property, so it's one of those rare opportunities that, again, we would ask the question, does this start the network?

In this case, it does not. We have some photos here just to give you some ground level examples of not connecting. And then factors in support, there are no current adjacent sidewalks. The closest is 4,000 feet away. There are roadside ditches, so there would be quite a bit of more work to be done if we did require the sidewalk to be built.

The closest bus station or bus stops are along Yorktown, which is quite a, again, quite a bit of distance away. The waiver would not be a detriment to public health or safety, and it would not affect adjacent properties that would have a negative impact. Two things against is, of course, we always wanna promote walkability. It's an obvious thing. These are one of those times as planners, it kinda flies in the face of everything that we preach, but that common sense aspect, again, is it's not connecting anywhere, and it's not coming from anywhere. So we are recommending as staff approval of the sidewalk waiver. And, hopefully, planning commission, if you have any questions, would be happy to address them.

Thank you, mister Demas. Commissioners, do we have any questions for

I have a question. When you were talking about the bus the bus station, the bus stop. Right? There's no sidewalk that's connecting that. What how how are people getting access to that?

They're more than likely walking in the ditch and then waiting until the bus arrives, and they're going back through the slope. It's it's not ideal. And so that's where we work with RTA of at least creating a spot so you're able to create a culvert, walk across the bus stop, and be able to get onto the bus without having to wade through a Are there are there challenges.

Would there be anything in the future that would allow people, from the walkability standpoint, right, of using the public Is there gonna be any kind of do you see anything on the horizon or going moving to put put sidewalks in?

So there there are always grant opportunities, things like safe routes to schools that they work with the Metropolitan Planning Organization, the MPO, and they are the ones that are the keepers of the dollars to projects, and cities and counties. And RTA, which is a quasi governmental body, can ask for grant dollars to say, we wanna connect so many stops because it's near a school, or we want to connect so many stops that's near a senior center. And they can apply for that grant funding. It's always there, but every year with budget constraints, we're going with our hat in hand, asking the federal government if the police has some more. Do you have a few dollars for us to connect some bus stops together?

Okay. I I guess my question was is always going to be it's like we're not stopping anything that is was has been done in the past and nothing that's gonna be done in the future.

So Correct.

Okay. That's all I need.

Okay. Any other questions? Staff?

Yeah. Andrews, I have a question. If you you did require them to put the sidewalks in, is this at a location where in the future if the city came in and they expanded the road and put in the the proper gutters and sewers and whatnot, that they would have to rip out what they put in anyway or or not?

Potentially. So that is an ongoing discussion that we have on on many projects when it comes to plotting of what is required. If we know an upcoming bond project is on the horizon or listed, that is the time we would have also listed that in our presentation. So for instance, Yorktown, there is project to widen Yorktown. We wouldn't have them put in the sidewalks today, knowing there's a project within the next two years to three years happening to install them. Similarly, on the plat, we are still requesting requesting the street dedication of widening Laguna Shores. So if that bond project someday does happen, we will have already acquired the right of way necessary to put that those facilities in. Okay. You. Won't lose any land.

Great. Thank you. Is all the drainage in this area just sheet flow? Is there no underground drainage?

Correct. It's roadside

roadside Even if they had to put a sidewalk, it would have to go quite a bit into the property just to space it correctly,

I guess. Correct.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Any other questions for staff? If not, then I'll go ahead and open up the public hearings for items b and c. Anyone? If not, then I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and entertain a motion or further discussion.

I'll make a motion to approve as presented by Development Services.

Second.

I have a motion and a second. All those in favor. Aye. All those opposed. Motion passes. Moving on to public hearing discussion possible action regarding Padre.

Madam Chair, just to clarify with that was for items three and four. I just Yes, We've made it clear. Yes. Okay. Just wanna make sure. Yes.

We For

items three and four. Covered Approved. You.

Good afternoon. Karen Costanza with the Planning and Economic Development Department. The item before you on your agenda is a public hearing and a recommending action for city council regarding the adoption of the Padre Mustang Island Mobility Plan. If this sounds familiar to you, it's because this body did hold a public hearing and recommend adoption back in June 2025. You may recall at that time, staff mentioned that we were trying to get to council ahead of the large number of budget items coming forward.

That didn't happen. And then immediately after that, council had agenda items packed with water project related items. And so we are now on the February 10 agenda for council as a public hearing and adoption process. And because there's been a nice gap in time between when we were in front of the Island Strategic Action Committee and this body back in the summer, we're coming back to you just double dotting the I to hold that public hearing and take that recommending action. So the the actual plan that's on council's agenda is what's also in your packet.

It includes the small text amendments that were discussed back in June and requested by both planning commission and the island strategic action committee. And so that there's no changes from June. It's just that we're coming back because of the timeline. I do have a presentation I'd be happy to go through if the chairwoman and members

are interested. Yes. Of course, for the new commissioners that have come on board.

We're absolutely happy to do so. So just to go through the timeline, this project kick started back in the 2023. At that time, it was with the economic development department. It was a TURS funded project. And, of some staff turnover, about a year later, it came over to the planning division.

And, when we took a look at it, we wanted to refine and get some more specific recommendations for the tech DOT roads on the island. So we developed some preliminary ideas, worked with the ISAC starting in the fall, and then conferred with our colleagues over at TxDOT. Then in April 2025, we published a draft and came to ISAC in May followed by planning commission in June. So you can see the text amendments recommended by both bodies on this slide, and those are all incorporated into what is going to council next week for adoption. Just to cover what the island mobility plan addresses, It's really about connectivity all different types of users, whether pedestrian or golf cart, bicyclists, and then we even have recommendations regard regarding connections via the canals and water on the island.

It's about getting people to places, whether it's the neighborhoods and the beach or getting visitors to get over to the commercial areas. Ideally, you know, one of the things that have come out of the area development plan for the island is wanting to get people out of their cars when they come visit the island and never touch their cars again until they leave for a longer stay than they're currently having on the island. So it's an economic development incentive there as well. So, again, just a broad overview of what's in the plan. You can see here we're looking at areas to the north, which we're calling the North Loop Streets in orange.

We've got the city beach connections there over in the blue, and lower below that is the county beach connections, as well as the West Island connectors in that yellow gold. And you can see how the idea there is to really get people east, west, north, south, and those tech start roads, Park Road 22 And 361 are really important, whether you're talking about getting to Zaan or also to the Marco 37 Island. So how do we how do we get people around, give them options, and make them feel safe doing so while enjoying that leisurely pace that the island residents are so eager to promote. I'm just gonna include a sample. Again, the full document is in your packet, but Park Road 22 is one of the larger recommendations.

You could see we're looking at 14 foot, paths on both sides that would have, the ability for bicyclists and golf carts to share north and south, access on both sides as well as separated sidewalks since pedestrians are gonna be a lot slower. The idea here is to have those paths for bicycles and golf carts be limited to 15 miles per hour. So we know golf carts can go faster, but that would be the recommended speed limit. And if and overall, the desire on the island is to reduce the speed limit of Park Road 22 to 45 miles per hour from the current 55 miles per hour. And I know we discussed that a good bit here last summer, so that that recommendation is still in in the document.

Because we were making those specific recommendations for Park Road 22, we did bring Kimley Horn on board to help us with some preliminary engineering and design. The Don Patricio Bridge is what you're looking at right now. There is a lot of right of way there. So it does actually, without having to add anything in addition, it is able to have that bike lane slash golf cart lane separated from pedestrians, but it is one directional on each side. So going in the same direction as the vehicle traffic as opposed to two way.

And you can see it still maintains the two travel lanes for vehicles over the bridge. And then, of course, one of the big initiatives here on the island is being able to connect. And you can see we're kind of facing westward where the Whitecap Preserve is under construction, and below that is Lake Padre development. So this is the the new water exchange and the idea of how we get folks over, under, across, and connecting those two large developments coming online on the island, and how do we get people elsewhere on the island to those two developments. That's a lot of investment going on the island, and we wanna make sure we are capitalizing on that.

Just a couple of additional images and rendering. All of this is in that appendix, again, within your packet. And to summarize in terms of next steps, of course, last summer, both ISAC and planning commission recommended adoption with text amendments. Those text amendments have been incorporated. February 3 yesterday, ISAC, had this as an agenda item, and they're very eager to see the adoption process continue.

We're here today, again, for the public hearing and recommending action from this body, and we're on the agenda, which is published, February 10 for a public hearing and, action item for city council. And Creating CC is our website. We have a project website as well as a constant contact email listserv. You may have received that email. If you didn't, it probably went into your spam.

But you can check out creatingcc.com to see the updates after today's item. Tomorrow morning I'll go in and update that just to let folks know what this body's direction was today. But they've all received an email letting them know about these public hearings. Stand by for any questions. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you. Commissioner, should we have any questions? On

the the bridge, if you could go back to that slide for the pedestrian Can we get and golf carts.

The slideshow back up on the screen for everyone. That's fine.

The question that I have on that, that's not gonna require any additional construction because of the the I guess you have some some side lanes there. I guess it was a slide or two before that.

Oh, okay. This one.

Right. Right. You're

not gonna have to

widen the bridge at all.

You're just No. There's no widening the bridge. It was built with a lot of right of way. And then we also had them do some load analysis. So, there's there's some things that make engineers very happy in the back of that appendix.

So, all you'd doing is just narrowing the shoulder and utilizing it in a different way.

It's just reutilizing the space. Absolutely. There will be some need also currently. I will mention, it's been pointed out to us that pedestrians are using the bridge today currently as it is. So we'd like to provide a safer opportunity for that use. But there will be the need for that additional pedestrian safety fencing along the edges. That's not there today as well. But the idea is that they they took a really close look at that bridge to make sure the at least for initial feasibility that it is doable before we proceed with the recommendation.

Okay.

Thank you for the presentation. I just have a question. What is the anticipated build out on everything if this does get approved? Is this a long term project, or is this something

So there is an implementation plan included within the document as well. And as most of our planning initiatives do, we have identified short, mid, and long term. Usually short term is one to five years. Mid is that five to ten time frame, and beyond that is long term. These are living documents, so we know that as things change on the ground, that document will also need to be revisited.

I will point out that ISAC is very involved in making recommendations as part of their work for upcoming bond programs. TERs number two on the island. So really, there's gonna be quite a few different pots of money that can be used, even grants in the future potentially. Adopting the plan helps pursue grant opportunities. Just for the record, it's one of the reasons it's important to do these things.

But it it it is going to be staged over time. And within the document, we've included in our recommendations for some of the for the city streets, all have an interim recommendation as well as a long term recommendation. So the interim recommendation is intended to be executed without a full reconstruction. So you can add on a lot of the right of way areas where pedestrians can walk with some paint and some bollards or some armadillas on the ground to help differentiate where people can walk safely and separate it from traffic. Also, golf carts on any street that's 35 miles or less can be in the traffic lanes.

So, there are a few recommendations for reducing some of those speed limits. So, to make sure that we allow that and make sure it's safe for everybody.

So as of right now, our golf cart's just only not allowed on streets that are above 35 miles an hour? Is that the city?

That that that's the state.

State. Okay.

That's that's state. Gotcha. Now, whether or not they do it. Wow. So Mhmm.

Thank you.

Okay. Any other questions for Steph? I mean, for the I just wanted to say ask something. I'm just curious curious to know. Since this thing started back in 2023 and I know that's been a while, so here we are beginning of almost 2026. I did notice there is some you know, you do have the public open house for the people to come and give their input and what it is that they would like to see in their neighborhood and things like that. And you also had online surveys. On all of that information and the fact that this presentation is nothing different from the previous presentation that was given to us. Right?

Correct.

Okay. So has there been any other of the people coming up and asking if what y'all have planned out, if there's anything that was added to it or changed or something that they were commenting on. Because I'm just curious to know, like, I know that y'all did a lot of the open houses and get a lot of feedback, but this is happening all over Mhmm. Corpus on all the things that Corpus has going on. And I think the public information that they give for that neighborhood that they're gonna be living in is really important for the plan.

Right. And with that, I just wanted to find out if the information and the the that that the public was giving you if you if you were able to accommodate some of those suggestions and and fulfill them.

So the plan as recommended back in the summer and the same one that you're seeing today, is based on that public information. It started with what do folks on the island wanna see. I know it's gonna be shocking to hear that people wanna drive their golf cart all over, you know, but that is that was the a big task that was set to to us. Same thing with Park Road 22. People did wanna be want to be able to access the businesses on Park Road 22 than necessarily having to get into their automobile and navigate.

So, again, that's one of the reasons we did take that extra time from when the document and the process was handed over to us at planning to make sure that we can get some recommendations and get TxDOT on board with those recommendations and meet with TxDOT on a couple different occasions.

Yes. I totally understand. And the safety of the people is really important especially on that area since we are a tourist city, you know, and everybody likes to go out there with their toys, with their big toys. So I just was curious to know because I'm always interested in hearing what the public has to say Yeah. On any growth

in Sydney. And and the island's an interesting geography. Right? They have the island moon newspaper. They're very connected in terms of communication on the island. And so there are I don't think there are any secrets on the island.

No. It looks great. I I I think I think this presentation is great. I'm I'm excited.

I will add that that constant contact email, gosh, I wanna say it was 600 plus, maybe it was 800. And now I'm blanking. I'm sorry. But it was a large number

of

individuals who have signed up to get updates and received those updates. So

Well, I commend y'all for doing this because I know that's a lot of work back from 2023 to now. You have come a long ways and hopefully this will be wrapped up pretty soon where y'all can get this thing started.

We're on the agenda for February 10. I have to agree with you.

Okay. Sounds good. Any other questions? Okay. If not, then I'll go ahead and I'll open up the public hearing and discussion for item five. If anyone like to come and speak on item five. If not, then I'll go ahead and close it and entertain a motion for further discussion.

Just a procedural question. What's the proper motion? Is it that we recommend or that we So I'll make a motion that we recommend the Padre Mustang Island Mobility Plan as presented.

Second. I

have a motion and a second. All those in favor?

Aye.

All those opposed? Motion passes.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to director's report.

No report tonight.

No report and nothing on the future agenda. Then we are adjourned.