Board of Zoning Adjustment - Special Meeting

Okay, we can call the meeting to order. Call this meeting to order. This is a special uh planning commission meeting here on uh February the 5th, 2026. Uh we do have one item to consider this morning. It's a public hearing item and uh we'll ask the chair to go through this item and we'll move around.

Okay. Uh good morning. First and foremost, I want to thank you all for coming. Um, I want to give credit to my team for putting it together and making this happen last minute as well. And I apologize if I missed you on the invite, but that won't happen again. But I appreciate everyone for showing up. Um, I will say that this is one of those meetings where we're trying to improve our customer service and help people expedite if they have some, you know, exterial situations or what haven't you going on. In this case, this applicant, Mr. P is trying to close on a piece of property and it can't happen until it's reszoned. So, we'll go through the case. So, this is uh reszoning 1444-26. It's 12.43 acres. It's currently zone community commercial. The applicant is Dylan P. It is located at 1319 Piscal Road SE Southeast. And the request is to reszone 12.43 43 plus or minus from community commercial to residential single family estate. There are no conditions to be met and of course the point of information is that any relocation of utilities will be at the owner's expense and any relocation needs to occur before construction. Um we have spoken with Mr. Pate and I want you all to understand this background information. Mr. P owns all the property surrounding his property as well and it's insulated with that community commercial, but he does own the large piece of real estate with the acreage. So, from the planning standpoint, we will recommend approving the zoning.

Sure. Since this is a public hearing, we'll take public comments uh starting now. Uh if you will come forward, state your name if you're a citizen of or resident educator and uh make your comments. Do we have a signing sheet? We'll get a piece of paper. Yeah, I'll sign a signing sheet. All right.

Uh just like Chad said, thank you guys very much for meeting today. I know it's kind of short notice, but my name's Dylan Pate and I've been through this process before with you guys. Kent kind of walked me through what I needed to do and to leave it zone B2. So that's what I've done. I actually had the back portion of this property annexed into the city when we did the original zoning and that was supposed to suffice for everything because B2 is a catchall as he put it and I could get a variance to build a house. So I did that, got the variance, built the house, completed construction about a month and a half ago. were in the house and I'm running into an issue getting a mortgage on it because it's getting kicked back out of underwriting saying that the variance isn't necessarily transferable. So, if the house were to burn down, I'd have to get a new variance and there's no guarantee that I could get a new variance to build another residence there. So, they don't like that. They want it zoned to residential in order to get a mortgage on it. So it's kind of where I am kind of stuck if you will. So that's kind of Kent told me to just come up here and try to get it resone R1e.

All right, that's basically all I have. Y'all have any questions for me?

No, ma'am. Just the one. Mhm. And I want to leave the front acreage commercial just in case. It's got Highway 31 road frontage. So I don't want that zone residential. That needs to stay commercial in in case in the future somebody wants to come in and do something with that. So can I ask that question? So you own the the lights in front of it? Yes, sir. Okay. So how about the 1321 lot? Is that your That's the one That's a cemetery. Okay. Yeah. And then it backs right up to the refuge. Yes, sir. surrounded by refuge on the back and and south side.

I believe part of those lots in the back there are not incorporated into the city. All right. Uh anyone else here wish to speak to the side? Good morning. Good morning, Mike Farooqi, Decatur, Alabama, resident. Um I can I walk over here and can you all understand what I'm saying? Sure.

Yeah. Because I know some of you are new and uh and I've had this discussion with many of you previously. Um and I the reason I'm only here is is because number one and I understand your point. You want to rush this through. Um and it's really not a rush because I've been down there when the first notice came out and I drove my motorcycle down and I looked this area. No problem. Right. But here's the problem, and this goes back to how we relay information. I've never seen this when you call this special counsel meeting. This does not exist on the website for the city, this information here. So, nobody else but me had any concerns about this as an issue. So, I would ask you when you relay these information or you have these special call meetings, the very first question, I understand customer service, but notification of this is a problem. If we're not going to share why we're having this, why do we have a special called council meeting for this event today? What would be the the harm in going to a naturally scheduled meeting versus a special called meeting? And I understand your concerns. Absolutely.

I can explain myself on that point also. So that's the first question. Yes, sir. Why do we call these things? The second question is notification. So notification I I saw the signs. The signs originally put down here, right, for notification of this property being reszoned when they originally put the signs up. Yeah, I believe so. I believe they're put down there.

Right. So, if unless you lived on this little road here, and I don't know if there was notification because the requirement is 500 ft. So, I don't know if anybody who lives within 500 ft of your property had any concerns, but the part the zoning regulation which y'all approved and the city approved still would allow very few people to have any inner understanding about what's going on because the question you just asked is are you going to build more homes? That question was never answered in any meeting prior to this one. And I felt pretty confident that one house, no problem. This could have been how many acres is this? 12 acres. 12 and a half. Yes, sir.

Okay. That could be a lot of houses cuz I live on Central and Central's been built up with a whole bunch of houses. In fact, more being built as we speak. So, the impact on the neighborhood in this case, minimal could be more. And it goes back to the process of how we approve and why we don't notify people about what's going on their own footprint. Now, if I'm not mistaken, none of you are in in district three. Is that correct? I've been asking that before. So nobody has any idea on the impact of this within the city planning directorate and we don't have a district 3 representative here to say yeah barely I cross I go up this road all the time. So the process in terms of having a firm understanding needs to be looked at. Now Chad what I would say to you is

a can I can I continue? Okay please. Um the last thing and I've made this comment several times. This is the area of operations. You have a very good footprint of the area of operations. What you don't show the public is the impact of the area of interest. A broader view. Where is this property? For anybody who doesn't know, and maybe most of you don't know, but this property is right in my neighborhood. I go this road every single day. And so having an understanding for the public on Highway 31 south and north, there's a traffic light up here. This is a hill actually as you go up. So there's an impact potentially with a bunch of residents popping in here if

Excuse me. Yes, sir. He's wrapping up. Yeah, one more minute. I appreciate that. Um, so just having a broader perspective on what's actually happening in the footprint. I appreciate my time. Thank you. Sure. All right. Oh, yeah. Anyone else here wish to speak to this item? But you did notification.

Yes. When we put out the signs, the signs don't go on the property. We don't put it on 31. They might see it on 31, but we do it cuz you if you put it on 31, they going to think that property being resigned. So, we put it on the property that's being resigned and the people who go down the road are the people who going to be affected the most. Those are the ones we see. So, that does right on that. We want the person who stand on that road the road and see and they get the signification in the letter and within 500 ft they get the letter as well.

And the whole the whole point of it is that it's primarily for the people that are immediately adjacent to the property and who has a vested interest like you know we wouldn't expect someone from another part of town. Well, as a planner though, from the perspective of traffic flow, if 12 new acres were built up there and a new subdivision was going to be built there, that would have an impact larger than just this one family res. Correct. So, having that visibility and understanding and notification process a little bit broader would be helpful to the community.

That's a and if that happens, there'll have to be a plant come to the planning commission subdivided. So, there's another whole process. Well, does the plat have to come in this with the same package? Because I've seen several times where that doesn't happen. Drainage, it comes with the road layout. It comes with a lot with the whole civil. Yes, a lot involved in that. Is the plat then cuz I've seen several reasonings like this from one to another and I've not seen any plats whatsoever and you guys approve. Sometimes the line is for a subdivision. If it was going to be subdivided and subdivision built on it, it had to come to

a layout subdivision layout. It'd have to go through four or five different steps before he could there would be a do study. There would be a water study drain study. There's a lot that goes into doing because I looked at doing stuff on Highway 31 road frontage.

It gets really difficult when you start doing that. You got to spend a lot of money to even get to the starting point of of building out there. The first thing would be a DOT study and they're going to make you put a turnout lane. They would never allow a neighborhood back there because it is a small road. PisGA is that doesn't have any kind of deceleration lane. So, what's back there is pretty much all they're ever going to allow without putting an acceleration lane or a turnout lane at the bottom there on 31. Right. So, I've gone through that with Pew, right? And Richard's helped me through it, but uh cost too much money for me. So, I can't do it, you know. So, all right. Uh I'm assume we Nobody else had any more public comments. I think we got everybody here. So, okay. We've got this item before us. Is there a motion among the commission here on this side?

I'd like to make a motion to approve presented. Motion by Mr. Terry. Second motion. Second by Mr. Moer. Any discussion among the commission? I have a question. Okay, Mr. Bur. Um, you sent notices out to the people surrounding. Did you get any responses? No, we did not. Uh, and that's a requirement by law. We have to do that every time we have a reasonzoning. That's a state law. So, okay. Yeah. Okay. Any more questions?

No question. Just a just a comment though to Mr. Fury's um remark notification on the website. Found myself in the opposition of actually agreeing. We probably could have and should try to get the agendas published on the website before we had the meetings. I don't think it was published, was it? We we we had time constraint stuff like that. We had to put out a notification about this meeting in order to have it, right? But as far as the information was about, that kind of stuff, we we send it to the newspaper and they advertise it and publish it and and

but to point on the website for a citizen to be able to pull it down. Again, I opposition agreeing with this rookie that yeah, we probably could and should do better job getting that posted up. Understand the tax on the city website. We could talk with the legal and see if that's something we can do. Yeah, potentially. We do it for our normal meetings. Okay. For special meetings so citizens can, you know, go to the website. That's where I go, you know, and pull down that information and stuff. So, but um other than that, I'm good. Okay. Anyone else have any questions, comments? All right. Will you call roll, please? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Okay. Okay. So, let's approve seven approved seven to 0. And I think that concludes our agenda today. Thank you for showing up. We're dismissed. What's your name? Mike. Where do you live? I was not yet. I haven't been down.