Zoning Hearing Board - Regular Meeting

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I will call the meeting to order. Uh this is the November 18th uh planning commission meeting for the city of Erie. First item is a roll call. Call the roll call. Sure. Chair Richard Spiker here. Vice Chair Colin Russ here. Commissioner Carl Anderson, Commissioner Jason Lzoric here, Commissioner Douglas Bizari here, Director Jaclyn Spry, and Assistant Planner and Secretary Coopermore. I'm here.

Okay. Uh, first uh item of business is approval of last month's meeting, the October 21st, 2025 meeting minutes. Motion to approve. Second. a motion and a second. All in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Thank you. Uh Cooper, do we have any public comment or correspondence? We have not received any public comment or correspondence.

Thank you. Item uh four old business. There being none in the agenda, I assume there's nothing. Okay, move on. New business. Item A, subdivision and land development. Item small A, SAS grass extension. Yeah. A short presentation.

Good afternoon. How are you doing? Good afternoon. Ashley Porter, Porter Consulting Engineers here on behalf of the Western Pennsylvania Port Authority. And what we're looking at on the screen is the uh dedication plan for Sasra Street Extension [clears throat] from the Bayfront Parkway to West Front Street. This is uh the roadway that was reconstructed with new walkways, lighting, and landscaping a couple years ago. And now there's been communication between the city of area and the port authority to formally dedicate that roadway. And this is simply the dedication plan for that that activity.

Okay. Any commissioners have uh questions for Mr. Porter? If there are no questions forward pretty straightforward. Pretty straightforward. All right. Uh can I have a motion? Motion to approve. Third. Okay, we have a motion and a second and a third. Um, all in favor signify by saying I. Thank you. Thank you very much. You bet.

Next item be 224 Woodbrier Lane. Uh, my name is Jeff Kder. um 1347 Southshore Drive. Um my wife and I purchased a home that is on two parcels, the house being on the parcel cut off on the top of the drawing there and the backyard is the second parcel. Uh when we purchased the house, it had a pre-existing fence and landscape along the southern edge of the backyard that made it look like where the property line was. When we had it surveyed, the property line was actually 10 feet further than the fence, uh, 10 feet closer to the neighbor's house, Marty Isert's house. So, we, um, decided we didn't need that yard beyond the fence. So, we are selling it to the Iserts, uh, 10 ft plus that angle back to the original property corner line, and we are in for a minor subdivision. Okay. Motion to approve.

A second. Second. Motion and a second. Is there any other questions or discussion? If not, all in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Thank you.

Thank you. [bell] All right. Well, moving on. There's no reasonzoning items. No waterfront conditional use items. No blighted property designations. No. Whoa. Item E, salo fee resolution. Um, someone want to speak to that?

Yeah, I can give a little um a little update. This is not an action item. This is an update. Um we are considering well we've proposed new fees for the salo process for subdivisions and land developments. Um council will be considering the fees at the meeting tomorrow night. Um and we have in looking at neighboring municipalities um and two other cities of a similar size across the state um have put together some new numbers um that we think are um more update and modern and in line with these other municipalities. Um so the the page you have has both the existing and then proposed fees and on the screen um I have some comparisons to these other municipalities um just for reference. So the left column if that's big enough the city of Eur's existing fees on the right is our proposed fees and in the middle are the fees of the other municipalities. Um and I'm not going to go through these line by line unless you'd like to. Um but just to show that we are are pretty much in line or um very closely in line with these other municipalities.

I mean respectfully a thousand is double out in town and I mean almost triple what we're at currently. I is there an expectation that the increased fees will translate into faster processing or that we'll be able to commit to delivering approvals, rejections, whatever in a faster timeline. So that when we look at time value of money, we're jacking up prices quite substantially for in most cases.

But what is a developer? What is a homeowner looking to build or you know their forever home? What are they getting out of paying substantially more? Cuz I I see this as only adding to the cost of building which is not what we need to be doing. So I I'll perhaps I I don't know if you can speak to what the h how this does anything or what what will be accomplished beyond just increasing the the cost of developing more housing.

Sure. Um yeah so these are are partly um well I should have opened part of the update is is to change some of the actual fees based on the salo amendments. um now that we consider subdivisions and land developments different um the subdivision by waiver is gone. So some of the updates are just to address that sort of thing. Um some of the increases are to you know cover the time of of all the reviewers um and then also hopefully we can invest in some more modern review tools um that will streamline and speed up the process for these reviews. Um, right now we're doing it all by hand, but we're developing an online application so that someone could submit um a subdivision or land development through this portal. Um, and it would track all the information for us. They could just pay online and then and then it would really cut down on um the back and forth and the reviews um and all the time we're spending to process these applications and make sure that everything's there. So there's [snorts] a hope that the money will go towards that or has there been anything that has stated specifically any additional increase in fees collected will go specifically to tools and resources that expedite approvals and review.

There hasn't been anything that specifically has stated that but that's the goal. I guess my concern would be the ratio of the cost between the minor and the major subdivision. Like using the example we just saw, you know, charge somebody $500 for moving a property line to face the realities of a fence compared to a major subdivision. We have a $50 million development. It's weird that there'd be a $500 differential between such scales of projects. Yeah, I guess going off that may Can you speak at all to how these numbers were arrived at rather than just in being in somewhere related to other municipalities? Is there a some sort of more I guess more empirical rhyme or reason behind it and I don't mean to put you on the spot. I'm just No, this is piggy backing off that. Um yeah, I mean so we we are working with a consultant from Michael Baker as you know um and we've talked with him about fees and these these updates to the salo. Um and I think the fees are probably as old as the original salo. Um at least several decades old. Um and so it was it was recommended that we consider new fees. Um, I looked at a number of of these neighboring municipalities to make sure that we weren't kind of crazy out of line with Mil Creek Summit and Harbor Creek. Um, as well as Allentown and and Reading, Pennsylvania. Um, and and a [snorts] lot of it was averaging the numbers. Um, the minor subdivision, most other municipalities that we were looking at across the state, even some that that I didn't include in here, um, we're including a number by lot. Um, so we decided to move forward with that

sort of example there. Um, some of the some of the numbers I think for Reading specifically, they're charging more than $4,000 for some of their for some of their fees. Um, so to arrive at the numbers, I mean, we we just did a comparison and sort of averaged out what seemed relevant.

Do you mind if I just speak quickly? Um, We also talked with public works as you know you the commission has not been due to the current of the existing what was the existing land development is not coming in front of the planning commission or following [snorts] sort of any workflow. So there's a new established workflow and process and when we spoke with public works all all situations will vary for land development but it it might be possible that it might take public works three days or engineering three days to review a major land. So we didn't necessarily look at you know hourly rate because it's difficult because situation is um is different. But just generally in terms of time um associated with an hourly rate, it seemed like we were in line with what the other municipalities were doing and probably under to be honest with you in terms of the amount of times and iterations that have to go through plans for minor and major. So um you know this the existing southern in 1989. Um I think J probably looked at these over the years but I'm not sure

it's occasionally but I don't think the fee schedule's been changed at least not

can you can you show us a few more of those comps that aren't the local ones like the cities of comparable size to us uh apologies for whatever more um additional detail, but there's cost to advertise as well. Um if we have writing, but that's not necessarily,

but let's let's use reading as a comp for a second. Four 4,000 for a major land development sounds more in line with the ratio than a $500 difference between the minor and major. Like, if we're going to increase them, shouldn't we be in line with a a peer city? Like I don't Summit Township is great but harbor creek they're not really true comps to the city of very our scale and density is different the scale of developments is different and I'm advocating that the ratio should be greater. Yeah, it seems I mean 500 it's less [clears throat] about the dollar amount there. It's they're so close together for what are substantially different asks or at least in my mind that should be expectation. You're giving major developments a massive discount.

Um the major would have to submit both of those those fees. I hear what you're saying, but they would do the the preliminary and then the final as well. So, combined the the two there. So, the the major subdivision would be at least $1,750 plus the lots. Yeah. If somebody spending assuming, you know, we're in millions of dollars in the major development range, $5,000 is not even a full percentage point. versus moving a lot. It's not going to kill a job to for the city to be fairly compensated.

I'm curious. Sorry.

I I think we we wanted to establish come up to some kind of benchmark at this point and revisit next year. I mean, we we've looked in cities that have, you know, their major is $4,000 um just for preliminary, I believe. Um we felt that making that kind of hike from, you know, $300 was was a lot and we wanted to kind of have a bit of a more gradual. I wouldn't call what we're going into as gradual, but at least we can visited um in the following year. Um we did that the same with the historic preservation fees as well. Um we thought we would start out somewhat more reasonable and then if it needed to be an additional height we will look at that on an annual basis. So I I guess going up

it's also comparable sorry it's also comparable to what our like Cooper said to our neighboring our neighboring municipalities which to me a developer is not going to look at $4,000 increase what's happening in Summit or several thousand increase

I don't think we're trying to attract the same development that Summit is. Yeah, they're they're not building the same thing. I I guess real quickly, you mentioned you have something to revisit next year. Was there any discussion about rather than making this something that has to be revisited, treating it as a you know annual cost of living adjustment or you know some built-in mechanism that it just each year adjusts accordingly with price increases, price changes so that we can actually have something a bit more sustainable rather than making it has to be approved each and every time.

I think we're looking more on the cost of the internal versus instead of cost of living. But I don't I don't that was that was not brought up. That's fine. But yeah, we're looking mainly about how much time is taking internally to go through steps. Do we have those numbers by any chance? Do we have those numbers? I know you said that they range, but is there any benchmarking as to how long these those activities take?

Yeah, I mean, as as they start coming in, I know Cooper sometimes is spending days on just working with the developer going back and forth process, you know, it's going to have a better idea of that going forward for next year to as we as we Hold on.

No. Well, [clears throat] as you're working on applications, um are you keeping uh our city departments keeping track of the time spent expended towards particular applications and tasks? I mean knowing what kind of activities are encompassed in uh and accomplishing uh approvals would be important going forward to have some understanding of the the amount of effort involved and

I mean I can say from uh Jason and I'm sure in our professional lives we are used to keeping minute time records of activities expended towards stuff. Yeah, we are beginning to track things in more detail that way. Um I have a large spreadsheet um to track all of these all of these projects and the date we get it and when we start reviewing it. Um and pass it off to other departments. Um but like for example, we pass it off to the engineering department and they have 30 days if needed,

right? Um, so we're we're asking them to um get a little more granular than just at the end of 30 days have it back and say the review's done. Um, but that's also hopefully something that an online application could be into track for us. Um, and cut down on the time we're spending on that if it can just tell us when we got things and who forward it and we can build in things for other reviewers to say, "Spend three hours on this. Thanks." Great. Have the other reviewers been receptive to that ask for, hey, can you give us a more realistic time taken for the review, not just at the end of 30 days?

Mhm. Yeah. And we haven't had this process um fully completed yet because we just passed these amendments and things. Um but we have a major land development that I think will probably be before the commission next month. um that's currently in the in the review stages that we're we're kind of going through all this with. Um and when this is going to be considered by council tomorrow evening. Tomorrow. Yep.

Okay. Any other questions or thoughts? Thank you. Um item six, Department of Planning and Neighborhood Resources updates. Nothing today. Okay, there being no other business.

Move to second. A motion and a second. All in favor? I Heat. [music] Hey, Heat.