Town Council - Regular Meeting

yeah a fall oh and we can start to hear each other now i heard you even this is good stuff thank you mr mercer good good work there uh let's start out by calling the roll please mayor gupton here

Mayor Pro Tem Dellinger?

Here.

Council Member Matthews? Here. Council Member Singleton? Here. Council Member Stallings? Here. And Council Member Vance?

Here. It's my honor this evening to be able to lead the Pledge of Allegiance and have an invocation. So let's start with the Pledge of Allegiance. If you're able, please stand. I mentioned to you in the past that I learned in the third grade about the thought for the day from my teacher, Mrs. Bass, and I think about that a lot, the thought for the day. And my thought for today, I learned it last Friday. It dawned on me as I was at the 9-11 celebration that you'll hear more about perhaps later. Our chief of police and our fire chief came together and put that together with lots of volunteer help. And of all the stories of sacrifice and heroism that I heard, the one thing I remember about that day was it was the start of some unity in America. We united to fight a common enemy. And I'd just like to ask each one of you to please look for the things that you have in common with your neighbors. Look for the things you can agree on instead of the things you disagree on. Because it doesn't take but about five minutes to learn there's something you disagree with with any person that you talk to. But look for the positive side. Look for the things that bring us together. Help us work united and keep Garner a great place to be. So thank you for what you're doing. That being said, we need a motion to adopt the agenda this evening. Is there such a motion? So moved. Second. Motion by Mr. Vance, second by Mr. Stallings. All in favor of adopting the agenda, please signify by saying aye. Aye. any opposed by nay hearing none that passes unanimously thank you there and item c is a presentation this evening uh is i think it might be a little bit of a surprise presentation at least we hope that it is is for our deputy town clerk did you trick her into staying oh yes you tricked her into staying over there i got to tell you before i tell you about what we're recognizing for i have to tell you my first encounter with stella when i first came on this on this team about almost three years ago and and stella the main clerk let me know that there's a deputy clerk and she had been looking for over a year for the right person and i said something really silly like well maybe you set your goals too high maybe you're looking for a unicorn and she said i beg your pardon i know what i need in this job and i'm going to find the person that fits this just right but good luck with all that It wasn't long before she found Rebecca, and it was the unicorn we were looking for. Thank you for overriding my immaturity and making a good decision. You did the right thing. What we're recognizing Rebecca for tonight is that she is receiving her North Carolina Certified Municipal Certificate and her Master of Municipal Clerks Certification from the International Institute of Municipal Clerks. This is a very rare achievement. Only about 20% of the clerks in North Carolina have achieved this. It's the highest possible achievement available to clerks. So we want to express congratulations to Rebecca for these prestigious certifications and for the work you do every day. If you would please join me right over here for just a moment, there's another part of this. mentor gave you that. The person who overrode my immaturity. Me and you and the flowers are going to be there. Okay.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Mayor Gupton and council, Stella and Jody, John, Matt. It is my great honor to be the deputy clerk for the town. I take my job seriously. Maybe sometimes I'm a little too serious about it, but I'm very proud to work for the town of Garner and I'm very proud to have received these certificates and hope that I continue to make you all very proud.

Certainly no presentation is complete without a photo op. Thanks for your patience on that. And that takes us over to item D this evening, which is petitions and comments. And it's always good to read the little disclaimer here that leads into this. This portion of the meeting is to receive comments from the public on items not included in this agenda regarding matters germane to town policies, or business or subjects within the town's real or apparent jurisdiction. Individuals or group spokespersons must sign up with the town clerk prior to the start of the meeting. The council is interested in hearing your concerns but will not take action or deliberate on subject matter brought up during the petitions and comments segments. topics requiring further investigation will be referred to the appropriate town officials our staff and may be scheduled for a future agenda each speaker is limited to three minutes and who do we have signed up to speak this evening this evening we have one speaker his name is ricky pierce mr pierce approach the podium please i think you know to introduce yourself name and address

Good evening. I'm Ricky Pierce. I live at 1810 Vandora Springs Road here in Garner. I've called Garner my home for almost 75 years. Just a little over two months ago, or about two months ago, this budget, the town approved a budget of $97.5 million. It's grown a little bit since when I was... started out paying attention to what was going on, but I understand. I'm a businessman. I've run a business with nearly 400 employees in many facilities, buildings, and equipment, and so much more. I understand the cost of running something as large as a town. In my earlier career, I, with my father, ran a very successful roofing business. We covered thousands of homes in this area. I wasn't a policy nerd or a shoe salesman. I was a real businessman. We had a sterling reputation for getting things done. I didn't have the benefit of having any tax money coming my way. We did it with ourselves. We also approved a 2.5 cent tax increase. I understand that. Things are going. We all got our recent tax bill. The Town of Garner's portion of that, the county's bill was half of what the total bill was. My tax bill coming up is $2,565.67. Mr. Matthews, yours is $2,841.85. I'm sure you've looked and you know that. Mr. Singleton, yours is $2,800.65. And $883.30. Mr. Vance, yours is $3,063.30. Mayor Gupton, yours is $4,371.48. And Mr. Hodges, yours is $3,005.64. But I forgot a couple of you. Mr. Dellinger, yours is zero. Mr. Stallings, yours is zero. Must be nice to increase people's taxes on everybody else, but not pay any yourself. You two don't contribute one dime to the salaries of our firemen, our police officers, our first responders, or any of the people that run this town. You don't even contribute to pay a portion of your own $9,500 a year salary. You don't put anything into the pot, but you have no problem taking things out. While your fellow board members may be comfortable with this, I have a problem with it, and many others do too. I guess that qualifies you two as moochers. Definition of a mooch is someone who takes advantage of other people's generosity by getting food, money, or items without paying or giving back anything. Mr. Dellinger, you're in your second term. You haven't done anything as far as contributing back. You can find no evidence of that. Something needs to be done about this to make sure that nobody seeks this board again without being a property owner. In closing, I'm going to mention something. Today is the one-year anniversary of the death of Joe Sample. Many of you knew Joe personally. I've known him since he came to town. We all miss him. He was a good man. Wish he was here today to keep things under control. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Pierce. Appreciate your comments. Was there anyone else signed up to speak?

No, sir.

Okay. That takes us to item E in our agenda, which is the consent agenda. This evening, there were about nine different items on there. Typically, these are of a little more administrative or routine nature, but some of them may be necessary to remove from the consent agenda and have a separate individual discussion on instead of just approving them. Is there a motion to move any of these items to a full discussion?

Mr. Mayor, I move we approve the consent agenda with exceptions of item four and six and add those items to the agenda just before section F, public hearings.

Okay. Is there a second to that motion? Second. Okay. Motion by Mr. Dellinger and second by Mr. Stallins to delete items four and six, take them off of the consent agenda for further discussion, and to approve the remaining. If there's no other discussion or items to be removed, we'll take a voice vote. All in favor of approving the consent agenda minus those two items, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, we pass that motion. And now we will take a look at item four and then item six for individual discussion. And Mr. Dellinger, since you picked out item number four, if you could give us a little background or your thoughts or what kind of things should we be considering as we consider this particular item?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is a budget amendment for White Deer Park improvements. There's a budget amendment proposal for $110,000 to cover additional work required at White Deer Park. An additional 32,000 indicated by Wake County meet health and safety standards in order to permit the splash pad for use as well as increased costs associated with the playground. I just pulled this item for information from staff on the nature of those increases and also to get us in the practice of pulling some of these budget amendments on a regular basis to present them publicly.

Thank you very much. And I think you were the second Mr. Stella. Any comments or observations on that?

No comments.

Okay. We'll pass on down. Mr. Singleton, any ideas, thoughts, comments?

Well, just the fact that we're having to spend an additional $32,000 on Wake County to meet health and safety standards for the splash pad. The splash pad just opened up four months ago. So the concern is... Why do we have to do it so soon after it opened? Why do we have to have this expenditure for that project? Because I know we've had issues with the splash pad.

Thank you. Mr. Matthews, questions, comments?

No questions. All I can say is I go back quite frequently just to see how things are doing. And the splash pad is a very popular place from people in Garner and around the area. So it does get a workout. But other than that, I have no questions.

Okay, and let's go to Mr. Vance to complete the first round of questions. Questions or comments, sir? No questions. Okay, let's go to town staff.

Yes, good evening, Mayor, members of council. I'll ask our Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Resources Director. Yes. to come up and provide some more detailed information. Both budget amendments that council's seeing on these capital projects are to close out these projects. And so the things that you're seeing now have already occurred and need to occur and either to finish projects or complete projects moving forward. And I'm gonna turn it over to Maria. So Maria. Yeah.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. The amendment includes a couple of items. One is what you mentioned, Mr. Singleton, costs related to obtaining the Wake County permit. Those were actually expenses that were incurred before the splash pad opened, which is needed to do some additional work to meet the requirements of Wake County to obtain the permit. So that is not some work that we have done in addition to. It was work that was done to wrap up the project. The other sort of balance of the amendment has to do with the cost for the construction of the sort of all the dirt work and concrete and everything that's going on around the replacement playground. Those bits came in higher than the estimate, the engineer estimate. So as we wrap up the project, we just wanted to make sure that the amounts were balanced.

Thank you. Let's have another round of questions or comments from council. No further questions. Mr. Tellinger, questions? Mr. Singleton? Mr. Vance, any other questions, comments? No questions. Is there anything else staff would like to add to this right here? Okay. Is there a motion to pass this particular item as well?

I'll move that we approve ordinance 2026-5387A, which amends the FY27 project ordinance.

Second. Okay, there's a motion by Mr. Delliger and a second by Mr. Stallings to approve this item. Is there any further discussion from council? hearing none let's call for a voice vote all those in favor of passing this particular item please signify by saying aye aye any opposed by nay hearing none that passes unanimously thanks for the discussion thanks for the good information always worth looking into and mr delinger i think you also mentioned number six pull that out for discussion

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is a budget amendment for Rand Mill Road improvements. It is a budget amendment of $300,000 required to cover increased costs associated with utility relocations and rock stabilization adjacent to the stormwater control measures for the Rand Mill Road improvements. So I had just a question on this. Again, kind of in keeping with the budget amendment monitoring. How much of the original budget was this amendment?

Okay, let's see if there's some other questions or comments, and then we'll have staff reply. I think, is that one of the major questions? You want to put another question out?

One at a time.

Okay, very good. Any other questions or comments, Mr. Singleton?

I would like to know the original budget and also what the contingency was, because we're going $300,000 above the budget. I'm assuming that we spent the contingency, too, and how much was that?

Mr. Matthews? No, sir. Mr. Vance? No questions. Let's hear from staff.

Yes, Mayor. I'll ask our town engineer, Ms. Harrison, if she'll come up. She can provide an update on the project and the additional costs associated with the project.

Good evening. Okay, so the original construction contract for this project was around 1.9 million dollars. The contingency during construction, we usually put about 10%, so we had just under $200,000 for contingency in this. The overages are related to several discoveries that we've made during construction. So as you can probably imagine, downtown is an area where you are prone to Finding things that you didn't know were there because it's a lot of old infrastructure. And so the costs are really associated with a handful of discoveries during construction. First were several of the roof drains of the buildings that are on Main Street adjacent to where the parking lot will be were tied into pipes that ran under the where the proposed parking lot would be. We didn't know those pipes were there. So we had to relocate them essentially because we don't want that running under the pavement long term. The second increase was due to coordination with the railroad. As you all are aware, all of Main Street is within the railroad right-of-way corridor, and so we have to have a right of entry for our contractor for them. In that process, they required that we potentially have a flagging operation for any work we do in Main Street, which was not relayed to us during design and was not anticipated because all of our work is on the other side of a fence from the actual tracks. So we have an additional cost for that. We also have a 12-inch water main that was not as deep as it was thought to be. and so we had to take some measures we thought we were going to have to lower it we ended up being able to come up with a solution to provide flowable fill on top so that we didn't have to lower it so additional cost but not as as much as moving the whole water line would be there were also two water services that were discovered that were unknown so those both had to be relocated And one of the big cost increases was once they started digging, we've found a lot of rock, a lot of really big rock. And so there's additional costs associated with removing the rock. There would also be additional costs associated with hauling the rock away, a lot of it. So we are trying to use what we can on site, including one of the things that was mentioned in the In the item, there is a kind of a swale ditch that's just at the bottom of the slope near the SCM that has eroded and is in need of some rehabilitation anyway, so we're going to use some of the rock on site to stabilize that, which ends up actually being less cost than taking it off site. So those are the major cost items. The budget amendment that is before you does include a little bit more than the base cost for those specific items because we are hoping not to have to come back for another amendment if something else small in the course of the project comes up. Anything that of course is not used at the end of the day will revert back to its original source after the project is completed.

Thank you. Back to you, Mr. Dellinger. Other questions, comments?

No further questions.

Okay. Any other questions from council? Mr. Vance, any other questions? Well, hearing none, if there's no other information you want to give on that, I'll ask, is there a motion to approve item number six? So move. Second. Motion by Mr. Vance and second by Mr. Stallings to approve item number six here from the consent agenda. If there's no other questions or comments, I'll call for a voice vote on this one. All in favor of approving this ordinance. Please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. Thank you very much for the good information and the good questions. We're talking about big bucks. It always bears good scrutiny. Thank you. That brings us to item F on the agenda, public hearings. And I get to read another nice disclaimer or explanatory note here at the beginning. of public hearings or legislative hearings which do not require sworn testimony. However, all persons interested in speaking must sign up with the town clerk. Town staff will present a brief presentation followed by the applicant and other persons who wish to comment on the item will be recognized to speak. Council requests groups of individuals with the same position to designate a representative to speak for the group. Each member of the public wishing to speak will be limited to three minutes. That being said, the first item is 1.1. This is a Tier 2 conditional rezoning request, SINCAR Properties, and our presenter here will be our Planner 1 from our Planning Department, Jamiah Ryans.

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, Mayor. Good evening, council members. Tonight, I will be presenting CZMP 26003, same car property zoning amendment. This request is being applied for by John Frazier of FLM Engineering. The owners are Sincar Properties, LLC. They are doing a tier two conditional district rezoning to rezone approximately 3.75 acres from light industrial to light industrial. The site is at 0 East Garner Road, 0 High Hope Lane and 101 High Hope Lane. as a note this site has previously went through a tier 2 conditional rezoning in 2023 it was case czmp 2301 dower light industrial due to a major modification of increasing parking spaces beyond 10 it is requiring another rezoning to amend the previously approved master plan So currently it is light industrial, LIC271. So for the LI district, it usually accommodates low intensity industrial uses that are restricted to indoor uses only with outdoor storage prohibited. And as I mentioned before this was previously approved in 2023 and there was an associated site plan submitted SP 2317 to allow for flex space and other light industrial manufacturing warehousing and transportation uses not listed and During the previously approved rezoning, it allowed for 24 of the 41 permitted uses within the LI district in written conditions for site design and architectural design standards. Later in the presentation, I'll call out those uses that were either taken away or added to the current rezoning. So just some contextual background, this site is located north of East Garner Road and west of I-40. Surrounding it is primarily residential and other industrial uses. There's Ashland subdivisions to the west with heavy industrial to the east, and then to the north we have some institutional uses with East Garner Elementary, and to the south we have East Garner Magnet Middle School. This site does not fall within an activity center, but it is designated as an employment center. So it looks to support office, warehousing, flex space, and encourages walkable streets and park and open space features for employees working there. So looking at this proposal, they are proposing to go to light industrial LI C-328. They have proposed 23 out of the 41 permitted uses, excluding those prohibited in the CHO and LHO overlay districts. Uses that they have taken out from their previous request are convenience store with fuel cells and veterinarians slash kennel use with outdoor operations. The uses that they have added are emergency services cell oriented use with outdoor operation greater than 25% of the total sales area in research and development. They have not proposed to change their conditions from the previously approved request and you can find the full list of conditions at the end of your report. They are proposing to add an additional building to the site. There's already one building that exists that's about 5,000 square feet. The building they're proposing to add will be about 16,000 square feet. During the previous approval, they proposed 39 parking spaces with no bicycle parking. This request is proposing 53 parking spaces with four bicycle parking spaces. And you can find the full master plan also at the end of your report. For stormwater and utilities, they're proposing a single SCM along the west side of the site and there is an existing 16 inch water line along East Gardner Road that they will are proposing to connect into and then there's a 8 inch sewer line southwest of the site that extends from the Ashland subdivision in those nearby residential areas. There are no significant cultural features. The most notable environmental feature to call out is the blue line stream that intersects the northern portion of the site. This project does not exceed the thresholds for a traffic impact analysis outlined in the town's ordinance or by NCDOT and the applicant has provided a certified letter stating that they will not exceed the traffic threshold. But just as note, The average annual daily trips or daily traffic recorded by NCDOT in 2025 was 7,832 for the segment of East Garner Road that intersects High Hope Lane there. Staff did invite the applicant to preview their proposal before you all. However, the applicant did not respond. There were 75 properties identified within the radius of the site and two neighborhood meetings were held, one May 4th with no people in attendance and then one on August 18th with two people in attendance and you can find the full neighborhood meeting pack at the end of your report. So going into the consistency for the growth framework, uh, there were 12 criteria that was evaluated and based on what the, uh, applicant has proposed, the project does align with the character area with that being employment center, um, the level three area to enhance and what the light industrial use rated as strong support for the character area crosswalk. And then transportation choices were also rated strongly. And then for land use and community character consistency, it was evaluated against 12 criteria with mixed support given. And then there were three criteria with modest non-support or strong non-support. And this was primarily due to the lack of commitments towards public realm activation, accessible open space, and Green Street stormwater features. Then one extra credit point was given for the retention of an existing building and reinvestment in parking lot design. Just want to highlight some comments and feedback given to the applicant by staff. Staff did encourage the applicant to add outdoor seating, enhanced planning or Green Street stormwater features to strengthen their consistency. We also suggested these improvements to offset the reduced landscape area due to the additional parking. and to improve overall compatibility with the nearby residential area. And these improvements also we believe create better visual appeal given the anticipated public presence. With this being a flex space and possible multi-tenant building, there would probably be significant public presence there. So those were the suggestions given. Overall, there was a finding of consistency. We did note that additional refinement of the zoning conditions, particularly with public realm activation, open space activation, and enhanced landscaping could support a stronger finding of consistency. But you can find the consistency review at the end of your staff report. So that concludes the presentation for SINCAR properties. Next steps, we hope to close the public hearing today and forward this to Planning Commission for findings of plan consistency and recommendation to approve or deny, then bring it back to you all for findings of reasonableness and decision to approve or deny. Thank you. And staff is here to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you very much for the great information and for reminding us the action, the proposed action this evening after the public hearing is to refer this project on to the Planning Commission for further review and recommendations and to pass along any concerns or questions Council might have at that time. And you're saying the applicant has chosen not to make a presentation?

No, sir.

Okay. In that case, then let's recognize council members who wish to ask questions or make comments. This time, let's start with Mr. Matthews down at this end and work this way. Questions or comments, sir? No questions, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Singleton.

Could you go back, Ms. Ronson, back a slide or two here, the part about the suggestions? Yes. That one, and then the next slide too. Both of them, yeah. Particularly related to public room, out in the space. Things that you suggested that they declined to do.

Okay. All right, thank you. Okay. Mr. Stallings, questions, comments?

No questions.

Mr. Dellinger.

Just when they declined your recommendations, did they give a reason?

They explained that they did not feel that the decrease in the landscape area was significant enough to warrant those enhancements and that what is being provided on the site is sufficient enough with it being a light industrial site.

Thank you.

Mr. Vance.

Initially they were requesting or part of the initial plan was 21 parking spaces?

It was 39 parking spaces in the original.

And how many has been increased to now?

It is 52, I believe. I can go back to that slide for you. Or 53.

53, okay. Now with that, we're changing the zoning, are we not?

The zoning is staying the same. However, because the amount of parking has exceeded the 10%, that's classified as a major modification defined by our ordinance, which is why it's going through this process again to amend that increase.

Are the permitted uses increased?

the permitted uses have not increased they originally had 24 of the 41 permitted uses now they have 23 i will state though during the time of when it was originally approved and now there were amendments to the ordinance that added research and development so that is the use that they're including and then also there were uses that were at or included in the previous rezoning that were prohibited for CHO and LHO districts that I believe were probably overlooked at the time to have stricken from their permitted uses.

Can you tell me one more time why the applicant declined to take in the recommendations made by staff?

They felt that the changes that we're asking to include were not you know significant that what we're asking is probably a bit much for the landscape area that's being reduced and with it being a light industrial site that adding those uses may not be required.

Yes do we have the applicant here and you would like to make a presentation? Yes sir please come to the podium identify yourself name and address.

Hey, good evening. I'm John Frazier, FLM Engineering. We're at 8951 Harvest Oaks Drive, Suite 205 in Raleigh, 27615. And thanks, Ms. Ryans. She was 100% accurate with her presentation. maybe miscommunication as she asked if we had presentation materials and we didn't have any slides prepared but certainly happy to to give you guys some background as to why we're here and answer any questions that you may have so thanks for your time okay as ryan's mentioned so the the rezoning plan was approved and reasoning was approved back in 2023 and we then went forward and had site and construction plans approved with the town after that and The original plan was very much like you see it here with existing building that will remain and a proposed 16,000 square foot building. At the time that was geared towards a particular user under a different owner. And between the time we had construction plans approved and where we are now with this request, the ownership has changed. And the new ownership felt that the site would have a better presence with some parking in front of the larger building. So that's really all that we're doing with this request. The previous plan had the larger building with about 65 feet of pavement behind it. We've now reduced the pavement behind the building by 16 feet. So it went down to 49 feet behind the building so that we could add that angled parking in front of the building. So there was not a significant amount of landscape area reduced. And you can see that the site itself is fairly tight. We didn't make any changes to the existing building or the parking around the existing building. So really this request is just to add the 14 angled parking spaces in front of the proposed building to make that a little more inviting. because the the single tenant that was planned for the project is no longer part of this project so it will likely be a multi-tenant building and we felt that the parking in front of the building would make it a little more inviting and attractive but there really was not an opportunity to add seating or other landscape area because all we were doing was reducing pavement behind the building moving the building back and adding some parking in front so In a sense, the site plan is very much the same as what the board approved in 23, just with those additional 14 spaces in front of that proposed building. So we did take the suggestions lightly, but as you can see, again, the site is fairly tight. We already have some existing wetlands and stream buffer that we permitted to the north. Didn't want to impact those any further. Didn't make any changes to our stormwater control measure or anything on the backside of the building. It's really just that front side of the building with the additional parking. So hopefully that clarifies why we're here, but I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you very much. Good information. This is still part of the public hearing. Let's cycle back through the council members. Again, starting with Mr. Matthews. Any further questions, comments? Mr. Singleton?

I asked the staff today a question and may have contacted you. I wanted to know what the buffer was from the back buffer to the property line in the wooded area that's about 55 feet. And then I also asked what the distance was from the Ashland subdivision, which is 250 feet so there's a great distance there uh hopefully other people will pay attention to to an existing neighborhood so i appreciate that that buffer um i just i'm concerned about not listening listening to the concerns of the staff that's a concern that's all for now uh mr stallins question no question mr dellinger no further questions mr vance no further questions any other observations or information you'd like to give us

no thank you for your time again understood staff's request for for seating and for additional landscaping again with where we added that parking there really just wasn't an opportunity to to do that and with this being a light industrial site um with with flex space and light industrial users we felt like that the plan we had that was previously approved and just very slightly modified was appropriate for this area um but happy to take any any other feedback you may have

Thank you very much. Thank you. And I'll ask our town clerk, were there any other individuals signed up to speak?

No, sir.

Unless there are some other questions that want to be asked here, I'm going to close the public hearing. We'll do that. Thank you very much. We'll close the public hearing. let me remind you what the council's mission is this evening not to approve or disapprove this project but to potentially forward it to the planning commission for further review and recommendation and any adjustments and it will be an opportunity for council members to send their suggestions their questions concerns to the planning commission for further addressing and then the project would come back to council for some final decision this is the first public hearing related to that So that being said, is there a motion from council concerning referring this to the Planning Commission? So moved. Second. Mr. Vance makes the motion and Mr. Matthews seconds the motion to forward this on to the Planning Commission for review and recommendations. Is there any discussion on that motion? Anybody like to make any comments on that motion? Hearing none, I think maybe we'll go for a roll call vote on this one. We'll call on each council member one at a time to... Respond as aye in favor or nay as opposed. And let's start with Mr. Vance who made the original motion, aye or nay? Aye. Mr. Dellinger? Aye. Mr. Stallings? Aye. Mr. Singleton?

Aye.

matthew all right unanimous uh the council has decided to refer this on to the planning commission uh thank you all for pulling together the information thanks for the good questions and again make sure we forward any questions or concerns such as you talked about here to the planning commission let them drill a little deeper if you like on that Thank you. Now we'll move along to item 1.2, which is a Tier 2 Conditional Rezoning Request, CZMP25-004, Enclave at Meadowbrook. And our sponsor, our presenter from our planning staff is Senior Planner Julian Griffey. If you are available, sir, give us the overview.

good evening mayor council members from both of us before Julian gets started I did want to just call your attention to and an oversight a little bit of a miscommunication when he was drafting the consistency for this particular project we had been discussing how it was coded in the plan and how it is currently coded as preservation in open space When we were doing the plan, we typically, I think in all other cases, would not have done that unless we knew that the town was actively pursuing something. So we were discussing how we felt that that was most likely an oversight for this particular property. I, however, failed to clarify for Mr. Griffey that he should continue to review it for consistency based on that. So the consistency that you'll see tonight is really more it's geared towards what we thought it would have been but going forward to the planning commission we will re-score it and re-analyze it for consistency based on what is actually there this is a case of where it may be one of those that if we find agreement that this probably was an error where you could find it inconsistent but still reasonable Which is why we have all those options for you to consider when it comes back to you for a decision. But I did just want to preempt that for his presentation and acknowledge that I failed to clarify for him how he should have proceeded on that.

Thanks for that preface, Jess. Julian Griffey, senior planner, I'll be presenting CZMP25004, also known as the Enclave and Meadowbrook Zoning Amendment. So the applicant is Collier Marsh on behalf of the property owners, and this petition is for a tier two conditional rezoning request for approximately 27.17 acres fronting Hebron Church Road and can be identified as those particular Wake County PINs. The current zoning for both parcels is the R2 zoning district. This is going to be your second least densely populated zoning district. And the R2 zoning district accommodates low density single family homes further away from non-residential areas. If it could be constructed right now by right, there are 17 permitted uses allowed that the property owner could at ease to. Going into the contextual setting, as I mentioned, these two parcels do front Hebron Church Road. It's basically at that northeast quadrant where Clifford intersects Hebron Church Road. To the south, there are gonna be single family dwellings, and then to the east, to the west, excuse me, directly across the Hebron Church right of way is gonna be that future homestead at Bryan Farms Residential Development. To the southwest is going to be South Garner High School, and then if you go north along Hebron Church Road, you're going to find more of a mix of R4, R8, and RMFA zoning districts. The site does not fall within an activity center, and as Mr. Triesenberg had stated previously, throughout my slides, there's gonna be the reference towards that open space designation within the current comprehensive land use plan, and then the caveat of what it was reflected against for consistency, which that was coded as the neighborhood's character type, which is consistent with the general vicinity of the project. Diving into the petition itself, the applicant is asking for and are for conditional zoning district. There are 31 proffer conditions. All of those can be found within your staff report. And the applicant has proffered one of 14 permitted uses being single family dwellings. So going into the site data, the petition is calling for up to 60 single family detached dwellings on roughly typical 60 foot wide lots with four areas of open space found roughly in the corners of the development. Two of those open spaces being active and two of those spaces being passive. FOR MY UNDERSTANDING FOR FIRST, THERE'S GOING TO BE A PARK LAND DEDICATION ASSOCIATED WITH THIS PARTICULAR PETITION WITH 2.13 ACRES FRONTING THAT EASTERN SIDE, THAT EASTERN BOUNDARY AGAINST THE METABOOK HISTORIC PROPERTY. AND THAT DID GO BEFORE THE PARKS AND REC ADVISORY COMMITTEE AND ULTIMATELY UNANIMOUSLY APPROVED RECOMMENDING THE TOWN ACCEPT THAT 2.13 ACRES AS PARK LAND DEDICATION. There is a 10-foot delineated side path fronting Hebron Church Road and a trail running between the existing pond and then the single-family dwellings roughly between that on that eastern side of the parcel. The full master plan is embedded within your staff report and it's available for your viewing. Going into stormwater and utilities, there is existing infrastructure along Clifford Road as well as Huron Church Road being a 24-inch water line main, as well as an existing eight-inch sewer line. The development does propose a single stormwater control measure, which is in the roughly extreme southeastern portion of the site. Going into environmental and cultural resources, there is a blue line stream located on the central eastern and southeastern portion of the site. And while there are no cultural features physically present on both of these parcels, the historic Meadowbrook Country Club parcel that is owned by the town is abutting immediately to the east of the parcel. A traffic impact analysis was not warranted based off of the 60 single family dwellings. However, at the behest of town staff, the applicant has submitted a traffic generation memorandum that has been placed within your staff report, roughly guesstimating per the IT manual, the rough trip generations that would be estimated from this 60 home development. Two NCDOT figures are presented before you, one a little bit more recently along Northern Heber and Church Road, being about 6,100 trips a bit north of the site before you get to the Avocado intersection. And then along Clifford Road, about 1,000 trips were accounted for from NCDOT in the year 2020. So there did occur a developer meeting. This occurred back in February of 26. The developers and the attendees are listed before you, as well as three members of Town Council. Staff did invite the applicant to present the development proposal before Town Council as a development preview, but received no response in that regard. And the neighborhood meetings have occurred. One was in September of 25. Five people were in attendance. One occurred more recently. The second one in August 5th of 26 with no persons in attendance. 105 property owners were identified and mailed out to and the full contents of all that meeting information is embedded within the report. As we had stated kind of early on in the presentation is that this is designated and coded currently as the open space. So when this was vetted and when it was assessed, it was placed and reflected against the neighborhood land character type, which Again, going into the previous conversations, probably these following slides are kind of moot at this point, and progressing forward through the legislative process, we will assess it going forward as that open space and level one classification. So when it was reflected, again, through that neighborhood typology, it was found to be really consistent. There was a non-support in that regard, as well as it was found pretty consistent amongst the criteria that were applicable under that neighborhood character type. Going into the discussions, there's been multiple discussions, email changes, and conversations that have occurred with the applicant team as well as staff. Staff encouraged to consider enhanced planning, some other green street features to strengthen that consistency. Again, the consistency that was reflected against the neighborhood, land use type. And then there were some conversations about internal connectivity and side paths that ultimately did, I think, believe get ironed out into some of those conditions. And then staff lastly inquired about a proffer condition related to minimum square footage of the single family dwellings. Again, overall, when it was reflected against a particular care type, it was found consistent, but again, potentially moot for this conversation. But progressing forward for the next steps, you would conduct and finish the public hearing. Again, it would then proceed to plan a commission for their assessment against plan consistency and recommendations, and then ultimately find its way back to town council. More than happy to answer any questions, but the applicant has prepared a presentation for him to present to you all as well.

Okay, well, while you're there, let's give council members a chance to ask you questions or comments, and let's start, and Mr. Vance is in this time. Mr. Vance, questions or comments for staff?

Just one pertaining to traffic and not needing a traffic impact analysis. Do we have an idea of how the traffic will impact the various developments that are going on within that area? We have a lot of development in that area, and we consider the impact that this will have on the traffic in that area.

Sure, and I might default to some of my colleagues. I'm a bit more familiar with it, but there is a caveat and there is a condition in there that states that the Walters-Buffalo agreement would be adhered to. And from my understanding, that is a developer's agreement for transportation improvements within that general vicinity. So they are part of the Buffalo agreement? That is a condition that they have proffered and agreed to. Got it.

Okay, Mr. Gallinger.

Yeah, a traffic-related question, too, and I think it goes for all the area around South Garner and South Garner High School, and it's sort of evolved and kind of evolved over time. There are only two ways out from down there, so to do like a local traffic count on the road immediately adjacent isn't really the relevant measure. It's sort of what is the traffic count on White Oak Road to get out of there and New Bethel to get out of there, So I think it'd be helpful to bring those numbers back because I think we've got to realize that that capacity is a limited resource and it's already over-resourced in a lot of ways. So I think just in the future, those two roads are going to be a better measure for the actual impact on traffic in and out of that part of town. So again, that's my only comment at this time. We have other questions, but.

And if I can respond to that, I actually got an email earlier this week from Director Treisenberg to inquire with CAMPA about trying to get some more NCDOT scoutings to go out there and provide some more takeaways specifically along the White Oak Corridor.

Yeah, because I think White Oak is already overbuilt or the traffic is already over its capacity. And I've mentioned before that the stretch of White Oak from Timber to 70, has the highest traffic count of anywhere in Garner, so like Highway 70 or 401, so that just contributes more, and so that's really the measure, and it gets backed up. All right, thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Stallings? No questions at this time. Mr. Singleton?

This is the second project in a row we've had where staff has met with the applicant, and the applicant has not considered doing some of the things suggested to staff. These are both projects that didn't come before us. So we have something consistent here. So when the applicant is up here, I will ask the applicant questions, and either we'll continue this and let them address it, or we may move it to the Planning Commission to address it. But to have these items in here, to consider enhanced planning for Green Street features, suggest improvements for internal connectivity and side path along Hebrew Church Road, perfect condition related to the minimum square foot of the single-family dwellings, Our criteria related to non-support was primarily due to a lack of centralized public area, a lack of mixed housing product, and green street features. Lack, lack, lack, lack. So we're lacking some stuff. You didn't come before us to begin with, and we could have addressed this. It may be the best thing to do, and this will be to continue, but we'll let the applicant come up and address the questions.

Mr. Matthews. Nothing this time. OK. Good questions and comments. Does the applicant plan to make a presentation? Well, let's go with the presentation and we'll have some more questions. If you would introduce yourself, name and address.

uh good evening mr mayor members of council i'm collier marsh with parker poe at 301 fayetteville street here on behalf of the applicant we're calling this the enclave at meadowbrook and i've got a number of members of the development team here to answer any questions i have perry virilli and mark altman with davidson homes ed tang with withers ravenel and then members of the property running family here as well interested in a good outcome for this project and for the town um julian did a great job covering the project site in the surrounding area it's about a 27 acre site very familiar for for us collectively and me because i i brought the set across the street to the town a couple years back the homestead brian farm project and that project took a little while to work through made a lot of changes listened to a lot of council feedback about what council wants to see in future residential developments i hope to establish with you all that we listen this is a project that responds to that feedback responds to the type of housing the town wants to see i recall council member dellinger saying you tell us you're about four units per acre why don't we ever actually see an r4 rezoning when we're presenting an r4 rezoning and we've tried to adapt to all the feedback that the council said about what it wants to see in residential projects we are currently r2 and so we're seeking a very modest increase to r4 really just a couple units would be obtained through this rezoning in addition to what's already entitled today but you're getting a number of additional commitments with this project um so this is the master plan uh that accompanies the the project uh at a high level we have up to 60 single-family homes um there's kind of two sizes that are contemplated here uh larger lot sizes than we typically present in residential rezonings minimum 60 foot wide lots i think you see 50s and 40s and lower uh in past rezoning cases so we're moving up in the the spectrum there and then we have two different home sizes we'll show you them in a moment but again larger than we've typically been requesting in rezonings for single family homes only one use just want to make sure that's clear town homes were a discussion point across the street if you recall one of the changes we made is that we had like a 70 town home 30 single family ratio we ended up flipping that on the brian farm case and then there are no town homes here and every one of these lots is going to be bigger than what you see across the street um the parkland dedication i think is significant here we are next to the future meadowbrook park and so land closest to that park will be dedicated to the town essentially you get two more acres of enlargement of that park that's kind of consistent with at least that the last discussion we had the town's vision for that area of the park to be more passive maybe trails and things like that so that section of our property could be incorporated but still meets the town's requirements for what needs to be included and usable for dedicated parkland overall density is at 2.2 units per acre but after that parkland dedication we do go up to 2.4 we've got 31 zoning conditions offered here and i'll go through those one by one i also do want to make sure i respond to some of those comments about what we didn't listen we didn't address that staff brought up i do think it's important to give context that in the course of a rezoning that's been pending for more than a year there's probably 50 similar comments that we get that we get from staff can you look at this can you make this change have you considered this and so we're down to a handful that we couldn't address but this isn't a situation where we said no we refuse to do that we think that's a bad suggestion the things we studied and there's a good reason why we can't do these easiest the one to check off in the back end is that it's illegal to condition a minimum square footage for a single family home there's a statute directly on that point we would love to because we have large single-family homes here that we want to get credit for but we can't do that as far as the central open space that's a common plan recommendation from staff or request when you're looking at how to design a site start with a central open space and kind of work around it this site's a little different than most this is not a massive development some of the projects we brought in are much larger we're only 27 acres we've got Stream features on the right-hand side. And so really, there's kind of an internal loop. And so if we have central park space kind of somewhere around that driveway, the site actually drops off pretty significantly in slope. So as you move from the road back towards Meadowbrook, the slope's pretty significant. and so if we have a central open space there it's pretty much just a hill in the middle of the neighborhood and it's not functional so we looked at it and we said we understand the nature of that comment and we understand the comprehensive plan's goals but we don't think that that sites that space is usable given that this is a small development we think we can achieve something that's different but does have meaningful open space so with this project you see our open space spread around the site so we've got in the two front corners we've got open spaces on the bottom left corner that active open space that's the the play field that we always want to make sure we include that open play field meets the dimensional expectations we've got another open space in the upper right hand corner we've got a dog park in the bottom right but to address that kind of central feature realizing that we can't have that central location we had a concept of a loop here so we have things on all the corners we've got walking trail to the rear of the site and then we've got the 10-foot side path along the front edge which is also important to bring pedestrians from all areas to the future meadowbrook park so we took a little different approach but we thought it would achieve something different something beneficial within that we also have fitness equipment along those walking areas so it becomes more of an active loop around the community where folks can stop and recreate As far as the additional landscaping, it was a matter of we have enhanced buffers along the street. We're gonna have a berm and an enhanced buffer internal to the site. There wasn't good space for it. And a related comment was on side units could you put additional landscaping in some of these locations it's a slope issue so where we have retaining walls again the site slopes so much we wouldn't be able to put retaining walls and additional landscaping beyond the requirements so it's not a matter of us saying no we won't do it it's a matter of us studying it and saying okay we understand the request but we're not able to do it instead here's what we can do and so we've offered that in a number of different ways and tried to have a different vision but a vision we think overall is positive and beneficial for the town so 31 zoning conditions i think each time we have a project a new bar is set and we hope to keep meeting that bar and exceeding it we have all the kind of standard conditions you'd hope to see with the single family neighborhood there's a max of 60 units the hoa is required to maintain common areas the project comes below the threshold for traffic impact analysis i think it's about 45 a.m peak hour trips and 56 p.m peak hour trips so very low traffic generator not to mention the buy right entitlement is pretty darn close to that notably that that pulte development agreement the white oak bryan corridor development agreement it has thresholds for who must contribute to it it says that you have to contribute one of the requirements is if you have enough trips for a tia we're even below the requirement contemplated by that improved that development agreement for someone to participate but staff brought it up and i think it was brought up in some of our our meetings with council members um can you consider it and so we did we're going to contribute to that those corridor improvements just as any other developer would, even though we're such a small trip generator. Last part on traffic, just keep in mind, Clifford Road and Hebron Church Road, the Lennar project across the street is supposed to build a traffic signal there. So there is an improvement coming in the immediate area. They have the requirement on both sides of Clifford Road to install traffic signals. now with two projects the full street frontage all the sidewalks and everything will be completed in that section bringing a kind of more rural street up to the town standards for this whole segment leading into the future meadowbrook park and on a note of leading into the future meadowbrook park with our requirements for open spaces some of the programming we've included are gateway features in the two front corners those are essentially just enhanced landscaping in those locations with some seat walls just to create a more attractive element right as you approach the community so again we couldn't do everything that staff asked but we found other ways and new things to add to try and do something that that met or exceeded those goals um continuing on on the um conditions i talked about the the parkland dedication um i've spoken with this council in the past about that blue ridge exemption and we've written a condition that's been vetted by your town attorney that that will not apply to this property um and so that you can rest assured that there's no tax exemption that's going to be sought this is one of those projects that's intended to generate revenue for the town as we hope to establish i went through all the common area elements and the architectural commitments conditions 14 through 31 there are a lot of them but i think it's better just to show you what we're doing i've heard from this council time and time again we want to see a step above you know we've gotten the same product type over and over we see you know narrow single family homes you can do or town homes over and over again we want to see something different So these are the representative images of the products that we intend to build on this site. So trying to make sure we have a step above with these 40 foot wide units. These are in 60 foot wide lots. Again, these are the 40 foot units. But then we got a request early on well is there a way to have some of the larger homes that davidson home does and mayor gupton i know you toured some of their communities and saw some of the other homes they're building how can you incorporate something like that into this project and so we work with staff and what i think is a pretty good solution to have similar lot sizes but a slight modification to the side setbacks so that we can fit another step above larger homes and so we have 60 foot minimum lot sizes the typical side setback is 10 feet wide but with staff we've worked on a condition that essentially says if you do a 50 foot wide single-family home you can have six foot side setbacks for that lot so essentially it's going to be at least a 62 foot wide lot a little bigger a little bigger lot a little bit of a setback reduction but a much larger home so these are the 50 foot wide units and it's our way Here's the second one and then the third to try and ensure that we can continue to achieve those goals of bringing a better product to the town and going another step above. And so with that, we've worked hard on this project. I hope we've established that we did address those concerns with staff and maybe just took a little different approach. We appreciate your consideration of this request and are happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you very much for the presentation. And while you're there, let's run through council again. Let's start with Mr. Vance again and see what questions and comments we might have for the applicant.

Okay, thank you for your briefing. And going back to what the staff identified as improvements, are you willing to look at those improvements before it comes back to us?

Which ones in particular?

The one about landscaping and...

So I think we've addressed them in some way. I can make sure that there wasn't one that overlooked, but where there's some component of landscaping that we are including, there's usually a physical limitation. But if there's something that we've missed, we're happy to take a closer look and see if there's another piece we can include.

I recommend taking a closer look at it, and also the centralized public space.

I will say on the centralized public space, just to go back, just to establish what that would be, I don't think it's a good outcome for the site, to be honest. If we put something in the middle, the way the slope works, it's just going to be a hill. um and so we thought it would be better again small neighborhood to have different locations so we did study that we just felt that the outcome of having something just right in the middle isn't really achieving the goal of having a public space to be usable just kind of be a hill and so our hope is that what we're doing it's not the central space but it's providing something just as good

One last question in reference to not doing a TIA. Are there any improvements to Hebron Church Road that will be done by this project?

Our frontage improvements and then our contribution to the White Oak-Bride Road corridor. So that whole intersection realignment, we will be paying our share into that.

Okay.

No further questions. Mr. Dellinger.

You mentioned the homestead at Bryan Road. I'm glad you reminded me you were on that one. You mentioned some of the feedback that council had on that project and it ultimately became an entirely residential project. You also remember there was a lot of discussion about adding some, reserving some commercial acreage on that 100 acre, I think about 100 acres parcel for future commercial development considering we've got about 6,000 homes down in that area. And we're running out of viable sort of semi-commercial opportunities in that part of town so people don't have to go all the way to White Oak Road or shops at White Oak to get a cup of coffee. So I say that to say I'm not in favor of any residential here because I think there's a tremendous local commercial opportunity. We got our tax hounds here tonight worried about tax base. This is a prime opportunity right next to a high school and 6,000 other homes and a major town park that is right behind it for a community-scaled commercial gathering space. There's a perfect example of this in Garner right now, Hall and Stone, right across the road from Lake Benson Park, where you'd be like, we can't put commercial there. There are no houses around it. This is just, it's a sequence of missed opportunities from an amenity standpoint, a tax base standpoint, property value standpoint, to be able to walk from Meadowbrook Park to a place and get a smoothie and hang out with your friends or go after school and buy something. There aren't that many other opportunities. This would be another major missed opportunity for something really innovative and more supportive to our tax base from a net revenue standpoint than this project as proposed. So that's my only feedback. I can't see myself, from a numbers standpoint, being supportive of a residential development here. So that's not a question, it's just a comment.

That's all.

Thanks, sir. Mr. Allen? The only question I have, can you point out where the proposed dedicated public parkland is?

The parkland, so basically it's page right of our plan. So the entire Meadowbrook Park is the property east of our site, or right of our site. And then there's kind of a darker, there's a hash section with a darker line that kind of meanders through. I don't know, is this a laser? Yeah, so here's our line. So it kind of carves off the corner. The stormwater pond is kept on our site for maintenance obligations. And I think if these weren't stormwater ponds.

Julian, excuse me, they can't see that. So Julian, could you help point that out? Council can't see what you're doing.

No worries. You've got my cursor right here. Can you see that actually on your screens? Yes. There we go. All right, now we're cooking. All right, so it's gonna be this delineated line right here.

yeah and so it's kept on the side of the pond and then keeping our stormwater pond out for town maintenance obligations the maintenance obligation would fall in town i think we'd gladly give a little more of that but cost-wise it makes sense for the developer to maintain that but around that existing pond there's tree conservation area and a lot of that on our side will still be preserved it will be kind of indistinguishable from the park side but the actual town-owned land is that that corner

So the light green area right here, and this is just for edification of the public, would be the dedicated parkland that's being proposed?

The color where the red dot is, that color carries throughout the section, correct?

All right, thank you.

And Mister saying. First thank you for the 60 foot wide lots muscle could start it looks like based on looking at the depth of these lots not not the ones on the corner of the curve but looks like a lot of depth about a 100 foot that somewhere in the neighborhood. What I'm getting a one 20. It's about 60 by 120. That's good. The active space, you have it here in the bottom left-hand corner, also along the back, which borders the side of the pond. Are those spaces going to be flat?

Yeah, so again, that has to do with that whole central or not central, they're flat. That's the idea, especially that front left corner with the play field. To your standards, it's a flat, open space, loosely bordered by landscaping to be an open play field. So we've worked to make sure that it's usable.

All right, a question, and this is one of the highlights of the staff discussions. You talked about the bigger homes. The staff inquired about a condition related to minimum square footage of the single-family dwellings. I would strongly urge you to consider that because saying it and seeing it in a plan, and we've done plans before, and what we saw and what happened were two different things. So we had this happen in another plan now not far from here off of New Bethel Church Road where they put in some larger homes and put in the conditions. So I would strongly urge and ask you to consider some of the minimum square footage because we're gonna talk about having larger homes and let's know we can get larger homes, not talk about it and then not build them. Really strongly encourage that. One question, maybe it might not be for staff, where you're, excuse me, I'm having back issues, where the entrance is, which is right across from the Bryan Homestead project, which you're familiar with, the driveways line up, the entrance into both projects line up, correct?

As depicted on the side, it seems to be the case.

Okay, and on both sides, there'll be a sidewalk on each side, correct?

I believe per the UDO, sidewalks are required on both sides.

I think it's 10 feet multi-use on both sides.

Multi-use? Okay. I'm just going to throw this out there, and I'm not saying this is all a responsibility, but that's a great place for a crosswalk. people can get over from here, you got an intersection, you got a crosswalk, and we're gonna have a park open one day, we hope, in our lifetime. But anyway, that's a great opportunity here. Mr. Marsh knows the developer of the project across the road, and of course you have to get DOT approval, but that's a good opportunity for a crosswalk there. uh for people to go down i know there'll be interest way into the park but you've got two neighborhoods here and i see a stopping point for people to cross not in the middle of the road so i'm just throwing that out there but again i would encourage consideration of some type of minimum square footage for these uh single-family dwellings so there's some confidence in any uh consideration of approval for the project we want to get credit because we intend to do that size unit we'll work with the town attorney because there is a legal hurdle to that but if there's a way to do it

All right, thank you.

Thank you, sir. And Mr. Matthews? A couple things. As we like to say, let's build it bigger and better. And the encouragement of master bedrooms downstairs. If you kind of look who's moving into the Garner area, those master bedrooms are most important on the downstairs. So seriously consider that. Also, the... I like the idea of the crosswalk that Mr. Singleton said, because you've got school right down the road when all those sidewalks are there. Let's make it travel friendly. And I know it's market driven. I understand how that works. But with your homes and your large homes, what are you anticipating? Retail value is gonna be or your homes. Yeah, and I know it's market driven. So we're taking a rough estimate here Well, what are you perceiving? What would you like to do because we like to make it bill make it bigger and you know You make more money and it helps us in the long run, too We expect these to be between six and eight hundred thousand six and eight hundred. Okay, I Well, you've always had a good reputation with this board, and I hope you'll follow through. That's all I got, Mr. Mayor.

I hope the market goes up.

Okay, thank you very much. If there's no further questions here, we'll let you have a seat. Yes, sir, go ahead.

Yeah, I'm sorry. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. What was acreage of the parkland dedication, the 2.13? Correct. What was the market value of that land?

I don't know offhand.

So the fee in lieu is structured, if we did the fee in lieu instead of the parkland dedication, it would come out to about $142,000 for parks. I would not be recommending that we take that parkland in lieu instead of taking $147,000 for some wetlands, basically, on the edge of one of our parks. Take note of that, regardless of what goes here. That is not a good deal for the town to take that parkland instead of that field.

I would speculate that the price per acre is higher than that, but I can get information.

For that two acres?

For two acres on the site, correct, yeah.

In a stream buffer?

Well, on the other side of the stream buffer, developable two acres. I understand the nature of the comment and appreciate it.

Yeah, we need to kind of analyze that a little better because I don't think that that's worth, we'd get more out of the $140,000 than we would. Now we're also over, we're being responsible now for the maintenance of that property as well. So it's also another incurred cost on the town where you can, developer could take care of it. Yeah, those are my only questions in common.

Mayor Gupton, I would just reinforce what Mr. Stinklin said in reference to the larger homes. Looking at that as well, considering it in the planning process. And I also agree with the crosswalk and location noted with the area where it's feasible.

See if we can find a creative way to articulate the home size that doesn't run afoul of the statute.

And before we let you sit down, let's see if I missed anybody else who had another question or comment here directly to the applicant.

Sorry, another one. Were there any nods or gestures towards housing affordability in your conversations with staff?

yeah so um i think we you know there's been a couple discussions with the town and i recall a conversation a while back their projects that allowed the town to get affordable housing by taking a sacrifice on the revenue and their projects that generate generate that revenue so that you can find the projects where affordable housing is appropriate the goal here was to be the type of project that generates more revenue for residential use than otherwise would to allow the town the ability in other situations to take the hit on property taxes and accept affordable housing. And so we're not offering affordable housing. These houses I don't think will be affordable. And that's kind of my design.

Yeah, I just think on size and scale, it wouldn't make sense to incorporate any actual affordable housing into this particular project. I was just wondering kind of what your rationale was with staff with regards to making any sort of meaningful gesture towards it. That's all. Thank you.

Mr. Daniels? No question. Mr. Singleton?

No, sir.

Okay, you may sit down for a moment. I have another question. We're still having the public hearing here and I'll ask for town court. Do we have any individuals who have signed up to speak on this topic?

No, sir.

None there. Okay. Mr Griffey, other comments, closing ideas here?

No, again, if the public hearing is closed and it does get recommended to go to the Planning Commission every time that this does get viewed going forward, it will have that open space. Just wanted to preface that again, so for the future land use map.

Thank you. At this point, I would be planning to close the public hearing, and then we can talk about what we want to do next, if I'm not hearing the other questions. So this closes the public hearing on that particular project, and now we'll... Again, remember our charge here this evening is, as Mr. Singleton mentioned earlier, either to refer this on to the Planning Commission with questions, comments, suggestions, or to continue it. Those are basically our two options, to continue it with comments. And having said that, I would be willing to accept a motion to forward this project on to the Planning Commission. Is there such a motion? so moved second motion by mr matthews second by mr vance uh now let's talk again about the idea of referring this on to the planning commission and let's start uh with mr matthews this time he made the motion uh what are your thoughts sir what questions comments have you got uh all of my questions have been answered mr singleton questions comments regarding referring this to the planning commission

I would just ask the Planning Commission to take consideration of some of the concerns that we had and take the opportunity to possibly address them when this project moves forward to them.

Thank you. That's what they're for, right? That's what we want to do, make it clear. Mr. Stallings? No comments. Mr. Dellinger, comments, questions?

Yeah, just in general, I think it's going to move forward through the process, I think. But, however, we still need to focus and laser focus on our revenue modeling for land use decisions. Because we can have a theoretical argument about what is the best case for rezoning for the community and the tax base to now actually have a model through which we're plugging in different scenarios to know what comes out at the other end. So it's very hard to even vote for anything without having that. It's one of the kind of conversations we have over and over again about tier ones is we don't know what we're gonna get. In this situation, we know what we're gonna get. It should be even easier for us to estimate the net revenue to the town against other proposed or optional land uses for that that are appropriate. so i you know we really need to lean into that in our in our decisions the other is so i think a commercial analysis of that parcel although kind of you know would be unique i think it'd be a unique a good contribution to sort of seeing what is the opportunity cost if we were to put this product here the other is i would like to see some type of analysis on that fee in lieu versus the actual parkland dedication maybe before it goes to Planning Commission, dig in a little bit deeper on that and just kind of see what those two really look like and which one actually ultimately is in the best interest of the town. So those are my little comments as we probably move this on to Planning Commission.

Thank you. Mr. Vance? No questions. Well, I just want to say again, revenue modeling is very important. Perhaps we haven't paid enough attention in the past, but at the end of the day, the only way we can prevent a continual increase of your property tax is have models of things that will actually be revenue positive. Whether it's residential or commercial, we need to be looking at this side of it. and if we do forward this one on if you do make the decision for it onto the planning commission that's something we would expect them to look into report on uh we got to know are we above the water line or below the water line and and as mr dell just said uh is it so is it so out of whack does it relate to the fee in lieu does it relate to possible other uses we have to keep looking at the big picture this is prime real estate not only in that part of the town, but being adjacent on two sides to one of our new uncut jewels, Parkland over there. We have to be very thorough as we examine all this. So thank you for your comments so far. So we have a motion and a second to refer this on to the Planning Commission for further review. And I'd like to take a roll call vote again on this one. Mr. Matthews, you've made the motion. If you would signify aye in favor of passing it along to the Planning Commission or nay as opposed. Your vote, sir. Aye. Mr. Singleton?

Aye.

Mr. Stallings?

Aye.

Mr. Dellinger?

No.

Mr. Vance?

Aye.

So there's four in favor of passing it on. One opposed. That passes four to one. I think it is extremely important we pass our information and our questions and our concerns along to our planning commission, make sure these are addressed. It will come back to us after that. They need to take all the time they need to take to get the public input and to get the answer to the questions that have been raised by council here tonight. If that passes unanimously, that completes that one on the agenda there. It's 7.26. We're sworn to take a recess at 7.30. Jeff, Mr. Treisenberg, unless you think you can do your zoning text amendment in six minutes or less, we probably will go ahead with the break now. Six minutes? Six minutes? Can you do it in six minutes?

I think we're getting rid of time. No pressure, no pressure. I'm always up for a challenge, no. No, but seriously, I think we can probably cover it fairly quickly since we just talked about this in the work session. I only have really one small thing to add, so if it's good with y'all. And I do apologize, a few of us have been battling some stuff this week, so my voice is a little half shot, but I'll speak into the mic. Yes, so this is a public hearing for ZTA 2603, which is our amendment package for recodifying the existing UDO with a new format and some minor edits. As I noted, we did discuss this recently at the work session. But this is being submitted by staff, and again, will help us with readability, management of the source document. We talked a lot about punctuation and other minor edits. So again, we have these purposes kind of laid out for you, for the public to see in this presentation. I talked about general shifting of the legal writing style as well as the overarching ability to incorporate our previous seven amendment packages into the master document. We'll be fixing the number of codification errors, fixing cross-references, removing the commentary except for that which had directive language. We have incorporated that into the actual text. Removing and replacing outdated names of specific uses. There was some discussion about this and I did want to mention I have a draft of a little handout that would kind of compare different housing types. Still needs a little more work though. So I'll be distributing that at some point for y'all to take in and provide maybe some feedback as to if it's if you think it's helpful or if there's a different approach to it. But that is something that we have looked at. Another purpose was to address a concern from the legal department regarding review of HOA docs. And in the staff report, I know Mr. Dellinger, you brought this up during the work session, We'll be incorporating the other amendment that we talked about as part of the next package because we do have a state session law that covers that as well. So you'll be seeing that in a couple weeks at the next work session. And then I did neglect to bring this possible small amendment to you at the work session, so I wanted to bring it up now for the public hearing before it would go any further. We have been in discussion with a couple of, particularly one potential business owner in the downtown area. Their property is in the traditional business district. And we currently have two properties down there, as you know, that have murals on the side of the buildings, very colorful. Back when those were done, we did not have any kind of regulation about the numbers of exterior colors on a building. We have a prospective business owner that we've been in communication with that would like to pursue something similar going forward, and we did not think that that was bad thing to consider so this minor amendment we didn't want to try to cram in a holistic kind of let's look about everything all over town but just propose and kind of restore the language that we would have had before by providing an exemption to that color limitation just in the traditional business district for right now to allow things for like murals to continue to go forward. I think there's still a discussion that we wanna have about murals more holistically, perhaps for other parts of the town or parts of the town that are near the traditional business district, but maybe not in it at the current time. But that's something that we need to think about, I think, a little more. A little more clearly, defining what a mural is and what it's not. But for right now, just wanted to gauge council's reaction to just providing an exemption to that color maximum limitation in the TBD district. Some of the other purposes are listed on this slide. Most of these are fairly grammatical in nature. Again, just a reminder of some special thanks to Ms. Charles on our staff as well as all of my staff for their contributions to this effort. Again, we are still moving forward with developing a style guide for the future and then just some notes about how we will maintain it going forward and post it on the website so that it will be very clear to everybody what the effective date of any particular version of the ordinance will be. So the recommended motion tonight is after the public hearing to motion to close it and thereby refer ZTA 2603 to the Planning Commission for review and recommendation. just again they're my parting thought at the bottom it's very definitely a big benefit to all involved for this one moving forward and as always if you have any questions i'm happy to answer them but otherwise invite you to hear from the public if anybody has any comments and consider forwarding it to planning commission thank you a lot of work has gone into that and let's start with mr matthews this time questions for staff at this point

So glad y'all made it through this. I know it's been time consuming and congratulations for you and your team for a job well done and getting ahead of the curve. Thank you, Mr. Singleton.

I think I made this comment, but first of all, thank you for all the work. I'm glad we're doing it. We're changing outdated specific uses, and the example you gave, no longer a duplex, now part of a house-scale multi-family dwelling. Let's be honest. The next generation, ain't nobody going to call anything a house-scale multi-family dwelling, except planners and architects and design folks. Most people aren't going to call it a duplex or a triplex. We all know that, but anyway. Yes. I know you changed it because that's what they referred to now and appreciate that.

And we did keep duplex in there in at least one location just to make sure that they could draw that correlation. Got you.

Also, you can bring back this amendment in regards to the murals and so forth in the downtown, close to the downtown business district, right? Yes. That's coming back from a minor change, you said, right? Yes, yes.

We would include that going to the planning commission with your all's blessing. Okay, thank you.

And Mister Stout, I'm just thank you thank you your team for the hard work and they have a question because I think covered it a little bit in DGA as well to which is downtown Garner Association. What is the limitation currently on the colors downtown 3, 3, yeah, thank you.

Yeah, it's a lot of good work, hard work, long hours, boring work, but important work. And it's important that we get this foundation reset since we have so many other tax amendments coming and in the works. So good job to everybody who's contributed. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Vance.

Thank you for your hard work. It's definitely a yeoman's job. I appreciate everything and have no further questions.

Thank you, and I'll ask our town clerk, has any individual signed up to speak on this topic?

No, sir.

None there. Okay, that being said, then we can close the public hearing at this point, but stick around. We may have a question for you there. Again, the mission before the council here is whether to forward this on to the planning commission for further plan consistency review and recommendation uh that that being said i've heard some positive things we know we've seen a lot of this stuff before that mr treisenberg's been talking about um i'll just ask uh can we get a motion to refer this on to the planning commission second motion by mr stallins second by mr matthews uh Is there any further discussion you want to have about this? Not hearing any other discussion, let's call for a voice vote on forwarding this text amendment along to the Planning Commission for further review. All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? hearing none it passes unanimously and you're right on the borderline of being right under that six minutes good good job mr tracenberg thank you and your staff for the hard work on this uh we will take a 10-minute recess now that'll bring us back in here at 7 45 sharp so please be punctual and we'll move right ahead thank you For your patience, and thanks Mr. Mercer for getting us back on track. And has Jeff Treisenberg already left again? And I was going to thank him particularly for having a very succinct operation on that previous item that we covered there. Helped us move along quickly. Thank you, Mr. Treisenberg. And that brings us to item G on our agenda, which is new and old business. And the first one up is number one. It's a tier one conditional rezoning request called CZ26002 related to 7615 1010 Road. Aaron Joseph our assistant planning director will be the presenter here this evening She's going to give us a little background on this. This is the second time that it has appeared officially Before council has been to the Planning Commission with some feedback and comes back now Looking for approval or what comes next.

Yes, sir.

It's all yours.

Thank you Thank You mayor. Good evening members of council, members of the public, it's good to be here this evening. I will take you through my presentation for this tier one conditional rezoning, case number CZ26002, also known as 76151010 Road. As the Mayor stated, this has been before you as well as the Planning Commission, so I'll briefly go through some of the details and primarily focus on what has changed since it was reviewed by you all during the public hearing back in July. The applicant, Worth Mills, has submitted this request, a tier one conditional rezoning, to rezone approximately 31.24 acres from rural agricultural, and a small slither of the site is commercial mixed use conditional. They are requesting to rezone to commercial mixed use conditional. Just as a reminder, a tier one conditional rezoning does not include a site-specific master plan. So the applicant is offering 16 uses out of the 62 uses that are permitted within the CMX district. They have broken the uses and divided them in the uses within four different pods, as you'll see outlined in the exhibit on the screen. The changes since the public hearing have highlighted that in that brown color. So the uses within pod B have been reduced to one use allowed within that pod, which is group care. They have included a condition that prohibits the use of the affordable housing tax exemption, also known as the Blue Ridge loophole. They have proffered that all of the residential units, not just the town homes, will comply with the Housing for Older Persons or HOPA Act. They have increased the minimum floor or stories for the apartment buildings to four as opposed to three. They have added the term cottage and to support that term cottage, architectural standards and designs for those cottage town homes. And they have included a maximum number of residential unit types between the apartments, the town homes, and the group care units. In addition to those changes pertaining to the zoning conditions, There was discussion during the public hearing as well as during planning commission about the access driveway four that the NCDOT congestion management unit did not recommend at Lake Wheeler Drive. So as you can see, they have added the right in and right out at Lake Wheeler Drive after a further conversation with NCDOT. The consistency analysis, the growth framework is pretty strong. The project aligns with the community activity center, the mixed use area, as well as the development matrix intensity of a level 4A area to transform. The transportation choices was rated modest support just because it is a tier one. There's no street lengths and block face and things like that to evaluate it against. The land use and community character consistency shifted just a bit, still a bit of a mixed pattern of support, but there are several criteria that align well with the Garner Forward plan, particularly for the mixed use activity centers expanding housing choices within Garner, and improved pedestrian connectivity with the proffering of a multi-use path throughout, a trail throughout the site. Four criteria, however, received a modest non-support, and there was just one strong non-support. That one strong non-support was the lack of a commitment to Green Street solutions. However, overall, given the strong growth framework and the strong level of consistency with the character and consistency analysis, staff does find an overall consistency rating for this development. During the Planning Commission, there were several comments that the Planning Commission and questions that the Planning Commission had, primarily technical. There was appreciation given for this proposed development for the site location and the proposed uses for this development. There were questions related to why the tier one versus the tier two and what was the rationale for that. There was questions about the Lake Wheeler access, the removal of that. There were concerns with the stacking and the potential delay in queuing on Lake Wheeler Road onto 1010 Road. There were some concerns with that. Just general questions about clarifying questions about the site. the uses, whether the townhome cottage units would be for rent or for sale. And again, just concerns that left turn lane stacking and a lack of a commitment to potentially make that route improvement to extend that turn lane. Again, the traffic flow at 1010 Road and US 401 was a question and concern about building a road over an existing dam and the need for homeowner coordination with the three lots that are across from the site as far as acquiring right of way maybe making some road improvements on both sides of 1010 Road. So there were some concerns there about traffic, and there was a suggestion to table it. However, after planning commission's deliberations and considerations, they did adopt a statement of consistency, and there was a motion to recommend approval to council. The vote was not unanimous. It was a five to one vote. So this evening, the case is before you to consider the reasonableness of the request as well as the consistency with the Garner-Ford plan. And you have six criteria to consider as far as reasonableness. And staff has prepared draft motions for your consideration, it can be found On page 623 in the agenda packet, two options have been highlighted, to find consistent and reasonable with an approval or to find consistent and unreasonable with a denial. That concludes my presentation. I'm here to answer questions. The applicant is here this evening as well and have prepared a presentation for you this evening.

Say the applicant has prepared a presentation. Yes. Okay. Should we go ahead and look at that before we ask a lot of questions? Yes. Okay. I'm getting some nods here. Yes. If the applicant would please come and give your presentation, just help us understand specifically things that have changed since we're in your name and address, sir.

Good evening, Mayor and members of Council. Worth Mills with Longleaf Law Partners. My address is 4509 Creedmoor Road in Raleigh, 27612. I'm here on behalf of Liberty Healthcare and Liberty Senior Living. Thad Moore behind me is here as a representative of Liberty. And we are also joined by Audrey Kronitzky from Klein Design and Morgan Cook from Kimley Horn. And this presentation will focus on changes since that public hearing. So again, just to summarize, Liberty is looking to rezone 28.3 acres to CMX conditional use to develop a active adult community and a skilled nursing facility. with space for small-scale commercial development between the active adult community and the adjacent costco we're looking at 260 age-restricted apartment units 40 age-restricted townhome style cottages 150 group care units and up to 69 000 square feet of non-residential development. Again, we think this is a huge benefit for Garner seniors and for other senior citizens in the nearby area to create a new place, a new community for them as they enter a new stage in their life, as well as open the door for new commercial development to complement the existing Costco at the intersection of 1010 and 401. um i'm going to have mr moore come up and primarily walk through some other examples of developments that they have done most recently and then we'll kind of follow that back up with changes to the plans and to these zoning conditions

Good evening mayor and town council members. My name is Thad Moore of Liberty Senior Living. We're at 2334 South 41st Street in Wilmington, North Carolina. We're happy to have the opportunity to present to you again. During our public hearing on July 21st, our team of attorneys, land planners, architects, and engineers listened to the constructive comments made by town council and documented these comments with detailed notes. We then immediately began internally addressing these comments and questions so that we could be prepared to resubmit an updated resigning package to the planning board meeting on August 10th. Work will go into more detail a bit later, but the major updates to our plan include including the condition that addresses the Blue Ridge tax loophole, number one. Number two, receiving approval from NCDOT for ingress, egress to Lake Wheeler Road. Number three, fully age-restricting all residential, including limiting our townhome slash cottage section to one-story living. This will be another dwelling option within our INSPIRE branded active adult program. Number four, providing certainty with regard to the specific permitted uses allowed in each pod in the plan, eliminating the ambiguity that once existed with those uses. This propelled us to achieve a five to one recommendation for approval from the planning board. After this recommendation, we began to further improve our plan by working with the town staff to implement 11 architectural standards to the cottage section. At this point, I'd like to show some slides of our newest three 55-plus active adult communities in North Carolina. All have daily programming for our residents, outdoor pool, extensive common space with wellness and group fitness, game rooms, theater, arts and crafts, display kitchen, salon, and pet washing areas, to name a few features. This is Inspire Briar Chapel. On the screen, it's situated in between Pittsboro and Chapel Hill on Highway 15 and 501. And I just have some slides here to go briefly through it. It's 150 multifamily residences in four stories. And it was just recently completed in 2025. shot of the courtyard there next we have inspire brunswick forest this is in leland north carolina just west of wilmington uh this is a three-story active adult building not what we're proposing here but um also has 151 multi-family residents and 23 single-story duplex cottages this is more of the common space i'll show you the comments here And there are the duplex cottages. There's 23 of them, and this entire development was completed in 2023. The last one I wanted to share with you this evening was Inspire Royal Park in Matthews, North Carolina, just southeast of Charlotte. It's a four-story main building with a separate clubhouse in the middle. This particular community has 204 multifamily residences and 20 single-family cottages. And there's the clubhouse there with pool, and there's an example of the cottages that we built. And this project was completed in 2022. And lastly, I've included a rendering, which is all I have right now, of a 138-bed skilled nursing facility that we are about to break ground on. at our Briar Chapel property in Pittsboro. So we're getting ready, we have a site there and we're getting ready to break ground. This would be a similar type of skilled nursing use that Worth previously spoke about on Pod B. I hope this gives you a glimpse into the community's Liberty successfully developed, as well as showing our company's commitment to make this site and garner our next great Liberty community. Thank you very much, I'm gonna turn it back over to Worth.

Thank you, Thad. Again, just to reorient everybody, this resigning request breaks the property up into four different pods, pods A, B, C, and D. Some of the comments and concerns that we heard at our public hearing included a commitment to not pursue the Blue Ridge tax loophole. Generally, I think it was just more specificity and more detail, particularly around where specific uses would be located in each pod the ambiguity that we had at the public hearing led to some unusual condition language for if this then that or if this then that so wanted to remove all of that uncertainty and be as clear as possible as to what types of uses are going where There was a request for the clarity on the proposed Lake Wheeler road access. Ms. Cook will speak to that and other transportation improvements shortly. There was the discussion about tier one versus tier two and the certainty that we should strive for. And then I think generally it was a well-received project, just needs a little bit more detail. And so that's what we've tried to do since that July 21st public hearing. So just to run through high level, and one that I didn't include here, but I'll say it for Council Member Singleton, we have committed to not pursuing the Blue Ridge tax loophole, which was the first order of business that we made after the public hearing. But we have removed all potential uses but group care in Pod B. So Pod B must be group care, and that's where we plan our skilled nursing. We've removed group care from Pods A and C, which means that the only use that can go in Pod A is the active adult community. The only use that can go in Pod C are those cottage-style townhomes. Now, we haven't decided whether we want to individually plat those or keep them on the same lot, so we kept both the townhouse and multifamily use for that pod, but again, with the uh conditions on height for those townhomes of one story those are going to be cottages we limited those cottage building heights to one livable story and 25 feet we want to emphasize uh the and make sure that we're responding to the needs of the future residents here not having to walk stairs every day and then we offered 11 additional architectural commitments to those pod c cottages Ms. Krenetsky played a huge role in that. If you have any questions on that, she would be happy to discuss them. And then we also increased the active adult building height range to four to five stories. It was three to five stories. We've now made that commitment that it will be at least four stories. And so again, what you see in these pods when taken into effect, these changes with the zoning conditions, we know what's going in pod A, that is active adult community. We know what's going in pod B, that is skilled nursing. We know what's going in pod C, that is cottages. Pod D is we have left a variety of different office retail restaurant type uses. Liberty is not a commercial developer, but I think we can all agree that that commercial area serves as a good buffer from the large scale retail of Costco to a small scale retail or smaller scale retail on this site and then transitioning to multifamily housing. So trying to bring some sort of gentle density decreases as you go from Costco into this more mixed use and residential area. We think that in terms of a tier one rezoning request, it is, I would be hard pressed to find one that has provided more specificity as to the actual uses that will go in actual locations on a site. And I applaud Liberty for putting their money where their mouth was and committing to those at this stage. So again, just somewhat of a higher level overview and some highlights of things that we are proud of. We have committed to a 10,000 square foot clubhouse within the active adult building. We have an eight foot wide trail system that connects the amenity areas and a six foot wide pedestrian path to connect the pods where the trail does not already do that. We're dedicating 10.5% of the entire property as open space. which is a good bit more factoring in that the pod D does not have any open space requirement. And then a commitment that at least half of that open space or that active open space has to be designed for active recreation purposes. And some of those are listed below. We have a limitation on surface parking between those buildings on pods B erpods a b and d and 1010 road we don't want to see a parking lot between the road and the buildings we want to bring those buildings closer to the street create an active and attractive streetscape for the town and lastly as i mentioned we did waive any rights to utilize that blue ridge loophole tax exemption Now Ms. Cook will come up and again just cover the transportation improvements and what we've learned from NCDOT since that July 21st public hearing. Thank you.

good evening you all my name is martin cook with kim lee horn at 421 fayetteville street in raleigh north carolina um so just to kind of update you all worth and that have mentioned it but we've had further discussions with ncdot regarding the lake wheeler access and um after some some meetings with them they've agreed that the right in right out access on lake wheeler could be allowed for this site just a couple other notes just regarding tias and trips looking at age restricted housing those trips are approximately 50 to 55 percent less than those of multi-family associations as far as daily trips go and when looking at single family trips you're looking at about 65 percent reduction just approximately when comparing age restricted to typical non-age restricted units as far as planning commission's comment for extending the left turn at the intersection of lake wheeler road and 1010 road it's that southbound left turn that shows the 100 foot of storage there on your screen we really only add about 20 less than 20 trips to that movement with our site with or without the right in right out driveway that's kind of negligible But any retiming that would be done, which is kind of what that red signal shows there, in association with the right turn lane that we're constructing there, retiming would also take all the other movements into consideration to make sure that those movements are given the proper green time to make their movement and travel to their destinations. I'm happy to answer any other transportation questions later on, but I'll throw it back to Worth.

Thank you, Morgan. We did do some very, very crude tax analysis. I'm certainly not a tax expert, but we based these figures on some assumptions, and I think they were fairly conservative assumptions. at full build out assuming the active adult skilled nursing the cottages and the commercial is built out and if we assume a 2028 revaluation given where we are in the 2024 evaluation period we anticipate an assessed value of the project to be approximately 126 million dollars and we think that is again a conservative estimate we anticipate a market value significantly higher than that At full build out, we would anticipate approximately $855,000 to $965,000 a year in revenue to the town of Garner, divided by property taxes, local option sales taxes administered through Wake County, registered motor vehicle taxes for people that are outside of Garner moving to this community, and then utility sales tax distributions as well. And again, I know this is not sort of, you know, written in stone or, you know, I'm not a tax expert, as I said, but I think a project of this scale with this type of use and the quality of development that Liberty has, I think they've shown in other areas that they are certainly a net positive on those municipalities' tax bases and on their communities at large. um so just to conclude uh my thoughts again the rezoning is consistent with the town of garner's comprehensive plan policy maps and it is consistent with those policies that it puts forward we're consistent with adjacent zoning districts both in garner and in fuqua which are predominantly mixed use in this area again the the inclusion of new senior housing we think is another key important uh benefit of this project to the town for those reasons we think the request is reasonable and in the public interest before i conclude our presentation i do have um written statements from two adjacent property owners, Royal Mark David King at Zero Lake Wheeler Road and JDS Farms LLC at 7625 Lake Wheeler Road. I have copies of these. I believe they were emailed to you, but I'm happy to pass these around, hand these to the clerk if she wants to pass those around. Just give me one second. And just for posterity's sake, I'll read these into the record. So this is JDS Farms, owner of 7625 Lake Wheeler Road. Mayor, council members, and planning department staff, as the owners of JDS Farms LLC, we are in support of the rezoning at 7615 1010 Road. our parcel 7625 lake willow road is located to the north of the proposed mixed use site and we feel that this is a product that is needed in our area as our population ages we need to be in support of providing options for senior living we have spoken with liberty's representatives and have attended the meetings to be sure that it meets the level of quality and has a reputation for proven facilities that meet our community's needs We respectfully request that the Town Council approve CZ-26-002. That was signed by Sally West and Dan Matthews. um now from uh mr king hello mayor gupton and all garner town council members i am the owner of zero lake wheeler road a 22.5 acre site that borders the parcel that liberty senior living is seeking to rezone my property is immediately north liberty and i have been in contact for the last two years to solidify a gravity sewer easement across my property which we have now successfully finalized An age-restricted residential use, like the community that Liberty is proposing, would be the best possible land use scenario for this neighboring land. I fully support Liberty's request to rezone 7615 Tintin Road, Royal Mark David King. Lastly, and this is the end for me, I'm going to have the property owners come up and speak to their experience with Liberty. and then we will be available to answer any questions that you have. Thank you very much.

Good evening, Mayor and Town Council. I'm Mary Alice Sorrell Arvin, and I live at 7600 Lake Wheeler Road, Raleigh, 27603. Our family, the Sorrell family, has lived in this area for generations. Our family moved to this farm in approximately 1956, and we've lived there. And in 2006, my siblings, who are Carolyn Sorrell-Powell, Ray Sorrell, and Jimmy Sorrell, and myself, we are now the owners of this property. And we... all graduated from garner high school as well as our spouses graduated from garner high school and our parents graduated from garner high school so we're invested in garner so um We have enjoyed living in this area and we know our neighbors. And everybody that's asked about this property, when they hear senior living, everybody is saying, yes, that's something that we need, especially for the adult care unit. We're all, as four siblings, we're all in our 80s, so we are getting to the age where we might need this particular property for ourselves. And we feel like it's very much needed in our area. And we're proud of what has been presented to us, and we hope that the town of Garner will be proud to have a facility like this in their town. We've been working with Liberty for maybe two, 22 and three years to try to get this thing passed through, and hopefully we're at the point now that we can get this accomplished. Liberty worked very hard to get this easement for the sewer, and I'm glad to say that they got it all approved with our neighbors, and they've got permission to get access to get to the sewage. So on behalf of the sorrow family I respect for request that the The town council vote yes to approve this rezoning project.

Thank you We are available for any questions

Excellent presentation is it's good to hear from one of the parties to these projects that we rarely hear from and that is the property owners themselves and the history of what goes into this and why that's part of also clearly the applicant has paid attention and listen to council's concerns and planning commissions concerns. We've been a little leery of these tier one projects because they lacked specificity and exactly what's going to go where, you seem to have addressed that. And the question is going to be, is that enough to convince us? But I certainly appreciate the energy that you, the property owners, and Liberty particularly, have put into this. very very fascinating project uh and with that we'll just start uh some questions and this time i think we're going to start with mr vance down at this end questions comments for for any of the folks involved a question for the applicant total number of the units 450

Yes, sir, and that is inclusive of the active adult, the cottages, and the group care units, which fall under the residential use category in the UDO. Will they all be age-restricted? So the active adult and the cottages will be. Those will be 100% age-restricted. The skilled nursing is not age-restricted. We find that there are plenty of people that are under 55 years old that also need that level of care. And so we wouldn't want to have to turn those people away.

Okay. No questions. Thank you. Mr. Dellinger.

Mr. Mayor.

Hello.

I'm going to start at high level, and then we'll go around. This is a very frustrating project. And it's frustrating because it's like a wrapped bicycle next to the Christmas tree where you know you want what's in there, but you're not quite sure what it is. And I think you mentioned removing ambiguity as part of this process. And I think that's where we are, is we need more certainty. Because I think, I've attended planning commission, and I think there's general support for the project type and the location and the need. But as kind of stewards to the town's fiscal sustainability and growth, that ambiguity, while you're presenting pictures and images and these things, the public really needs to understand with a tier one, those are not real. They are pictures that aren't necessarily tied to conditions. And I think this is probably one of the more solid projects that will follow what you present. But we've been given in the past, we're going to do this, and it's going to look like this, but then there are no conditions that match that. That's the real ambiguity that exists in that Tier 1 versus Tier 2, which is, this is what we are going to build. This is how tall it's going to be. These are the elevations. And I really appreciate the nod to doing the tax evaluation. We tried. We probably do it our own. But that's the level of certainty you get with a site plan, is you can actually figure, you have a mass to deal with. So you're in this weird space where It's a great concept and project, and we're pretty confident it's gonna go there. But there's just that, there's an unease with the leftover ambiguity. And even the larger project here, it's a nearly 100 acre project, industrial project, has shifted from tier one to tier two. to try to remove that ambiguity so we in the public actually have a concrete project to evaluate so it's not a question it's just sort of kind of framing my own thoughts around the project there's a lot of support i think in the community and everywhere um but the detail the devil's sort of in the details and um hopefully we can work through that that's my only comment no question

Mr. Stallings?

I've noticed, as they ask most of the times, what's the rationale behind the tier one versus the tier two?

So when we were at the public hearing in July, we had multiple potential uses within that pod B, skilled nursing, medical office building, but also more general office in that space as well. And all three of those uses drastically change building placement layout, how close do you want the building, parking, all sorts of factors that, in our opinion at that time, made a Tier 2 very difficult to accomplish, given that sort of uncertainty as to the ultimate use in Pod B. after the public hearing and before planning commission is when we went And we said, okay, well, here's what we have in a tier one now. What's the most certainty that we can provide in our existing sort of application in that framework? And it was to eliminate every use but the group care use for pod B, and then similarly eliminate every use but the multifamily use in pod A. So while you may not see the 2D building footprint on the pod plan, I think you can be assured as to what the ultimate use and sort of how this site all works together, given that specificity within pods A, B, and C.

And I remember when I asked this question before, the answer that you gave was that you pretty much didn't know who the end users were going to be in one pod, and you were pretty certain in the other pods what was going to be there. And I appreciate the specificity. I mean, it's very detailed. I think the problem with this in its totality is that as we're going through a lot of these rezonings, we want to make sure that we are, we hear a lot about taxes and revenue generations from our citizens, but there's not a lot of actual specificity when it comes to a tier one. You will see sometimes in staff reports that they can't even evaluate certain criteria with a tier one because there's no master plan there to evaluate. So ultimately, I know that developers sometimes like the flexibility that Tier 1s give, but we also need to have certainty for our residents as well, too, because you may not know who the end users are, but we also want to know what the end product is for our residents.

And just to that point, Councilmember, I mean, in terms of the list of allowable uses in each pod, I don't know that we could be more specific, and I would venture to say, aside from you know, a 2D sketch on that plan, the Tier 2 doesn't provide much more specificity than what our Tier 1 is in terms of what goes where. And between a Tier 1 and a Tier 2, you know, I understand that there's questions about, you know, the uncertainty, but Neither application type makes anybody go and build anything. There's no obligation, just because I filed a Tier 2 application, that I ever have to build it. Liberty is here, ready to go. They've got a solid concept of what this property's gonna look like and how it's going to function together. And so to that end, I understand that council, would prefer tier two. And honestly, if we could start at the beginning, knowing what we know now, we would 100% choose a tier two. But I think we've done so much to remove that ambiguity just on what goes where. I think council can take some assurance in that where they look at this site and they go, that's where the skilled nursing goes. That's where the active adult goes. That's where the cottage goes. And that is true of a tier two. And that's sort of what the building placement is for in a tier two is to say, this is where this goes. Well, between the pod system and the lack of uses in each pod, I think we've, you know, through a different route, accomplished a similar goal. But I understand the...

the concerns. I have no further comments other than with a tier two comes a master plan in which you can actually see what the end product will be. And that's all I have, Mayor.

Okay, thank you. Mr. Singleton.

I've looked at some of the Liberty projects and they look really good. They've got a good reputation. I'm glad that You're talking about the group home, the 150 beds, because people of all ages need them. I've had to deal with this the last few years. Both my parents had to put them both in facilities. Fortunately, we got group homes, separate ones because they had different needs in Raleigh. One a five-bed home and one was a six-bed home in Raleigh. And so I understand all that firsthand. You've got a lot of conditions here, but this is confusing as all get out. I'm sorry. We've moved the puzzle. We've done this. We've done that with the conditions. It's like we're on a Ouija board. The only thing we know is what D is. D is going to be commercial. Up to 69,000 square feet. So no minimum, but up to 69. Okay, we got that. The concern is I look at this project and I look at the one we just did. which is much smaller than just 60 units. But by sitting there looking at what they provided for us, I could tell that the depth was 100 or plus feet, you know, by simply just looking at it. And it shows us everything, whether we 100% agreed with it or not. The concern here is you're talking 450, 300 units, individual units, plus the 150, so people who will be working there and also families who will be visiting people. I saw the traffic counts. I'm glad we got the right in, right out on Lake Wheeler Road. I heard Mr., the gentleman on planning commission, his name was Mr. Mills, talk about the additional need for left turn on Lake Wheeler. I went there today. And he's correct. I was there at 141. I got a date snap on my phone, and that left turn, I mean, I was the fourth current at 141. There were 14 cars beside me I couldn't see anymore. I had to go straight. It's an incredibly busy intersection. I just was concerned about the... Some of us up here don't care for Tier 1s. I think we made that pretty clear. We've already had one that was a Tier 1 to switch to a Tier 2 that is going to come before sometime in the next few months. Tier 1s for a small lot, somebody's trying to add a garage in their back or something, that's simple. This is just some big projects. It's a good project. I do like, and I appreciate you showing them here, that the sewer, the to and through sewer, We'll go back up into that right-hand corner, which was asked about in the last meeting, and the water and sewer will be extended up there. So that is a huge plus for potential development on some property that fronts onto 401. But seeing it is totally different than reading the conditions. I mean, I just, you said you just started over, you did a tier two, and I really prefer that you pull the application and bring us back a tier two. I'll just be that blunt about it. I'd rather see it, because we had moved here, there, where they were here. You said, since the public hearing in July, that everything changed. And that's less than two months ago. And I'm not saying everything's going to change because you have conditions, but seeing it gives us assurance that we're going to approve something that we know we're going to approve. I mean, when they did this stuff right beside you with the commercial development, we saw it on a footprint. I just would prefer to see this in a tier two and would request from my standpoint that you pull the application and bring us a tier two and we'll all feel a whole lot more comfortable with what we're approving. I also do appreciate you making the effort on the potential tax revenue. Oh, one other thing, I'm sorry, bringing that up. on the cottage homes? You had them connected, they may not be connected.

Well, they would be connected. It's a question of whether they would be individually platted on their own lots or whether they would be platted on a single lot.

But the 40, we're not gonna have 40 connected, but you can have a group of four, six, or whatever you have.

I think the UDO requires us to have at least five units in each. If they are individually platted, I think there needs to be at least five units. If they are not individually platted, I believe it has to be four.

Okay. Well, one reason is because of when you go to assess tax values, it is different. So it's a huge difference. So that's why I know it doesn't sound like it, but I've gone through some more renewal properties and the assessed value, particularly on ones that are single family versus townhomes right across the road in the same subdivision. It's a huge difference in the assessed value. So I'll just bring that up. Okay. Thank you for clarifying that.

Mr. Matthews.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I've heard everybody has some serious concerns up here, but obviously this is a project that's badly needed in our area, especially in that area there, and a lot of us are seniors like myself, and we're not getting younger, but I certainly like the product that you're presenting because it's all badly needed. Also, to the commitment to the pods, I know we've got some tier two issues here, and we'll probably talk about that some more. But you know what you want to do, you know, so we know what we want to do. Let's do it. But Liberty has a great reputation. You make a fine product. Don't doubt your integrity or what you say you're going to do. I think it'll wind up being a great product. You've got support from all your neighbors, which is a big thing. And like Mr. Singleton, I've had a family member we've had to deal with these same type of issues. And it can be an uphill climb sometime. But other than that, that's my comments, Mr. Mayor.

Could I ask a question of the council and perhaps of the planning department or city attorney's or town attorney's office? Is there an option to potentially convert this existing case to a tier two? I don't know procedurally what you would need from staff or planning commission to do so, but it sounds like there's a lot of excitement about this. if there is a little bit more that is shown on that slide right there. So in the interest of time, rather than going back and doing, sort of going back to step one, if we can amend our application and we can work with the planning department and the town attorney's office to figure out the best way to do that and make sure that we're doing it correctly, that could be sort of the compromise there as opposed to, you won't see this in next September, maybe you could see it in a month or two, I don't know.

I agree, like I said, we've got one that was tier one that is now going to tier two, and it's supposed to come before sometime in October, we'll see if that happens. They can address some of that, but no, I don't want you to start over. We've got the pieces of the puzzle here, we just want to see all the puzzles put together. You can ask Attorney Jones or Ms. Joseph can address that.

Thank you. Yes, we were just saying if they decide to amend, we've allowed that for another. application at this point you know if a decision is given tonight there is no waiting period between recent middles of application so it would essentially be a new application you know they would have to have another neighborhood meeting go through rounds of review for the master plan and you know review that if it's amended so it's sort of kind of maybe splitting hairs on whether to deny and allow them to resubmit given that they don't have to wait six months anymore or continue it and allow them to amend it and go through the necessary steps as far as resubmitting with the tier two reviewing the master plan, going through staff review, conducting another neighborhood meeting to allow the adjacent property owners to review it.

My question is, if we're at this point, and I think we're all in agreement to understand that, and you've got a good product, I think it's been presented well, We're right here. Do we have to jump through all of those hoops, or is there anything we can waive? Anything's workable in this world. I mean, I understand we've got rules we've got to follow, but since we are at this point, I think most of the... Councilman they expect that are separate pretty much at this point. We would like to make this happen But the tier two what can we do to simplify this if it's possible? So we've got to start going through all these hoops to get right back where we are if you follow what I'm saying I Don't know that there's anything we can particularly waive.

They they could convert it to a tier two and Their planning director has arrived. They could convert it to a tier two. They'd still have to go through the TRC review. There's still submittals they have to make associated with a tier two, and that would have to go through all the regular review process. Now there is a question as to whether they would have to do another neighborhood meeting or not.

I have a question. So the resubmittal to the, if it's resubmitted, When they even were approved as a tier one and they have submitted a site plan, would that not still have to go through that same type of technical review for the site plan?

Are you talking about the actual site plan? That usually is something that comes after the rezoning.

Yeah, so I actually have another...

The master plan is different than the site plan.

I have another question. Kind of that's going to... May lead us in the direction of continuation anyway, because I've got another set of questions on some of the details around the Cottage Town Home ambiguity that I don't know we're going to resolve tonight. So I don't know if we want to let you all discuss that, and let me get my...

cottage question in the air so you all can start percolating on that and staff can start thinking about it too does that work just make sure we all have all of our questions on the table yeah i think you're right and if you hold that thought for one minute let me just kind of recap what i what i think i'm hearing here is that most councils seem to think this is a good idea this is a good a good thing we want these kind of services these kind of housing uh for our residents and overall that's a good thing we still are a little confused and the main question is do these conditions can we write enough words to make sure that the product actually matches up what it looks like i mean that's our question you know we know if we draw diagrams and every dumpster and every tree and every sidewalk And every building and how high it is, we get some level of confidence if what we know is a tier two. And I guess my question, I'm just throwing that probably in line with what Mr. Ellinger is saying, is how do we get from where we are, which is real close, to moving ahead with how to do this thing. How do we make it happen to where we can tell our constituents, oh yes, this is exactly what we thought it was, and they dotted every I and every T, and whether it was a picture or a thousand words, they said a picture's worth a thousand words, How do we move forward in the most expeditious way to do the right thing for our residents and not be caught standing with something that was not what we thought it was? That's just an observation. How do we proceed from here? And Mr. Dellinger, I agree with you. Any ideas, any questions that we can be throwing out at this point might help us decide what are possible paths forward. So with that, I'll go back to you.

Yeah, and for clarity, the project has evolved significantly since the public hearing. It was quite a different version. It went to planning commission, and it changed very little since planning commission, but it was discerning on Pod B changed, and then there were some changes to some of the language on these townhome-style cottages that came from, I'm not sure where, and I want, Jeff is over there talking, and they're trying to contemplate, but I'm talking about the cottage homes. So I had some questions about that because you were sort of defining a new housing type that doesn't exist in our UDO. And because it doesn't exist in our UDO, it's also not sort of been vetted, verified as a housing type we want or know we want. So again, there's no precedent for what you're proposing, and the terminology doesn't align with anything we have. So there's some ambiguity along what that product is, because I could read it out, but it would bore everyone to tears, but the townhome, even the definition of a townhome in our UDO reference a specific B-simple of property. So what are you doing? Rentals?

And that's why we use the term cottage. And within there, defined that it was going to be an attached product, either platted on its own lot or platted amongst other units because you know hit that hinges on whether it's now an apartment or a townhome so I think we can certainly look at the verbiage to if there's I think conceptually like you're it seems like it makes sense but it doesn't job with our UDO it doesn't fit and one of the things we have to be really careful of is some of our land use decisions can be precedent-setting

Right, and I think it could be something where we currently say cottage, it could be any dwelling unit in Pod C. Well, and again, I don't know, and I don't think we can figure it out tonight, because the language townhome cottage... pulls from two different parts of our UDO on cottage being one thing, our comprehensive plan, and townhome being a very specific thing in our UDO, and they don't exist. And so that also, this actually sort of goes back to the problem with the tier one, and it opened the opportunity for even this level of ambiguity on what the housing type would be in the pot. because it wasn't a specific housing type that was chosen and put into a master plan and say, this is what is allowed here. Now let us master plan that housing type out. There's a new housing type was accidentally sort of created. So I think I throw that out there because we need to resolve that language and verbiage before this project could move forward anyway. And I think that would mean that we'd have to have some kind of continuance to figure out, even if it were a tier one going forward, there's still gonna be a delay on working with planning to figure out what are you really thinking about putting here? And it's those kind of details that I think no one, this is not gonna be an instance where we're resetting this whole project. The other one hasn't totally reset. It's kind of like, okay, we're starting from a new definite set of plans, but you've done the legwork, right? So anyway, I put that out there because that was one other thing that in, Mentioning it to Jeff briefly after the Planning Commission meeting, it was sort of like, I'm not sure what this is. And so, again, put that out there. We're probably in a position for a continuance anyway on those grounds for that pod. So that was my comment.

Mr. Mayor, I know we're having some discussion out here. Is there any changes, or do I want to offer up anything here, or thoughts, or we're still, you're trying to figure it out?

Yes, it might be a good time to get our planning director, our assistant planning director over here now, and our question for us is, how do we proceed with something that sounds very good? How do we make it be what we want, as clear as we want?

what what what are our options before we speak let me ask this that came before us in july and in less than a month they dramatically changed their plan to the planning commission so they can dramatically change their plan then i'm trying to figure out why we i know you got to reach the middle for tier two but we don't want to deny it and wait six months so they dramatically change their plan in less than a month so um I don't want us to wait six weeks, and I'd like to do a site plan, but tell us what we can do to get this moving smoothly. Because if they could dramatically change a plan in a month, then this is, all we're doing is asking them to put the site plan down. We won't shoot the site plan. It's a tier one to tier two, yes, that's a substantial change, but they made a substantial change from July to August. and what they projected for the project.

Right. So the ordinance, the UDO allows a case, a rezoning case to be modified anywhere along in the process so long as it doesn't expand the scope or increase the number of uses. Everything that they've done to this point has been the opposite of that. The only question that I have that I would need to get the town attorney to weigh in on is that one of the differences between the tier one and the tier two is that it requires a second neighborhood meeting. That second neighborhood meeting is supposed to be, I believe, the way the ordinance is written, prior to public hearing, after application but prior to public hearing. Technically, I think the public hearing's been closed, for other items, so there's that little hurdle. And then the rest of it just I think becomes more of a, What are you comfortable with as council if you were to continue this? Do you want it to go back to Planning Commission? There's nothing in the ordinance that would say otherwise that that would have to happen. Apart from this question about I have about the second neighborhood meeting because if we go back that far then you clearly have to.

Mr. Mayor, so technically the next time they come back we could make that a public hearing. but we can make public hearings whenever we want to.

If you have another public hearing, then you have to do a referral to the Planning Commission again.

But we can, but if it's a, we have the authority to make anything a public hearing.

Yes, but once you do it under Chapter 160D, state law required, that's a specific kind of public hearing.

Okay, the other question I had was, would it make things faster to remove the D pods from the rezoning and move forward with the other ones as the tier one and the others come back, I mean tier two, and then the others come back later as tier two? Would that be, is that possible for amending the, project and say they know what they're doing in A, B, and C and can put a master plan to it, let's go ditch the D section for later, come back with a tier two when you have a user.

That would be reducing the scope of the request, so technically yes.

Can I ask this here? I'm just an old country boy, okay? There's a thing called common sense. We're all here trying to achieve the same goal is what I'm hearing from everybody, at least that's what I sense. We want this thing to happen. And we're letting technicality, and we've got a certain amount, we've got technicalities beat us all to pieces. Is there a way, and I'm sitting here listening to everybody, that our biggest concern is what's going to be in pod A and pod B? Is that a safe thing to say? Okay. What if something is specified and right in pod A is going to be exactly this? Pod B is going to be exactly this? We get to the same result, what we're looking for. We just want, we want to be totally sure what's going in A and what's going in B and what's going in C. Can you just put that in writing? Would that be acceptable to say this is what we're gonna put in those and it be a bonafide statement that we can take to the bank?

Correct me if I'm wrong, the uses are specified. The types of uses are specified for each of those. I think the issue with the tier two is the master plan, you would have more detail about the building layout, the street design, things like interior network, transportation network and things like that.

And those were a lot of concerns.

This mentioned site plan you mentioned earlier. Is that not going to come back to school?

Yeah, because a lot of concerns, the planning commission would be resolved with a master plan because you can work on traffic and layout and stuff. So a lot of the concerns they had on flow wouldn't be, they could be addressed concretely with an existing master plan. I think the tier two route, get the master plan for the A, B, and C, and D, one and two if you have it. I'm confident we'll figure it out and not take much longer than even if you got her, you still gotta do that work at some point anyway. So I think that's kind of, there's reciprocity on wanting the project to move, I think. I think Terry's smiling, so she has good news.

I'm sorry, I was conferring with Mr. Treisenberg, so can you repeat your question or comment?

I didn't have a question. I just saw you smiling, so I thought you'd come up with a perfect plan.

No, I did just want to explain that if you deny the plan tonight, they would have to reapply for anything, and they would not have permit choice options at that point. They have not been, nothing's been approved yet, so there's no vested rights at this point.

Let me draw back an issue.

Sorry, but modifying it continues them with their original application.

Yeah, let me ask the question again. What can we do to keep moving ahead in the most expeditious and clear and legal and in line with our UDO way to do this? I think we're all saying, what can we do to move ahead? And does that mean that we continue this for an indefinite period while planning and applicant and our attorney and we all put our heads together and say, yes, that seems to be moving in the right direction. How about come back at this time, this way, to keep moving ahead and not have to start over, not have to deny it and have a penalty time? What is a continuance of way to study this?

I think none of us want to deny it and make them wait six months. None of us want to deny it and wait six months. We want to continue the project. If you have to have another neighborhood meeting, fine. If the Planning Commission sees it, fine. Then you can bring it to us the very next meeting. because planning commission have already approved it without a site plan. They really shouldn't have any issues. I mean, that's the big one about it. I mean, they've sort of approved it without us, what we see. In fact, because they were looking at more technical stuff, that's what their charge is. And they asked, again, raised some excellent questions. So, we've done that before, is where you had a planning commission meeting, and then at the next town council meeting, which would be the next week, because that's on the second Monday, and we meet on the third Tuesday, but Tuesday after that, excuse me, one week after that, that would shorten that period a couple of weeks. So I think what we all want is to continue it and move forward with a tier two for A, B, and C, because as Mr. Treasonberg noted, that did lessen the scope and full steam ahead on that. That's what I, and I would be glad to make that a motion, but I wanna make sure that staff and legal department thinks that's a safe motion.

Can we hear from the applicant about this conversation we're having?

Well, I think it's a great conversation. I'm just glad to not be getting denied tonight. I would want to confirm with planning and legal, there isn't a way to simply add building footprints to this existing tier one pod layout, is there? And I guess if there was, does that rise to the level for town council to feel comfortable enough, or does...

say again there's a way to do that and the planning director he can analyze this better but there are required elements for a tier two master plan that have to be submitted right i was saying if if

if it's enough for town council is it possible to take this tier one take this pod map and put building footprints where we anticipate active adult skilled nursing and the townhome okay i just want to make sure that you know we're looking at every option i don't know if that's if that would be enough for council to feel like they've got the information they need to approve.

Because a master plan also allows our planning staff to review what you've done and make sure it's in compliance with the UDO and those other expectations. You've heard sort of night there. They hone in on certain things and so that it takes their role out of

this process if if we don't have that so i i'm pretty it's a good idea but we we value our staff's input on understood projects but i to council member vance's point um that option the options that have been thrown out are certainly preferable to a denial six month wait and then go back with a tier two um everybody's it's fresh on people's mind um everybody's familiar with it so you know if we can sort of figure out the best way to convert this and go through all the procedural requirements that we need to get this back for you I think that's the best way forward and if it's a matter of You know, I guess town attorney can weigh on this if it needs to have a date certain on the continuance or not. But, you know, we're open to that, I think is the takeaway. That's much more preferable than the alternative.

I would just say where we are now is we were probably staring down at a continuance anyway over the town and cottage issue. So we actually at this point have not lost any time. So it's time that we would have had to take anyway. We can just make even better use of that time. I'll leave it to Mr. Singleton and the town attorney for the motion.

Before the motion, I have a question. I hear from the applicant they want to get close to a tier two, but not a tier two?

Well, no. I was just thinking, I was brainstorming, if building footprint is what's most important, is there a way to put this on the existing tier one? But it sounds like that's not a preferred route, and so forget I said it.

So we go into tier two? Yes, sir. Okay.

If I could clarify some of the, while our UDO used to have a waiting period for, and it may still state the waiting period for a denied plan, under state law, we can no longer make them wait. They could be denied today and resubmit for the same property, same plan tomorrow. Now, it probably wouldn't be the same plan, it would be modified, but there is no waiting period after denial. We're prohibited from having any kind of regulation on that.

That's relatively new, right? That's relatively new? Yes.

Okay. I will say that continuing it only requires one neighborhood meeting. A denial would require two neighborhood meetings.

Okay. Yeah, we want to do what's more expeditious. And the difference between a Tier 1 with lots of details and a Tier 2, they start to blur the line. We want a lot of details. We want a lot of certainty of what it's going to be. Is it a Tier 1 that goes into great detail and it's almost just that close to being officially a Tier 2, but we don't have to change it to a Tier 2 and start over a whole waiting period? and i don't know the answer to that we don't get this question very often but if we if we continue this uh then those are the kind of things that the applicant and the property owner can work out with the planning staff and the attorney and come up with something that will uh i think we all see where we're going we like this kind of a project we like this kind of thing we just want a little more clarity a little more certainty that what we approve is what will be on the ground and i think it might it'll

The process will be odd, but I think it will be faster to continue it and keep this application active than it would be to start it.

So, Mr. Jones, if you were to, what should we say in a motion, and I'll make the motion.

I just want to clarify, there was a question about could they do more to this Tier 1, and would Council consider that? And my understanding is, Council rejected, it's a Tier 2 or a denial. So you can continue, you wanna do a motion to continue for how long and for what purpose, to allow them to resubmit a tier two? And then there becomes a question as to whether you also wanna require a public hearing and or a neighborhood meeting.

Well, if we continue, that'll be, the public hearing continues, right, correct?

This is not a public hearing. This is, we're past the public hearing.

This is a decision point.

So I'm not sure, continuing, are you continuing this for the purpose of allowing them to resubmit or, not sure the right word. Submit a tier two.

Would it be a continuance?

Or do you just table it at this time until it's ready to come back with some proposal?

Because the next step here would be a public hearing. So if it's deferrent for two months, so we can submit something, do a neighborhood meeting, get feedback, and then we're back.

So do we use the word table or continue or the same thing? I don't use the wrong word. Is it the same thing?

Well, if you continue it to a date certain, it goes on that agenda, and then you would have to take action either that night or continue it again.

Okay. So maybe we all need a date certain.

We all probably have public notice of this meeting. Yeah, so normally because you're at a decision point, there's not your typical public notice period like you would be required if there was going to be a public hearing.

Okay. Okay. So you just said 60 days.

So you could table it and staff can put it back on an agenda when it is ready for the session.

I would prefer that. Okay, I'll move that we table this project and direct staff to work with the applicant and they will put it back on an agenda when the time's appropriate. Second.

There is a motion. Mr. Singleton and a second by Mr. Stallings to continue this for more detail and more communication work between the applicant and the planning staff. That's what we're hearing. And I'm going to call it for a voice vote. All in favor of that continuous, please signify by saying aye. We're tabling it. Yeah, table it, continue it, what's the word? Table, table.

So it's essentially the same unless you continue it to a date certain. We're not continuing it to any kind of date certain.

Table it until it's an appropriate time for staff to bring it to an agenda.

Last time when I said table, they said no, it's continued. This time I said continue, they said table. We're going to table this thing, right? Okay, the motion has been made in seconds. It's tabling. All in favor of tabling this motion as described, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? It passes unanimously.

And I have one clarifying question. The letter, the extension of the sewer, will go to the property and that's one of the letters that we received from the property owner, correct? Yes, sir. To the extension of sewer and water utilities will go to Mr. Mark David Royal King. And that's one of the letters that we got.

Sewer will go north. Sewer. I think we've got water available.

Okay. Water just extends and stops there, but the sewer will go to that property. Yes, sir.

And to an existing manhole north of our site.

To an existing manhole.

Okay.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you for everybody who participated in this, and I think we reached the best possible conclusion tonight, and we'll look forward to seeing y'all again after a lot of consultation with our planning staff.

Thank you for your feedback.

Thank you very much. Thanks, Council and planning staff particularly. okay and that brings us along to item 2g in new and old business and that is a zoning text amendment request related to funeral homes in the neighborhood mixed-use district and again we've talked about this before been around and i bet miss joseph can give us a condensed and simplified and recognizable status report of where we are today mr joseph all righty thank you

Okay, so this is back before you this evening for consideration of decision and possibly adoption. So this is a staff-initiated text amendment, ZTA 26002, also known as Funeral Homes in the Neighborhood Mixed Use District. Quickly, background information. This text amendment came about after staff met with a business owner operator of a funeral home within the town. They wanted to do some site modifications and it was noted that their zoning district did not allow for major modifications. Staff believes that the omission of funeral homes within the NMX district was an unintended oversight during the update to the UDO, Garner Forward UDO in 2022, thereby bringing this proposed text amendment for your consideration to correct that oversight. So the NMX district is intended to support low intensity commercial uses that primarily serve nearby residents, providing convenient access to goods and services. Typical uses that you'll see within the NMX district include office, professional services, and small scale retail. Again, you'll see on the screen there the table of permitted uses where funeral homes were not included in the NMX district. Currently, funeral homes are allowed in the CMX district and the LI district. So the proposed tax amendment would add funeral homes to the NMX district. We have updated the definition and removed the term burial with disposition. That was a tip from the working with and speaking with the funeral home operator, better definition. We've also included use standards that currently are not within the UDO, just including that all storage be included in an enclosed building and the display of sample headstones and other memorials that are for sale. to be screened from the public right of way in any lot abutting residential district or uses by either a continuous OPEG screen that reaches a minimum height of six feet with a fencing or decorative wall so they would have the option to choose between any of those screening methods. The Planning Commission reviewed this case in August. There were several questions and comments. Primarily, there were some clarifying questions about the existing funeral homes that are out of compliance and if a special use permit would rectify that. And there was a question about the crematorium and if that use would continue as a non-conforming use. Again, if a special use permit could be granted to allow the continuation of this specific site. without the text amendment. There were some concerns that allowing this proposed text amendment to move forward could potentially open up a can of worms if funeral homes are allowed in the NMX district. compatibility concerns with funeral homes in the NMX district versus other uses within that district or primarily adjacent to residential uses. And then a clarifying question if funeral homes would remain within the CMX district even if it is added to the NMX district. And there was a question, I believe it was that they were speaking, the planning commissioner was speaking more about cemeteries and that screening, so a little bit of confusion. So we cleared that up, that the screening requirement is for those items that are for sale at a funeral home. The Planning Commission adopted a consistency statement recommending approval that this request is consistent with the adopted land use plan. There was a motion, and it was not a unanimous vote, it was a five to one vote, but they did adopt this statement. Regarding text amendments, there is only a statement of consistency. There is not a requirement to evaluate a text amendment with reasonableness. So you're really looking at the consistency to the adopted land use plan. So staff has provided options. They are found in your agenda packet, page 914, and either to find consistent approval, to find inconsistent or deny, or the option of continuing or any further information that may be needed. That concludes my presentation. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Great, great presentation and we'll start with Mr. Matthews this time and come down the road for questions or comments on this particular suggested ordinance change. Mr. Matthews.

Thank you for all the information and update and that's all I have, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Singleton.

I second Mr. Matthews. Mr. Stallings.

I have no questions.

Mr. Tellinger. No questions. Mr. Vance. No questions. Okay. Well, then probably we've had the discussion. Is there a motion?

mr mayor i move that the town council accept the planning commission's written statement regarding consistency of the zoning amendment request with adopted land use plans detailed in section three of the staff report is their own and i further move that the town council adopt ordinance 2026-5399 approving rezoning zta-26-002

A motion by Mr. Matthews and a second by Mr. Singleton to adopt this motion. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, let's go for a voice vote on this. All in favor of approving this, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, passage unanimously. Good job of looking hard on a detail, but very important, another cleanup thing. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And that brings us to item H on our agenda, updates to council. And the first one under H is committee reports having to do with committees. And being on the Public Art Commission, I can tell you that they meet tomorrow. And we'll pass on down from Mr. Stallings. Any committee reports?

No reports.

Mr. Dellinger? No reports. Mr. Vance?

No reports.

Mr. Singleton? No, sir. Okay.

I just want to quote the Veterans Council met this past Monday and had a good turnout, a good meeting, and updated on memorial lights. The memorial they're putting up, replacing all the lights out there on the tall columns, and they're going to come right behind it and install lights under those benches. So that whole area will be lit up and looking extremely nice in the evening hours. And plus made plans for Veterans Day preparation. And Rebecca was out there with us reviewing the appointment procedures for the DAV, American Legion, FW. And thanks to the town and our council for all your support.

And Mr. Mayor, you can tell that Mr. Matthews was born and bred here in North Carolina when he said benches. I had a good friend like that. That's what he called them when we went to races. We didn't sit on the seat. We sat on the bench. On the bench. When you said that, it popped in my mind, so... I'm glad I could reflect like that.

Then we'll mash the button to turn on the light. Exactly. We're from around here. Thank you very much. That brings us to item number two, manager reports. Ms. Miller.

Yes. Tonight we have for you your September talk of the town. I'll ask Mr. Hodges to briefly review the talk of the town report.

Thank you, Ms. Miller. Mayor and council members, in your packet, you've got the talk of the town. A couple of highlights is the final Groovin' in Garner concert will be this Friday night on the lawn outside the GRC. The GPAC Showtime series is kicking off. One of the special events coming up is country music star Kathy Matea will be coming to Garner in October. um there is an electronics recycling event this saturday that public works hosts our downtown garner association and garner police department will host a trick-or-treat food truck event and garner night out on october the 10th and then there is also a reference for you for some featured a garner feature in the parks and recreation magazine and you can find the the address for that in your report there's also your garner info monthly analytics And as always, we want to mention that these do not include all the proactive work that our code compliance team is out doing. We provide you those numbers in a different report. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer those.

Questions, comments?

Just one other recognition. I just want to publicly thank Chief Penny and Chief Adams for their coordination of our 9-11 remembrance event last Friday on September 11th. We asked them to put together that event for that very special anniversary. I wasn't able to be there in person, but I saw the video and it was a very special event. Just wanted to thank them for their leadership and putting together such an important event for the town.

It was an outstanding event. The only question is to do it every year or every five years. I'm sure you'll come up with the right answer there, Chief. Thank you.

Those are all the manager reports for this evening. Happy to answer any questions from council.

Any questions for the town manager? Hearing none, that takes us right along to attorney reports.

I am pleased to introduce council and the public formally to Lydia Elrod, who's in the back corner. She is our fall legal intern. She's just starting her second year at Campbell Law School, and she is a native to the Triangle region of North Carolina, so we're happy to have her. She started last week and will be with us until Thanksgiving.

Well, man, that is good news. You've been able to assemble quite a team through the years and just another great team member, I'm sure. Thanks for being here.

I told her we could give her the opportunity to speak, but depending on how late the meeting was, probably not. But we'll give her another opportunity to come before council, hopefully later in the year. I would also like to inform you that I will be next week, Wednesday through Sunday, I'll be at the International Municipal Lawyers Association Conference in Salt Lake City. I'll leave you in the capable hands of Assistant Town Attorney Morgan Pierce while I'm three hours behind you.

We want one right here on our clock, thank you.

Looking forward to a lot of good sessions on things that have a more national scope of municipal attorneys. They always want us to do the caveat, well it's called international, it's really Canada and the U.S. that are parts of this association.

Thank you. And that's all on the attorney reports. Yes. And that brings us along to item four, which is council reports, not committees. And I'll just start off by saying I think today we council members and leadership team got our third invitation to a Diwali event here in our town. So that's the big deal this Saturday. I will be out of town and almost impossible to get back. So I would greatly appreciate any of our council members and our leadership team that could go. This has been great fun with great food every time. And I think they started as early as 11.30 and run through 2.30 or so. You've seen the emails. But if you go tell Mayor Buddy said, hey, it's a great event. That being said, council reports, Mr. Vance, any other council?

Yes, I have several in reference to the big sweep that was done recently with the cleanups in the various areas of town. My hat's off to the town manager and the town manager pool for pulling us off and pulling us together. It brought to my attention that it was really ignited by conversations about community cleanup and citizens eating out and wanting to beautify Garner by picking up the trash and things of that nature and now it's into just a large event, and I will say that I hope that it continues and continues to expand so that we can continue to maintain the beauty here in Gardner. Thank you all for that. And also, my hat's off to the chief, both chiefs, for the 9-11 Remembrance event. It was a very touching event just to understand it was 25 years ago that this tragic event happened that brought the country together. And it's my hope that the country can come together once again. And I'm going to embarrass her right now. I remember Ms. Lydia Elroy when she was little tattie tot, coming in our church and right there. And it's good to see her and going here with us now and in our second year of law school. Congratulations to you. I'll tell you, daddy, I saw you. Man, that's good news.

Mr. Dellinger.

Yeah, just three quick things. September is National Preparedness Month, kind of focusing primarily on hurricane preparedness. Kind of run into this in my day job, but one of the best things you can do is prepare yourself for a disaster and a hurricane because it alleviates a lot of pressure off of first responders and other aid organizations. So it's a good help for your family, but also the community if you can kind of hold your own for a little while if there's a disaster or you're without power and resources. There's some resources on ready.gov to help people do that. The second thing is pulling the two agenda items. I think we moved to that trend of putting more of those things on old and new business. And I think it would be helpful too, we get our quarterly financial reports to get sort of an easy to read list of budget amendments that have occurred. So I think we kind of want to keep our finger on that as the year goes through to see how we're kind of tallying up these budget amendments and in situations kind of understanding and to Mr. Singleton's question, what was the contingency and what are sort of the practices and other ways that we can avoid unexpected budget amendments. The last is, sorry I couldn't come to the September 11th event, you know, work obligations, but I do want to tip my hat to Chief Penny and Chief Adams and the whole staff for doing that. I saw the pictures and it is a very, you know, It's an emotional event, and I appreciate you guys putting in the effort to put that together and honor everyone and the work that everyone does every day and to commemorate. It's hard to believe it's been 25 years, but thank you all for doing that, and I think it was a great contribution, so thank you.

Thank you. And before you finish, did you mention this was the year anniversary of our last big hurricane?

We've got a lot of big hurricanes. Which one are you referring to?

The one you're working on up in the mountains.

Oh, I was going to say that for later, but...

This is later.

It is getting later. Yeah, so September 27th will be the anniversary of Hurricane Helene that hit western North Carolina. And the manager's office was kind enough to put together... Some of the things that the town of Garner did with relation to helping out out west and sending fire rescue and police out west and sending materials and our public information officer went out there. So I've shared that information with our staff in office and working on some stuff. But I think we just wanted, you understand there are a lot of help that goes out in these disasters that no one ever hears about. and that our small town can help contribute when people are really struggling and do it without hesitation whatsoever. And so I'll do something a little bit later, but I want to elevate that, that people really care in this state about our neighbors, and it's appreciated out west. And as the second anniversary comes in the next couple weeks, it's very emotional, and there's a lot of gratitude, and sometimes they don't know where to send the gratitude. So I want to make sure we make those connections and let you know that the people of Western North Carolina are very thankful for everything that the town of Garner did in the wake of the hurricane.

And we don't mind hearing about it again later in September either. And thank you for the work you personally do on your day job to make sure that's working in the right direction, helping us all out. You know, it's a job that you've really thrown your heart into it and really brought something to it. So thanks for your efforts there. Mr. Stalin?

No report tonight. Thanks again for the work on the 9-11 ceremony with the neighborhood team, but I saw the video that Mr. Mercer sent us and appreciate it. Also, we had this past Saturday, Ball Day, Mr. Matthews and me and Mr. Vance were there, and they got 411 kids playing and going to baseball this fall, and 200 plus parents volunteering, so it was a big crowd out there, as always. And great to see folks. We talked about the, you mentioned the hurricanes was the last week was 30 years since Hurricane Fran, which might have gone up pretty good. Fran basically came up 40 and I can remember it very vividly. I was working at Hudson's, no power, everybody needed chainsaw, everybody needed everything. I made seven trips, two on Friday, two on Saturday, two on Sunday, one on Monday over to Mid-Atlantic Steel in Durham and picked up over 100 saws every trip. So over 800 saws picked up, half in Garner, half in Clayton. As soon as it got unloaded, go back. It was something else. The town needed stuff. The town would come in. They were part of the people who needed things, shovels, garden rakes, leaf rakes, axe handles, axes, picks. Batteries, flashlights. Luckily, at the time, Ace Hardware Warehouse was in Charlotte, and they were able to consolidate, and we were able to get a lot of materials, but that was something else. Doing that with no power. We had just transitioned from the credit card, the old credit card, this way, with a triplicate. the electronic ones so we had all the old credit card and the slips and everything everything was done that way that's the only way you could do business and once you pay cash we had a notebook and you took cash so that's what you did there was no power there there was a pocket of forest hills including town hall and a little pocket by my parents from had a couple days but town hall didn't lose electricity it was a generator and forest hills shopping center didn't lose power a little bitty pocket, and everybody else was out. We lived in North Garner, I mean, right beside North Garner Middle School, we were out for a week. It smacked Garner pretty good. Luckily, I don't think there were any fatalities, but it was a lot of damage. And then we got other ones, you had, you know, Florida in 99, Florence was just, what, 10 years ago, and then, of course, Helene was horrible out west. So far this year, there's no forecast right now, so we'll see what happens. It would be nice if we got a tropical storm that just rained for a couple of days, but anyway, we don't want to wish for that because we don't want the consequences, but that was a tough time here 30 years ago.

Indeed, yeah. We don't always get what we wish for, so we'll just hold our breath and hope for the best. Right. Mr. Matthews?

Oh, yes. Just echoing the Fran thing, I was a volunteer fireman and had a lot more hair back in those days. And so I was up all night running calls and to finally just shut the doors. And it was, like Grace said, it was a long night. And the next day was even longer. And I remember getting home, going to shower up right quick. I looked across the street at my young neighbor. was up on the peak of a two-story house where he lived, and his wife was out front yelling at him. And so when I said, what's going on, she said, He's got up there, and he can't get down. A fireman's job is never over with. So I went up there and talked him down, and we got him down. And I assured him if he ever got back up there again, it would not be to his best interest. So that was good. And 9-11 was very good. And if you didn't get a chance to hear Mr. Foster's story, he was on ground zero. doing some very tough, tough work identifying body parts, I guess is the best way to put it. I think it was on recording, so you never know what's going on, and the people you work with, you never know what makes them what they are, because of what they've been through in life. But 9-11, that was a great ceremony, and congratulations to the police and fire in the town staff for making it happen. It was the best.

It was very meaningful indeed. And that seems to finish up everything on the business agenda. We don't have a closed session tonight. So that kind of concludes our business. Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. A motion by Mr. Stallings, second by Mr. Vance. All in favor of an adjournment, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. Thanks for the good work, all of you. Thank you.