Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Dear heavenly father, be with us this evening as we do the business for the city and the community. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Item C approval agenda. This is to approve the agenda for July 14th, 2025 regular tech commission meeting. I'll move to approve the agenda for July 14, 2025. I'll second. All in favor? I.

Very good. This item D says comments. At this point, we allow anybody who wants to speak to speak and they're allowed three minutes. They must state their first and last name and where they reside. And at this point, Mr. Chair, if you want, you can open citizens comments. All right. Open citizens comments. Very good. Anybody want to speak about it? First and last name, where you live, any type of political affiliations.

Let's see. uh a Panera on Fernando Santana, but here I'm George Lee on the city of Gddard. And uh I just want to make a shameless plug for the uh fundraiser that we're doing for the senior van. Earlier this year, we received a grant for I think it's 75 or $80,000 for a senior van. It's a 15 passenger van. Also, we in that grant is an additional $10,000 for maintenance, ongoing maintenance of vans. So, there's a match for this, which is around $20,000. So, I thought it'd be fun if we could just put together a little fundraiser and see what support we can get from the community and also from the seniors. So, it's next door a few minutes ago at uh they're doing line dancing. And I just told them and proved that I have two left feet. But, I did hand out a few of these cards and I left you each one. Uh it's got a QR code on it and hopefully um we can raise you know 15$20,000 for the down payment. I I pitched it as um 100 people doing four or looking for 100 people 20 doing 400 2300 2200 2100 uh 20 doing 50 that'd be 20,000 but I've already had somebody give me a $150 in pennies so we'll do pennies for progress as well. Um it's it's um the idea though I think is to try to encourage the seniors and also give opportunity to the members of the community to show their support for the senior center. So just wanted to drop these off and just would say thank you appreciate anything that you be willing to do. Um I did the first contribution I might take $400 in. I don't like asking people to do anything that I want to do myself. So So anyway, we only need 199 folks to to meet that number. So we're getting those increments. however it comes in, it comes in. And we're thankful for every dollar, every donation we get. Appreciate you guys' work that you do for our community. Um, we're blessed to have you share your

your time, your energy, and your talent. I just want to tell you thank you, too. So, thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Close citizens comment. Very good. So, the consent agenda. So, this is to approve the minutes from June 9th, 2025 regular Pine Commission meeting. As a reminder, we had the R1 zoning lot width and depth modification, the Garver presentation for G trails and phase 2 concept and the salt sand building for the public works site plan. I'll make a motion to um approve the consent agenda. All in favor?

I I

Very good. This board of zone appeals. This is F1. This is the setback reduction lock coverage heightened permitted uses for the R1 amendment. We will also have the G1 which will cover lot width and lot depth. So from time to time it is considered good practice to review the subdivision zoning regulations in term of any modification or adoption should be made. City staff presented the possibility of modifying the R1 zoning classification to allow smaller lots of smaller lot widths and depths. Plant commission stated that they would like to see what this would look like holistically with all the bulk regulations together. This is part of that request to show a theoretical home on modified regulations and what the kind of what we call the buildable envelope would look like. Uh second part of the change comes with permitted uses. It's often the case that land is donated to the city for city uses for additional public buildings. Um we get a lot of land donated to us so people can have tax write offs. Um, this land is typically R1 since majority land in city limits is zone R1. And so the zoning classification only allows public buildings as a special use. And city staff would like to change that to allow public buildings as an R1 district as an acceptable use. So then we're going to go through. Black is not changing. Green I've added, red I'm striking out. And so you guys can look at this and if you see anything you don't like or see anything you do like or have any questions or comments, just feel free to state it. All your comments will be received and filed. Then we'll present it to the city council for final consideration. So under permitted uses, you can see here I marked green, which is a public building erected or land used by any agency in the city or township, county or state government not otherwise provided for these regulations. And under special uses you see here was number one was public buildings directed or land used by any agency, the city or township, county or state government not otherwise provided for these regulations. So I moved this one to here. So it became a permitted use from a special use. And as mentioned, we get a lot of land. That's one of the reasons we didn't think about what that would look like. The only real maybe concern we might have about that if it was more of a water treatment plant maybe next to residential that might be some kind of issue but obviously we already have that. We have a water treatment plant right next to Clover Leaf development. So that's

literally a budding of residential development. And if you think about the fact that public and private schools are already considered an acceptable use, there's nothing that's going to have a higher traffic volume than that compared to the city. So, ultimately, I don't see a real strong reason uh for why that would be considered um you know, a negative to have a public building. I mean, it's not abnormal for you to see a police office or police building next in in a residential neighborhood. So, um but that's just being said, we decided to move it from one and to permitted uses. So, that was change number one. Conditional uses are not changing. Lot size requirements. So dwellings permitted under section 4101A1 which is basically all the permitted uses which includes single family and you notice here single family detached and residential design manufactured homes. It doesn't allow for two family. It's only allowed two families only allowed as a conditional use. So this is just talking about single families and modular homes. We switched it from 6,000 to 4,000. That's to accommodate a 40ft width and then 100t uh for the depth. So that would be 4,000 right there. And then dwellings permitted by section 4101 for minimum lot width. We're doing 40 ft. And next, there it goes. We did change the maximum structure height from 35 to 45 ft. I don't really see them changing that much, but I figured if you shrank it a little bit, maybe you want to go more vertical, that would give you a little bit more wiggle room to go from 35 to 45. that would give you opportunity if you wanted to build vertically because our our lot coverage really only takes in account the building footprint. Some cities, as I mentioned before, has what's called an F or floor area ratio. And then you would count in your numerator. You would count floor number one, floor number two, to floor number three to floor number four. We don't do that. We just say building footprint is your numerator and your denominator is your lot. And so for here, you could have 2,000 and then go vertical. So our cap is 45 ft on that one. Minimum front yard 20 ft. So we just reduced it from 25 to 20. And then

I changed it here where it says where the street rideway is at least 60 ft wide. Since some of our streets are shrinking, this still should take into account the fact that the streets are shrinking still allow that. One of the yards may be reduced to 15 ft provided that driveway to a parking space must retain a length of at least 20 ft from the front from the front lot line. Says what you see when he says from 15 to 20 here. That's on every corner lot you see in every subdivision around here. So every every time you turn a corner, you're like you'll see a house set back 20 ft, but then instead of it being 6 ft to the side, you'll see it pushed over 15. So there's always that production possibility. Uh minimum sideyard that hasn't really trained drilling permitted by section 4101 for minimum sideyard. We had it at six. We marked it down to 2.5 and that's to kind of allow for that closer 2.5 on one side and 2.5 on the other. This is still not zero lot line. So you still can't put a building directly on the lot line, but we would allow 2.5 2.5 for that 5 foot causeway greenway that we see and some of the concepts that we're coming up with or some of the concepts the developers are coming up with. Minimum rear yard be 11.5. So I dropped it from 20 to 11.5. The reason I I put 11.5, you'll see an example of this actually in Witchah. Um, the reason I did 11.5 is because typically you'll have an easement in the backyard and it's 10 feet on one person's side of the property and 10 feet on the other. So, I add an extra foot and a half to stay out of the easement would actually give public works another opportunity to reach inside and get that water line or sewer line if they need to do a repair. That'll just give them an extra foot and a half minimum lot coverage. So instead of doing 35 or 50 or 60, I just decided that it's best to simply say a building may occupy a whole lot not required by the setbacks um with use limitations. And so that being said, it'd be sorry use limitations should have been pushed down here with no outdoor storage. That should have been green. That's staying black. Use limitations is no outdoor storage. But basically we're saying instead of trying to do a calculation of like how much is sitting on the lot versus the lot and saying that well it's 35 or 25 or 15 or 60 we'll simply say well you've met all the setback requirements so you can occupy all of

that lot that's not required by setbacks. Once again that's part of your buildable envelope. So what does that look like? That looks like this. So you would have 40 by 100. You have 11.5 for the rear yard set back 2.5 on the sides 20 on the front. and then that would leave you about 2240 available space to build. This is what you call your buildable envelope as the bluepart with the yellow being the restriction. So I actually found not an exact example of this, but I found this one over in Auburn Lakes. Um that's off of 135th and north of US 54 on the east side. Um this is a little blurry over here, but you can see it. They have 48 as the width. So, it's actually really interesting that they did 48 and then they had I call these piano key lots and you can see why and we like piano keys. But they have 48 here and it goes back about 150, 160, 120. So, they made them real long in the back to give them more backyard space and but they made the width 48 and you can see here that's about a 5ft width. So, they actually had them separated about 5 ft between these two buildings and then they did gravel concept. So what you're seeing is a lot of developers will this is from protection builders and so what you're seeing is that some developers are saying hey this works for them so maybe it'll work for us and so you're seeing a replication here there's there's a Bible verse that says there's nothing new under the sun that certainly applies to development everybody's just simply copy and pasting out to everybody else they said this works for somebody probably going to work for me so this is actually a precedent now these homes are built uh in Witchah it looks like this from an arrow perspective and so I took this from Auburn Lakes and I dropped the theoretical lot on that to kind of see what that looked like mocked up. And so you can see that it almost meets exactly the lot width here. Lot depth, they added an extra 50 ft in the back. So that's quite a significant bit more on that end. But as mentioned, these parameters here, these are lot minimums, not lot maximums. So if this was adopted today, they still could build this concept here. But this is kind of what it would look like. And you can see the

breezeways that they have in between the lots. So we try to always show now a fiscal impact analysis what that might look like. This is asphalt and so what that would look like over 35 years. Table one below show 7 75 acres of the proposed infrastructure based on averages from previous developments. The total liability over 35 years amounts to about 5.8 million. So assuming 2.5 lots per acre of development would have about 188 acres 188 lots excuse me. If the average home is around $400,000, city would generate about $4.3 million. So, we'd have a net negative balance of about 1.4 million. Um, if we changed it so that it was using 40 by 80 or excuse me, 40 by 100, then we'd have about maybe 4.125 lots per acre. And 4.125 sounds like a lot or like really small lots. But if you think about it, 4.125 is actually the Willow development which is being proposed off of Maple. So they're actually flatted. This is actually platted right now. 4.125 lots per acre. And you would have about 309 lots. If the average home was 250,000, that would generate about 5.5 million. And this would still be a net negative. It'd be less than a net negative. We'd be around 306,000 in the hole. But what's interesting is to break even on this concept at 40T by 100, average home would have to be about $277,000. So, if we had a home that was about $277,000 as the average for a development, they could potentially have a zero sum gain or be no net loss to the city if it was developed that way. Just something to think about. So, small publication cost for the public hearing and ordinance under consideration by the city council. Legally, it's approved as form. It is recommended the planning commission chair both one open the public hearing, receive comments, close public hearing, and approve the changes to the subing regulations amending the R1 zoning regulations. So, Mr. chair. At this point, if you want to open the public hearing.

All right, let's open the public hearing. Very good. Are you here to talk about our zoning regulations? Nope. Okay. Mr. Chair, at this point, you can close the public hearing. Close the public hearing. All right. Closing public hearing. At this point, it would just be deliberation, comments, thoughts, feedback. So with no maximum lot coverage restriction, what does that do to the evaluation of drainage? Drainage. Well, usually drainage is going to be inside of the utility easement. So utility easements double as a drainage easement. So that 11 1/2 ft would also carry water to the storm inlets, but the storm inlets would be inside of that easement.

But are they going to have to be evaluated for additional since there's less surface for the water to soak into? that can use potentially. But just because these are the minimum doesn't mean that's actually going to be built out that way. But at the same time, when they do a storm water evaluation and do lot grading and master drainage plan, they assume maximum impervious surface. When they do,

usually they do maximum, and I'm not an engineer, so I couldn't tell you, but usually they do do maximum impervious surface runoff as a consideration. They don't go, well, we're going to do minimum, you know, and hope hope things don't get bailed out. They usually said maximum and then people usually come below that. That's what they use when they're you know for detention pond sizing to say well we're going to have a lot of impervious surface taken into account streets sidewalks and then the built surface area for those lots and it's all going to go into these ponds. So they're going to size them up lay town zero something game. That's a good question. And what was the the setback off the street? 15t.

Yes. So potentially you got 2.5, you're off the side of the street, you could be pushed by 15. So in other words, strictly one car. You couldn't put two cars in that driveway. You could put two cars in the driveway if it took that into account. I mean, if you put two cars in the end, one of them will stick out the street. And if you got a sidewalk, why put sidewalks and you Yes. You're just constantly weaving,

right? So, this is saying that if you're on if you have a corner lot, you're probably not going to be able to get that 40 by 100. You're going to have to make it slightly bigger and accommodate that. So, then you would have the two-car minimum. That's still a requirement for the parking regulations. So, as soon as you hit that corner, you're probably going to have to go bigger to accommodate for that, unless you just may not be a reserve area. That's not uncommon where you'll see lots, especially on more linear developments, you'll see them go 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 and then have a reserved and then 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 and then another reserve. So you have a common area that spaces them out before they hit the street. And it it just it's ultimately be up to the engineering firm and the developer to lay that out. But to accommodate that, they would probably have to say we're going to make a strip of a reserve area to buffer the side lots from the actual street. That not we still this still requires article five parking regulations to two off street parking spots are going to be a requirement for single family dwelling units. Are we going to require sidewalks?

Sidewalks. We could technically subdivision regulations require it. The way it states it right now is that the city engineer makes that determination. That's one thing I was going to present to you guys in the future as a change in some of these regulations as a requirement for sidewalks. Most developers put them in at least on one side of the street. You could consider 6ft sidewalks both sides of the street. That increases the specials. it increases the specials, they're going to want to go smaller on the lots. So, I mean, sort of catch 22 there. But, I mean, right now, the way it's written, it's kind of a determination of the city engineer, but most developments, they put in sidewalk on one side of the street. Um, in Deer Trail right now, my my development uh that I live in right now, there's no sidewalks on the street. That was built in the 80s, 86, and early 90s. So, there's no sidewalks on the street, but they have a common area that you can walk to that's exclusive to the neighborhood. So, Yeah, I I'm not opposed to quite making that a requirement. Of course, that just like I said increases one side to be honest.

Yeah, that's t they usually do. Um they usually do, but it wouldn't hurt to say, "Hey, you have to put in six foot sidewalks cuz sometimes I end up strolling off into the grass, get away, you know, from the person walking the dog, you know, or something of that nature." So, that's just another requirement we can change in there regulations. That's a good question. 24 inch. Now, what's that? Beside what width? The width right now they're 4 ft.

The width is 4 ft. Okay. They're all 4 ft unless we require otherwise. Yeah. Well, the house is getting smaller and I think that encourages people to not be excited so often. It's like, well, it might be nice to have safe.

Yep. Yeah, we certainly could consider that as as sort of a basic requirement. We also could go to the idea of a basic requirement as a neighborhood park. If people have less backyards, maybe maybe dedicated common areas becomes a requirement as opposed to a suggestion. Right now, it's not a requirement. It just simply says if you are dedicating any land or lots to neighborhood parks, you have to show it on the plat, but it doesn't say you have to do it. So, that's definitely a consideration, too, like sidewalks and parks should be a requirement. It's like we could just simply say in the sub regulations unless planning commissions and council don't want to see a neighborhood park. You know, it's something to consider. This will be a ways down the road, but if you're talking 40 45 foot. How does how does anybody perform maintenance up on those cables

with care? A ladder is not going to get there. Sensitive sensitive care. Sure. Any any way people would normally maintain it? There's some houses Well, I haven't actually seen any Well, I have seen some houses that are pretty tall. I don't know if they're ever 45 ft, but I pushed up there just in case. But if you're going to do maintenance on something that high up, I wonder how high. Mine's two stories. How tall is a two-story house? 25, 30. Yeah. Not more than 35. Yeah. So, we're probably not going to hit that 45 ft threshold. But if we ever did, at least it'd be considered acceptable. But if somebody's going to be making something, then I can do it with care. Great care. Okay.

With with OSHA in mind cuz they're probably listening now.

I mean, I imagine it just be the same way like you talk about doing maintenance up on a hotel or an apartment complex or something. It's just nobody care sensitivity.

You still think the minimum side of 2.5 is not enough. We get at least five. Nobody can run roof to roof. A lot of marble. If you got 5 foot between the foundations, you got an overhang of what? Foot, foot and a half. Not a very far jump from roof to roof. That's possible.

It's good for the chimney sweeps.

Yeah. I could probably make that next meeting. I'll give it a try. I'll say for me personally and and I mean two things I'm in favor of it for two reasons. One, I mean this is what we're seeing from developers. This is what they believe the market is moving to. Um my fundamental assumption is if a developer is going to come and propose something like this, it's because they think it's going to sell. Um they're not going to throw out a development that they they're not doing it just for the fun. They're doing it to to make money. uh this is what the market's asking for. We need to need to be sensitive to that. The second thing, you know, as we all know, I mean, housing in general has become very expensive. Um building equity in a home is a fundamental building block of our economy. And obviously, the younger you can do that, the better to get that ball rolling. I think houses like this offer that opportunity to to those that to get to get into home ownership as soon as possible, get that equity building up. um that's much harder to do today with with the housing situation. This offers a product that I think people could start doing that with um start building some of that equity in their own home to to do things with. So, I'm I'm in favor of those two reasons. Well, not to rush anyone, but no comments. We're looking for a motion. Make a

motion we approve the changes to the subdivision regulations amending the land zone regulations. I'll second. All in favor? I I down the line. Commissioner Hayden. I. Mr. Klein. Opposed. Um, Chair Coin. Yes. Commissioner Walker. Yes. Commissioner Milligan. Yes. Commissioner Williams.

Okay. Motion passes four to two. Will now be considered by city council with that consideration in mind. So, thank you very much. Moving on, this is item F2, parking space minimum amendment. So from time to time, I like to start off with this first sentence. From time to time, is considered good practice to review the subdivision zoning regulation determinate modifications or adoption should be made. Parking space minimums are a topic of conversation modern day planning when one looks at the space consumed by parking for businesses. Parking requirements tend to come from analysis of peak demand usage during the year. And this analysis is used to set minimum number of parking spaces for that land use. So, and I've kind of had this conversation with some of you, but you probably heard it before. It's like the cities will tend to say, "What is your greatest day of the year, which requires the most amount of cars?" And you know, people say like Black Friday. So, we say, "Okay, well, that's going to be the minimum standard for parking moving forward for that particular land use." And so, it's kind of a it's the abnormal thing to consider, but you say, "Hey, when you're up here, we want it to all parking to be up here for all those land uses moving forward." And then of course the businesses are like that's odd because the majority of the time my business is not doing a Black Friday sale. So why am I required to have X number of parking? So this comes up quite a bit and so the question about what should we do or should we dictate it or should we not dictate it and so this is something for planning commission to consider along with city council. So you guys are welcome. So anytime I'm in agony you're going to be in agony as well. So parking requirements tend to come from that. uh this tends to lead to empty parking spaces throughout the year, effectively leading to a large loss of undeveloped land and economic potential loss. And so that's something to definitely consider. What this policy revision seeks to do is remove the parking minimums for commercial industrial uses and apartments, condos, hotels, and motel, not single family or two family or um it's anything over three basically. Well, apartments, condos, and hotels and motel. This will allow developers to determine on a case- by case basis what a reasonable amount of parking is given their land use and will potentially allow more buildings to be built on

smaller tracks of land increase in the tax base for the city. All policy revisions are considered first by the planning commission of course and then second by the city council for final approval. So click planning commission is reviewing a policy amendment to remove all park amendments for certain land uses as well as supplemental provisions. So a full review of the proposed changes modification are listed under exhibit F.2A. The language provided will allow developers to determine parking based on a reasonable expectations. So what we determine reasonable expectations is they say hey I need to build a building that's X by XY ft or whatever and I need to have certain amount of parking. I believe that the best parking given by land use based on what they know is best given their market we would like to see X number of parking spaces. So we'll have that dialogue with the developer and say what do you think is reasonable and then they'll say we propose x number of parking spaces and so of course it being a commercial development that means they're going to put x number of parking spaces on a site plan and that site plan will come before the planning commission. If you go hey I feel like that's not enough parking and you require more parking during the site plan. If you say hey I feel like this is way too much parking then you could ask them to reduce the amount of parking. It's just something to be considered but that way it won't have to be a calculation that shows up in the site plan. It would just simply be a count. You would see it show up on the site plan as a count. Number of parking will be X. Number of ADA parking spots will be accessed. We are not removing the ADA requirement. This would allow developers to build more of their businesses which would be more valuable to the city long term than the parking that accommodates the business. It would also allow a city have more commercial business placed in specific areas. More revenue to be generated to minimize their infrastructure liability. What does that look like? That looks like hopefully let me put this button there. This is what it looks like. So here's Walmart. And so I pulled this from the county records, but and they use county uses Marshall and Swift to do appraisals and make determinations. So Marshall and Swift will say, "Hey, you have a Cobra light, it's made out of steel, that's $5,000. You have a chain link fence, it's running for x number of linear feet, that's what $20,000." And so they said,

Marshall and Swift said based on the county website that the asphalt parking for Walmart is $280 per square foot. So it's roughly $81,000, 360. And they said, well, the Walmart building is a composition of different material, but ultimately it's about $73 per square foot. So that equals about $9.2 million. And so combine those two together, the parking lot, and this I'm generalizing this, so this is I'm not an appraiser. Um, so I'm generalizing this. Total value is about $10 million. Assessed value since it's commercial is 25%. So that comes to 2.5 million. So the city is generating $92,995 a year off of the Walmart, which is that's a good amount of money. and it's good for property taxes. But theoretically, what if Walmart could reduce its parking and say they want to introduce an extra $32,000 ft? Well, what we did is we took 32,000 away from the parking and added it to the building. And so that generated, you know, at $73 per square foot, $11 million. It reduced the 81 to 71,000, but it made the total increase because obviously 73 per square foot is definitely better $2.80 per square foot. So now we're generating $119,000 a year. So we're making an extra $20,000 a year just by reducing the parking minimums and allowing them to build an extra 32,000 ft. You can take that even further and say, well, since they don't need all that parking anymore and click this button, we can chop this little section out over here and put another building over here. So let's chop out about, you know, 60,000 per square foot for paving and add another 30,000t building. That's $73 per square foot over here and $2.80 over here. This generates an extra $21,000 to the city on top of the $111,000 over here. So now we're getting an extra $40,000 um a year difference than what Walmart originally looked like. So this is just a way

conceptually to look at it and say, "Hey, we can actually add more building to the actual building." And in fact, we can chop off little lots if necessary. And you could put in extra buildings that would generate more revenue for the city because not only would this commercial building potentially be generating property taxes, but it's also going to be generating sales taxes because if it's a retail business, then that's just our 1% kicks in. And then now we're generating a lot more revenue. Not to mention our 1% from all the sales taxes from them buying extra material to ship to that new business. So that's one way of looking at it. Very small publication cost for the public hearing and the ordinance after consideration by city council legally approve this form. It is recommended the plan commission have plan commission chair open the public hearing receive comments close the public hearing and approve any changes the sub approve the changes sub regulations any article finds the parking regulations so Mr. Chair at this point if you want to you can open the public hearing we'll open the public hearing very good here talking now okay parking all right Mr. Sure. At this point, we can close the public hearing.

We'll close the public hearing. Very good. At this point, it's just deliberation, comments, questions, thoughts, concerns.

Would this apply retroactively to places like Walmart? you know, this passes could Walmart do exactly what you're supposed if it's like, well, I don't need as much parking anymore and I'm not held by the parking regulations, then I'm going to sell a corner of my lot. And I'm not saying that this is something which already does. I'm not having looked at WTO, but I did notice a lot of Seven Brews popping up in different parking lots. And I wonder I I'm just wondering about that. Seven Brews a coffee shop and you see them pop up in parking lots and I'm like how do they do that? You know, how do they do that according to Witchah subdivision regulations? But I don't work for Witchah so I'm not sure. Like the one in the Lowe's park.

Exactly. So it popped up in the Lowe's parking lot and I'm looking at that and from planning perspective from you guys too you probably like hm I wonder how did they get a variance? What's happening over here right now? Most people just drive by go I want coffee. But you guys are looking at like huh wonder if they got a conditional use permit for that. You know what I mean? So it's when you see that pop open, you're like that Seven Brew, you know, you're like, "Well, that's more sales taxes to Witchah, except they don't have 1% sales tax." So, you know, it's just more property taxes then. But that Seven Brew is probably, I don't know, $20 per square foot. I'm not sure, but it's definitely more than $2.80 per square foot. So, they're just generating more revenue off the same parking lot. Something to think about, but yes, retroactively, they could they could do that. Make a motion to to um approve the F2 agenda item.

Who wants that one? Okay, very good. All in favor? I I posted

any opposition on that particular Okay. six to zero on that one. Thank you very much. This is F3 C1 parking lot requirement removal. So given the limited space of the city's downtown area, is it in the city's best interest to allow development to occupy all available space for buildings to maximize economic return to the city? This is currently the case for the C1 central business district. However, in the event someone would want to build residential on top of commercial, they would be required to put additional off- streetet parking to accommodate the residential units. This off streetet parking requirement would take up available space for buildings, excuse me, to occupy and would inhibit the economic potential of the lot. Just kind of something we just talked about. City staff is proposing to remove the requirement for parking in conjunction with residential uses in a central business district exclusively. This recommendation would also go before the city council for final review. So this is verbatim what we'd be scratching out. The planning commission is a policy amendment to remove all off streetet parking requirements for central business district as written below. So existing this is current required parking spaces off street parking spaces accessory and uses here and after designated shall be provided as follow except no such spaces shall be required in city central business district unless for dwelling is permitted in conjunction with business uses. Striking that out required parking spaces off streetet parking spaces accessory uses here and after designated shall be provided as follows except no such spaces shall be required in the central business district C1. Dwelling units permitted in conjunction with businesses uses are exempt from these requirements and should not be required to have off street parking for the C1 district. So it's very exclusive to C1. So that being said, it's the idea once again that it allows you to build 5060 70 $100 per square foot for your additional building space instead of having to occupy your lot with $2.80 per square foot. So if people want to park and they want to build residential on top of commercial kind of like what you see at Struts, you know, they had to require off streetet parking at the time. Struts built not Stroos, excuse me, uh TNT, they built residential units on top of commercial. We forced them to do off- streetet

parking to accommodate that residential. We would prefer if the off streetet parking actually parked in linear park, parked on Main Street, parked on the side street, parked along those any parking spots because right now we don't actually have a high demand for any parking on our street after 5:00 because there's no commercial activity after 5:00. So, anybody who wants to park uh in residential unit on our central business district, which is only three blocks from Santa Fe third, then they can park on the street. That's kind of their justification behind it. That being said, in the future that might cause an issue, but right now I don't see that being an issue immediately because we don't have a lot of bars. We don't have anything that's going to generate a lot of after hours activity on our on our main street. So small publication cost of public hearing and ordinance after consideration by city council legally approved as a forum. It is recommended plan commission have plan commission chair open public hearing receive comments. Close the public hearing. Approve the changes to subdivision regulations amending article 5 park regulation for the central business district.

All right. Open the public hearing. Very good. And we'll close the public. Okay. I'll make a motion to approve the changes to the subdivision regulations amending article 5 parking regulations for the central business district. All in favor?

I. Any opposed? Very good. This is G old business G1 R1 zoning lot with depth modification. So on June 9th, the planning commission reviewed the possibility changing the minimum lot width and depth of the R1 zoning classification. After review is decided to table agenda item until the next meeting to give staff time to review the complete zoning classification modification which would include depth, width, height, lot coverage setbacks and applicable uses. Agenda item F1 showed how all these changes work together and the agenda item would modify lot depth and width R1 zoning district. This is just going over and covering all the bases with plan commission reviewing the policy amendment to change the minimum lot size width and depth for R1 district. Typical lots in R1 are 75 80 by 100 and current dimensions for a minimum are 60 by 100 depth allowed and minimum those mentions to be 40 by 100. So small publication costs for the public hearing and ordinance after consideration by city council legally approved as a forum. It is recommended that the planning commission approved the changes to subd regulations amended R1 zoning requirements minimum lot width and depth. That's as it relates to that one item. So we had a public hearing. That's why you'll need to open a public hearing and close them today because we had one on June 9th. So this point just be deliberation.

So explain why two separate items. Yes. I like to make you guys frustrated. Uh no, it's I had two separate items because technically this was a standalone item back on June 9th and I need to have it as a separate standalone item for the day. So technically I could have rolled it all into F1, but since it was old business and F1 was introducing brand new items, I had to separate them if that makes sense. So

yeah, since you guys had already seen lot and lot depth, that's an old business item. Since lot coverage, lot setbacks, acceptable uses was a new item. Technically, you had to open the public hearing for those new items, close the public hearing, and then consider the old business items from June 9th. All right, looking for a motion. I'll make a motion that we accept the recommend. All in favor?

I. Any oppose? I.

Very good. 42. So that item passes. Thank you very much. This is item H, new business. There is none. So this will just go into our staff report. So, um, I like to give these economic pro reports just to kind of give you guys an update on how things are looking. But all the yellow bars or the green yellow bars, that's the year total for the valuation. So, every time a building permit submitted, they're like, "This pillar, this this building is going to be worth $300,000. This one's going to be worth $250,000. This one's going to be worth $500,000. And this commercial building over here is a million. This one over here is only 400,000." And so, we just sum it all together. And so all valuation for 2019 is right here. And then 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 year to date. Next to them on the right is going to be the quarters. So obviously the quarters every 3 months, January, February, March, and etc, etc, etc, etc. So quarter 1, quarter 2, quarter 3, quarter 4 for 2019, and then 2020, 1 2 3 4 etc., etc., etc. So this is just kind of interesting to look at as you watch these trends of valuation. Um, I think a large part of that, for one, 2024 was a stellar year, just an exceptional amount of valuation, an exceptional amount of building permits that we issued. I think that was a trailing effect of all the plats that you guys approved over the years. I think what you see is that plats will get approved and infrastructure goes in. So, there's like this trailing couple of years and all of a sudden all the building permits start flying in because all the streets and sewer and water go in. And so, you'll be like, "Oh, 2019 is really high here." here, but that's mostly probably because of the plats that were approved back in 2017 and etc. Here 2020, everyone got a little bit scared, but there were still plats. So, building permits were still coming in, which that was kind of interesting, too, cuz I thought everything was going to come to a standstill, but we still had builders coming in without masks and everything. I'm like, I'm still working. What are you talking about? So, I was like, okay, processing building permits. So, we kept moving forward. 2021 was obviously we

had a lot of plats in 2019, so that popped up and then it just kind of does this. And 2024, I mean, we had so many plats come in, it's just, you know, from the previous years that all the permits that were come flying and especially duplex permits just had a massive amount of them. So, the valuation just skyrocketed. Um, we're doing pretty good in 2025 so far. You know, we're a little bit more than halfway through the year, but we're on pace to beat 2020 in terms of valuation. Now, that being said, a valuation could be high. So, for example, you're looking at 2019 and 2020 here. You're like, "Oh, I bet you there was more permits in 2019 than there was in 2020 based on valuation." Well, not necessarily. We had 56 building permits in 2019 and 94 in 2020. And so you're like, "Well, how did that happen?" Well, we had Genesis submitted their building permits and that was, you know, $6 million. And then they submitted a separate hotel permit for another 14 million. I think they'll actually invert that. The hotel was six and the Genesis was 14. So you had a $20 million evaluation dropped in 2019. And so you're like, "Wow, that was a lot." So that really bumped it up. And then you go back over here, 2020, we had a lot of permits. So that definitely, but we didn't have as much valuation because we had more residential. And then obviously 2024 was just a stellar year, just a very, very good year. So 156 building permits, brand new development. So it was just a very, very incredible year. But all in all, when you look at 2025 and we have 45, we're just actually on pace to beat 2019 in terms of actual new construction pull. So even though rates have gone up, we've not seen a complete standown in terms of new building, really the slowdown has been rained more than anything else. Just been an exceptional amount of rain. So nobody's going to go out there pulling permits when they can't do anything cuz once you pull a permit, you have 6 months to call in your first inspection. So why bother if you're going to have 6 months of rain? So anyway, so we're actually doing pretty well in terms of quarters. Quarter one's obviously a cold quarter.

So, usually it's pretty slow, but 14 for quarter 1 and 2025. 61 for like I said, 2024 was abnormal. So, we're doing pretty good there. Total fees collected. So, we're doing really well in terms of all all in all fees. $461,000 worth of fees. Now, you're like, how can the fees be higher than 2019? You know, you have 45 here and 56 here. you should have more fees in 2019 than you would have in 2025. Well, that's because we've heard some of the complaints about the idea of duplexes and, you know, everything else and are they paying their fair share. So, we've actually doubled the fees requirements for duplexes. So, every time you submit a duplex building permit, it's going to cost you about $12,000. Every time you submit a building permit for a single family, it's going to cost you about $6,000. So, it's pretty much double for a duplex to build a duplex in terms of the fees we charge you. So that being said, they pay double for caps, double for the community improvement fee. So with the duplexes coming in and also the single family, we are collecting more fees than we would have in 2019, even though we see less building permits being submitted so far. That is it. I'll move on to item J. Planning Commissioner comments. anything.

No, no comment. So, he brought up me about um uh possibly when they annex something in the city. I'm not necessarily what you guys got. I giving them free ring. Yeah. Yeah. I don't Did you catch that? Mike, you want to explain that? Nope.

Just kidding. No, we included the idea of so entitlements is the most difficult part for a developer, right? So, let's pretend all of you guys are developers now. All of you guys are sitting in the seats. You've reached out to your prospective engineering firms. You've floated the ideas. All those engineering firms reach out to me. I I tell them how to get through the process, what it might look like. They're like, "Okay, I'm ready. I'm going to go buy the land. I'm going to reach out to that farmer. I'm buy the land." So, they go buy the land. So, you guys have just bought that land. And now you come to your planning commission and the city council and you're saying, "Hey, you know, city council, I want to annex." And they're like, "Okay, you know why?" And they're like, "Well, I might want to do residential development. Okay, so we'll annex." So, the default is R1. So, default's R1. And then they go, "Okay, how am I going to make this work? I need to dewater. Maybe the water table's high. I need to put in retention ponds. That eats up a lot of my land. I need to put in streets, water sewer, curbon gutter, um sidewalks. You know, the planning commission wants me to put a sidewalk on both sides of the street. Now, okay, that cost me more money. You know, in terms of specials, I want to keep my specials low. I need to spread the lots. Can I what can I do now? Since at the time R1 was not, you know, for still not until the city council approves it, of course, if they don't approve it, then it's not going to change. But at time R1 was 60 by 100. If they're like, I can't do that. I need 50 by 100 to make these work. I need 50 by 100. Then I'm like, okay, well, here's your options. Reszone. That's your option. So reszoning. So then they come before planning commission. Maybe planning commission likes it, maybe they don't. Maybe they get torn apart. Who knows? And so then it goes to city council and city council's like, "No, I don't like it." Maybe planning commission likes it. City council does it. Maybe planning commission doesn't like it. City council does. So the developer, you guys are like, "Okay, now I'm stuck. It hasn't been approved. My zoning hasn't been approved. I need to go back to the drawing board. I have this carrying cost of both the money I

spent with my 1031 exchange and the carrying cost of paying the taxes on it. And I have to figure out how to make this work." So that's the risk factor. That's the thing that comes up the most is what's called, you know, risk and entitlements is the riskiest part. banks. I'm not saying banks are easy to work with. No, you know, not making a knock against Commissioner Hayden or anything like that, but banks are going to have an idea of kind of what they think is their risk tolerance. If you can make the bank comfortable with their risk tolerance, then you can make potentially the project to work. But you just don't know. And I always tell that to developers. I can't swear what planning commission or city council is going to say. You know, I can say that this is how you get there. It's subject to whatever they want. And so that's where they go. Okay. So that's the biggest risk. So the idea was potentially there was a question can we allow developers to buy land and choose what zoning classification that they want to do and the answer to that is no that's illegal. So can't do the illegal way. Okay. So what other options are there? The other option is why don't you set it as the default when somebody annexes in. Instead of R1, you set it to R4. That gives you the widest range possible to tailor your development to any type of residential type that you would like. It doesn't mean commercial or industrial. Doesn't mean you can put a car, you know, car sales lot or gas station. It just means if you want to do anything from apartments and condos down to single family, that gives you that option. So

that's only on annex land. Only on annex land, not new development. Yeah. So if there's land in God, it's already been annexed since R1, you'd have to go through zoning to change that. Annex and you made your portions of land here.

Well, we're always that's one of the questions that come up is like, well, how often are reszonings annex land. It's like probably like 80% of them are annex land. So that's that's a big thing. So if a developer says, "Hey, I'm coming from Texas and I have like we've had we have a text from Texas developers. I have $50 million that I you know I have a 1031 exchange and I want to pay capital gains tax on it. I want to buy land in God and I want to build duplexes and triplexes and and row homes and patio homes and, you know, single family. I want to do this mix. Maybe I want to do this, this, and this." R4 would allow you to do that without getting excoriated from county residents. So that was the rationale. It did get approved and and then came in as R4 and and then somebody who already own land came to us and said, "Hey, I'm at R R1 and you're letting all any any new land come in R4. Well, why can't mine be R4?"

Mhm. I think it'd be really hard to say no to them. It'd be like they'd be at a disadvantage just because they only and that was already in God and not the MX. I guess that that's the vision I see. It's just that the that it would be hard and and if that's the case, then what's the use of the zones at all if you're I think I personally have a hard time saying no to somebody who just because they already own land. If we if if this was a change that that was made to tell anybody else that notice because you already owned it before the change, you're not you know that was But I'm glad you brought this up because I was I was kind of wondering the same thing and I I'm I'm the new guy here so I I was just kind of really eager to hear what everybody else thought about it.

Well, I don't like the go back and do with the city council and then just wanted to basically disobed. But I like the checks and balances and I don't know that I'm going to give up the checks and balances and just say all. Yeah. But I didn't want to just I only knew my opinion. So I want to hear what you're I don't I don't agree with the R4. They want put different things in. They need to come and present it.

Well, I mean I'm going to say again what I said before. I don't believe a developer is going to walk in here and propose something they don't think is going to be is going to make them money. I I mean I I don't think a developer is going to walk in here and do a whatever duplex development or whatever because I mean they they're they're tracking the market. They're they're putting out a product they believe is going to sell. And I I think it's it's a waste of resource both for them personally as well as government resource to go to do the back and forth game of, you know, come in, get it reszoned, go back 30 days, come back, get it get it approved, go to the city council process, go through all that in the end, it's all going to be the same anyway. It's going to end up being an R4 duplex or whatever the end end result is going to be. Um, if they think a single family residential development is going to going to win, that that's what they're going to propose. But it was supposed to be the beginning of those build affordable housing. But I don't think there's any such thing as affordable housing anymore.

Well, not without an option, right? But still, even if it's a duplex, the only affordable housing would be an apartment complex. Okay. What's wrong with that? I mean, I mean, let them build it. Yeah. Okay. I mean, that's what I'm saying. If if if that's the best option for the market, let let them let them do it. They're the ones investing the millions of dollars money they're investing right and I just again I my fundamental assumption is they're doing it out of the best interest of the of the of their business. Yeah.

Like my perspective on that is similar to Ryan's other than the fact that the city does have somewhat of a plan and and we do have limited land available currently inside the city limits. So much of what we do moving forward will be annexed. And if we want to have any sort of vision as to where things go, um I struggle giving them the freedom just to buy land and put what they want there if that doesn't necessarily meet the vision of the city. That that's where I struggle. I like to hear about the projects. I'm not opposed to the to the development of the city by any means. Um, but I I do struggle with the the you

Yeah. You know, the the lack of checks and balances that an R4 might offer. That's what I was. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's very well looked at. I think the risk we have to assess is is what are the what are the surrounding cities going to do? Yeah. Sure. Right. I mean, and that's we're going to have to balance that because there's nothing stopping Witchaw coming around and annexing it themselves. And now, you know, now we're, you know, now we're we're

land investor who's got that money if he sees us. Well, I could buy it here in GDARD and maybe I could change it or I can go right next door and and not have to worry about it. That's that's where we'll go, right? What do you know what the county you know if you do by land I mean if if by land just north you're in it it's in county jurisdiction what is how does you do you know what the county zoning is? No I would guess it's rural residential as the default but I couldn't tell you. I mean but it's going to I mean if it's county land and they buy it it's going to stay z whatever they buy it at I believe so at that point in time. Yeah. The only time it would change is if it was annexed into a city,

municipality, right, to either Witchah, God gard.

Yeah. So the county's got the zones zoning classifications and so really if it was going to go to rural residential have been deanexed from a city and I don't know if that's their default, but we rarely going to see a city deanex land unless it was filed in a lawsuit. You know, we could board account commissioners has certain authorities and force us to deanex if we fail to provide services to to property owners that we've annexed. you know, that type of thing. But I don't know what the default for a lot of cities are. I was starting to do that, look into that a little bit more. But I would imagine a lot of the zoning and subdivision regulations are kind of copy paste. You would see that a lot. So I'm guessing for most cities, it's going to be the most restrictive just like ours. You know, it's going to be R1 or R1A or whatever the equivalent is for these cities, R1B, you know. So I'm guessing that's for a long now. How easy it is to get it reszoned in those cities really depends on the city. You know, that's the risk factor. Now, Witchaw's broken into districts. So, if a district representative says, "I'm okay with it," chances are city council's just going to approve it once it goes through. So, um, but every city's a little bit different. If this is something you guys want to discuss in more depth, we can always present it at a later plan commission meeting if you want to as a formal agenda item. Um, you know, if you want to discuss it during a joint workshop with city council, it's always an opportunity and we have a new council member that you guys have yet to meet. Her name is Naomi. Um, you know, we have uh two seats that are coming open on city council right now and uh so you may see at least one additional council member maybe in the new year as well. So something about you discuss this anymore answer your question?

Yes. All right. Well, next meeting will be August 11th at 7 p.m.

Okay. All in favor. All right. Thank you.