Planning Commission - workshop

There you will.

Are we ready to go? All right, I'd like to welcome everyone to this Joint Council Planning Commission Workshop. I'm glad to see so many folks here. It's really encouraging. And I'm glad to see members of the public here. We have a pretty good crowd here for such a nasty afternoon here in Greenville County. Let's begin with a word of prayer, please. Dear Heavenly Father, we just ask you to be with us during this workshop and to lead and guide the conversation and to give us wisdom, Lord, and to help us continue to work for the betterment of Greenville County. We pray these things in your precious name. Amen. Amen. All right. So to start off, I'm going to steal your agenda right quick. Rory Parham from Planning Commission is going to start out on the first page. portion of the slides. And then Jim Moore, these two guys have been working pretty heavily on this with the Article 9 recommendations. And this meeting, again, is pretty much strictly just for us to get from council where they would like us to move forward with regulations and with the PROBLEMS THAT CONTINUE TO ARISE WITH THE GROWTH THAT WE'VE EXPERIENCED HERE IN GRIFFIN COUNTY. AND SO WITH THAT BEING SAID, I'LL TURN THAT OVER TO YOU, COREY, TO START.

THANK YOU, MR. CHAIR. AND THANK YOU, EVERYONE, FOR BEING HERE. EVERYBODY, PUBLIC, ONLINE, DEVELOPERS, PUBLIC, TAXPAYERS, TOO. THANK YOU ALL FOR COMING AS WELL. Here's our agenda. We're just going to run through things. I think we're going to shoot for maybe an hour, an hour and a half. We'd love to be done closer to an hour, but we may go a little longer. I'm going to run through the first four or five slides, as John, our chairman, was saying, and then Jim will cover the rest. We're going to just run through the objective, some of the planning commission authority in our duty, and we're going to start digging in for Article 9. And lastly, talk about close everything out with next steps. While we're here today, our objective is to talk about establishing a basis for determining the appropriateness of subdivisions and group development sites based on infrastructure availability, specifically road and traffic attributes. And that will assure that both existing conditions as well as approved but not yet built out developments are considered. This is an eye chart. So I don't really expect everybody to read all that. It's here for the record, so to speak. There are aspects of this. I could probably zoom in a little bit, but I'm not going to try. Basically, this slide is full of a bunch of language from the Enabling Act, as well as the current LDR. And a couple of things that I'll highlight from it is that, you know, the the drivers for why we're here, obviously the growth, everybody can see that, they hear with their ears what's being talked about, but our current zoning and LDRs cover in great detail what can be built, how it can be built, density setbacks, et cetera, but it doesn't really talk about when. And what I mean by when is when the infrastructure and capacity is there or when it's not. So that's some of what we want to look at as we go through in the coming weeks the recommendations that we have for LDR Article 9. Because of some of those shortcomings, it makes it difficult for us to fulfill on the Planning Commission our duties and obligations that are given to us by the Enabling Act. There's a lot of things there. A lot of it talks about the plans that are made and recommendations from us as it relates to safety and the general welfare, well-being of our communities, as well as the traffic throughput, congestion, those kind of things. They're all mentioned in our LDR, as well as the Enabling Act. And so what we're going to talk about the rest of today is what we can do and some of the recommendations and the specifics about it. But the main thing I want everyone to take away from this, this will be online, I suppose, and in the recording that everyone can go back and read that eye chart there on your own laptop or computer. But the main takeaway for the public and everybody else here who may not be as a parent, The Planning Commission makes recommendations. It's the county council that makes the regulations. We recommend things to them. They also come up with their own. But we can't do anything that's not in the regulations. So if you like what you hear today, call or email us, your county councilman. If you don't like what you hear today, just email the county councilman. Seriously, email us as well. But the whole point is, the takeaway is that we're doing recommendations. The council has to make changes or create amendments or create new regulations.

What's the...

Number one or number two each unit citizens of Greenville County complain about What what is the number one or number two issue that citizens of Greenville County complain to you guys most about And you spend an awful lot of time on Roads roads and We're gonna We're going to talk about article 9 because we use a traffic impact study to evaluate effective traffic pattern that may be on existing roads and to help identify significant impacts of safety, traffic, and transportation operations. Ultimately, the TIS can be used to assess if the scale of the development is appropriate for a particular site and what improvements may be necessary on and off site to provide safe, efficient ACCESS TRAFFIC ROADS. WE INTEND THIS TO APPLY TO BOTH STATE AND COUNTY ROADS. NOW, WE'VE HEARD A LOT OF TIMES WE CAN'T DO ANYTHING WITH COUNTY ROADS, AND THAT'S EXACTLY RIGHT. WE CAN'T TELL THE STATE WHAT TO DO WITH THEIR ROADS. HOWEVER, WE CAN EVALUATE THEIR ROADS AND DECIDE IF IT'S SUFFICIENT TO SUPPORT A NEW DEVELOPMENT AND DECIDE THAT WE WANT THAT DEVELOPMENT TO BE THERE IF THERE'S NOT ENOUGH SUPPORT FOR IT. And that's what this is about. That's what Article 9 is about. Not telling the state what to do, getting the sufficient information to determine if that's state road, if it's state road, meets the criteria for new development both now and in the future. Because both of those, according to the state code and county code, are pretty vague. And as we've heard many times, we need to be specific about regulations. And these have big opportunities to be more specific. We're also going to review the high-level issues. There's about four of them. Now, the regulation's about eight pages long. For the county, the state's about nine. They're both vague. But there are four specific ones we want to talk about tonight. BECAUSE THEY MEAN A LOT WITH REGARDS TO WHERE THE TRAFFIC IS GOING TO COME FROM. WE TALK ABOUT FIXING A PAVEMENT, WE TALK ABOUT WHERE ALL THE TRAFFIC IS, PLANNING COMMISSION CAN'T DO MUCH ABOUT THAT. BUT WHAT THE COUNTY CAN DO, THE COUNCIL AND PLANNING COMMISSION, DETERMINE WHERE THE TRAFFIC COMES FROM. AND WHERE IT IS GOING. WE CAN INFLUENCE THAT THROUGH ARTICLE 9. We want your ideas. We don't have all the answers. Staff doesn't have all the answers. But one of the things apparent is it's not too often the planning commission gets some direction from council on where you want to go with this. We don't want to spend a whole bunch of time putting something together that goes too well and we get thrown right back at us because you don't like it. So we'd like to, particularly these four issues, understand where you guys want us to go Because there's a lot of flexibility we have with where we want to go. We just need to understand what you want.

Next one.

These are the key areas we want to talk about. Traffic impact studies. Those are an evaluation of the roads surrounding a new development. And we're not just talking about subdivisions. We're talking about all developments, group developments, tiny homes, apartments, the whole lot. And the conditions around that subdivision or development or the additional traffic coming from the development and or future developments have already been approved. Development management. There's about four or five articles in this that are very vague. In fact, one or two of them have been the subject of a couple of lawsuits counties experienced because they are so vague. We need to tighten those up, and we're going to talk about the two critically. Traffic limiting considerations. Present regulations do not have any traffic limiting considerations. We want to talk about doing one thing. Several high-growth counties in the state now have them. And what we're going to see here are not what we dreamed up. It's what they use in their regulations. What I want to make clear is that everything we've got here is either copied from somewhere else or we've gotten it from someplace that's valid and secure. It's not something we made up as we went along. And finally, mitigation. How do you fix it? This is going to be a toughie. I'll tell you it's a toughie. We put it at the last because we can have some time to talk about it. But it will be a toughie for you because there's very few things you can do REGARDS TO IN GREENVILLE COUNTY BECAUSE THE LIMITS OF EASEMENTS AND RIDEWAYS LONG ROADS AND WHAT WE CAN DO TO GET ADDITIONAL SPACE FOR LIKE TURN LANES AND THE LIKE AND WE WANT TO TALK ABOUT HOW WE WANT TO ADDRESS THAT NEXT PLAN A COMMISSION OVER THE LAST EIGHT MONTHS HAS SEEN ABOUT 32 subdivisions. And I'm just going to talk about subdivisions so we've got that data. There's other data for apartments and the like we can get, which we intend to do later on. But out of council, and I think a couple of councilors know the answer, so don't tell us. Out of council members, what percent of subdivisions that came before the planning commission in the last eight months require a TIS? County and state. Put them together. What's your best guess?

Can you just tell us?

How many think it's 30%?

How many think it's 20%?

How many think it's 15%? 10%? Price 6%. Out of all the subdivisions we've seen in the last eight months, hundreds of vehicles going on our roads, only 6% got TIS. If you want to stretch it a little bit, you'd count Owens Glen and throw that one in, but that was a reconsideration. You get to 9%. That's a pretty small sample size, and we intend to look at a much bigger sample size But that's what we've got. Now, is it any surprise to anybody that we have traffic problems whenever most subdivisions and or developments never get studied? And that's what we need to get under control. Study them and decide if you want and influence where the traffic is coming from and where it's going to go. Traffic impact study, I think I've already talked about it. Basically, a study of the surrounding area around the development and it's up close by developments with regards to where the traffic's coming from and where it's going to go and the conditions of the roads, size of the roads, and the like. We'll get more into detail. This is a little bit of a pie chart. This table comes from THE STATE CODE FOR STATE ARMS MANUAL THAT ALSO IS IN OUR REGULATIONS, WE'RE SAYING SINGLE FAMILY HOMES, YOU'VE GOT TO HAVE 90 UNITS WHERE YOU CAN HAVE TRACKS, EITHER COUNTY OR STATE ROADS. THAT'S WHY WE'RE LOOKING AT A SMALL PERCENTAGE OF SUBDIVISIONS BEING PIS. YOU CAN SEE IT FROM APARTMENTS, CONDOS, AND THERE'S A WHOLE LONGER LIST OF OTHERS, WHICH IS JUST A SMALL SAMPLE. I JUST WANT TO ASK A QUESTION. WHAT PERCENT OF OUR SUBDIVISIONS SHOULD GET A TIS, FOLKS? WHAT DO YOU THINK? YOU GUYS ARE GOING TO APPROVE SOMETHING. WHAT DO YOU THINK IT SHOULD BE?

DON'T YOU HAVE TO PUT A QUALIFIER ON THAT? YEAH. ARE YOU INCLUDING FAMILY SUBDIVISIONS?

Let's just take single family subdivisions. What percent of the subdivisions that we see, you remember now we only see 6% right now with 90. I'm not asking for the number of units. I'm asking what percent of subdivisions should we see a TIS on? I think you have the same.

They don't know exactly what size subdivisions we typically see. I think that would be.

Well, we have the average is about 50, 50 units. The average.

I'll say a high percentage then. You should be up.

Well, the monitor subdivisions go up to 10. So it will be 10, but 11 on up. 50%, I'll tell you what 50% is, somewhere between 35 and 45 units. 60% is somewhere between 55 and 65 units, based on that small sample size. Right now, you're not getting much consideration of where traffic's coming from.

So one of the things that happens now is you can have two or three subdivisions that are 80, 75, 60. They're within a quarter mile, half mile stretch of each other, and none of them have traffic impact studies done.

Stallings Road is a classic example. Those seen on Stallings Road. Classic example. Up and down that road, there must be eight or nine subdivisions. None of them had a traffic stop. And you wonder why the traffic is on Stallings Road.

Well, I was going to make a comment earlier just to kind of fit in with that. Before I do, I wanted to acknowledge that Dr. Spann is online. And Kelly mentioned it, but I don't know if she's made it here or not. But the reason that I couldn't really throw out an answer WE'RE GOING TO GET TO THAT. THAT'S ANOTHER ISSUE WE'RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT. WE'RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT THAT.

RIGHT NOW AN INDIVIDUAL SUBDIVISION PLACED ON A STATE OR COUNTY ROAD. JUST AN INDIVIDUAL SUBDIVISION. THE POINT HE MAKES ABOUT AROUND IT, WE'RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT THAT. IT'S ONE OF THE VERY VAGUE ISSUES WE'VE GOT A PROBLEM WITH. WE'LL TOUCH ON THAT. JUST AN INDIVIDUAL SUBDIVISION. THAT'S WHAT WE SEE AS A PLANNING ISSUE.

Real quick, can you enlighten us as to what the number of units counts as subdivision?

That's a major. A major is 11 or more. Seven. Okay, seven. Anything more than seven. Thank you, Josh. Appreciate it. Five, I'd say. Sure. Seven seems...

yeah that sounds like a family problem right right and we're not to be clear i'm not well i say we you know i've talked about this quite a bit we talked about most planning commission members over the last several months we're not trying to do that like a right uh you know somebody inherits 10 acres mom and dad pass away and each kid gets an acre or two whatever we're not talking about that kind of stuff that's not what we're trying to get involved in it's when you have the know right in a row 20 50 80 and none of them are meeting the 90 threshold and that's not what the intent of this originally was so that stuff's going under the under the wire and we want to try to fix that and generally scdot says for every dwelling or unit there it's between nine and ten vehicles a day coming to and from so if you've got 100 units you're looking at 950 that thousand

Trips.

Trips on a 90-unit subdivision.

Yep, on a 90-unit subdivision, 900 trips a day. That's a good question.

And that's real.

Yeah. I wouldn't say this was going to be easy, guys. Because we want to come up with something you guys will approve.

Any more questions or discussion about this particular aspect? Because this is one of those aspects that we want to get addressed, this table and the qualifying elements about it.

Like I said, for me, anyway, it's a little harder to throw out just a number based on just the sole fact that it's a subdivision because there's so much around that that would play into it. We're going to talk about the others.

THEY ALSO PLAY INTO THIS VERY MUCH. AND I'M NOT ASKING FOR THE NUMBER OF UNITS. WE'RE ASKING FOR THE PERCENTAGE BECAUSE WE WANT TO MAKE THE SAMPLE SIZE MUCH BIGGER. IF YOU GUYS SAY 50%, WE'RE GOING TO TAKE A YEAR'S WORTH OF DATA OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT AND SAY, OKAY, WHERE'S THE 50% POINT AND USE THAT. DON'T GET HUNG UP ON THE 90%. WE HAVE A LOT MORE DATA WE HAVE TO GATHER. WE'RE LOOKING FOR A PERCENTAGE IF YOU WANT TO SEE

Does anybody have any idea of what that 90 unit was originally based on?

I'm going to talk a little bit about that later. This table was put together in the mid-1990s.

So Isha has an answer for that.

Okay, Isha? Hi.

Isha, remember I said what, not when.

Yeah, I said each generation of manual and... industry standards. We reviewed probably standards from 15 to 20 different similar sized entities mostly in the southeast and compared the numbers that they used. We looked at the local ones and that is how it came up with those.

I might be a little out of tune. Don't blame Nisha, but you're looking at what other places are

But where does that standard come from? ITE, trip generation manual, is the... The Institute of Transportation Engineering, the trip generation manual is your main kind of...

The industry guideline. Correct.

And they might have been great 15 years ago, but that hasn't changed. It seems like they're not now. What organization creates that?

No, manual. Same organization. They update the manual.

that's it so she's saying that's the update is the state but it's not always information and um but it's still up to in local entities to say whatever a standard is but the only reason when these funnel down into the courts i'm just trying to make sure there's some kind of foundation of not just making up numbers but it sounds like it's got a foundation but

JUST PICTURES THIS COMES FROM THE SC DOT ARMS MANUAL WHICH MANUAL THEY USE FOR THE ENTIRE STATE WITH REGARDS TO TIS IS FOR THESE KIND OF DEVELOPMENTS OKAY THE ENTIRE STATE WHEN'S THE LAST TIME THEY 2008 I KNOW IT'S BEEN UPDATED THE ARMS MEETING I'LL FIND OUT

stay the same in every update?

They changed. It was originally done in 1996. It was actually 1991. Updated in 1996. Now, when we go back into those years, South Carolina was a very different place than it is right now. It was losing population, not gaining population. The textile industry was going away. Now you have a situation for 48 counties. 10 to 12 are growing like crazy, like Greenville. There are still counties in the state that are losing population. And this covers the entire state. So they had to be flexible with regards to how they address this.

Mr. Moore, the arms manual was last updated in 2021.

Okay. Well, the one I have online was up 2008.

Well, it says 2008 edition, but then they list a whole list of all the dates for all the updates.

Was this updated?

Yes. Yeah. Okay.

All right. regardless the point is we got a lot of subdivisions going in that they add up you know you can do phase one two three four and they add up two or three times 90 and none of them get a tis and we have we had one recently okay uh the only reason i'm going down this road is you said you want council to uh

Go back. Agree with what I was doing. I agree. This is a great idea. Have you got an idea of, from legal or whatever, where, how far down we can get that number? How much flexibility we have?

Mr. Schock, those are standards. Those are the broadest. Those are the maximum. We're looking at a closer counter level that's growing. Those are not a state statute or a state law that says you cannot... you cannot change that. I mean, those are peak hours and those are what, say, SCDOT looks at and what we look at at the current time for traffic impact studies. Nothing says, I mean, we could go say, hey, you want to put a 15-watt subdivision in and there's no state law that violates that. The rationale is that we need a happy medium. We don't want that 15 lot subdivision necessarily to have to do a TIS. It's very expensive and counterintuitive to what we're trying to accomplish. The problem is, as you know, as well as everybody else, that we have a serious infrastructure problem.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think we're, So we're not trying to push against any violations. It's just showing you what is out there at this point and where we got it.

Correct. And I'm not saying that you are trying to do that. I'm just trying to see if you investigated how low we can go. I don't want to go as low as you.

We have not yet investigated. about what you would like to see, because currently we're seeing about 10%, and that's a generous number for a TIS, and obviously most of you were surprised by that number.

Percent, is any, using the percentage doesn't seem like the right, should we be looking at percentage? Is that really a?

Well, that's the percentage that are getting a traffic study out of the hundred percent.

I'm just thinking, do we care what percentage it is? important part is the size of the subdivision.

We could weight load it. We could weight load the subdivision. There's a lot of ways we can do that. But we're just looking for a general number because 50% of the subdivisions we see are between 35 and 40 units. 50% are higher than that. 50% are lower than that. Remember, if you go higher, you've got a lot more vehicles coming your way than you do when you go lower. Because the numbers. So we're just looking for percent subdivisions you think we should see.

But like Mr. Chairman Blunt said, it's not just necessarily the size.

It's what's around how we're going to get to.

I keep going back to it. So at this

whether it's 35 and i think what we're going to get at a little bit is like if there's already failing roads around it that might change a little bit of the criteria you know if you're already got core graded level of service we're going to talk about that in just a few slides that might change the calculus a little bit okay well we'll table this for the time being and come back to it when we get to the broader text the context of the other stuff around

FOR THE NEXT SLIDE. OKAY. STATE ROADS. TRAFFIC IMPACT STUDIES ARE BASED ON THE ACCESS AND ROADSIDE MANAGEMENT STANDARDS ARMS MANUAL. IF YOU EVER WEIGHED YOURSELF INTO THAT, THERE ARE SEVERAL OTHER MANUALS THAT REFERENCES WITH REGARDS TO IT. THE BASIS FOR IT IS THE ARMS MANUAL. THE STUDY IS DONE BY A PROFESSIONAL ENGINEER Generally hired by the developer. And follows that arms manual. Instructions on how to do it. It has a lot of flexibility in it. Makes it real hard for us to be specific. Because it does have flexibility in it. And we're going to talk about that a little bit later. And the other issue is when we get to mitigation, when their traffic study indicates that something has to be done on a state road, the Orange Manual says it should be done. It does not require it. And as a result, when we get to mitigation, a lot of them never get done because it's not required in the Orange Manual. The word should is used. We think that should be typed up. In fact, when we get to the next one, the county roads, we think that the two should be mirroring each other, but right now they do not. But the traffic study for state is handled by the student. If something's required to be changed, the developer has to get a permit from the state to do it, and the developer is responsible for the cost of it. But again, as I say, when we get to mitigation, a lot of times the improvements are never made. Because for several, there's a lot of reasons why, and they're valid, why they're not done. But the subdivision goes in anyway.

That's an issue that we're getting into next slide. One last thing before we leave this slide. Jim hit on it earlier. A lot of times when state roads, non-county roads are brought up, well, we can't do anything about it because those aren't county roads. Where we're really trying to go with this is not that we have to be able to do something to that state road. We can't. It's not under y'all's jurisdiction. What we are saying, though, and where we're going to go with this is why can't we consider the current state, the status, the capacity, the level of service on state roads, okay? Our citizens, our taxpayers drive on those. If they're unsafe already or they're already over capacity, why would we add more insult to injury? Okay. So just because we can't do anything on that state road doesn't mean we can't consider the data about that state road from a decision standpoint. Does that make sense? Yes.

Okay. Kelly Rose. Article 9 is loosely based on the Arms Manual. If you make a comparison of the Arms Manual to Article 9, you'll find that some paragraphs are included, some are not. The word should is used a lot. Can is used a lot. There's not many shalls. So there's a lot of flexibility with regards to when the engineer does this evaluation. Last time it was revised by the county is, what, six or seven years ago? Roughly, I think it's like six or seven years ago, I think. Life statements, state roads, performed by a professional engineer, paid for by the developer. The difference between our Article 9 and the Arms Manual is our Article 9 includes a mitigation article, articles, about what you do with the results of the traffic study. It only applies to county roads. It doesn't apply to state roads. Arms manual doesn't consider mitigation other than the word should be done in one sentence. Some of the articles are rather vague because they come right out of the arms manual because the arms manual takes a lot of flexibility. Okay, background road. This is Benton's issue. Both the arms manual state AND COUNTIES TALK ABOUT THE DEVELOPMENT THAT'S PLANNED OR UNDERWAY WHEN THIS SUBDIVISION COMES FOR APPLICATION. BUT THERE'S NO SPECIFICS ABOUT WHAT HAS TO BE CONSIDERED. SEVERAL COUNTIES USE ALL OF THE SUBDIVISIONS OR JUST DEVELOPMENTS IN GENERAL. ANY DEVELOPMENT THAT HAS IMPROVED IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS, BUT IT'S BEING BUILT OUT OR NOT BUILT OUT HAS TO BE INCLUDED IN A STUDY OF BACKGROUND GROWTH. THE ISSUE IS HOW BIG IS THE STUDY AREA? WHICH IS THE NEXT IDEA? RIGHT NOW OUR REGULATION, RIGHT NOW THE ORANGE MANUAL SAYS IT'S UP TO THE ENGINEER TO DETERMINE THE SIZE OF THAT AREA. OUR REGULATION SAYS IF IT'S A SUBURBAN AREA, YOU HAVE TO GO OUT HALF A MILE. IF IT IS A RURAL AREA, YOU HAVE TO GO OUT THREE-QUARTERS OF A MILE FROM THE MAIN ROAD. PROBLEMS WITH THAT ARE YOU GET INTO A PLACE LIKE STALLINGS ROAD, THEIR PROBLEM IS MORE THAN A HALF MILE LONG. YOU GO INTO RURAL PARCES OF THE COUNTY, THERE ARE AREAS AROUND Mr. Bradley and me, you go two miles before you get to another intersection. So if you go three quarters of a mile, you don't have an intersection. Never mind, it's on a very narrow road. So this needs to be tightened up. How much background growth should be included? In other words, how many years out after it's been approved should be included in this study? Three years, five years? Most subdivisions take more than four or five years to build. What do you guys think? I can tell you we're thinking five years. That seems to be typical throughout the state when you look at other counties. So you look at two cases with PIS. One for as it is right now, new subdivision with no growth around it. You look at that. This is number one. And number two, you include the five years out. Include all those. You could have one that looks like there are examples of this. You could have one where by itself doesn't create a problem. But whenever you look at the other five years out, the other six or seven subdivisions around it, you've got a big problem, i.e., stalling growth. you can also look at that forksholes road and and mr uh bradley's district same thing going on you can see it coming what about the reason what about the zoned areas that haven't been developed for that that that's that too so how many years out should we go typically again nine years built something or apartments or any way the riddle and the two aspects

How far geographically do you go out and look, as well as things have been improved and not yet built out? All that has to be factored in.

I'll tell you, the group is looking at two ways, rural and suburban, because the two are so vastly different. And I don't know what they are. But I think the two are going to be linked because when you look at intersections, one of the ideas is you go out intersections to get the first collector or arterial road. In suburban areas, that's not very far. In rural areas, it could be up to about five miles. But remember, it's rural. Those are the things we're thinking about. Does anybody have a problem with that? Or do you have something different? We're open, looking for ideas, guys. This is the type of stuff we wrestle with. The staff wrestles with it.

I have a comment, but I have a strange feeling it might be for later in the discussion. I don't care to say it.

We only got about four more slides.

To me, again, it feels more like when I CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THAT AREA TO WHERE, TO ME, IT'S MORE LESS ABOUT THE NUMBER OF YEARS IT'S BEEN AND MORE ABOUT HOW MANY ARE IN THIS AREA NOW AND IMPACTING THE TRAFFIC NOW AND HOW THAT PIECES IN.

THE TRAFFIC IMPACT STUDY FOR THE NOW WILL BE IN THE TIS. YOU'LL BE ABLE TO SEE THAT.

RIGHT.

YOU'LL SEE WHAT IT IS TODAY WITHOUT THE REST OF THE GROWTH. THEN THERE WILL BE A CASE. It'll show with the growth, say five years out, what does that impact? And the reason we're looking at it that way is because the next area is criteria for being able to put a subdivision in. Do you want, let's say you have a subdivision now that has a, we'll call it a level of service C, just call it C, right now. But when you get the growth, it's an F. Because there's so many other subdivisions around it, it would be an F. Everything's built out. Would you approve that new subdivision? Because what you're doing is creating a very unsafe condition. So we're going to say you've got to look at it both ways. It's very important you look at it both ways, as you point out.

Oh, yeah. I think it's more data in general. Yeah.

The current TIS is... As I understand it, somebody to correct me if I'm wrong, is you have to, it considers about so many years out in the future build out. They model that in the future. And what I'd like to see personally is current capacity plus whatever's already approved. If all that was suddenly built out the next day, what would your grade levels be?

your level of service not necessarily how many years out we already know what's approved it just hasn't been completed because just just because a parcel has not been developed or doesn't appear to be being developed it could be already zoned or approved for a vast amount of retail, commercial, subdivision. And if that's not factored in, I mean, it could sit there for 10 years before somebody decided to break ground on it. I mean, it does happen. There's nothing you can do at that point, you know, but it is existing and it's already planned. So we need to keep that in mind before we're adding even more.

The next one is, and it's linked. As I said, this is based on the study area. How far out on intersections do you go? As I say, right now, it's a half a mile in suburban areas, three-quarters of a mile in rural areas. Clearly, in rural areas, that doesn't work. In fact, the way it's worded is a problem as well with regards to the intersection GO TO THE EXTENT THAT IT WAS THE SUBJECT OF ONE OF THE RECENT LAWSUITS THAT HAVE BEEN DROPPED SINCE. BECAUSE OF THE BIG LANGUAGE OF THAT, THAT'S WHY WE'RE GOING AFTER THAT. BUT IN RURAL AREAS, I'LL BE BACK UP, THERE'S FOUR FACTS OF ROADS. LOCAL, MINOR, MAJOR, LOCAL, COLLECTOR, AND ARTERIUM. THOSE ARE THE FOUR THAT THE STATE USES. identify the general size of the road when i say go out to a collector the idea is going out to a road that's going to collect the traffic from all the surrounding areas uh in the subdivisions suburban areas that's not very far the issue is when you get in the county areas it becomes quite a bit and right now we're looking at segregating the two out so that they make sense Does that make sense to you guys? You're happy or just happy or don't know? What is this?

You know, we're looking for, we're just looking for some guidance and what your feelings are on this. Because we're the ones facing it and you know, we know what we think we need to do based on what we're seeing and hearing from the public and from the developers. But

just looking for some guidance to update this to 2026 2027 because growth is happening you know in short we need better tools in the toolbox you know if we want to be able to consider things about current um infrastructure capacity and what that what that infrastructure is going to get put on it based on what's already been approved and right now we're somewhat limited in those tools that we have. So that's kind of what we're looking for. If you guys are going, no, no, no, we're not interested in this at all, we're not going to spend any more of that high-paid dollar per hour that we're paying.

Have you all had this conversation with the staff?

A little bit.

We have this conversation every single month.

Multiple times.

I'm talking to some of the chief staff people.

I'm thinking more directly. We clearly have some ideas about some changes so i'm curious if you've had a meeting with the staff not yet because honestly i'll tell you for most of us as elections we're this is not our area of expertise and i will speak for myself i mean my district has very little unappropriated area and i know that's different for some of my other colleagues but you all see it on the front lines but also we have experienced trained people who are also experts in this area and so For me, I would actually like to hear the combination between these two groups coming to a recommendation to give us something to react to.

We fully intend to do that. The issue is we want to know if there are any showstoppers from you guys.

Well, maybe a good way to do that would be with the first two questions, what is the Planning Commission's opinion on it?

something together as a starting point for our recommendations formalize that yeah we can do that fairly quick i mean we're prepared to move forward with this rather you know there's some work that's been done but we didn't want to spend a whole lot more time you guys that have to approve it aren't real interested in it i mean i'm not

I will speak for myself. I would be interested, but I think this is the intent of how this is supposed to work. You all are supposed to make the recommendation, but I just would implore you to please rely on the expertise of our staff as we do every day.

Don't misunderstand us. We intend to have staff in the meeting next week. We're going over this word for word next week. So we have something that everybody can agree on. This is not planning commission idea. We're ignoring staff. Not at all. This was an effort to understand if there are any showstoppers you guys have. So when we go into that, we can say, yeah, they don't want this, or no one has a problem with it so far. Let's do what we want.

I mean, I don't have any showstoppers. To me, I think the goal is can we come up with something that is sensible, but that also can be applied equitably every time. Oh, yeah.

because at the end of the day these ldrs staff can make their recommendations and we can be both in complete agreement but if we don't have the support of council and and they're not nothing nothing's going to change and i think that's that's the whole right and i think that's that's

I think Article 9 is about eight pages, maybe. And we have some idea of which paragraphs need to be updated to handle some of these things that we're bringing up here that we're all hearing from the public. We see with our own eyes when you came downtown this morning, this afternoon. hear about in the grocery store so to speak so i think we can put something together and that's our intention is to put something together work with staff get their input and then ultimately you guys need to approve it or deny it it's relatively simple at a high level but we wanted this to be a good jumping off point to make sure you guys kind of knew where we were coming from because as i laid out in that eye chart that's our duty and obligation to recommend and then get feedback from the professionals on staff and make adjustments and go from there. I don't expect to jump out of the gate here and even what gets approved. Hopefully we get something approved and the amendments made. I don't expect it to be 100%. What I do hope we can do is not drag it out for 6, 8, 12 months and get something that's a relatively quick, get a 80% improvement, and then put forth additional amendments six months a year from now to get the next 10, 15% improvement. Because right now, I don't think the county, the citizens, want to wait another year to get these things fixed. We hear about it all the time. We're kind of, you know what, one way, and then if we do, and then if we don't, it's kind of where we are. So, I think we got a pretty good example.

There's an example coming right up.

We kind of covered that.

We're looking at limiting considerations. What you're going to see is not something we pulled out of the air. It comes from the Federal Highway Traffic Safety Administration. These are where the numbers come from. We're going to look at capacity, level of service, and pavement quality of it. Capacity is simply how many vehicles per day go down the road or go through the intersection. Level of service is a calculation based on the amount of traffic delay, vehicle speeds, and density at intersections and road segments. So it's a calculated number. And pavement quality index, that's when it looks at quality of the road itself. I mentioned how's it falling apart. Or is it? What kind of shape is it? Next slide. We bring this one up because we recently saw this subdivision. It was McConnell Landing. It went on to St. Mark's Road. St. Mark's Road is a state road. And we did have LOS data, our in the blue. And the LOS goes from A to F rated. Level of service. Traffic, and I'll give you an idea of what a C is. It's in the middle. Traffic begins to back up. It's just level C. Level D, it does back up and becomes what's called unstable. And it becomes a safety issue. What you see in the blue are safety issues. WE DIDN'T HAVE A TOOL LIKE THIS TO USE TO DENY IT. BECAUSE THAT ROAD WAS ALREADY OVER CAPACITY, OVER 11,500 VEHICLES A DAY. THAT ONE END WAS 350 APARTMENTS ON A STATE ROAD. APPARENTLY THERE HAD BEEN A TRAFFIC STUDY ON IT BY THE STATE, BUT WE COUNTY DIDN'T HAVE IT. THE OTHER ONE IS ALSO problem with the subdivision that creates levels. I think some of them are actually F's.

Yeah, they are.

Are actually F's. We didn't have something like this to address this. We approved it. Because we didn't. So we just, and what we put on there from McConnell Landing was about 700 vehicles a day onto a road that's already over capacity. So

Where this is, this is St. Mark, right here. This is Wade Hampton. You can see these are these light orange. So those are already failing well below C. When you go up the road, St. Mark gets better when you get away from Wade Hampton. But by the time you get up the Locust Hill, you've got E and F. at that intersection. And this is one of the examples that we were talking about earlier, where, you know, when you, if you only go a half a mile or three quarters of a mile, you're not going to see these, but all of these cars are going to flow out of here. Subdivisions are going to be built out in here. They're going to flow out of these little twisty narrow roads on the St. Mark and then flow down to Wadehampton and Locust Hill. But neither one of those were considered, and there's a huge complex going in right here as well. 350 apartments. It's not even in these numbers, to the best of my knowledge.

We were advised of some intersection improvements at Wade Hampton and St. Mark with the, I think there's a future development coming across the street from where the apartments are going again, kind of category from Mr. Salsuck there in the bottom right. So there's going to be some interchange or intersection improvements, but it probably won't be enough to accommodate all these subdivisions and this additional traffic from the new apartment complex that's coming in.

So this is where, you know, it's going to get ugly, making a sausage of how we figure out what's the best piece are the best approach, whether it's in urban areas or more rural. You might want to look more broad when it's in a rural area than in suburbs.

And in this case, if we went with the collector over our arterial, you'd cover both ends of that road. You'd know.

The intersection is somewhere.

Yeah. You'd run into that. And the way it happened is six lanes with a median. Some of it's paid. Most of it is not. St. Mark is two lane and Highway 290, where it dumps in from St. Mark, is also two lane. But there is a little median there up near Greenville Tech. But then it goes back down two lanes again. And it's very crowded. I travel that road about three days a week in the mornings and in the afternoons. And it's bumper to bumper in both directions already.

Same kind of thing would apply here if you start putting in subdivisions. This is green. I mean, this has got a great, probably an A, I imagine, right now. I'd have to look at the ledge in there to the left. But this is already an E and an F. So where are all these cars going to go once this is built out? And that's one of the things that we want to try to get ahead of and not always constantly be behind. You know, things will catch up. Well, you just keep growing more. You're never going to catch up and fix any problems. Try to get in front of it.

doesn't the uh mitigation rules cover that yeah we're gonna we're gonna go there so i i agree with what you're trying to do and looking forward with all the pending projects and all that one thing i also want you to consider are the pending projects for the road improvements yeah absolutely i want that to be included as well um you know One thing, and I know the boomer's going to get really upset with me saying this, the name of the game of the planning commission is not to deny subdivisions. However, it's also not to approve subdivisions. It's to make sense. So that's just something that I want stated. You know, I don't want this turning into, let's just find every single tiny excuse to not approve subdivisions. As you all know, we don't have a dedicated road fund or anything like that. And the only way to grow our tax base is through property tax. And as you all also know, it creates a firestorm when the council increased property tax. What's the balance in a word? Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

We're trying to make this a balance. Everybody walks away a little unhappy. Right.

evaluation shows us where the infrastructure is is lacking and where it's unsafe to put more residents and and so you either have the county says whoa we got a problem because developers don't want to develop here anymore and we focus on that some way or another or or the developers when they look at these properties they know hey i've got to do a b and c and i've got to factor this in Am I going to make any money or not? Do we think anybody's going to walk away from Fregal County? I don't know. I mean, I really don't.

And I can't remember who the development group was off the top of my head. It was the child to my tongue. But I know there was somebody that came in, I think it was between Rick and Dance District, and their kind of carrot or their free chicken that they gave you was, hey, we're going to improve this intersection as long as you approve us. And it was... Something like, well, if that subdivision's not even put there, then we're not going to even look at this intersection for another, I don't know, 30 years.

Right, and sometimes that is.

Yeah, and so I know we want to incentivize developers to do that to improve the community. It's like, yeah, they are going to add on to the traffic burden. However, comma, they are going to put in measures to mitigate

uh the pain right yes and that's kind of what we're going to talk maybe one more slide two more slides and then just open it up for open discussion about any of this next slide you asked what we're thinking about this is a table that comes out of two or three other counties uh the data on it is a little different than what the other counties show because WHEN YOU GO TO THE FEDERAL HIGHWAY TRAFFIC SAFETY ADMINISTRATION, WHEN YOU LOOK AT MINOR LOCAL ROADS, WHICH ARE 12 TO 15 FEET WIDE, THEY DON'T GIVE YOU A SINGLE NUMBER. THEY GIVE YOU A RANGE. BUT WHAT YOU SEE THERE FOR A NUMBER IS THE MIDDLE OF THAT RANGE. LIKE IN THE CASE OF MAXIMUM CAPACITY, 1,000 VEHICLES A DAY. That is the C. The C is traffic begins to slow down. It's not backing up yet. Several counties use C as a minimum. A couple of counties, Anderson 1, use D as a minimum. C is a calculated number. It comes from a calculated number. The Payment Quality Index, that's a South Carolina DOT measurement. 2.3 is the middle of the range. And that range of that is from zero to five. 2.3 is in fair condition. Get good condition, that'll be 3.4. It's going up to five. We broke it down into minor local roads that are 15 to 12 to 15 feet wide. Major local roads, 15 to 18 feet wide. Collectors, which are 18 to 21 feet, and then arterial is 22 on up. The only number there that's a single number, can you go up to arterial? That 10,000 is an SCDOT number. The road gets 10,000 at capacity for arterial The other numbers right now, I'll tell you, are placeholders. It's not until we get the group together to look at it in more detail and see that they really need. But we're looking at those type of criteria that if an intersection within the study area doesn't meet that, the development can't be built. Or the developer has to fix it so it becomes satisfactory to meet the criteria. question that we need to think about is remember there's two sets of data built today and build out. Do you want these values to be at build out? Because you could give today it's an A or B. But to count what's being planned, you could be at a D or an E. Our thinking is it's at build out. But that's just what our thinking is. We don't have a really good reason other than if you just use today's data, you know you have an unsafe condition in a few years. Do you want to be part of that? That's the reasoning behind that.

And then we've inconvenienced everyone with the improvements. And when they're done, we're already behind again.

Yes. Everybody remember Lawrence Road when it was so terrible? Then everything moved off of it as soon as they got all the widening done. Then what road became the issue? We don't want to keep creating those if we can help it.

So we're saying including a table like that to determine whether or not it gets approved. Yes, sorry. When you say two or three other counties, can you be a little bit more specific?

Lurie and Charleston, New York. Lurie, Charleston, New York.

Okay.

SO THAT WILL COMPARE A LITTLE BIT BETTER WITH GREEN. NEW SPEAKER Yeah. SPECIFICALLY WE LOOKED AT THE HIGH GROWTH COUNTIES. ABSOLUTELY. WE'RE LIKE THEM. WE'RE NOT LIKE THE OTHER 36 OR 37 THAT ARE NOT GATING POPULATION LIKE WE ARE. NEW SPEAKER YOU SAID THE OTHER DAY STDOT. NEW SPEAKER STDOT, FEDERAL HIGHWAY SAFETY ADMINISTRATION, THEIR VALUES are a little different because they took a different part of the range remember i put these numbers are the middle of the range their numbers are within the range for the highway state administration yeah this is just an idea to your point to start the conversation instead of starting with a blank page okay so you're not saying that a road that's 12 feet wide with a thousand vehicle trips okay is adequate

That's not what that chart says.

That says that 12-foot ride road.

That's the definition of it.

That's the definition of it. With 1,000 vehicle trips, if you use the 1,000, if it's more than 1,000, you've got a safety problem. Overcapacity.

12 feet wide.

Yeah, 12 feet wide. However, that's 1,000 a day. Yes. Is that per lane?

No, that's the whole road.

That's the whole road. That's the whole road. That's just what the Federal Highway Safety Administration says is the middle of that range. That range could go down to, I think that one goes down like 400 up to 1500 or something.

We could set that lower. It's in the middle of the range. I just took the middle of the range. It's loud. Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, that's a lot.

I was surprised too.

Very scary.

But that may be one that whenever we look at, we lower it. I mean, that's what I say. These are placeholders. This is the type of thing we have that if they can't meet that criteria or fix it to meet that criteria, can't put submission in for the next mitigation.

Okay, this is one. That's kind of a stickler.

We've hit on some of it. Mitigation for the state is handled by the state. What it means is if there is a traffic state that says a turn lane has to be put in, the developer goes to them and sees if they can get a permit for the turn lane in. IF THE DEVELOPER CAN'T ACQUIRE THE PROPERTY, IT'S UP TO THE TRAFFIC ENGINEER TO DECIDE WHETHER HE HAS TO DO IT OR NOT. I'M AWARE OF TWO OR THREE CASES WHERE TRAFFIC STUDY ALONG HIGHWAY 25 SAID A TURN LANE SHOULD BE IN, PEOPLE WOULD NOT SELL OFF PROPERTY TO DO IT AND THE TURN LANE NEVER GOT STALLED. NOT SUSTAINABLE. NEW SPEAKER THE DEVELOPMENT MOVED FORWARD. NEW SPEAKER THE DEVELOPMENT MOVED FORWARD. BUT THAT'S THE STATE LAW. THAT'S THE STATE CASE. FOR SUBDIVISIONS, GROUP DEVELOPMENTS, AND COMMERCIAL PROPERTY, THE TRAFFIC STUDY HAS TO BE SUBMITTED AT APPLICATION TIME. IN THE CASE OF THE STATE, WE MAY OR MAY NOT SEE THE TRAFFIC STUDY. THERE'S NO REQUIREMENT FOR THE STATE'S TRAFFIC STUDY TO COME FOR THE PLANNING COMMISSION OF THE APPLICATION. SOME OF THEM DO, SOME OF THEM DON'T. SO WE NEVER EVEN SEE THEM. THE ONE THAT WE WERE TALKING ABOUT, THE TRAFFIC STUDY FOR McConnell, the county folks knew they had, thought they had a traffic study because they were changing the entrance to one of the roads. However, no one knew what it was because they didn't have to have it at application time. That's a state. We're saying we need it at the time it comes to the county. Before the plan comes to the county as an application for development. Because we're working with the clock of 60 days. In the county, here's the way it works. The developer is responsible for mitigation. They make an offer to the landowner for the safety of the turn lane. The landowner has the option of accepting or rejecting it. They reject it. The developer comes back to the county and says they rejected it. TELL US HOW MUCH THEY OFFER. AND IF THEY CANNOT ACQUIRE THE PROPERTY, THEY PAY A FEE TO THE COUNTY. IT'S STILL BUILT. SO YOU'VE GOT AN UNSAFE CONDITION, PAY A FEE TO THE COUNTY AND YOU CAN BUILD IT. THAT'S THE WAY IT WORKS NOW. WHAT WE'RE SUGGESTING IS STATE OR COUNTY You have a traffic study that says you have to make a modification. It's the state. You go to the state, make an offer and get a permit. You make that modification. If the state agrees, put a subdivision in. If the state does not agree to give you the permit, you can't build a subdivision. Same thing would apply to the county. You can't get the property, put it in the turn lane, You can't put subdivision in. Reason B is if you went ahead and built a subdivision, you're accepting unsafe conditions on your roads. That's what that rolls down to. That's what we're thinking. Now, we're hoping someone can come up with a better solution than that. We do not like that answer. To be honest, we don't like that. Some counties still use eminent domain. years ago given the domain was in this regulation it's not there now i i don't know what you guys are thinking but my body language suggests you don't want to use any of the domain either we'll have the money for it yeah yeah you don't you don't want to do it i'm the one not suggesting that we're not but that that's that is something some other counties do but right now We're kind of between a rock and a hard spot. They can't get the permit, can't get the property, can't build subdivisions. Now, what this will do is will likely move, this whole set of changes will likely move growth away from the desert areas because you're going to run into a lot of roads, some roads that are at capacity or worse. You can't put subdivisions. It will also push infill to the further outside edges. It'll move traffic or move housing or development out away from the center. It'll have that tendency because that's where the traffic infrastructure is there to handle it up to a point. So if anybody's got any good ideas for mitigation, we're all ears. Because we don't like the choices we got. Next slide.

Next steps.

Next steps. We do have a draft that we put together in the last six or eight months, six months, of this article. It was our intent to meet with staff in the next couple of weeks to go over this in great detail. So that when we walk out of that room at some point, we have something we can send you all that we can support. But in general, this is the guidelines that we're going under. Unless you guys can come up with something different, and believe me, we're all ears. We are.

And we know this is a lot of information to be thrown at you in an hour and a half. We're sorry. But that's what we're dealing with. We deal with this on a monthly basis. And something has got to change, and we need help to make the change. And I so appreciate everybody coming today and appreciate being online with us today. I think Kelly was trying to get on. She couldn't get on. But, yeah, we need some guidance on this because every month we wait, it's just getting worse. The problem is getting worse. The roads are getting worse. because we're adding more people to the roads.

I'll add one more point to that. This is not simply you change one thing and everything's good. You change one thing and it hits everything else. So that's why we've got to spend some time looking at this and thinking about it. It's not just one and done, because we've found that that's the case. You change this, change something else, unintended to do so. So there's got to be a lot of thought process put in this. This is not just one and done.

Maybe we should revisit the UDO.

I'd like to avoid a 700 page because that's going to take us a long time.

I appreciate that. But to your point, you pull one lever and there's going to be some other lever.

I agree.

There's going to be some other lever. So there was some good work done there that it might be worth.

I don't disagree with that aspect. We should look it over. My personal opinion. approach or feeling on this is that we should try to adopt a little bit from the engineering world and a little bit less from the government world from the standpoint of failing fast. Meaning, let's get something done sooner rather than later and we get an 80%, 75, 80% improvement and then we can tweak it and improve it over the next 12 to 14 months instead of waiting two years to get something done while everything is continuing to be, the problem's getting better. Because as we are trying to address it, your variables are changing constantly.

I just think it could be a yes ain't.

Yeah, if we can do some of both is my hope. Earlier I used the word balance. To me that's what we need to try to find the right balance here.

IF I MAY, MR. MOORE. SO LOOK AT YOUR STANDARDS THERE FROM THE ARMS AND FROM DOT. I UNDERSTAND THE ARMS GIVES YOU THE STANDARDS, THE MINIMUM. YES. OKAY. I UNDERSTAND THAT. SO IF YOU LOOK AT WITH YOUR DOT STANDARDS, And if you look at what we have now, like I said, someone mentioned the subdivisions approved. They don't have to turn dirt five years plus or minus extension, extension, extension. But then others are approved in the same vicinity. You're compounded already. So why hasn't these been followed to date?

Because they don't.

Because they don't.

They don't.

They don't. It just doesn't happen. Okay, but when you got your level D area up through there, that's in your arms manual.

They don't calculate background growth that way. Not to that extent, which is I think what they were proposing is that type of situation we look at locally instead of...

Right. And again... IN THE ARMS, THE BASE REGULATION IS 2008. I THINK MS. GAMBLE SAID IT HAS BEEN UPDATED RECENTLY. YES, MA'AM. SO AGAIN, SO IF THIS HAS NOT BEEN FOLLOWED TO DATE, THEN SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE BESIDES THE MINIMUM STANDARD. IT NEEDS TO GO BELOW BECAUSE I TELL YOU WHAT, WHETHER YOU Stop infill, reduce infill, let it migrate out. It's not going to happen in my area. Because I tell you what, the folks are just pitchforks and torches. And I tell you what, it sounds to me, and I know this is probably not the time to mention this, but I tell you what, there's two counties in the state that has concurrency clause. And it mitigates adding all that to the local levels. But I'm going to say, my idea is you're not going to keep going and keep going and keep going. Yeah, you can talk about it anyway.

Yeah, but I was just asking, didn't they try to pass that in Columbia this time around?

They did. It is. Lexington has it up and running.

But it didn't pass whatever was in Columbia.

But that doesn't prohibit each county from doing it. Right.

No, no, I was just asking.

But no, in the legislature, they tabled it.

It kind of goes back to the speed of government.

And again, I'm not trying to litigate that here, but I was saying because it's just to a point now, if you go with just the standard, you're seven, ten years behind the standard now. Whether it's arterial lanes, whether it's feeder lanes, rural roads, 12 feet wide.

You're always behind.

Right. It doesn't matter.

That's right. We're always behind. We're asking for some guidance just to do anything to move the needle.

And again, that comes to my point, Mr. Chairman, yeah, that comes to my point, is when you created this draft, was it just planning staff or planning commission, or was there any civilian input, or was it just...

It was planning commissioners looking at what other counties are doing, and recent changes from there. It's not somebody who's been having the same thing for 10 or 15 years. No, no, and There was all, that's the reason I picked the counties I did, because I mentioned the counties I did, because they have all recently made change, addressed it in this kind of way. And they're growth counties. So the idea is, I'm not ashamed of copying somebody else's work if it works.

Well, there's 10 counties right now in South Carolina that has a variety of restrictions because of density models. Oh, can you not hear me?

Maybe not.

Oh, okay.

I don't think...

It's already messed with the point up. Oh, no, you didn't mess my point up. It's ingrained.

Thank you, Ms. Sagan. Can you hear me now? Yes.

Yeah, so what I'm saying is there's 10 counties now in the state that have adopted similar, but yet specific to that need in that area. So because they are beyond the capacity or the funding And they all have a penny tax. So they're still putting major restrictions, not just whatever. So my idea is that if we do set our local standard, it should compensate. And when we went this way, we're overbooked. Now we need to come back this way just a little to mitigate those subdivisions that are approved and are still haven't turned dirt yet, but yet we're still approving subdivision, and boom, three years later, that one's done before the five-year's done. Because there's no way to go back and say, well, you can't now because this one's already in there. Does that make sense?

No, it does make sense to us. And that's kind of the same goal we have. That is the goal that we have. Because we're facing that today, and we're going to be facing that probably for the next five years at least, even if we change everything tomorrow.

But yeah, and so on your draft, if I finish up real quick, I'm sorry, but on your draft, if you get that, get that out to the public as soon as you can, because there's a lot of intelligence around smarter than me, I guarantee you, especially a lot of you at this table are probably smarter than me, but I can read. So, as I'm saying, there's a lot of people within the community that would probably be hands in the air to give input. Oh, yeah. So, I appreciate it. I think we're on the same page. We're on the same page on that.

We want to make sure it's both existing conditions. I went back to this early objective slide. Existing conditions as well as what's been approved but not yet built up. We want to make sure that's included.

And to get ahead of... Could you use the 17... Thank you. I'm here. You mentioned 17 years behind.

Remember I showed the numbers up there, single number like capacity. There's a range there. We can choose to change that to the lower part of the range, catch up.

We can adjust that. So, yeah, that's a very good comment.

We may want to look at that very seriously, adjusting that range to do a little catch up if that's what you're looking for.

As Ms. Gamble said, when the updates, there are still pending updates to the arms that has not made it in the draft yet. be proactive and we're not trying to tell somebody you can't it's just you can't because oh i think everybody heard that you can't be bugs the people that got them people the people gary the people got here right um like i said i'm not trying to argue that point i'm just saying there's just a lot of things that um we have to listen to the constituents you know and like i said in my area it's

some of this and um as they say rule johnson we are suburban anyway even though we don't want you know what point of information i i can't remember if this date is exactly right but greenville county has been designated as an urban county and i think it's been since 1970 and that's not to say that i want to pave over all the farms i don't want to do that all right i'm I'm a big infill guy, but that's just something that we also need to consider, and everybody else just needs to know that's just a fact of the matter.

So if you don't like it, then?

I didn't say that.

You're fine. All right. Does anybody have any other questions or comments? I promised. I do have a question.

First of all, I support what you're doing. Yeah, I do. I want to go on record saying I do support what you're doing and as good a number as you can get for it. Anyway, my question is, and you might have answered it at the beginning, is traffic the only input you're looking at or are you looking at other inputs? I think there's another. It's not the only way. It's a great way to skin the cat, but there's another way. that's not just traffic. So I don't know if you already looked at that. I don't think I need the mic, but I'll use it.

The short answer is today, specifically this meeting, we won't start here. The long answer, no, we're looking at other things too. It's going to be the plan. It's not just roads. There's a lot more other infrastructure capacity that needs to be considered. We get things each month in the dockets from various agencies, REWA, et cetera, that kind of thing. If you go back a couple months and look at, I think it was May, the May Planning Commission meeting, there's a rather contentious development that's been mentioned a lot lately about septic versus sewer. I think that's something to get addressed also. I think maybe there's some others already working on that. But for today, Getting back to what I described about, let's get something quicker. Let's get 80, 90% improvement soon, quick, instead of trying to eat the entire elephant at once. So I'd like to see a lot more of infrastructure capacity built into our LDRs. But it's not there now. There's a few things in there. This is the one that we figured should be the easiest to get through and not take six months to get through. That's my hope. We want to get feedback and input from the developers, the public, citizens, staff, but at the same time, let's not drag it out six months. There are some complexities, but it's not sending a man to the moon. Does that answer your question? It answers it, but it misses...

that may make it easier for you guys and all of us.

I agree. I agree. I'm just not going to list all those things. There's about a dozen. No, no.

I'm telling you. We live in a system of systems. Looking for ease here. Anybody else? Joe?

What's that? I guess as far as what Corey mentioned just now too, but from the Planning Commission side, obviously the regulations are how staff and council give you the tools to do that. So where are, outside of the road and the traffic impact study, where are the holes? And I mean broadly. You feel like you get him when it feels like it's not the right direction, but you have no choice because there's no regulations to address it. Does that make sense? Who would like to go first?

The whole. Eddie, get the mic. That's a good one. He's coming.

So I'm new to the land plan mission. Can you hear me, I guess? Yes. Yeah. My first meeting, tensions, we had all that going on with the community out. I wrote it. I got my notes from that night. I highlighted what's going to cause every lawsuit going forward. Definition of available and feasible. And I was asking the staff at the time, and I think Drake gave a great answer. You could argue that a sewer is available in the whole county. You want to pay $10 million and run it up the mountain to your house? Great. Is that feasible, though? Doubtful. So the word feasible, like the word quality, are subjective. That's the problem, I think.

I would second on that. And we need to look at that in these ordinances and LDRs we're looking at pushing through. The suggested language is not helping us in any form or fashion, we need clear, directive verbiage. Because, I mean, like with Article 9, your traffic impact studies, what you think it means, because I remember years ago, when I started reading these, what I thought it meant, It's not what it means. So, you know, staff is doing their job, no doubt. But, you know, they work to these two.

All right. Anybody else? I promised you an hour. We've been here an hour and 30 minutes. Again, I appreciate everyone coming today in person or online. You know, this is a busy time of year. School's starting back.

A lot of people are sacrificing staff. Appreciate you guys being here, as always.

And I guess we'll move on to the next steps. We're going to try to get a meeting hopefully next week with staff, ourselves, and anybody that would like to join us on the committee meeting to discuss this further and get some facts out there.

And Mr. Moore? I'd like to add to that. ANYBODY FROM COUNCIL WANTS TO ATTEND THESE, PLEASE DO. BECAUSE YOU FIND OUT WHAT'S BEHIND SOME OF THE DECISIONS. MR. BRADLEY ATTENDED THE ONE FOR CLUSTERS. THERE'S A LOT OF STUFF IN THAT CLUSTERS THAT HAVE A LOT OF CONVERSATION AND JUST LOCATION BEHIND IT THAT WAS GOOD THAT SOMEBODY FROM COUNCIL GOT TO SEE WHAT IT WAS. WE DO THIS, PLEASE, IF YOU CAN, PLEASE ATTEND. WE GOT YOUR INPUT.

we also want you to see how we arrive at some of the conclusions we do one last thing um mr chair mentioned earlier about other ideas and other things i think you were asking mostly about infrastructure there's some of those i was going to mention something he said well while i had the microphone literally Most folks don't realize that, and I don't want to send this down this rabbit hole right now, but it's something to come up next. Look for it in your mailbox soon, so to speak. Most people don't realize that the Planning Commission does not see group developments. That means apartments, those kinds of things. Apartments add volume and load and demand onto our infrastructure capacity as well. So let's just say we could snap our fingers and everybody was happy about changes we made to Article 9. We did that in place rather quickly. Still wouldn't fix some of the issues that you get five or six apartments coming up within a block of each other, and they don't even come to the Planning Commission. So if we fix Article 9 and a few other things, that would change. So look for that in your mailbox soon.

Anything else? All right. Seeing none, hearing none, I want to thank everybody for coming today.

Thank the public, the developers that are here, and everybody have a safe drive home. Thank you.