City Council - workshop

I want to call the meeting to order. This is a scheduled council workshop meeting. The meeting is specially called for the subject of an engineering manual review. Steve Grant, our city engineer, will give us an introduction and an oversight to that. And we will commence with the workshop meeting for the engineering manual review. Podium is yours, sir.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Good evening. Appreciate your time this evening, the meeting before the meeting. We're here to talk about our engineering manual update. It's something we've been discussing a couple of years. We've contracted with Bolton and Mink to lead us through this endeavor. And I'll introduce Kelly here in a minute. She's going to introduce her team. But our goals primarily tonight are to familiarize you with the scope of this endeavor, this undertaking, what all sections we'll be reviewing and updating, the things we're considering adding to the manual, and then finally, any questions you may have or any discussion. that you may have on any of those subjects, feel free to bring all of that up. We'll probably wrap this up in six months, plus or minus. And we'll be back in front of you then with a 90% complete version. And we'll wrap it all up after a meeting with council. With that, I'll introduce Kelly. And she's going to introduce her team and kind of just walk through what we're going to be doing. Kelly Green, voting in me.

evening mayor and council again my name is kelly green and i've got jackie thompson with me too and then keegan edge we are excited to work with with the city on this update i have a background in municipal engineering i worked for a community for many years so i've i've done these sorts of things jackie's been in the consulting world for quite a while, working with municipalities, updating their manuals as well. So, um, we're excited about this endeavor. Um, our first step really is to talk to you all and get your input. Um, after that, we'll be meeting with the staff, uh, both planning and engineering group. Um, we'll probably have, um, two like half day workshops, I think is what we're planning, um, just to get their input and really understand what the concerns are with the existing manual. what new things might need to be added, those kinds of things. So our overall scope, again, we want to review and update each section. One of the things we know is that maybe there's some conflicting information with other ordinances or other manuals that you may have, so we want to look at each section and review it from that perspective. We want to update the roadway, sidewalk, and stormwater design standards, Um, maybe it's not in conformance with, um, SEDOT where we'd like to be. And so we can update those standards for you all. Um, again, identify and resolve different conflicts that might be, um, in the manual and then also develop a user friendly manual. So not only for, um, your team here, your city staff, but maybe also for developers. So if they want to build new roadways within their development, what is the city's expectations? And so how can this be a user friendly document for them? Um, any questions so far, it's kind of the big picture, um, of what we'd like to do. Um, these are the sections in the current manual. And so, um, maybe we'll change these sections a little bit. Maybe we'll combine them. Maybe we'll add additional sections. We're not really sure yet. It depends on what we get out of this workshop and the city staff workshops. Um, but for instance, maybe the preliminary plat requirements, maybe it has some information. that's more land use that would belong more in the UDO as opposed to the engineering manual. So we'll look at things like that. And so tonight what we really want to discuss with you all, we've heard that these are some hot topics. So private streets, how do they become public streets? What does that process look like? We've talked a little bit with Steve about encroachment permits and what did that process look like. And then also, um, traffic calming. We're also working on the SS for a project for you, all the comprehensive safety action plan. And, um, that, that item continues to come up as traffic calming. And so what does that need to look like for the city? Um, so that's a lot of information in a short period of time. And now really, I just would like to open it up to you all to get your feedback. Um, what are we missing? What are some other hot topics that we might want to include? Um, any thoughts?

Council's floor is open, I guess, at this point.

This is a hot topic for me, but how road cuts and repairs are made, how you backfill the trench, the whole nine yards, and then the length, the width, I think that needs to be spelled out. That's super important to me.

And so is this with regard to private utilities typically? So Duke Energy comes in and cuts the road?

Generally, I mean, the utilities that are cutting most of the streets are the water and sewer providers. Okay. But it would cover everyone that's having to do that. because we don't want, I mean, I understand that on occasion you'll pave a road and then all of a sudden you've got a repair that has to be made. Well, okay, we don't want just a small repair because no matter how well you compact it, it's going to fail. So that's important to me to make sure that we have some kind of standard. That's good. And that goes along with longevity of roads, making sure we get the lifespan out of them that we're supposed to. And I believe, even if they're repaired correctly, it's probably going to reduce that lifespan, maybe. I don't know that as a fact. But I've asked before for new development, is it possible that in the right-of-ways, and I know sewer and water have to be separated. If you could put sewer in one right-of-way outside the paved roadway, water in the other, and then when you have to cross, maybe do it in an intersection in that subdivision. Do you ever see that?

I feel like, yes, um, we used to make sure it wasn't under the pavement. So maybe it's in that green Boulevard between the sidewalk and the back of curb or beyond the sidewalk. Um, yes, especially for water sewer. We would see down the pavement more often, but, um, yeah.

And, uh, even if it's under a sidewalk, it's going to be a lot better. Okay. Okay.

Yeah, we can definitely look at that.

One thing to add to that, too, is usually you've got storm sewer as well to consider. And so there's spacing requirements for the three utilities. So depending on the width of your road, the width of your right-of-way, all of that is how do we fit everything. But if we know your priority is to keep your water main under your sidewalk or out of your pavement, that then fits everything else around it. So that's something really good to know.

Normally, the repairs... are caused by the water mains, right? Either it's a new construction, new tap, or changing out the taps, whatever. You don't see a lot of failure of sewer lines, do you?

Not as much.

But not like, I mean, I would assume that the water lines would be the ones that would be the create the most repairs.

Because they're under pressure as opposed to just a gravity sewer.

Sure. Right. Right.

And then, of course, in the very long run, for whatever reason, I've seen them throughout the city on occasion change out taps for, I don't know why, but they change out the taps. Well, like on Tomorrow Street, really changed all those taps.

They changed our water taps not too long ago.

Yeah.

So they're digitally. So they can scan them. Monitor them. No, the taps themselves. Oh, no. I think on Mars we can look at all the little cuts going down. It's like that.

Is that your district? Yes. Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. Good points.

Anyone else?

You're talking about traffic calming. I know we have an existing ordinance there with this part of this process is reviewing even those one off ordinances. Just bring everything into alignment potentially. Okay.

I think so. Yeah. Yeah. And knowing where it needs to where the information needs to reside, whether it needs to be in an ordinance or a manual. If an update needs to occur to the manual or something like that, sometimes that's a little bit easier to do as opposed to an ordinance. really looking at all of that information.

So as an example, potentially amending some of those existing ordinances potentially as needed or appropriate.

And the other goal is to reduce duplicity. So when something does need updated in the future, you're not looking in two spots. It's really just residing in that one so that you don't get potential conflicts. So that's the other part of this is as we're updating it, We're also reviewing those to make sure it's residing, like Kelly said, in the right spot.

Thank you. So in that vein, is it possible then to offer alternatives as well too for planning around new subdivisions or other areas where the option might be Um, a traffic circle, uh, and then have a traditional four way stop, uh, three way. I mean, whatever is gonna all be incorporated as options. Okay.

And we can, if necessary dictate, um, you know, these are your four options and, and we recommend this in this scenario, this one in this scenario, something like that to give, um, the staff just a little bit more information to make the, the decision if it plays out that way.

So let me ask you, are there any regulations around fiber at all right now in terms of how it goes in and where it goes in and all that kind of stuff?

Fiber? Not that I know of.

I'm not aware.

I'm not sure.

I have worked with some communities that they do specify that any private utility, electric, gas, fiber, needs to be installed in this avenue. So behind back of curb and between sidewalk. So that's part of the standard of dictating where, like the sewer and water, where does everything need to go so it all fits within your right of way. But outside of that, There's no regulations nationwide or statewide to say this is how it needs to be done.

Do you have agreements with these utilities?

Well, I think that's mainly dictated by our state, the way that... Okay. Is that not correct?

Well, yeah, but I mean, I'm thinking we've got vaults going down Poinsett. Then we've got places, boxes in the right-of-way. We've got... other things in people's yards. I mean, it's coming down here somewhere today, and I saw one of the fiber people putting lines in with a little backhoe. I thought, well, that's a recipe for disaster, you know?

Steve, does our regulations state anything about when a right-of-way is opened say it's a grassed right-of-way, that the utility contractor has to go back with the same type of grass that's there? That probably ought to be covered. Just an example is out at Hood Road where they're, not Hood Road, it's Subur and Right outside of New Fire Station. Chick Springs. Chick Springs, right. They're doing a lot of work out there. And I'm sure that our staff will hold these folks accountable. But I did see that they got a lot of straw out there spread. And that grass is, I think, Bermuda. At the fire station, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, we can definitely look at that.

Others, the item I wanted to mention is not necessarily in the three of those. It is concerning like traffic impact analysis right now. We like for us to see, uh, take a, a heavier stance from an engineering standpoint. because right now we rely heavily on the developers and SCDOT to review. I know a lot of cities and towns are taking a harder stance on TIA, whether it's broken out in level one, level two, level three, as simple as a trip generation, where everyone is being asked to do things like that. I think it'd be beneficial for us to have more teeth because I think there's opportunities for us to get things and developments that may not have been there before, especially when, I think there's a lot of opportunity there.

I know when we had our scoping meeting with the team, the city staff, that definitely came up that something that they'd like to look into a little more too.

contain information talking about trips per day. Does that, do you guys put that in the manual for say our planning commission when they're looking at different things or council's looking at?

Okay. Yeah.

And something that we could do is not necessarily duplicate that information, but say in here for information regarding trips, see UDO.

Steve, do they need to confirm that what we have in their UDO is proper as far as trips per day?

Yeah, and I guess really mine is more from an advocacy standpoint where there's projects that I know of where the city is able to hold up

whatever the, the permitting process is because they're not getting quite everything that they should be on their end. And so that's really what it is. It's a tool for us to have some level of advocacy instead of relying solely on DOT or someone else to dictate that discussion. We'll have measures in place to have some bite at the apple.

Yeah, that's a great point.

Steve have, have we ever, and I'm not sure, and we've got CPW with us tonight, so it may default to them. Have, have we had any requests in regards to this new or pressurized sewer systems that are available now? Is there, has there been any overtures to y'all about using the many choppers and then a pressurized system where you don't have to have a light flat layout and that sort of thing. I know we're doing some work with, with a mountain community in there. They're using a pressurized sewer system. Is that something that's for new homes? Yeah. New, new development. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. So it's already in place. Oh, okay. All right.

You're talking about individuals or just in general?

This is individuals.

Oh, individuals? Yeah. I would guess that you've got a handful of them in smaller lots, yeah.

Okay. That's something that you'll permit. Address is a permit issue for us. Okay.

All right. Okay. All right.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you both others. Steve, there are, are there issues beyond some of the things that we have identified tonight that you might want to make council aware of, or see if they want more information of, or less information about, or whatever.

So we mentioned stormwater. Is that part of this manual as well, too?

Will we address how potentially repairs are to be made or to be addressed or that kind of thing? I know there's several areas where we've got systems that are having some age problems.

Okay.

What are we missing, ladies?

Do you want to talk a little bit about private streets becoming public streets? It sounds like that's been a hot topic. We've got time.

Sure. Yeah, you know, it's something we address. I have no qualm about diving into that pool.

Okay. Four streets to be privatized. Opposite way. Yeah.

Oh, I thought that if a street was private, then we didn't have any control on how it was constructed. Correct.

But if it's built to city standards, even though it is private, technically we could accept it. The council could accept it as long as we follow the criteria. Those are some things we've got to make sure they're spelled out, what those criteria are, the process, the core samples.

Typically you would test that or either tell them that the road had to beat a standard before we would even considering accepting it. Is that not correct?

Okay.

Is that standard operational kind of procedure?

That's what I've seen in the past as well. As long as the developer can bring it up to city standards, then the city is open to accepting those streets into their system.

Or in most cases the HOA because the developer's long gone.

Yeah, you're exactly right.

Others.

Are there any issues in the engineering world that y'all see that comes up on a regular basis as far as roads, city roads, secondary roads? that we could try to avoid while y'all are here and redoing our standards.

It seems like, um, you know, to require sidewalks or not is usually an issue. Um, lane widths sometimes becomes an issue, you know, um, there's had been a big push for a road diets and things like that and, you know, narrower lanes, but then, um, maybe if people want to park on that road, then all of a sudden, you know, you have traffic issues. And so, um, I feel like those are the common ones that I've seen come up regularly.

I think it would be appropriate to at least. give a cursory sort of look at our our parking requirements we're getting we're getting into more and more dense housing and um i think it would be worthwhile having having that conversation and do you mean on street parking or just parking in general i mean yeah i'm going to say the same thing i just came off planning commission

they could count on me, and it didn't matter what was being presented, I asked about parking, because there's not a place in the city that's got enough. We gotta push the standards up a little higher, because we may one day not need cars, but it's not gonna be anytime soon.

Where do you see the problems as far as the road width, as far as parking, on street parking?

Well, for instance, maybe you have just a small neighborhood roadway and so you decide to put two 11 foot lanes in there or something like that and don't accommodate for any kind of parking because you don't want too much pavement in the neighborhood and you want to protect the green space and those kinds of things. And the next thing you know, they've only put a small driveway in or they have a one car garage and they have two vehicles and now they want to park in the street and now your two lanes are kind of blocked by one car and there's more traffic on it and people can't get around and things like that. So just kind of thinking through what is this development gonna look like? How many vehicles are gonna be going through this neighborhood? What's the length of their driveway? All of those kinds of things. We need to consider all of those.

I wish Ashley would notice. I believe the UDO, we don't count garage spaces as part of the parking. I'm not sure about that. Because, again, back to my constant complaint about parking and even asking everybody, hey, you got a two-car garage? Raise your hand. How many cars you get in there? Not many people get two. So that's why I never wanted to count them. And we just need more parking. I don't much care how we get to it.

So in other municipalities, would they dictate parking? Lane width by also taking into account driveway length and width.

I feel like it's primarily the use of the road. Right. Um, is kind of what dictates your lane with at the end of the day, but still considering all those other things too.

Yeah.

If it's a high density.

Describe to me the use of the road. Like how would that change?

So maybe it's a high density type of a neighborhood. Maybe you would want to go ahead and put parking on one side of the road or something like that. Just knowing that it's a high density type of development.

Okay.

Even though it's a neighborhood road, but it's a high density, you know, maybe you want to consider something like that.

Well, going back to your, original comments. Sometimes when we do the traditional zoning, we'll see kind of plats where there's not enough room to put a large driveway. They even park, as Paul said, several vehicles. Almost requires some road parking. I don't know if there's a way or if that's normal to look at actual driveway square footage and then dictate the road size by that.

Yeah. Have you done that? Yeah. In the community I work with in North Carolina, there is a minimum driveway length based on the type of zoning and the type of housing development that you're putting in. And the other thing to consider is, is there a sidewalk or not? Because if you have a sidewalk crossing your driveway, that's taking away parking space because you can't park over that sidewalk.

Absolutely.

So making sure that there's a minimum driveway length that allows for parking. And if not, then that on street parking becomes even more critical.

Okay. I think the length and also, sorry, but with or no, um, because one car versus two cars requirements based, are you doing one or two?

Um, if you're parking one, you know, being able to use your garage or, Different things like that. So again, it really comes down to, from what I've seen, the zoning and the type of housing development that you're putting in.

I think currently we require at least 19 foot between the sidewalk and the unit that gets a car. I'm pretty sure whatever standard it is for a parking spot, it is basically the size of two of them in the driveway.

I'm just looking at examples. I'm frequently in O'Neill Village and and Blue Ridge Plantation, and most of those driveways are fairly narrow, so it doesn't matter what time of the day. If you go through the middle of the day, there's going to be cars lined up. Now, for the most part, those roads are, well, Neal's much wider than Blue Ridge, but Blue Ridge kind of gets a little congested.

And in other manuals, I've seen there is that minimum driveway width as well as a maximum. Because if somebody, after they purchase the home, they want to add that extra strip of concrete, I've seen it where there is a maximum width that you can have. So it's not driveway, driveway, driveway, driveway, driveway.

One more thing, and this is a really one-off example. I've talked to this lady several times about it, actually. You came with me. there so if you look directly at the house and you drew a driveway straight towards the road there would be a storm drain right in the middle so what did they do they went like this and made the entrance very very tight and her driveway which is from here to that wall is just like this yeah so it's almost impossible for it back in and out without hitting that storm drain. I don't know if there's any kind of setback requirements from infrastructure to actual access points. Have you ever seen something like that?

I haven't seen that. But what I have seen is a requirement that you show the houses and the driveways on your plat so that you can ensure that there's no conflicts, whether it be with meters or storm drain manholes, like you said, or storm manholes. So showing that and showing more of that fine grading helps as well, because then you have fewer stormwater issues between the neighbors. You know, if, if you know how it's graded between the homes, it is more work on the developer. And I've seen that get a lot of pushback, but, um, I feel like when it's well planned out, then you can avoid those kinds of things. Okay.

I think as you're looking at home street parking, uh, think we're gonna have to be regardless if it's high density or, or not. vehicles are much larger than when a lot of these rules and regulations first began. I mean, for my own example, my driveway flares out at the end and so you can put two vehicles, but if I have both of my sons over somebody's parking on the road And this is the way the lay of my yard is. You can't really get into the yard. My road is a county road. It's not a city road. And so it's blocking one lane. But we need to be able to think differently, maybe even you know especially if it's i don't know what the width of the lot would be but maybe if there was an encroachment into the light with true maybe two parallel parking spaces leave you with a pretty small front yard but for wanting to do stuff like that i would

Currently, a lot of our problems we have in the city today wouldn't happen if the staff approving it existed then. A lot of this stuff predates them. Well, Blue Ridge, that was planted better than 20 years ago. Staff does a whole lot more and does a whole lot better job today than they did 20 years ago. than the handful of them that were here 20 years ago.

I think the issue may be that we want to have some flexibility in terms of our parking. We are a rapidly growing community, but we are also very diverse in terms of the types of housing. I think you just heard those examples. And while we intend to see more of the urban area become denser, that might flavor the type of parking as opposed to single-family residence on a half-acre lot in a subdivision down off Highway 101. So I think we're going to have to have a fairly broad policy in regards to how that works, given how many different types of housing we're going to have to address.

And is parking not a unique subject for us? Because if you think about from Take our mill villages, for example. You don't own one of those. You walk to work. Well, but now, unless you're in an overseer house, you're probably not a driveway, and so you are parking on the street, so most of the roads in the mill villages are one lane. But, yeah, I think leeway is, you know, because when you start becoming hard and fast with things, it's, it causes issues.

I used to dream of a parking requirement that was driven by the number of bedrooms. I never came up with the formula.

And that's one thing whenever we do these types of manuals, we do want to consider that flexibility into it because every project is going to be different. You get unique topography, you get unique development that wants to come in. And so allowing those standards to be provided of here's the baseline and then if that, engineer or developer comes in and makes specific requests, that's for town and town council to review and approve and go through that. But the goal is really to provide those standards as a starting point with, you know, every street theoretically looks different because then maintenance gets a little bit easier too on public works staff. They know what equipment they can use. They know where their storm drains are. They know the materials that are being used. So that's really the goal is to provide that baseline but still allow that flexibility as development's occurring and as industry standards change over time as well.

Okay.

Thank you. Council, final questions? Comments?

Mr. Grant, does this process provide standard drawings as well? Okay. You said six months. That's pretty quick. Do we already have some, or would this be great? Like standard drawings for?

Not a ton.

I will add a pushback. Fiber, yes, it's kind of messy when it gets installed. But it's wonderful. Hurricane Helene, Spectrum was down for how many weeks? Forever? My subdivision, most of it was already fiber. fiber fiber was it never went down once we had electricity to run the routers they were it was back online so if you had a battery or generator it never went down spectrum took about better than about three months in my neighborhood choices choices choices is a better thing so whether you know further discussion

Hearing none, we appreciate your time. Thank you. With that then, if there is no overview from engineering, I will call the workshop to a close.