Regional Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the June 9th, 2026 Johnson City Regional Planning Commission meeting. There are two opportunities for members of the public to address the Planning Commission during the meeting this evening. Firstly, during the public comment period, which will be at the beginning of the meeting. And then secondly, during the public hearing, which is heard at the time a specific agenda item is brought forward for discussion. If there is a public hearing for an item, it is identified on the agenda. The public comment period is intended to allow members of the public to address any comments to the Planning Commission, whether or not those comments are related to a topic that is on the agenda. Public hearing comments are limited to certain classifications of topics, and as I mentioned, those are indicated on the agenda. To be eligible to speak during the public comment period, you must have registered to speak at least 12 hours before this meeting. Public comment is limited to 12 people to make sure the Commission has time to conduct its business. To be respectful of everyone's time, we would ask that you speak only once on any given topic. Speaking time is limited to three minutes for members of the public, with applicants given 10 minutes to present their case. For both public comment and public hearing, I will open the floor at the appropriate time. If you come forward to speak, please introduce yourself by giving us your name and address. Your comments should be directed only to the commission. I now call the meeting to order at 6.01. Commissioner Williams, would you mind leading us in the invocation and the pledge, please?

Please join me in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we come before you tonight with grateful hearts. We're thankful for this day that you have given us and this much needed reign. We're thankful for this great city and we ask that you continue to pour your blessings down upon us and our leaders. We're thankful for the planning department and this group of men and women that serve on the planning commission. We ask for your guidance and your wisdom as we make decisions tonight. And we ask that those decisions are fair to all concerned and bring glory to you. And we ask all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Please stand for the pledge.

I pledge allegiance.

Thank you, Commissioner Williams.

Okay, first item on our agenda this evening is the approval of the agenda. Is there a motion to approve the agenda?

I'll make a motion to approve the agenda.

Thank you. Is there a second?

I'll second.

Thank you. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Fantastic. Second item, approval of the minutes. Has everyone had the opportunity to review the minutes from our last meeting? Are there any changes?

I need to abstain. I was absent. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, having reviewed the minutes, I'll make a motion to approve as presented.

Thank you. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Fantastic. Okay. Now we're going to move on to the public comment period of the agenda. I'm going to call the names of the folks that we have listed. And at that time, if you guys, if you would like to come up and please address your comments to us. First up this evening is Mr. Dave Adams.

Yes, hello. Dave Adams, 3 Coventry Court, Johnson City. Chairman Dutton and Commission, thank you for the opportunity to speak. I know this board is usually quieter with a smaller audience, but tonight you find yourself in a very consequential position. Don't take this as me being ungrateful for what's been accomplished, but I only have three minutes, so I'm going to spend them on the remaining problems. We are under a microscope, and every step we take needs to be precise, defensible, and clearly written. When, not if, this ordinance is eventually tested, the only words that are going to matter are the words that are written down. This ordinance calls for a 200-foot separation from residential properties, but it does not apply that same separation standard to churches, daycares, hospitals, schools, or other sensitive properties. Those sensitive receptors may be identified during site review, but identifying them and protecting them are not the same thing. The justification for that admission and the justification for only 200 feet needs to be made publicly before we accept a number that low. The data has been requested, so I hope the planning department brought it today for your deliberations. The ordinance also calls for a special exception process through the Board of Zoning Appeals. That is great. But the current language still reads largely like a checklist of materials to submit and not a clear set of standards for deciding whether an application should be approved or denied. Requiring studies is great, but I think the ordinance needs stronger language saying things such as the BZA shall deny unless it finds X, the BZA may approve only if Y, or an unmitigated adverse finding requires denial or specific mitigation. If a BZA decision is taken to court in the future, does this ordinance give them the authority they need to defend that decision? I don't think it does in its current form. Before we proceed, we need to arm the BZA with clear operative language that turns technical findings into legally defensible decisions. Additionally, shut down authority. This was a request that we made very early in the process. Didn't quite make it into the final text. Code enforcement, injunctions, and annual approvals are slow. And we've seen the pain that has caused other municipalities, other regions. We need authority to pull the plug early if we expect to have true oversight. So I do love these improvements, but I think we need to tighten the language and equip the city with the tools it needs to enforce good stewardship. So as we go into this process, thank you for your deliberations and for the role you're taking to keep Johnson City safe from harmful enterprise. Thank you.

Next on the list, Anna Fernandez.

Good evening.

My name is Anna Fernandez, and I live at 504 Rose Avenue here in Johnson City. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak.

Good evening.

There's a lot of controversy around the effects of data centers and Bitcoin mining on communities where they've been developed. I think many communities where these centers now exist were ill-prepared to deal with the developers of these projects when they arrived. So I applaud the Planning Commission for trying to get ahead of the rapidly... developing trend that could very negatively impact our community here in Johnson City. We need strong zoning codes in place before these industries come knocking at our door, and they will come knocking at our door because of our abundance of water, farmland, and relatively inexpensive electricity. Well, I think what I read in the proposed changes is to the current zoning is a good start. It does not go far enough in protecting the quality of the life of a residence. One of my primary concerns, as was expressed by Dave Adams, is the proposed 200-foot setback from residences. This is not far away enough to protect residents from the well-documented light and sound nuisance produced by these centers. To put that in perspective, the average road frontage for any given yard in the city limits is approximately 100 feet. So that would mean that the center could be a mere two houses away from a residence. This is just way too close, in my opinion. And I think it should be increased. As a neighbor, I can't imagine what living just a couple doors down from the center would do to my sanity, much less my physical health. And as a realtor, I think being located that close to this type of center would make selling one's home virtually impossible. So again, I congratulate the Planning Commission for initiating these zoning changes. However, I strongly urge them to consider increasing setback limitations, demanding complete transparency from the developers with regards to every project, establishing monitoring criteria should said projects be approved, and addressing the industry's responsibilities in dismantling and disposing of these projects should they become obsolete or simply move on at a future date. Thank you.

Thank you. Next on the list, we have Cassie Kirk.

Thank you for allowing me to speak. My name is Cassie Kirk. I live at 106 East 10th Avenue. I am an educator. I've lived in Johnson City for a decade or so. My main concern is I am very thankful that we are moving in the right direction, that we are trying to put in place things to keep these data centers from coming in and just doing whatever they want. But my feeling is this. the difference between a big tiger and a regular size tiger is negligible when it's in my house um i'm not crazy about putting in place some things to mitigate a little bit and not help enough um In other places we've seen the cost of these data centers be passed on to the public. My neighbors are already struggling against high electric bills and we are struggling with our water currently here and I don't understand why we would allow people who don't live in our area who have millions or billions of dollars to come in, steal our resources, make our area a less pleasant place to be. We live here on purpose. You know, we live in one of the most beautiful states in our country. And I don't think it's fair to my neighbors who are already struggling to say, OK, we're just going to let rich people come in. We're going to give them a pittance. And you are going to take on the cost. It's just not fair. And I think that a lot of us feel that way. And I can't speak for you, but I feel like this is a train that's coming and we need to step out of the way and not let this happen. As others have said in other places, this has harmed the health of people. I agree that this 200 feet is not enough. I can shout loud enough to be heard from 200 feet away with my human voice. I can't imagine what that's going to sound like with hundreds and hundreds of servers. It's not going to bring a huge amount of jobs to our community. It's not bringing anything of benefit. And so while I applaud us for putting in some kinds of safeguards, I don't want a data center in my backyard at all. Thank you.

Okay, next up we have Mr. James Powell.

Good evening, commissioners. My name is Jim Powell, and I am at 205 Joe Hale Drive. That's my place of residence, but I'm here to just represent Christ Community Church, whom I know you engaged in the May 12th meeting. I was away for my daughter's wedding, and I wanted to just come before the commission representing that church body and thank you for the work that you've been doing on the parking text amendments with regards to the West Walnut Street corridor. I wanted to engage not just gratitude for the non-residential dwellings, as I understand how things have matriculated, but also just support of general parking text amendments with regards to that whole corridor, businesses, as well as just the vibrancy of the community. So I'm here in support of the work that's already been done. I just want to say thank you.

Thank you. Next on the list, we have Sarah Jane Della Vecchia. I hope I didn't butcher that too badly.

You got it completely right. Thank you. Sarah Jane Delavecchia, Five Garden Way. I'll start off with saying I'm quite pleased with what has been laid out in zoning so far. The city is taking this seriously and not just listening to our concerns, but acting on them, and I'm not the only one grateful for that. That being said, there are some important questions that still need to be answered and additions needed. Johnson City residents deserve to have full confidence in these ordinances and what they mean for our community. So what are the consequences if the ordinances aren't adhered to? When does shutdown authority come into play? When does permit relocation? What is the process of handling written complaints from residents? If a data center is actively harming the community, it needs to be stopped. Fines alone are not, I don't think, are enough when it comes to life and property in Washington County. Many of these data centers are funded by incredibly powerful individuals and corporations. We need to protect our citizens and environment, not just in intention, but in continued action. We also need to see the noise and vibration assessment guidelines mentioned in the zoning there. I think the city should choose the qualified acoustical engineer performing these studies. There's an included right to the technical review by the city, but it would be most prudent to have the city choose the engineer in the first place. Let's see. And the noise and vibration studies need to account for not just what can be heard and felt, but any and all wavelengths coming from the data center. I would like to suggest continued monitoring. I would suggest continuous sound vibration monitor installed at the property line closest to residential use at the expense of the facility. It should send real-time data to a publicly accessible dashboard, again, paid by the facility. We should retain timestamped data logs for at least a year. That amount of time should be able to allow residents to prove an ordinance was violated at the time. It needs to be calibrated annually by a properly accredited engineer and records filed in the city. I would like to see yearly inspection by the city and compliance reporting by the facility needs to include every hazardous impact laid out in the general operational compliance section, including but not limited to glare, electrical disturbance, smoke, gas, fumes, odors, dust, emissions or fire hazards, not just noise and vibration. I note on decommissioning and bonding, financial assurance that the operator or third party can pay for decommissioning should be updated more frequently than five years. A whole lot can change in just a year, so annually would be preferable. When it comes to estimated decommissioning costs, this needs to be provided by a third party provider not affiliated with the facility. We're definitely headed in the right direction. I'd like to conclude in summation with saying that in order for this data center zoning to be fully complete and acceptable, it needs to ensure that the facility and operators are held accountable to every ordinance contained therein. Thank you.

Thank you. And last on our list this evening, Michael, would you care to come up?

I am Michael Sterling. I live at 2814 Oak Cliff Court, South City, Tennessee, 37601. And my comment tonight is about the parking spaces that they want to take in narrow State of Franklin from Colonial down to Buffalo. I think that is a bad idea because I have a quite a bit of history with traffic flow. You're going to affect the traffic off of 400. You're going to affect the traffic off of Lincoln Street. You're going to affect the traffic off of 321, which I guess is 67. You're going to affect the traffic that comes off the freeway. You know, driving is 80% habit. When you all go to work, you go the same way. You can about get your sleep unless something really comes up and changes your traffic pattern. This traffic is going to have to go somewhere. And before you, I've got five questions that I put before you that I wish you'd consider and hope some of them have been answered, which I'll read them to you. Has a traffic count been conducted to the affected area, and what was the count? That needs to be done twice, once in the winter, once in the summer, because college is not here in the summer. Two, when the pedestrian light is activated, the crosswalk, how much traffic could be backed up that will block Buffalo or South Rome? You see that all the time up there at Princeton at the five-way stop. What would be the most cost effective to open the parking garage or the overflow for seven days a week? Which it would be. But ETSU has it tied up during the week because they hold classes there. How long will that last? And when they do that, they have a bad habit of parking at the East Market Street parking lot because it's easier to walk across the street and go in than go up into the parking garage. Number four, what route do emergency vehicles fire police protection with just two lanes of traffic? on state of franklin if you close up to how would that affect response time has anybody done a study does anybody know number five how would delivery trucks make their deliveries to businesses when right now they block the west lane state of franklin or take over the west market street and block the other lane when they make deliveries so how are you going to get around all that And as you can see, the key downtown parking details, what spaces you have, and you can take away the downtown center. But to this date, I've never seen Cherry Street full where you couldn't park. You're looking at approximately a quarter million dollars to do this in four months. And I think consideration really needs to be looked at. I think it needs to be slowed down a little bit because once you do it, You've done it and then you're going to have traffic going through all kind of residential areas to get around this blockage. So I appreciate you giving me the time to speak. Thank you for putting me on the agenda and you have a good evening. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Okay, with that, that concludes the public comment period of our agenda this evening. First item of business is unfinished business 6.1, the zoning code text amendment request to amend Article 6 and 11 regarding parking standards for B3 and WWD districts. Ms. Putnick.

Good evening, Chair, Vice Chair, Commissioners. I am Riley Pudney, Development Coordinator for the Planning Division. And I am here to bring back the discussion for the parking text amendment in the B3 and West Walnut District. The Commission heard the initial amendment on May 12th and workshopped it today. If moved forward, it will have its first reading with City Commission on the 25th and final action roughly July 16th. The request was for a text amendment that came through by Christ Community Church that would allow for non-residential uses in properties in B3 and West Walnut to continue to operate without having to meet the existing parking requirements. And this is due to current parking. Their current parking is all off-site and is non-conforming to our code. And they're planning an addition that would require them to become meet the code, sorry. So the things we are looking at, and staff has made just a few changes to the ordinance that we heard on May 12th, but B3, it would be to reduce parking for residential uses to an amount that is later provided. And then the change that we made for non-residential, this would include, or excuse me, not include hotels, motels, extended stay facilities and bed and breakfasts. So there will remain a parking requirement for those uses. But anything else that would be built non-residential would not have to meet the current parking code. And this does not include anything that is existing within the B3 in West Walnut. So any existing use is allowed to keep their current parking and would not have to come into conformity. This is just a map that shows the existing B2, B3, and West Walnut District zoning. So your dark red is our B2, the peach color is the West Walnut District, and your B3 is the lighter pink. So we are looking at the peach and the lighter red where this would be implemented. This does not touch the B2 downtown district. West Walnut, the reason a lot of this has come forward was the West Walnut district area regulations as well as the B3 have lots that do not have enough room on the property for parking. They adjoin, usually we see buildings that adjoin right onto a property line or another building. So any change in use or addition to those buildings currently as the code reads, they would have to provide the new parking for that use. And there's simply just not enough space. So this amendment is to allow for redevelopment in the B3 and West Walnut District and allow businesses to come forward and have reduced parking requirements. Currently, right now, the parking requirement for West Walnut District and for all parking districts is off-premise parking is a special exception. And it cannot exceed 50% of your required parking. And that is a special exception. So it cannot be granted a variant. So they either have to meet it or they can't be provided that exception. So again, this is what the commission saw last month. The only change that has been added is the non-residential uses would have to provide parking, and that would be one parking space per rental unit. So that would be a hotel room or a room and a bed and breakfast, so one space per unit. Again, this is to encourage residential development downtown with reduced parking requirements and allow for new businesses and institutions to occupy existing spaces. Again, this does not impact any existing uses or buildings. In making this determination, we looked at multiple municipalities around the area in North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Virginia. And you can see the Johnson City is highlighted in yellow. with the current on that top line and the proposed on the bottom. And what we can determine from this graphic is that we are still within the realm of reasonable requirements based on what all of the other municipalities are doing and still providing adequate parking for non-residential and residential uses. So staff would still recommend approval of the text amendment in anticipation for future development in downtown. This amendment would allow for new and existing businesses to come forward and have less restraint for parking. So staff recommends approval. Okay.

Thank you. Questions for staff? Okay. Okay, seeing none, I know this is, there's no public hearing associated with this item this evening. So the discussion is among ourselves.

I believe that you, there is public hearing because we added a, we added the hotel.

Okay.

So we wanted to make sure that there was any, anybody wanted to speak to that, they had an opportunity to.

Okay, thank you Ms. Hodges. Okay, so we'll open the public hearing. Is there anyone here who would like to speak to this item? I've seen none. We'll close the public here and move on to the discussion among ourselves. Does anyone have any comments?

I mean, I was for this text amendment last month, and I really appreciate the amount of time that staff put into the research of all the neighboring and sister communities we have throughout the southeast area. given the amount of investment that the city has put into the West Walnut Street District, I think we need to do everything that we can to support the property owners and the business owners in that district. I know there's some concern about how much parking the church may use. However, I look at that as kind of a cyclical time. Their high use would be during Sunday services when a lot of other businesses are going to be closed, maybe Wednesday nights. I don't know what time they meet during the week, but I don't think that's really going to affect a lot of the other businesses on West Walnut. As far as the residential, you know, in downtown, we see a lot of business on the first level and residential on the second or higher floors. I don't think we're really going to experience a lot of that on West Walnut Street, given the type of buildings that we have there. So I think the residential is going to be minimal, in my opinion. And then adding the parking for the hotel, motel, bed and breakfast, et cetera, I think is the right thing to do. So I'll be voting in support of this text amendment.

And I share many of those sentiments. I think when we're in an area of town here, especially where we're trying to encourage density rather than not encourage density, you do find yourselves, I think, naturally, we're going to have uses that are cyclical in nature. So the concept of shared parking makes a whole heck of a lot of sense to me. So for that reason, I'll be supporting it as well.

I'll go ahead and make a motion, if that's okay, to approve the zoning code text amendment for the parking standards for B3 and the West Walnut districts.

I'll second. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? Okay. Seeing none, Heather, would you call the roll, please?

Commissioner Aldridge? Yes. Commissioner Goodson?

Yes.

Commissioner Meade.

Yes.

Commissioner Williams.

Yes.

Commissioner Goetz. Yes. Vice Chairman Kelly. Yes. Chairman Dutton.

Yes.

Motion has passed. Thank you. Okay.

Moving on to item number 7.2, the subdivision variance request for Strawberry Fields, the extension sidewalk. Welcome back.

I believe you skipped over 7.1.

Did I apologize? Okay. Sorry. 7.1, which is you as well. So this is the concept plan amendment for 621 Lake Harbor Drive. Thank you.

You're welcome. Commissioners, tonight I will be presenting the concept plan amendment for 621 Harbor Point Drive. Tonight, or excuse me, yesterday, a neighborhood meeting was held. We had one member in attendance who was on the board of the HOA and was just kind of curious of what was being presented. Tonight would be the recommendation public hearing, and it would have one reading at city commission scheduled for June 25th. to orient the commission on where this property is located. It is at a subdivision at the corner of intersection of Rockingham Road and Boring Chapel. And it is at the corner of, excuse me, it is at the highlighted parcel here and is zoned RP2. The request is to amend a concept plan to reduce a 100-foot stormwater easement to 25-foot stormwater easement at the property. And you can see what I've provided here is the 100-foot easement, and they want to reduce that to 25 feet. A little bit of background on the property. It was rezoned from R2 to RP2 in 1994 as part of the Lake Harbor estate subdivision. At that time, there was existing depressions and sinkholes on the property and a hundred foot wide permanent drainage easement was recorded along the property line. of Lake Harbor to encompass that entire front depression area here. There was no study at the time in 1994. It was in lieu of the study that 100-foot easement was retained. In order for the applicant to provide a plan to reduce the easement to 25 feet, a flood analysis was completed and determined it would not negatively impact a 25-year and 100-year rain event and that the sinkhole on the property had adequate storage to retain the water on the property. No additional studies would be required if a second structure were to be built. And our city engineering department agreed with these findings and have recommended approval as well. Again, neighborhood meeting was held last night with one attendee, and that concern was just over deed restrictions and what can and can't be on the lot and not concern over the easement itself. So due to the request not negatively impacting the surrounding properties and the retention area still maintaining adequate capacity, staff would recommend approval of the amendment to reduce it to 25 feet.

Thank you. Questions to stall? Okay. Seeing no questions, this is a public hearing item. Is there anyone here who would like to speak to this item? Seeing none, we will close the public hearing for this agenda item. Ladies and gentlemen, discussion is among us.

Mr. Chairman, it appears it's pretty straightforward. I'm familiar with this a lot as well when it was first, matter of fact, I lived out there. And I think it's a reasonable request. The study's been done. It seems like an acceptable change. So I'm going to support it, and I will make a motion to that effect. Thank you.

Is there a second? I'll second. Fantastic. We have a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? Okay. Seeing none, Heather, would you call the roll?

Commissioner Aldridge? Yes. Commissioner Goodson?

Yes.

Commissioner Meade?

Yes.

Commissioner Williams?

Yes.

Commissioner Goetz? Yes. Vice Chairman Kelly?

Yes.

Chairman Dutton?

Yes.

Motion has passed.

Thank you. Okay, now we can move on to 7.2. Thank you very much.

Okay. This is a request for a variance to the sidewalk on the proposed cul-de-sac of the Strawberry Field subdivision. It is to approve a variance to figure 17 of the subdivision regulations to eliminate a portion of the sidewalk along the west side of the proposed cul-de-sac on Strawberry Field Drive. And this is to orient the commission. You saw this in March as a final plot. and it is for the extension of Strawberry Field Drive cul-de-sac. The preliminary plat was approved and that should be March. I apologize. March of 2026, the construction plans were submitted in May of 26. And so in the determination of construction plans, it was determined that that portion of a sidewalk would exceed the two to one slope and also would require a retaining wall and grading on the neighboring property. So at that time, the developer came to us and asked for a variance to the portion of the sidewalk. They provided a figure that shows this section of the sidewalk would not connect due to the two to one slope and would require grading on the neighboring property here. Figure 17 to the subdivision regulations requires a cul-de-sac to go all the way around the bulb. However, the proposed sidewalk is highlighted in yellow and would stop just short of connecting to the west side of the sidewalk on Strawberry Field. So it is just that portion that would exceed that two-to-one slope. Due to engineering and staff recommending approval to this for the two-to-one slope and it being graded on another individual's property, staff would recommend approval of the variance request.

Thank you. Any questions of staff?

Riley, if you'll go back to that for a minute, where it stops there before, is that going to have like a ramp so that people can get off of it if you're handicapped or riding a bike or something like that off the sidewalk?

Right here? Yes. It's not in the current plan, but I would assume that it would have a slope to get off of the sidewalk, yes, for bicycles and so forth. It would have a grade into the pavement. Okay.

Riley, would you mind to say again, what is that distance that will not have a sidewalk?

I don't have the distance provided, but approximately I believe it would be roughly 15 to 20 feet.

Okay. Can I ask your opinion on something? If this property was fully in the developer's hands, and if they didn't have to go onto a neighbor's property to do grading, would you consider this enough of a hardship to provide the variance? Or because you would have to grade on a neighbor's property, that's really good grounds?

Because it exceeds the two-to-one slope, and to have it meet the grade for the street would require going onto the property, so it's kind of two factors coming into play. It meets the threshold of variance.

Okay. Any other questions to start? No? Okay. Discussion is among ourselves. Does anyone have a... There's no public hearing associated with this one this evening. Mr. Chairman, go ahead.

I'm sorry. Go ahead. I think this is pretty self-explanatory. I think that it makes a lot of sense to go ahead and cut it off where they're cutting it off. So I'll go ahead and make a motion to approve the variance request for Strawberry Fields Extension Sidewalk.

Thank you. Do we have a second?

I'll second.

Thank you. We have a motion and second. Is there any other, any further discussion? I agree with the sentiment as well, by the way. In this case, I think this is a perfect rationale for a variance and there's really no impact or reduction in service as a consequence of it. Heather, would you?

Commissioner Aldridge? Yes. Commissioner Goodson?

Yes.

Commissioner Meade?

Yes.

Commissioner Williams?

Yes.

Commissioner Goetz? Yes. Vice Chairman Kelly. Yes. Chairman Dutton.

Yes.

Motion has passed. Thank you.

Okay. Item 7.3. This one is rezoning. Considering a proposal to rezone .33 acres located at 1012. I believe that should be Knob Creek Road, not Knob Creek Drive. Yeah. From R4 to B1.

Yes. Knob Creek Road. Good evening, Chairman and Vice Chairman and Commissioners. My name is Steve Martin. I'm a planner with the Johnson City Planning Division, and I'm presenting to you this evening a request for rezoning for 1012 Knob Creek Road. There we go. Meeting's timeline. We're here this evening for the Planning and Commission Recommendation public hearing, and if approved, we'll move on to July 2nd through August 6th for the third and final reading. We did have letters sent to the property. The sign was posted, and we did have a scheduling neighborhood meeting. Just for orientation, the arrow depicts the location of the property. And you can see it is northwest of Kiwanis Park and just southwest of Clark Street Baptist Church. requested to zone one parcel just over a third of an acre from r4 to b1 from medium density residential to neighborhood business district and the reason for request is to accommodate additional signage for an existing child care center and i put a little tip at the bottom there so you can see the distinction between sign allowances between r4 and b1 So R4, you can see it's one wall or freestanding sign of 32 square feet. And at B1, you get a little more options as well. Being on a corner lot, this property is on a corner, you can increase your signage there. So in addition to having greater visibility, the applicant would like to add other features that the child care service does offer. And in addition to child care, so he wants to just expand his offerings and his signage would give him that additional exposure. Current zoning is R4. Adjacent zoning is between R4, R01, PB, and R2C. And the current land use is a child center or remain a child center. It is residential to the north and west and commercial business to the east and south. Oops, too fast there. So the B1 neighborhood business district, the intent of it does include residing in adjacent residential areas without adversely impacting residential character of the area. And commercial uses should be in scale and character with the adjacent residential uses and do not encourage the generation of additional traffic from outside the area. So as this business will remain exactly how it is today, we don't see any changes that would affect the rezoning to B1. The concept plan is simple. Separate from a lot of concept plans you will review, this is an existing child care center. So the only distinction from that would be the sign. We are in review with the applicant on the sign placement because it is a corner lot. There is sight distance concerns that we would have in place. So we're working with him to make sure that he achieves the ultimate goal of the sign that he's desiring. As use would not change, there will be no impact to utilities, schools, or streets. A neighborhood meeting was held on June 3rd, but no one did attend. The Horizon 2045 plan has this place type as downtown transition. And you can see in the lower-handed corner, the use type is mid-between residential and non-residential. And you see the place type just covered the surrounding areas in the same place type surrounding the site. Staff recommends approval. The proposed B-1 district is compatible with the surrounding areas. The request is consistent with the growth management plan, and there is only one way to increase the intensity of the development as no building expansions or changes are proposed. I'm available for any questions. Unfortunately, the applicant did have a family medical emergency this afternoon and would not be able to make tonight's meeting. He apologized.

Thank you, Heath. Questions of staff?

Heath, what is the setback on the signage? That's a good question. We're still looking at it. He hasn't completed a signed application yet, but we're reviewing with him on site distance. An engineer has been a consultant on this, so he's probably going to get a surveyor to determine the right site triangle he's looking at on that corner to see how far it would be from the corner or if he can move it on. He has the option to put on each side facing the streets or additional footage from the corner. Right now, he hasn't picked a final placement yet, but it would probably likely be 25 feet back from the corner of what we're looking at right now.

My concern would be the site clearance or site distance that you would have when you come out there and try to make a turn. That's exactly right.

Absolutely. That's exactly why we're doing this review right now, just to make sure that he's satisfied with the placement of the sign options he would have.

This is a side note, and it's not direct on point, but it's just the point there. I drive by that... daycare center often i see those kids playing out there those little little sweet little kids run out there and in that yard about five feet from knob creek road with people doing about 55 miles an hour down through there and uh it scares the living daylights out of me every time i go by there and see them playing um I don't know if there's any buffering or anything that would be considered with this change that would take place that would kind of supplement the safety component of that daycare center on that corner.

Right. We did review the distinctions between the districts, and there wasn't a change to ever have any enhanced buffer requirements to be zoned for B1. And again, the area that they do play under is fenced in, but I was there posting the sign. The areas they play on are fenced in, largely fenced in areas, especially along Knob Creek.

Any other questions of staff?

Just a comment to staff. Thank you for working with a business. I mean, child care access is an issue many families struggle with. So, you know, creating an environment that's friendly to recruiting businesses of that nature, I really commend you for trying to work with them, have those protections in place. you know, allow business to want to enhance and grow what they're doing and further promote, I think is very complimentary of the environment we want to have here in Johnson City. So, staff, thank you so much for your work in this.

Thank you.

Okay. Seeing no further questions for the time being, there is a public hearing associated with this item. Is there anyone here? So, we'll open the public hearing. Is there anyone here to speak to this item? Yes, sir. Please come forward.

Hello, my name is Herman Garcia. I live in 808 Polk Avenue, which is about 500 yards from that corner daycare center. And every morning when I wake up, I usually walk and I walk by that daycare center. So my concern would be what type of materials are going to be in that sign. That to me is a big concern because these are children. Every morning when I walk by there, I see all kinds of debris on the sidewalk and stuff that the kids have obviously been doing to the little playground area. So if there is something that's going to go up there, a sign that the kids can damage and then that damage goes on to the road. who's going to be responsible for that? So we need to take that into consideration when you're building that kind of sign for the daycare center, making sure that that sign is something that these kids, even though they're little kids, they can still do damage. And so we need to make sure that whatever it is that goes up won't come down. Like I said, I live like about 500 yards away from there. So that is one of my concerns when I walk around there every morning. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else here to speak to this item?

Hi, Tricia Corade, 415 West Pine Street. I'd like to simply point out that the decision being made isn't merely about this particular property owner's commitment to not change the use. Once the zoning is changed, it changes it for anybody who buys it. So what else could possibly go in there under the new zoning? And is that something that we would want in that area? Is that something that the neighborhood would want in that area? So I'd encourage you not to make a decision simply based on what's here today, but consideration for the future.

Understood. Thank you. Is there anyone else here to speak to this item this evening? Okay, seeing none, I will close the public hearing for this item. Ladies and gentlemen, back to us. Any discussion, any further questions of city staff? Heath, perhaps you could clarify really quickly, just the sign location there, which I believe you pointed out was kind of on the corner there of Knob Creek and the road in front, correct?

That would be his preference, but right now we're negotiating just to understand clearly what the line is going to look like and how far back towards the structure it might actually be. And the vet changes his mind to just do two signs, one on one street, one on the other street on that side. So we haven't got to that point yet.

But in any event, probably not particularly close to the playground or I guess we don't.

No, I believe it's in front of the, if I could just move back a slide or two. In front of the building, yeah.

So the playground.

So there's fenced in areas here for playing. This area here is kind of a drop off area. So the site, why does it show up? I thought it showed up sometimes. There you go. There he is. OK, sorry. Here it is here on the corner here was proposed. This is in the beginning of the conversations here. So now we're looking at probably further back here towards the almost towards the building itself. Now, it looks like that's not going to be opportune for him. He knows he has the option to put it farther here or over on this side as well. So we're opening to just kind of continue this conversation and find out where the final placement would be.

Is that outside the fence on? I mean, does the fence line right?

The fence first runs right up adjacent to you and there's a guardrail right there and there's a chain link fence that runs right through here. Yes. Okay.

Okay.

Thank you. Any other questions of solve for discussion among ourselves?

Heath, as you think about the future land use map that we created as a part of Horizon 2045, when I think about this corridor, to me, there's consistent stretches of residential with hubs of commercial, stretch of residential, hub of heavy commercial, some medical closer to State of Franklin, of course. But any concerns with the rezoning in terms of long-term planning?

Can you speak to that? Yeah.

Whitney Hodges, planning manager. So as this area, and I'm actually going to go back a couple of slides to show what the existing zoning is. So we've got some hodgepodge already at that corner. So if that does expand or it does change because it already is commercial as a childcare facility. In that use, you could have bakeries, beer service, beer sales or establishments, financial institutions, laundromats, home occupations, government buildings, a neighborhood convenience center, but not an auto service. It's kind of a small scale. as well as personal services, pharmacies, like that's on the corner, utility stations, but that's not really what's here. Residential, because that goes in all of them. You can have residential uses on the second story and then restaurant at a very small scale. There's some specifics to that. So it's not that you would be bringing a large scale restaurant. And the other uses would be by special exception. So just to kind of give you an idea of what that is. But yes, this is a place where you would want to see, as we kind of called it out in the Horizon 2045 plan, as a place that we would tolerate some change and some additional densities and things like that. This would be an area for that.

Okay. I'll make a comment. I'm very familiar with this property, too, as I work just around the corner. And it seems consistent with the area. I don't think changing it to be one... is really that dramatic to the area it's a reasonable request i think it's a one that as commissioner alluded to it helps support an existing small business that's been around a long time a much needed small business and daycare so i'll be voting in support of the request tonight thank you is there is there a motion perhaps

I'll make the motion to approve it as presented. I'll second it. A motion and a second. Any further discussion? Okay, Heather, would you call the roll, please?

Commissioner Aldridge? Yes. Commissioner Goodson?

Yes.

Commissioner Mead?

Yes.

Commissioner Williams? Yes. Commissioner Goetz? Yes. Vice Chairman Kelly? Yes. Chairman Dutton?

Yes.

Motion has passed. Thank you.

Okay. Item 7.4, the zoning code text amendment, request to amend Article 2 for data center, accessory data center, pre-construction noise and vibration analysis.

I'm not Heath Martin. I'm Whitney Hodges, planning manager. But I'm going to start the presentation just so that I can set the stage for what this is and why this is needed. As we're going through this process, this is a text amendment process of kind of what this is. So as a text amendment, there aren't necessarily neighborhood meetings, but this particular amendment has had a lot of community engagement. It has had a working team of staff as well as a member of the community to make sure that we are listening to all of the community concerns. But it will follow like a rezoning that kind of a planning commission recommendation as well as three readings. This is a public hearing. There will be another public hearing at the second reading. That will be right now that we have a tentative timeline of putting this together because we also want to have a workshop because as we workshopped this with you before the meeting, this is a very heavy amendment. So we want to make sure that the city commission has enough time to digest everything before making recommendations as well as having some time to take in any recommendations you have, incorporating those if there are additional community concerns, incorporating those. So we're going to to probably have that meeting sometime in July and then tentatively unless there's something changes to the schedule it is before you. So why do we have text amendments? The ordinance is written in paper so sometimes things change and we need to change with those times. Our ordinance was written I believe in 1972 and it did not encompass all of the things that could happen and if you think about all the things that have happened in your lifetime This is one of those things that just needs to be updated. With this particular issue, there are multiple things that we need to change. What is before you tonight is just the zoning ordinance. Now we've done some studies, we've had a lot of community conversations, we've had surveys. We're gonna present kind of some generalizations of that data because it helps tell a story and has helped shape what we have done. So when this text amendment happens, there's also a text amendment for the municipal code, which is where we call the noise ordinance. And that is a municipal ordinance, so that only goes to city commission. So I want to make sure that everything is clear. one of the reasons that we need an ordinance for data centers is that a data center is a legal use in this state and in this country and we cannot as a city outlaw a legal use so what we want to do is find a way to make something very legally defensible and so that means that we can't just say make kind of big swaths of it has to be 100 acres or is it because that's not that is not rational or something that you would find here so what we have done and heath is going to go into this in great detail of how we came about to the parameters that we did because we want to make sure this is legally defensible what we want to do is protect all of the residents of johnson city and should this be challenged it could mean that we could have rules kind of put on us instead and so that is how we went into this process to make sure that we were being fair um to the existing building businesses because if we apply it to data centers we don't have to apply everything else but we need to make sure that businesses that may fall in similar categories if need to make sure those rules are fair so we're looking at a lot of things and was a lot of things to juggle i really commend this working team especially my staff who has worked really hard to put together what I think is at least a great starting place for some community conversation. And with that, I'm going to let Heath get into it.

Thank you, Whitney. Thank you, Whitney. Community Commissioners, it's me again. As you said here, it's been a process. It's been a team effort, to say the least. Some great minds at the table. A lot of feedback from the community as well. A lot of sharing of ideas and information, which has been great to see. Great to use all this information to come together for one reason. So we're here tonight because data centers rely heavily on technology and investment to continue to evolve rapidly. We adopted regulations in 2025, about a year ago, to define a permitted use for data centers within I-2. Since then, the moratorium's been put in place for the review data centers, and we came to the conclusion that they were better served as a permitted use as a special exception review by the Board of Zoning Appeals. And that's what we'll be reading into tonight. Since 2025, we adopted an ordinance. We built out that ordinance this evening. In the fall of 2025, we solicited a request for qualifications for a noise vibration study for an acoustical engineer. And in the meantime, while that was being solicited, we established a working group. Within there, we started to look at national policy, industry research, and review of peer communities to see where they were headed. In February of 2026, JPM was awarded the contract, and we worked quickly to start the noise study in Johnson City. And that followed between March and April. JPM conducted the ambient noise study at 10 different sites across the city, representing all three category areas within our noise ordinance, that being residential, commercial, and industrial. In May, he provided the ambient noise level report. We had a few exchanges back and forth for comments on the final report. The final report did yield that The levels that were detected outside of a few will explain norms, which is primarily construction and traffic, that our areas were within the thresholds of our current noise awareness guidelines. So we learned from that point is that likely no changes will be made to the decibel count for the three land use categories. With that, though, being close to the June 4th, June 5th deadline of the moratorium, we needed more time. We wanted to further evaluate the results that we had from the noise study and as well have our consultant continue to help us with the noise ordinance language for that. So the moratorium was extended now through December 3rd. And as well, as of last Friday, we posted an online survey, which was posted at the same time the study started. We censored it that Sunday, last Friday, and we took it down and we're reviewing that data. And I can tell you from a cursory review of the data, a lot of the concerns that reached the top levels of the review from the survey are exactly items that we've addressed through this text amendment this evening. So international policy, what we looked at were information coming out of and through federal agencies, through executive orders, EPA regulations, as well as state governments, information from utility providers, not just power companies, but as well as water and wastewater providers, and jurisdictions that were already regulating large-scale data centers. Those who were handling already in a large scale, we wanted to see the change they had made and the language they had put in place. Common themes that we identified was noise management. How are they regulating noise? How are they enforcing noise? What types of noise do they identify? And what kind of levels do they finally come to in their ordinances? Infrastructure capacity verification. This is power, water, gas supplies, generators. Let's look at those to see where we're gonna land in Johnson City. Environmental reviews. Where did it go beyond the data center itself? What are the other impacts outside of utilities? Community engagement. How well do they converse and exchange information across lines with the public and the community itself? What were the benefits of some of these areas to the public? What kind of offerings did they provide to the local communities? Ongoing compliance monitoring. What I mean by that is, what did they do beyond construction after the CO was issued? The occupancy was issued when they started operation. What hold did they have on data centers once they became operational? And as well, flexibility to adapt to evolving technology. As I previously stated, data centers change seems daily. So how did these local county ordinances elsewhere outside of Johnson City keep up with the trends that were happening with the data centers? So at the conclusion of a Norris research, we realized that noise matters and data centers operate continuously, which is different than most industries we have in the Johnson City, if not all of them. Data centers are very unique in that capacity to operate 24 seven, seven days a week. They have massive cooling systems and generators that are primary concerns to the public. and the impacts are highly site specific that means is this information that we learned means that data centers inherently will generate a lot of different interferences a lot of different concerns and adverse impacts and as well as other facets around the land where you just can't just look at a data center in general you have to look at the data center and the site they want to put it on a lot of topography a lot of vegetation a lot of adjacent uses they have to go into your decision making to determine whether or not it would be approved for that type of location So after research and national standards, reviewed acoustical engineering practices with our consultant, we developed technical assessment requirements that are still being worked on right now. We'll talk about the guidelines, but a lot of those are still being in the final stages of development and they will follow with the city, with the city commission or its readings as they move forward. And as well as we created a compliance monitoring framework beyond construction, beyond when they go operational. So key changes from the 2025 text amendment. Currently there are permitted use for proposing a special exception use in I2. We have devised definitions of data centers, accessory data centers, and we have added definitions to noise and vibration studies, and as well as defining what a qualified acoustical engineer is. And within the definitions of data centers and accessory data centers, we wanted to make sure that our data center definitions were very broad, but defined enough to capture evolving technologies. So we wanted to make sure we catered Bitcoin and digital currency mining operations, as well as data centers and the different facets of data centers. We also wanted to define accessory data centers and put the provision in there as a companion clause that said, if your accessory data center grows to a certain point, you will be considered a data center. So you want to let them know that that's fine if it's supporting their principal use, but if it does expand, then it could be considered a data center in our eyes. We established objective noise and vibration performance standards and compliance requirements. We require technical studies for noise and vibration, utilities and environmental impacts. We did increase the setbacks and we changed the residential separation measurements from the facility to the property line. And we do require ongoing public transparency to a project information website while they're in construction. So let's stay the same. Data centers remain limited to I-2. Operations must comply with all applicable city ordinances and regulations. Digital data operations remain enclosed within buildings. And screening and burgeoning requirements remain part of the development review process. I-2 zones in Johnson City. This is a broad overview zoomed out of all the I-2 parcels within Johnson City. As you can see, a lot of them are running kind of through the city in certain areas here, and some are kind of broken off and scattered off. So these are the only zones that data centers would be accepted in. So this is where we put a lot of the focus on for our setbacks and our separations. I did it again. I quit moving that thing. All right, hands off. All right, Board of Zoning Appeals, Special Exception Review. While this matters, so every proposed data center must be reviewed at a public hearing before the BCA. This is the benefit to the public for BCA hearings. The board is comprised of Johnson City residents appointed to serve as independent decision makers. They must submit technical studies, site plans, and supporting documentation that will be reviewed by the public. Adjacent property owners within 200 feet would receive notification. The properties would be posted with signs. Property owners and members of the public may provide testimony during the hearing process. The board may impose additional site-specific conditions to address compatibility, noise, and vibration. And it does warrant an annual review at the license renewal, which does also prompt back the notification through letters and through signed postings. General operational compliance is a new provision added and establishes ongoing operational standards for data centers. What we call these are performance standards. We call these our how a data center will behave and how it will act. It must comply with the city's noise ordinance and all applicable city regulations. So the noise ordinance will be undergoing some revision that will expand some definitions to include the tonal characteristics of noise inherited data centers. It wasn't already in there, so we included that in there so that the noise ordinance would be the body enforcing the noise for data centers, for all noise in Johnson City, say that. Now I'll talk about vibration a little bit further down the presentation. It does prohibit unreasonable offset impacts, including glare, emissions, interference, odor, fumes, It does require compliance with the vibration performance standards, which will be established in the guidelines. And it does establish the noise and vibration assessment guideline for future technical evaluations. And I'll break that down in a few slides from here to explain why that's beneficial to the city. And it does allow BZA to improve additional concerns when warranted. So the BZA board could actually look at an application and decide that additional considerations should be considered and applied to the applicant. So why is vibration addressed separately? So vibration is not in the noise ordinance. It will be a provision within the zoning ordinance and will be defined in the guidelines. But vibration presents challenges. Unlike sound, it can be difficult to identify and attribute to a specific source. There's a lot of legal dispute on how to trace vibration back. You can triangulate it, you can identify it, you can measure it, but to track it back to a definable source is where the legal challenge ensues. Ground conditions, building construction, traffic, rail activity, industrial operations, and natural conditions can all influence perceived vibration. Because of these complexities, we require vibration analysis by a qualified engineer using accepted engineering methodologies. So these studies will require modeling and examples of what their vibration levels are. So through the study, the engineer will be required to disclose that information to us so they can review that information on that. When it becomes a complaint, that's where we can approach the facility to say, hey, we have a concern about vibration. We didn't have this in your pre-construction analysis. We didn't have this during your modeling. But now we have vibration issues. We need you to do a vibration study to figure out where the source is coming from. And we can actually make them do that and make them pay for that. to make sure they show that they're not the source emitting the vibration. And that would be reviewed by someone that we identify on our side to review that consultant's report. Site plan and operational layout. So a lot of this is typical to most site plans. We do have a little bit different property boundaries and setbacks, and we'll go through in a minute. We'll take a lot more consideration into adjacent land uses and zonings, nearby residential and noise-sensitive uses. cooling equipment, generators, substations. We want to see all of the accessories part of that data center dictated in a concept plan and a site plan to review on that. So what's different from a lot of site plans that would be on this site plan will be that we consider a data center and everything that supports that data center as the data center. So the generators, the power supplies, the backup battery supplies, cooling towers, and maybe to cool off the systems will all be considered within that giant box we'll call a data center. So when we talk about setbacks, that's important to remember because it starts from that line, not just the structure itself that houses the internal operations. And we're talking about proposed screening and bufferings or the acoustic benefits and development of phasing where applicable. The pre-construction ambient analysis will be conducted by a qualified engineer and will document the existing ambient background conditions of that site before construction. It will create a baseline for future comparison for the city and will be prepared in accordance with our city guidelines. Same as a predictive vibration, noise and vibration study, it evaluates future impacts before approval. This will have to be done by another qualified engineer and a demonstrated compliance with the city standards. So part of the reporting back will be how the facility meets or exceeds our expectations in regards to our noise ordinance requirements here. And evaluate equipment such as the cooling systems, generators, and supporting infrastructure. The annual compliance verification will be when it's in operation. So this is where we'll get to see, did what they tell us actually, is it actually what we were told in operation here? So it required annually or at business license renewal. It confirms compliance with approved operational standards. It does evaluate actual facility performance and it documents ongoing noise and vibration compliance. If a facility has to retrofit, has to add more servers or to replace equipment or add, expand generators, increase IT loads, or has phased expansion, that prompts a new vibration and noise study. They can be two ways. It can be through modeling. It can be through actual and operation when it's in place just to show that whenever they start retrofitting or expanding operation, we'll have to be included in that process and it'll prompt another study. And that study will be made public. independent technical review. That means that the city gets to identify and retain who we want to review their information that they submit. So it's important that they get to identify who they want to do the study. It's important for us to identify who we want to review the study and find out if it meets our standards and is in fact what we asked to have done. Separate from some things that we do within the city, we don't have a qualified acoustical engineer on staff. So this is where we would definitely outsource that. Facility design and equipment screening, the purpose is this, to minimize the visual and operational impacts. So we talked about how all their operations must be within enclosed buildings and that their ground-mounted equipment will be limited to side and rear yards. Acoustical screening is allowed when required. That could be around generators, it could be around cooling towers or anything that would generate noise. And the roof equipment must be integrated into the building design. So we talked about parapets or facades in the front that actually conceal roof-mounted equipment there. Setbacks and residential separation. This improves compatibility with nearby residential areas. So within data centers in I-2, they'll have a 60-foot front setback. And they'll have a 50-foot side or rear setback. That's larger than any other setback requirement that we have in the I-2 zoning. The 200 foot minimum separation will be from residential uses and zoning districts. Now that separation is different than some zoning ordinances you'll see across the country. Our proposal is to have a measure from property line to property line. So it won't be from the data center structure itself, it'll be from the property line of that data center, not to the house or the home on the residential use, but to the property line of that use or that district. That is because our noise ordinance requires the readings be at the noise receiving areas at the property line. So if we're going to have an enforcement, we need to make sure that our zoning establishes the enforcement guidelines within it. So as I stated earlier, when I talk about a data center, that little blue square in the middle of your screen there will encompass the generators, will encompass the cooling towers and all those peripheral structures that support the data center operations. And from that, you have your setbacks. You have your 60 foot and your 50 on the sides and rear. And the property lines will establish that 200 foot separation between residential use or districts. By 200 feet, proposed separation standard provides a meaningful buffer from residents to areas while recognizing The compatibility is ultimately achieved through site design and operational controls. This is where we are really going to be tight on the design features of this facility, is to make sure and ensure that the impacts don't leave the site and spread onto adjacent property areas here. But in addition to that, we're going to institute 200-foot-degree separation between that and residential uses. So we're doubling down on what we expect from these facilities. 200 feet may not seem like a lot, but 500 feet or 1,000 feet just gives a facility 500 or 1,000 feet more to radiate noise before it drops to the level that's acceptable to residences. 200 feet puts them on a shorter leash. It makes them create a facility that's better designed so it doesn't travel 200 feet. So it really limits the range. So they have to increase the facilities designed to meet those standards in here. Right. So in the ongoing verification, the service impact remains an acceptable limit. So within that, we have an annual study. So the good thing about these annual verifications are even if they don't expand or retrofit their equipment through these annual studies, if some of the bushings go bad and some of the equipment start to rub and create noise, that's kind of like an opportunity for them to clean house and make sure that their equipment is operating as expected here. So then the 200 feet as well, we have to be reasonable with where Johnson City is today, where these parcels are, where these residential uses are as well. So when you look at 200 feet, that's an area where Johnson City can say that there are parcels that would comply with this requirement. If you say 500 feet or 1,000 feet or 1,500 feet, we essentially exclude data centers from Johnson City, which we can't do. So we have to find that spot, that median in the middle that gives us the ability to protect the environment and the citizens of Johnson City, but still establishing legal criteria that we have to for zoning for data centers. So in addition to the setbacks and the separation yards or separation distances, we'll have tougher buffer yards. We'll have additional buffering where required. We will permit, if presented, earthen berms or acoustic barriers. If a designer of a facility says, we need acoustical berms established around the area to help reduce the noise, we're open to that concept. We're giving them the option to consider that if they need that to decrease the noise leaving the site. As well as enhanced landscaping may be required. So if they need to enhance their landscaping plan to meet those standards, that gives them the opportunity to have the discussion with us. Environmental Industrial Operations Study. These are commonly referred to as a NEPA study or a National Environmental Policy Act study, very common in industry. And a lot of these requirements are surrounded with water use, wastewater impacts, stormwater, utility demand, transportation impacts, emergency services, environmental conditions and community impacts and mitigation alternatives. So this is a very well known practice in industry. So we're just applying it to this industry as well. And we have a risk management environmental specialist that works on staff that is helping us establish those guidelines as well as review those reports when they are submitted. In the utility capacity verification line, this is where we look at the grid. We look at water supply, wastewater supply. and treatment. And this is where an applicant will have to submit verification from the power provider that they can adequately support the power demand as they have prescribed the data center would be in operation. Water service, they would be coming to Johnson City, just like a lot of industries do, a lot of developers do, request a need-served letter. They'll come to the water and sewer supply service here in Johnson City, tell them what their needs are, and they would get a letter from them saying, yes, I can or cannot, the city can or cannot support your operation. So they have to have that letter submitted with their application. Wastewater treatment as well. If they have the need to be connected as an industrial user, they'd have to fill out an industrial user form through the city to explain what their process is and what kind of wastewater they generate and how it would be treated at the wastewater facility. And as well as any necessary infrastructure improvements that would go into that. So if we require water supply, wastewater improvements in those areas, they would be responsible for that just like a development would in a land development process for a residential neighborhood. e-waste, or electronic waste management. Thought it important to put in here, as these facilities do evolve and they do turn over different types of equipment, we wanted to make sure that the waste that was generated from the retrofitting or expansion of these sites were held accountable. And this does address servers, batteries, hazardous materials, and related equipment. And this all flows under state and federal regulations and is subject to our review. We wanted to make sure that they had a clearly defined plan that we could review and share with the public. Decommissioning plan. This is a long-term accountability effort. If the facility decides to shut down, move on, we require a decommissioning plan, which does require cost estimates. There are procedures to restore the site, to remove what's in the site if it has to be hazardous, how they're going to handle the hazardous materials, and it also establishes the requirement for a bond. Separate from BZA the bond were actually presented at Planning Commission so that's where that would be back before this group today after it would be approved by the Board of Zoning Appeals public information and transparency this is the public website that the applicant would be required to post and this would be upon approval of the application, they'd have to put up several factors here to follow along the entire process up until the point where they would begin operation. So it can be from a project description, construction schedules, the public meeting information, as well as their permit statuses. Here's just another example of what the process could look like in a screenshot. All the factors here submitted an application to BZA. It is approved and goes on to the Planning Commission. Now for the decommissioning plan on the bond, it could be anywhere from after approval up until the point of the certificate of occupancy is when that bond would go into place. So there's a range there between construction when it would be presented before the Planning Commission. So we wanted to make sure that you created a flexible regulatory framework as these industries evolve. They do change quickly. Some list of things that you can change rapidly here. So we created guidelines. What these guidelines do, it's referred to in the text amendment. But what it does, it takes you to a living document that can change over time. This is similar to traffic studies. When a development is put before the planning commission, sometimes it does trigger a traffic study. And our engineering department will go with them and say, this is what we need you to do for this traffic study before we move forward. Same thing would apply here. This would trigger a... A noise study, noise and vibration study, we would hand them a prescribed list of parameters or requirements within the pre-construction analysis, the noise and vibration study, as well as the operational verification study itself. And as these technologies change and as the methods change, we can actually change that faster. We can change that as these industries change, because if not, if it resided solely within the zoning ordinance, we'd have to go through this process here today. We'd have to go through planning commission and three readings of city commissions to make those changes. We like to have the ability to adjust faster, to catch up to industries, so we're up to date. So when an applicant comes to the door, we are updated and relevant to what they're asking for at the time. So why this approach is defensible in general? We feel it's reasonable. It does allow data centers in appropriate industrial areas. It does not create a prohibition. It is rational. The requirements directly address documented impacts. Standards are based on engineering and technical reviews. It is defensible, subjective. It does have measurable criteria. It does require consistent reviews. And there's a clear nexus between impacts and mitigation. Consistency with our adopted plans. Horizon 2045 Growth Management Plan actually has an area in here that does require our office to continue to review and assess businesses and industries. So in policy P1.2.1, we are required to regularly review and update zoning ordinances to ensure they accommodate emerging industries and evolving marketing trends. So this review is timely. This effort is timely for us to evolve current industries as they come out in the market. Firstly, make sure that we keep up with them. And through this process, this amendment does support economic development, protects neighborhoods, does provide flexibility for the city to adjust to these changes as they evolve. It creates a predictable review process and allows adaptation over time. So with that, staff does recommend approval of the proposed text amendment. It does reflect our extensive research and incorporates public feedback, established measurable standards, and it does protect human health, safety, and the welfare, provides a reasonable, rational, and defensible framework for future data center review. With that, I remain available for questions.

Heath, that was a very thorough, comprehensive, very well thought through presentation, as is the amendment that I know this presentation addresses. So thank you for all yours and the rest of staff's time on this. We really appreciate it. And with that, I'll open it up for commission members here to ask any questions of staff.

Mr. Chairman, just before we get ready to hear from the public and deliberate, I really want to remember what got us here. Even before I was appointed to the commission, I was aware of this issue and followed it through this body and the other. And I had true concerns. There was an industry like this that needed to be regulated. And at that time, there was no prior regulation in the zoning code. So I want to remember that my colleagues on the commission set staff into motion to begin the process to ensure that industries like this don't have. unintended consequences on our residents and members of our community. Local government can't determine what is a legal business, but we can through zoning and codes determine how and where those businesses operate. I'm really proud of the work that we did and have done. So I commend staff and the members of this body and others that contributed to that. So thank you.

Any other questions of Heath at this time? Okay, seeing none, thank you, Heath. You take a seat for a second. There's a public hearing associated with this item, so if there's anyone who would like to speak to this item, please do step forward. Yes, sir. Sorry.

Hello. Once again, I'm Herman Garcia. I live at 808 Polk Avenue, Johnson City. My concerns about this is that I'm running for Congress. I'm going to be running for House of Representatives District 1. And what you are doing here is basically, it's looking like it could be a model that I can take with me to serve other counties within my district. especially since I have a meeting in Hawkins County two days from now because they are also having issues with Bitcoin mine. Next week, I might be going to Hancock where they are also having a proposal for a Bitcoin mine to open up there. So what you guys are doing here with all the deliberations and to try to figure out the best interest of the community, I am going to be paying very close attention because I need to take that information with me to the different counties should a Bitcoin mine operation wants to open up. I will also be taking it to Washington when I do win the election. Because I want to make sure that other colleagues that I work with understand what's happening, because this is not just a local problem. This is not just the Johnson City problem. This is a national problem. And you see it almost every single day where somebody in the community just this week, Nashville, is having an issue with Bitcoin mine. And we want to make sure that the United States has a control of what's going on with this issue. And that's why I want to look at what's going on here in Johnson City so that I can make sure that when I do take this to Washington, I can use this as a model of what to say to others. Say, hey, this is what happened here. This is how we were able to. make sure that we did not interfere with the community to where it's a safe environment and making sure that the community itself can actually say to people that yes it is a safe environment in johnson city and so we need to make sure again this is not just a model for johnson city this is a model that's probably going to be going across the country So that's something that else might be a burden, but hopefully it's not. But we need to make sure that whatever you deliberate and whatever you do, that we have it to make the future of this issue a positive one.

Thank you. Thank you, sir. So, yes, gentleman in the green shirt.

Thank you all for allowing me to speak.

So would you mind with your name and address, please?

My name's Timbal. I live at 712 Hamilton Street. Thank you. The thing I want to address is you seem to be saying that we have no choice about whether a data center moves into our town. Is that, am I understanding that correctly? That it's going to happen and we have no legal rights in this?

So this is an opportunity for you to provide your comments as not, this isn't a town hall. What I'm going to state though, I'm going to state, I don't know that there's any particular data center that's lining up to come here. We are merely, the purpose of this exercise is to establish criteria. Should that be the case, then that data center would have to comply with the criteria that we are establishing. This is not about, there's no, To my knowledge, there's no data center, there's no use that's seeking to come here.

Okay. Well, I really appreciate the effort that you're putting into trying to control this type of industry. What I have seen in the media going across the country is that there's no benefit to having a data center, and there's tremendous problems with having a data center in your town, and especially right in the middle of town, which is the kind of area we're looking at here. There's There's not a great deal of revenue. There's not a lot of employment. There's a tremendous amount of pollution and heat pollution and noise pollution. And I don't see how that stacks up to where if we have the opportunity to just say no, that we should just not have a data center anywhere near Johnson City, which is a wonderful place and will not be enhanced by a data center. That's all I have to say.

Thank you, sir. Thank you. I think I'm going to make, Ms. Hodges made some comments during her presentation. But just for the benefit of the group, one question I wasn't perhaps clear enough there on. We do not have the ability to prohibit data centers from coming to this community legally. That is not something that's permissible. We can establish criteria, but we cannot prohibit a legally allowable use. That is something we are not legally allowed to do. And Blake, you're nodding a bit, so I haven't put my foot in my mouth and saying that, I don't believe. Yes, good, yeah, okay. Is there anyone else who would like to speak to this item? Yes.

Sarah Jane Delavecchia, Five Garden Way. I just wanted to highlight one of the things I said earlier, because I said a lot of words. I think the most important thing that this needs is, again, consequences of what happens when the ordinances are not adhered to. Because what you have is great. We just need to have faith that they will be enforced. Thank you.

Thank you. Heath can answer those questions for you in a minute. Sorry, Michael, you're up next. And then, David, I think there was one more person behind you.

There's a lady back there in the town. As you know, Michael Sterling, 2814 Oak Cliff Court. I know you can't answer this, but I want you to think about it. I commend them. I commend the ordinance. But my question is this. If I'm the property owner and I got 200 acres, excuse me, and I want to sell, but the ordinance is a good ordinance and it keeps me from selling, will it stand the test of the law? And if it doesn't, then what happens to our ordinance if they win and we lose? That's the only thing I'm saying because I commend them. It's covered every base. It's done really good, but can it stand the test of the law? That's all I'm asking you to try to find. And I know you don't have the answer, but it's just a question that I have.

Thank you. Thank you, sir. It's a thoughtful question. Young lady in town, I believe you're next.

My name is Rebecca Tolley. I live at 1907 Cherokee Road in Johnson City. I came here tonight very, very concerned due to all the research and different concerns that I've been apprised of over the last couple of years as AI and data centers have come about and propose different risks to both community and the public as a whole. I would really like to commend this commission as well as the proposed regulations that have been proposed because I had a whole list of different items that I wanted to address and a lot of them have been addressed before I even got up here. One of the things that I do want to add, I know that in the regulations it is proposed that these are living documents and that these are constantly available for amendment as needed. I would like to encourage the Commission, whenever that time does come, because ultimately it's inevitable, we can't plan for every single item, that decrease of regulation is not the first item that we jump to. I've worked in real estate and different business environments. And so I'm well aware of the different negotiations that tend to happen beyond behind the scenes and the different ways that businesses try to strategize in order to make a way in order to propose their business and promote it forward. I would also like to make sure that our community and you as the commission remember the different perspectives on AI and data centers as a whole. There is a very large growing background of lawsuits that are trailing behind this new incoming industry because it is so unregulated. And so I would just like you to continue to pay attention to the different social impacts that it has. Johnson City is a very large artist space similar to Asheville and our neighboring state, but it is also concerning to me as I am becoming a parent this year. And May 6th of this year, our local news station reported that several minors in Johnson City were victims of child sexual abuse material generated by AI. The report is available on their website. But I would like to encourage you all, because I hear that you all have a love for children and a love for our community, that you continue to make sure to very heavily scrutinize these industries as they come in and propose to come in. Thank you.

You were next. We'll get through everyone. I promise we'll make time.

Dave Adams already spoke, so I'll try to keep it short, but essentially wanted to loop back around now that we've heard the presentation. Essentially, number one, the item that I talked about in terms of the restriction for 200 feet, I understand the planning department's position that it's reasonable, but if that's the case just please show us the data um the data was requested we were told oh yeah it'll come but like i still just want to see the data i i i think we're willing to accept that 500 feet is not acceptable if the data shows it but like can can we just see the data The other point about Board of Zoning Appeals I want to loop back around. Please, before we push this forward, during the workshop earlier today, it was mentioned that this is kind of a living, breathing thing where we don't have to push this forward immediately. We can punt this back. We do have time. Our current moratorium expires in December. So there is still time for us to work on this before we send it forward. And we have, like, I know the planning department, citizens, like, people have been busting their chops for the past year on this. So please, please, please don't push this forward if there are still questions. Let's make sure that those get resolved. And then the third question... Oh, I don't remember what my third question was. Oh, yeah, shutdown authority. I didn't hear a whole lot in there, but during the... work session that you all had earlier, essentially, like I said earlier, the ordinance as it exists doesn't have one, and that was kind of admitted. And before we push that forward, I really want to make sure that we have a firm understanding of why we can't put that in the ordinance, because that is, again, one of the biggest concerns that has come out of other communities is this terrible thing happens, and then all they can do is continue to push for $50 a day fines and those sorts of things and has to draw it in court. When we had the situation in Limestone, how long did it take to get that mine out? It didn't come out until March. It took so long that we started our fight and we were able to go and take meters and take readings long after the court case because it just took that long. If we have shutdown authority defined up front, we avoid a whole lot of that heartache and heartbreak. And I want to make sure that we have justifications on the record for why we can't do these things if we don't do these things before we move forward. Thank you.

Hello, I'm Jasmine Horinda. I live at 4005 Prescott Drive. I don't know anything about zoning. Thank you for teaching me and thank you so much for doing so much here. I heard 200 feet was reasonable and a thousand feet would negate it coming and so we can't do that. But if Why? That's, a thousand feet is, well, I don't know, but it seems from what I've heard about data centers that a thousand feet is reasonable. However, I don't know anything about smaller data centers, which it seems with what we have, it might need to be smaller, but I don't think that we should, worry about that making it impossible for them to come also i don't once again don't know anything about zoning so sorry thanks for the uh lesson but if there was a way to um insist upon employment per acre maybe in a zoning I think we take good care of our land here. Our land matters here in a way that some of the nation doesn't take care of their land. And if we end up with... hundred acres of data center that is negated five years from now, which is a possibility, we'll end up with a hundred acres of soiled land in a way that we don't often deal with here. And therefore, I would appreciate that if they're going to take that land, at least maybe employ a security guard per acre something. Because as of right now, I don't see a benefit to them being here or anywhere. That's it. Thank you guys so much. You did such good work. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else? Yes, sir. The chap in the back. I don't know why I got all English on you all there, so I apologize.

Good evening. Luke Carter, 141 Fairview Circle, Jonesboro, Tennessee. I appreciate the work y'all been doing. It's been great. Regarding data centers, I appreciate the moratorium extension, taking the time to make sure you have good requirements in place. I've lived in the county for 47 years and I've spent and still spend a lot of time in Johnson City. I don't want a data center here. I can guarantee most of the people in the city don't want a data center in the city. They eat up resources, water and electricity, make a lot of noise and produce nothing of value for the people who have to live next to them. And a lot of this stuff has already been addressed already. It's concerned like it might have some construction jobs starting out, but long term, it's not. A couple of people are going to run the place. I would prefer an outright ban, but I know you can't legally do that. But if you're going to do it the right way, I would suggest looking to the ordinance Jonesboro recently passed. It's pretty restrictive and makes it unlikely for anyone to want to try and put one there. I've looked through some of your proposed changes, and I hope you have a similar goal in mind as they did. There is one major difference I would like to address, and that is regarding the distance from residential buildings. As has already been brought up by several folks before me, your requirement is 200 feet. The Jonesboro requirement is 1500 feet. So apparently Jonesboro thinks that's okay. So I would ask that you please consider at least matching Jonesboro's ordinance in this area. Thank you. Thank you.

Go ahead, sir. Yeah, you go ahead.

Friends, thank you so much for all your hard work. Thank you. Thank you. You've heard us say we have no need for a data center. We do have need for clear water running through the Watauga. Nice air above the Buffalo. Good ground that will grow our fruits and vegetables. You know this. So I just want to introduce one idea based on something I don't understand. I hear you say we can't say less than some number. Right now it's 200 feet. Because that would forego the possibility. It would prohibit them from coming here. But you're thinking only in what exists currently. So the question I would ask is how many parcels of land now could they build on? And that's existing parcels. If they bought two parcels, then how many sites become available? If they bought 10 parcels of land, if they bought the entire Fairview, Watauga corridor all the way to the river, that's a real possibility, right? These companies could come and buy many adjoining pieces. So by saying 1,500 feet like Jonesboro did, you're not... Telling them they can't come. You're just saying you'll have to buy many pieces of property. Have to assemble some puzzle pieces to make it possible. So I would say don't let the tail wag the dog. Don't say this is what we have existing. We must fit. We must allow you the opportunity to come to our community and you fit on something that already exists. say to them, let science say, or let some study say, how much space is needed for this use to safely fit within our community, and then require them to buy the appropriate amount of land for that boundary to exist. So a side comment. Thank you for hearing that. Please consider that. A side comment I would say is in the traffic study or in the noise study that you all did in April, you will discover that noise is an issue in Johnson City, especially in the valley between the two hills here. There are many cutout mufflers or unmuffled cars. So as I've heard you all mention that you'll address some noise ordinance, as you address those noise ordinance, please coordinate with the police department to begin enforcing and fining and confiscating cars from people who go in the streets unmuffled.

So, sorry, I forgot to ask you your name and address.

Brad Parker, 1810 East Fairview.

Thank you very much.

Hello again, Trisha Carade, 415 West Pine Street. I'm going to focus on something a little bit different than most of the comments, first echoing the appreciation not just for the body but for staff. I'd like to thank you for utilizing what's already in place, the Board of Zoning Appeals, in order to leverage that as a mechanism for control points, and also for points of public engagement. For those who may not be aware, the Board of Zoning Appeals is a five-member appointed board, appointed by the city commission. If the city website is accurate at the moment, that five-member board currently only has three seated members. two vacancies. So, my ask would be that a recommendation be made. I know it's out of your scope as far as that board goes. You can, in parallel with your recommendation, ask administration, ask staff to review whether a five-member board who currently has two vacancies is really robust enough, perhaps amend the bylaws, make that a larger body. given the additional importance that we are going to ask them to bear. Thank you.

Thank you. Not to say to much, Trisha, I am aware it's outside of the scope, so we wouldn't get to it in the presentation, but the city is alive to the BZA . Is there anyone else? Yes, ma'am.

I'm Noelle Shannon. I live at 5 Madison Court, Johnson City. And I appreciate the Planning Commission and all the work that they've done to include the community and set forth these guidelines and amendments. I just have one concern. I was looking at the amendment and on page 10 where it talks about the utility capacity. It says the applicant shall provide written verification from the applicable utility providers confirming adequate capacity exists to serve the proposed facility at anticipated full build out and operation. way to hold them to that because it what if they say we anticipate this much but it it comes to be a lot more and then I guess my other concern is we've seen other communities electric bill and water bill skyrocket because these data centers come in. And the costs are spread all the, you know, across the community because of the tremendous amount of electricity and water that is consumed, excuse me, I'm a little nervous, consumed by these data centers. It's a tremendous amount. I don't have the kilowatts or whatever in my head, but that's my concern. We're already looking at other things, increasing our property taxes. And I'm just concerned our water and our electricity is going to really, really skyrocket. So are there going to be some safeguards put in to where if data centers do come in and they use a lot more than they have stated or anticipate, is there going to be something put in place where that can be, they can pay the extra cost. I don't know. So it won't be put on the citizens of the city. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am.

My name is Shelby Holly. I live at 2411 Circleview Drive. And the Planning Commission and everything that's been done is a great job. But there's something that I've realized that hasn't been brought up about medical situations. People that's going to be affected by a broad thing of the vibrations sound um if you know got kids animals i mean there's so many things it's going to affect but i was just thinking maybe something could be put in there they also be added to state that you know they have to be responsible for anything that would come against their citizens uh their health and and and look at how That'll affect them. I mean, I've heard it from the very first meeting that I came to when they had discussion about this. And it's going to be a little bit too late for everybody calling 911. in a situation that it's going to cause too much chaos. And, you know, I just want to think that, think that again. Put something in your mind about, you know, health issues. And that's all I wanted to say. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Yes, ma'am.

Rachel Hawley, 2411 Circleview Drive. I didn't mean to come, but this is really going to affect this city more than you all realize. I've lived here for 58 years. And I was here when hopefully none of you all were here. They put the dump in in Johnson City. And my mother still lives on that in the town. And they have the most horrible smell. And they call the city and call the city.

And the city just reroutes them back around until no one picks up the phone. And that's what's going to happen here. If this Bitcoin is allowed to come in here, we're not going to matter. We're just going to be rerouted until we're not heard. And that's just the way I've come to know the city. I don't know any of you all, but that's the face I have of this city, is that it just doesn't care about its residents. And I'm going to be less than two miles away from this. And as sick as I've been, I've been wanting to sell my house to get out of it. Because I can't take this big window in here and to know that I've lived here my entire life and to think of me picking up roots and having to go away. So please, please understand. It's not just us being angry and just on our way. It's not. It's all of us. Please, God, please just hear me. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am. So are you coming?

Hi there, my name is Tom Cook, and dang, that thing is loud. I live in Garland Acres, like a lot of folks that's here. We were basically kind of told when this first started that forget about it, it's done for. There ain't nothing you can do about it. The city's done, not the city, but people in power have taken their things. I ain't accusing anybody of taking anything. But I've lived where I live for 22 years. And if it had not been for me living there, I worked at the VA, retired after 38 years there. I've had several occasions where I've been pronounced dead at home. And if it had not been for being right there by Clercy's fire station, and them guys responded within three minutes. I'd be here today. I've recently been able to take charge of my life, get out and walk and do things and things like that I enjoy. And I don't want to think about moving away from a safety zone that I live in. It's been so powerful to me and my family. To have your wife come in and find you laying in the chair with agonal breathing and the the paramedics show up and say he's gone. That they tried everything they could. Those people do their job. They show up for this city like they're supposed to. All I'm asking is you folks, I don't see a problem with saying, hey, it's like you're saying we can't make it too tough on them to come. Yes, we can make it tough. You're not saying you can't come. You're saying, if you want to come, you've got to meet this. You can't do this. And another thing is I'm a 10-year Army veteran. Noises scare the pee out of me. Not just noises, but to hear humming and just a constant drone. When you have that in your life, it's not fun. Rachel is my sister-in-law. She'll be my brother-in-law. But they can tell you I would jump almost out of the car if something just buzzes real loud and scares me. I appreciate the work people have done. I appreciate what all these folks back there with these red shirts on have done. They've stood up for their rights in this city. And I hate to see them be trampled upon. I want you guys to do your part. To make it tough, not just give in, not just roll over, but make it tough.

Thank you, sir. When we close the public hearing, is there anyone else who would like to speak? Yes, ma'am.

Hello, my name is Sharon Mosier. I live on 140 Forest Hill Drive, Johnson City. And you, Stephen, Tamara, Whitney, Ben, Laura, Robert, and David. I'm going to ask you a question, and you can just think about it. Okay, where do you all live? Do you all... Are you going to live right here like we are next to this Bitcoin mining? That's been shown and proven that it destroys wildlife, God's creation, humanity. That's what you all are too, humanity, humans. That it destroys, destroys your health mentally. And it also causes heart disease. It causes mentally ill people. There's already enough in this world that is flying apart. And then you all have the power of one, two, three, four, five, six of you to say, this is okay. Would you say it's okay if it's in your backyard? Is it in your front yard? Just think about it. It's not in your backyard. It's not in your front yard. So it's easy for you to say, no, we wouldn't put up with it. You don't have to put up with it. But we do. You know what? There's a day coming. And it ain't going to be long. I don't know if Vince knows there's a God in heaven. But he says, for the love of money, the root of all evil, what you pat in your pocket, what you buy in this world, you will not take it with you. But you will take with you what you did to God's creation of life. I'm not saying this to be mean, but I know I'm to speak this, for it's the truth. I've looked up here and watched you, and I've seen times it looks like you're just fighting your sleep, where you can't stay awake. I hope this keeps you awake, because it might not be coming to your door right now, but I promise you, it will. It will. And don't ever let this leave your mind. God's in control, not man, not man. And I thank my Lord for it. Thank you.

Thank you for the comments, ma'am. Just as a matter of order, I think we can keep our comments to the matter at hand rather than impugning integrities or making any suggestions about motivations for anyone up here on city staff. Thank you. With that, is there anyone else who would like to say anything? Okay, seeing no one, we will close the public hearing section for this item. Members of the Commission, back to us. Questions of staff, Heath, I'm sure there will be. I'm going to start you off with a couple of these ones for you here. I think, would you mind chatting a little bit about, we heard some questions, some comments about enforcement mechanisms. I think it's probably also worth talking about special exceptions, what that requires as it pertains to the annual mechanism for maintaining a permit. If that permit is not approved, then of course that use goes away. So would you talk about that, please? Sure.

So with this BCA being a part of the process, it goes about the zoning code for enforcement. So it goes back to the standard enforcement process for any zoning code enforcement tool there. As far as the annual license renewal, the requirement for that renewal is to submit the operational study, the online verification study, every line to be reviewed to see if they remain compliant. Past that point, if they don't provide that, if they don't show that they are maintaining compliance, That's where the license would not be renewed at that point. Now, past that point, before we get on this, let me go to find out the steps.

So one of the things that when you're designing an ordinance like this, you also have to think about the repercussions to other industries and to other people who are operating legally in the city. And so when we are looking at what we can use as penalties, we need to keep a standard to that. And so we're using our zoning code as the standard. Now we realize, and I'm going to say it differently than exactly what he's just said. So we realized that we heard that from the community. What do we need to have shutdown procedures? to keep this in in a zoning ordinance and then that's all that we can control it is the zoning ordinance and to keep that in that we felt that the mechanism to do that would be this year review that this is this is the only we have some things that require like a three-year review for certain items that have a special exception but this would be the one only one that i know about that has a yearly review And so that was one of the things that we could say as technologies change, because that is one of the real concerns that we have as staff and that the community has, is that something could change and we're not going to know about it. We're not going to be able to stay on top of that. So that your review provides that to us in a way that we feel like is fair for industries that are here and then industries that may be coming into Johnson City.

Thank you. Additional questions?

Since I don't sit on the BZA and I've got a knowledge gap there, would you mind to just walk us through a quick rundown? Let's say, you know, we're failing to comply. There's noise complaints from all the neighbors and those complaints make it to the BZA. And so code enforcement is deployed. What does that look like in real time?

So in real time, what that would look like at the point of which, well, in real time, what that looks like is code enforcement is doing their thing and they're going through legal and they're doing all the things they can do in the municipal. That year review comes up and we would, as testimony, say this is what we have against them. This is where they're not complying. And we have evidence to say that they're not complying. The Board of Zoning Appeals can say we're not going to renew that. Like, until you comply, we're shutting you down, effective immediately. You do not comply. Until you comply, you cannot have this permit again. And they would have to start the permit process over again, which means they would have to provide all the data again, updated things. So it is in their best interest to keep things compliant. And that's what we were trying to do with all of these studies. It's in their best interest to make sure that they are being transparent and being open with the public.

Thank you.

Any additional questions? I've got one question. The permitted use is only going to be in I-2. And most of the surrounding area to I-2 is going to be stepped down before it gets to residential. So do we know what it looks like, how many residential properties are within even a thousand feet of an I-2 because when I think of I-2, I think of an industrial park that then might have some light business that then might have some residential.

Have we studied that? I'd say it's a lot more than you think. It really is. We're looking at trying to find the picture of the overview here. For residential use and residential districts, it's very close. So especially the peripheral lots on the outside edges of the I-2 zones, that's very proximate to residential uses and districts.

And I think, Heath, the point you made earlier, which is an interesting point, is that the further you push that boundary back, because the noise criteria we're establishing require that noise measurements be taken at the property line, at the boundary. The further you push that back, the louder it can be.

Explain the decibels that go out.

Right, the silver decline at the distance. Mike, who's clenching your hat on? If I get this right, so every 10 feet, the decimal counts start to drop over time as sound travels. So again, 500 feet, it should drop a lot more than it would at 200 feet. But the 200 feet limit keeps them on a tighter constraint to make sure that less noise leaves the site. So at the 200 foot, those diminish faster than it would have to be at 200 feet because it's still going through, or 500 feet, it's still going through other different types of adjacent land uses before it gets there. when you try to step it down or tear it down from industrial to commercial to residential which traditionally you expect that between industrial and residentials You want to give that that drop that time to drop 200 feet is ample. We're trying to push the setback separation distance as far as we can to alleviate a lot of public concern as far as we can reasonably and rationally. And that's where the 200 foot limit came into play. When you look at the entire I-2 band, 200 feet is where we were with land use that was residential use or district. So we had to find areas that worked within our current setup where parcels are currently set and where the residences are located.

You had a slide that might be helpful that had the picture of, I think it had a blue box.

Yes, ma'am.

It was early on. There you go.

This one?

Yeah.

Yeah, so this is kind of where property line to property line. So we look at that 200 foot separation. It will be for the boundary line of that property of the data center to the boundary line of the property that has a residential home on it. Whether that's zoned residential or not, if there's a home use on that, that's what takes priority. It does matter the zoning is as if there's a residency. So you could very well have a residence that's a nonconformity in industrial zone. That's likely. That actually qualifies for that 200 foot separation.

Can you walk us through the decision to apply the 200 foot setback only to residential and not to other areas?

Right, so that was the primary concern from the public for residential uses, especially at nighttime from data centers. Typically people ramp up processes at nighttime. Power seems to be cheaper at night. But with that, when you talk about sensitive uses, that's listening to noise awareness, which we consider like churches and things of that nature. Those are zoned in varying districts. So the challenge also gets compounded when you start talking about other uses outside of residential. You kind of increase the uses in your area, so that affects your separations. So now you could actually cause it to come closer than 200 feet. So that's kind of how we factor that into that, if that makes sense. It's very complicated. When you're talking about something that already exists, the zones already exist, and the city already exists, you're not starting from scratch. So you can't plan for them from the beginning. You're having to compensate for how you're currently configured.

I would like to address that in a different way as well. So when the Board of Zoning Appeals gets to look at a site specific, because we're trying to get as many things down on paper as we can, but we know there's going to be something that is particular to a site that we might miss. So what we want to do is when it says additional requirements, if there is something that is noted that is around that property, say that there is a church there or there's something that is when the BZA can step in and say, how will you mitigate to this? You know, you need to, you know, this, let's say this church is a hundred feet. We need it not to touch. We need noise not to touch there. How are you going to do that? So we can take that as a case by case basis. And that's one of the reasons that we feel strongly about the approach that we have taken. on this kind of site selective so that we have a lot of knowns. Because I think what the fear in the community is, is there is still a lot of unknowns. We don't have a proposed data center. There was something that had errors maybe coming around, but that's not there anymore. And so we're trying to figure out how many knowns can we put down and the ones that we can't, how can we empower the future to be able to say that is where we need to have more protections.

Thank you.

Heath, one of the questions that came up or comments from some of the public were talking about the drain on resources, particularly utilities. And if I remember in the workshop, we talked about that that cost would be by the business owner. Can you expand on that for us?

Right. That's referring to the state law that's passed this month. And it really applies to the electrical grid, the power supply in that way where if a data center is constructed, any expansion or additional or requirement to increase production of power for that area is on the developer to pay for, whether they provide the improvements or they go through the utility to provide the improvements. And it's not supposed to be carried over to the customers around the area. It's specific for that development for that applicant. So it's on them to either pay through the utility provider to increase capacity at that site or create their own alternative energy creation on their site.

around any other questions i will i will say that you know i think taking taking as a principle that while a specific use like there's some illegal use cannot be prohibited within our boundaries i mean i think that the approach staff has taken is to define a set of criteria that give us the best safeguards we possibly can have to to ensure that that proposed, any proposed use, and again, there is no specific proposed data center coming here that we're aware of, but if that use, if someone should seek to place a data center here, it will not be of nuisance to its neighbors. So I absolutely commend you in the thorough nature of the proposed regulation in accomplishing that. I couldn't fault it. One more question.

And this will be more for legal. And it really might be outside of our auspices here. But I was thinking about, we were talking about beer permits during the workshop and how those are limited to the number of citizens within Johnson City. Is that even an option for us that we can limit the number of permits that we would have for a data center in our area?

So just speaking generally, I believe you may be conflating beer permits versus liquor licenses. So the liquor license is regulated by population by state statute. Beer permits do not receive that same type of regulation by population given the statute. It would be very difficult for us to impose a restriction that is not otherwise state imposed based on population because it would only be applying to us. And then subject to challenge later, a court reviewing it could see that as a significant barrier, a significant hurdle given that the state has not tried to regulate that area.

So I've got a question around the setback line of 200 feet. Cities, towns have come up with different setback lines. If you look at Knoxville, I think they've got 300 feet setback and then 100 feet of landscape buffer from residential areas. If you look at Kingsport, I think they have 100 foot setback line, but they also incorporated a 500 foot landscape buffer. Did we look at a combination of those as we were looking at the 200 foot setback?

Yes, we looked at parcel sizes. We looked at how to establish dimensions within a facility itself. We do have a type four buffer, which is 35 feet wide. We can add additional buffers into that. And it's something that is up to the applicant to determine by their own design, the size of lot they need to create the buffer and the distance between their property line and adjacent property lines. So it's coming to them to understand what their operation is, the size of their operation, the amount of noise it might generate to determine the parcel size that they would require to create that degree of compliance. So that's how I would answer that question. It really just depends on the type of facility and the size of the facility as to what their needs would be for their build.

I think all of us are still just wrestling with this number 200, you know, and if we see One, I want to just speculate that we probably can't create a text amendment for a scenario that doesn't yet exist. Does that seem fair? So I share concern, I think, with the rest of our community that just because it's not zoned I-2 now doesn't mean that property owner couldn't request a rezoning in the future. And we could see the I-2 zoning district grow. Now, I don't know that any of us has a particular appetite for that, nor did I really see that reflected in the Horizon 2045 plan. But nevertheless, still looking at the parcels that we have in our current ITU district, I would love the breakdown of how we analyze the properties and came up with 200. I mean, I hear you saying that it's rational and I, I, I want to understand what does rational mean? Like how restrictive can we be legally? I mean, if we say it's, it's 500, And that means that there's four parcels available to develop for a data center. Is that too restrictive? How do we define that?

I hate to say this, but it depends. I mean, it is the most attorney answer that I could give. Excuse me. Essentially, in a review, it would be based on reasonability. So what was reasonable under the circumstances? You also have to think of what we've kind of floated around, which is the idea of exclusionary zoning. So Potentially you have exclusionary zoning in fact, where I say you cannot have this business here, even though it's legally permissible, we're not gonna allow you to have this business here. You could have exclusionary zoning in practice where you make it so exclusionary or so limiting that it is impractical for any business to come here, period, or so restricts their ability to come here that it would be something that could be subject to legal challenge. So I don't know how many parcels are out there based on this number, but assuming that you would restrict it to four, you'd restrict it to one, or you'd restrict it to two. All of that would be reviewed by the court later to say, was there a real effort to make this a legally permissible use, or was it just an effort to restrict it by only allowing one parcel to be available? And so... Our staff attorney, Megan Bell, has been working with Heath on this. So I would defer to her and her expertise in the evaluation and coming to the 200 feet. But again, it would honestly depend. And then the court would be considering as what is reasonable under these circumstances. So I hope that answers your question. Kind of.

Thank you, Blake.

Questions of staff? Maybe as a point of interest, it might be worth going down this rabbit hole for a second. Heath, you've done a lot of research. Do you know what the average size of a data center is?

Depends on the scale of the facility itself. You have local uses, regional uses, hyperscale facilities. You're talking Meta and Google. You're talking 50 acres plus.

For a relatively small center right now?

Regional, I think the smallest we've tracked is around 10 acres plus for a small regional one. So again, their footprint, a lot of land, which is why the counties seem to have a lot of the hyperscale facilities out there, hyperuse. But they could be several hundred acres. And we don't really have a lot of those parcels that could fit that bill.

Right. And I, too, is all the city's zoning for somewhat noxious, heavy, industrial, noisy, potentially smelly uses that already exist.

Correct. The other thing that I think that when we think about when we start to compare ourselves to other ordinances is that we also need to We also have to, we can't completely compare ourselves to everyone because they may not have the same noise ordinances in place. They may not have the same mechanisms that we can do mechanisms in place. And so for us, that kind of a thousand feet, we're knocking everyone out. 1,500 feet, definitely. At 500 feet, we're getting to a point where we didn't feel comfortable saying 500 feet is good for us. So what we tried to do was say, if we can get to this place where we have, where there are Spaces enough spaces that it doesn't feel discriminatory, but that we put so many mechanisms in place that to do it, you are really going to have to want here and you are really going to have to want to be a community partner and transparent.

And you're going to have to be extremely risk tolerant to to take on a an annual public process, public permitting process. That's like I think that's that's pretty onerous.

Whitney, can you expand more on the transparency and communication for everybody?

So what it starts with is during their construction process. And we hear and that's what we heard from a lot of the feedback from listening to our original, like around the moratoriums was like the construction. And we hear that a lot and just in general. And so we wanted to make sure that as these were being constructed, that the studies that we were talking about were readily available to people so that no one felt like they couldn't get their information. Because we do want people to get their information. Now, when it does go into operation, we kind of feel like that's a time to say, you don't need to maintain that. because you're going to come back to us every year. We're going to post your property every year and we're going to send letters to your neighbors every year that invite them to a meeting every year to tell us about how you've been doing. So it does put some, some onus on those neighbors. Um, you know, But it also says if you've had any complaint, that's going to be brought as evidence so that those kinds of things start to build cases that if they aren't being a good partner and a community partner, because we understand that these data centers are not job creators. They're not necessarily in our environment an economic development tool, but in others they are. But we want you to be that, to do what you say you're going to do and to live up to the standards that you have set forth for yourself.

Thank you. Thank you.

Blake, may I ask you maybe another impossible question? Let's speculate about worst case scenario. We get a bad actor in there and we decide, the BZA decides that we are not going to renew their permit. What does that timetable look like? for actually shutting them down and enforcing that. And if I fumbled the ball on who's doing what, I see you shaking your head at me.

I apologize, Laura. I have another question I meant to ask you that probably goes to that, but that was discussed with myself. Okay.

I mean, just as far as I understand it, it would follow the typical BZA timeline. So whatever those notice requirements would be by the BZA for purposes of enforcement, purposes of hearing, purposes of the show cause, that would all have to still be followed in order to effectively pull somebody's ability to operate based on allegations of either one, as I think was just referenced, some kind of complaint by the community member that's subject to BZA review during the re-permitting process. or if they bring it back to the BZA for their yearly checkup and the BZA says, yeah, you know, this doesn't fit, it would still be subject to all those guidelines or notice requirements, show cost hearings, likewise.

Right. And so if we say you're out of here, how long does it take to get them out of here?

So is your question if you were to pull the operating permit or the special use exception from the organization? I mean, at that point, they are not going back to beer beer permits. If we pull your beer permit, you are no longer authorized to sell beer. If the state pulls your liquor license, you are no longer authorized to sell liquor. And there are real. penalties that can be enforced as a result of your continuing to do so. So, I mean, it could be that you pulled a special exception permit and they immediately stop and they comply. It could be that they continue to operate, which requires legal action on the city's behalf, either through seeking recourse in circuit court or chancery court and then utilizing injunctions and then having courts impose significant financial penalties against individuals who continue to operate essentially what would be illegally.

Thank you for laying that out for me again. Appreciate it.

And there's a bond there too, isn't there, Heath? Say again? There is a bond there that we're going to require. Yeah, the bond asks for decommissioning, yes.

So if they do shutter, then we have a provision to make ourselves whole again.

Thank you. That's what I was miffed at myself for failing to bring up earlier on. Any other questions for Storm, discussion among ourselves?

I've got another question for you. In the facility design, we talked about this in the workshop, but I think it's good for community understanding. So in the facility design and equipment screening section where we're talking about ground mounted equipment, so screening, hiding stuff, hiding all the stuff on their property that's going to maybe make noise. Um, it says, you know, it can be located in the side or rear yard only not encroach into the setbacks and be screened by a wall or equivalently acoustically effective screening approved by the city. Can you just remind us how high can that go? How do we determine the height of that screening?

The site that the screening is what we're asking for is literally just above enough to conceal it and also provide acoustic continuation for that. So same as the roof-mounted structures, that would be like a parapet cover facade around the building itself to cover that. Now the building has a max capacity height as well, so they can't extend too far past. I believe that parapet would actually extend the building height past what the 35mm would be because IT resorts back to I-1 for maximum building heights. So as far as that goes, it would have to be high enough to prove that it's providing an acoustic mitigation factor, but also concealing what it's intended to conceal. And we give them options of materials that they can use acoustically to accomplish that. I don't think a wood fence would suffice for a lot of these things. It'd probably be a masonry or a masonry with an applied surface on top of it. to absorb noise in and of itself. So hopefully that answers your question. We're not asking for a 30 foot wall for a 10 foot high generator.

Any more questions? Discussion among ourselves is a motion perhaps.

I'll just say, first of all, thank you to everybody that came tonight, particularly all those that came and spoke and those that have been involved on the coalition. We hear your concerns. It's a shared concern. We're all concerned about data centers and how it can affect this beautiful part of the country that we all call home. And let me further state, we are volunteers. We're doing this out of the goodness of our heart because we care about our community. None of us are profiting from any businesses that come to Johnson City. We're trying to do the right thing. the way that we can do that because we can't prevent a data center from coming to Johnson City. But we can try to create something that is so restrictive, that is so difficult for them to come that we're going to make them toe the line. And so I want to thank the staff for all the work that they've put into this and the research. It's been a lot of work and I appreciate what they've done. You know, this is tough for all of us because I don't think any of us want a data center in Johnson City. But at the same time, we have to have something in place for accountability purposes. And I don't know if we'll make that decision tonight or not. But I think what we have in front of us has, is a great start to that. So I'll end with that.

And I'd like to ditto exactly what you said. I commend the planning staff for looking ahead, you know, and planning because it's a possibility. that we could have a business come in here and want to put a data center. And we definitely need to have something in place to guide us. And I think what you all have put together is great. I think it makes it a little difficult for a company to come in here and want to put a data center in because there are a lot of restrictions there are a lot of guidelines that they have to follow i agree with with commissioner williams and the fact that none of us none of us want a um data center in our beautiful town, in our beautiful city. But we can't stop it. If they come, if they come and request it, then we have to have things in place to protect us. And I think what we have right now is Good guidelines. And I'm assuming, and Whitney, this is a question for you, since this is a text amendment, there's nothing that says down the road that we can't modify this text amendment, correct?

Correct. There's two things. two things in that. So we are still working with our consultant as far as providing guidance for that noise study. And we want that to be a very agile document, just like some of our policies and procedures are agile documents that we can change those of like, Hey, this is what we're hearing. We need you to study this. But when it comes to something where, where we're like, we need an additional study, I don't know what in the future to say it could be, but something in the future. We can open this back up. Just like we changed parking tonight, we can open this back up.

Okay. Well, so based on that information and because of the fact that I personally feel like we have great guidelines in place right now if we approve this. And I commend the staff and Heath, you in particular, for all the research you've done and everything that you all have done as a team. For that reason, I'd like to make a motion to approve this amendment.

second that motion. Is there any further discussion?

I'll go ahead and echo, tremendous work. Super, super work. There's a lot of hours by both the community and the staff, so thank you very much for that labor. I'm really pleased with the noise studies required, with the environmental reviews. I have to do those myself for work, and I know the amount of labor that goes into those and that they genuinely protect our community, humanity, animals, et cetera. I'm so close to voting yes for this. I just want to make the comment that I have a personal confliction and still like I need to do a little more due diligence and learn more from perhaps Ms. Bell and from the staff and see the numbers on the 200 foot setback. I just would like to see it with my own eyes to have a better understanding because it still seems like a little bit of a gray area in terms of liability and where a lawsuit could potentially begin. So that's really one of them. That's the only hang up for me at this time. Otherwise, it's exceptional. So tonight, I would prefer to defer. and feel good about that coming into next month. So given that there's already motion on the table, I would just say I have to vote no tonight.

Any other comments? Just one. I commend you for the effort that you put into this. One of the things that's unique about the way that you put it together was an evaluation that addressed all All the concerns. With a business like this coming in, with a business like this going out, we don't have any protection now that would address a lot of those concerns. With this, it's a start. It's a document that we can tweak. If we find some data later on that can enhance it, or protect us in some additional ways, including the setbacks or some of the other measurements that you've applied to this. For that reason, I'm strongly a supporter of this and also look forward to seeing this as a living document in the sense that we can look at it on down the road as some of this other information comes in.

I also like the fact that, Heath, that you said earlier, that it's measurable, it's defensible, and it's revocable annually that we'll be looking at it. So that gives me some comfort. And I agree with everything that y'all said, that this is a working document. We have until December until the moratorium is over. So if we need to tweak it, that we can.

Okay. Seeing no further comments or questions or comments, Heather, please call it.

Commissioner Aldridge? Yes. Commissioner Goodson?

Yes.

Commissioner Meade?

No.

Commissioner Williams?

Yes.

Commissioner Goetz? Yes. Vice Chairman Kelly? No. Chairman Dutton?

Yes.

Motion has passed.

Thank you. Okay. Item 7.5, mandatory referral.

You can't hear.

I will make you talk.

I'm going to set a little stage for the main event.

And Jason's going to take it over, Whitney Hodges, planning manager. So mandatory referral, it comes out of when you need to, in the state statutes. Sorry. in the state statutes when certain projects need to be sent to the Planning Commission. Oftentimes, we have done this through different plans and studies that have come before you, but when there's something outside of a plan or study, it needs to come before you. That is the stage I would like to set, and I'm going to pass it off to our Public Works Director, Jason Miles.

Thank you, Whitney. Jason, welcome back. Good evening. Chairman, Vice Chairman, Planning Commission, thank you for having me. Jason Miles, Public Works Director. Sorry. Here to present the State of Franklin Road and Downtown Square parking improvements. What you see here is just an aerial of existing conditions right now along State of Franklin Road, roughly between Buffalo Street and pushing up toward Colonial Avenue. Our project goals for this project, this is a two-phase parking and roadway improvement project. We intend to improve the parking capacity and accessibility in the downtown area. I'm sure you're familiar with the downtown parking study that was recently completed, and this is a follow on to that to develop additional parking in downtown. This will support downtown growth. We have a total estimated cost of roughly $460,000 for this two-phase project. proposed improvements. The phase one improvements are the parking improvements and roadway improvements along State of Franklin Road itself. So the first bullet there, we intend to construct 32 additional parking spaces along West State of Franklin Road, east of Spring Street. That includes four spaces within the downtown square parking lot itself. How we'd have to reconfigure the frontage there to accommodate those spaces. Construct the median and reconfigure lanes to create parking dry bow with speed humps. So I want to focus your attention on the bottom graphic first. So on the far right side of that is pushing out toward Colonial Avenue where it connects to State of Franklin. The parking spaces, the additional parking spaces, essentially start at the bottom right of that lower graphic, and you're moving west along West State of Franklin at that point. So there would be five parallel spaces there before you get to South Rowan Street, the intersection there at South Rowan Street, and then moving forward, what you have is a The westbound lane of State of Franklin would divert to a dry-vile lane on the right side, which would feed into the downtown square parking lot, but also feed those additional parking spaces that you see sort of angled along State of Franklin there. Those vertical lines along that dry-vile lane are speed humps, so the idea there is to slow traffic down as you're entering a parking area. So again, the additional parking along State of Franklin would increase to 32 additional spaces with this configuration. The upper graphic is a continuation of that. You can see sort of in the upper right the end of those parking spaces, those angled parking spaces. And then you see the roadway improvements that continue through there. So, you know, the long and short of it is over roughly a three-block area, we would be necking down State of Franklin Road into essentially single lanes and creating this drywall lane for additional parking there. The last bullet point there is to eliminate, excuse me, eliminate the dual entry exit for the downtown square parking lot, creating a single entry exit only. We've talked with the fire department about that. You know, obviously have concerns about maintaining emergency access into downtown square parking lot, given all those buildings through there. So certainly wanted to make sure that we were And they're good graces for getting fire trucks in and out of there. So indeed, that's the case. But we would be losing one entry exit point, creating a single ingress point for the downtown square parking lot. So that's phase one. Phase two, we would then remove the islands within the downtown square parking lot. So the work at that point transfers or switches from the state of Franklin roadway work into the parking lot itself. So phase two, we would remove the islands within the downtown square parking lot. We will reconfigure the parking spaces to maximize capacity by providing 37 additional parking spaces within that lot. will provide pedestrian access along the roadway frontage and to the breezeways between the buildings and of course ensure safe emergency vehicle access a recommendation staff recommends to approve the proposed state of franklin road and downtown square parking improvements plan

your decision options listed here any questions thank you for the presentation mr miles questions and stuff i have i have one um mr oh uh mr miles the single entry makes it you know makes me a little uncomfortable can you talk a little bit about um public you kind of touched on it but public safety's buy-in and weigh-in on this um and i'm visualizing that parking lot in my mind is what is proposed here the same um width is it any larger what can you talk a little bit about that from an access specifically for public safety or um other concerns yes ma'am that might be brewing in my head of that of that thing yeah we we coordinated with the fire department uh quite a bit uh for this plan so

converting to a single entry exit point, we took into account fire truck radius, turning radius, things like that, and then how they would move throughout the parking lot as well. So after After several iterations of this design, we arrived at a consensus that this was a design that made sense for them as well. So they obviously have to have access into that parking lot and appropriate turning movements to accommodate their fire truck. So all of that was taken into account and accommodated.

So is that single entry the same width that it is currently or is it a little larger?

I believe it's actually slightly larger. Okay.

And again, I'm doing this from memory. Are those spaces a little like at a different orientation to where there would be more room to turn?

So most of the area that we gain inside the parking lot is from the islands that are in there now. So the idea being that in a lot of parking lots that you go in, You don't necessarily see these walking aisles throughout the parking lot and that sort of thing. You know, people get out of their cars and walk toward the businesses and that sort of thing. And so, you know, obviously parking is a premium downtown. So this was a way that we found to increase the parking in the downtown square parking lot by removing those islands and creating more of a typical parking lot layout, maximizing spaces. As everybody knows, and you can see from the existing aerial behind the CAD work here, that parking lot stays full pretty much the entire day. So going back to, well, to make a comment about schedules. So for phase one, we proposed to start that work this summer. If indeed we start the work this summer, we've got a lot of work that we're doing currently on other projects, but the idea would be to finish in the fall for phase one. We haven't yet determined a schedule for the downtown square parking lot. Obviously, that would impact businesses in that area substantially, so we want to take our time to make sure that we think that through and coordinate with businesses and all of that.

Mr. Miles, I have a question in regards to that entry into the parking lot. It appears that they cannot turn left coming out of that parking lot. Is that correct? So they're going to have to, if they needed to go left, they're going to have to turn right and go all the way down wherever and try to turn around somewhere.

That's correct. Yes. I also have our city traffic engineer, Anthony Todd. I'm sure you're all very familiar with Mr. Todd. So he can help answer any technical questions of why that's necessary versus allowing people to turn left coming out of there. But As you can also see, there's several lanes of traffic that people would have to cross to make that left turn. You know, and with necking down or I should say road dieting this area, if you will, certainly the traffic over this three block area is likely to you know, condense a little bit, right? You know, because the idea is we're going to slow people down, allow them to park, all of that. And we're losing. We're going from two lanes to one, of course. So we want to be sure that we don't allow people to make dangerous turning movements. So that's the purpose of the medians.

And I understand that, but I'm just wondering how inconvenient it's going to be for the public. Like you said, that parking lot stays full. So how inconvenient it's going to be for them to have to turn left or right and go wherever to try to turn around to go back the other direction. Is there any way that that island or median, whatever you want to call it, in the middle there could move up a little bit so that they can turn left.

Yeah. And, of course, they could drive around the block, you know, which is obvious, I guess. But let me let Anthony speak to some of those easy experts.

Hey, Anthony.

Anthony Todd, traffic engineering manager. So the reason we chose to block that is because the left turn is so close to the intersection and now you would have a higher volume there. So one of the things that we're able to do with this is we are narrowing, as Jason said, the distance that the pedestrians have to cross. And I've got some numbers as far as how many pedestrians actually cross at these different intersections. They're pretty high. So you're over 600 pedestrians a day crossing right there to Rowan Street. So it helps shorten that distance. And then as you go into the parking lot, most people's procedure when the parking lot starts to get full is they start down Main Street, look to see if there's any on-street parking on Main Street. Then they make a right turn, another right turn, and get on to State of Franklin, and then they start going through the parking lots. So this kind of moves in the direction that they already move anyway. So as you exit, they would have to go down, maybe down to Buffalo and then turn right on Main Street to go in that direction. Or if they're headed back to State of Franklin, they just continue straight. So it's probably not that much different from some of the other maneuvers they already do to get into the parking lot to start with.

So in addition to ingress, if you're eastbound on State of Franklin, unless you do a new jersey slide and do a u-turn you're going to have to come back around and right turn into uh you you would probably either choose to go to the cherry street lot or you probably go down main street first and go around that way i know that you've run this scenario but i've

come out of that parking lot quite a few times and when you're narrowed down to one lane and the person headed towards EHA then chooses to take a left on spring and then you've got that clog because of oncoming traffic and people at the red light so people should probably anticipate sitting at that red light for maybe more than one rotation yeah during likely sure during your peak period you're probably going to sit through at least a couple of cycles

It's not going to be all day long, but during your peak period, you're going to sit through multiple cycles.

I think that's going to be an adjustment for the city.

Yeah, it will slow down traffic. You're going to cause a little congestion, and so we anticipate that. We already know that's going to happen, so that's part of the consideration.

But that's intentional because of all the pedestrian traffic. We've had some fatalities there parking at the Cherry Street. So that's intentional, correct?

Yes. There are lots. I can look at it with me. Let's see. So as I mentioned, at Rhone Street, I actually had the numbers backwards. So that one's around 500 pedestrians that cross there a day. And then at Spring Street, it's getting close to 700 a day. And then as you get down to Buffalo Street, it's still in the neighborhood of 400 a day. So there's a lot of pedestrians crossing back and forth. By shortening those distances, it helps them get out of the street quicker.

Anthony, is there any reason why... that we don't add the parking spaces on the other side of the road too, why we're keeping that two lane and why we're taking away a lane on the other side?

There is. So we looked at some different options. We looked at some parallel parking on both sides of the street. As we all observe, when people get out of their cars, they walk straight across the street, which is not what we'd want them to do. So also on that side, we cannot put a sidewalk because the railroad will not let us put a sidewalk there. So you have to get out and then end up crossing the street. So we did take that into consideration. We don't have enough room for angle parking on both sides. We can only do it on one side. We wanted to put it on the side where the businesses were. Makes sense. Thank you.

I had a question. Do we have a cost associated with this yet?

So, both phases are roughly about 230K for a total of 460K. We're hoping to come in less than that, but we try to be conservative with our estimates. And pedestrian bridges are a lot more than that, aren't they? Yes, absolutely.

Just a couple quick questions. If I may.

I just have one thing at the end. You asked your question.

Did you get your answer?

Yes.

What's the traffic count through that section?

So we did a traffic count while ETSU was still in session, which is where you have the higher traffic. We had around 1,348 or 480 vehicles a day. And then on Friday, we had 13,450 vehicles a day.

That's a lot. And you're going to take that and you're going to narrow it down into, funnel it down into one lane. And you're going to... resulting in a stacking there that's probably going to go past several traffic lights. I'm having a real problem with this. It's such a congested area. It's dangerous for both cars and pedestrians. And I'm just wondering if, you know, with all due respect, I know you all have looked at this and looked at it. If there's been some way of maybe thinking outside the box on this thing. People are going to be heading in that downtown direction in order to get to the interstate. And I'm trying to think, if I'm trying to get to the interstate, I've been to ETSU, I've been going to a game, I'm from out of town, and I'm trying to get to the interstate on downtown. And I'm trying to figure out how in the world I'm – and by the time I get down there, it's going to be so congested. And by the time I wander around, it's already difficult. And I'm just wondering if there isn't a traffic study or – look at this from a standpoint of kind of looking at the whole overall area. You know, this was looked at before many times. One of the things we tried to do is put a parking garage in the parking lot, convert it into a two or three story parking garage, which I've never seen it brought back up again. There's danger for pedestrians crossing where that railroad track is. There's elevation differences. and changes. It's just an extremely complicated thing. I think this is a great step, but I don't know if it really is as comprehensive of a look at this as we could possibly do. I'm just expressing some frustration with it.

Sure, and I'll let Whitney talk, but we're looking at other things as well, so this is not over.

So we are exploring other options.

Oh, yes. And you kind of really set me up really nicely to kind of segue into something. So the purview of the Planning Commission during mandatory referral is to see if this project matches plans and studies. And so one of the things that we have looked at as a study is the downtown parking study that has given some recommendations. That study is still in process because there were things it was hard to communicate what was in the study to the public. So we are taking all of the things apart and making that in a way that we have used before to communicate all the same things, but this was one of the recommendations. So out of the Horizon 2045 plan, the directive in that is that It's in the downtown section, vibrant downtown, that says strengthen connectivity and mobility to improve access within downtown. So to speak to your point, that also includes wayfinding. So if you're taking that person coming from the game at ETSU, maybe there is a way that either through their mobile app that directs them to different places when there's traffic or through signage that says, hey, maybe Watauga is your way to go to get to the interstate today. Because what we really want to do is find this balance where that pedestrians feel safe because they're, of the users, probably the most vulnerable because it's just their bodies crossing around. And as well as keep traffic moving. And so that is something that we've worked with, Public Works has worked through to kind of come up with those solutions to also provide more parking, which is something our community has said they want in the downtown area. So you've set me up so well for that. Thank you.

Anthony, maybe just a couple of quick follow-up questions for you. I think this has been pointed out, traffic is kind of this weird thing. It's living, breathing, and people are involved in it, so it's very unpredictable. But generally speaking, you make one change somewhere, and that change is going to have a ripple through the system. So rather than folks perhaps traveling east on State of Franklin to get to the freeway, probably some folks are going to go down Buffalo. and go up that way. And similarly, if you were trying to access the parking lot there, you were coming from ETSU or maybe you're going Buffalo down Main and then coming up Colonial Way or something like that. Have we modeled what we imagine may be some of the implications of that and just check to see that other intersections are functioning still at an effective level of service with that additional traffic burden?

Yes, and so people do disperse themselves and they do regret themselves. When we did the University Parkway median and we did the crossing with the water and sewer line, We expected heavier backups than what we got because people did reroute themselves. And so we know that there will be some rerouting. Those people that didn't really want to be in downtown just passing their downtown will probably choose other routes, and that's not a bad thing.

Have we also considered making Watauga and Main a two-way instead of double direction one-way? I know that's something that's...

Mark and I, we did look at that. The problem, one of the biggest problems we have there is we have so much loading and unloading. It goes on all through the day. There's really no practical way to make them two-way and keep traffic moving at all because I could... I think when we were doing the walkthrough, I was pointing to the engineer. I said, look right there. We got seven people loading and unloading on Main Street right now. So it's just not practical to be able to do that.

Speaking of loading and unloading, so you'll also see right now the building on the corner of Spring Street is getting painted.

Yes.

It's getting a facelift. Love to see that. But it also means that the workers and the scaffolding and everything is either just right there on the sidewalk or they've commonly had trucks there blocking, loading, unloading, etc. And same with Wansau loading and unloading. And so it looks like without some interference and very strict guidance from the city, that confluence... It's really interesting. That confluence could be a little tricky if you've got that far right lane blocked.

Yes, and we do know that they do that already, actually. And so that's why it's actually a little painted median in that area. We brought the median just past Spring Street to force people to turn right, but we left enough of a painted median so that people could get around trucks loading and unloading.

So, Anthony, if they're unloading and loading, aren't they blocking those new spaces, or am I looking at this?

We wouldn't allow them to load and unload east of Spring Street. It would only be to the west. That's where they do it right now.

Okay.

And so we were allowing that to continue to happen.

Okay. Thank you for that clarification.

How far down did we research into elevated platforms or walkways?

I don't know that we went deep into that. A lot of that is driven by cost. And when you do go over railroad track, you do have to have certain clearances, and those clearances are really high. So if you don't put elevators and things of that nature in, a lot of times people won't use them anyway. We had a big problem with ETSU's overpass there. People using it for the longest time because it wasn't convenient. And they do a lot better now because they reroute some of the sidewalks and move things around. So it's a matter of convenience for most people. So we don't want them walking underneath it. We want them walking on it.

Any more discussion? Sorry, turn the mic on.

I'm just going to make a comment that, you know, it's definitely a change and it will take some adjusting, but it sounds like Anthony and Mr. Miles and the staff have done their homework. and have tried to think of every possibility and scenario and that sort of thing. So I'm inclined to support this. Would you like to make that into a motion? I can make that into a motion. I'll be more than happy to make a motion to approve the West State of Franklin road parking and roadway improvements.

Thank you. Is there a second? I'll second it. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? If I just may make a comment.

I agree with everything that you just said. And I would normally vote for this. But I'm not going to vote for it tonight because I think that more work needs to be done to evaluate some alternatives, especially some of that rerouting. The stacking of the traffic and the traffic pattern change through there concerns me a great deal. And I don't feel comfortable enough with it in order to support it at this point in time.

I think one of the things that gets me there with this particular proposal, we do know we need additional parking downtown. I don't think that's a surprise to anyone. I know there's parking in different locations, but there's a question of parking that people will actually feel comfortable using. So I think we do need parking, but I think this also serves as a traffic calming function. We've probably all run the gauntlet across the state of Franklin there along Spring, and I think this will go a great way to... to alleviate that. And unfortunately, when you're downtown, you're constrained. I mean, you have very limited options for that reason. I will be supporting that as well. Okay, seeing no other comments, Heather, would you call the roll?

Commissioner Aldridge? Yes. Commissioner Goodson?

No.

Commissioner Meade?

Yes.

Commissioner Williams?

Yes.

Commissioner Goetz? Yes. Vice Chairman Kelly?

Yes.

Chairman Dutton?

Yes.

Motion has passed.

Fantastic. Thank you. Okay. The only remaining agenda item for us this evening, division reports, if any.

I would like to share with the commission that this will be Riley Putney's last meeting. So Riley Putney's last meeting. She has taken a job in Nashville and we're very proud of her and we are excited for her opportunities, but very sad to see her go. She has contributed so much to this department and has kept it running in an absence of a manager or director and her absence will be felt. And I just wanted to share that with you that this would be her last meeting.

Thank you. Riley, speaking for the Commission, we've really appreciated the work over the last couple of years, the professionalism of your presentations. We will miss you. Thank you.

And our loss is Nashville's gain. Congratulations. But you will be missing. And you can always come home.

Enjoy that traffic out there in Nashville.

All right. I think that brings our agenda to a conclusion. With that, we are adjourned.