Planning and Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

If you'd please rise and join me for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And Madam Secretary, would you please call the roll?

Commissioner Susanna Ballard. Commissioner Joan Desiro. Commissioner Paul Lair.

Here.

Vice Chair Tiffany Wilson.

Here.

Commissioner Lonnie Stevenson. Chair Jim Harris?

Here.

Commissioner Gabrielle Medley?

Here.

Commissioner Mary Costa? Here. Commissioner J. P. Thornton?

Here.

Commissioner Phil Annette?

Correspondence and announcements. Mr. Gilbert, please.

Mr. Chairman, for this particular meeting, I actually don't have any announcements at this time for this meeting.

Okay, well I do. It should be noted that today is one of our commissioner's birthday. Happy birthday, Mr. Lair. Thanks, Joe. You're welcome. Okay. The minutes of the last meetings, the last two meetings, do we have any additions or deletions? We'll start with the first one, which is ID 265231. Any additions, deletions, corrections by commissioners? Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion. I

move to approve meeting minutes of 04/15/2026, Planning and Zoning Commission regular meeting.

Do we have a second? I'll second. We have a motion by Ms. Medley, a second by Mr. Stevenson. Say Say it. Henderson. Go ahead. Mr. Stevenson, any further discussion? All right. Let's go ahead and place our votes.

Vice Chair Wilson?

Yes.

The motion to approve the April 15 minutes passes seven to zero.

Okay. The next hundred set of minutes for ID 2,052,320. Any motions? Ms. Medley?

I will make a motion to approve the meeting minutes of 05/06/2026, Planning and Zoning Commission regular meeting.

I'll second.

Okay. We have a motion by Ms. Medley, a second by Mr. Lair to approve the minutes. Any further discussion? Hearing none, let's go ahead and vote on it.

Vice Chair Wilson? Yes. Motion to approve the May 6 minutes passes seven to zero.

Okay. This is a public hearing, and there is a structured order to this proceeding. The city staff and our consultant will present the new general plan. And after that, we will then open the proceedings to the public for their questions and input. I would ask that anyone of the public that wishes to speak limit their trips to the podium and microphone to one only, keep all comments to less than five minutes, and to stay on point and not discuss subject matter that is not pertinent to this discussion.

After public testimony is taken, I will then close the public hearing and bring the item back to the table for additional discussion amongst the commission, if necessary, and then city staff's conclusions. We will then move on to our regular agenda items. Thank you in advance for your cooperation. The first item on today's agenda is ID 265220. This is the second public hearing for the draft 2026 Lake Havasu City General Plan. Mr. Gilbert?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A couple of things to start the meeting. First of all, the consultant team is not here for this meeting. The arrangement was that oh, I'm sorry, we do have a representative here, but I'll be making the presentation. They won't be doing the presentation like at the first meeting.

My

mistake. And then the second item is we had members of the audience submit documentation to us that will be afforded for City Council review as well prior to the meeting today. And that will be made available to them. And I also want to state that lot of the material that was submitted refers to state land auction of property adjacent to their residence areas along Cabana. And the city's general plan, is mandated by the State of Arizona does not have any impact on the actions of the State of Arizona in selling land that they own.

The city does not have power to regulate that process at all. That is completely through the State Land Department, which is run through the State of Arizona, including the governor and legislature. So I just want to point that out. Starting on the let's see here. Okay, so today in presentation, the agenda for this meeting is going to be background, community engagement, plan content, next steps and questions.

That's going be the four phases of my presentation. What is the general plan? The general plan is a living long range policy document for growth, land use infrastructure services investment and it expresses the community's vision, future land use direction and guiding goals objectives. What this plan is not, it's very important. This is not zoning. We have a zoning ordinance development code that's already in effect and a zoning map. And that map is not changing. That's important to point out. So any property that zoned something right now does not change as a result of this. This only impacts future actions.

It is not a tool to promote special interest and it's also not a capital improvement plan that is updated by the city regularly as needed internally. What is the general plan? Again, if you look at this pyramid, there's five layers to this pyramid. The general plan is at the very bottom. It's the foundation of all planning tools.

In other words, this general plan sets out the goals and objectives that the residents of the community are looking for and identifies a future land use plan map that has land use categories which spell out what can go where. And if someone comes in with a rezoning request and they want to and it does not match up with that, then they have to apply for rezoning go through hearings and likely change the general plan as well. On top of that, you have the city code and specific master plans that could be developed based on what the general plan contains. And then above that, you have the zoning compliance regulations. Above that, site building plans.

At the very top of the pyramid are your certificates occupancy which are issued when development projects are complete. And so everything stems out of the general plan on the way up to certificate of occupancy for a new construction project. So what are the topics in the general plan? The state mandated requirements depending on the size of a city, there are 17 categories that have to be looked at. And this general plan covers all 17 of these through a document with five chapters where it's been boiled down the 17 to five chapters that are all interrelated.

And I'll give more on that later. Why update the general plan? Well, Arizona law requires municipalities to readopt or update the general plan at least every ten years. Our current general plan was done in 2016. And so here it is 2026 and we're moving forward with the 2026 plan being updated to replace that.

Lake Havasu City is currently adopted in 2015 and ratified in 2016. And this will go to a vote of the people in November. The update ensures the city's long range policy framework reflects current conditions, emerging issues and community priorities. That's very important because over ten years, communities change, priorities change, conditions change, and those need to be looked at and addressed. The process and schedule that was followed, there was five stages to it.

And this started in the late fall of twenty twenty four with the retention of the consultant team and then progressed through the different stages that are involved in plan development. As you can see on here, we're now in stage five going through the hearing process after about a year and a half of progress. Participation by the numbers, I'm not going to go in detail, you can see it up on the screen. Through all these various methods about 27,000 community engagements were achieved. And thanks to the benefit of social media and electronic technology today that wasn't there even two decades ago.

That's an enormous number. General plans in the past had far less turnout and this was great participation by the community. And you can see there the different examples of efforts that were made to bring people into the process and get their input. And including at the bottom, the City Council and Planning Commission were updated regularly with progress throughout the entire process. What did we hear from the community?

Well, there's the five chapters that all these 17 elements required by state law were boiled down into balanced growth, connected community, prosperous economy, thriving residential areas and healthy environment. And under each of those, as you can see on the screen, there were different categories of importance that were presented or present to us by the citizens that were in the process. And the photos that are attached, these are not just generic photos, these are actual photos from the events with Lake Havasu Residence as they occurred. We had pretty good turnout for them and got lots of good comment. 60 public review period, which recently ended prior to this public hearing process that ran for sixty days and was reviewed statewide.

We had to put that up and make it available for comment. And there was a lot of draft views. We had eight eighty three views of draft document and 86 comments on that draft document during that sixty day window. And all those comments were responded to by the city. How comments inform the plan?

The final plan was refined through the sixty day draft review process, public comments reinforced the recurring priorities and there were technical edits and policy feedback that we also took into consideration. What types of input did we receive? Well, 86 comments submitted from 32 commenters and you can see there on the screen the comment types that were received. And if you look at the pie chart on the right that breaks out what those 86 comments on the draft plan look like as far as significance. The comments were addressed were the most difficult to address as long with the questions.

There were a lot of technical edits and suggested revisions that we also analyzed. What changed from the last plan? Now this is important because the 2016 plan was very complex with 16 land use categories. The current plan has been cleaned up and we only have seven. And because there were 16 categories, were a lot of misclassified areas in town that have been cleaned up.

So we what we believe is generally correct map for what's existing right now and reflects everything that's existing with this category. We updated the future land use map and refreshed the goals and objectives. This is an example, this isn't the whole form because it extends through commercial industrial, but it is an example. If you look at the 2016 future land use map, that's the flume on the screen that you're seeing on the far left, the rural residential and low density residential were two separate categories. In the 2026 plan, they're now neighborhood low, it's one category.

And if to the right are the zoning categories from our development code, which directly relate to neighborhood low. Residential agriculture, residential estate, R1 single family and R2 two family are all considered neighborhood low density. This is the 2016 Flume. This is the current general land use map, general plan land use map that we're using today. You can see all the categories there and there's 16 of them.

And if you look at the map, can see how complex that is to interpret. And within those different colors were a lot of misclassified areas as I referred to earlier. And let's advance to the 2026 flume. This is the current one that we're working on, put into the voters in November. It's cleaned up dramatically all the correct areas were established on here for existing development.

And this next slide is going to show how that impacted the percentages. So if you look at the future land use types, commercial, the resort employment, medium high density resident, rural residential, low density residential, mountain protection area. It shows you what they boil down into and then the percent increase decrease. Now these numbers on percent increase decrease, there were some errors in the 2016 plan, so there's a little bit of variation in them that we didn't expect, but these are the correct numbers. For example, on rural residential, low density residential, due to one of those calculation errors, there really was not a change in anything that was classified as that before.

But the numbers that they had in the 2016 plan were off. That's just one example, some of these others were similar. From vision to action. So the five chapters in the draft general plan that take those 17 state mandated elements, they're boiled down into these five chapters. Balanced growth, connected community, prosperous economy, thriving residential areas and healthy environment.

And when you look on the screen, you can see under each of these the elements the elements that are listed state state mandated element that fits under that chapter. For example, balanced growth is land use growth area and redevelopment. And then the aspirational statement for each chapter is listed below that. So here's an example. A goal is a concise statement that supports the community's vision statements and describes the condition to be achieved and provides a focus for more specific objectives.

And then the objectives under the goal are a specific policy derived from a goal to guide public and private decision making. Objectives provide clarity on what needs to be accomplished in service progress benchmarks. So this is one example at the bottom, balanced growth goals and objectives, balanced growth goal number one, promote a balanced and efficient pattern of growth as compatible with the community's vision and the city's projected infrastructure and services. And then under that is objective 1.1. There's many others, this is just an example.

Lake Havasu City supports rezonings that are in concert with the community's vision articulated through its future land use map and interrelated goals and objectives. And then there's many others in the draft document which you can access online on the CAES website if you have not already. And finally, there's a chapter in the draft general plan which contains implementation tools. And if you look at the bottom of the slide, you have community driven themes that are turned into aspirational statements and then those lead to goals and objectives. And then implementation tools, which generally happen after adopted, which are such things as regulatory tools, long range plans, capital improvement planning, and inter agency coordination.

Next steps for the plan, June 9, this very same hearing that we're having here will be held in front of the City Council. This will be presented by the consultant team to the City Council as it was at the first Planning Commission meeting. And then for the November general election, this item will be on the ballot for the residents of Lake Havasu City to vote on. Mr. Chairman, any questions?

Are there any questions of staff by commissioners? No, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And while the Chairman proceeds with the next phase, I'm going to put up let's see. No, never mind, it's not here. I was going to put up an extra slide, but I'll just leave that off. I'll turn over to you, sir.

Okay. This is a public hearing, so I'll now open it up to the public. If there's anybody that wishes to speak on this item, please come forward and state your name for the record. Anybody at all? Your name for the record, please. Thank you.

Sorry, Don. Can you hear me? That map provision has changed very recently probably in the last forty days from an AE zone into a lower risk flood area which allows for development. So I do have questions about that. I'm thinking that your 10 priority project wash needed to be complete for that map revision to take place. I am asking about the wash projects if they have all been completed and that correlates to the hydraulic continuity all the way to the bottom? Or is it just the 10 projects?

I'm not able to answer that. Mr. Gilbert?

Mr. Chairman, I believe we have our Deputy Director of Public Works here and also Development Services Director who can answer that.

Thank you.

I'm going invite Tim Collett up. He's our Deputy Public Works Director in charge of water, wastewater and some of the engineering aspects. So

in regards to the washes, the city completed the first 10 priority projects from the original wash master plan. Earlier this year, we brought the second set of 10 projects to the council for approval. They were approved. So the first 10 have been done. Those are completed and we're starting to begin the second 10. So that's where that's so I'm not specific on which wash it is. I'd have to make sure that wash is part of the first 10, then I could answer that question.

So my question is for hydraulic continuity, does the whole master shed to be completed in order for you to realize that bottom number?

It's modeled top to bottom. So when it was modeled, it was modeled top to bottom.

Right. So all right. Thank you. So that map change did take place on the top priority 10, which is great. I mean, it's great that we're not going to be flooded down there.

But I do object to really some kind of any type of development down there until you have that accurate bottom number for that flow. That parcel is the bottom drain that or one of two bottom drains that comes in everything flows down into that that parcel so that was one question I did have a question about your community engagement summary I see that you did some great out outreach. I wanted to understand if this 23,000 number is part of your engagement completion of the 37,000 views. Because I believe that this number is is not really engagement. It's just people who hit the website.

So if they hit the planning and zoning website, everybody who goes to planning and zoning hits that site. And then if you had to redirect to a third party site, which I'm not sure the name is it, Konezi or whoever did the third party for the sixty day review, that this number is not all accurate. So I'm going to ask you just to go back and look at that because I am looking at your own data and it says during the sixty day review you had 883 public reviews and that's a lot for a town that has over 50,000 people in it. So I'm asking if the engagement is enough to move this plan forward for ten year development. So that's just a question for you to ask yourself.

It's one that came up on mine. The next question I had was regarding the map that's used in the general plan. And Chris, don't know if you could bring up page 20 or not. I'll just tell you what's in my little packet.

No, I do not have that. Oh, the flu map?

Yeah. Well, I have a copy here. So this was when I landed on page 40 of your general plan review is the map that we're looking at. This was at 200 in physical in your packet and this was at 500. There is no way for me as a resident to go down here and see that you're putting a seven house per acre in here.

It doesn't show me a parcel. There's 72 houses on the row of cabana, which is a direct wall to everything that's coming in my particular parcel. But you can't go in there and put in your parcel number, and I can't see the overlay of your vision and how it affects my property, my investments. And so I think it was a disservice to the people, even in my neighborhood, that we can't even see what your vision is. How determine do or make a thoughtful comment on your plan review when I can't see it?

Okay. Mr. Chairman, if I may.

Go ahead.

Could we have the screen I have up right now put up on the overhead for everybody to see? Is there a way to do that? There we go. So this is the twenty twenty six flume that we're working on. So if you see if the mouse works here, it does. Can everybody see the mouse? So this is the Cabana neighborhood right here. And most of the city is single family residential and this entire area is all low density in this plan, which does granted does allow up to seven units per acre. Let me go to the end of this display. I did anticipate you would have some questions.

Let's see, this one. This is the zoom in on the 2016 map that we currently have. And this is your neighborhood. You see the LDR, that's the low density residential, which presently allows up to four units per acre on all of this territory. That is state owned trust land.

And it is currently on this next slide, if you look here, there's the zone, it's AP Agricultural Preservation. What the zoning on that property allows is only one acres, one house per acre as an accessory use to an agricultural operation. So in other words, if someone was to purchase that land from the State Land Trust Department, they have to come to us and say, what do we have to do to put what we want there? And unless it's one house per acre with agricultural operation, they have to come in and definitely get a rezone. And if it's what they're planning is more than seven years per acre, which is duplex or less, then they also have to do a land plan amendment.

So they would have two different hearing processes to go through. If for example, it was commercial or storage, that's what would happen. Whether or not that ever sells and in our latest look on the state land site, this property is not for sale but there is a piece that's up on the state land site for that set parcel between the Foothills and the rest of the city off of Cherry Tree Drive. That is on there. That's about a 600 and some acre parcel. But 611. But this particular parcel doesn't show. It is possible the state could be talking to people. We do not know. They don't tell us.

They don't have to tell us. But if they sell that, they have to work with us. They can't just come marching in and say, okay, we're building storage units here, for example. They have to come and visit with us. We have to say, here's what you need for rezones and land plan amendments. And they have to go through this very same public hearing process to change that. And in fact, there's one of those hearings happening right after this meeting or this hearing on this item, there's a general plan rezone happening. So if you want to stick around, watch that's what has to happen if you can't follow the rules that are set down the general plan and the zoning documents.

Let me just clarify. In our last meeting, I was told that Parcel 28 was zoned for low density, which is up to seven houses per acre. Is that correct?

That's not zoned, ma'am. Zoning land The

provision use map says

Correct.

Low density housing.

The land use plan moving forward as we cleaned up the categories and boiled them from 16 to seven, we took three ranges of density and condensed them to two. So instead of one to four, four to like 10, and then 10 to 20, now we have a one to seven, then we have a seven plus. And that is the change to the general plan. The zoning hasn't changed, I have to point that out. That does not change zoning.

If someone wants to come in to develop duplexes on that property, let's say, let's say seven years per acre, Then they could come in and they would only have to do a rezone through this public hearing process. With Planning Commission City Council, they would not have to do a land plan amendment and the rezone, which typically run together. But they would have one less hearing, but regardless, the residents would get a say just like this in the process.

And I appreciate that. I do know historically that the last couple of auctions that had low density housing that the zoning did change for those properties. And I just believe that when somebody is paying millions of dollars over the value of the property that there's some concession there that they have to pencil in and meet the numbers. So I think that the public's comments are sometimes after the effect and not before. And and sometimes maybe that's just more of a formality in a hearing like this.

You can see here, there's not a lot of people in here. So it's just a comment I wanted to make and maybe that's something we should be working on about how we notify the public of changes that are in their communities in their backyards. So Chris is that and I'm just gonna make one more comment on that map. Is that map your map? It's not the map that's on the

Can we put that map back up please?

Because I have this at a 500 zoom and I can't define a parcel in there.

You're referring to the 2026 right?

I'm referring to the general plan that was on the website for the six year review.

So this is the general plan from the city's GIS, which you can access remotely from your house if you want to look at it. This is the current 2016 general plan map. That's up right now, 2016. That's the current one in effect.

The 2026?

The twenty twenty six one, because it's not approved or final, is in draft form right now. And if it gets adopted in November by the voters, then it would replace this one on our GIS.

And that doesn't help me make a decision and provide comment for you regarding what's going on in the density of my backyard construction?

Well, your area is right here off Cabana. See right here, it's all yellow. That entire your neighborhood and everything around it is neighborhood low, which is a category right here, which is planned for one to seven dwelling units per And

that's what I'm saying that is state auction land. So you have to auction that land off before you can develop on it. And I'm not trying to you're saying I'm not supposed to complete the two, but they're directly correlated, right?

No, because they still have to get city approval if the state sells them the land.

I think that the people were denied a right to make a comment on a map that they can't define. And I would recommend that we get that map up as soon as possible so they can see how their investments that they're making in their backyard, your vision of development, how it affects that because I know people on my street specifically they're pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars in their backyard and they have no idea that you have a two year construction site in your vision by looking at that map so I have an issue with that And I'm sorry to bring up things that are not all pro I'm not against growth. I'm just against transparency and responsible development is what I'm asking for. Okay. And then the last thing I wanted to speak about, you had a map up there which just shows the partial pretty well.

And I want to talk about your standard mitigation plan for that parcel. If you can see the two hills coming down at the top and the one right above the orange, that's the parcel that is going to be up for auction for four eighty eight acres. That specific parcel has a venturi or a wind tunnel in it. And what I'm talking about is that the wind comes down, hits that lake, and that wind is amplified in that channel, and it whips through the backyard and through the houses. So everything is going to be amplified in there. It's going to be double vibration. It's going to be double the sound for heavy equipment. It's going to

be

the displacement of ecosystem, the scorpions, the snakes, the rabbits, bunnies, whatever is in there, has one way to go. And that's to the lake or to that back row of Cabana Drive. So I am asking that you review that. I don't think your standard construction is going to cover the risk of mitigation for those 74 houses. That is the wall of Cabana.

Takes everything off that lake. Everything. And then the residential, behind it is about 400 to 500 residents are going to be blasted with, dirt, dust. And so I'm asking if they do a residential impact study for that specific parcel and that the developer has an additional fund to address those risks.

When the time comes? Yes. There's nothing slated for that at this point?

No. But it I when the map changed, it is coming. Your general plan says it's open for development, and that developer is going to come for that property. It's a $1,000,000 view. I don't forget it back. And I can't say nothing about the view, but I could absolutely say something about the development that's going on there. So with that, I appreciate it. Thank you to my neighbors who came to listen and to support. I'm sorry that you weren't aware, of their vision and that's just really a transparency issue. None of us knew that this is what's planned and that's why I'm asking about participation.

How come not one of my 500 neighbors knew that your vision was to put that in their backyard? And they've been there for thirty years, and they have vistas. And like I said, they're, I don't know. The guy who just did six RV garages in a house cost 3 laws on a cabana, he probably going flip his cookie sheet. But thank you for the opportunity to speak. I encourage any of my neighbors to step up and address their concerns.

Thank you, Ms. Willett. Appreciate it. Anybody else wish to speak on this item?

My name is Don Margensen.

Say again in the house. I'm sorry.

Don Margensen. It's 1631 Cabana. And I have been absolutely clueless about any of this stuff going on. And it isn't because I don't pay attention to what's going on. So I would agree, I'm here to back up what Catharine said, that we would like to know what was going on sooner. That's all. Okay? Thank you.

Mr. Gilbert, would you go over how this has been presented over the course of the last year and a half, how the public has been notified?

Yes, Mr. Chairman. So let me see, I thought we had a slide here. We have the consultant. This is Drew.

Thank you, Chairman and Commission. I'm going to invite Mikayla up with Logan Simpson that will kind of talk about how that process was done over the last year and a half.

Good morning, Chairman and Commission. My name is Mikayla Dunphy. I'm with Logan Simpson, part of the consulting team that's been working with staff in the community on this plan over the past year. Engagement was very and continues to be very robust for this planning process with over 27,000 touch points for engagement. We did have a project website up through the process highlighting opportunities for engagement.

Many of those engagement points were through the website. However, thousands of additional engagement touch points happened through in person drop in events as well as visioning workshops, other open houses. So compared to many communities across the Southwest and around the country engagement was quite robust. Typically we see anywhere from 1% to 4% engagement for an entire community and we're looking at much higher numbers with that 27,000 approximately 45% engagement. So the appendices of the document also highlights the many and varied opportunities for engagement and outreach strategies as well.

So we document that in the appendices of the document for more specific information on all of those different outreach strategies and specific engagement events.

It was also notified through media both print and,

Yes significant social media, radio, web, newspaper, advertisements for all of these varied events that you see up on the screen here.

Anything more, Mr. Tinaman? Okay. All right. Thank you both.

Thank you. Chair Harris, I was just going to give a little bit of an overview too because we did a lot of the drop in events. We took flyers to the senior center. They were passed out at various community groups by staff members, by planning and zoning commissioners, by city council members. We spoke to chamber organizations, neighborhood watch groups. We did a booth at the community back to school health fair, the fall fun fair, just handing out flyers, sharing information with people. We had radio ads. We did speak out, social media posts several times. So we tried to reach a very broad range of the community. We did WinterFest.

So some of those may be duplicates because maybe they attended an open house and were on the website. But I think that in the long run, when you think about maybe the people that were aware of it and just chose not to participate because they didn't have any comments to add, I think there was a lot of awareness even if the individual participation numbers may look lower, if that makes sense.

Thank you. Ms. Hannigan? Mr. Chairman, if I may add, this is from my experience in the planning field since the 1990s.

I've done general plan process before, albeit not in Arizona, it's my first one here. But in 2002, had a city of almost 30,000 people that prior to social media, we did our best to use the existing advertising methods, which is newspaper, radio to get the word out. And we had 1% involvement. We had 150 people decide the general, let's call it comprehensive plan in Missouri, to decide the future of the community. Involvement surprised me greatly in this process.

And social media had a lot to do with it. At every council meeting, every plan commission meeting where we did updates, we gave out the city's website not city website, I'm sorry, the general plans had its own website. We gave that out to everybody. We distributed swag at all the events we attended, including myself. I participated in some of the radio broadcast. I participated at some of the community events, handing out swag, talking to people. These numbers are legit. These are the actual number of people we reached and we tried to focus the events that we attended based on reaching residents instead of visitors. We didn't want to get out of towners if they don't live here. Want to reach the people who actually live here.

Events such as Truckapalooza, events such as community health fair, events that have a lot of local residents. So we made an effort to get out, do that and also talk to all the various small groups around the community of which I probably did five or six myself to different organizations, including political parties, including rotary clubs, including there's just a wide variety and it's all listed in the plan. If you look in the draft plan, it's all in there. So we tried our best, but the reality is just like with a lot of city elections where you have low percentage turnout, you're not going to get everybody interested in participating. And I think the level we reached was substantial here and actually surprised me greatly.

But I'm thankful to all the citizens who did participate and I think we ended up with a good plan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Just for the record, this is the fourth general plan update that I participated in, in this city since I've been on the commission, all the way back to 'ninety six. And there has been, with this one, substantial notification to the community. I saw it myself just reading a paper or whatever in my own home. So kudos to the staff for what they have done and the notification that they have given. And I apologize to anybody who has not seen or heard anything about this over the last year and a half. I hope that answers your question. So is there anybody else who would like to speak on this item? Please come forward and state your name for the record.

Giuliano Torres, resident. Just a quick question. Is the plan now final? Are there going to be further edits? Or what people now see is what's going to be voted on? Mr. Gilbert.

As of right now, this is the final plan unless there are some dramatic changes that have to be made. It still has to go to counsel.

And counsel has the ability to make modifications.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Christie Cosgrove. I'm also a resident. What happens if the plan does not pass? What if it goes on the ballot, this 2026 general plan goes on the ballot to the voters in November, correct? What happens if it's not approved?

Mr. Chairman, if I may, this is not approved, the old plan stays in effect And then the city has to work out a way to continue to try to meet state law beyond that. But the old plan will stay in effect. And what it shows for your neighborhood doesn't change. It's still the lowest density level of residential that the plan has will still be in effect.

Well, in effect, for those of us that live here that have been through these kinds of processes before we know that that changes depending on what the city sees as best for itself and what developers want to do and how much money they're going to bring into the city. So you can understand why the residents feel as if our voice is never really going to be heard. You're relying on apathy which is just a fact of politics right. A lot of people that just don't care, don't get engaged, don't get involved, don't pay attention and you rely on that and so things get done in rooms like this where the vast majority of people have no idea until a building goes up in their backyard what's going on. If a variance is requested, neighbors are notified, right.

Everybody gets a letter in their mailbox that says, guess what, the guy next to you wants to do something that could drastically impact your standard of living the value of your property and get a letter in the mail. How difficult would it be to send a letter to everybody in it whether it's Cabana or anywhere else where there's a development that could happen and you're saying, well, right now it's not for sale. Oh, baloney. That property, you could take one look at that property and then drive around this lake in a boat and see where there's parcels that are still going to be lake views. That's a flood zone.

Army Corps of Engineers basically didn't even want Sailing Hawks to be built at the time because it was a flood zone. So, you know, adversely are we going to be affected? I think Kath made a great point of what's going to happen when they start chasing everything up into our neighborhood because it's not going into the water, it's coming right into our neighborhood. We have a few pockets of that kind of land left And if what it's going to take is engaging every single person that has a stake in this to get them actively involved to fight the whole general plan. Throw it out.

We'll stay with what we've got right now. Like you said, maybe that doesn't affect us. But I know the new general plan is not going to work in our favor. I don't see any possibility that that's going to happen. It's going to be less conservative for developing and new neighborhoods and more neighborhoods and we're not fighting that in general, but you know that's the whole Nimbe thing, build it, just don't build it in my backyard.

Well, yeah, that's how we feel, we got property values at stake. So yeah, we're going to stay vocal about it, we'll see what the City Council has to say. If it doesn't pass, if the community really gets engaged and says, okay, we don't like this general plan or maybe we want something that says some of these lands need to be preserved. Can we put that in a general plan before we get to the whole rezoning thing that's just you know backroom nonsense. We know how that works. So that's basically all I wanted to say is just we're paying attention and I hope you are too.

Thank you, Ms. Cosgrove. Anybody else wish to speak on this item?

Hi, good morning. My name is Darlene Nikke. I also live on Cabana Drive and I appreciate you guys hearing our concerns today. I think that what I'm understanding is that the state has not sold that designated that land behind our parcels as up for auction yet. And I'm looking for guidance on who can we contact at a state level to express our concerns about the development of that land. And on top of what Kathy and other neighbors have talked about, one of the things that really concerns me is, you know, we sit right across from Mesquite Bay. We have a lot of wildlife that exists in that parcel back there from roadrunners. We have burrows that are back there sometimes. We have California quail. I've personally seen turtles back there, which I don't know if they're desert tortoise.

And outside of the scorpions and the snakes and everything that were afraid to come into our community, what about the wildlife that lives there? And especially considering that we have a state park right across the street on London Bridge, I think that that land should be looked at as, again, maybe becoming part of the open space or part of the state, the wildlife there? Because if they do disrupt that, that's going to affect a lot of natural wildlife that's been there for a lot longer than this has been Lake Havasu. So can you provide any guidance at the state level of who we can reach out to? Or how do we go about doing that? Or is it contacting somebody at the BLM?

I would suggest State Land Department.

And do you can you offer any contacts there or a person so that we're not just calling out of the blue?

Mr. Chairman, if I may. Sure. Ma'am, I highly recommend your best option is to contact your elected officials who work at the state, the state representatives and senators, because they are the ones that control the power of the purse and the governor's office. It's a state agency.

We do not have any power over the state agencies at all. As a creature of the state, we have to follow the rules. That's why I recommend is contact your local state reps and senators to bring that issue up with them. As far as preserving the land again, that's something that we cannot even in our general plan do. The state mandates under proposition two zero seven, which was a voter pass initiative that the land has to allow at least one unit per acre.

It cannot be designated as open space in part without violating proposition two zero seven. So the state kind of has us in a pickle on the lowest land use category we can assign. And that's why in both the 2016 and the 2026 maps around Cabana Drive, that state property is shown as low density residential instead of open space because we cannot designate as that legally.

And what can you specifically say which representative to contact? I mean is there one designated for the Lake Havasu area or our district?

There are that represent our area and I think you can get that through the city clerk's office. Would that be right, Kelly?

I'm not sure if that's available through that.

Okay. I would you

should be able

to go online and determine if who your state reps are for the area, both Senate and representatives.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Anybody else wish to speak on this item? Please come forward and state your name for the record, Mr. Parrott.

Thank you, Mr. Harris, for reminding me. And I'm getting old, you know. John Parrott, February. I was a member of the Planning Commission, the General Plan Committee. I think the staff should be congratulated on the makeup of that committee. It was a very, very diverse group. Mr. Torres and I have pretty diametrically different opinions of things and it was a very vigorous discussion amongst the committee and all sides were heard on any issue that came up. I don't think we ever talked about this issue you're talking about now because it's too specific.

It's really not a general plan issue. But the committee worked diligently and we think we did our best. We ran up against the State Land Department on several things, and we just have to live with that. But I think the committee did a good job. The committee you referred to as a committee of citizens, volunteers? All volunteers, yes. And of course, we had the consultant and the staff with us all the time. But I think there were 13 people on the committee, something like that.

Mr. Chairman, mean the steering committee and the technical review committees were put together as part of the process and that's a common activity to guide the overall direction using citizens of the community who are volunteers. And they were instrumental in making sure the plan stayed on course and achieved its goals. Thank you, Mr. Parikh.

Thank you. Anybody else wish to speak?

Hi, my name is Chad Nelson. And I think what this neighborhood is doing is what you need to do. Now, to be clear, from my understanding, the city and the state on the parcel that the neighborhood is talking about, the city has no control over that. Even when someone goes to put in an application to buy that land at auction, only when it's rezoned would the city have any involvement is my understanding. But the fact that the neighborhood came together is really cool.

And to talk about preservation of that land, I think from a development standpoint, it would be very challenging to develop that land. But I just wanted to get up here and publicly say that I'm part of the off road community And there are trails that go through that area. And so my recommendation for that neighborhood is to also speak to the off roading group to the sheriff's office. Find some other ways that you can get other people involved other than your neighborhood. But what that neighborhood is doing is exactly what you need to do is come to the public hearings and learn more about the State Land Trust auction process.

And to my knowledge, the city has no involvement with any of that or being able to preserve it or anything like that until it's auctioned and a developer or whoever bought it brings it back to get it rezoned for something. And then the neighborhood can state their opinion and get their the commissioner's voices behind them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Nelson. Anybody else?

My name is Steve Elliott, 2250 Fisherman Drive. I'm the general manager of Bruce Properties, which has been in business here right at forty years. The partners in Bruce Properties are 96 years old and 90 years old. They've been in this community a long time. I've learned one thing from them, communications.

And in our world today, have a problem with not our message, our delivery of the message. Many people look at government officials and they don't trust them anymore. Not because of the message, because of delivery of the message, how it's delivered, how it's received. I have to give Kathy a lot of credit. In two weeks, she did her due diligence.

She put it together. Her delivery was wonderful. I would just ask everyone, how you deliver the message, how you get the message out is the most important job you have. And I thank you for your time.

Mr. Elliott, is there anybody else who wishes to speak on this item? Anybody at all?

Morning. Darren Hinke, I'm with the group. I guess my question is, so part of this group plan and what I'm kind of trying to beat this horse, so it's state land and you guys can't do anything with it until it's auctioned, but you still have to zone it for I know that state law says that every ten years you guys have to come up with an improvement plan for the next ten. So you have to zone that land that a state land that has technically nothing to do with you guys except for the fact that it's within city limits. So you have to zone it as something for the time being.

Is that pretty much well what I'm understanding?

We're not zoning anything. What we're doing is putting together a plan for the future should something happen. And as Mr. Gilbert said, it can't be open space. So we have to put some designated number on it.

Correct.

And we've done low density in order to accomplish that. It's good. So make no mistake, all state lands around the perimeter of the community will go to auction at some point in time, maybe not in my lifetime, but they are going to sell at some point in time. And we do have to plan for that.

Sure. Understood. And that's just, I guess, my main question is, for this plan that you guys actually kind of need to pre designate what, in theory, if it's sold, the next stages it would be. So it's not technically zoned as of right now, correct?

Well, it does have a zone, but it's not the zoning that everybody has been talking about. It's currently zoned agricultural.

Ag, okay. So that's where it's currently at right now. If it does sell, it would be classified.

That's the state's default zoning for raw land. Got it. Cool. Well, thank you guys. Appreciate it. Thank you. Anybody else wish to speak on this item? Hearing none, I'll go ahead and oh, there is one more. Please come forward.

To that's I

And

think couple of lots down and that's the the reason entrance. I see people going in on side by sides and motorcycles and taking walks and everything like that. And until a couple of weeks ago, knew nothing about what was going on there. I thought that was just going to stay like that. And I understand nothing's forever, everything changes. But down at the bottom of North Palo Verde, they put up those two story duplex things and that's still considered low density. Is that am I correct on that?

You're talking about along London Bridge Road?

Yes.

I'm not sure exactly what that zoning That's is down Multifamily.

Sailing Hawks, believe is zoned RMPD, I think is the zone for that.

And this is on the other side of Sailing Hawks on the South Side Of Palo Verde at Lindenbridge Road.

I'm not let me see if that shows up.

A bit of trailer park?

Yes. Yes. So with that

It's a multi family zoning.

Is that possible that something like that could go in there?

It is, but it would require a rezone and a land plan change because the density would be super high if you're going with high density residential. Right now, the low density is only seven years per acre, which realistically duplexes are the largest, highest density thing that you could see in low density. To get apartments, to get four plexes, generally looking at high density residential, which is a land plan amendment plus a rezone. So there's multiple public hearings. And yes, we do notice by law within 300 feet of the boundaries of any proposed rezone.

Okay and also I know that being that it's zoned agricultural and you know one parcel per acre, but the height restrictions on that are different than if it was zoned R1. They could go up, what is it 30 something feet or?

Yes. RM has a 30 foot height limit, R1 has 15. Okay.

And so it is possible that somebody with money could go in there and develop those in large one acre parcels and get it passed and have these basically two or three story houses there and that would affect the same thing. They wouldn't have to go for a rezone.

Well, they couldn't right now because the zone that we're talking about the general plan in this hearing, but the zoning is not changing at all. The development code and this map are not changing as part of this process. The zone that is applied is AP, agricultural preservation. Single family is permitted, but it has to be as an accessory use to agriculture activity. So in other words, unless somebody is doing farming or horses or something like, horse farming, something like that, they can't have the accessory use rather principal use.

So they can't just come in and build a neighborhood of single family homes, because they have to be that's a primary use, not an accessory use. So the AP is too restrictive to do a real development out of. It requires a rezone. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Wheeler. Anybody else wish to speak on this item? Anybody at all? Hearing none, I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing portion of this meeting and bring it back to Mr. Gilbert for conclusions.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't have anything to add other than this is the second hearing and the normal process is the commission would make a recommendation to the council. And I think I have a slide here for that one. The hearing is scheduled for June 9 at 05:30PM.

And that is the final hearing for this item. Thank you, everybody, for your participation. We'll now move on to the next item on our agenda.

Mr. Chairman, that requires a recommendation.

I'm sorry?

Requires a recommendation to counsel.

I'm sorry. We are at the table for a recommendation to counsel. Do we have a motion or a recommendation by a commissioner?

Mr. Chairman? Mr. Lair. Yes, I'll move to recommend approval of land use action number 265220 to the City Council, approving the draft 2026 Lake Havasu City General Plan.

We have a motion by Mr. Lear, a second by Mr. Thornton to approve ID 26265220, sending the, general plan amendment on to City Council. Any further discussion? Hearing none, let's go ahead and vote.

Vice chair Wilson?

Yes.

The motion to recommend approval of the draft plan to City Council passes seven to zero.

And Council has the final say.

Correct. And that their public hearing will be June 9 for another public hearing and then their discussion and possible acceptance, which would be through resolution.

Okay. Thank you, Ms. Hennigan. The next item on today's agenda, before I got ahead of myself, is ID265200. This is a request for an amendment to the general plan, general development plan, of the planned development for 5699 Highway 95 Come Together Project, Track 2396, Lot A3-one. Mr. Kearns, your presentation, please.

Morning, Chairman, Commission. Happy Birthday, Paul.

Your wife put us up to that.

The subject property is located at the shops at Lake Havasu between the movie theater and Walmart. In 2025, council approved a planned development amendment to allow multifamily residential, a 32 foot building height, and an exception to the residential covered parking requirement. In February 2026, the property was split to separate the movie theater and multifamily project into separate properties. This was one of the required conditions of the planned development rezone. The project has come back to Planning Commission due to the applicant making changes to the approved general development plan.

The changes being proposed are reconfiguring building locations. The applicant has stated the changes are to enhance ADA accessibility and overall site maneuverability. The proposed amended general development plan has 20 less parking spaces than the existing approved plan. The parking will still be part of the existing shared parking at the mall. After the project's completion, there will still be five forty seven parking spaces more than code requires. The project will still have 102 units that will consist of six buildings with a mix of one two bedroom units, which is the same as the previous plan. This item is scheduled to be heard at the June 9 City Council meeting. I'll be happy to answer any questions. And the applicant also has a presentation today.

Are there any questions of staff by commissioners? Is the applicant present? Would you like to make a presentation?

Trevor, could you play that short video first? Here it is at the bottom. All the way at the bottom. Yep. You gotta plug in some information real quick.

For millions of Americans, housing has become the difference between stability and stress. Teachers, nurses, first responders, the people who make our communities work, they're not asking for more, they're asking for something that works. This is the missing middle, and for many, it's not just hard, it's becoming impossible. Not because we don't care, but because the way we build hasn't kept up with the way we live. At Come Together, we believe the real problem isn't people, it's process.

So we ask a different question. What if housing were built as a system repeatable, precise, and designed around real lives? Instead of reinventing every building, we created standardized designs that can be approved once and used many times. New apartment homes are ready to be lived in within a few months instead of taking years to complete. Instead of chaotic job sites waiting on materials, components are precision cut, labeled, delivered in exact sequence so crews build without delay, waste, or guesswork.

Instead of long uncertain timelines, apartments are assembled in controlled environments near the site, cutting months, sometimes years off delivery. The result, better quality, faster delivery, lower cost without subsidies, without cutting corners, apartments designed for real lives, built to exceed expectations, delivered when communities need them. But here's the truth, this doesn't happen alone. It takes suppliers who believe consistency beats complexity, developers willing to rethink the old playbook, cities ready to say yes to smarter, safer, repeatable solutions, and partners who understand that impact scales when systems align. If you supply materials, components, or systems, help us standardize what works.

If you are a landowner or developer, build faster with less risk. If you're a city or community leader, deliver housing your workforce can afford. And if you believe innovation should improve lives, this is your moment. Join us, partner with us, scale with us, make a difference, be the difference.

Thank you. Again, my name is Chad Nelson, and I'm with the applicant today. And we're actually very excited to come back at this time. As you can see, we've come a long way. And you could see that in that presentation there was actual you're looking at the actual apartments, which is cool.

We hadn't built any at the time where we did the presentation before. So we've come a long way. And we had a lot of feedback from the city, from the utility companies and from the community. And essentially, I believe that Come Together has really listened to everybody and to bring forward this new plan. So we didn't have to do this.

Actually, our original plan didn't have any comments. But after we spoke with Unisource, you could see that upper building on the left hand side. And Trevor, if you can scroll to the old plan, you could see that those buildings were configured to be kind of on top of each other there, more on the northeast side of the property. The building below had it was kind of touching a utility easement, and that kind of started the process of reconfiguring the building. It was a little too close for Unisource even though they didn't have any comments.

And obviously, we want to do something positive. We don't want to ruffle any feathers. So we started reconfiguring the building. And another part of the community feedback is that this plan that we brought to the city, which had 100% approval, we still had a lot of parking spaces and kind of it was kind of open to Walmart and things like that. So you could see it had an opening at the top there where people come through Walmart, they could still drive through.

And a lot of people commented that it didn't feel like it was its own development. It felt still open to for people to park there from Walmart and the movie theater and so on and so forth. So we really try to improve the parking for like Buffalo Wild Wings and the movie theater. If you could scroll over to the new plan, you could see that there is a complete landscaping bar on the top there and a landscaping bar on the bottom. So it really feels like it's more exclusive to the complex.

Something that's kind of hard to see on the plan there. On the old plan, the balconies for the apartments was either facing Walmart or facing Buffalo Wild Wings. Well, now the balconies are facing, the lake. So, that's another big improvement. There were comments about parking and ADA.

And you could see that we completely reconfigured the parking. And you heard comments about a little bit less parking. But you could see in the lower section of the four buildings, there's a lot of bike parking. We know that people are commuting on bikes and riding bikes. And so there is an option to make more parking, but we're trying to live in today's standards and what's really going on in our community.

You can't really go a day without hearing something about bikes. And we've also made more ADA parking. And we've increased from six staircases to 12. So less distance from people having to get out of their car and get into their apartment. And then you can also see the turning radiuses for we put those as icons on this map.

So you can see where fire trucks have to go in and out. And those have been widened. And because we're very cognizant about fire safety, even though these buildings are almost 100% fireproof, it's steel framing. All of the wallboard that's in these apartments is 100% fireproof. It's not drywall.

It's a different material. So the company that's working with us to design all the fire systems, they said I would live in this building because it can't burn down. So there's been a lot of benefits to this new plan. Let's see if there's anything I missed here. Yeah, I think that covers it.

And I'd like to hear, your questions and hear the community's questions and introduce, Kevin Blue who's also a part of the project.

My name is Kevin Blue, one of the founders of Come Together. I wanted to introduce myself and to thank the City of Lake Havasu, its residents and its staff. We're doing something radically different here and staff has been incredibly helpful, working through this with us. The video, it always strikes me that's three years of, engineering and hard work with our partners like Chad and Jared, to get this to a reality. And, we're really looking forward to, delivering these rental homes to the hardworking folks in Lake Havasu.

But thank you, especially to the staff. Everybody's been great.

Thank you very much. Any questions by staff excuse me, by commissioners? Mr. Stevenson? So

but at the end of the day, all we're reviewing right now is just the general layout and the changes. We're not this has already been an approved project, correct?

If I may. This project was already approved without any concerns or anything like that. The reason this is back before us is because of the power company's unwillingness to accommodate an easement. And that's facilitated them having to go back and totally redesign their project because of that. Nothing's basically changed except and correct me if I'm wrong, except the reorientation of a building. That's it. So it was already approved once.

Yes, that's what I thought.

Just didn't. Any other questions or comments? Okay. This is a public hearing, so I'll open it up to the public. Is there anybody in the audience that wishes to speak?

Good morning. My name is Emiliano Torres. I'm a resident. I have the same concern I had the last time, and that was that you are going to relax the parking requirement to make the entire mall parking for this facility. That lends it to every resident that has a every renter can park anywhere he wants in the whole mall with anything he has. Typically, a community like this is built, it's walled off and it has its own unique entrance and exit.

This doesn't. And to give

you an example of what can happen in Southern California and Ontario, there's the big I think it's Ontario Mills, the big mall out there. In front of Penny's, there's an Airstream trailer, a little one, with a fortune teller setting up business on the street in front of JCPenney's. That can happen here. You can have a pet groomer park his pet grooming business if he's a resident right in front of Petsmart. You can have someone with an RV trailer park in the if he's a resident, use the Walmart parking lot as his RV storage area because it's a shared area. You've given them that permission. I would just say be cautious. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Torres. Anybody else wish to speak on this item? Hearing none, I'll go ahead and close the public hearing portion and bring it back to the table for staff's conditions.

So, yeah, the same conditions apply as the original ordinance. It'll need to substantially match the general development plan. They've already made condition number two, which is splitting the lots. The shared parking and cross access easements for the subject property and surrounding properties must remain shared. This is back to hearing just for the changes to the site plan to move the building.

All right. Any questions of staff by commissioners? We are at the table for discussion and or a motion, commissioners. Anybody? Mr. Thornton? All right. We have a motion by Mr. Thornton. Do we have a second? I'll second. Mr. Stevenson seconds. Any further discussion on the item? Hearing none, let's go ahead and place our vote.

Vice Chair Wilson?

Yes.

The motion to recommend approval of the amended General Development Plan passes seven to zero.

Congratulations and good luck. All right. At this time in the meeting, it is the call to the public where anybody in the audience can address the Commission on any subject whatsoever. We may not respond, but is there anybody that would like to address the Commission? Seeing none, I'll go ahead and close the call to the public. Future meetings, Mr. Gilbert.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The next meeting on 06/03/2026 will have two cases.

And I will not be present for that meeting. All right. Thank you, everybody. We stand adjourned.