Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

The time is 6 p.m. I'd like to call the meeting to order. Good evening. I'd like to welcome everyone to the Town of Leland Planning Board meeting. Please note that these proceedings, including the public comment portion, are being videotaped. The public and media may also videotape these proceedings at any time. At this time, I'd like to remind everyone to please place their cell phones on vibrate or turn them off so as not to disturb the business of tonight's meeting. We all please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. We'll move on to agenda item number three, the approval of the agenda. Does anyone have any amendments to the agenda?

No.

Not seeing any, may I have a motion, please? So moved. Do I have a second?

Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. Item number four, the approval of minutes, the December 16th meeting minutes. Does anyone have any amendments to the minutes as presented? No?

Seeing none, would some of you be willing to make a motion to approve the minutes as presented? The minutes be approved and submitted.

Do I have a second? Second.

Thank you. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Agree. We'll go on to item number five. At this time, anyone who has signed up to speak during public comment prior to the start of this meeting may come up to speak. Mr. Galanga, do we have anyone signed up to speak?

No, sir.

Thank you. In that case, we can move on to number six, discussion topics. Mr. Andrea will now present the comprehensive update of the land development regulations.

Thanks. Good to see everybody tonight and back in the... Wanted to spend a little time talking to you tonight about an upcoming project we have been wanting to get to for quite some time, essentially back since the Leland 2045 plan was adopted. We've been... wanting to update our development regulations, essentially do a complete overhaul. So tonight I wanna talk to you about why we wanna do it, some goals for the project, how we're going to accomplish this, what you all should expect as the planning board, and a rough schedule of how long it'll take. So why should we update our development regulations? I'm a car guy, so I'm going to use a car analogy for you. From the most I can tell, our development regulations were originally, the first of them, adopted in 1992. So here's something else from 1992. This is a 1992 Honda Accord, when this thing rolled off the lot, man, it was shiny, it was reliable, pretty safe for the time, relatively simple. Got us where we needed to be. It is now 2026, and this is kind of what our Accord's looking like these days. Similar to our Ordnance, it's been patched together, it's got a little Bondo on it, tires are mismatched, still getting us where we need to go, but probably not as efficiently as we would like. 2045 plan has a lot of guidance for us on how we should update our development regulations, not intending to read through these or have you all read through these, point being that woven into this plan there is a fair bit of guidance on what we should look at for updating our development regulations, things we should be thinking about, and particularly in the context of writing a set of regulations that moves us closer towards or in a direction of the vision established in 2045. Similarly, the Town Council adopted a strategic plan a couple years ago. There are some things specific in that strategic plan that relate to updating our development code. So a couple things there that are somewhat repetitive to the things in the 2045 guidance. Some of them a little bit more specific, but nonetheless things we want to be thinking about as we're taking on this project. So some things that we hope to accomplish as we're taking this project on. better organization of our development regulations. We have several different chapters right now. We have definitions that are in different places. We have some room to an opportunity for improvement on how we organize our development regulations, both for ease of use by the folks in my department that administer this code, but also our customers who use this code, helping to make it logical the way things are laid out, Some easier references and some cross-referencing when it's necessary. Along those same lines, easier to understand using language that minimizes legalese, things that people can understand using images and pictures where necessary, where it can help convey a regulation perhaps better than a wall of text can. We also have some areas in the ordinance now that have some conflicts to some degree. So making sure that we're removing those, making sure that our regulations are complimentary of each other and we don't have any conflicts in our land development regulations. We also have some gaps in the ordinance. Some examples of that are in our zoning districts, our residential zoning districts we have a pretty wide gap in the density allowance. We have R6, and then we jump up all the way to multifamily, which allows up to 15. So there's some room to fill in the gap there and offer some additional flexibility that can be used as we try to move towards this vision. Updating our standards. Again, this goes back to the vision set in 2045, things that we've heard from the public during that process, things we've heard from the public and from planning board and from town council along the way, things we should be thinking about that are important to the community, how to weave those into a set of standards that people have to do essentially in the community. And then all this, again, aligning with the 2045 vision. So I talked about the organization of our land development regulations currently. This is an outline of every chapter in the town's code of ordinances that has some relevance to the administration of a land development code for us. So quite a few chapters here. This means that as a site designer or a land planner, there are a lot of different places potentially that you have to go in the ordinance to understand how to design a site or what the process is. So, what we would like to do is take those relevant sections out of each of those chapters that were on the previous screen or combine them into one new chapter that we would refer to as a Unified Development Ordinance. That particular phrase, Unified Development Ordinance, is somewhat commonly used in North Carolina at this point. It's actually been wrapped into the Chapter 160D in the General Statute. We could call it other things, but using the phrase unified development ordinance will be helpful for folks that do work in other jurisdictions and maybe they're coming to Leland. They know that's what that term means. So this is a general outline of the articles within this chapter that we're proposing. And to some degree, this could change over time if we identify something that that perhaps we missed. But at this point, we're pretty confident this is what our new chapter would look like. So an overview of the process and how the planning board will be involved specifically. There's a lot going on on the screen. I'll walk us through it here. Essentially, it's all going to start with staff drafting one of those articles on the previous page. You can think of it as a chapter in a book, so to speak. So we're drafting a chapter. What we would then do after we finish our internal reviews on it and get it to a place where we're ready to put it out in the public space, we would include it in one of your agenda packages. So we would include this entire chapter in an agenda package. You would then have the entire month to read it look at it, come up with questions, and then after that month passes at your next meeting, we would talk about it, talk about things that you want to point out, good or bad, things that, suggestions you may have, things that we need to think about as we go back and maybe do any kind of final tweaking that we need to do for this chapter. So somewhat concurrently with that, we'll be doing the same thing with town council. Planning Board will get it first just because of your meeting schedule. So, for example, next month in February, you'll get Article 1, and then Town Council will get it shortly after you will. So then Town Council will also have the same, roughly a month period to do the same thing, read through it, identify things that they want to talk about, and then staff will have that conversation with Town Council at one of their agenda review meetings, the one following September. the month where they get it included in their agenda package so once we get feedback from planning board and from town council staff will take that back we'll do any revisions that we need to do and then we'll essentially put that chapter to the side and move on to the next one so we'll be doing this essentially every month for the next 10 months or so until we have this each final draft of this chapter of these chapters put together so that we can create this new book and then this book will be brought forward to you at one time for your recommendation for approval and then to town council ultimately for adoption all at once does that make sense i think it does um one question i have is that since you have on here that we would be looking at it

relatively similar timeframe as Town Council. Was there any thought to having a joint meeting when you got to the discussion period with Town Council?

There's definitely some value to that. It would certainly add to the number of meetings that we need to have over the next year. So the reason why we have it staggered where the planning board or staff and the planning board will have the conversation first is so that we have that conversation before staff and town council have the conversation so that we can go to town council and say, here are the things that we talked to planning board about relative to this chapter. There certainly is opportunity for joint meetings along the way. I'm just a little hesitant to do that with every chapter because then we would essentially be having 10 joint meetings over the next year, and that could be a lot to deal with.

Mr. Whitney.

Yes, all the articles, are they being drafted solely by the, or does the staff have consultants that they're working with, or are there legal people involved with it as well, or?

Yeah, good question. Staff has taken the lead on drafting all of these. We haven't contracted with any consultant to draft any of this. We are looking at and have been looking. We've kind of been working on this on and off behind the scenes for some time, so we've found other ordinances out there that we really like, and we're not hesitant to borrow language that makes sense and that can work for us. Certainly, there will need to be a review from our legal team to make sure that whatever ultimately is codified is... all good to go from their perspective. But no consultants have been hired and are intended to be hired.

I would just like to say, too, I think it's a great planning scenario to have people like us, well, I guess I'm sort of speaking for myself, on the planning board because we bring a variety of experience and background to the table. So I think it would be good for the council to hear what we have to say, because they too have a different background and experience. And once they hear ours, then they can let it be a lead in to what they're thinking. So I think that's a good place to do it.

I agree with that. I appreciate that comment. It is a group effort. staff is taking the lead. We're providing our professional expertise and our professional opinion to you, and then you get to react to it and do that through the lens of your experiences and your education, your experiences. I did also just want to mention that this strategy is also deliberate so that The inclusion of these chapters in planning board and town council agendas make it available for the public to review these chapters as well. So as we have opportunities for public comment here at this meeting or at a town council meeting, we can hear if folks have some feedback and they're also welcome to contact us directly if they have things that they want to talk about. Point being is that it gets it out into the public space so that people have an opportunity to take a look and provide input if they want to.

On your process also, if there are changes made on the unified development ordinances suggested by planning board then goes to council and there are changes made from there, do we get to see that again? or would they just then move forward?

That's a good question.

I think it depends on the degree of the change. If it gets into something that we feel needs to come back to you, then I think that we'll do that. If it's something minor that we're pretty clear on what you're asking of us, I think we would just make that change and ultimately incorporate it into the final version. Probably point it back out to you when the whole thing comes back to you that, hey, we talked about this last August or whatever it was. We've made this change for your suggestion. Just wanted to point that out. So, yeah, it depends, I guess.

Other questions for Mr. Andrea? So, one more. I'm just curious about the possible involvement of, say, the development community. We've had text amendments and other things that come through, and then you get a public hearing, the development community comes out, and they they're not happy with some provision of the, is there a spot where they can put income or input earlier on in the process rather than waiting till the end?

Yeah, absolutely. Any stakeholder, including folks in the development community, can be part of that process that I just described as we're going along. I do intend to intentionally send these agenda items packages that will include these chapters to some stakeholders in the community with the intention of giving them an opportunity to review them as we're doing it instead of at the end, I guess.

And that also may apply to, say, certain HOAs and other communities that represent certain neighborhoods that they could have an input during the process or not?

Anyone can have an input during the process. I think there's only so much outreach that we can do. I also think that there needs to be a reasonable expectation of the public's involvement in this process. This isn't writing an ordinance by a committee. This is reacting to the recommendations the staff are bringing forward. So we welcome you and other champions in the community to share, and we welcome feedback. want to be realistic that we're ultimately trying to get a consensus. And so people may have differing opinions along the way. So this is my last slide, but this will be a rundown of the articles. These are not in order and that's intentional. So we'll get through some of the easier stuff first over the next couple of months. Then once we get into about June, when we start talking about zoning map and districts, I think at that point we're going to start to get into some more robust conversations about potential changes in the ordinance. The things leading up to that are relatively straightforward, more about process, who's responsible for doing what, what happens in a sequence in a certain process. So those are more straightforward things. So by summertime, we're going to, I think, start getting into things that may be more, like I said, more robust that I think stakeholders would have more of an interest in, I guess I would say. And then ultimately to wrap it up would be a set of definitions. We have about four different places in the chapters right now that have definitions. We'd like to have one chapter for that. We want to do that last to make sure that If there are things that we identify along the way that need to be defined, we just add them to that last chapter. After we get through all these individual articles, we'll essentially take about a month for staff or take it, but to weave this all together and put together a final draft of a document that we would then bring back and present to you. So this is a doable timeline, although it is an optimistic timeline. It's going to depend on if there are certain things that we need to talk about more that may take longer than a month to accomplish. There's not a hard and fast goal for when this needs to be completed, but it is something that we do want to continue to make progress on over this next year. Mr.

Chair, one, I like a hard and fast deadline on a project like this because it could go forever. Just things like parking standards, open space, lighting, that'll be like the summer.

Yes, sir. So things like that in particular would be in that Article 6 general development standards. Okay. Things like that that may be specific to a specific use would be in the Article 5, the use and use specific standards. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

To the degree that on some of the easier ones you get through, would it be possible or would you be willing to send out things a little bit earlier so that the planning board had a more than a month if you know if you if one's real easy and you're ready to go to the next one we don't necessarily do we have to wait till a certain time you could send something out and say look at this in advance we're going to be talking about it in two three weeks if yeah if internally if the progress allows for that there's no not opposed to that yeah any other questions

We look forward to working with you on this and look forward to your input. So this has been a long time coming and we're excited about it.

Actually, I'm kind of excited about it too. I think it's a really good thing for all of us to look at.

It's great. I wonder what kind of car we're going to see though, huh?

Yeah, I should have wrapped us up.

Is it going to be electric?

I don't know. I guess that's... Maybe that's all something you can discuss. Let me know next month.

More likely a Tesla. Okay, that was item six. Item seven, old new business. I think, Mr. Whitney, you had something you wanted to bring up.

Well, I just was curious. It's not really planning board related, but I drove by here around the Christmas time, and I saw all the lights, and I didn't walk it, but you had a good crowd.

I just kind of would...

would think that the board members would like to get kind of a how did it go kind of a report and what was good, what was problematic, whatever, if you can share that.

I don't know the details of that, but I can talk to some other staff members and see if we can get a summary and get it to you, if that's okay. I think what I'm hearing is that generally it went well. Um, but beyond that, I don't know that there's too many more details that I can, that I can share with you, but I can certainly get, get something together and get it to you if that's okay.

You've got good participation from the community and, uh, January's agenda meeting.

Okay. So I'm being told that there have been some presentations to town council that get to right of what you're asking one of those happened in january and another one will excuse me will happen in february so i can send you all the link right to where it starts in the video and you can hear that presentation that's great mr lazar i was just gonna say i did walk it and it was fabulous and that i had our grandson was with us he's only 16 months and

I wanted to compliment the town on a great project that found this park. It really is government by example from things that Perhaps nerds like me look at the permeable parking and the EV charging, but the playground was fantastic, and it was well used, and there were a lot of families out. So I know once the bandstand is completed, the summer is going to be just fabulous. So I just want to congratulate the staff. There's one thing I did want to raise, and I know that the town has limited – jurisdiction, probably none, but it's telecommunications. And I would just ask perhaps if the town as a whole could reach out to the T-Mobiles and the Verizons of the world. In Brunswick Forest, I get one bar, if anything. And it's just, you know, when I leave my house to use Apple CarPlay, it takes me to get to Mallory Creek or sometimes River Road for the GPS to kick in to where I want to go. So maybe there's an opportunity to reach out to the providers and say, hey, what you're doing, because it doesn't make it doesn't serve the community really well. And as the town is growing. And a lot more people are getting on their cell phones and everything else. It certainly is problematic to make a phone. There's some rooms in my house I can't make a cell phone call from. And I appreciate them saying, I'll send you a booster for your house. That's not a solution for the community as a whole.

You know, honestly, it's not necessarily a solution for your house either because our boosters haven't done a whole lot of good.

Yeah, so I just... You know, there are a lot of high-tension towers here, and in Northern Virginia, you've seen them put transponders on them for cell service. I don't know if Dominion, not Dominion, but Duke or BMC supports that kind of thing, but as a growing community, telecommunications is really critically important. Just a suggestion.

bringing that up. I know there's been some discussion about some infrastructure improvements in Brunswick Forest. I'll see if I can get an update on that and share it with you.

That'd be fine. Thank you very much. But I just think it is a town-wide issue.

Any other old or new business? One other piece of perhaps new business, but I get a lot of questions about status of certain projects and Looks like the public's area is going along pretty well. A number of people have asked about the athletic club over there by Lowe's. It seemed to be empty. And just curious if anyone in the town knows what's the prognosis of that particular location and what's happening in that area?

Sure. What I can share with you is they have passed all of their inspections to occupy the building. So at this point, if the building is not occupied, that sounds like it might be a decision of the tenant or of the folks who pursued the permit. We're not in conversations with the business about whether... My staff isn't in conversations with the business about whether they're moving in or not moving in. So I don't know the answer to whether or not O2 Fitness is moving forward, but if they... If they wanted to occupy the building, they have the permission to do so at this point.

Anything else? No. Thank you. Then we go on to staff, board, and committee monthly reports.

Sure, I can be brief. In the month of December, we issued 197 permits in total. 39 of those were for new single-family detached homes, 19 new townhomes. The inspections team performed about 1,900 inspections and the value of construction permitted was $14.2 million. Wanted to just remind you or let you know that the input period for the WMPO's Safe Streets and Roads for All Safety Action Plan is open right now through the end of the month. You probably recall that the town went through similar exercise a year and a half ago, two years ago. The MPO is also going through that exercise now. The difference really being only that it's for their entire planning region, which includes New Hanover County, portions of unincorporated Brunswick and some other towns in Brunswick County, and then some portions of Pender County. All of the recommendations from the town's plan will be included in the MPO regional plan, but this is still an opportunity to help spread the word and help provide any input about safety needs on the transportation network in the region. So there are a couple of different ways to do that. There's a survey that's open. There's a comment map similar to the one that the town had for our project. There's an open house at the Skyline Center in downtown Wilmington on February the 3rd from 5 to 7, specifically for this project to get input. And folks can learn more at WMPO.org slash safety action plan. So those are my updates for you tonight.

Just one question, and just without investigation off the top of your head. How would the permits from this last month compare, if you could, to like a year ago at the same time?

Residential permits have been slightly higher, were slightly higher in 25 versus 24, but still down from the years prior to that. So historically, March through about June are the busiest months for residential permitting. So over the next few months, I think that we'll have an idea of residential development in the community and how that's going to shake out this year. So it's been a little bit lower. We're seeing more non-residential permits, but not the volume at which we see residential, of course.

Thank you. Questions? No, sir. Seeing none, thank you, Mr. Andrea. That's it. We're on to number nine, adjournment. Do I have a motion to adjourn the meeting?

Do I have a second? Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right, that carries. And the next regular meeting will be held right here on February 24th at 6 p.m. in Town Hall. Thank you.