Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Time's 6 o'clock. I would like to call the meeting to order. 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 and live streamed. The public and media may also videotape these proceedings at any time. At this time, I'd like to remind everyone to place their cell phones on vibrate or turn them off so as not to disturb the business of tonight's meeting. I ask everyone to please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. We'll now move on to the approval of the agenda. Does anyone have any amendments to the agenda? No. Seeing none, then I would ask if someone would make a motion. Yes. So move. And second. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Item four, approval of minutes. This is the April 22nd, 2025 minutes. I believe everyone has them in their packet. Does anyone have any amendments to the minutes?

No.

Seeing none, again, I would ask if someone would make a motion to approve them as presented. So moved.

So moved.

Seconded. Seconded. Thank you. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Thank you. Move on to item five. Do we have any guest speakers? Seeing none, then we'll proceed to item six, the quarterly update for Leland 2045 comprehensive plan. Ms. Ferzinger will now present the quarterly update for Leland comprehensive plan.

Thank you, good evening everyone. So yeah, I'm doing the Leland 2045 quarterly update this evening. The Leland 2045 comprehensive land use plan is something you all are familiar with. It's our planning document that guides us through growth and outlines goals, policies, and implementation strategies for that. And this was adopted in 2021 through a pretty comprehensive public engagement process. And through that, we had six themes come out of it. The six themes are guided in this presentation, so I won't go read them off the slide here. But our first theme, highly valued protected natural and cultural resources. We don't have any updates this quarter moving this theme forward, but we have had some internal conversations about how low impact development or green infrastructure could look here at the town of Leland, but we haven't initiated that action item yet, but it is something on our radar and a priority for us. We don't have any updates for the second theme, livable, diverse, and connected neighborhoods either, but we are still having, again, internal conversations about how we can increase connectivity in the town. Our third theme, a resilient and stable economy. We have been focusing a lot on researching ways to expand and diversify our economic development. So this quarter, the Leland Tourism Development Authority released a survey and collected responses as well as held an open house at the Cultural Arts Center and this was an opportunity for the public to provide feedback on the future of tourism in Leland and what they envision that looks like. Next theme, an inclusive, supported, healthy, safe, and educated community. We have spent a lot of time in action item H2. As you can see, we had initiated and completed the plan to support aging in place. That was through our age-friendly strategic plan. And we've been doing a lot of activities with AARP in their partnership to further this theme. And specifically this quarter, we partnered with the Caregivers Academy, which is made up of AARP, the Alzheimer's Association, the Cape Fear Council of Governments Area Agency on Aging, and the Lower Cape Fear Life Care, as well as Brunswick Senior Resources to offer an event at the Cultural Arts Center where we showed a documentary by Seth Rogen about how to care for loved ones with dementia. And then we also followed that showing to discuss where services are in Brunswick County for people struggling with dementia as well as for those caring with loved ones with dementia. And then we also discussed where those service gaps exist and brainstormed how the town could come in to fill some of those gaps. next theme infrastructure that supports community life we have prioritized action item i4 this quarter we have really moved forward some recommendations for new streets roads trails sidewalks and paths We had two walk audits through Lend a Hand Leland. The first one was conducted in partnership with We Live Here Leland, and that was done last October in the Westgate area. The second walk audit was done in March. That was in partnership with AARP, the North Carolina Coastal Chapter. And we all got together and analyzed the results of the walk audits, and we presented those to town council. So that first walk audit was done in the Westgate area, and the second one with ARP was done in the Gateway District. And so those results were analyzed and presented. And then the Safe Streets for All Comprehensive Safety Action Plan was adopted last month at town council. And then our last theme, an active participant in a cooperative region. We have not done anything this quarter to move this theme forward, but we are still having conversations about how we can cooperate or work regionally with other municipalities to move forward this theme. And that is all I have. Any questions?

Any questions? Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll move on then to seven, public comment. I don't believe we have anybody signed up, do we, Adam?

No, sir.

Okay. Then item eight, action item. First of all, does anybody have a conflict of interest or a disclosure statement in place on the record regarding this?

No.

Seeing none, then we will proceed. We have a recommendation for adoption of a CAMA land use, and again, Ms. Ferzinger will now present the recommendations.

Yes, I hope you're not sick of me already, because I'm up here again. So this last couple of months, we've been working on writing a CAMA land use addendum to our Leland 2045 plan. So I'll go over exactly what CAMA is, the Coastal Area Management Act, as well as what the addendum includes, and then the staff recommendation for the addendum. So the Coastal Area Management Act or CAMA, I'll say throughout the presentation, is a state law that protects, preserves, and manages the coastal resources across the state. So CAMA is enforced by Department of Environmental Quality or DEQ. Their office is the Division of Coastal Management that enforces CAMA. And so all 20 coastal counties across the state are required to have their local land use plan certified by CAMA. And we're not a county, obviously, so we're not required to have ours CAMA certified. But we're choosing to do so because once our policy is CAMA approved and certified, it would be implemented on the state level when people are applying for CAMA permits. So it requires, because of this, approval is required by the state for us to have a CAMA land use plan. And we have to make sure that we include some local policies that we find fit our vision and our goal that address growth and future development in the town of Leland. When our 2045 land use plan is certified with this adoption of the CAMA land use addendum, it would provide a broad range of policy guidance to both individual projects and then other federal issues. So this first map here is showing, this is nowhere in particular in North Carolina, it's just sort of showing what exactly CAMERA requires for buffering for the different types of public water. So for inland waters, which is like fresh waters, creeks, rivers, that requires a 30 foot buffer, but the coastal waters require a 75 foot buffer. So this map here is a map of Leland, of our planning area, showing exactly where our CAMA areas are located within the town. So the pink areas that you guys see here, those are coastal waters or joint waters. So that's either coastal or brackish water. Those are waters that require a 75-foot buffer. And then in the green, which is a little bit harder to see, but it's sort of along these creeks you see here, those are our inland waters, which require a 30-foot buffer. And I zoomed in here just to give a little bit of an example about what that would look like. So this area over here is Cypress Cove Park. And as you can see, the green back there is indicating that there is a CAMA-identified area of environmental concern, and that is the inland water. So that would require a 30-foot buffer, any development there. And if you were to develop there, you would have to apply for a special CAMA permit through the state. And so that's sort of why it would be beneficial to us to have our policies considered when applying for a special CAMA permit. So the addendum or what we're calling the CAMA land use addendum, it's an addition to the Leland 2045 plan. And there's just some updates that we had to include to meet CAMA certification. Some of that includes some data updates. We also needed to update our action playbook. And then we also wanted to include the policies that would be needed to be met for the CAMA permits. So for data updates, we had to include two, per CAMA guidelines, we had to include two decennial census data. So we pulled 2010 and 2020. When the plan was originally adopted in 2021, because of COVID, the 2020 census data was not yet available. So that addition was pretty simple. We just went in and added that for population growth and housing demographics, and then NCDOT provides some transportation and traffic data that was added. And then Brunswick Sewer and Water, or H2GO, provided some information and data about our water supply and wastewater system needs. So for population growth, it's no surprise to anybody that Leland is seeing a great amount of growth. Our population has more than doubled between 2010 and 2023. And we are one of the fastest growing municipalities in North Carolina. we anticipate a yearly average of about 2 000 people moving to leland and by 2050 we are looking at a population of over 80 000. we're growing at a rate much faster than the state of north carolina and even brunswick county as you can see In terms of demographics, on par with our population increase, we also see that our households are increasing. We have more households in Leland. We had a 93% increase, which is much higher than North Carolina's 15% increase between 2010 and 2023. So Brunswick County you can see is growing also pretty rapidly, but Leland itself is growing very fast. The median age in Leland also rose slightly between 2010 and 2023. We are seeing similar trends across Brunswick County and also pretty similar across North Carolina. We are, I think it is a statewide trend, or I know it's a statewide trend that about a third of our population is over the age of 65, but that's pretty reflected across the state. And then for housing demographics, we see that most of our housing units in Leland are single family homes. Most people in Leland are owning rather than renting. And a nice statistic that I wanted to point out is that our vacancy rate is decreasing, which is great to see. Another nice statistic is that the median home value or the value of our homes in Leland has grown by 80% since 2010 and 2023. So the value of our homes are growing higher than they are in North Carolina. This next map here is North Carolina Department of Transportation's annual average daily traffic counts. It's a little bit hard to see, but I'll just point out some of the most important takeaways on here. So in the yellow, we see US 17 is our primary road with high traffic. We're seeing an average of greater than 55,000 vehicles traveling on 17 each day. That's probably used mostly for commuter traffic and freight traffic. But then we have Old Fayetteville Road and Village Road. We're seeing some pretty moderate traffic there. It's greater than 5,000 vehicles traveling on those roads each day. And so that's important for us to note for local connectivity. But I think this map just shows sort of how we can plan ahead for future growth in terms of our infrastructure of roads. And then this data was provided by Brunswick Regional Water and Sewer, H2GO. We have no identified water supply watersheds or wellhead protection areas in town limits, which is important to note because we don't need any regulatory protection over those. We have had no documented public or private water system overflows, but since 2005, there have been 21 documented wastewater overflows or issues that may degrade the quality of our water that could be a threat to our public health. And H2O let us know that considering population projections, they are not anticipating to increase any of the water or sewer connections for the foreseeable future, so that number will stay the same. Moving on to our action playbook updates, we just went into our action playbook and added timing that was specific to a fiscal year. So instead of it saying ongoing or upcoming, it says FY24 through ongoing or FY26 to FY28. And then lastly of the presentation, we'll go over the CAMA management goals, which guided the policies that we'll go through. So there's five goals determined by CAMA for their management. First one is to bolster public access. That's increasing water access to public trust water. And then the second goal is ensuring land use compatibility with our natural systems and other similar uses. Third is ensuring infrastructure carrying capacity. That's like looking at those roads that we were, the annual average daily traffic data. That is, that's a mouthful. But it's like looking at stuff like that to determine if our infrastructure is on par with our growth. And then our fourth goal is to conserve and maintain our natural hazard areas or areas of environmental concern. And then lastly, it's the production, maintenance, and enhancement of water quality. So for our first goal, policies 1.1 and 1.2 cover how we'll increase our water access. One, by partnering with other agencies to provide water access for people with all abilities. And policy 1.2 is to support commercial operations that would promote recreational activities within public waterway. Goal two, to ensure land use compatibility. We have policies 2.1 through 2.5, I think, goes over to the next slide. But we are limiting the density and intensity of development in areas immediately adjacent to areas of environmental concern. We're also prohibiting floating homes and houseboat communities, which we defined here so nobody gets confused. And then we are also going to aim to prioritize shared use facilities for public and private docs, as well as participate in regional hazard mitigation planning and implementation, and then only allow moorings with there is no adverse effect on the navigation channels. To ensure infrastructure carrying capacity, we'd like to prohibit clear cutting, mowing, and removal of vegetation within an AEC unless authorized by CAMA. And then also limiting dredging activities For goal four, to conserve and maintain natural hazard areas, policies 4.1 through 4.3 are to prohibit the use of estuaries for development activity, which would result in some sort of significant impact on the natural function of those areas. And then also limiting the density and intensity of development in areas that are susceptible to flooding. And then also considering acquiring property, especially for those that have repetitive flood loss damage. And then our last goal, to protect, maintain, and enhance water quality. The town will aim to inform the public about the importance of stormwater management. We also would like to encourage development practices that are low impact or green infrastructure designs that really reduce runoff, improve water quality. And then we'd also like to integrate water quality considerations into our land use planning. So we're optimizing stormwater management And then only allowing hardened shoreline protections if there is no other feasible option. And then lastly, 5.5, the town shall preserve and enhance where possible all existing wetland areas to improve our water quality and provide a buffer for flooding. And the staff's recommendation is to recommend the adoption of the CAMA land use addendum to the Leland 2045 comprehensive land use plan.

Any questions? I believe there's no one signed up for public comment on this?

No, sir.

So questions?

I just have a couple of comments. I appreciate all the work that you've done. And I took this as an opportunity, of course, to bring out my original Leland 2045 plan and go through it like a typical linear person would and to find everything. And it's quite impressive. I just hope that what I'm reading here, what you've told us, will come to pass because it's absolutely wonderful for those of us who believe in living in a community that is all things to all people at all ages, all states. You know I had to say that, but anyway. But just one question thing about this housing. I did see... in the original Leland 45 plan that the housing mix numbers in this book were higher than what's in the addendum. I'm just wondering what that means.

Yeah, I noticed that too. And I was looking into that. I think that Are you talking about this data? Yes. I think that we are just seeing a lot of single-family detached homes in the town rather than multi-unit, multi-family homes.

Okay, got you. Yes. There are a lot of townhomes going up. This seems to be the... prevailing use of our land now. So that's good, but thank you. I was wondering about, I thought, how can that be less? But I guess I didn't delve into it that much, but I liked it. And I appreciate the opportunity that you noted about regional cooperation, because I don't want to keep getting on my soapbox about transportation, regional transportation, but I think that's critical, too, to be looked at for the future. Absolutely, absolutely.

Mr. Lazzaro.

Thank you for your presentation. Just really quickly, what kind of, with the adoption of this, does it open up additional funding opportunities for grants, state, federal, or other?

Great question, and I just spent a lot of time looking into that this morning because I was curious about the same thing. And yes, we are. It would open up more eligibility for grants in a way that having a CAMA land use plan, for lack of a better term, looks better on us. And I can't speak to how DEQ does their grant processes, but they prioritize municipalities that have a CAMA land use plan for some of their grant funding, yes.

Could you just give me an example of what would require a CAMA permit?

Yes, it's all of these policies is what we would require for our- I mean a kind of project. Like if somebody wanted to build a dock in their backyard, if it was leading up to a waterway.

Other questions? One question. Not to be against a CAMA, I guess. Have you guys looked into what potential drawbacks there might be to implementation for our town, considering the small percentage of our acreage?

Yeah. No, I haven't necessarily looked into drawbacks. Have you? I did talk to my contact at DEQ, and he said, we don't really have many people applying for CAMA permits within the town of Leland, but it's always good to have, because when it comes up, we're able to reference your land use plan. And so obviously, we're doing a public comment period, so people who live here are able to put a say in to what goes in our agenda.

Other questions? I have one comment, two comments, really. Number one, very thorough. I like it. Excellent presentation. While I don't want to pick on any one specific, I'm not trying to prioritize any one specific policy, I think it was 5.1 in there. There was about public education on stormwater. Please do that. Yes. I can't tell you the amount of questions and the misunderstandings as to what stormwater and why it's important and how it is done that I get almost on a daily basis in the area I live in.

Yeah.

So I'm glad to see you doing that. Really, if you can do any way you can get the public to understand, it'd be great.

Totally. Thank you.

I'll second that one.

The amount of people who don't understand what a stormwater pond is.

And why it needs to be maintained.

Or what it costs.

Right. Other questions? Seeing none, then I think we're ready to have a motion. Anyone make a motion?

I so move that we allow the planning department to move forward to the council with this recommendation.

We have a motion. Do I have a second?

Second.

Okay, second by Mr. Burling. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Carried, thank you.

Thank you.

Old and new business. Any old or new business? Seeing none, then we're ready for staff reports.

Thank you, good evening. Just give you some quick stats for the month of April. We issued 212 permits. 34 of those were for new single family detached homes and 40 new townhomes. Performed just shy of 3,000 inspections and the value of construction was just over $18 million. some transportation related updates we are reviewing the final final draft of our integrated mobility plan and our intention is to bring that to you all next month and present that to you uh... actually are partner on the project will be doing the presentation but nonetheless that's coming to you and then hopefully to town council in July for adoption so just as a refresher that's essentially a local version of a metropolitan transportation plan so it's a plan that includes all the wish lists for transportation related projects in and around the town limits The WMPO kicked off their Safe Streets and Roads for All plan. They got a grant, the same kind of grant that the town got a couple years ago. Well, got a grant two years ago, but just wrapped up the project recently. So now the same sort of plan is being done on a regional level to include all of the WMPO planning area, which includes the town of Leland. The WMPO's plan will essentially double down on the town's Safe Streets and Roads for All plan. So all of our recommendations will also be in that other plan, which kind of makes it even better for grant eligibility or attractiveness, I guess. And then finally, the regional metropolitan transportation plan, also an effort done by the MPO. They have to do that every five years. That's the plan that has all of the transportation-related projects at the regional level. That's wrapping up. I'm on the steering committee, and we just had our final meeting, so that's going to be concluding and going to the MPO, going through the adoption process at the MPO. So that's all I had to present to you. Is there any questions that I may be able to help with?

I just noted, I think it was in Star News, there was some article about the bridge. Yes, sir. Yes. And I think some of the implications were they're still talking about possibly a toll bridge, and I believe that the town has taken action as before in not recommending a toll bridge, but I don't know if things have changed with respect to that because of difficulties in financing or whatever, so.

Well, the town council had a robust conversation about that at their last meeting, and if you wanted to hear that, you could. rewind the tape, so to speak, if that's available. But the gist of the conversation, not to speak for council, but just my own summary of that, was that they still maintain that position. So the WMPO board tomorrow is supposed to vote on whether to proceed with this concept, with it including a toll, and the mayor, the town's mayor, is on the MPO board.

Okay. The article made the, I don't know if it's assumption or whatever, that basically that was the only way the bridge was going to get repaired. That was by making a toll. Was that a, in your opinion, was that an accurate statement or not?

I can't really substantiate whether that's accurate or not. I think that part of the town's opinion is that the prioritization process that the state has may not look favorably on bridge projects which results in a bridge replacement project in particular ranking lower in comparison to other projects so but that statement has certainly been said by particularly by ncdot

Is there a, I don't know if it was the same article, but there was a reference that the Army Corps of Engineers is specifically going for the 135 foot, which is the higher span, which would put the exit from 3rd, I think they said back to 5th Street. Is that the one they're definitely moving forward with, do you know?

It's my understanding that both the Army Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard have pretty significant input into the ultimate what is chosen. It's my understanding that the Army Corps' rationale was that the higher clearance above the water would result or necessitate less channel dredging, which is why they're choosing to have recommended that higher one. I don't know if those comments are the end all for the, make the decision to be the 135 feet, but it's my understanding that their comments are important and influential.

Last unrelated question to that. The new shopping center, where's that at in TRC? Is that coming sooner than later?

It's still in the TRC review. So with any project, there's a series of back and forths, as you probably know. Series of back and forths to ultimately get a project to the approvable state. Gotcha.

I get a lot of questions asked about that one. Sure, I understand.

I think we all do. Yeah.

I also noted some mobilization going up around New Point and Westgate. Looks like you're going to start that new little circle there. What's that work looking like?

The last update that I'm aware of was that we're working through a final right-of-way acquisition project. So I'm not prepared to say when that construction is going to start. I just don't know.

It looks like they've got markers around and equipment and other things happening there.

It's possible that they're out there surveying for right-of-way acquisition. Similar process going on for the pedestrian crossing on 17th.

Thank you. Other questions? Thank you. Thank you very much. That is the end of the business part of this. So I'd be ready to accept a motion. Anyone has it for adjournment? So moved. Moved by Mr. Brown. Second. I'll second. Thank you. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Thank you. Next meeting of the planning board will be held on June 24th at 6 p.m. right here in Town Hall. Thank you all.

Thank you.