Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

We will begin shortly. We will... We will be conducting tonight's meeting in person as well as in virtual setting using Zoom. Members of the public may view and listen to the meeting tonight on Wave Channel 18 and online through the city's YouTube channel. If you would like to participate in live public comment via the Zoom platform, please refer to the agenda for instructions. Chair Eric Johnson will begin the meeting momentarily.

All right. Well, seeing that it's 6 o'clock, I call the July 15th, 2026 City of Lincoln Planning Commission meeting to order. Roll call, please, Secretary.

Commissioner Gilbert. Commissioner Hutchinson. Commissioner Jackson. Commissioner Jerry Johnson. And Chair Eric Johnson. Vice Chair Manning is absent with notification.

All right, thank you. Next item of business is Pledge of Allegiance, and Commissioner Peter Gilbert would please lead us in the pledge tonight.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, public for which it stands, under God, indivisible, and with justice for all.

Thank you, Commissioner Gilbert. Agenda modifications. Do we have any agenda modifications this evening? I'm seeing none. We'll move on to item number five, information items and disclosures. Do any of my fellow commissioners have any information items to share? Start on my right. All right. Nor do I seeing none. We'll move on to item number six, public comment on non-agenda items within the subject matter jurisdiction of this, of the commission citizens may address the planning commission on any item on the agenda. When the item is considered citizens wishing to speak may request to speak. by raising your hand when requested to do so. This is an opportunity to speak on non-agenda items. Please limit your comments to three minutes. Secretary, do we have any hands raised online or do we have anyone in the chambers that wishes to speak?

Thank you, Chair Johnson. I did not receive any comment cards. Does anybody in the room would like to make a public comment? I do not see any hands raised in the room and online. Does anybody have a public comment? There's actually nobody online. No speakers today.

Okay, thank you. Seeing none, we'll move on to item number seven, consent. All matters on the consent agenda are considered routine business and will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a request to remove a specific item for separate action is received. Any items removed will be considered after the remainder of the consent agenda. We only have one item on there, but do any of my colleagues wish to remove the item from the consent agenda? All right. Before I take a motion, is there any public comment on the consent agenda item?

I do not see any hands raised in the room and no one is online.

Okay. If not, may I have a motion?

Second.

All right. We have a motion and a second. Let's see. So we'll just do a voice call. So all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

I have to abstain. I was not here.

Perfect. All right. So we had three, zero, one abstention and one absent. or sorry, I need to count myself. All right. 4 0 1 1. Perfect. Thank you.

Can't forget myself in there.

All right. We'll move on to item number eight, uh, public hearings. This is item eight, a consideration of a design review application for the JLC concrete design review. And we have Efren Sanchez, our senior planner, who will give our staff report tonight. Please, Efren.

Thank you. Good evening, planning commissioners. Efren Sanchez, senior planner with Community Development Department. The project we have before you is a design review application for an industrial building and on-site improvements. The proposed project includes construction of a 2,182 square foot industrial building at 1316 Gliding Road. JLC Ready Mix Inc., the property owner and applicant, currently operates a concrete ready mix facility at the site. The new building would support JLC's concrete's existing operations by providing space for administrative offices and storage. Concrete trucks and equipment would continue to be stored on site. The proposed project would consolidate the company's operations to a single location. The proposed project is located west of gliding road near lincoln's northern city limit the site is generally surrounded by industrial development and open space. It is own industrial which allows you to such as concrete batch plants fabrication processing and production facilities storage and warehousing thus concrete ready mix facilities are permitted by right in the industrial zone. The site is primarily gravel and contains primarily gravel and contains several existing improvements, including an approximately 6,000 square foot round steel storage building and an approximately 1200 square foot industrial building and 107 foot tall monopole cell tower with associate ground equipment. The proposed construction would be located generally in the middle portion of the parcel. Less than one acre of the 11 acre site is expected to be developed. Specifically, the 0.84 acre project area would include material storage, concrete mixed equipment, truck ramps, retention pond, building pad for the new two-story industrial building, and utility connections to serve the building and concrete mixed equipment. As shown on the site plan access to the site would be provided from gliding road the proposed building would be served by two parking spaces, including one. Van accessible space and one standard space with a planter area Jason to the parking spaces, the two story building would have a maximum height of approximately 26 feet and would comply with the required zoning setbacks. The proposed project includes windows and doors on the north, east, and west elevations, which are potentially visible from Gliding Road, while the south elevations includes no windows or doors. The main entrance to the building would be on the east elevation, which is closest to Gliding Road. The color palette has a warm, earthy exterior palette using fiber cement siding and trimmed with a terracotta-toned metal roof. proposed structure is characterized by a model pitch roof over a two story rectangular building mass, with the pitch of the building facing north towards the concrete and mix equipment. This slide display the South and West elevations of the proposed building again note no South elevate the South elevation includes no windows or doors. This is a proposed floor plan for the building. Approximately 83% of the floor area will be utilized as office space and observation room, while the remaining floor area consists of staircase, break room and restroom. proposed project is consistent with the city's general plan and zoning ordinance. It states as stated in title 18 is the intent and the industrial zone to provide space for operations of heavy commercial, industrial and manufacturing industries. uses permitted under this designation include fabrication processing and production facilities origin warehousing. Staff finds that the proposed two-story 2,182 square foot plan observation room and office is supported by and consistent with the intent and purpose of the Lincoln Municipal Code. In May, the Design Review Board reviewed the proposed project and did not provide any comments or changes to the project. The DRB unanimously recommended approval of the project to the Planning Commission. The project is found to be exempt from environmental further environmental review pursuant to section 15303 of the sequel guidelines. The project is exempt because it meets the criteria of being located within urbanized area and its size. And then stone for the proposed use not involving significant amount of hazardous materials and does not exceed 10,000 square feet of for area. Therefore, in accordance with secret guidelines 15303 no further environmental analysis is required. Staff recommends that the Planning Commission conduct a public hearing, consider the information contained in the staff report and testimony of the public, and take the following actions. One, determine that the project is exempt from CEQA, and two, adopt a resolution approving the design review application for JLC concrete with project specific and typical conditions of approval. That concludes my presentation. Please let me know if you have any questions.

All right, thanks a friend doing my colleagues have any questions or comments before we open the public hearing.

or Johnson, I do this relative relative to the environmental finding. The project itself is surrounded on the West. and Southwest with wetland area. which frankly. has been neglected in the past. And I'm wondering what protections are built into the site design that will keep further on erosion of the, not erosion, but degradation of the wetland there.

Yeah, I can answer that. Let's see. As you can see on the site plan, it indicates the limits of the wetland.

And as you can see, there was an aerial shot that showed that better, but you can see it there with the elevation lines. You had a slide a couple before that.

Yeah, but yeah, so essentially it's set back from the limits of the wetland. And then, yeah, in the other slide, you can see the building itself would be in this area, whereas the wetlands will be here on the edge of the property.

But yes, I mean- Is there some fencing, some concrete walls? Anything to protect runoff from the property getting into the wetland?

Right. I mean, they're just, you know, the standard conditions of the one specific conditions of approval. You know, it's essentially, they're not going to be doing work over there, but if there were, then of course that triggers additional.

Yeah. Frankly, I'm more concerned with the ongoing, you know, if there's any way that we could, encourage them to protect the site, protect the wetland site.

Yeah, because this is the one that we went over, I believe. As part of the project, there's actually some environmental restoration that's kind of associated with it or some of the areas that got touched. And then we have a whole series of rules and regulations of what you can do in those wetland areas. And so what we're trying to get them to do is comply with the rules and regulations that we have in the books. I don't think that we want to do anything, like for instance, why wouldn't we put up a fence or something like that? We don't want to do anything that would actually further degrade that area and there will be limits to as to where they can operate and conduct business operations and things of that nature so a little bit's going to be you know periodically checking you know you know for enforcement making sure they're not doing business operations and kind of monitoring the wetlands but it's really more of so i don't want to give the inference that there's nothing that's being done it's more of just enforcing the rules that are already in place and making sure that those are good i'd be happy with that

More eloquently.

Thanks for the question. Any other questions before I open the public hearing? Seeing none, I'll now open the public hearing. Citizens wishing to speak on this item may request to speak by raising their hand when requested to do so. Please limit your comments to three minutes. Secretary, do we have any hands raised online or anyone in the chambers that wishes to speak?

I do not receive any comment cards. Would anybody in the room like to speak? Please come to the podium and state your name.

Kevin Sittle. I was at a design. So I was at the review board this cement operation and someone at that meeting brought up the effects of cement trucks rolling down Lincoln Boulevard at any given point in time you can see seven or eight cement trucks rolling down Lincoln Boulevard that's in addition to the logging trucks at that review At that board meeting, whichever it was, the individual that's asking for this said everything goes north. But now it's all rolling down Lincoln Boulevard. I live on First Street. I own a home on First Street. Two or three weeks ago, there were probably 50 fully loaded cement trucks rolling westbound on first street and empties coming back on first street i don't know what they were doing but if we're gonna have a cement company it adds traffic to lincoln boulevard and we already have a problem with logging trucks And now we have cement trucks rolling down Lincoln Boulevard. So that just exacerbates the problem. I'm not opposed to them developing their thing, but we need to get control over what's rolling down Lincoln Boulevard is my point. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Would anybody else in the room like to speak? There are no hands raised. Would anybody online like to speak? There was actually nobody online. So no, there are no more speakers.

Okay. Thank you. I'll now close the public hearing and bring it back to my colleagues. And I guess before I do that, I'm just curious. Thanks for your comment. And I guess, is that something that the city can kind of look into?

So the city did conduct a truck and travel evaluation as part of the downtown master plan. We did review different alternatives available to either alter or mitigate truck travel in general. This project before you really ends it related to truck travel. It's not a new business. It is an existing business providing some modifications that don't have anything to do with increasing the amount of truck travel. So it's not really relevant to what you're asking. We're asking you to approve this evening when we do bring forward the downtown master plan, we can have a discussion on the findings that we found related to truck travel. But I will give you a little teaser that they are all hundreds of millions of dollars in order to solve the problem.

Okay. Well, thanks for touching on that. Yeah. Realizing it's kind of out of the scope of this one. but it's good to know that it's on the radar being looked at and appreciate the comment kind of bringing that forward again. So thank you. So I'll bring it back to my colleagues. Anyone have any questions or comments, please?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Several years ago, I guess the year would be 20, either 2012 or 2013, While I was serving on the City Council, we had a discussion in various meetings with the people that manage and own the trucks, the big trucks that go down Lincoln Boulevard. And there were a couple of ideas or proposals, nothing ever done in any detail, Route them off of 193. And I'm going to say out the back end, you know, off of trying to think of the street, first street you come to off of 193 and you're headed down towards downtown East Street. Go East Street and then go down East Street and then come back onto Lincoln Boulevard and feed north. At the time, someone estimated the cost of doing that because they needed to widen the roadway for the big trucks to make the turns, et cetera. I seem to remember $1 million. And at the time, we were pinching pennies in the city. So $1 million was like $100 million to us. It's all in the eyes of the beholder, though. So I just wanted to share that with my colleagues. And it's going to be an expensive fix to ever get the trucks off of Lincoln Boulevard. I don't know how much, but it might serve us well to have somebody who does business with the city in the engineering field just to give us an estimate. in today's dollars. We may not do it today, but just so we and the staff and the City Council have some idea of the cost involved. And since you know that, my previous life on the City Council 45 years ago, we had a project come before us and we said, gee, would you make a major contribution towards solving this problem, which would help you? And they said yes. And they wrote the check. And at the time, that city was in very poor financial straits. So I think having some idea of what the costs might be could be valuable at some time. Because I'm very sensitive to the gentleman's comments. You know, I'm downtown like everybody else is. And there are times where the trip from one end to get to City Hall down Lincoln Boulevard is 70, 80 seconds. And there are times where it is 10 to 12 minutes. That's wasting a lot of gas, a lot of time. And something we should look at is, OK, guess what I'm saying.

We did provide a presentation to City Council on the truck route study, as well as some kind of broad cost estimates of the different alternatives that would be available. So that has been completed.

If we're taking traffic down East Avenue, that estimate better include sound retention walls.

If I could that that's not what the item is before you this evening, get back on track to the item that is before you. If this committee would like a presentation on the information that we gave city council on truck routes, we're happy to add that to the next agenda.

Mr. Chairman, in all difference to staff, we had one of our residents that brought up a point. I want to make sure that he was leaving here with the knowledge that not only are we aware of his comments, but that we hope to do something about it at some time in the future.

If you could please either come to the podium or reserve your comments for a later time.

Again, if you could please come to the podium before you're speaking.

My name is Kevin Siddle. Thank you all for being here. I avoid Lincoln Boulevard at all costs. I live on the other side of the tracks. I either do H Street or F. I only cross Lincoln Boulevard at a stoplight because traffic is so out of control, I won't cross Lincoln Boulevard without a stoplight. I get a green light, I'm good to go. Other than that, I avoid Lincoln Boulevard like it's the plague. I can go into other specifics, but I won't because this isn't the forum for it. But now we have cement trucks. In addition, we've had logging trucks rolling up and down G Street for years. and nobody's been able to get that under control. And now, in addition to that, we have cement trucks rolling up and down Lincoln Boulevard, G Street.

Yeah. Thank you for your comments.

Thank you for your consideration.

No worries. Yeah. So I think it'd be helpful to have a little informational session in the future, if you don't mind.

We're happy to bring that presentation to this commission.

Okay. Thank you. All right. Do any other comments, questions? If not, I'll entertain a motion.

Move adoption of the item before us. Second.

Okay. We have a motion and a second. We'll do a voice call. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. So I'll get this right. So it passes five zero zero one. Perfect. I included myself this time. All right. So we'll move on to item number nine, general business. It looks like we have none. So we'll move on to item number 10, informational items from staff director reports. Do we have any information from the staff to share?

I don't believe we have any informational items. We do have the tracker attached to your agenda of the upcoming projects and also the status of those projects. I did get a question before the start of the meeting regarding on the corner of Ferrari and Lincoln Boulevard. So I did just wanna provide a brief update that that project is through the entitlement stage. And as a result, the entitlements are considered vested, meaning that they won't expire. It is in the process of going through the building permit process. Some applications for building permits for some of the pads have been submitted, but not for all the pads and that's continuing to work through that process. There isn't necessarily a deadline in which a developer has to complete the building permit process as long as they are continuing to work with us and provide the information that we're asking for as long as they continue to pay the fees that are required and the applications of the building permit. that if it takes longer to get through that process, then it takes longer to get through the process. Once a building permit is provided and approved, it does have an expiration date, but generally it has been the city's practice that if a building permit has been approved, and has stalled for whatever reason, perhaps financing or lack of materials that the city's past practice has been to provide an extension of those permits. So, but that's where that project is. It's through the entitlements and going through the building permit process. Thank you.

That information. All right, item number 11, commissioner comments. Do any of my colleagues have any comments? All right. I don't have any either. So seeing none, we'll move to adjournment. We're now adjourned.