Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay. All right. Good evening. At this time, I would call to order the May 21st Columbia Burough Planning Commission workshop. Could I have a roll call, please? Sure. Chairperson Wikenheiser here. Vice Chair Tin present. Secretary Belin here. Member Evans here. Member Hartman here. Member Roach, memberlair here. Okay. I did have an email from Nathan that he would probably be unavailable again this evening and uh I think within our meeting we need to put feelers out for at least an alternate. Um, I went back to Nathan. It's his decision to make. I know he is on school board and he was on the ballot for school board again. So, I don't know if there's some overcommitment there, but we'll see how that plays out. But if there is anybody you know of that we can approach, you know, even if Nathan is able to remain, we we still have no alternative at this time. Okay. So, um, moving on to the agenda. Do I have a motion regarding the minutes of our April 15th meeting as presented in our packet? Do I have a second? I'll second that. Okay. I have a motion from Belin and a second from Tin. Any comments,

corrections? Hearing none, all in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Okay. Ordinance 957. This has been quite the process putting this together. This ordinance as presented in our packets is at this time been through council review at their meeting last week. They motioned to forward it to both Columbia Burough Planning for review and comment and to forward to Lancaster County Planning for their review and comment. They're trying to move this forward as quickly as possible, but in all probability, it's going to be the July, possibly August time frame before this uh would be back to council for a vote for passage and to amend. So, this is basically what we worked on at our March 20th joint meeting. I hope you've had a chance to review it. Um I know following our last work session there was still some comments regarding um in particular definitions for the uh package delivery service as to what that was going to be. Uh there has also been a change there.

Section three of the proposed ordinance has to do with the building height. And where this came from was um council president zinc that when they started looking further at some other areas of the ordinance right now um you could put a 90 foot building within 30 foot of a residential property line. So that is what that section three is addressing. And then they also found there was another ordinance that they found that they really liked that section three number five that it has to do with uh shadows being cast by the building. And what they have done is currently if you were to look at section 3, if you were to look at chapter 220 26B3, there are five numbered items under there. And the fifth item referred to the airport. So that has been eliminated and replaced by that. No building or structure shall be constructed which will cause a shadow on the south facing wall of any dwelling measured at the first floor between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 3 p.m. on any winter solstice day, December 21st. So that was one thing that was added plus the provision for the setback that it would increase based on any additional height that 30 foot was based on a 35 foot height of a building.

So um the actual table anything that is boldfaced are the changes that are being made and which were agreed upon at our March 20th meeting. And then the other thing is in section five of the ordinance um changing the table of dimensional requirements to what we were discussing as to the minimum lot area and the maximum coverage being changed. So I think a lot of what we are seeing in here follows along with some of the suggestions that Justin had made. I don't know if there are any things within that that you feel need to be changed. And uh the thought was that any recommendations we would make would be uh basically the minimous changes that if this goes forward to planning commission in its current even if we were to decide to make some minor changes to it, it would not have to go back to county planning. and council has a final say. If uh county planning comes back with something and council doesn't agree with it, it's it's their decision. Am I right, Justin? Yeah. Yes. Yeah, it is. It is their decision. Correct. So, um I I thought it was very

well done, too. Yeah. So, took into account all the feedback from our joint meeting and uh all of yours, which is great. Thank you very much for your feedback. Yeah. Well, sorry about the uh I don't know you guys couldn't open it. I was trying to get it done before I left town that week and I don't know. Everything it was in the cloud and right stayed there I guess. There were thunderheads. Yeah. I'm adapting slowly, I guess. So, I think the other thing we're seeing here is with this ordinance, we're finally uh codifying both the uh marijuana dispensary and the tattoo ordinance that those were the two that were lost never made it into the ordinance. Mary, I thought that we had discussed the possibility of um highway commercial for the marijuana dispensary and now it's just in like business in industrial. Yeah, it's an industrial but not highway. How does that change now that the state is trying to have marijuana recreationally? Because once it goes recreational, you don't even need medical marijuana. That'll be controlled by the state like the liquor control board. I would do away with dispensaries because one of not necessarily one of the things is in the definition of smoke shelf. We have THC and THCA. And there was actually discussion as to whether it was beneficial or not to leave that in the description. And with uh the solicitor there that evening, they felt that leave

it in that it would help and and the CBD. And I actually thought Tiffany with the uh the dispensary that the ordinance called for it to be in the light industrial. The ordinance itself called for it to be in the light industrial and our discussion was to also add it to the light business. I didn't know that highway commercial had entered into discussion as uh okay a permitted use there. Which one is that? The marijuana dispensary was but was that what was that by the by the ordinance it was permitted yeah it was permitted there and we added it to the print with this ordinance guy. Yeah. So the Yeah, the smoke shops though are right strictly in the highway commercial. Right. Not that we need anymore. Right. Right. You see in the restaurant that one down the street. Yep. I wish there was something better like some sort of better state law that well it should be enforced down for that right it's the it's the grocery store that opened down next to B& uh oh printing with lights that were so bright right cars that would be against harb Right. And we have our daycare, our child

daycare in there as permitted the accessory and accessory use. Right. So I think the the tables pretty much I I think the tables have it set the way we had agreed to it. Right. I think the definitions uh I know we had quite the discussion about the package delivery distribution center and I would like to know that you are all okay with that definition as it is there a facility of 50,000 square foot maximum that specializes in transporting pack packages weighing less than 150 pounds from one location to another. Yes. Are you okay with that, Brad? Yeah. I mean, I expanded an email for you. Yeah, I know. You expanded and if if you want it concise and that's good for me because the one you had was from point A to point B and there was other Yeah, I kind of expanded on it a bit, but I don't know how much we really need to expand on that. It it pretty much says and I think what needs to be said. I replied to you in that email that we would discuss it right. I appreciate So you think that pretty much hits it? I mean I think the whole conversation with council and then you know I'm assuming discussion in in April too. Mhm. It is what you define it as and there's no perfect way to do it. So I mean I guess you know having taken a look at it issues. I think the concern was just trying to make sure there wasn't huge

warehouses down there with all the truck traffic. Right. And then these changes will be incorporated into the existing because this is not all of the TAR permitted uses. So these would be incorporated into the attachment to to the zoning ordinance. And did you see the addition of the height restriction? Yes, we we already discussed that. Sorry, I'll say that. And we were good with that. I like that whole shadow the shadow thing. I like that. I didn't even think about that sent that. But that makes sense. Especially like someone like me that has lots of plants. So if I had good light coming in and a building went up to block all my light, I'd be kind of upset. So I think at at this point to put that in what I said I would have never thought to put that in. Me neither. Me neither. And it makes sense. It was the McGinness team meeting. They were like, "Oh, wait a minute. What about height?" And then they explained it like the way you're written now, you can go 35 off 35 feet off the property line and put up a 90 foot building. You really want that, you know, maintain the character of the community, the residential neighbor. Yeah. What that section does Yeah. that that changed to 220 26B3. Currently there were there were height restrictions for several of the

districts and then it said within all other districts. So that's now being changed to within the light business districts. and that definition number three is being changed to that and then four will remain the within all other districts. So right now you're only listing height restrictions in the CRR, LDR, MDR, HDR, MDRB, NCP, and LB. Any other districts would fall under number four within this section. That's what it was. M and then number five was for the airport was for the airport. See also the burough airport approach. So that no longer exists. Okay. Mhm. So I am going to ask after all we have done with this in trying to get this together. Is the planning commission members in attendance comfortable with moving this forward? Yes. As presented. Yes, no further changes. So you will see on the planning commission meeting there is a line item to recommend the approval. Mhm. So, I I've reached the point and I hope we're within bounds to do this that council has their work sessions and then a week later they have their

council meeting where they can take action for us to have our work sessions and wait a month to take action. I am looking at setting the precedent that if there are items we're going to be discussing, I'm going to put them on our planning commission agenda. Sure. To take action the same evening. I think we did lose one item there about a year ago. There was an ordinance that we had looked at. We were on car 921. Why do I think it was 921? So what I discuss with Paula when we set the agendas, if there are things that we are going to act on following discussion, we're going to put it on the agenda. We're going to get it all out and not lose it. So any further discussion, we will move forward with this then to make our recommendation, make our vote at our planning commission meeting. Great. Um I think we need the next thing on our agenda here is to get back to the zoning district consolidation. We had started this how long ago and then we got pulled away and I think at this time we need to get back to this. And the other thing at one point I think Jessica was working on the additional dwelling unit.

Oh, the accessory dwelling unit. The accessory dwelling units. Yes. And I think we may need to get back and because I think a while ago I had heard something from council that they felt that that was something we needed to to follow up on too, that that was becoming a hot item and we need to have something. So Paul, if you would follow up with Jessica for our next meeting to see if she had put anything together on that and if she had, you know, would she be able to to forward or present to us that we're not going to lose that? Did the short-term rental thing get worked out? The short-term rental out of our March 20th meeting, we basically left that as is. Correct. That there was nothing being done to that, that there was discussion among several council members about combining short and long-term rentals into a combined ordinance. Wasn't that discussed at the joint meeting? Yes. So that at this point the short-term rental was left sit as it was. We we were not going to make any changes until the decision was made. If that's the direction that council wanted to go to combine those, it did make sense on us beating our heads against the wall about making changes to short-term rental if it's going to be consolidated. So, Heather, is that still the direction

that council wants to go? Is anyone working on it? They should I don't think they should be comin I just I don't I I don't I have reservations on how that would work. Um because there are obviously things that we would want to regulate the short-term rental that we would there's apples and oranges there. You're you're trying, right? But I believe Kelly's working or at least he should be legislating, right? Um I I don't know. I mean, I can ask him. Okay. I can also touch base with him to find out what he wants to do with that. What would your feedback be, Paula? I'm not so sure they should be together. They're two different totally different. So that should be related. And Heather shared with me a document from county planning. I love it. There the simplified zoning. There are some things that I love and some things that I don't. I like the way that it focuses more on like the the um Glenn gave us the presentation and the it has so many districts. Obviously, not everyone would have to have all of

those districts because there were a lot of agricultural districts which are nothing to us. That's right. But instead of focusing on permitted uses, it focuses on permitted impacts. So something could have moderate traffic impact or um increases pedestrian traffic, which you know for residential that's what you want. Uh, what I didn't like about it was that it left it too subjective in those impacts. Like it says moderate noise impact or moderate noise increase. Well, what might be moderate to me is a whole lot different than what's moderate to my neighbor. And so, how do you define moderate? That's what I didn't like. And I didn't like um also thinking about it, if we if you look at it that way and take out all of like the permitted the permitted uses and go to impacts, we would not be able to regulate a smoke shop. We would not be able to regulate a tattoo. Like those individual uses would be gone. And I'm not sure that I'm ready to give that up either. So Heather, I think one of the things when you approached me with this is to have him come and give a presentation to planning. Was that one of the things? Yeah. Went she is more than happy to to to come and have a conversation with any municipality. I think she's just thrilled that we have something to present at this point because like you said, Mary, they've been working on this for years. Yeah, pre we were part of

that preco there with attorneys and realtors and that yeah and what I'm bringing this up one of the reasons I'm bringing this up now is you know we're looking at combining our districts but would planning commission try want to try to set up something for our next workshop which would be June 17th. to find out if she would be available to come and give a give a presentation. Yeah, I can send an email. And in the meantime, what I would like to do is Heather sent this to me as electronically. It is 58 pages. Yes, it is. And I would send it to you, you know, kind of give you a a heads up as to what it is. But it's it's very interesting and based on what we did that was at least two three years ago precoid it was around the time of co that's when we were having the big meetings down down at county planning. Yeah. And I think Jessica touched on that a little bit during the comp plan meetings. Mhm. So if you know we could set her up to come for our 17th meeting, that would be great. Work session. The work session. We do it with the work session. Okay. Yeah, that's what the document looks like. anything.

So, it is it is quite a lengthy document and as Heather said, there are quite a number of the things that would not apply to us because there's a lot of agricultural there's a lot of in there. It would apply more to the townships. Sure. Than to the bur. How would the applicant present that kind of information to the zoning hearing board impact? Bring these questions because because Yeah. Because if one of them is say vehicle traffic, well, if you come into my block at quarter to 8 in the morning, you're going to see lots of walking and lots of cars because of school, right? If you come at 1:30, there's nobody around. Mhm. And if you come back at 3:00, you're going to have the same thing. It's just I mean that was kind of my thought process when Jessica presented that. I was like, "Oh, yeah. How do you do that?" So, and it's subjective. That's what Yeah, that was the big thing that I didn't like is that it is really subjective. How do you monitor or how do you how do you gauge, you know, moderate odor impact? What is that? Yes. Somebody may be more sensitive to something than someone else. Exactly. Right. Yeah. But I think it's it's being proposed. It's been hanging out there for a number of years. And if you know we have someone willing to come and talk to us about it, present it, it's something for us to look at because I truthfully think that our zoning ordinance and I think there are a number of people who agree it needs to be redone. Well, it is that goes without saying.

All you have to do is use it for a few years and you know it's it's not user friendly. to make it more use user friendly or to reduce some of the bulk of it. You could do that without going full you know completely go that way. I mean there may be some certain areas where we could make it simpler right without going full because you're right I mean enforcement becomes a bigger problem when there's no defined standard right that and so that and evaluating whether you can issue a permit for something if it's based on subjective things makes it pretty difficult the staff to do that. So, I think it sounds like we're all kind of on the same in the same boat as we don't want to create more problems by trying to solve the the ones that we have, but there's probably some ways that we can do make it better. You're right. A full rewrite is probably in the cards at some point and we're not alone there. You know, you can't just keep amending amending amending, right? that you lose track of what your actual content is. [Music] So, sorry. Okay. Consolidation. We had this came out, some of this came out of the comp plan, the future land use map. about going from 17 to one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, basically seven to eight zoning districts

and Oops. Thank you. That's what I said. 58 pages there, you know, and and even looking at that, there were different um downtown the downtown was defined in several different ways. So, um, industrial in the proposed zoning map. That would be light business, light industrial and general industrial would be the districts combined to form the strictly industrial area. Although I guess we'd be leaving out LB this time since I don't think they want to council combine that with the industrial district, right? No, not since they did that. So that's leaving you still with you would just be combining LI and LG for industrial for industrial [Music] The other one was what? DCNC and MDRB. Is that what you have there? Yeah, because they're looking at a a downtown mixed use. Oh, that's right. Yeah. SL

which would be um downtown commercial, riverfront commercial, medium density, residential and neighborhood commercial [Music] zoning to combine all those into a strictly downtown mixed use. And the only thing with that is if you combine all of those, that would open up your short-term rental because your short-term rental is in the medium density residential business. But you would still have the provision there defining the structure for the short-term rental that it would still have to be you still have to meet those criteria those criteria but it would open up other areas of the burrow for STRs if they could comply with those right with those uh restrictions on it. And there would be a gateway commercial. Who is that? Good evening. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. How are you? Which one is gateway? What was that? Route 30 interchange previously zone downtown commercial, highway commercial, and late industrial.

That's that's described as in gateway commercial future land use a small area along South Front Street and the existing commercial area along an Lancaster Avenue east of Shauny Ruin. Okay. Bas it split the highway commercial. It splits the highway commercial at Shaun. Yeah. at Shauny. Yeah, because it takes some of that from uh northwest of Shauny Run into that downtown mixed juice [Music] conservation combined commercial recreation which is a burough farm, rural residential which is the cottages is and uh they're looking at Zion Hill Cemetery and a buffer along both sides of Shauny and Strickler Run. That would be the conservation, you know. Look over the sea. the maps, see how they look, see how it would affect your tables there. And I think we'll continue this. If short-term rentals get taken out of the zoning, the table, right? That's right. if they were to combine

them. But the thing is, it seems like part of the thing with short-term rentals is wanting to expand where they would be allowed. And I think that was one of the main discussions when we had our joint meeting that there was a desire to expand it. So that would allow for that, but they still have to meet the criteria and that would help to keep it right. Didn't seem like there was consensus on which direction to go though. So no, still has yet to played out. I definitely don't think it should be combined, especially for staffing purposes, shortterm rental. No, they're completely different. But if you were to combine these zoning districts, right, that would allow for more that would expand the area where STRs would be allowed, but yet they would still have to maintain that single structure, you know, and the other criteria for the short-term rental, right? What it would simply do is change where it would be permitted. So any further discussion on this or we look forward to next month with or take a 15 minute break here before our next meeting. Yeah. So what do we need to do next on this combining districts? Nothing. They were kind of I think what we need to do is maybe put together a list of do we want to move forward with these recommendations to combine these? And I think at that point we present them to council to let them know that we want to move forward with this.

Okay. Or then that would officially change the map. That would officially change the map to this map that is in the comp plan. This one. Yeah. Wrong map. Too many maps. It would be this one. Yeah. this future land use and the utility what finalize that. Yeah. What is cute? What this future land use is pulling out a utility zone which is basically your It's in the gray. It's your railroad. It's your railroad area. Route 30, right? Uh it's even pulling out the railroad running along Shauny Run there. So that's what's being carved out as a utility area. So you would have to define that. That just looks a lot cleaner. Yeah, it more condensed. It describes utility future land use would be uh part of utility or transportation easements includes lands that were previously identified as conservation highway commercial light industrial and general industrial. So that's what that's doing saying hey this is utility easements you can't really build there that it is what it is so I think what we will do is next for next uh months worth I'll try putting something together based off of this recommendation for the zoning map and

future land use map and we'll see if that's a direction we want to go and possibly then forward a recommendation to council to move forward with this. Okay, great. Okay. Thank you. So, I think we've got plans for next month if we can get the uh simplified zoning, get that together, have a presentation on that and move forward and see what we think of that. try and keep in line with what county planning is doing. Okay. So, at 6:45, I would entertain a motion to adjourn our next meeting being June 17th at 6 p.m. Second. Okay. I have a motion from Tin and a second from Justin. All in favor? I Okay.