Planning and Zoning - Regular Meeting

of the planning and zoning commission for the city of Apache Junction. Today's date is October 14th, 2025 and the time is 700 p.m. Let's please stand for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Me, too. Rudy, can I do a roll call, please? Yes, sir. Chairman Hansi here. Vice Chair Barker here. Commissioner Gage, here. Commissioner Star

here. Commissioner Mikeland here. Commissioner Ken here. Six present. We have a quorum, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Rudy. We have a motion to approve the agenda and minutes. Mr. Chair, I move that the Planning and Zoning Commission accept the agenda as presented and approve the minutes from the August 26, 2025 regular meeting. Do I have a second? Second. Rudy, I have a motion and a second. Can I please get a roll call? Commissioner Callen, yes. Chairman Hansen, yes. Vice Chair Barker, yes. Commissioner Gage, yes. Commissioner Star,

yes. Commissioner Mikeland, yes. So move, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Rudy. One public hearing this evening, consideration of resolution number 25-28, approving conditional use of the permit case number P-25-49-CU, a request for a 65 foot tall wireless communication tower.

Good evening, commissioning members. My name is Erica Hernandez. I'm a planner on staff. This presentation is for a conditional use permit request uh for City Switch and Verizon Wireless represented by Christine Tucker um with Terra Consulting. Here we see that the um subject site is located uh near the southeast corner of 29th Avenue and Idaho Road. The request is for a approval for a conditional use permit for the southeast portion right here uh of the parcel for a 65 foot tall um faux mono elm wireless tower cell tower. Okay. Now the parcel is zoned B1PD. It is surrounded by Countryside RV Resort to the north, B1PD to the east. um the US60 to the south and B1PD to the west. These two lots are vacant, by the way. Here's the proposed site plan. Um okay, this um the proposed location is to the rear of the property. It will be at least to 300 ft from any residence. They are proposing an 8 foot CMU block wall around the uh subject site here and a 10- foot um 10 foot wide utility easement right here and a 20 foot wide access corridor to the rightway. It will also be dust proofed. Here are the elevations for the prop for

the proposal. Now, a 65- f foot cell wireless cell tower is um allowed outright with a conditional use permit. Uh the elm tree design with a full canopy is provided or proposed. Uh the branches do allow concealment of the antennas and radios and the collocation is uh proposed. Okay, here is the current site as it is today. And here's the mockup after installation. Can we put Christmas lights on it at Christmas time? It looks like the right kind.

I think you could consider that public art, Rudy. Okay. As far as public input, we'll look into that.

As far as public input, a sign was posted at the site. Notices were sent out to property owners within 300 ft of the subject site and the case was advertised in the newspaper. Uh neighborhood meeting was held on August 16th. No one attended the meeting and staff has not received any questions from staff. I'm sorry to staff. Okay, with that staff recommends approval of case number P-25-49-C subject to the conditions of approval found in the staff report. Now, the applicant does have a presentation of her own and afterwards we'll be happy to answer any questions. I can pull up her slide with the easements.

Why is there different footprint for the utility access? Seems like the property is owner. Commissioner Gage, that's a great question. Thank you very much. Especially the elbow. I'm sorry. Especially the elbow on the east. So, this access right here is from the actual rightway. Um, and I that is a great question for the applicant and I'm sure she can answer that question for you.

Commissioner Gage, Commissioner Gage, there's an existing driveway already in place there and so they're just connecting to the driveway and so that's why there's an elbow there. And then uh the utility easement corridor there. That's just the most uh efficient way to reach utilities. Yeah, that's straight lines. That's right. That's right. But uh where it's located on the southeast portion of the property, it's the rear of the property and that's how they had to configure uh access to the existing driveway.

Yeah. I'm just, you know, for for somebody owns that property.

We've got and I would imagine there's a legal restriction that me tonight. I appreciate your time. Um, I'm Christine Tucker. I represent Oh, I'm sorry. I represent Tara Consulting. Um we do site acquisition and permitting for uh different companies around the valley and and other states as well. Um I live here in Gilbert, so I'm very familiar with this area and often cut through here to go to Canyon Lake on weekends. So um pretty familiar with it. So, City Switch is going to be the owner of the facil of the tower and Verizon will be the main tenant on the tower. Um, Verizon has gotten into the business more of providing wireless service rather than tower owners. Um, it just makes more sense. So, they issue search rings to these different tower companies. There's other companies, colllocate, collocable companies like uh third party tower owners like Crown Castle or American Tower, City Switch is like them. So Verizon prefers to just be the tenant rather than have to maintain everything. Um you asked about and and I'm sorry, excuse me. Um Tara was consulted by City Switch. So and I work on lots of Verizon sites. I've I've been in this industry for 38 years. So, I've done a few of these. Um, you asked about the drive. The drive is an existing parking lot. It's undeveloped right now. Um, the owners bought the Motel 6 and they've really done some nice improvements over there. I don't know if you've ever had the opportunity to be in

that area, but they're they're cleaning up that property. Um, painted it. They they've all kinds of uh finishes on the other parking lot on the other side. This is undeveloped. Um that driveway coming in is existing as was mentioned. Um they use this to just park overflow vehicles. Um it's not even black topped. It's uh DG I think. Um but it's it's not it's a shared access. So it's just we're going to do construction. They they identified that. But I mean people are going to drive anywhere. It's just a big giant parking lot. The utility uh easement, the power pole is directly at the end of that utility easement. So, it was a straight path. And then we'll bring fiber in that way too because the site needs power and fiber to operate. So, that's why we try to keep it as close to the property line so they can develop and I think he is going considering developing more of that property as time goes on. the owner. Um, the reason that we're here is the engineers. Um, oh, where's my how do I get to my my little slideshow? You did a great job. Erica, you did a great job. And staff, I just want to say staff has been so helpful throughout this so this process. They're so nice and so responsive and I don't find that often um in in doing this in other jurisdictions. So, I really I do appreciate that. So, this kind of just lays out it. City switch is going to be the actual owner, but Verizon is the main tenant, the base tenant. Like I said, Terra is the uh consultant. Um, this slide shows the green circle is the uh engineers search area. So, I went out, I do a very thorough search because we try to find the least intrusive um

area to place this because we know that people don't want to see these. Um, so I contacted 12 property owners and of those 12, three property owners uh were interested. So, and they met setbacks for zoning. They they're right by the highway. The gentleman that owns the parcel right next door, the the lot is actually under development right now. Um, I think it's called Charlie's Roofing. He was interested, too. Um, but we worked out a deal with the Motel 6 and it's more flat and it just worked out better for for everyone. Um, but I had three interested parties and sub submitted all three of them to engineering and they selected the motel six lot as the best to meet all of their requirements. Um, the we did not see any other collocatable opportunities. Uh this red circle is a mile radius around our site. There was an AT&T tower uh just beyond the mile radius and that was a little bit too far to meet the engineering objectives. And you already had this map up and you already discussed this, but um there were only three parcels that were in within the 300 foot radius for public notification. And I did send a letter with um elevations and a site plan to those three property owners with my name um an email address. And then I also uh put Faint. Faint was a project manager. She was so nice assigned to us and she's no longer here. But uh as far as I know, she never got a single call. I didn't get any calls or emails. Um and like Erica said, no one showed up at the meeting. Fainted though,

so I got to know faint pretty well. We sat there for an hour. Um, so you already saw the site plan. Um, this is this is the lot. It's just all kind of gravel. So it's not really that we're marking off a specific drive with the elbow. It's just they just drew that on there like that. Okay. But there I mean there there will be somewhere a recorded utility piece for sure. right over here. But the access ements you're not gonna have separate. Yeah. And and like I said, I mean, the driveway cuts are right where we we show it.

Um and then there's uh BMS with plantings, so it really couldn't have a straight path. That utility easement is really close to the property line. Um, and we weren't impacting any existing shrubs or landscaping because he did he did spend a lot of money putting all of his shrubs and stuff up by the road. Mhm. And then you saw the elevation, the compound wall. It's a 60x 60 lease area and the compound wall will match the existing colors of the building. And then Yeah. So Erica had a really nice presentation. Maybe I'll hire her to do my presentations from now on. These are two views. Um, this one is uh from the exit ramp um on the Superstition Freeway heading west. And then this one is from across the street by the mobile home resort. Um so with that, I'll take any other questions that anyone might have. We we would ask for your approval of this.

Is the fiber already run down 29th Street? 29th Avenue. I'm sorry. Say that one more time. Is they already installed the fiber down 29th Avenue? Uh there's fiber going in. I I don't know if that's the fiber Verizon Verizon purchased MCI within the last few years and is starting to provide its own fiber now from the rideway to its cell site. But they will pick up whoever's the closest fiber there that they have an agreement with. So I did there there is fiber on that road already. [Music] Several pedestals. Ari, do you have any questions?

No questions. Thank you. Thank you. See how it is a public? There is no public. It's open. It's now closed. Findings of facts. We need findings of fact, don't we?

Don't need them. Wave the finding. Okay. Okay. If you want a motion.

All right. I move that the planning and zoning commission approve case P25-49-CUP a request by City Switch Developer and Verizon Wireless LEI represented by Christine Tucker with Terara Consulting for approval of a conditional use permit CUP for a 65 foot tall full mono elm tree wireless communications tower and it's apertinate a pertinent that's that word I got it a pertinent structures at the southeast portion of parcel number 102-21-042A located at 251 East 29th Avenue zoned B-1 PD general commercial by planned development subject to the seven conditions that are listed in this um report. Do

I have a second? Second. Have a motion in a second. Can I please roll? Commissioner Star, yes. Commissioner Gage, yes. Vice Chair Barker, yes. Chairman Hansen, yes. Commissioner Kalen, yes. Commissioner Mikeland. Yes. So move, Mr. Chairman, this item is approved. If if any audience member protest within the next 20 days, it'll go to council. Otherwise, your decision stands. Mr. Ch. Thank you, Rudy. There's no old business. There's no new business. She doesn't have anything. Rudy, do you have anything?

Uh just uh a quick announcement, Mr. Chairman. Unfortunately, we are sad to report that both Kelsey and Faint have moved on to greener pastures. Uh Kelsey uh moved back to Chicago to be closer to her parents and her husband got a job back there. So, she did a lot of great work for us. Well, Mr. Faint uh is moving to Japan. She's got a job over there and an exciting future ahead of her. Uh certainly we're sorry to see them go, but um we uh we move on. Uh we are interviewing for a new entry level planner next week to replace Thaint and as of last Thursday, Sydney, the the replacement for Kelsey senior level principal planner level type planner uh closed. Uh so hopefully we'll be interviewing for a senior level planner probably within the next couple of weeks. So, transitions and development services and we'll have some new people on board soon.

That's it, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Yeah. What about Erica? [Laughter] All right. Do we have a me motion? Do we have a motion to select the next meeting date? Yeah, we probably do. The end. Thank you.

Uh, Mr. Chair, I move that the planning and zoning commission hold a regular meeting on October 28, 2025 at 7 p.m. in the city council chambers located at 300 East Superstition Boulevard. In the event there are no items to be brought forward to the commission, these meetings may be cancelled. Notification of cancellation properly posted and commission notified by staff. Question. Do I have a second? Second. Rudy, I have a motion in a second. Can I please give a roll call? Commissioner Gage, yes. Commissioner Star, yes. Commissioner Mikeland, yes. Commissioner Kalen, yes. Chairman Hanche,

yes. Vice Chair Barker, yes. So move, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. I now adjourn the meeting at 7:20 p.m.