Planning and Zoning Meeting - Regular Meeting

with the city this group does not is not able to make decisions on those all right we just saw a sign up here in the top that's understandable no you're totally fine you're totally fine so their discussion tonight is on parking if you'd like to stay and listen we don't have any new business our old business

We'll now continue our discussion on parking and driveways.

Did everybody see the questions that Jenny sent to you? This is kind of our final copy right now. You're catching up, but this is, we spent quite a few meetings on this topic at this point. Um, The last meeting, we kind of went line by line and tried to address some lingering things. And we've done that to the best of our abilities. Now, I just want to make sure, kind of have more of a global discussion with you, because the next step for this would be that we have a public hearing at this meeting, followed by another public hearing at the Board of Aldermen. So you would have your public hearing. This board would vote on it for a recommendation to the Board of Aldermen, and then they'll have a public hearing and then they'll vote on it to pass the actual ordinance. So before, we've kind of already been through the process one time where we sent the one section to Board of Aldermen and they had some feedback or comments last time. So before we send the whole thing back to Board of Aldermen, I just want to make sure we're all on the same page and this is doing what we're wanting it to do. So I think one of the, from just the section that went back to Board of Aldermen when we were talking about off street parking. And if we really remember the conversation started because of Pine Creek town homes and how we allowed for one garage space and then the driveway to count as their two required parking stalls. And that has resulted in an abnormal amount of off street or on street parking from those residents. So that's what spurred this entire conversation that we're having was There's a lot of people having to park on the road in Pine Creek neighborhood. And is there anything we can do to help alleviate that? But what we proposed to the Board of Aldermen was a little bit more restrictive. And I think the Board of Aldermen's concern was we have a multifamily off-street parking problem with Pine Creek. do we need to restrict single family? So what we landed on is the division two, section 50-584, where we have single family dwellings require two spaces per dwelling unit exclusive of the garage. And then dwelling spaces with single family dwelling spaces with four plus bedrooms would require three spaces per dwelling unit, exclusive of the garage. Duplexes would be two per unit. Multifamily is two per unit, exclusive of the garage. But we added an additional communal parking requirement for multifamily. So I'm not questioning anything that you guys have done. I just want to make sure we have We also have new members. So just one final gut check. Are we comfortable with those requirements across the board?

John, what is our plan to talk about? We're talking about four bedrooms. I assume we're going to have a two-car garage and then two driveways. You can't count the garage. You've got space there. Or they can't put it in front of the house. Don't we always, whenever the house is built, laid out, the lot has got to be so many feet between one house and the other house, right? So they have to put it on the outside end of the driveway side, right? As long as they did that, I'm good with that. I just want to make sure that you were going to put it in front of the house to clear over in front of the front porch or something. That third spot.

Right. But I don't think there's necessarily anything that's saying it has to be the side side what's the word I'm looking for?

It's the outside. Side setback. Yeah. Yeah. What I'm thinking about is you put it over there because you'd have a space and you'd have two cars parking there. You wouldn't want to go to your car and put it over in front of the house. That's my only point.

Well, there's nothing in our code that would prohibit. There's nothing in our code that would prohibit them from putting it.

They wanted to put it in front of their front porch. They could.

It's not our direction to tell them how to get out there. Their property is

But I think the question is, if it's a four-unit, four-bedroom house, is three driveway spaces what we want to have required? Or is that too much?

We kind of went round and round on that. I would think my thought was one per bedroom.

Yeah, what we originally submitted was much more than that. Yeah.

What about the setback, though? If you only have room for one driveway out front, then you only have three spots. Yeah. And that's what... You have to get two or three in there. Back, back, back. One of it's close enough to the street. You know, like that, you can have a two-yard garage and have one there, one there, even one there. That'd be three. Mm-hmm.

And that's the thing to think about too. And what we did think about it, but like on smaller lots, because some lots are grandfathered in, they're only the 50 feet wide. So can you fit three? But then if that's the case, then maybe you can't have a four bedroom house on an old grandfathered lot because you don't have the parking requirement or parking space. Okay. Just gut checking it. Okay. All right. So we're comfortable with that. Next question, what problems are we trying to solve with this ordinance and does this draft solve those problems without creating unnecessary requirements? Yes or no?

It says in the top there, courtesy access issues, excessive on-screen parking. That's the problem we're trying to solve. Do we have anybody... emergency service people.

To review it?

Yeah. Do we do that?

We don't typically do that, but we could look into it. Which part are you saying?

On the questions.

Oh, on the questions.

Yeah.

Well.

At one of the meetings we had...

yeah that was for lakeview drive just one street over here going into the hill subdivision and i the board did decide to reduce parking on lakeview drive for that reason and so and i think that some of that the answer is that it is a per street it's something that the board should look be looking at on a per street basis because with lakeview drive they felt like yes that is tight we need to allow more but then we had the same conversation but for dryden street and they took no action at the time because they felt like there was sufficient room to navigate through dryden west dryden um I mean, I think, I do think that what I'm hearing from you guys is that you feel good about what we've put together so far. I just want to make sure before it goes back to Board of Aldermen and they dissect

100%. Every lot, old, new lots, every

I think it can be deep as well.

Yeah, because we didn't put a width requirement on the driveway either, which then you get into possibly going into the front yard. But when we discussed that, we felt like it wasn't necessary to put the width requirement on there to allow for more parking spaces.

We talked about the eight rooms.

That's for residential. That the residential driveway ingress and egress width shall not exceed 27 feet unless otherwise approved by the city engineer. And the other thing we did is I really liked having the date. We got a We still got to do some research on the grandfather dates. So like on section 50-580, we have that blank in there for when the gravel grandfather date went into play. But from what we've researched so far, that The ordinance that requires paved driveways has been in there since at least 1983. So, yeah. I mean, we can't change 50 years of highs and lows of code enforcement when it comes to that. Many driveways have probably been allowed that weren't authorized by the code. But you have to have something somewhere. Start somewhere.

Is that just going to be enforced on new houses?

No.

All of them.

But what I'm saying is technically it should have been enforced since at least 1983. The only other section that I guess, well, does anyone else have any questions or did any of these questions, did they raise any flags for you or any overall concerns with the ordinance itself? If not, then I do want to talk about the section or the 50-580 surface requirements. and how we address interlocking concrete favors and all of that stuff. I tried to do some research and I defaulted back. So I guess just take a good look at that section. I think one thing that we've, remember whenever we were comparing to our neighboring cities and how they worded things and their code said for residential and duplex, you have to have cement, asphalt, paper brick on an approved base. And so that was our question was like, well, what's an approved base? And so I did some research into why it doesn't give us a number in all of our neighbor's codes. as to what an approved base is. And the answer is to give residential some autonomy. So it's saying, yes, you have to have it on a base, but we're not going to say that you have to have it on four inches because residential driveways generally have less heavy weighted vehicles on them to begin with. So I guess what I'm saying is that It intentionally doesn't say to what depth the approved base has to be. Specifically for residential and duplex to give our residents a little bit of reprieve and autonomy.

I know there's a standard out there. I know there's a standard out there.

Well, we tried to research that and there's a lot of standards that we could, there's too many places to find the standard and it got a little too in the weeds for us to be able to try to enforce it. So what we decided to do was say, we said interlocking concrete papers is specifically designed for vehicle use. And then we say interlocking, let's see, interlocking concrete papers shall be installed over a compacted aggregate, or other structurally suited base in accordance with the manufacturer's installation specifications.

So you cannot throw a couple of concrete blocks and park your car over it?

Nope. But the point in wording it like this is to have them tell us what is required for the materials that they're using specifically. Based off of the manufacturer's requirements. But in reality, when it comes to us, we're going to say, do you have a base and not just you're putting concrete bricks down? So that's the key for us.

Do you have anything, codes for new street? Do you know if there was a street put in?

Yes. Does it say the eight streets? Well, it's your concrete paper that she's talking about.

It's going to be a different.

Yeah. And it's going to require much more. Street asphalt is going to require much more.

um different standard than a driveway would is it is it our uh no it doesn't say that but they're going to have to have a

I will talk to Hunter Goodnight.

He does those. See what he says. Yeah, whatever they say is to warranty that product. I think what we're trying to get past is somebody's violation and they went and bought a couple of one-inch concrete blocks and they parked each tire on a concrete block. Yeah, that's what happens.

That's what we're trying to do, too.

Yeah, I know. There'd be a lot of tickets.

Yeah.

In my neighborhood. Well, yes. Gotta enforce it first, though. Down my street. I think that's where we disagree. What? I think that's where we disagree. What's that?

My opinion is make the laws so they're there when we need them, as opposed to don't make them because we can't enforce them. We struggle with enforcement significantly, so we still need them there.

Yeah. But no cops. Just give me a segue.

A segue.

Unlike Paul Borg.

Our code says, Steve, our code says that new streets have to be designed for or based off of state and federal highway regulations.

Nobody wants to say.

I don't know. But I mean, we can't recreate the wheel for everything that we do or we'll never be able to enforce anything.

You go back to highway stuff, I mean, that's, they go down 24 inches. Yeah, we're not going to go 24 inches just for a driveway.

Okay. So does that, but what I put in there about interlocking concrete pavers, you're good with that? And then we said, so the first sentence of that, off-street parking areas and driveways serving single family and duplex residents shall be graded and paved with asphalt, concrete, or interlocking pavers designed for vehicle use. I think so. I think we Did we mean to take out the approved base or did we need to put that back in?

For that one sentence.

I think we need to add back in on that first sentence.

Shall be graded and paved with asphalt, concrete,

or interlocking pavers designed for vehicle use on an approved base. I think we took that out. And then what do you guys think? Is it too lenient to say you can have- No, I think that clarifies.

I think it just states it.

But the way it's worded now, it's saying concrete, asphalt, don't have to be on a base. But I don't know if that might be okay for residential. I mean, we're having conversations about gravel versus pavement. So if we're trying to meet people in the middle of gravel versus pavement, maybe a base isn't necessary because it adds additional restriction to our residents.

We also go through here on the next part where it says... deterioration and create an unsafe condition or hazard to pedestrians or vehicles.

Yep. And that has to be maintained that way.

You don't put a base down on concrete or asphalt, it'll just crack right up.

Yeah. Your asphalt's going to fall out. Your concrete's going to bust up. I mean, you have to have a base.

You have to have a base. Right. So then I think we need to just say on an approved base.

Yeah, we had it and then we took it out. We also on the parking lot,

and parking lot lighting section. We changed the title, made sure it was clear that that was for lighting in parking lots. And then we separated out steps C and D to make it clear what the chief of police would be responsible for and what the city engineer would be responsible for. And then we had some pretty in-depth conversation with code enforcement about how they enforce this. And we kind of talked about fine-wise, your repercussions are it goes to municipal court and that could be anywhere from a $0 fine to a $500 fine. But when it comes to this code, the code enforcement is going to, this goes back to what you were just saying about the deterioration that creates an unsafe condition. It's like, well, what is an unsafe condition? And that's intentional in the sense that they're going to take this language in this code and the language in the, um, international, um, property maintenance code that also has strict language about driveway maintenance and the state that your driveway can be. They'll put those two together in order to be able to enforce a maintenance requirement of any sort across the board.

How far into your property can they enforce?

Remember, I think I brought that up last time where this is the sidewalk. Yeah, I think that would be for the judge to decide. Yeah.

It would be your entire property though would be subject to code enforcement technically and property maintenance code it overall Gravel driveway

that far, but if you just said, well, you just got through the first 10 foot, well, you'd have more gravel washing down onto the road. So that blocks up the, what do you call them? Sanitary, sanitary sewers. So there we go.

Yep.

But the answer is your entire property is subject to property maintenance code. Okay. um what else did we clarify oh the commercial district part so um we've had in under commercial districts we had the language about your the inability to use parking stalls for storage of materials or vehicles um outdoor display or sales vehicles servicing or repair assemblies equipment Well, I moved it from it was under commercial and it was under industrial separately. So I moved it out of commercial and put it in the very first section, section 50-576 letter C. So now it'll apply to all parking parking spaces. I feel like it has to apply to commercial and industrial. Okay. So the intent behind this was really for commercial and industrial, but now I'm realizing after reading it out loud that by putting it under general, now we're applying it to residential, which means you can't store any vehicles in your driveway. which our code somewhere else says you have to store vehicles on your driveway. So that won't work. We need to make this apply to only commercial and industrial. Yeah, but a lot of people have... like additional vehicles, I think there'd be an argument that we'd have to define which way it's leaning if they just have extra vehicles registered or not in their driveway. Are you parking them or storing them?

Right, you're right. I don't know.

The intent was that if you have parking stalls in a commercial parking lot, you need to use those for parking, not for extra storage. That's the intent of this. Previously, it was kind of worded in a way that was like more of a zoning issue that didn't have anything to do with parking. So we tried to tie it back to parking. but then we took it away from commercial and industrial. I think so, yeah.

I feel like it should also say storage of materials or storage of vehicles, maybe. Because it almost sounds like we can't have a vehicle at all.

That's true.

Okay, we'll adjust that.

Yes, and don't you own a commercial? Okay, what do we think?

Are we almost done with parking?

We have a dumpster enclosure requirement.

No, he's talking about like a commercial business's weekly dumpster. Their permanent dumpster. Oh, a temporary dumpster.

If we put it in this section.

It wasn't originally in here.

No, it wasn't originally in a parking section. Yeah, that was a different ordinance. We haven't talked about that. I'd always forget. It's just you leave that there. So if you need to add anything for a commercial section later, you can. You don't have to renumber everything. And it makes it so it's clear that we didn't intentionally forget that section. So if it just went residential to industrial, we'd be like, did we forget about commercial or was that intentional? It just shows...

Yeah.

But I guess there will be something in it because we'll have to put that back.

Yeah, I think we'll have to put the other one back. Because we're going to have to put that one section back in there.

The storage of vehicles.

Well, personally, I think it looks pretty darn good. Yeah, I think we got pretty close. Yeah. All the time we spent on this thing, I think.

Yeah.

Pretty solid.

Good. That's awesome. So then our next meeting, we'll probably advertise for a public hearing for this topic and then vote on it. And then I'll go to board of departments.

How do you do that on this? Bring everybody in for the public comment?

Yeah, we advertise it in the newspaper.

Yeah.

It's available on the city's website, but the public hearing ad notice will just say we're discussing this section of the code regarding parking.

And it has my information, so if they want more information, they can contact me.

It would be pricey if we put the whole thing. No, we'll have a public hearing and it'll be on the agenda.

We'll allow for public comments.

They'll be able to speak in favor or against. And then you'll vote.

What's new? Dang. Dang.

And then the only other thing I'll mention is we're starting the UDO process. So that's our unified development ordinance. So right now we have section 42 in our code is subdivisions and development. Section or chapter 50 is zoning. Chapter 10 is buildings and construction. So we're kind of like all over the map in our code. And then we have decades of we've revised this section and then left this section over here and this over here contradicts this. So we are hiring consultants to come in and they'll basically create a whole new section in our code. So we'll have like our normal chapters, but then we'd have like an actual additional section where all things development are all in one pack it together, basically one-stop shop. But what the consultants are doing because we're creating law by doing that, they're going to go through every like line by line with staff, Board of Aldermen and you guys, not like every, I don't know exactly how we're not going to have multiple line by line work sessions, but they'll have work sessions across the board to help them kind of determine what the direction and, feel is to make some of these improvements to our code so we end with a much more user-friendly easier for us to be able to follow code of ordinances so it'll be it's a costly process it's very similar to the comprehensive plan when we have done that in the past that's been a little bit since we've done the comprehensive plan but it's very similar in the sense that it's it's really a community project and there's a lot of um communication and insight from the community insight from you guys insight from board of alderman to pull all this together which is why we hire the consultants and then as soon as that is done it'll probably take about a year as soon as that is done then we'll focus on comprehensive plan so and there is just so we're all on the same page to um probably a lot of other cities would do their comprehensive plan first and then their UDO. We felt like our code is in such bad shape right now. It's in need of cleaning up, especially with our increase in development that we're experiencing right now. Whenever you have no development, the problems within our code don't shine through because we're not using them. Well, now we're using them more than ever, and it's proving to us that there's a lot of conflicting things within our code that need addressed pretty urgently. So we're going to do the UDO and the code improvements and then the comprehensive plan. And so hopefully the consultants can do the UDO knowing that the next step is this and kind of set us up or tee us up to be able to put all that together too with our new directions. It'll be fun. It'll be historic. We don't even have one now. It is exciting. I'm a little bit of a nerd. But I just want to let you know that's coming down the pipe. We're in the decision making process of who we want to use right now. Okie dokie. Anything else?

Well, our next meeting is Thursday, October 15th. Does everybody know? If there's no further business, I'll take a motion to adjourn.

I motion to be adjourned.

Can I get a second? I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Anybody want to not stay here? The meeting is adjourned.