Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay, we're good. I call this meeting of the Lancaster County Board of Zon and appeals to order and I will ask our Madame Secretary if she will call the role of membership

here. James Faulenberry Mark Boland here. Aaron Fender here. Joshua Pangle here. Thank you gentlemen. Everyone is here again as usual. That is makes it a full quorum. So the meeting can continue as it is planned. Gentlemen, you all have copies of the agenda before you. There should not be any changes or deletions or additions to it at this point. Do I hear a motion?

Motion to approve. Second. Have a motion and a second to approve the agenda as published. All in favor? It's unanimous. Thank you. I'm sorry. Who was the second? Pardon me. Thank you. Oh, I asked who the second was. Sorry. Oh, am I supposed to

I'm the world's worst at calling names. So, get used to it. Next item on the agenda is the approval of the minutes for the meeting held on December the 2nd, 2025. Are there any changes, additions, deletions? Hearing none. Do I have a motion? Motion to approve. I have a motion to approve for Mr. Fender. Second

and a second, Jason. All in favor? It's unanimous. Thank you. All right, we're getting through too quick. We have some folks out here that haven't had a chance to really stand up and introduce theirelves and speak. And we like to give each one of them about 20 minutes and that will give us an hour to get this meeting started and then we can continue from there. So we will begin with Miss Allison if she has anything she'd like to offer at this time.

I have the pressure of coming up with something. Um thank you Mr. Chair Mr. Chairman. Um Allison Harden, director of development services. Um I can give you an update on our unified development ordinance. Um since the uh county council developed an ad hoc committee to go over the the second draft of the UDO, we have had um almost a meeting a week. Um we had we started late in November. We had three meetings in December and we have a meeting scheduled each week the rest of this month. Um, we have been discussing things that relate to uh things that BCA will talk about in the future, including things like setbacks and minimum lot sizes. Uh uh we've been given a task by one of the elected officials to see if there is an opportunity to provide a a zoning um option whereby uh an LDR type or LDR uh zone properties could have um smaller lot sizes but not more density um in reaction to the the um propensity to go to cluster zoning. Um, for those that haven't haven't been involved with this before, um, we have, uh, set minimum lot sizes per zone. Um, we start at the A AR and the RR in the agricultural and rural zones um, with one acre per lot. We go all the way down to, um, 10,000 square feet in the MDR. Um, but there are options for allowing for down to 5,000 under what's called a cluster uh overlay whereby a property owner can come in and ask for the uh and provide a development agreement uh with the council and ask for the lower lot sizes. They put more space into open space. They put their

developed areas and um cluster them essentially into a different area. Um it provides for more open space and smaller lot sizes, but um it has perceived has been perceived as more density even though the uh number of lots per unit are typically lower than what's allowed in the base zone. Um but it requires reszoning to MDR medium density residential because uh that's the only zone that allows for cluster subdivision overlay. So you have people in the rural areas that want to do something a little different and but they're asking for a reasoning from a rural residential or rural neighborhood which is one um one unit per acre or one and a half units per acre up to the MDR which is two and a half and allowing for those much smaller lots. So it's quite a jump. So, we've been asked to look for something in between to allow for some more flexibility where developers can still have something that is um gives an opportunity for maybe smaller lots but not more density. So, instead of a um a minimum lot size of a third of an acre or two/irds of an acre, maybe we go down to a quarter of an acre um and making sure that the reserve is over in open space so that the rural character is is maintained. Um that's been a a bulk of a lot of the conversations. Um we're getting to the point we're also getting into conversations about um infrastructure and what will be required and when. And then we'll get into uh we'll also get into plan development districts which are not in our current zone. A plan development district is a a zoning district um that is negotiated through the planning commission and the county council to um and they can negotiate anything that's available in the planning commission or the UDO except for uses. You can't add uses that aren't in the UDO. Um but at that point when you have a plan development district that actually leaves the BZA out of it. the BZA cannot give a

variance on a plan development district because that plan development district is a direct negotiation with the council. And so if you want to do something different in that plan development district, you have to go back through and ask council to make that change. Um since you've written your own zoning code, if you have something that that won't fit in your own zoning code, you have to change your zoning code. Um we have a few of those left over from the pre20 2016 ordinance uh of UDA ordinance and that's currently how they would have to fix things um is to go through that process if we had that process currently available. It is uh the plan development district is being looked at to replace the mixeduse zoning. uh the mixed use zoning that was placed in 2016 we were hopeful with uh at the time um according to the notes that I've read but it hasn't um provided as much uh controlled and and design growth as we we'd like. So those are some of the updates. The quick question when you were talking about changing lot sizes you you mentioned the 5,000 foot square foot. Yes, sir.

Lot I build houses bigger than that. Yes, sir. I agree. And 5,000 square foot is the We had We've got some at 10,000 is the lowest you can go. We've got a lot of them at 6,500 that in that area. Yes, sir.

Okay. smaller lot sizes and smaller homes are part of the key to getting lower prices um for workforce housing. Um there's a lack of starter homes on the market available for the children of our families that are graduating high school or graduating college and wanting to start out and still remain here in Lancaster. We have a a very big I I've I've said it before that our more our workforce housing availability range is over in York County, not here. Um because you can get a a townhouse or a home for uh 200 250,000 just across the the county line. So it's one of those things that we're talking about at a high level and how can we make that happen? Um at the last cow meeting for the council, um the planning department uh presented uh their initial thoughts on how to uh create a housing committee which is part of the comprehensive plan. And that committee would be made up of um stakeholders and people in the community and folks that know how this works um in order to see what the county can do to help encourage u more um opportunities for housing. Okay. One other question.

Yes, sir. PDDs. Yes, sir. They are provided basically by state law. Yes, sir.

And it's my understanding from attorneys out of Colombia and everywhere else that the PDD as it stands today, we had 27 of them. I think there's a good many that have not been built. But each one of those are required to meet the UDO as it stood the day it was approved. That's part of it. May I help with that?

Sure. So when you design a PDD, you can design a minimum lot size that doesn't exist in the current property. If let's say that you have property AR and you want to design a um an agricultural um tourism element and with an agricultural farm, you want to have Airbnb huts that you can use. None of that is allowed in one zone in our current code. So you can write your own code for that. What it ties to with the current UDO is that anywhere that it is not changed in the plan development district agreements or the the negotiations, everything else falls to the UDO at that time. So let's say we change the minimum lot size and we change the minimum setbacks, but we don't change the minimum height or the maximum height. Anybody that comes in, if it doesn't say it in the plan development district, if it's quiet in there for something, then we fall to the the UDO at that time.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

M K2, you have anything you would like to offer? You better turn around and look behind you, Jeff. Make her get up and talk.

She didn't know he's back there. No way. All right, ladies. Anything you want to offer at this time? And we have our county administrator who has just walked through the door, Mr. Steve Willis. Thank you, sir, for being here. Happy to be here. Keep in mind, I'm just a temporary. That's all right. Temporary. We'll take that. Come on in and have a seat. Okay.

All right. Check on that knee. Tell her we hope she's doing well. Thank you. Thank you, sir. All right, young ladies. Andy, got anything you want to offer? All right, it sounds like everybody's being real quiet tonight. They'll get mad mad mouthy one of these days. All right, gentlemen.

Mark, was there nothing? This is a quiet crowd tonight. There's got to be something. I don't have anything either. I was planning on these ladies having all this stuff going on and you know and I didn't put anything together. So now they're not doing anything but sitting there laughing

laughing with you. Um at the next meeting then what we'll do is we'll um provide a more formalized update on the last month's work on the UDO and provide for um uh we'll bring forward a little maybe 15minute learning experience on something with the BCA um something related either to um uh cross-examinations or subpoenas or processes and things that might help out. One other question for you. Yes, sir. the Never mind. I let it go right there. I understand that too.

But um I'm still concerned about and you can mark it in your book. 5,000 square foot ain't big enough for a lot.

Understood. But um the the BZA is going to get involved in some stuff that is going to occur because of the moratorum I'm sure and we just need to have good updates. And the first one I'd like to have is when do we even anticipate a UDO being complete? We've been working on it now for what, five years?

Started the work with a um an inventory and and uh asset discussion in 20 in November of 2021.

Uh worked on the flex zoning and alternate zoning plans in 2022. Um those were brought up twice and did not pass. 2023 um were they were working on the infrastructure and the like. We stopped work on the UDO to do the comp plan in 2023 and passed it in 2024. Picked it back up in 2024 and provided the draft uh in October of 2025. And um the moratorum being 9 months in the moratorum ordinance it it uh it imagines that the UDA will be complete by the 9-month process which would end in June. There is an option for an additional 3 months if up if the month before the moratorum no later than the month before the moratorum is set to end. um staff and the administrator would come to council and ask for additional time and provide the proof that they need that and have done the work up to that point. Then there's an extra 3 months available which would make it September of next year um to be ready. We do envision that there will be several um public meetings that will need to be held for this and that is part of the calendar. Um, we're hoping to We also have the budget for council uh coming up in where we're starting working on it now. It'll be uh rolling pretty heavily by March. So, we're hoping to get some something back to the full measure of council uh in the spring so that we can start the public meetings.

Right. you know, state law is ridiculous, I guess, since it says it has to be updated every five years and rewritten every 10. And um well, that's the comp plan. The UDO can stay as is and be updated, but it's better to align it with the new comp plans. I' I'd say that coming from a community that had a zoning code that sat for 30 years and all it was was minor updates here and there um and then it took seven years to rewrite. So we're we're less than seven UDO tied so tightly together that um I consider one the other.

Yes, sir. Okay. We'll be through with it sometime this year. Next year. That's the goal. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

I know I have been in several several meetings on it and over a period of well since 21. Here we are in 26. Okay. Gentlemen, is there anything else that we need to discuss? Anything else we need here? Is there thing on the calendar for next month as far as cases? Not at this time. Okay. All right. My other question is I usually pick my package up during the first part of the week that prior to the meeting. And am I going to still pick that up at your desk? Where is your desk? In the zoning department. Okay, that answered my question because I didn't bother to pick it up this week, but I do have it. So, and if I pick it up, I don't need another one on desk now. I had two less, but I sensing printing that much. Okay, I think all my questions are answered or pushed out of the way of wish. But anyway, if there is nothing else that anyone has to offer tonight, then I'll accept a motion to adjourn.

Make a motion, if there's no further business, to adjourn. We are adjourned. That's one. I don't need a second.

Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. Yep. See you next