Planning & Zoning Meeting - Regular Meeting

Mayor Attorney Alex Esquil Dr. Pam Sardo here. Gary Chapel here. Patrick Cus here. Tony Love here. David Reed, he's Jane Ridgeway here. April Arand here. Cody Waldron.

We will go into new business. The workshop for the unified development show joint work session presenting feedback and discussions of the unified development code by discussions. Mayor, members of the city uh council and and members of the planning and zoning commission. Um Miguel and Clown for the record. Uh this workshop is intended to uh gather the the feedback from both bodies. We have uh Carissa Cox and Adalfo Gonzalez from Kimley Horn who are managing this unified development code project for the city. They will be providing a presentation outlining the scope of work where where we are so far and then they'll have an interactive session where they will be asking questions and receiving your feedback.

turn this on, I guess. Okay. Thank you for being here and being part of the team. And uh you're you're very peppy and energetic, and I love that. Um this has been going on for over a year. Um and I believe we're really small and don't need much. other people disagree and um we've had several planning sessions, there was a technical session, there was a stakeholder session. Um a little sad that you don't have that. Um so something's missing, I guess.

I see. Okay. So, um, three years ago, there was a volunteer group of 13 people who gave input onto what they wanted the city look to look like and that was contributing into the comprehensive plan and it was things like more parks, sidewalks, a way to get across the street to get to the park and things like that. There seems to be a desire to have a downtown area. There also seems to be, but property owners are not convinced they're going to sell their property yet. There's also um there was also previously a discussion about having mixture of homeowners next to businesses. There needs to be a lot of work there.

To me, it's a big problem, but it's it's the methodology and how you work through it. Um, also regarding the comprehensive plan, I guess I don't know if you've had a chance to look at that. Okay. So, we only have 3,300 people in city limits, but we do have almost 9,000 water meters in the ETJ total. You know, the big area. So, the growth is happening. We know that there's a lot of things about a north south highway loop, a text. Route 6, 1777. There's also people who want to maintain our quaint small town feel and do not want to be told what kind of setbacks they must have, what kind of plants or trees they have to have. And I've um I'm going to be a broken record. I apologize in advance. Lex had 800 changes their UDC and took over two years. Um we have yet to see a draft. Um I don't believe there's a lot wrong with our ordinances. that's in your PowerPoint that you want to discuss. So, I'm looking forward to learning from you what your thoughts are on that. Um, so it's this is a wonderful collaborative opportunity. Um, it seems like there's some things that are fragmented which is unfortunate. Um, but we we can absolutely work through it.

Both.

Okay. So, I was coming tonight hoping that you would give us a summary of what's next based on your technical meeting and different um surveys and public meetings and how that's going to work. I personally do not believe that one or two public sessions are enough because this is going to impact every single person that lives around us. And also we have infrastructure problems, we have wastewater problems, we have developments that are desirable, developments that are less on our favor list. And so there's a lot to work through and I I I'm just looking forward to getting feedback from you on what you see coming towards us and how we can navigate all of this. So again, thank you. Thank you both because I know you're the you're the strong link who's been here the whole time. So I I look forward to hear from you about what what's happened since we last got together. And again, thank you for all the work you're putting into this.

Okay. So something Yes, please. So that would be like would you say those are the top? I'm only one person. We got a room full of No, but for you

stakeholders left today and it was summary of we are in the process and we get to that. Okay. Is that anything else I should add about this? Personally for the voters and because this is Texas, I'd like to see the least amount of regulations possible and least amount of bureaucracy and the greatest amount of freedom for personal freedom possible. But again, I'm just one. There's massive amounts of brain here and I'm only one person. Having a little trouble there. I've been around planning and zoning since 2016 and I thought the zoning ordinances were pretty good because we went through those pretty much with a fine tooth comb. We found a couple of things here lately that could be worked through. Um, as far as the subdivision rules, if somebody would have asked us to look at the subdivision things going on, we could have done that, too. But planning and zoning actually went through this in 2016. And I'm not sure if anybody knew that or not. Um I think they're pretty good, you know, except for there might be couple of those tattoo parlors or whatever that we need to get out of there. But um we do want to I want to keep this small town and looking like a rural area because I think that's what people came out here to be, not to be a sea of houses.

I mean, we have subdivisions down here that are have stopped right now for whatever reason and other subdivisions coming in up north that says, "Oh, we we can have this done in two years." Something's not right. And we just need, and I'm going to be the broken record, a grocery store that I felt like we could have gone out and marketed

over the past two or three years. And I mean, we've spent a lot of time and money on doing the unified development code, which is good. We're going to need that, but we need something for the people in between. This is 10 years down the road as we're looking at it. that in the comprehensive plan and it's like we're redoing things over and over and that's to me that's not a good way to spend the taxpayers dollars. We need to give the taxpayers what they want. So that's my dissertation.

I'm this one's harder for me. So let me see. I'm going to get it wrong. You have to correct me. So give the taxpayer what they want. keep small town feel. Um because what you said is actually really you can say word salad that's fine. Okay. So I'm hearing like don't over please Lord don't overburden us with like more staff more regulations more red tape. We don't want that. Is that I think the people who live in this town and have moved to this town just want to be able to live without a bunch of regulations.

Okay. And so if I understand this is for the developers coming in, but quite frankly, I think we need a moratorum until some of this other stuff's built out to see what we've got. Wouldn't that be great? I know. Lord, bless Austin. That is all I have to say is bless their hearts in Austin. They just can't help themselves. So Amen. You're right there. Did I Did I get it? Did I get most of it for the most part? Okay, who's next?

Okay, so I'm April. Um I feel a lot of the same ways. I feel like we did move out to this area 13 years ago. Um to get away from some of the stuff Leavonne had going on and it is just ever growing and I'm very happy to be here in Josephine. I don't want to be told what kind of grass I can plant because I like St. Augustine grass and I want to plant whatever trees I want. Whether that's a fruit tree in my yard, I have a half acre, I should be able to plant trees. like I bought this house, I paid a lot of money for this piece of property.

Um, so I don't feel like we need to overregulate too many things. Um, as far as like people just having trashy trashy houses, of course, we don't want that. We want the city to look nice. Um, I do not want to see a bright pink house sitting next to mine. So, I do like some regulation. Um, but I do think that there's a lot of things that when people spend a lot of money on a house, they don't typically just trash it up. And so they need some freedom within their house to do what they want to do. I feel like when we had me and Gary were in the same meeting um, and then there is a page where it talks about the meetings that we had. I don't feel like that

did not match what we felt like. Um, so and that is coming from Kimley Horn. Okay, that was there. But also the people that were in our meeting, there were three people that lived in the city of Josephine in our meeting and we all lived in the exact same neighborhood.

So there w there was not diverse. Everyone else was I don't know why they were there. Uh, one lady was trying to put a business into our ETJ, but she couldn't even pronounce our name. She said many, many times that she was going to put a business in Hosphine. We don't live in Hosphine. Um, like that did not ma like the people that were in that meeting did not um what's the word I'm looking for? It it wasn't it wasn't a good picture of our of our city. It wasn't diverse a diverse area of our city. Like I said, we all three lived in the exact same neighborhood. So, um I would like to see maybe a few more maybe town hall type meetings where people from different areas are targeted like y'all live in an area that's not actually a neighborhood. Y'all just live in the city. We want y'all at this meeting. Y'all live in this ETJ area, we want you at this meeting. Y'all live in this mud, we want you at this meeting. And get ideas from all the people that live here.

But the biggest thing that we really need, we really need some stores. We definitely need a grocery store. And we do not need any more gas stations. But we need places to spend our money that's not elsewhere because I spend all of my money elsewhere. Yes. And your time getting there. And my time getting there and the wear and tear on my tires on these crappy roads. So home ownership like

and I and I would like to see um in our development agreements, things like that that we do with new um home developments that we um don't allow any more than 10% of those homes to be rental properties. That's when you were talking the first thing I thought of is a lot of this is a homeship issue. It's it's and I did like everything short and you can't. So, I do think our communities are better with the older people living in those homes and they just make better neighbors. Yes.

And it's not as much of a revolving door. Like nobody wants to fall in love with their neighbor next door and every 12 months you get new neighbors that you have to get to know. Like we would like people to actually own their homes and want to be here. Yeah. because Josephine is a great place to live. If we could just get some stores, that would be wonderful. Okay, so that was it. Okay, so um here from a broader cross-section of the community for this stuff.

Um don't overreulate homeowners, don't over homeowners on what they do on the property. So a way to incentivize more commercial specifically You stay restaurants too. You stay restaurant. Restaurant is retail. I want to spend my money there. Okay. So, I eat out. I buy clothes. I retail. I go grocery shopping. Like I do I go to the movies. I go do all the fun stuff. I want to spend my money in Josephine.

Is that would you say that for the most part issue crosssection? I want to make sure we have homeowners, not rental companies. And April, did you want to touch on the election that's coming up with the petition?

Oh, the alcohol sales. So, I I do have a huge issue with the It's not a huge issue. Let me rephrase that. I have some concerns about the way that the alcohol bill is being done. I would love to see the planning and zoning because it has to go to them first. I would love to see something get put into place to where in order for you to sell alcohol here, um you have to have a certain portion of that be food. Um I believe the paperwork that I gave was 40% food

um versus alcohol sales. That way we don't have a whole bunch of bars and things like that. We have Mexican food restaurants where I can eat an enchilada and have a margarita. Sure. Um go play the bar and say and then get on my road.

Sorry. All right. Jump over to Tony. What the No one wants to hear me anyway. As the new new guy, nobody wants to hear me.

I'm sorry, guys. Here it is. I got it. I got it. Okay. Sorry. Um, like I said, I'm the I'm new. Uh, so I don't I feel like I I actually feel like I haven't lived here long enough to know what the issues are. Okay.

Um, I what I see as as kind of a new outsider is I do see growth and I see growth that's out of the control of the city in a lot of ways. And so I think maybe one of my concerns is how do we control or or manage the growth in a way that benefits us the best. Um, I see that I do see that this is a bedroom community that uh funds the local government mostly by property taxes and that's even a very small area given that so many large developments have been have been put in place just outside of where we can collect finances from them, funds from them. I see that as a problem. I see that as a future problem. Um I I think the the increasing growth and the um stress that it has on the infrastructure of a town that's not much removed from a small

town and still is quite a small town is a major issue.

Uh in terms of a successful meeting um I think that if and again I'm I'm new here in the town and new on the commission as well. So this is I could be missing the mark and totally off base here and I recognize that. Uh but I think that also a successful meeting would be if we could focus on the good things that a um unified development code can do for us, which is um ease the development process for the things that we want. and um and and make it simpler to advertise to grocery stores and other places and and and be known as a place that has their stuff together so that developers will want to work with us. I think if if we could focus on how to make it work for us, that would be the best of both worlds.

So how to make regulations talk about Yeah. Right. Like how this literally how this Yeah. Can can we streamline the approval process but then also make it where people can have trees or grass or that there are restaurants, not bars or whatever. Yeah.

Uh good evening. Thank you for coming out, spending your time with us. Um I guess my uh one of my major issues is uh structural infrastructure in the city. uh water, sewer, fire, police, um and a lot of the growth is out of our control because it's in the area. So, but we don't have to support their water, fire, and everything else. And that might slow them down. I don't know. I mean, if they can't get water cheaply, they can't build. Um, also on this unified code, uh, I think there has to be a differential between business and residential. And I don't know, we don't have that much because we've never had a lot of businesses to work.

outside. Yeah. Can I ask Can I ask a question? Okay, Patrick. Do you see a smaller grocery store being able to come to the city? We know that we can't get a big one because obviously they've got him,

but a small one. Could you see that? small being an Aldi or like a Spring Market something of that size

not within the next three years analysis they don't care if it's accurate or not they don't care they look up So, we still should try to market is my point. Okay. We should still mark. Do you think

if we had a grocery store here then we wouldn't have so much traffic because people would shop here instead of having to go out and come back. traffic. Yes, we do have a lot of that, but we also have a lot of traffic that we, the citizens who live here in the city and the ETJ, we have to go out to another city to get our groceries and then we have to come back. So, we're creating traffic. If I had the money, I would put the grocery store right across the street and get your rich.

Would you be willing to help invest in one? There's the question because that is exactly what Heath did. They got their shopping center. People chipped in and did that. I was just wondering if that would be a good idea. I mean, you think about the role of

ours is empty. That tells you how many Yes,

it's empty. It is always empty. And they actually have vegetables, but they get empty, too. Got it. Okay. Um, I don't want us to get off schedule too much, but just because this is our first time to talk, I just kind of wanted to hear that. So, I think there's some stuff we need to do tonight. We need to and and everything y'all have asked for is part of this presentation. So, that's good. Um, but this is also going to help us because the challenge is like uh that like you can put like um performance guarantees and things in place so that things don't get half built and then abandoned. So you can do that those are new regulations, you know, and you can control commercial those. So so I I think probably is let's figure out like because part of what we're hearing is we don't want any change at all. We just put it together, you know, and be done with it and move along and we can do that. But then I'm also hearing a little bit of we kind of there are probably maybe some things we can do better. So as we get into this tonight um I'll put up some particular examples and I just wanted we're here to serve you and give you what you want. So at the end of the day we just have to make sure we're understanding what that is.

Um so yeah. So last I'll go last. Yes. So okay go.

Um you're Did we get everything for Patrick on there? Okay. Um so I'm going to echo most what everybody said tonight. Um, smart traffic low is important to me. Um, turn lanes, getting off the main road as quicker uh, as possible. Right. Um, what what we have in our two towns over in Leavonne is they have a massive subdivision that went in and they have no right turn lane to get into the subdivision. So that one lane people are slamming their brakes on. Yeah. And just backing up traffic. I want to make sure we have something like that in our ordinance to make sure we have smart traffic flow coming through the city. Any kind of impact that goes on it. Going off on the regulations. The city council, I don't know, it was like four or five years ago, I think Jane, you were there when they did this. Um, we put in a mandatory, you have to have a homeowners association.

I don't think we should have to mandatory have that as a mandatory thing. I think that thinking they were going to take care of the roads, but I don't think they

they don't. And that's the thing. I mean, we have city ordinances in place. They don't have to mandate it. I think we would get better home ownership if we don't have homeowners. We don't have a homeowner association in our neighborhood, and I think we have one of the best neighborhoods in in the city. Um because we attract a better quality of people because they don't have a homeowners or a homeowner association. I think that's something that we need to re-evaluate in the city, right? Um I want smart growth and smart traffic flow. Those are the two things I think I echo exactly, Tony. You were spot on. We're a bedroom community. We're beyond that now. We We have our own fire station now. We just opened. We're having our grand opening in what, next month. Um, with that, we've got to have the tax base to do it. And we can't keep putting that burden on our taxpayers. We have to get businesses in. We need to stop focusing on residential and we need to focus on business. And that's what this unified development code to me is successful if we have a UDC that can bring in businesses quickly, fast, efficiently, and smartly. So that that's what I'm looking for tonight. I'm looking for a UDC that is going to work for our goals of bringing business here, especially a grocery store, restaurants, retail, all of that as quickly as we can to help offset our taxes to be able to grow our public services that we need to to grow the the roads like we need to and get our water facilities where we need them. And then we can look back at residential stuff.

So, retail focus as you grow building the infrastructure that kind of supports that growth, right? The Yeah. I mean, our our roads are kind of overt taxed now. I mean, we we need to address our roads now. Um, so so there's a Okay. So, and then we're going to get I'm jumping ahead because this is Sorry, this is going to be on the slides. So, a a unified development code is basically just the zoning regulations and the platting regulations of the city. all the development regulations put in the same place and it is the technical tool used to implement regulatory wise your comprehensive plan correct

and so as you do kind of evolve as a city slowly you're going to have like and and also the nice thing about putting the UDC together is it's like a framework so then when you add other things in they have a place to live when you make changes in the future and you add other things into it so this is always going to be changing like every few years and the reason you can't just keep what you had 10 years ago is the state has no I know the state done a lot

and so like you're always every session you're going to have to update something and then and that incrementally gets things messy so usually about every five or 10 some cities do it way more often I think a good thing needs to only be redone every 10 or 20 years it shouldn't have to be redone all the time um but so our we build you that base that kind of organized document where everything lives and then we go by whatever you told us when we started this project that you want to see done, we do that. We make sure everybody's happy. We get an organized system we can give to you. And what I always say is we can create a parking lot of all the things that you think you need to do as a city.

We may not need to do that all right now, but at least that helps you as you plan in the future for what you do want to tackle. So that's kind of where we'll get is, okay, this is our top list. We got to have this done. And then this is our parking lot of what we want to grow into. And maybe as we talk about new incentives for developers, new regulations for things, some of those issues are code enforcement issues. Some of these issues are like the turn lane stuff, like your developer should be doing that because that's a traffic impact. So if someone's building like a 100 or 200 or however many new homes, it's a huge traffic impact. They should have to mitigate that. And so putting a TIA requirement on your developers and that slows a lot of them down because that's expensive for them to have to go do that study. Um, so there are certain things you can put in place like that in here to slow down what's coming that you don't like. um and ensure that if somebody comes and tells you they're going to build a grocery store and then they put a driveway in and then they go bust and then you have a driveway sitting there for 10 years because that's the you know so there's certain measures you can put in place when they plat and things like that to where they have to before they start doing anything they've given you that guarantee so you know that you're not stuck with with a dream that went bust. So there's things like that that so you're not redoing everything. You're just being real strategic almost surgical in what you are adding and not um so we'll I'd say that's probably the overall direction.

Yeah. And I just want to echo echo one thing that um Dr. Faro said earlier. This needs to be this UDC. We need this sooner than later. Obviously we're growing. Yeah. We've already been dealing with this for over a year. Yeah. I'd like this to be done in the next few months. Okay. I mean I mean I don't know about the rest of the the city council or the P&Z but I mean this is holding us up from moving forward. Okay. Okay. So I see this as a roadblock. So we need to Well, this was in the 2324 budget, so it's been around a while. Yeah. Well, this isn't changing anything. And so you're this isn't holding.

It is changing. It absolutely is changing. This is changing the way that we're going to operate as a city. I mean, that's the whole purpose of having the code in place, right? I mean, we have our code. Sure, we're operating. we're moving, but this is going this is how we're we've pitched or this how how this project was pitched to us was how we're going to operate moving forward. So, it absolutely is is it's your regulatory framework. Okay. Yeah. Well, we were put on hold for quite some time. So, we just ramped back up again about what two months ago. So, um so per instructions given to us, we were put on hold and so it's not like we've been dilly out. That's fine. I don't care about the past. I care about the future.

Great. Okay. So we based on that we are going to probably skip then. Okay. So let me ask you a question. Would you rather talk like timeline and what we're working on or would you rather and an update back to what you said at the beginning timeline what we've been working on what we've heard from the community. Is that priorities? And also what time do you guys want to put on for a hard stop or do you not want a hard stop as far as time for the evening goes? I have I think getting this thing moving I think being goal driven is more important to me than a hard stop tonight if that's what you mean. Yes. I want to be respectful of everyone's time. I don't know about everybody. I don't I

want this process to get moving. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. So stay here till we feel good is what I'm hearing. Works for me. So I don't want to be here till midnight. No. Okay. That's what I'm saying. So y'all need to just tell me like move along. So I'll put a slide up and tell me if you want to talk about it. How about that? So Carissa, I do have a question though. Um I would like to get a technical report update on what happened at the technical end after the stakeholders met and also at the stakeholders meeting. Um there was a discussion about changing the relationship between things that go from planning and zoning to city council. Okay. And back to planning and zoning and I have strong feelings about that and wanted to know where that stands. Okay. because this is probably the right forum to have that discussion and I don't know if you know what I mean.

Can we flag that issue and we'll come back to it. The other thing is um there are businesses the few that we have that say we're not businessfriendly. We have one business that went two miles down the road because something didn't work. Okay. There's another one that's on the 11th amendment and your company staff is in involved with that and I was hoping that you could try to help it perfectly said by planning and zoning streamline figure out ways to streamline and make processes better. Yeah. And improve so businesses can be very happy when they walk in the door and walk out the door both. Um, so,

so there there's several things that I think when I said fragmented before, I don't have answers for that were supposed to be a continuum and I'd love to have some of that. Okay.

Bringing us up to speed from what's happened. Yes. So, a report out from those meetings, I will tell you. So, um, and it's a challenge in smaller communities. Um, I'm doing some work down in Crannle down the road. We were just there. I think um the challenge is like getting bodies in the chair sometimes. And so what we we've had a lot of talk about that like sure in a perfect world we would have a committee for this and a committee for that and a group for this but to your point if if it's the same five people that are showing up at each of those is that really the most effective way to do this process. And so what internally that's one of the things we talked about and we spoke with with city too. It's like maybe so we're going to we're suggesting a pivot to you guys to let you know that like I think that probably wasn't particularly effective because of what you said. So we said okay if if community input is what we want let's just focus on community input and not do these specialized groups because we're not getting a good cross-section. We're getting people that show up that just want to sell their own business. You know it's not this isn't why we're here. So, because of the turnout and how those went, we we have some recommendations for maybe how to focus on what the community wants instead.

Um, okay. I think everyone knows all of this. Like when you started the plan, I don't think I need to read all of that to y'all. Um, so I will say this is kind of where we were coming into this meeting is thinking that this should be our priorities moving forward. So based on everything you told us, this is what we came in thinking. So maybe if we can look at this list and read over it together and then you guys tell us if you agree or disagree with any of these or you want us to modify any of these like the resolve conflicts and gaps in the current regulation. Like if there's something that by best practice should be a standard in your code and it's not in there.

Well, to me single family residential should be single family residential. That should be really clear and we've had some hiccups there. Um to me I would rather focus on immediately moving forward to reach our objectives. To me if we have to spend a lot of I know that visions change, strategy changes, highways are going to change, everything's going to change pretty soon. The second bullet, I personally don't want to spend a lot of time on a parking lot of hypothesis. I'd rather spend a lot of time on creating true outcomes. So, I guess the way to clarify that is y'all like you look at this list. I'd say probably 50% of that is beyond our scope, you know? So, can we get to a place where we and if we're supposed to be done in two months and yet there were a lot of things said here that could take us about six months to develop. So my when I say parking lot, it's as we're talking about these things, we can flag those for you or do we, you know, so for future revisions and things that you say you want that aren't necessarily a part of this process so you can know and be able to come back to those later versus the things that you want from us to get focus and get done. So those are things, yes, we would like to see that someday, but we want to get in and get done right now. That's the that's the thought behind bullet number two.

Okay. So, regarding current regulations and codes and and ordinances, did you see anything that was a big red flag that you think we need to change? Okay. Yes. Are you Could you share some of that? Yeah, we're going to get into that later. Okay. Um, so we'll go over examples of some of that stuff. So, I'll show you examples of conflicts and gaps. So, we saw because that's the first thing I did is a full technical review of all of this stuff. So, I was like missing, missing, missing, needs revision, missing, missing, missing, needs revision. Perfectly fine. And then we we will show like this comes straight from your code and things like that. Um and then we got some input to make the ordinances more user friendly to the point of it shouldn't be so difficult to when you have to go through 11 rounds of stuff. Okay. So we're okay with that bullet number three.

Yeah. If I get some detail. Yeah. Okay. Um like I guess basically the question are any of these not important? um to create a more business friendly development process, which is what I think you brought up of someone having to go through so many rounds of iterate like can we make it a little more friendly to business so they can come in and do their project, have it comply, have it meet standards and get something built. Correct. But that leads me to Tony. I think we talked at the last meeting about the PhD students and that's is it able or not able to move forward to put it back on Kimley Horn versus your students or can your students dovetail or is it just not going to work?

No, I think I I'm a professor at UT Dallas and economic and political science and we're going to do a summer class where we look into some of these issues for the city. I think that that what we do just be advisory, telling you best practices and and answering specific questions from the city. Uh that could just be used in conjunction not to supersede or subsume uh anything that's going on here. It just has more information to make your decision. So you see a way to go from your vision to the last bullet. That's what I'm asking. Sure. All right. Thank you.

Um Okay. Okay. And eliminating existing conflicts in city ordinances. So like a lot of what like our first stop is usually dealing with compliance with state law and consistency, internal consistency between all the different plans. So like if over here you have something that says um commercial buildings are this and then over here it says commercial buildings are this and they conflict like we want to resolve that conflict. So, at the most basic level, whenever we do some type of cleanup like this of where you're just taking existing regulations and putting together, cleaning them up, we're going to do that, but then we're going to compliance with state law and internal consistency because the whole reason for like a lot of cities just have their zoning chapter, their subdivision chapter, it's clunky, but they don't want to change it. That's fine. Um, the whole reason a lot of cities want to change them is to have a better, more consistent document where you don't have conflicts. Like a lot of times you'll have signage regulated in zoning, you have signage regulated in the building chapter. Well, which one controls? And your developers hate that because they don't know what you want them to build. Staff doesn't know what which one to enforce. And so building the UDC gets rid of that type of conflict. So you have one set of rules. If they're doing a site plan, these are their rules. If they're platting, this is their plat application, what it has to have. These are the same definitions for all of these things. And so it creates a lot of internal consistency. So we're focusing on that. like we're not reinventing the wheel. We're not making up a bunch of stuff. It's getting you compliant, getting it consistent. Um making this more friendly and all of that. And then anything that's kind of beyond that, like there's a lot of detailed things in here, you know, we can we can work with you on that. If you want us to do some of that while we're in there, we're happy to do that. But we're not going to do that until you've told us you want us to do that. So

So there are some things that we mentioned in a previous meeting that we did not want. We we have water restrictions a lot of times during the year because of the drought and we don't want a car wash. The citizens have spoken on that and one developer has agreed nearby near residents of development. There's also things that concern me like sex shops and you know liquor stores and tiny houses. Um my personal view is I don't want those either but I'm just one person. I'm not

speaking for anybody else. and um undesirable. I would rather have family focused businesses and entities and stores than undesirable. I'll leave that vague.

Yeah. So, and and part of the challenge as a city as you kind of grow into all of this, some of these things are going to be your business regulations, the regulations you put on businesses. Some of them are going to be development regulations, and that's what we're going to be focusing on. Um but like um your new attorney when you get your new attorney like a new sexually oriented business that is technically zoned but that's a whole thing that that that person needs to work on developing that for you. Um and it would eventually plug in here you know and it would we can even make that and make it say reserved and then once you figure that out that parking lot is like that you make a thing and you say reserved and then you go in later and once you have it and you're happy with it you adopt it and it goes straight into your code. And so you're kind of building that framework because again you don't want to our intent is not to give you a 400page rewritten document of it and that is not the intention. So um but we do want to set you up with a framework to grow into.

And would you be so kind to hold the copy of the current ordinances compared to what you've got and not hit delete until we have a chance to look at it? Yes, for sure.

Okay. And I'm I'm feeling very validated because I think we I'm sure we missed some things, but most of what we're talking about tonight are are most of the things that you said. So, um this was big picture and we've adjusted some things. You know, um we did start this process a long time ago. There have been a lot of stops and starts along the way. So, um I would say 80% of everything is done. Um depending on y'all, I mean, it could be even we could even say 90% at this point. um like you know we're we're kind of waiting for you to tell us how much we need to just get finished versus things you want to see changed and added. Um so that's going to determine how long this takes to finish and how much engagement you want because that takes time. And so if we're talking about community meeting, leaving the survey open, doing a lot of rounds of revisions, that takes time, too. So um we'll go through a process. I think we can get done we could get done as early as June. Um, if you want the level of engagement that and I could be wrong, so we'll go through and talk about that on the next slide. Um, because you have to have a public comment period, a 30-day public comment period, you have to have legal review and you have to have a chance to review it.

Yeah. When I and just to clarify, when I want my personal opinion, when I say we need this done in the next few months, I don't want to go into next year's budget. So October is our next year's budget. Okay, I like that. That's a very good directive.

That's a very good Yes, I agree with that 100%. I think we even talked about that in our meeting. We were like, heads up, we got to get done before the fiscal year ends. So I like that directive. Um, we like that a lot. Um, so based on everything and again I could be wrong, so tell me if I did if I misunderstood, but um, we were talking about because those those committee meetings weren't particularly effective and there was a lot of concern that the community didn't know what was going on. We thought let's use our remaining engagement budget to deal to do community meetings and have and continue online providing online support so that people we still have that survey window open. People can always provide comments and we'll go through a two-day where we're here all night doing like an openhouse style meeting that everyone in the community can come. It can be town hall style. We can have stations set up. They can ask questions. We would be there in person to interact with everybody. Um and so that that window and then have that happen at the same time that that public comment period is open. And so the document would be out, a draft version of the document would be out. Everyone would have let's say like a week or two with it and then we would do that twoight meeting and then after that twoight meeting they would have more time with it. So there'd be like 30 days and then right in the middle of there somehow we would do those meetings with everybody so they could come in ask any questions we would be available um to do that. So, we thought that would probably that would be our recommendation of best use of remaining budget. If if really what you care about is community engagement, that's going to be more effective than doing a bunch of series of committee meetings. That sounded sounds like y'all thought the same thing we did that that's probably not the best use of everybody's time.

How close are we to actually having a full draft? Yeah, like we're going to do numbering. We have to do all the outlining. Um, I want to It depends on tonight. Um, so back up, but like if you want it in like a week or two, probably 10 days, two weeks, we could have a draft. But I think you're I think we're going to need to do some more stuff after that. So like if you if you're like pencils down, just get us thing we're done. I would say probably 10 two weeks, don't you think? Um, there's one chapter that I always give high scrutiny and I haven't gotten to do that yet. So that's why I need I need a week with it and then we need a week to package. So, if we want to go that route, but I think there's some other things we can do, but we'll see. Yes. Good.

Um, I just wanted to get your opinion. You're with a very big successful company. I would like to hear from you what your best practices are for getting citizen engagement. So, for example, we're a small town. People are busy. They work all day. They may not be around. Some may be in their house with their children or whatever it might be. People are busy. So, we have some rollable giant side of the road signs. You know, fill out the survey here, please. Or, you know, opening up the community center is another idea, but we really need best practices

for getting the people to understand what's about to happen and participate. What do you suggest as a best practice? Two, well, a question on that. How much how effective is online stuff here? Not so well people observe their social media all day. But like going to the city watch like you know like your meetings and and do people when y'all have council meetings? What's the attendance? Pretty much zero. Yeah. Well, what please help us? Oh no. I'm just Yeah. Do you know? Cuz I know we used to be able to see how many were online, but now with YouTube, I'm not sure we can.

We have at least a hundred people that view the videos afterwards. I just would love them to come to city council meeting.

I know that and and it's not y'all like I was doing a comprehensive plan um for the city of Godley, which is over on the CBurn side. Um and they were having major I call it donut syndrome is where all the developers just go to the ETJ. So you get you don't get residential growth in your town, but you get like thousands of new homes in your ETJ. So they had like this huge ETJ donut, but um they were frustrated at participation. I was like more people did the surveys than voted for like your mayor, you know. So are well actually it's just cuz the number it's just the it's fr of us that are kind of civic minded, engaged minded. It can be very frustrating that other people in the community aren't here. And we deal with that a lot. We're like, are you kidding me? That's all that came? We just did so much work. But it's just, you know, there comes a point where you are providing ev horse to water is the thing. You're providing every avenue you can and you're meeting people where they're at.

Um and then then and you and I would also say set goals for your engagement and base it on reality of who attends and we maybe it's we want a 15% improvement over what we've had before and don't just go expect to do like don't expect 300 people if you've always had 10. Um the other thing is um through school and church is the best way to reach people um not through anything else. They're going to read they were going to read flyers put in their kids' lunchbox. They're going to you know see announcement posted in the kitchen of wherever. So I would say those are good places to reach people and um balance your in person and online and and if if you don't ever get people to come in person another community we're doing something with Wolforth out there by love and um even their advisory committee if we do it online we get nobody like two people but if it's an inerson meeting everybody comes like it's the opposite so every community is just different on that um

but be realistic one person so we do we are able to see Okay, go ahead. Okay. I think nobody expects this. I think we have more interaction on our neighborhood Facebook pages than we do anywhere else. Anytime that we post something, three of the council members, we all live in the same neighborhood and anytime we post something on our neighborhood page, it gets more interaction than anything else. And I I think I could probably say that for most of the ETJs as well.

Okay, that's that's lean into that like lean all the way into that and I'll say if I I learned so I did Bernie's first you know they same as y'all like a lot of these cities I I'm kind of step in and do the first UDC they ever do so we're doing that for them and we got towards the end and the big issue was a lot of people were like you kept talking about a UDC we didn't know this meant zoning and that was my lesson learned years ago that you have to be very clear and if

if people know you're changing the zoning of their property That's a whole lot different than you just sitting up here talking about budget and good point and hiring staff. Who care? They don't care about that. They But when you say the we're going to this is going to affect your zoning, that gets people's attention. And by state law, you have to put that on certain notices you send out now anyways. So, I would say if you really want to get the numbers up, that's a on Facebook especially like did you like an FAQ? Oh, we do those. We can do an FAQ that y'all could post on Facebook with some things like that, like the this is what the UDC is about, that kind of thing. Question. The video is not working.

Well, I don't know where Jim sent this, but he said, "Okay, you got the mic on, but this just came through." It could have been somebody else. Just want to make sure that that's the right screen everybody's seeing. Oh, okay. So Jim must be the one person watching.

So back to that point after the survey was originally going to close. We extended the survey period. We revamped the website and offered a great reapply and how you know it helps shape what the community is going to look like as it grows and develops. and I think I was going to touch on that, but we did receive a much greater number of responses

in that short period when the survey was open at any point before if I'm not mistaken and they'll they'll touch on that, but we are making an effort at the staff level as well to ensure that the public understands how this is going to affect the city in the future

because there's there's a lot of technical in all of this, you know, and We It's so hard because I don't I don't think you do anybody a service when you just speak technical stuff that nobody but at the same time a lot of this does impact property owners and they need to be made aware of that. And so part of our challenging job is yes all this technical knowledge and expertise but it has to be translated through FAQs and and also knowing what are those things that people honestly really care about and you're going to be looking at. Um and so so we kind of will look at that and and Miguel I might let y'all figure that out like I don't we're not um we don't touch city Facebook anything um that is you know but we can any of the content we're providing for the website could be translated that way and if that's an effective venue that everyone does look at then either linking to and sometimes also like linking back to that website um it helps the project because it's nice to have a home face and so then people aren't waiting for you to spoon feed them new posts all the time sometimes giving them that link so they can know oh there's a site where everything I could ever want to know about this is found so um so we can continue providing content and let y'all decide like how to disseminate that um so but that community input obviously is going to be ongoing um we are in late of March now so um we were thinking based on how everything goes tonight. Um staff also needs a chance to be able to re review this because they're the ones that enforce and have to apply all of this stuff and so they need to be given a chance to review this as well. Um so we would we're like really at April right now. Yes, we're March, but we're almost at April. So we'd like probably a couple of weeks to package everything up. Um give staff a couple of weeks with it, get us their comments back, and then we can make any necessary revisions there. and

sometime in May. I think it would honestly and it just depends. I don't know how the election universe is here this year. I don't know. So, I don't like doing a lot of stuff. I mean, May is just hard, you know, because of that. Um, but then you're in June and you're in the summer, so there's no great time. But time wa timelinewise, May for a 30-day public comment period combined with some um open house, a two-day, two nights because again, it's every opportunity. So, um, Wednesday is usually a church night, but you know, then you have ball games and practices and things, too. So, we'll work with y'all to figure out what are the two best nights. It's good to have it during the same week, though. Um, because you do need to control that process a little bit, give people plenty of time to digest it. They can post their comments online and all of that stuff, but we want to be available to them and staff can be available to them as well, which is actually a really good thing because a lot of times the people who live here don't ever interact with with city staff and so it shows that your staff also knows about this and they also enforce this and this is their role in that. So on a lot of levels, those kinds of meetings are good. Um, and then after we get the public comments back, we will take a couple of weeks to sort through those, figure out how I like to do it is have one point. Like everything would go through Miguel and come to us from him. And so if you have comments, they go through Miguel to us. I give it. So he's he's the point guy. He's our point man for everything. Um, and then we go through and we address every comment. So it's not like we skip any. So we'll either say revision accepted or we can't do that because you can't do that or whatever. So um so you'll get that then once we do that we go with the through attorney legal review you're and because you you have new attorney coming in I don't know um Miguel's going to work with that person to figure out um what what they want to look at in particular

usually it's the provisions and procedures that they care most about um not like they don't really care what kind of trees and you know what the setbacks of the front yard are. They don't care about that. They want to know is the city going to get sued if we do it this way and what's your definition for this? So, but we'll see once they get here. Um, and then once we get that back, we do the revisions based on their comments. Um, and then we make our final edits and it comes to you guys for action. In the middle of all of that, if you notice there's a red dot around Junish, it would be where we come back to this group. And I don't the there was a reason we had it a joint meeting. Um, it's really a lot of communities P&Z and council can get out of step or if you're always showing up and doing your job, but you never get to hear what they have to say or vice versa. So, everybody needs to be marching to the same drum beat. And so, doing these as joint meetings, I I think is particularly effective because you get to hear from the other body that's given their time and doing their personal best to help the city be amazing and everybody kind of gets to hear each other. Um, so that's that's our recommendation. Again, if you do or don't like that, we can change it. But we were planning on doing another one of these um in about two or three months. Um, and then that and that way if there's anything that we changed and you would also be involved I mean that public comment period you have access to all that too, right? So, um, that would be your chance to say on page 35, line 15, I don't like this or whatever, and we can talk about it. So, you would have a chance to give us feedback before it goes to city attorney. Um, so that way we kind of get everybody's input at some level. We tighten it up, goes to city attorney, they give us review, and then it's ready um for action. And so, and that's why it takes a long time with this stuff. And so, oh my gosh, the bigger cities take forever

because they do multiple rounds of all of that. So, um, so I think this is an efficient but realistic process. Like I said, we can move as fast as you want, but there's some basic 30-day windows up there that really do need to happen. Um, now that first UDC development box, that that's what can shrink. You know, that could be again like if we leave tonight and y'all say we don't want to do anything else, just package it up and get it ready. Then then we can shrink that timeline by maybe like a month, you know. Um but yeah, so and then the budget is the other thing I think we we talked about. Um like you don't want to be taking action on this at the same time you're taking action on your budget,

you know.

So August is out. We're not doing anything in August. Yeah. So that's why it was like in all likelihood it might be September. Not because it's going to take us that long, but just working with you on when's the best time to do this. Um, so it's either going to be July or September. And um, so you guys just need to tell after we get through looking at everything tonight, we'll, this is the last slide. We'll come back to this at the end again. um to just figure out do we need to move fast and get it done in July or do we need to take some more time make some more revisions to the content and um do it for September so that we you don't have to decide now we'll we'll figure it out at the end of the meeting. I would just like to see another opportunity for community, not just one yellow dot, but two. And I don't care where it is, but I just think that in city limits, we don't have a lot of people outside of city limits in ETJ, we do, and this is going to apply. And I just, you know, really feel like the community needs to know. And if they choose not to participate, I get that.

Okay. But I do feel this is possibly going to affect every single resident. So, okay. Um, so we were going to do So, you're saying instead of doing the two events concurrently, separate, put more time between the two events. No, I'm not saying take away anything from the two. I'm saying add two. Okay. You have four. I I I don't at least three. I I mean I know it's hard to herd the cats and get people to come to the water trough but okay I really feel the citizens need to understand they will be affected.

Okay. Um so maybe Miguel we can work on how to put extra add add meetings to our you know what I'm saying? I don't I think that's going to be we can figure out a way to do that but um because we're having to take from some things to we're already having to do that a little bit. So maybe we can go back and figure out a way to make that happen. In all honesty, I I would rather see something between June and July with just even as a one-time thing because at that point in June, we should be pretty close to where we think we're going to end up. And then that last community thing in case there's something that we're just completely off base on, right? Where the community goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Yeah.

Right. You never know, right? I mean, we're all human. We're going to make a mistake, right? But I I mean I'm good with the the two where it's at, but maybe one after our our joint session in June, right? Okay, that's okay with me. I mean, I'm just throwing ideas out there. I just would like one extra. Just Does that make sense? At least just one extra. So would the June joint meeting or you saying move that up? No, I'm saying have the community one after that June meeting. Move yellow until after red. No add make a second

between June and July after the workshop. Do we want to do that as an hourly or should do you want to talk about that later? We'll talk about that. I mean the question I guess that's happening here is budget and scope right. So we're we're making adjustments to stay within the budgeted amount and the scope. If we can stay and make adjustments to stay within the budget, then we can add that extra night. Great. However, I guess it's more of a policy question here. Yeah.

To avoid having to come back and ask for additional funds. Would you all be open to splitting the two dates have one day in May and one day in June? As a last resort, we're going to do our best to That's okay with me. Okay. I I just it's ultimately paid for by the taxpayers who live in this area. Yeah. Yeah. I'd like to understand what that that night cost. I'm sorry. What does that night cost? What are we going to incur if we do a third night? I I think I know I know we can't make a determination or a vote or anything like that tonight, but

that Okay. I I have a question. if we're going to split those up. Um, so we have right now we have the public review miday and then we have the next meeting with all of us like somewhere around the 1st of June. Um, if we did split that up like is that going to change? Are we going to have to come back and have another meeting with all of us?

Yeah. So the challenge is and this is I forgot. I'm so sorry. See, I told y'all I'm challenged with PowerPoints and now it won't go. There we go. So, I'll just walk over here and point. So, the challenge is this public comment period. And so, once it goes into legal review, pencils down because that's straight to you. This can these two have to travel together and nothing break. So, whatever you want to do before it gets here is great. But this so everything has to happen basically.

Okay. So, if we have a public review and you get some content that changes things a little bit, then you come back to us the 1 of June and then we have another public review and things have to be changed again. Do we have to have Do we have to have another red meeting before it can go to green? You don't have to have any red meetings really by law or you have to have yellow meetings. Um, but I think it's good practice to have you guys. Yes, absolutely. I love you guys.

So, I I'm doing it again. I'm so sorry. Let me get back over here. So, so the like I said, the green and the blue have to travel together and that's the end. Um, and and I'm hearing and I think that might be a good idea is just extend the public comment period of public review to be 45 days. Do you want to be sandwiched in the middle or do you want to come at the end of that? The the problem that I have with another just extending it just randomly extending it. They don't have anything to look at. I want them to have a document to look at to provide comment on. Right. Yes. They'll have a document by then. Yes. That period will be so we're going to have a second another public comment when we actually give them the draft. The first draft versus public review. They'll have the draft ready and looking at by then

and they'll be able to put in comments and do whatever they want. Yes. Yes. That criteria. So that's what we want to publicize. we have to publicize. Okay, we're publishing a graph on our website on that point in time and giving them 30 or 45 days depending on what you choose to allow them to provide comments. That feedback comes into us or to Kimly Board. They incorporate that feedback into the draft and make edits as needed.

Then the expectation is to come back to you all to give you a summary right of of those that feedback from that review and additional alterations or changes. So if we add another yellow, we we could, but that's going to be up to you what you want to do. But no matter what, any public feedback received will incorporate it into and I will say and I'll just give y'all a warning and this is the really hard part. So again, we didn't the comprehensive plan that was done what, two years ago? Two, three years ago. three years ago.

So, by law, your zoning regulations have to be consistent with your land use plan. And so, when you create an input process about zoning, you create an opportunity for conflict with that comprehensive plan. And what that does to you as a city is it means you have to go update that land use plan. Yeah.

So, you are putting a whole other project on yourself. So, you got to be really careful when you do engagement about zoning. It's intended to be informational to where people understand how this is affecting them. They have a right to influence like maybe procedures and things like that. But the zoning ordinance by law has to be consistent with the land use plan. And so, if you create this whole outside of the of the comp plan process for public input, you're you're kind of going around your comp plan. And so you have to be really careful with this. I'm just giving y'all that information so you understand. Um that's why you do these UDC's right after you finish a comprehensive plan. The whole purpose is to get those two consistent because by state law you have to do that. And so transparency, the sharing of information, the opportunity for people to be informed is really important. But you cannot create an opportunity where you're creating an alternate voice and alternate instruction that conflicts with that plan. So as we go into these meetings just be really careful with that and I just want to make everyone understand that as far to have expectations. Yes.

Is it too much This is maybe a totally naive question. Is it too much of a service to just invite people that want to come to our June that June? Not at all. But we need Are they invited here? Yes, they're invited here now but public. We just invite them in June. We heard from you. We put this together. We're going to get together and talk. If you want to get tell us something, come tell us. Yeah, we don't have to put on a favor. I think we just need to advertise that pretty well and make sure that they have copies before they get here of the UDC. So basically just instead So when we start the work session, we we just open for public comment and then we close public comment and then we go back into work session. Such a good idea.

And then we're done. Can we do that? Yeah, we're tired. I think so. I'm looking at Lisa. Yeah, it's a really good idea. I think that's a great idea. That's efficient. And y'all, it's just it's also building in that practice of governance, you're reinforcing that that you want governance to be participatory. And so by you by combining those, I love symbolically what that says. I think that's all. Yes, 100%. And if there is something that you every you hear what they're saying and you're all and the other issue I will say the other reason that's genius is that

when it's when you have community meetings separate from this you can have quorum issues and so suddenly people can't you have to number who gets to go and who doesn't and so suddenly you guys don't all get to be there listening to everybody and by have by having them here it already is a quorum you already are here it's already being recorded and all of you get to hear what they're saying. It's not just two of you that gets to hear what they're saying. Love that. Good point. Uh the beginning of the yellow box, the left side of the yellow box. So they'll have

no matter what they'll have at least 30 days before and we're not getting it any earlier than them, right? We're getting at the same time or is there a possibility that we're going to get it sooner than the public? Yeah, it would just push back when they get it. like we'll just set a date and say if you see I think that's what where I'm going with is the work session tonight we need the dates and when the stuff is expected right that that's that's what outcome that I would like to see tonight is like if you guys need you know two weeks four weeks whatever that's a date when the city gets it they're going to have x amount of time to review it that's a date right we we need to so we need to settle on that stuff so we actually have time and then we can work it into the budget dates because those are going to be coming up

yeah yeah so our our our thought was that once it it just kind of goes live to everybody at the same time. So, you would get it at the same time as public because you're not meeting with us till then. Anyways, so I have a concern with that if if we're dropping something out for the public that this council has not seen or the P&Z hasn't seen yet. Okay. You want to see it first? Okay. It could be completely off of what we're looking at. Right. And we could So, we'll pad two weeks. No, that's fair. I think that's very fair. Not that I expect it. Yeah. Not that I expect that to be. Yeah. Right. But if we see something in there that like we're gonna get just completely fried on on Facebook, I don't want that happening to this to either one of these boards right now.

No, that's I actually I actually agree with that. I think maybe we swap the red and yellow or something like that. Or maybe they can just maybe we give it to you in time for you to have a hearing. Miguel just fields questions at a council meeting or something. Well, you said you could have it by the middle of April. So if you gave it to us the middle of April, they get it the middle of April. Oh, so the city gets it first and then city council. Yeah. Because I think what's going to get people's attention when they start? Yes, 100%. So how long until you can get it for the city? To staff or to you? Staff. Um it depends on if you want me to put more stuff in it. So if all we're doing is finishing up what we have, probably two weeks.

Okay. And then if how long does city staff need it before council can get it? Two. And then we would need to fiddle. Could we make that one week? Could we? I think it's two. Yeah. No, that's fair. So that's May 1st before we would get it. Well, no, because it's April. I mean, it's April. Yeah, they would get it the middle of April. We would get it May the 1st and then the public wouldn't get it until say a week or two after that. May 7th, May 15th. Yeah. And going by two weeks is just a better way to in all reality, especially with all the new notice like you said.

So we're 6 weeks out from the city getting it if they they stick to their twoe timeline. And then this then the citizens have it for 30 days after that. So best case is mid June before this this body can be back together again. with public comment. Do we know how big of a document it is? Yes. But I'm just laughing because this I really was hoping this was supposed to be what we talked about at the end. So I feel bad we're talking all this stuff. Y'all haven't even seen any of our analysis yet. So um your question I'm sorry is how big of a document is it? Um 400 pages. Oh lord. Is it like 150? No.

Okay. Okay. So something that for people who don't use the computer, the city, it's not so large that the city couldn't make a couple of notebooks if somebody wanted to come up and look at it as well just to see what it is that's going to affect my zoning. Once you put the word zoning in there, you're going to get we're going to get participation.

Yeah. And normally when we do these meetings, we have like a a station with a scrolling PowerPoint, you know, like on so like we can be answering questions and that thing just keeps going. We'll have posters up where they can see the map and and all that. Sometimes like flyers that say like if you I'm just making stuff up. SF1 is this, C1 is this and you know whatever. So, um we make it to where people can follow. Okay. I would like to show y'all some content analysis if that's okay. And we will come back and finish with this because I agree with you. I think we need dates on the calendar. I'm fine with that. I think that's a great idea. Come back. Are we cool to moving into the guts of this stuff?

We're getting making We're making sausage now. Okay. Well, we've already talked about this. Oh my goodness. Okay. See, I was all this stuff that we've already talked about without the slides. So, survey is still up. We've had just since March. This is um is that true? 269 since March. Oh, to date. Okay. Oh, as of March. Okay, I got it. Okay, so it's 269 total. Okay. Um community openhouse, we'll talk. We've already talked about that. Um 30-day, we've already talked about that. See, we're just so advanced. Um Qing engagement, we've already talked about that. Um they the qu Have you all done the survey? Yes.

Okay. All right. Um so we got that. So they get to do some ranking questions and priority questions. Um everybody knows about all that. I don't want to go through things that you either already know or you've already talked about. Um these are common themes though that have come up. So, um, would like more business opportunities to attract visitors, less residential developments, which is very consistent with what you guys said tonight. Um, so the look and vibe of Josephine for residents to enjoy living here 30 plus years from now. Um, that's neat. That's a very insightful, inspiring kind of thought. Um, road maintenance, we got that wider streets, parking,

and that developer funded infrastructure improvements. That's actually something that can be written into your like that's what we talk about adding things to your code. It's that kind of stuff like the plan development. Yes. Well, no, it's it's doing like TAS, impact mitigation, parkland dedication, having them build your turn lanes, like having them build all that stuff. So, it's the how are developers going to mitigate the impact they're putting on your community. Um, and so that's something that often gets written into Let me ask a question on the TAS. Yeah, I noticed one in a document I was looking at that it was it was just done by an engineer. It wasn't done by like text dot or something like that. Is that normally what kind?

So the developer has to hire an engineer to go do that. So the city writes standards for how they if they create a certain number of trips then they have to go mitigate those impacts and then they have to prepare a traffic impact analysis which is a huge study that cost them a lot of money and then they have to submit that to the city and then in the code it would give you rules for how you know they and then your your city engineer and your city folks are going to either approve that or deny or work with them to negotiate what improvements they're going to do. Um they have to be roughly proportional. You can't ask them if they are putting like a hundred home I'm making something up that's going to sound so stupid. They're putting 100 homes right here on this road. You can't say well because you're doing that you have to go build a park over here or they have to be proportional.

Um so you just have to write. So there's language in the UDC that has to be written. But the whole point of that is to create a mechanism that when they come to do an application to build something in that application is the financial guarantees and the quantifying of how they have to mitigate that impact. Um so that's the kind of stuff that you can put in to tighten stuff up on development because I I do I I agree and I think I understand what you're saying. It's don't burden homeowners but we want control over development. Is that kind of the Is that the growth? We want control of the growth. Huh? Control of the growth. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's a good way of looking at it. A land development. Yeah.

Mhm. We're not going to turn down a lot of businesses though if they want to come in. There you go. That kind of growth we want. There's one or two, but that's about it.

And I'll tell you, like if you think about it from an investor perspective, someone's going to be very hesitant to invest where it's not there's no prediction of their return and there's no prediction of what's going on on either side of them. another community they have all their highway can be either industrial or commercial and they're not you know so you get two big manufacturing things on your highway frontage no good commercial is ever going to move in there so that's the kind of stuff you're like I have you have to create an environment where investment feels safe enough to go um and that's part of this so sometimes standards are actually usually developers won't mind you asking more of them as long as the pathway is predictable the process is controlled and what you're asking from them is they can math it out, you know, in their financial models.

Can I ask you a question? Yeah. Is there anything in it in the code that where a developer comes that the city actually and I heard this at a commissioner's court meeting? What kind of financial backing do you have? You're coming to our city 100%. Okay. And city should always, that's my opinion, but I always tell you should always make performance guarantees and they should have to do it before they get their plaque. And so they have to do performance guarantees with you. Give us give us your who? It's a bond. Yeah,

it's basically a bond, a line of credit, whatever it is, the equivalent of that impact. Um I did that even before we did the comp and godly that's the first thing I did for them is we went and redid their subdivision, their platting sequence because a lot of cities will say you have to go build the infrastructure before you get final plat. But they don't require any performance guarantee. You can have ghost town neighborhoods. They can build all those roads and then go bust. And that happened down in I think it was outside of Brownsville. I remember I went Austin had this one time too. You just like Ghost Town subdivision industrial park where the roads got built.

The guy was speculating so he goes bust. You're looking at those roads forever. And so I think it's better to do that. Make them bond it. Get their performance. Get their bank in there. Say, "Yeah, these guys are good for it." Awesome. So, do we have like Liberty Ranch West? They went away. We I have no idea what happened to them. So, they haven't started yet their actual infrastructure, right? I know. But like they have plans performance is at the time they submit their actual plans. Okay. title and zones. I mean, it can stay there. That part is only a factor when they're ready to start actual construction that they finish the actual

and see what's different at the commissioner's court because they haven't even come into town yet. They want to come into town. So, and there's a big difference I know now between commissioners and the county and what city does. So,

yeah. And I will say, you know, and I don't even know, every session they're going to try now to take away ETJs from cities, which makes me very sad. But I will say, if y'all ever want to know, it's always better for you to regulate than for the county because they don't have the same level of authority. They can't require preliminary plats. They can't require site plans. They can't require any of that. And so they don't have the same right of review that a city does. Even general law doesn't matter. You have more right of review than a county does. So if you want control over what's happening around you, it is always better for cities to to my opinion it control that ETJ as long as you have it. Hopefully we'll have it. So you said at the time they plat we can ask for their financial no time in the construction construction plans.

Okay. So like when they say hey here's our plans here's here's what we want they're going to build and we've got the plat before that. We normally ask for a final plan after the fact like like Marissa mentioned that's the best practice because It's only to solidify what's already being built on the ground. It gives us a protection so that they don't go selling lots before the infrastructure is completed. And that that's happened in other jurisdictions before. Okay. But I thought, and correct me if I'm wrong on this one, Patrick, but when we did concept plan, preliminary platon was allowed to go ahead and break ground and start construction

and that that happened. You don't file a final plan until the infrastructure is in place because we want those as built plans. We want them to actually reflect No, I'm saying okay moving dirt. They were actually moving dirt. They weren't to me that is still construction but they were moving dirt at at preliminary plat. And so our preliminary process as it's rated right now requires construction plans to come with them. So okay, the plans get approved by the city engineer and then they have the pre-construction meeting in the bonds and things and those things are required at that time and they can begin construction. Okay,

we don't even want to touch a final at home. So everything is done and it's the case of morning recent decent points is the very end but it was because you final at the end that we were able to identify that issue to begin with. Okay. So it's a protection for the city to ensure that the subdivision is built. We have everything that we need before we can report that approve and report that plan and then they can start. Okay.

So this is the reason for the parking lot. You just realized you just understood the reason for the parking lot. We officially started our parking lot platting sequence and construction document sequence. That's a whole other thing. That's why I'm like this could take a year. Like it's all of this stuff is it's just how much of this you feel we have to get this done right now and then how much of this you want to take the time to do now versus parking lot we'll do this because some of this stuff your staff can do like

you know and then and some things um yeah there's just and then get into the engineering standards like that's a whole other thing for your subject you know I was like there's always things in here you're going to find that you want to see changed and made better it's just when this pencil's down you know that's the challenge is when to put pencils Um, and then development and design standards. Um, like that's a whole other parking lot issue. Like do you want new commercial design standards? Because that's a whole big thing to do for your city. So yeah. So yes, we don't have any now. So yes. Yeah. Make them.

Yeah. So I would say revisit um platting and land development sequence and commercial design standards because we've talked about a couple of things that we think we need to have in for that yeah and yeah that's what the parking lot of bodies yeah could do it so that that's a reserved section in the right

okay So before we aren't the again because I wasn't in these meetings so I need you to tell me if this is wrong or not. Um from everything that I was told and from what I've heard from you tonight that the big takeaway was this was not particularly effective. Is there anything that did come up in those meetings though that you feel like we need to not lose and that you found particularly insightful or important? Not to change our current process between planning and zoning and city council because there was a proposal to cut out an aspect of the circle review and I'm just one person but I oppose that. I want to leave things the way they are with my as far as who who are you talking about an approval the approval processes.

Yeah, the preliminary and the final proposal. Okay. So platting that would be for platting um resonings. There was a proposal to leave city council out to where PNZ would just approve. Yeah. Yes. And and my personal opinion is I love them to death, but no. Thank you. You want everything coming to council still. Yes. The way it is. The way it is. Yes. Yes. They go and they make a recommendation and you make the the final. Okay. Yes. Yes. Yes. Highly respect them though. Very much. It's respect them right now. I don't think we have a problem city. Yeah. 15 years down the line. Well, just teach us. I'll be dead. So, don't worry about it.

10 15 years. I can change it. I will say I will say what he just said is exactly right because that's how it works. A smaller towns almost always they go to council and then as you grow council eventually says hard pass please Lord no. And so but until but you won't you up until you hit that point it's very common for it to stay this way. Um the state is actually now grant a lot of cities are moving to because the deal with plats is it's not there's nothing discretionary about it. You can hate it and you still have to approve it if it meets all your standards. And so because of that, a lot of cities are actually arguing to get more given to staffs in the opposite direction of you because they're like, "Don't take my time up. This is an administrative approval. Our engineers look at the plans. They comply with our rules. We're going to um but that's larger cities." And so the larger cities are wanting the relief of of PNZ doesn't even want to see them. Like they're like, "Can we give more to staff?" But in the smaller communities, you were elected, you were put here. And so there's this sense of I need to do the duty to my community of being the one to have my eyes on it. So it's very common to to have that. I think that's fine. So So maybe um that was you said that was something that came out of those meetings that stuck out to you like one of the things we needed to remember. Okay. Anything else about those focus group meetings that we need to not lose if we go to this community meeting?

Just don't lose the grocery store. So I cannot do that. Yes, I know what you mean. And um I think the challenge in your regulations, creating regulations that encourage and incentivize certain things, a lot of it like your economic development incentives. Do you'all have an EDC or no? No, we got rid of that. We have an MDD next month through the municipal development district.

That is that those kinds of things what you consider your like economic priorities. Those are the marching orders you give to that group and you say, "Here's the thing. Job number one." and they they're going to help with recruitment. Um all of that kind of stuff. So you you want to write regulations that don't turn people away, but regulations are never going to attract anybody. Um they're going to make it more desirable of an environment, but your incentives are what are going to attract people to come here. Um and the stats like general statistics of the neighborhood. Um so it's one big package. You want to do your part with the regulations to where they're not ownorous, they're navigable, they're reasonable, all these things. And then you go get a hustler who's gonna help you find those people. Um okay. Um I'm gonna move along from this. That's okay.

Yeah.

Okay. Maybe. Are you kidding me? Please. Come on. There we go. Okay. Moving along. Okay. Draft document. Finally there. Um so again, our marching orders kind of have been don't mess up it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Keep what we have. We're just building this into a framework that will grow with us as we grow. That's been kind of our assumption. So, we're going to just organize things in a more conventional stand stamp um format, which would be more what a UDC is. So, you generally your general provisions will always come first. Administration is just who has the authority to do what um procedures are all your procedures. So it'll be your platting procedures, your resonings, your variances, um any special or conditional use permits, any type of procedure they go through would be in that third chapter. So that and that's the one your attorney is going to look at really closely. Um and then you'll have a zoning chapter which is going to cover like you know uses that are allowed, heights of buildings, setbacks and all of that stuff. Um site design. Zoning regulates what goes on sites and that's within your city limits. So chapter five is really like the design standards that travel with zoning um with site design. If you think there's site and subdivisions, um platting is the regulations they have to follow for subdivision design. And then and that's like blocks. Um block

yes. Anything like if they do entry features, perimeter fencing, things that are about the subdivision. And then infrastructure design of course be roadwater, roadway, water, wastewater drainage, those kinds of things. Um environmental design. Y'all actually had some regulations in there that have to do with that, like a tree preservation, if there's anything about that. Um, parkland dedication, if there's anything about parkland dedication. Um, some areas that are in like recharge zones, anything, you know, um, some some communities put their flood plane rigs in their UDC, some communities keep them outside. It's it's there's no hard and fast rule. Um, and so we'll just if you want them in there, great. If not, great. That's the kind of stuff we'll talk about with staff, like where do you want this living in here or not? Um, just from their standpoint where they need things organized. Um, and then any appendices. So, like if you did, like we talked about TAS earlier, if you use that, a lot of communities would have any like um worksheets that you have for people or like if there's a list like if you had an approved tree list or you had like a list of anything else people have to follow, those would sometimes live in the appendix. Your definitions, I always like to put definitions in the appendix. Um, so that kind of stuff. So that's kind of the general structure and that way it's super easy for people. There's not like 50 million chapters. It's everything is organized by topic, easy to follow. We'll typically do like a process graphic, you know, showing people where to go, how to navigate everything.

Question question on which which part of this is it going to separate residential from commercial? That under the subdivision or does it not separate? Uh, five site design. Okay. So there'll be a commercial and there will be a residential. Yeah. Okay. In some communities, again, it's like how long you want everything to be, but in some communities, I we've done residential site design, non-residential site design, and they're completely separate chapters to really call that out. Um, and we can do that here if you like that. I think because we were doing this because it was so hard to do commercial that we might want to do that. I don't know. Yeah. Or at least make commercial first and then

Yeah. Okay. So, you would do residential and non-residential. And so, that's the two um separators there. And that way, because you would not believe the arguments over the definition of commercial, like everywhere you are, there's different all of those. So, we we um I tend to just say non-residential. That way, you'd have two categories because if you say commercial, well, where are the standards for industrial and is office considered commercial? and what about this and what about that our health our health facilities our hospitals and clinics and so it's like h so we just do residential non-residential that way every all of that stuff is lumped in the same

and non-residential come first because in comes before R in the alphabet okay um do how do we feel if is everyone happy with that splitting that out into two separate chapters add more time to project or no that's a that's yeah I mean it's going to cost money that's fine we won't do it. If it's going to cost money, we won't do it. But if it's not, do it. And it sounds like the priority here is having those regulations for site design where the nonresidential and really that's where most of the grow. Well, see, I thought that's why I thought that's kind of really one of the reasons we started this because it was too hard for the developers. So,

yeah. Okay. I love that. Okay. So, we'll go four zoning, five non-residential site design, six residential site design. Okay. And so, there'd be nine chapters plus an appendix. Will you be covering overlay districts or not? If you have them in there right now, we will. Um I they need if if you would be creating them from scratch, that's they need a they need a process because all the people who live in that area need to have an engagement. And there was a recent survey about how high we wanted our buildings. Have you gotten any information on that? Because our fire trucks currently go two stories and we already have three stories buildings by the school here.

So, we have to call mutual aid if something's tall. That's the reason we review with staff is that kind of stuff. So, we figure out like

fire marshall usually doesn't want to do any planning and fire marshall usually want to do two different things. And so we got to get everybody on the same page with the width like do we want, you know, skinny streets or wide streets? Can buildings be above a certain height? Depends on how tall our things go. So can anticipate for that, you know, saying, you know, we're not ready as a city. I'm just speaking from experience, you know, and from our current code. It's written in a way that anticipates, you know, having more equipment to serve those higher buildings. I'm not saying that that's the goal here, but I think we will take that into account this code anticipates that increased height.

Yeah. And obviously we're not think

but if somebody came in tomorrow and wanted to put three stories in they cannot right now because we don't have the provision. So like any multif family development that was approved

cannot be built because they are not you know we don't have the infrastructure now they come in and say hey we'll pay for a city that considered then at that point the city could allow that to happen but until the city cannot say no until they come in and say those are the appropriate you So that's how it's set up right now. I think the intention we're all on the intention is to anticipate and set up the city in the infrastructure there to support those.

Oh, this is our commissioner Marie by the way. I'm sorry.

Nice to meet you. Yeah, I don't want to say no to a threetory industrial building at all, but you know, we've got to make sure that the plan is in place and they will incur that cost whether it's a huge donation to fire department for truck or something in the building that will satisfy the fire to say boo. Never want to say no. Okay. So now again, reorganization, not revision. Um, so kind of when I'm going through this, I'm just picking four of the chapters to kind of show you when we do a technical cross check is what I call it. Uh, we're how we look at new structure versus old. Because the other thing when we come out of this, you're going to get um the draft document you get, you're going to get a um a code cross check a table to go with it that's going to say, okay, um sidewalks is chapter 8, section 4 in the new UDC. It was chapter 2, section three in the original document, so that you're able to see where everything came from um as you go through. Um and so that's what this is. So, um, our working document right now we we created as a first thing is is this cross check document on the right. And so I go through I do a review of everything that should be in there. Um, and if it's not, then you see location and city code. And so I I cite the location of those things in the current city code. And then um on the next slide, if if it's just best practice, I always recommend people have this. It's blue, but it's not like critical. It's just like, oh, it's good if you have that. And then the um I'm sorry, Versafisa, the blue stuff is what you really need. The orange stuff is like optional. So, it'd be nice if you added that, but not critical. I had them backwards. Sorry. So, um so as you're

looking at these, if you see orange, it's not really essential. Um but it's probably good practices. Like, you don't have to regulate residential garages, but some communities really care about that, so they want to do it, but it's not something that I think like every code should have something on that. um outdoor storage and display for commercial areas. Yeah, you really want to regulate that.

So, that's kind of how I did this. So, yellow just means that I was able to find it in your current um regulations. If it's orange or blue, I was not able to find it in your current regulations. So, I did that for every single section of what we're writing. So, um so Adolf and I have been working on the draft. We said, "Okay, here's our current draft, and these are the sections, you know, the chapter and section there." Um and then we went through and is it in the current code? And and I got some of these are they're not in your current code. So there's a gap. Um and a lot of this is like general provisions. It's like a short title, you know, like also referred to as a UDC, you know. So it's not like real content. It's like legal ease kind of stuff. So, there's a lot of that stuff that I think could be added in that probably should like that you making a statement that the code needs to be consistent with the comprehensive plan or um some a provision something talking about violations, liability claims against the city. So, this is stuff that we wouldn't even necessarily have to write your city attorney. That's this is the kind of stuff she he or she is going to want to weigh in on. Um so, we do flag that though. So, and then a transition policy in there that's optional. Um consistent. A lot of cities have a lot of other documents that um this has to comply with as well, like big cities. Um you guys aren't going to have like a bunch like Do you have a separate um like um design criteria manual for you know

engineering drainage? Okay. So then this might be pertinent for y'all to say that those this has to be consistent with that and that something like by reference any requirement in there is also required in here you know so something like that. But doesn't that defeat the purpose of getting it all together?

Not that. So the reason you don't ever want any of that stuff in your UDC is every time you change this, it requires a public notice, a public hearing, and it's this whole process. Engineering standards are going to change based on like national standards and the number might change from two to three or or um like atlas 14 when some new adopted by so they'll still come through both bodies, but it doesn't involve an extensive public engagement process. No, I was just thinking making it easier for the person coming in and looking at the city. It's It's better to keep them separate. Yeah, those things. Um,

now these codes, what it says location and city code. Is that in the subdivision ordinance or because I don't recognize those numbers in zoning ordinance? 10 is our subdivision ordinance. 14A is our zoning. Okay. Both of them. Chapter 10. Chapter 14. Okay. And I'm sorry, the location in the draft UDC, that's where you guys have that now. Is that stuff that you've added? Because if it wasn't in our city code. Okay.

Some of it, but we haven't. That's why some of them are left blank. This is kind of an example for you on how we're working, but also like if it's orange or blue um getting this and you know, we're still and and kind of hearing both like don't do anything new, just package up what we have versus we need changes. So, I didn't want to go in and start making a bunch of changes to this until we had this meeting. And so, this is me flagging things that are missing that to me would be standard practice. Um, so I just need to know like which of these are the biggest priority to get done so we don't do this for the next year. You know, like these things in chapter one, I'll tell you all of these together take about five hours to write. So, this is not a heavy lift. This is like line item things to put in. Um, but they are things we would go over with your city attorney. Um the next one, this is the procedure section. Um the other nice thing about doing a UDC instead of keyping these things separate is um for processing of application because there's so much um the state has created an an incredible amount of liability for cities by creating things like shot clock and public notice requirements. And so the more disjoint when you have a bunch of different processes, if every single application has to follow a different process, you're creating more risk for yourself.

And so you need all applications to go through some very basic general application processes. It limits your exposure and your liability. And it also makes it easier to do business with the city because every application they have to do, it's the same. It's wash, rinse, repeat. It's always the same. Um, and so that's what this general application procedure section is about. And so when you put these two things together, you're creating that because before you had zoning over here and you had subdivision over here. So they were separate. And so now you're saying, "No, we're creating a unified development code. This is the general way we process all applications in our city. There are going to be particular requirements for each of those applications, but there are also some general rules for how things work. Um, submittal dates is a perfect Do you'all guys do y'all do intake dates or submitt dates?

Okay. Yeah. So you do all that already.

Okay. So like making sure that's in here and and clarifying like every session they want shot clock to apply to different things like they want it for building permits, they want it for this, they want they talk about wanting it for zoning, they want public notice for all this stuff. So this allows you as every session they extend further and further. You're already doing that and you already have this set up. And so you it's just a way to kind of keep yourself orderly, minimize risk of missing a notice, missing an you know a completeness check, missing something else. So there's just general application procedures, everything follows. Um and then specifying the difference between completeness and compli and technical compliance. That's really important. Um how you deal with postponement requests. And a lot of this stuff comes straight from state statute. Um it's just getting it all in here so that everybody you're just saying this is how we're doing business. If you want to do business in the city of Josephine, are you allowed to do concurrent processing? You know, like can they do these at the same time? And and which things can be done at can they do annexation and zoning at the same time? Can they do zoning platting at the same time? Like which things can be processed concurrently or not? Um so there it's just stuff like that. Joint meetings like this can you you know there's just a lot of things on what can be approved and how you approve them. Um, so that's a section that we that you probably didn't have a lot of that before because everything was separate. So once you put those things together, you need general, it helps you to be more organized in how you manage development. Um, I didn't find anything in in your codes about how the comp plan is like a procedure for amending the comp plan. So I might have Yeah.

Yeah. And that's a that's a gap for you because then how do you know when you have to hire a consult when what is staff like are you allowed you create a thing where staff can make minor amendments and then if it's past this amount um you have to procure or whatever or some cities put themselves on a schedule like every five years we will do this and this and this. So that's that's kind of usually in there too. um threshold triggers. We've talked about that a lot. Like if it's a development of a certain size, once they hit a certain size, they have to do more stuff. Um there's just a bunch of stuff in there that you can have that's not mission critical. So that's the purpose of the blue and the orange. Could I ask a question?

Yes. Um, and again, I'm just going to give you my opinion of one person, and I don't know how the rest of council and planning and zoning feel, but I prefer the developers and land owners do not do annexation and zoning at the same time. Okay. I don't know if you're going to touch that or not, but if you do, my vote is have them separately so we can take a look at all the ramifications. Okay. Anybody else? I think that's going to be one of our parking lot issues.

Okay. um because I'm that's like content, you know, and so we'll walk through all of this and then keep bringing stuff like that up because I want to get all that stuff on this list and then at the end of the meeting we can go back through it and figure out which is the most important things for us to leave here with. Keep keep annexation and zoning separate so we can um really assess the ramifications and impact. Okay. Thank you. Um, and maybe through the other thing is though is that you can do I guess through a development agreement like if you're trying to incentivize someone to come.

My understanding so we can jump in, but I I believe that that has been the practice is that a development agreement establishes the parameters for both annexation and zoning. Now the only uh question I get becomes when when you annex you have to designate the zoning classification upon annexation. Yeah. So if the policy becomes where you know the developer pursues a development agreement prior to the annexation then I think it's fine keeping the zoning separate from the process because it'll be determined

because the agreement is in place to give them the security they need. Yes. But otherwise I agree.

The the problem is commonly like if they come in without zoning their designated agriculture or some cities will have a holding um and that's a high risk for someone that is agreeing to come to you. So um if it's somebody you want you want to reserve the right to be able to offer those that concurrent processing. Could I ask you a question about a 2025 legislative issue that passed that was brought to us by our previous attorney? Um, the industrial zone. Yeah. So, it was explained to us that it doesn't necessarily mean smoke stacks and making chemical stuff. Correct. That the industrial zone could be something that is beneficial to the city, whatever the city decides. Yeah.

Will you be including that? Because we haven't touched that in my opinion. I'm unaware of any way, shape or form that we have touched that and what the expectations would be. If it's not going to be in this in this document for time and efficiency and budget, that's fine. Yeah. If it is though, we need some guard rails and parameters and what that really means so people can understand what that means.

So, normally what that would entail was you would have two different um industrial districts. You would have a light industrial and a heavy industrial. And for each of those, there would be a list of uses that would be allowed and a list of standards. So again, in that site design, non-residential site design, you could have non-residential site design standards for them. But the districts themselves, they would have different uses allowed in each of them. So if someone wanted to come in and reszone to light and like a lot of times light industrials, they're industrial uses, but they're contained fully within like warehouse and distribution like that is contained completely within a building. some of these Amazon distribution things, you know, they're they're tilt up tech flex type spaces that has a different environmental impact, a different noise impact than like smoke stacks, but they're both industrial uses. And so light, you have light industry and heavy industry. And that way you get to as council decide if someone comes in to reszone, this is bad for our community. This might be okay.

Okay. So when I voted for that, my understanding was it did not necessarily mean industry that it could be something outside of a mud, another part of the development that could the city could make decisions on. Excuse. And so am I misunderstanding? Yes. Okay. Sorry. Clarify. Let me clarify a little bit because I think we're talking about two different things. So there's industrial zoning that's in the zoning. Yes. code.

Um, but the industrial district that we adopted was for the ETJ. So, it's not zoning. And I know it gets confusing because they use the word district uh in the legislation, but we put that in place as a protection because you can't create MUDs in an existing industrial district. So, we determined that um, you know, there was a few exceptions for you can't pull out of the ETJ. Being an industrial district is one of them. Yeah. There's a handful of cities that have put it in place. We've tried it. We have not been challenged on it to date. We might get challenged on it in the future. Um a big mud may come in there and challenge it at one point.

Um but we thought we I mean they use every tool they have, you know, the muds and the others. So we wanted to use ours as well. So we named them uh agricultural um is an industry. Agriculture is an industry. Housing housing is an industry until it's built out. and we're talking about individual homes, but when they're building in mass amounts out here, to me, that's an industry. Yeah. So, it may have been a little loosey goosey on on one end, but I thought it was worth trying.

Well, and I I voted for it because I appreciated your description. If it's going to be included, I just wanted to make sure there was clarity. If it's not going to be included because of time and budget, that's fine. I don't have any issues at the time. Um, I just was curious. Okay. So, I would say that that's that's city attorney is going to weigh in on that first of all and and bring that person into that conversation. And if it's already in the zoning code or it's already in the subdivision code, then we're just bringing it in as it is. I don't think it is. I know that it's in the comprehensive plan because we changed that. You know what I mean?

It's in the ET. It's in the ETJ. So, it's completely separate from the zoning code. But I think the zoning code and again we need a legal review on it but I would think there could be some sort of a explanation that kind of you know explains that it's separate and not to be confused with well the ch so here's the challenge a reference to it your zoning regulations will not apply outside the city limits. So it's not going to go in there at all. It can it can influence platting because platting can be applied in your ET in your ETJ or it can be a part of your long range plans where you show environmental protection and all these whatever you want to call it.

Um but that's going to be probably a legal question on how you're going to implement that because there's no um there's no vehicle for enforcement is the problem and finding how you're going to So the future map says mixed use on the ETJ areas. We did a change on that. Yeah. And it says mixed use. It doesn't say industrial. So that's kind of confusing to me. It it it doesn't matter what it the issue is jurisdiction. And so you can say that all day long, but if you don't have a power granted to you by the state to enforce that, that's what I don't understand. And so that's going to be a question for city attorney is got. Okay.

Because you can it's like um tree preservation in the ETJ. Technically tree preservation is enabled by subdivision but when are you ever out there to permit penalize and enforce it and so a lot of cities are like we don't even bother you because when are we other than a plat like they don't ever come back to us for building permit so how can I ever enforce and so this is kind of like it's like you have to figure out how you're going to actually enforce that if not leave it in your complex a lot of times those ladies plans you can um when you're doing your platting you can you know consistent with comp plan can be a part of that process. So, um I think that is a good parking lot issue, but I think during legal review will talk about that.

I think so. So, I think as long as there's a distinguishment between the two and I knew it was going to get confusing just the way it's worded um because that's the way it's worded in the state code. So, we kind of had to copy some of that language. Um so, we knew it would be a little confusing. It was really entirely directed at my development so we could have some protections and that's really what it was for. And we we also talked about um Rob and I talked about our city attorney that it might be challenged someday. So if you get a big dog attorney, mud attorney, they they may um Greenwood Mud for instance, they did pull out because they found another loophole. If you're in two ETJs, they get to choose. So it didn't matter if we if we had a an industrial district in place or not. That one that said if you're split between two ETJs trumped it and there was anything we could do about that one. So that one we lost. But the rest of it is in place so that we don't have people petitioning out of the ETJ and have a Swiss cheese look all over town or all over the area. And so

your release then or no ETJ release. So So they can't do it. Um they did it in that one circumstance that I just mentioned because so this is to control ETJ release. So it's it it's meant to so to prevent people from petitioning out of the ETJ and then you can't create muds in the ET. Love that in in an industrial a designated industrial district. It's not a zone, but a district within your ETJ. So, we might have been a little loosey goosey, but I thought it was worth a try. It didn't really cost us much to do it. Um, it was just a attempt to control. Yeah, I'll because I got to figure out just where it's going to go. But I I'll send that to you. I think probably just an explanation, you know, somewhere because it's not really a zoning.

It's more of a making a distinguishment between the two. I'll send you the ordinance on how we do that. I love that. That's a good idea. Okay. He was a little out there. No, it's really it's really clever. Um so we've already said we're breaking this out into residential, non-residential. Um so um there's some stuff like about on-site circulation. Um meaning like you know sometimes you have a bunch of pad sites and they all have curbs around their entire site. So like if I pull into the bank here, I have to pull back out into the room to pull into the next. This means, you know, so some some cities make it to where all your pad sites have to have site circulation and connectivity. So that kind of stuff,

traffic flow. Yeah. Building, you know, some some building design stuff. Um, residential garages. Um, and like I said, outdoor storage and display. So I do like I was like, okay, if we make any revisions at all, we got to deal with outdoor storage and display. I don't know which of that other stuff. It's sounding like some of this for non-residential you would want to see some additions made for those or no. Or do we put that on the parking lot? Non-residential design standards. All the orange stuff up there. This is these are all your site designs. We we we want that, right? Yeah.

Buffers. Buffers and transitions. Yeah. Buffer and transitions. Yeah. concerns from res. Okay. So, here again with Bernie, this is the chicken today. So, you are not allowed to regulate lighting unless you're dark sky and then you can do dark sky regulations, but you can't go to do dark sky until you show them an ordinance about how you're dark showing you regulate the lighting. So what we did there is they went ahead and added the dark sky regulations to demonstrate. They just didn't enforce them until they were recognized as dark sky community parking lot. We definitely need that for lighting.

I thought we did something with the lighting. Wait, wait, didn't we? Well, we did something with lighting because we did those special cute little lights that Yeah, the state said you're not allowed to regulate lighting anymore. That's the problem. So, we're trying to find a way around. We chose that kind because of dark skies. Or did we just want to be dark skies? Do you remember that a little bit? I remember when we did that, but cuz we didn't. Dark skies is not the first time I've heard about this. Yeah, we've had people love our dark skies. I actually be shocked about the dark sky. Because I do live I live in an old country subdivision and y'all this these new people keep moving in our neighborhood. There's a lot of people in California. Yeah.

Oh, they love to put their lights up and I just hate it. Like there's one at the corner lot. They ran these Christmas lights along the whole fence and I'm out walking my and I'm like that's my next door neighbor. But you know it's that that whole like and what I think the challenge as a city is at what point is something a nuisance and at what point is that your business and not mine, you know? And I think as a city it's just always hard for us to know like when do you like when is that just bugging me? Are you really crossing a line? It's hard. Like it really is. And every city's different on where that line is.

In 20 years from now is it really going to make a difference that those lights are there though? He had a good he had a good time putting them up and I kept thinking maybe they'll short out. There's so it's like Clark Griswald, you know. I was like there's just so many lights. Um so I was sad when they took away our ability to do much with lighting. I thought that was funny. Oh, you can though in historic districts. So you can do some you can get away with some of that if it's a historic area.

Oh, we're doing that. Um and then subdivision line like I designed it's this is like when they're actually doing their subdivisions like making their lots. So this is like um lot sizes lot orient like you some of this like no flag lots you know like how lot every lot has to have access onto the main road you know that kind of stuff. So you write your regulations for your lots your regulations for your block. Some people want block lengths and block widths. Um, and you guys have that and you have standards for your easements as well. Um, I didn't notice any requirements for how surveys have to be like any surveying requirements. So, that's something I think we could add in for sure. Um,

the other thing was no rules on gated communities. I guess they're not an issue here. No, they are not an issue. Okay. Absolutely. Okay. And we want multiple entrances for public safety. Put this on. We want multiple entrances for public safety for rapid egress in case of tornadoes or fire and also to reduce con congestion on one entrance way. This is for gated communities. That's exactly what I'm talking about. We don't have any we have developments who are proposing them and ready to build them.

So, so where Dr. I share that concern heavily is single point of entry whether they're not a big ticket item that has to allowing and really to point sometimes not even enough multiple or and again public safety is a major concern over response time. Love it. I'm going to see if I can go back without messing this up to um here at the very bottom right there it says threshold triggers. That's another example of a threshold trigger. Once you get like if you have four houses being built that's a street but I think it's 20 foot once you hit a certain number of houses. codes have a lot of that as well.

We just need to make sure it's in there and it's clear and we can write standards for that. Um so that's that. And then um any standards for public or community facilities like when HOA when when let's say they do a gated community and they put their um park in this happens a lot like what's the guarantee there like when a water man breaks in the middle of that gated community who's paying that bill? you know, and so guarantees that HOAs have to cover or whatever if they're private. Now, if it's public and you get to approve it and receive it and accept it, then it's public. But if people are building private facilities, the the performance guarantees and those things that are in place so that you're not left like dealing with a something that happens. So, that kind of stuff. Um, what else? Oh, and access too. some some communities are really thinking about that like if it's if they you know this needs to always have public access versus gated and all that kind of stuff. So

So just go back to the yellow here. So when it's when it's there and it's it doesn't have a number in the location of the EVC. Did you guys just drop that from 108? So no, we'll have all that in there. So if it's identified like down here okay it's in that section. This is just this is more my when I went through to figure out where your stuff like did I find you in your or not. Yeah. Yeah. Because I I remember doing I remember doing the monuments piece is there. So Okay. And that's an important like that the to me the surveys monuments and lot markers. That's we got to have that and then past that it's whatever you want. Okay.

Um okay. So that's those are the main things. So again, we're back to here. Um, so we haven't we don't have as big of a parking lot as I thought we would. So that's a good thing. So it sounds like we kind of already have a parony list. Um, so we've ended up coming back full circle where we need some actual dates on the calendar. Um, and then these are some actual issues that we wanted to see addressed. We have um this this is a big thing to work out. This will probably take us about a month. Honestly, because typically how I do that is we come up with some alternatives. We work with your staff with that and we lay things out and then and you would have to weigh in on that. I think that might be if we want to change how the city does that. I think that might be beyond what we want to accomplish with this.

Oh, I I was just going to say and then correct me if I'm wrong, but I I kind of think of the UDC um as a living document. So, I don't want anybody panicked if we don't have something in there because we will always come back. We're always we're going to have a planning and zoning department. So, in addition to our regular applications, things are going to come up. Things that either we didn't think about or that weren't applicable today. So, I just don't want anybody thinking that if we've left something out here, we can never go back and change it. It's not a it's a living document. We're always I know Levik had the 800 or I'm sorry, I may have the city wrong. We're going to have some we're going to have some changes as we as we evolve as a city. So, um just don't want anybody thinking that this is the final ultimate we're not going to change it for five years kind of thing. We're we're going to have some changes as we go through. So, if we forget something or we leave something out today, um we can come back in the month after it's adopted and we can fix

but what I heard earlier was that we can change that like inhouse. It doesn't have to go out, right? We can add stuff for the parking lot that cannot be covered under current scope because I believe some of those are priorities that need to be addressed soon. Those and then with that we still have to go through the process of doing an open forum get public impact all that and I think you're going to want to do that anyway. It's it's kind of the due process way. That's what people expect if there's a major change coming in one document at the same time.

So basically what I'm hearing tonight is we're just trying to get to initial. We're just trying to get to initial udcrame the framework of of it and then set priority to the city and say okay city staff these are our top 10 issues that we want you to work on for this fiscal year or whatever. And then yeah, we can do that and we'll have a public engagement process needed for that. And part of what and I don't I'm I'm hes I don't know if this is right for this but for a lot of communities you build your amendment cycles in to match fiscal and stuff and you say like every year we're going to do process and that way you have that engagement process staff can

strategic budget priorities. priorities for every saying, "Oh, I got to come to a public hearing every like two, three months." Now, we want to kind of orderly process

the goers also want that stability, right? and and I started this so um and I asked Kimley Horn to look at it originally but we had just adopted the the comprehensive plan and I did want it to make sure that it all went together well and the other reason was you know we have been talking about uh more business um I don't know that how you can really just not focus on residential and having mortoriiums is a whole another talk about issue we'll do that another meeting on why it's not as simple as it sounds. Um, but making it business friendly, making it development friendly for businesses or for anybody else, having it in that one UDC, it's kind of it's just the modern way. So, it's kind of what's expected by the bigger developers, whether they're a business developer, um, commercial retail, or whether they're um, uh, a big developer of sub subdivisions. So, it's kind of just become the norm and the standard. So packaging all up in one neat little package is, you know, I thought would be great. It it kind of got um a little bit messier than I thought it was going to get from the beginning. And we did hold off for a little while because we were so overwhelmed with development applications that we kind of waited for Miguel because I didn't want to put it in place and then have a planner that came and went, "Oh no, I wish you hadn't done that." So that's kind of where it is. But um I'll take a little responsibility for the the confusion and and maybe some of this maybe didn't go quite as smooth as it hoped. But hope I think we're going to get there and it's going to be fine. But living document, we can always come back and make a change.

I love that. No, that's 100% true. And this is the hard. It's funny like the hard part is just it's like if you're reorgan like moving every I don't know. It's like re completely redesigning your closet, you It's just there's a lot of taking stuff out and then repackaging and putting them back in there together. So, it feels like it's this heavy lift, but you're building something that you can use moving forward in the future so that you are const you're you're amending it doesn't you don't get off track and you don't create disjointed things and confusion. So, I love that. That was very true. So, um, other than refining the timeline, is there anything else we need to talk about before we I see tired faces, so I want to try to get us like I think we're like at here at this point.

Um, yeah, I mean, the only thing I There was a lot of recommended up there that were blank. Um, I am kind of concerned about that. My personal opinion, I'm kind of concerned about the recommendations and nothing being in there. Um, And again, I I would think that we insert some placeholders. That's very common. Yeah. People you'll just see something like um I don't know like superhero is reserved, you know. So you just have that you create the section and you just put reserved in there. So like lighting that you had struck out.

Yeah, we've got that in planning and zoning. Reserved. Reserved. Yeah. I just Yeah. over over half the documents going to be reserved from what I saw is not

of those when we decide on that time I will be able to tell you how much of that orange like 10% whatever we're going to have time to be able to do in that time and budget frame and if you don't have those orange things it's not that like it's really not and those become parking lot things and the work plan that that Lisa and Mel work through to say okay you know they can work those next. So, and they're not like a lot of that stuff was not um like I like residential garages, you know, do they have to be attached to the house or do they can they be detach? Like some of that stuff your community isn't really going to care about.

And so, um that's why I was like they're not really um they're not mission critical. Am I pointing to the wrong thing? When we make the parking lot, can we can we put priorities on it as we do that? Because that might help us kind of space things out where it's not overwhelming. We can identify maybe the top three. Get your battery. It'll be no. We basically say no gated communities, right? Okay. I'm having no luck. Yeah. Oh, maybe. It's hard for public safety. Yeah, I turn it off.

Adalfo, could I ask what happened with the technical meeting, the internal technical meeting that you had? Could you bring us up to speed on that one after the original focus groups? There was going to be an internal technical meeting. Are you talking about Kimley Horn meeting or a meeting with staff? part of the UDC process that the technical advisory board that didn't happen because we didn't have like she mentioned we had a hard time even getting people to agree to go to the focus group okay among the stakeholders so we went to the

so we that's that's the reason because the concern was not having enough community feedback and input opportun we took that meeting and converted it into this community house instead. So

that's helpful to know because I thought internally there was going to be a discussion of infrastructure and how buildings were going to be connected or separate or mixed use or whatever water sewer I thought building size and spacing an internal technical review in my mind was an internal technical review. So if you didn't have it that's fine. We as staff want to make sure that we follow the policies and guidance that both bodies give and whoever that ends up becoming my opportunity to provide that feedback is when I get that draft and provide comments. I mean this meeting has already given me a lot to think about to focus on

that if there's things that we can address now great and then the others will write those priorities the purpose of the technical review is really for outside like engineers like developer engineers yeah that's what I wanted to know engineers or others to provide feedback I sent out emails to some of the developers who've been working it working and really none respond.

And and really the the challenge is those the the details that are the handoffs right now and there's the same you know the the strip of the 11 review right construction plans most of those deals are not even part of the development during the engineering and drain. So they're not those issues for example were not relevant to this specific document. This specific document really process like development process itself and some of the design guidance for you know planning and I guess I'll call it urban design but um the technical part is part on the transportation you know the thoroughare design of utility and design outside of this particular document. So we felt staff and consulting team we felt it was better to take the budget and the time for that meeting and put it towards more meaningful community.

Okay. Thank you. That's very helpful. I'm trying to get what I don't maybe I think I'm having I think the cler so I can't get back and forth on it. So I'm just not being able to. But um so those orange boxes that are just kind of they'd be nice, but they're not essential. I think the blue boxes will do. Okay. Like that's the stuff you really need.

That that was that was my more I was more concerned with the blue boxes than the orange boxes. So we anything that's a blue box on there I assume we're going to need to go and do it but I didn't want to do that without having I didn't want to just go in based on my assumption and just start adding things to your code. So, um, as a summary to this, probably what maybe we can do is get you that list and say, "These are the things that we think are missing that we suggest adding like recommended and then maybe like a list of the optional ones that I know we can accommodate without derailing our process and then the rest of it we'll give to you as parking lots. Does that work? I'm good with that."

Yeah. We have a plan. We need the timeline again. Just the timeline. I I can't click. I'm sorry. Okay. Even even the power. Okay. So, we're back to this. So, if we if we do our streamline process, which is just like get our heads down, package it up, get done, and focus just on blue. I think that's in two weeks April 15

tax day and that would be us all the tight document and maybe a few of those orange you know but I might need to get that and kind of figure that out and maybe let you know by April 15th we can get that draft to staff

and that puts on on schedule for coming to you May 1st and going for public which is two weeks. So public review would start on May 15th and so that would be May 15th to June 15th. So basically it would just mean all of this bumps back two weeks so that you guys can get it to so we would stick to the schedule but you guys would get it closer. You know, we still have a month of August as a buffer, right? Still come back in September.

Okay. The the public review though, the in midMay, do we want to hold that before school lets out? Yeah. Cuz most people are like out of here the moment the school gets out and they're going on family vacations. Okay. So, can we just give it to y'all a week in advance then? Yeah,

everything that goes with it. That's true. That's That's impressive. So, we're going to change that to May 7th. Yeah. To June 7th. So, again, you're still have that same opinions to Well, yeah. The the public I'm not worried about the public. I'm worried about the the the yellow dot. When are we actually going to do the yellow dot? When are we going to have those? Um that that's what I'm saying needs to happen. I don't care where the public review is as long as we got our 30-day window. That can be that doesn't have to be in the middle of the public review. That could be anywhere in the public review, right? So, we can still do the May 15th to June 15th.

Yes. May So May 7th to June 7th, you want the yellow dots, you want these to fall within that period. Yes. That's what I'm saying. before school gets out, right? Oh, you want these two I you want these two dots to happen before school. No, just the yellow one. The yellow one. Just the yellow one before school gets out. So May 15th, the community open house thing. We want that before school out. Okay. So we would give y'all the document May 7th and we could do community meeting. Okay. to clarify. City gets it May 1st. We get it May 7th. Is that what you're saying? No. City gets it. April 15th.

April 15th. April 15th. We get it May 1st. All right. We get it May 1st. May 1st is a Friday. So, we're not doing, just to be so clear, we're not doing anything at the council meeting in May. No. That was the June one that we talked about doing. Are we doing that at the city council for June? Join the joint. Yeah, a joint in June, right? A joint in June. Yeah. With public inviting, right? For sure. Advertised big time,

right? Like a Beyonce concert. Me either. There's a Beyonce. I mean,

the 22nd. Okay. May 22nd. Are those I I think it would actually What's May? Sorry, let me go to May. What's May? School gets out the 22nd, right? So, would it be the 14th and the 19th when you want to do the meetings with the public? Like a Thursday and a Tuesday or something.

Can we do I don't think we'll get any participation on the 21st. So the 12th and 14th of May that if the public gets it on the 7th that gives them the weekend to review it the 12th to do it the 14th as a as a backup they can't come to the 12th and then they have the other opportunity to come and the meeting in June whenever we set that meeting

that works So May 12, May 14.

No, that's

okay. April 15th goes to these folks. May 1st, you guys get it. May 7th through June 7th is public comment period. May 12th, there's community meeting. May what's happening on May 14th? Community. Oh, yeah. Okay, that's And then both. Yes. And then when's the red dot? That would be in June. We'll have to talk about that.

Well, if you're doing here's the thing. If you're doing it as part of your public, if you're inviting public and so just keep that in mind because you're want to that that comment period is still open. They're going to go home and How long after that second red dot do we need to give the public to comment?

Not even that much as long as it's happening during that time. You can even do it at the end of it, you know, and you can extend that. Doesn't have to stop at 30 days. It's just the more you extend this, the more it's easy to extend. So just try to keep it tight. The planning zoning commission is going to start meeting on the first Monday of every month starting May and June 1st is Monday. I think you'll have more commissioners by just do it June 1st. I mean I if there's any business it can be it could be done as a joint meeting to those

so you're saying they wouldn't have a regular meeting they would have a meeting with all of us a joint session that needs to be they could do that first and then close that meeting and just yeah done that before the same days That's efficiency. That's efficiency. So, so we're saying if all goes according to June 1st would be the red dot, right? And then June 7th closes out public comment. So, yeah, that's tight, but that's that's fine. Okay.

And a lot of times, like I said, the challenge and all that and we can talk again and I'll talk, but the only Usually it's very informational because you just don't want to create an alternate voice that that's the one thing you don't want to do because then you have to go back and you just need that to be because people went through process and it's in there. So that's really whenever you're doing

so just quorum aspect Lisa where do we actually have to have quorum? Do we have to have quorum in any of this? So, um, for you, yes, definitely. We're going to have the joint meeting. Um, I would have rather we had three when we started tonight, but I think we're okay. It's a work session. We're not taking action or anything. Yeah. Yes. You're going to take action for Okay.

June 1st, that's the regular meeting. The expectation is open for commission and expectation monthly meeting as well. Okay. So all these dates June 1st we have to have quorum. The rest of them it's we're good. Okay. So, we're just committing to be here June 1st from a city council. Everybody okay with that? I know. I'm okay with it.

Um, yeah. Can you be um J. No, I live for this city. Okay. All right. She's serious. I haven't figured that out by hand. Yeah, I if I'm dead.

So, we're happy with these dates. Yep. Okay. What time is it? Lower. We did. What time? Yeah, we didn't midnight. That's right. Is there anything else y'all want to tell us or talk to us about the whole speak now or forever hold your peace? This is great and it is I just this stuff is so fun but there's a lot of rabbit holes you go down and so I just love that these guys I love that idea for districts. That's really smart. So, we'll do our very best. We'll get everything done on time.

Can All right. If we're good, can I get a motion to adjourn? I'll second. Journed. 8:36. We covered a lot of ground. My goodness.

The picture the newest one. We won't be

somebody here.

And if you can stop even one of them, you're ahead. I mean, even if you just stop one, it was already established and they took it away.