Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I can do an Yeah, you too. I don't know what kind of law he pract. All right, we ready? Hello everyone and welcome to the uh Tuesday, May 13th regular planning and zoning commission meeting. We have six items on our agenda and we'll carry them in order. First would be a roll call. Miss Velvet, please. Anita Picket, present. Jason Dupree, here. Anderson Neil, here. Chris Owens, here. Corey Moss, here. Randall Hickerson is absent. And Chairman Thomas here. Second item on the agenda would be an adoption of the summarized me minutes of the April 8th meeting. Everybody had an opportunity to read through those. Any uh additions, subtractions, additions or edits or anything? None. The chair here will accept a motion. I move to approve the summarized minutes as and a second. Second. All right. This will be a voice vote. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Same sign. Item number three, ordinance revision requested by Roger Douglas to correct article six, supplementary provision section 28-51, accessory buildings G. Accessory buildings. Paragraph 1. Second sentence to state attached detached accessory buildings located in the rear portion of the lot shall not be closer than 10 ft to the main building. Miss Jamie. So this is one of those things

where in paragraph A it originally said 15t and then in paragraph G it says 10t. So, it's supposed to be 10 feet. So, we're just cleaning that up where they both match. So, we've got uh And then Roger asked that we remove that last sentence from paragraph G because it doesn't apply anymore. We've got uh language that doesn't uh agree with itself. Yes. Okay. And the Firewall up one side. Nobody against each other. Yeah. Okay. Sorry to interrupt. All right. So, we're just cleaning up the language and our required language or desired language is 10 feet and not 15, right? Okay. Any questions from anyone? This being a simple housekeeping thing, this goes before the board of directors for adjust for final or does it not? It will. Yep. Okay. Uh if there are no further questions, the chair accepts a motion. So move. Move to accept and a second. Call roll, please. Anita Picket, yes. Jason Dri, yes. Anderson M, yes. Chris Owens, yes. Cory Mobs, yes. And Chairman Thomas, yes. Item passes and will go before the city board for

codification. All right. Item number four, an ordinance review of draft ordinance regarding truck stops inside the city limits and creating a new zone for such. As we remember, we uh passed forward to the city board of directors uh draft ordinance. Is that correct? Uh and they sent it back or is this have we not done that yet? We haven't done that yet. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Got that confused with something else. All right, Miss Jamie. Short-term rentals. So in order So we were asked originally for an ordinance that did not allow truck stops inside the city limits but because they are such big revenue producers we decided to come up with a plan that would allow them in appropriate places. So in order to do that there's two ordinances here. We went and we used the mixeduse highway zone that's from the comprehensive plan and we had agreed that we would um set the setbacks and everything the same as C3. So that's where all those lot regulations came from. They match C3. Okay. And right now the only thing we're allowing in that is the truck stops. But there may come a time when we want to put a I don't know FedEx or something else that makes sense. So the only thing we're allowed in the mixed use would be truck stops as you've got it written. Well, that's the way I've got it written because we didn't we haven't discussed anything else. Truck stops and accessory uses. Mhm. I think we mixed an we qualified an accessory use as a hotel mo or motel. We did. Okay. We have uh truck washes, hotels, motel,

light repair garage, a restaurant or convenience store. Right. Those are accessory uses. Okay. So we had to have an ordinance to establish that zone and then there's a separate ordinance which regulates truck stops. Okay. And the name of that ordinance would be what? Um it's going to be section 2884 truck stops. It'll be a new section. Um Yeah. Yeah. Here we go. We've defined truck stop and tractor trailer. Um we've said they m they can only be located in the mixeduse highway zone. Um the parking, we said one automobile parking space for each 200 square feet of floor space for retail activities and everything has to be paved. Lighting faces away from adjacent residential districts. Now I have in here that when they apply for this zone, if they apply for a truck stop, they have to submit a site plan, a traffic impact study conducted by a professional engineer and a water runoff and drainage study conducted by a professional engineer. They have to give that to us with the application. Right. And then upon pro approval of the resoning request, they have to have an

approved driveway permit from ARDOT. Right. Make sure I got all that right. Compliance with all state and federal regulations. We talked about this. I put applicant must demonstrate cooperation with all state and federal agencies regulating the highway or interstate which the truck stop is located upon. Right. And then a uh they'll have to have a certificate of occupancy. Well, access to the truck stop won't be directly off the interstate. It'll be off an access road because there's no exits. They won't they wouldn't build an exit just for a truck stop, right? You mean change that? So, we also including that to mean major arterials. Well, we talked about that. That'd be like a state highway and not just like County Avenue. County Avenue, I think, is considered a major arterial or is it collector? It's an arterial street. So, we wouldn't want them on major. Well, wait a minute. I mean, we talked about a 82 and you know there are places on 82. Well, it's where the parkway comes in there, though. Yeah, there are places on Jefferson also if you wanted to do that. But then that would but they'd be they'd be the confluence of like one of our major arterial city streets and the interstate, not necessarily one of our major arterial streets that leads into another arterial street. So our purpose is to put them on the interstates, which is in my opinion where the developers are going to want to put them. They're not going to want to be interior of the town and they're not going to be want to be hard to get in and out of. But I mean, wouldn't they still have to come to us? Like we tell them, "No, you can't." I mean, they'll have to resone. They'll have to reszone. Like, the zoning would have to be the

checks and balances, right? Yeah. So, are we going to modify the language of C3 to exclude truck stops from C3? We don't have it. Truck stops are not listed in our ordinance at all. Okay. We didn't even have a definition. Okay. But all of the truck stops now are all in C3 zones. Well, I mean, we don't even have any other than technically flying Jay out out in Mandible. Yeah. Well, if you ask the guys at the corner of uh Trinity and Four States Fair Parkway, if they're a truck stop or not, they'd tell you no. But they got diesel pump fuel uh stations, islands, and they got truck parking in the back. So in a technical term, they are a truck stop. So does Roadr Runner. So is Road Runner. Trucks parked behind. Roadrunner doesn't sell diesel, but they have parking overnight parking. So that's all grandfathered in in my thoughts. But that's a C3 zone. Speaking of definitions, do we we say light repair? Is that defined anywhere? No, but I can because we had said we wanted to use the term light because we didn't want them out there rebuilding engines. Adding some oil, adding some washer fluid, light bulbs. That's Well, yeah, it' be minor repairs in order to keep the truck on the highway or keep it moving down the highway. Okay, we can add that. Light service work. We might say light light repair and service work. Somebody pulls in what light means. I will I'll I'll I will do some googling. There was in the other ordinances from other areas of the instead of saying light, you could say minor. Yeah, minor would

might be a good adjective. That might be more defining. Would you think just Jason? It's all about perspective. True. Minor to some, major and vice versa. Well, if it's an indoor place, I really don't care if they're rebuilding the engine if it's inside a bay, inside a shop building. It's about what's seen. Well, I worked at Midcon Truck Stop in my early years and we had a shop and the big thing that they did out there was uh replace a wheel bearing, uh replace a brake line hose, replace a hydraulic hose, uh replace fuel filters, you know, that kind of stuff. They they're not going to tear a truck down because the guy that's got the truck has got a load and he needs to get on the road. So, light or minor repairs. Okay. Once again, Google up a definition. I mean, we don't want to write a My God, you don't want to write 40 pages of def definitions for light, but I'll come up with something. Yeah. What if you make it too vague, then next thing you know, like Jason says, Yeah. I mean, it maybe it's more based on time, maybe short-term or, you know, repairs that take less than a day or two or I don't know. Come up some. Good luck. Thanks. Thanks. Every truck stop has a little shop. They, you know, they all do and they do replace a broken wheel stud, fix a flat, you know, that kind of stuff. Okay. So, yeah. All right. And I'll make that They're not going to have any mechanics working there that can take an engine down. Okay. I promise they're not going to pay them that much. All

right. Do we have anything in there about um all abandoned trucks? But if a truck does break down major and it stays out there for a week, week and a half, you know, like in the our residential ordinances, you're not allowed to have a car on blocks, right? for without it moving for so long. Well, you could you could define that by saying no abandoned vehicles. No abandoned vehicles. Uh any over the road trucker that breaks down bad enough that he can't quick it and get back on the road, they're going to they're going to tow it to the nearest truck repair shop. Yeah. I mean, it will. And again, that you just come across weird things. Well, you come you come across down and the driver just walks off. I mean, we've I've had to deal with abandoned trailer houses on the side of roads that we've had to do something with because it wasn't worth the owner. He just unhooked his truck and left the house out there and now it's mine to deal with. Yeah. Well, you can't you can't cut short of old Joe Blow uh puper either. No. And I'm sure the truck stop's going to they're going to want it removed before we would, I assume. Yeah, you could put a time limit on it. Okay. Two weeks, one week. No inoperable vehicles left over two weeks, but the truck stop would probably be more judicious than we were. Yeah. Until they come up with some partner deal with the local big truck repair that they start using that as their parking lot. Yeah.

in this mixeduse highway zone. Are we going to address uh RV overnights? That's up to y'all. RVs stay overnight at truck stops. That's not an uncommon thing. And it it six one half a dozen or the other. Whether they're a a bus truck or 3/4 ton truck pulling a cab over there, you know, overnight shouldn't be an issue if the truck stop allows it. I don't think so. I don't see any reason to call it specifically call out RVs. Okay. Well, if you had a an RV park would be something different and that'd be covered under a different ordinance. Yeah, we do have RV parks, right? In our ordinance. Like the one out by Flying Jay that's just down the road. Used to be the KOA. Mhm. Well, I can make those tweaks and bring it back to you next month. Sounds good. Okay. Anything else? Anyone? All right. So, we'll have two ordinances. One defining mixeduse highway zone and uh dictating size setbacks and uses and uh that. And then we'll have another uh regulating truck stops, dictating definitions, sizes, uh areas, can do this, cannot do that, screening, landscaping, pavement, that kind of thing. Everything that's out there now would obviously be grandfathered in. We wouldn't have they wouldn't be required to update

If one of the existing trust wanted to do an accessory building, would they have to resire property or would that be included under the city? If they wanted to do what now? Add an accessory building like if they want to put a motel. Oh yeah. A lot of additions like that always trigger the normal grandfather the grandfather to what's there and that's it. Yeah. If they change it all then they'd have to resone. Then they have to reszone which wouldn't be a big issue. They're already there. Mhm. So it's just uh renaming the dirt they're sitting on is all that amounts to and then they come under the new regulations. So yeah, I I'm I agree with Jason. If if grandfathered means what's there now, if you change it, it ain't there now, right? It's something else. It would become legally nonconforming, and you can't increase the the footprint of a legally non-conforming structure, right? Now, they can they could remodel or improve or put some pavement down or stuff like that under normal building code practices, but they couldn't add on another 50,000 square foot of building. So, right. All right. On the lighting issue, is there any uh Roger, is there any need to designate [Music] uh LED or low energy lighting? Would that be of any benefit? They're going to do that anyway. Yeah. Okay. Is there any need? We're going to have them submit drainage plan and a

traffic study. You could also have them submit their lighting plan. So there I have that listed on their site plan, but they do have to have the all the lumens everywhere on it, but I'll add that separate. All right. Any other questions? The additions, subtractions, changes. Anyone? Okay. What uh what action do we need to take here? You this you're going to come back with another draft. Make the tweaks and bring back. So very good. Okay. So we need to take there's no action needed then. Okay. Um the only other thing we need to talk about tonight is the workshop Thursday. So there's been a little bit of a change. Um, we originally were just going to do the workshop for short-term rentals. However, there is an individual Yeah, please. There's an individual who is building a container home over on College Hill and one of the directors had issue with it and they requested that we have a workshop. Um so we are going to combine the two. Okay. Thank you.

Um the container homes I'm going to speak for Roger. The container homes that this gentleman is building are attractive. They meet all the building code. They have to meet all the residential code, everything. So, it's our opinion that it's just a single family home. Okay. Um, but they've asked us to have a workshop on it. So, right, Roger, in your opinion, how elaborate would any ordinance need to be? We could I know the I kind of sense that the board, this board member particularly would like to have an ordinance that would prevent someone from setting a container on blocks, cutting a door in the front of it, and hooking up water and sewer and electric to it. They they can't really do that anyway because it's got to meet all of our building codes, okay? And building codes cover everything from having, you know, escape windows and bedrooms, everything like that. So, it's not so much a deal about that. I think in my opinion, they should be covered just under single family dwelling pretty much. But we do need some ordinance on container homes just to keep someone from coming in throwing one container down there, especially if it's a 20ft container. Yeah. And making a home out of it. Right. The aesthetics is my my main thing that I want to get in there. Yeah. You know, so they can't, you know, bring one in, paint it five different colors, something like that, you know, and we've got some stuff outlined for that workshop and stuff to go through. There is a draft ordinance in your packet that I put together. Good. How would a how would a single 20 foot

container differ from a tiny home? It won't. That's part of the deal. Okay. You know, we don't have any orders because you're looking at 320 foot on a No, 360t on a 40ft container. Yeah. Uh a 20 foot would be 180 square foot. We currently don't have a tiny home ordinance codified, do we? No, the state does not have anything on tiny homes. Nobody has anything on tiny homes. Yeah, we're not. We don't want to move forward on tiny homes until the state does something. Okay. So, is it from section four on? Yeah, I think so. But it's there's a lot of information in that packet that Jamie gave you tonight. We we okay have been looking at a lot of stuff. Uh yeah, from what I gathered from that meeting we had with the board of directors, most of them were in favor of just kind of considering them single family homes and you know just making sure that they're aesthetically pretty, you know, and there are aesthetic aesthetics in that draft ordinance. Yeah. Well, aesthetics are going to be important because that's the main thing. We all know that long as Bubba's out of the rain, he's not caring that much about the aesthetics. So, you have to It's unfortunate, but you got to write an ordinance to prevent people from doing the worst instead of encouraging them to do the best. Yeah. So, is there something in the ordinance that stops me from painting my house five different colors currently? No. No. Not currently, but to me, a container home is a little different. Uh, you know, as far as you've got to paint them, you know, when you put them in there. So, we've had in the ordinance we've got in the aesthetics part, we've got one color and one trim color, you

know, just to kind of make them fit in well. I mean, your most your houses are one color with, you know, maybe a lighter trim or something like that just to keep things from getting crazy. Think of a container home like a metal building. But you could do them. You know, you can do them all. Somebody suing us for treating them different than we're treating everybody else. Yeah. Well, and that's when we're having a workshop next Thursday, right? Not this Thursday. No, it's this Thursday, 22nd. No, next Thursday. That is next Thursday. 22nd. 22. And we have invited all the board members home or not. So as long as you know if you're building a container home and you're building a stickuilt home, as long as you're meeting applicable building codes, you're not discriminating. So and that's the thing we have to be careful about is not discriminate not discriminating against someone that's building a container home because they are a viable option. Yes, they're more cost effective. One thing I like about it, if something does go wrong and you have to tear it down, you chain it up, pick it up, put it on the trailer, and haul it out of there. You know, instead of spending $10,000 to have it torn down and hauled off. Did you also address in this draft uh uh using containers as backyard shops or storage areas? It's in there. It's in there. It's in there that you can't use it for storage work. Okay. because we currently have ordinances against uh just using containers for storage and stuff like that. You know, there was two out there behind the old dapper. Yeah. Yeah. Had to go, but they were he was supposed to do something with them and he never did. Right.

just for aesthetics more than anything, you know, just Okay. All right. So, that'll be included in with our uh workshop for the Yeah. short-term rentals. We do need to check things, you know, have something in there because if you're going to do a container home, you want to make sure you get one if it's, you know, if it's a used shipping container that hasn't been hauling chemicals or something like that in it to use as a home, right? You know, so we we do need to have some ordinance on container home. Safety measures. That's about the only thing. safety measures and aesthetics just so somebody didn't, you know, because most of the people who are doing them are building really nice homes with them. Yeah. I mean, they look really good, but Well, I could see a uh enterprising entrepreneur building a container home subdivision kind of like a trailer park. We need to address that as well with a definition at least. You know, I'm I'm still think they fall under a just a single family dwell single family home. Okay. You know, if they build Fair enough. if they build a bunch of them or you know like the guy that's doing it now, he's got the permit for the first one and we've got he brought renderings of what it's going to look like and everything when he brought his plans. He'd been very open. Anybody can come by and look at it progress, you know, he'll be glad to meet with them. Anything else and he's looking at about $65,000 to do it. Wow. It's a lot better than what was in the neighborhood to start with. Mhm.

Yeah. So, I mean, it's it's a viable option, you know, for less expensive housing because housing is getting so dead expensive now. You know, they're you talk to contractors and it's 200 plus a square foot. Yeah. Well, a 2,000 foot house, do the math, that's $400,000. We need some less expensive options for people. Good. Do you have the address of the house in question? 30 Ferguson. All right. Any other questions? Anyone? Thank you. Thank you for the draft here. That give us something to think about. Next meeting, June the 10th. Uh, of course, our May 22nd workshop at 6:00 right here. Mhm. Okay. Huh. I'll have food. She's baiting us here. Baiting us? Yeah. We'll have to get here earlier next time. Pizza was a little short when I got in here. Anything else? Any other business? Any new business? Old business? No business? No business. Our business. Anybody? All right. If there being nothing else, the chair accepts a motion for adjournment. I motion to adjurnn. Second.