Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

all righty i want to call this meeting to the order of the town of wheddington regular planning board meeting for tuesday may the 26th of 2026. uh we'll move to a determination of a quorum we have a full house so we have met that read the conflict of interest statement in accordance with the state government ethics act it is the duty of every board member to avoid conflicts of interest does any board member have any non-conflict of interest with respect to any matters on the agenda if so please identify the conflict and refrain from any participation in the matter involved i definitely don't have conflict of interest and i haven't had any of the meetings we've had awesome none all righty moving forward uh approval of the minutes for april of 27th 2026 regular planning board meeting do we get an approval make a motion to approve the amenities minutes as presented second all set all in favor all right i'll let karen decide who was first at the second i tried to get it All right. Do we have public comments? Perfect. We have public comments.

Attendance. Oh.

We got a decent attendance as well.

No, you just needed...

Well, you should have signed both one for attendance to say your president and the other one, if you wanted to speak. Uh, but I think you're on the one you wanted to be on.

So leave that one up front.

All right. For public comments, individuals are allowed three minutes to speak and must only comment on current agenda items. A maximum of 30 minutes is allocated to the public comment period. The time limit may be extended at the discretion of the chairman. All right. With that said, we are going to start with Mr. Steve Holmes.

Yeah, it's OK. We get perfect.

OK, good.

160 Amanda Drive. Steve Holmes, thanks for the opportunity. And for some of you, I think this may be redundant. Some of it may be just the clarity on the perspective we have, just so that you understand our point of view as much as as well as we can convey that to you first. And a lot of people come in and complain about what they don't like. We all respect the volunteering and the time that you guys give to this. Um, but certainly there are things that not everybody agrees with all the time. So we do have some expectations from your team. And the first and foremost is to make decisions that protect the safety and welfare of our residents as a priority. protect the character and the integrity of our community. We've been there for over 40 years and there's lots of communities around town, I think most of you live in them, that have that kind of vintage. You've been around for a long time. The integrity of the community, we hope that you make decisions to protect that too. And what we don't want you folks to do is to compromise our safety for what we consider the perceived benefit of others. I'll explain that in a moment. Just for some background context, and again, probably you are very familiar with this. Our road is at best 18 feet wide. It started as a gravel road. It's 43 years old. NCO DOT told us flatly that it had a confirmed life expectancy of 25 years. And we're 43 years into it. So it's meandered over time. The substrate has degraded terribly. We have paid 40 years of taxes collectively. Many people came there originally and stayed. That's a lifetime of taxes. And what have we gotten from NCDOT in that lifetime of taxes? Nothing. I mean zero. Our roads have serious substrate deficiencies. We have sections that are less than 18 feet wide. If a pickup truck and another pickup truck happen to be coming at each other, one's taking a ditch to let the other one by. And what we get from them was the asphalt surface treatment, the chips and fog seal, as kind of a cheap out to disguise the problems. That's what we've gotten for our four years of taxes from those folks. Yes, sir. So the other side of the house is you folks, the planning board. So what have we experienced? What have we gotten from the planning board over this period of time? Both past and present planning boards, this is the third attempt, third, to force cut-through traffic onto Amanda Drive and Cary Lane in less than the past eight years. It was a big, well, I don't have time here to go into it. I'll be glad to answer anybody's questions.

Please wrap it up and you're good.

Big issue when the roundabout went in by the charter school, big issue with Vinnish Creek. We had to come in and defend our positions. Town ended up doing another TIA and I can't go into it now because I don't have time, but this is the third time.

Okay.

We've asked over time for evidence of actual harm to other communities for this policy. And we've never been provided any compelling public safety evidence other than the perception of harm. So hadn't been provided to us. And we unfortunately feel like you guys demonstrate a profound concern for other community safety without a reciprocal concern for ours. And I hate to stand here and say that, but it's just the way it feels after three runs at us in less than eight years. Morris Farms, by the definition of safety for them, is a divided 20-foot entrance road plus a 100-foot thoroughfare buffer along Weddington-Matthews Road. That's to support 32 houses. Amanda Drive is 18 feet wide at best, the dead intersection into Weddington-Matthews Road that already supports 50-plus houses. So if your definition for Morris Farms and 32 houses is a 24-foot wide divided highway with a 100-foot thoroughfare buffer, we don't have any of that. We're already supporting 150% of the houses on Armanda Drive. And if you burn more houses in there, it just exasperates the situation.

Let's get this one wrapped up. I hear you.

Cary Lane is a right turn only and delays already on peak times. And it's been made worse with a 485 out by Siskiy. More people cutting through there. And I'm interested in your definition of a UDO session K item four. It states... Residential collectors and local streets shall be laid out in such a way that their use by through traffic will be discouraged.

All right. On that one, I appreciate it, Steve. I imagine we're going to get more from the other neighbors as well. Yeah. I need about six more seconds. Get you six seconds. Let's go.

All right. Toll Brothers has demonstrated tremendous good faith and support of our community's safety concerns. It's not going to be matched by any other developer. They have stepped up and been very responsive to us. And we know that there's talk on the table for concessions that they're willing to make. The roads go private, they do a bench skate, and we approach a permanent emergency only vehicle as a solution for no cut-through traffic. Awesome. We hope that you folks will rapidly approve that for those people. Thank you.

Thank you, Steve. All right, Mr. Bailey.

I'm Richard Bailey. I live at 135 Cary Lane. I've done so for about 42 years. I just have very few comments. Speaking about Cary Lane and Arbor Oaks, we've gone on record that we do not want to cut through to Bonner Drive, which would adversely affect us, Cary Lane and Amanda Drive. The fire marshal has gone on record in writing that the extension is not necessary and that it should meet certain criteria that they outlined in that meeting with the Toll Brothers. NCDOT states that a connecting road is not necessary unless the development is over 100 households. The engineering firm that did the TIA or traffic impact study on the Cole brothers application recommended, recommends following national fire safety standards, which is greater than 126 houses per development. Our planning board has recommended any development greater than 15 houses must have two entrances which drives up cost to the builders, the increased cost to the homeowner, probably shuts down small home development and drives away or drives the cost up for all individuals and we lose tax revenue if they decide not to build because of stringent constraints. I now ask the planning board to take this into consideration and please let us hear our voice to oppose this recommendation. I ask the mayor and town council to vote against this requirement from the planning board. That's it. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Bailey. All right, next we have Kurt.

Hi, my name is Kurt Voorhees. I'm a longtime resident of Bonner Drive in the neighborhood of Arbor Oaks. Bonner Drive and the adjoining streets of Amanda Drive and Cary Lane are very narrow. These are not curb and gutter streets. We have no sidewalks. When we go to the community mailbox in our cul-de-sac, we walk on the street. Visit neighbors, we walk on the street. When we take our dogs out, we walk on the street. When the kids go from house to house playing, they ride, they bike, they walk on the street. Turning our cul-de-sac street into a cut-through compromises our safety and wellbeing among other things. now we've learned a lot in this process and it seems like the udo that governs this bonner drive cut through was provided to toll brothers at the inception of this project and established as a requirement by the town of weddington among other things the udo requires a second entrance into neighborhoods of more than 15 homes ncdot the national fire code has similar requirements but they only apply theirs to neighborhoods of more than 100 homes 15 versus 100. now as a as a long time weddington resident i can get behind tightening some development restrictions for the betterment of the community i really can but seven times as restrictive That seems incredibly excessive and beyond what is reasonable. As long as the town of Weddington forces conformance to this ill-conceived UDO, we will be fighting this Bonner Drive cut through battle, no matter the developer. Take Dole Brothers out, put another one in, we're back here a year fighting the same battle. Now Toll Brothers, in particular Margaret, has engaged in direct, open, honest conversation with us to formulate a solution given the rigid, unyielding requirements by the town of Weddington. And just to be clear, toll brothers never wanted to cut through obviously the residents never wanted to cut through this cut through is being mandated by our town our town grant granting a variance or an exception to this udo is always has been our preferred solution to prevent the cut through no doubt about it That said, we believe the proposed permanent, and I underscore, emphasize, put it in bold, put it in italics, permanent emergency access only gate seems to be a reasonable compromise And that gate will be on Bonner Drive, obviously, between Arbor Oaks and the now private gated community of Morris Farm. And those are all very, very key items on that private gated Morris Farm. and a permanent emergency only access gate. I think it accomplishes what we're looking for, which is to eliminate in its entirety, residential and commercial traffic on Bonner drive. So for this reason, we support Toll Brothers Morris farm development. Awesome. Thank you, Kurt.

All right. We got one speaker left. Uh, Christopher Neve.

um when toll brothers first presented this just uh i think it was just a month after their last project was denied i was curious to see how the residents would respond uh to them coming back with another uh uh proposal for weddington and um i discovered that residents were actually very welcoming to this idea who would be most greatly impacted by this development They had one simple request that was even brought up as early as the community meeting, which was roughly a year ago, and voiced this concern that they just didn't want to have to cut through to Bonner Drive. As a resident who lives on a very similar length cul-de-sac, I can say I can put myself in their shoes and I would not want additional traffic on my street, especially those with kids. And so they had that one simple request. There are many other developments in Weddington, not develops that were developed a long time ago, but more recent ones, one being Beckingham subdivision off of Lock Haven Drive that has 38 homes and only one entry point. This added to the already roughly 100 homes that are already back there off of Lock Haven. And never once did that project get held up because there was not a second access point. From what I've been told, what Toll Brothers, that Toll Brothers has been very accommodating and wanting to work around this and not connect to Bonner. So there seems to be a lack of consistency in a lot of areas if this were to be forced, that the connection were to be made. Now, I do know that it's being recommended that there be a gate there with reassurance that it will never be removed. I think the real test is if it's never going to be removed, then why connect at all, especially if the main entry point is wide enough that emergency vehicles can get there? I think and I am very sensitive to safety. uh concerns um i've been a first responder for 10 years now and i can honestly say there is a much greater risk to kids playing on the streets of bonner drive that portion of amanda drive carrie lane through the years with the additional cut through traffic than concerns with emergency vehicles being able to get to the homes of moore's farm i can also um they would also be used as a cut through um because we know of the traffic concerns when the international fire codes were made those are good recommendations and we appreciate the spirit of why those came into play and we can all agree with them but they didn't have bond or road and drive they didn't have in in mind they didn't have Weddington in mind in this specific scenario when they came up with that suggested recommendation. And so we know the details. We know there's a traffic circle up there. We know Kerry Lane runs parallel to Weddington Matthews Road up Tilling Morris, where the roundabout is that traffic gets congested there. We can we know the details there. We know that there will be extra cut through traffic there. And so I would like to see, and also the tree ordinance, trees would have to be removed. That's a new ordinance that our council is very proud of. I believe it's a good ordinance to have in place. There'd be a heritage tree that would have to be removed, at least one, as well as additional trees too. So please take all those things into consideration when you look at this. Thank you.

Thank you, Christopher. All right, that wraps our public comment portion. thank you for uh residents coming out to speak we will move to our old business now uh discussion and possible recommendation of an application by toll brothers requesting conditional zoning approval for the development of a 39 lot conventional subdivision located on weddington matthews road parcel number zero six one two zero zero one one the staff want to say anything or do we want to roll with it all right uh so i want to uh start by saying too that we did receive some emails of uh one resident i thought he was coming to speak as well um today from from chad i tried to pass along for everybody to review and with his emails and some of his stuff i do want to say that uh We need to make sure we keep it important that we distinguish between this is a schematic level plan and not a final construction documents that we're trying to work through. I know he had referenced Luna and that one of the ponds was missing from the CZ. And I think that's just an example of what we were trying to do. We accurately wanted depiction and where these things don't get missed when it actually goes to CD. i think this one check the boxes it went through we uh had bob wilson from labella look after it he had some conflicts as we kind of did before went to council i think toll did a great job working with bob to address everything from that end uh they they requested themselves to come back and come through this process to do it right so i'm gonna attest that that's a a good move so now Here we are. With that said, I think Tole wants to do a little presentation. Is that correct? I think let's let you work your magic and then we'll all open up for discussion.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Margaret Puckett. I'm the VP of acquisition for Toll Brothers. I've had the opportunity to speak in front of some of you, but not all at our February planning board meeting. Out of that meeting, there were a handful of questions. Candidly, like Chris had mentioned, we had some loose items that needed to be taken care of. We've spent the last three months doing that. Bonner Drive, you heard a lot of the residents talk about that connection point. I'm gonna discuss that tonight. Private roads, there was discussion prior of slivers of private road. Would NCDOT maintain that? We've also taken care of that issue with going to a suggested private community altogether so that issue would go away and there were a lot of stormwater questions a lot of stormwater questions regarding our deq response hydrocad came up quite a bit i think there were a lot of technical questions and like you just mentioned chris we've spent a lot of time going back and forth with labella making sure that those answers are addressed with our engineer and i believe the package that you have today has all of those concerns addressed. There were questions about our landscaping plan, the buffers, and we've included all of that information. I'll go through that as I go through my presentation tonight. There's a lot more clarity there. Entrance monuments, there were two. Everybody was like, well, which one are you doing? We've got the correct one in the packet this time, and I'm happy to go through that. Tree survey, heritage trees. There was a lot of discussion specifically about, is that tree a heritage tree? Is this one a heritage tree? Which one? So we've got that in the presentation tonight as well. And then We also were able to get in contact with Union County. We have that school capacity letter. So there were outstanding items, but those were those items. If you go to the next slide for me, I actually typed all those things out on this slide, but it's taken us a little bit of time, but I'm glad that we came back after that time period, because really we've been focusing quite a bit on the neighbors at Bonner Drive. And you've heard from four of them tonight. I've had candid conversations with all of them. And I think that the solution that we've come up with is a very good compromise for the neighbors, although it wasn't their preferred option. It is something that I think does meet the needs of the UDO and it helps the neighbors with their major concern. If you go to the next slide for me, I'm gonna just go through this presentation like I did back in February. For those that were not here, I'll try to be brief, but this is the Morris, what I refer to as the Morris property. It's 94 acres on Weddington Matthews Road. It actually anchors both the east and the west side. of Weddington Matthews. If you go to the next slide for me. A lot of changes have been going on on this project. Actually, we've been working on this coming up on two years. We had our community meeting in June of last year, big crowd at the Weddington pool complex, but we've made a lot of changes to our plan. Specifically, the reduction in unit count or home site count went from 47 to 39. we do meet a lot of the requirements or all of the requirements regarding the new UDO that was moving as we were navigating through this as well. But that before and after really does give you an indication of all of the changes that we've made on this plan. The next slide actually shows a bigger version of that site plan. I think the biggest change that you'll see on this plan shows an entrance marker that actually has our gates so this community after discussion with the bonner drive residents after discussion with planning mayor bell was involved as well suggested that a way to work around this situation would be to go private streets have the community be gated so that we will alleviate the concern of cut through traffic If you go to the next slide for me, this was all of the things that we wanted to highlight that we've been spending the last year and a half, two years working with Weddington on that Bonner Drive. And I will go into more detail. I have it in the slide deck, but that Bonner Drive connection point was a very sticky pain point. So we've suggested going private. having gated community. We have enhanced architecture, which was very important to Mayor Bell and then appendix to be. So we have heritage trees, septic permits. We have accommodated a block length. We've increased buffers. enhanced our berm and landscaping, which I'll show you in a moment. And we've also gone back and forth quite a bit on stormwater updates, those DEQ updates that we were not able to meet the first time around, we've changed those. And we've also worked with LaBella on all of the hydro CAD counts If you go to the next slide for me, this is what we're proposing for that actual gated concept. So you'll see those barrier islands in between. The gate is kind of hard to see, but if you would look straight back, that is actually going to be a gate similar to a lot of communities in Weddington where it will sit back, allowing for turnaround if you don't pull into the right neighborhood and you're like, oh, I got to go back. We have that a accessibility and access, but these are gated and would be shut at all times. The only resident or the people that would have access to get into the community are our residents. We have done this multiple different ways. Sometimes it's a key fob, sometimes it's just a gate button that you would hook up to your car, but it is private and that would allow our residents to have a gated community and it would allow us to gate at Bonner, which would keep our residents in our community, no cut through traffic in the instance of an emergency, which is why we're here having this discussion. Those gates would be able to be opened by emergency access vehicles as well.

You go to the next slide for me.

This is, um, actually I was out in on Bonner drive today. I took this picture. I stood in the woods. Um, so this is a concept of what we would propose for a gate, um, in the community. So this would be fire access only, emergency access only, it would remain shut, but it would look good. We don't want this to be something that gets blown over with the wind. We want this to be a substantial gate that will serve a purpose, which is privacy for our community, but also safety for the Bonner Drive residents. you go to the next slide this is an overview of what that cul-de-sac looks like today um not today it's a little sunnier in that picture but um cul-de-sac and you can see where that proposed cut or connectivity would be we would essentially be building a road on our property and that gate would sit on our property line we would be toll brothers maintaining that gate taking care of that gate it is at no means a obligation to the arbor oaks residents this is a toll brothers obligation and i want to note that we have committed to the arbor oaks residents that no cut through construction traffic will be using their roads we will put this gate up as soon as our roads are paved we will put this gate up to where no construction traffic will be flowing through the community as that was a major request of the residents If you go to the next slide for me, highlighting these two concepts together, we've got our gated front entrance on both sides of Weddington Matthews, in addition to that, that gate that would be that connection point to Bonner, shown very small red arrow, but you can see that there on this slide. Again, the private streets really do incentivize Toll Brothers, which this gate will be on our side. It incentivizes our residents who will be taking care of this community in future HOA. to not remove that gate. Why would they, if the streets are private, they're going to be maintaining these streets within their own community. There's really no reason that the gate would ever come down or be a concern in the future. I know that's been discussed with various residents in the community. Gates are coming down. I don't want that. This allows this to be secured for the future because the community Morris farm would be maintaining it and taking care of it. If you go to the next slide for me, these are just some additional concepts that we actually shared during our first meeting. The bottom right hand corner shows that turn lane that we're going to be installing along Weddington Matthews, which will ease traffic going into our community on the left hand side. And then you can see just some of the streetscape concepts that we've put together thus far. You go to the next slide. Again, some of this entrance monumentation, with our gated community concept. We are very excited about this community and we recognize fully that our past has not been what Weddington wants in the future. And we recognize that and we have done a lot of work to enhance and make our project better so that it fits the needs of the demands and of the town of Weddington. So if you go to the next slide. This is our heritage tree exhibit. So you can see on this exhibit, the green area actually shows individual heritage trees that are remaining on the site. this very difficult to see but there are some red dots on this um on this map that are heritage trees that would be removed um the existing tree canopy is 12.8 acres which is 14 of the site toll brothers is actively saving 53 percent over half of the existing canopy the town ordinance currently only requires us to save 10 so significant tree save on this property and there are 143 total trees on the site and we're removing 18 um heritage trees so very minimal although it's not great we are taking trees down um the site is relatively um flat and farmland as it is today so we've really done our best effort to avoid taking down trees that we don't need to. As people mentioned with that gate on Bonner, there are two trees there that would need to come down to get that gate installed or that road installed in the future. If you go to the next slide for me, this shows our enhanced landscaping plan. We wanted to make sure that this got called out in color so that everyone in this room can see the green on this site plan. the green shade is extra planting that we're going to be installing. The area that's darker gray, and I know it's kind of hard to see on this plant, those trees are already there. So those trees will remain, we're not touching them. The area in green again is where we will be replanting and enhancing the existing area that does not necessarily have trees or where we took trees out, we are going to be putting those trees in. If you go to the next slide for me, this is our septic exhibit that shows where those septic fields will be on the site. These are all designed for five bedroom systems. And again, if there's any specific questions, my counterpart Robert Price can better answer them, but this has not necessarily changed drastically from our last presentation that we did in February. And if you go to the last slide. well, not the last slide, but the last part of this presentation, enhanced architecture. So we have spent a lot of time over the last year on designing homes and bringing up the quality of the homes that we're building in Weddington. For example, all of the homes that we're proposing are crawl space. They're individually cleared home sites, so we're not masquerading anything. We have four sided architecture, meaning four sides brick. We have new elevation designs that we're bringing in. All of these homes are three and four car garages. They're all side loaded, so there will be no homes that you would see the front of the garage from the streetscape. If you go to the next couple of slides. And you can kind of go through these relatively quickly, but we've got a handful of, of floor plans, front, rear sides that you can see from an elevation standpoint, A lot of these homes again are four car garage. So the garage that you do see in this picture will sit back further. And you can see on some of these plans, I've got the footage of the homes listed. The smallest plan I believe is about 4,500 square feet ranging all the way up. These homes go to almost 6,200 square feet. So you've got a large range of square footage, four sides brick. This home in particular is a courtyard plan. It has two separate garages for a total of four, four bays. This home is over 5,100 square feet. Keep going for me. Just a couple more. That is all I have. And I'm happy to stay up here and answer specific questions as they come out of this discussion. Robert is here as well. We also have our engineering team here as well to answer any specific questions. But I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to come back multiple times to hopefully get this right. We have been engaging with these neighbors on Bonner Drive and we really, we wanna do the right thing. We want to be good neighbors in every community that I've ever built and I've been in home building for a long time now. My goal is to leave it better than we find it. I wanna make sure that these neighbors across, right directly next to us everywhere, that they're not impacted in a negative way because that is absolutely not our goal. We wanna be good neighbors. Thank you.

All right, thank you. While she's standing, does anyone have questions for her or do we want to open discussion?

Yeah, I have one, well, two questions. Define cut through traffic.

Cut through traffic to me would be parallel roads. You have two different routes. Cut through means to me, you're going to go one way to avoid a situation on another road. so a lot of the neighbors on bonner drive before we proposed a gate viewed hey weddington matthews is backed up hey there's a accident hey there's that answer my question yep cut through driving people coming down weddington matthews road instead of going down to the roundabout they're going to cut through There is a belief, and I've seen it in certain circumstances where people will try to go the faster route. The concern is they go down Bonner. Correctly.

And then my second question was, you referred to the gate between Bonner, Oaks, and the subdivision as an emergency access gate.

It would only be an emergency access gate. We on the Toll Brothers side of Bonner Drive would not open that gate for our residents. It would be a private gate only to be opened for emergency access.

So if I live in Morris Farms and I'm going to go up and get on the interstate to head up north, I can't exit through that gate?

That's correct. You cannot, we would only be using the one access point on Weddington Matthews road, unless it was an emergency situation only to be used by a first responder or fire police of that nature. And that was our compromise and our solution going private streets. We would allow just that one access point, but we would not allow our residents to be able to exit out of Bonner drive either.

Because as I read through the TIA, let me rephrase. The TIA is 266 pages, so I did not read through it. Bob Wilson, our engineer, does. And the two recommendations that came out of that, left turn lane, which is there, and a Bonner Drive connection. And... This is a delicate subject, because if I lived in Bonner Oaks, I wouldn't be coming through my street either. But at the same time, we try to get connectivity within the town. The fact that our engineer was saying, hey, Hunterford Turn Lane connectivity to Bonner Drive I'm with the gates that you go in and that's where I asked what cut through was. I just have some concern on emergency access. Those are the only two questions I have. Okay. But thank you.

I'm going to elaborate a little bit to Bill's point. So I did email Bob about this change to get his reference and see if he had any, could flush out any concerns from our town engineer. his response was the only concern about private versus public roads is the increased maintenance cost to the hoa however we understand the residents of bonner drive do not want their street connected to moore's farm and this would be required for the public street option so by them going private they are now in control of they still make the connection but as private as theirs they can gate it we can't say anything and then they by default hit the essence of our two entrance two connection spirit so uh i do think that this works for uh toll residence town as a as a way because um i would say that going private is a costly endeavor for toll to attach. I know we might not understand that, but that's a...

It's a costly endeavor for the residents of Morris Farms. I mean, I live in a gated community.

Yeah, in the long run, but it's also... They could turn the roads over to NCDOT when they're done and

It is definitely more costly for Toll Brothers to go private. We have to subsidize at a much higher level to get the neighborhood HOA stabilized. We have to install the gates. There's a lot more to a private community than there is public. And our preference... in normal circumstances, when we have a perfect community that doesn't have neighbors, which doesn't happen very often, it would be public because we turn it over, the state would maintain.

I think when you're saying stabilize the neighborhood, you're talking about as it's turned over to an HOA, they're going to have to you're going to be gradually building up that fund until eventually it's taken over by the HOA. So when I say it's more expensive, I meant from the standpoint of the dues that those residents.

It will be more expensive for the dues of the residents. It is more costly for Toll Brothers to, when I say stabilize, we maintain the HOA and we're the declarant of the HOA until the community is almost built out and we don't turn it over. So I'm responsible for those roads during that time when, The traffic is the worst because I have construction traffic. I have trucks tearing up the roads. Ask Robert. He's really good at messing up my pretty roads. That is the most expensive part of it. So it is absolutely a burden on toll. But we hear our neighbors in this community loud and clear that they do not want that connectivity. And the only solution that we can be in the middle of is providing those private streets.

And I understand totally. And again, I'm walking on eggshells here. The last time I said you guys had a pretty good presentation, I got beat up and bruised pretty badly. But we're basically saying people on Bonner Oaks are going to hate me for this. We've got how many homes are there? Eight, 11, 10. So we got 10 homes. They're going to dictate our policy on connectivity and other issues. I'll play devil's advocate. Make Bonner Drive private. You can put a gate at both ends. Now, that's going to be ridiculous.

Yeah, let's... Gotcha. Appreciate it, Steve.

So, again... I tried to press it. I know this is going to create a lot of... But I'm just trying to get discussion...

on this so that's all i've got to say yeah i think from from from sitting here they meet the standpoint of the udo with two entrances uh commend them for working with the neighbors in weddington to find a solution uh and then still create the second entrance with the gate that uh has no access no through traffic that protects bonner amanda and kerry drive um is there any more questions for margaret or told while we're sitting here before we kind of

Looks like we got one right next to you.

Just a quick one. Go ahead. So regarding assurances for the people existing on Bonner today, will that be ran into a bylaw for the HOA, meaning like it's impermanence, they know it won't disappear, it's bounded, and the bylaws of the HOA?

I can't do that on the Arbor Oaks HOA because I'm not involved in it. However, what I can control is on my side. On Toll Brothers, Declarance, HOA, we absolutely will have to put in. These are private streets. The gate is installed. We can weave language into our CC&Rs that indicate that these streets are going to be maintained by our HOA, and we will. So that security alone gives us a lot of confidence that the neighbors just think logically here for one second, as we have 39 homes in this community, there's a gate they buy into. I'm going to live in a gated community in Weddington. I'm responsible with the purchase of this home to maintain my streets. I am not going to want to take down any sort of gate that protects those streets because we know that streets require maintenance over time that those residents are going to be on the hook for. They have to maintain them. So there's really no justification for those gates to be removed in the future because those residents are going to be the ones that are maintaining it.

And maybe I misunderstood your question. 10 years from now, that's built out and people are living in there, will there be something in the covenants that said that gate cannot be removed?

We can weave language into our CCNRs in our covenants that indicate that that gate cannot be removed. Yes, we can.

I think you're going to have to have that.

Well, my point was more for emergency purposes only. If they've got a key to the castle, they can buzz right through if it's a gate of community still, but again, if they have access, it's not emergency only, which was the intent.

A resident couldn't use their key fob.

Yep. Bonner is not going to be a connection point for the residents. They will not be able to use that gate. We will wire it that way. That is not an access point for our residents. Sorry to be confusing. The front access gate will be, they have in and out access. Emergency access vehicles will be able to get into both should they need to in an emergency situation.

Yeah, I just want to safeguard for the future. That doesn't change the intent. It's emergency only access. It doesn't change in a year or two.

Our intent will not change.

The only the only question that I had was that with the private roads for our new deal, you realize this section G that G that that the built and NCDOT standards that we inspected like you said they'll when you have this emergency access gate you'll have to have to provide the emergency services with access either numbers or fobs or whatever it is um yes i know you mentioned that yes but you know i know the roads are going to get beat up a little bit when the construction is ongoing it's going to have to be brought up to standard at the end when you want to leave the community and we'll do those you know the town will provide the town engineer will potentially go there and inspect those roads.

So I want to address that with specific languages.

Okay. So I mean, that's, it's in our UDO that's that section G for private roads. I just want to make sure you understand that commitment that you're making to, to provide everything that says in that, in the UDO.

Yes, we understand.

And I, and I would also like to say that I appreciate your effort. that you guys have put in to work with the community. Really, hopefully this works out. But for you guys to talk to them, which it sounds like you have, I appreciate that on behalf of the town, because it takes an effort to do that. And I know Toll is trying to improve its standing, and this can go a long way. So I just, for one, personally for me, I appreciate it.

so just again a small thing and maybe the ambulance the deputy the fire truck comes out and it blurts out a a yelp and that gate opens it's called a squaw box okay in my neighborhood we call it a yelp but that was just the point i wanted to make

okay we can we can look into understanding what that technology looks like if if it's out there i'm sure we can figure it out and and make that happen it's been in my neighborhood for 20 years yes so that that should not be an issue this is this one gets more to report the comment civil engineer okay so yeah you would so uh you've already got it you've already got one of the sections out of the uh

out of the Weddington Roadway standard that you show on your plan.

Cross-section of the road, you mean?

Yeah, cross-section. And so I want to be sure that this is protecting the future Weddington residents here because I'd like to see verbiage in your paving that specifically addresses NCDOT 610. Yes. Too many things are going on right now. Too many times I've seen these guys paving out of spec at the end of the day it comes down to oh we again we put it in there and it was middle of january put surface course in the middle of january and it was foggy and in 34 degrees right no

Yep, understand.

Because at this point in time, we're going to tighten that up and this put it in rights first time. Then those residents are going to have a longer life out of that, out of those streets and less impact on them. And it says it's supposed to be conducted, you know, constructed for the NCDOT standards. And that is an NCDOT standard.

Right. So essentially for us, we will provide NCDOT standard.

Because again, you guys, you're going to have to come back and certify that you're the, that you approved the proof roll for that. And also that, you know, if you don't, then we're back into destructive testing and that sort of thing. We don't want to get into that. Yes, sir. Also, I know the guys in the field came out of, just retired after 50 years in the construction industry. I know how guys in the field are.

Yep.

you're gonna have to give them a one two three to follow yeah now that'll be part of our certification along with bob too i have another question since this is going to be an emergency access gate to present cut through traffic or the people that live there is there any reason to make it a gated community you can't gain a public street

So, and this is, and if it's public, it was going to be required to be through traffic from our engineer. Even if everybody wants to think the town, our engineering is going to require y'all LaBella to, to force it.

And in conversation with the mayor, in addition to other council members, um, gating enhances the value of the homes in the community. It is something that we, we feel as though in this particular circumstances is a benefit. Um, so.

like you said before uh in the maintenance plan for the community you know the gates have to be included in that and you probably have to see some of that cost you know going going forward to the hoa um because it's a little bit more than what it would have been before especially the roads are a lot more i'm talking about just the gates and stuff like that and the mechanic part of it

It's definitely an obligation we recognize we're taking on and we fully understand. We don't have a gated community, Toll Brothers specifically, that I can point to in this region, but we have done many gated communities across the country and we understand what we're taking on.

Just to find in the ODO how you fund that. All right.

So I wanted to go over a few things. Are we done with questions?

some of your elevations show front-loaded garages and you said everything was going to be side-loaded.

Is that just a, because that's... Yeah, if you flip back to some of those elevations, I can walk you through why you may think it looks front-loaded. They're not. The garages are side-loaded with what we would call a bolt-on garage that goes on the back of the home. So yes, from the front, you may be able to see it, but it is sitting much further back. When you elevate the home like this, the garage actually sits back about 20 feet. It's just 18 feet roughly because there's a garage in front of it.

So it's a courtyard.

This home is a side-loaded courtyard plan that has four cars.

It doesn't look like that on that picture.

three windows on the front with the garage right what you're not seeing and maybe from this side elevation where you see that garage door that's the garage door you couldn't see and then the other garage sits back further is the one that could be interpreted as a front load you can see it but it is a side loaded concept with that courtyard um so yes that garage looks like it's front loaded but it sits much further back And you can kind of tell if you go back one slide for me on that garage concept. Go back one more for me. One more. Maybe we're going forward. Sorry. If you look on that one back. There we go. On that, this is a three-car garage. You can see the side load, but then that third bay, that does face forward, but it is sitting back. And so when I say front load, typically I mean the front of the house is garage, what you would see. This is sitting further back.

Does that help clarify?

Okay.

All right. so i'm gonna bring up from our past meeting we had eight conditions for the group to address to get to council before everything load i want to just quickly run through these and see uh does everybody we agree that these all uh were completed addressed and and rest assured that that we're fighting fire with fire here. It was, first one was updated stormwater analysis and HydroCAD verification. I know they extensively worked with Bob Wilson at LaBella and completed that and LaBella verified that. All impervious calcs, drainage area calcs, explained drainage area calcs. so that one check comes back great uh the updated bua summary um this time also matched and was completed and they verified that labella verified that all the tables match pond sizes match everything is uh depicted accurately we had one where the confirmation from ncdot on the stub roads that no longer is an issue with private roads and weddington so i would say we checked that one we did make a condition about the specification and details for gate connection to bonner drive knox locks knox lock or some type of way of even going private addressed they went private the public school letter at that time we made a condition it has been addressed they have been notified school letter has been received The next one was a revised and improved tree survey, including a tree save exhibit. This one may be a little bit up in the air as to did they meet it or did they not? Our updated tree ordinance is definitely significantly more detailed than prior standards. And to this point, and even we had a previous submittal, we saw maybe we need to relook at our language of some of that. I think we have an unattended consequence there, but this would be one I think we could deliberate on as to did they meet it as the intent here or are we achieving that? the other uh condition was uh the ncdeq approval and confirmation regarding the bypass water on the lower two lots um there was some emails going back and forth from mike lauer or lawyer lawler that uh basically had stated that it was there they were not going to do a preliminary or cursor review that the group had to submit a full submittal but they did allude to a little bit in the email that uh under the post construction program high density projects must treat the runoff from all proposed bua via scms it says if there are areas where this seems improbable you may need to demonstrate that those areas can meet all the requirements to be considered an area of low density so to this point the whole project's bua table they're touching like 12 of the total property that is absolutely what weddington's been after i feel like from our planning they're keeping over an acre lot so by default low density but bob had told me and then i'd let their engineer confirm this that the bypass of the two lots bob wilson required you to upsize the pond and over design the pond in that drainage basin is that correct over detain and then those two lots will not run into the water system but they will be platted with bua restrictions And in the same email, he says all lots have a BUA restriction. That is true, but their pond has sized and Bob verified that if they wanted to concrete all your lots, your BUA systems are over designed to hold it all. So the only lot set on a plat will come up imperviously restricted will be the two that are low density and they will always have to stay low density. They will not be able to go over that threshold or it will put the neighborhood in default. so to that deq letter and record recognition from deq even though they wouldn't give the formal they did by default tell us that a mixture of low density high density and when this was going up she's stormwater pe i ran it by her she kind of supported that that we could use a mix as long as you stick to the mix and i think they've they've done that the last one so the restriction um would be reflected on the deed for those two not a deed it will be on the record plat okay so it'll be seen when somebody goes to pull a permit at weddington they look at the record plat oh they have 2000 bua they use 2500 nope we can't do this uh So, and then when people go to sell, they'll get a final survey. If that survey shows over, then some of these lenders want zoning verification letters. It will present itself to be a problem if that goes to be the case. the last one was a perimeter and entrance landscape plan for buffers and roadway screening i believe they addressed that in this packet and i actually think you did better with the slideshow with your highlighted color if that could be slip sheeted into the next packet uh you're talking about the green on the yes where she said they were going to plant and then she showed the existing leaving white you really got to look through then you i saw your notes about well the plans note your landscaping yeah to the ordinance but the visual was something I agree that uh next slide that visual I think will go a long way to add into our council packet just so they can see where we got existing where you're going to go the extra mile plant and add more than just the note saying hey we're planning per the UDO of this section at whatever the spacing so with that said on the conditions Does everybody feel comfortable where they met everything? And if anybody wanted to add on to the tree survey part and tree save exhibit.

The only thing I would say about the tree survey and we discussed it before the meeting, I'm not the author of the tree ordinance, but I was probably major input to it. And I think strengthen that thing up because there's some pretty severe clear cutting I think we need to make some adjustments to it. Um, I don't, as an example, I don't see a need to do it. Say it's conservation subdivision. I don't see a need to do a survey in any of that understood land.

I agree, but our language actually reads, I know it does.

So that's what I'm saying. I'm comfortable with the focus on the heritage trees and, um,

so i it and this was a unique case because it is a farm i mean it is farmland so we're we're we're not talking about the law it doesn't meet it but i think the law is pretty darn strict and we need to make some adjustments to that so i agree so outside of these conditions does anybody else see anything that we need to bring up discuss as potential issues how we need to uh Bless it be the name.

The pond on the left side of the development coming from town hall, left side. Is that going to be screened from the road?

The BMP on the small side, your SCM.

I know you're going to have the a hundred foot buffer, right? But

pond is there's a road to the pond and then the pond right for maintenance is there you plan on any screening to screen that pond from the road um we we can um we can commit to screening and now from a landscaping we would likely very much keep it consistent with what the greenery look like and screen where we do it in the 100 foot buffer i mean it's pretty close to it um trying to think here

Robert, do you see any reason why we wouldn't be able to screen there?

I know we've done that at other sites as well, so that's that's a typical protocol for us. So I don't see that being a problem. I think we talked about from the interior portion of the community, not from the road for the road. I don't see it looks like it.

It looks like it's five or eight feet above the road. If I'm looking at the topography, right.

Well, they got to dig a hole.

So it's going to be less from the edge there. It looks like it's seven 25 while the road is like seven 20.

So I think from a real perspective, 30 directly from. Yeah, I don't think the elevation is going to be the problem. Everything around the perimeter of the development has some type of buffer. And so I think from a screen standpoint, we definitely fulfill some type of screening. So again, I think we definitely can. We'll revisit that just to make sure topography doesn't come up.

the other two sides because there's nothing there.

Yeah. It almost seems like just an enhanced view shed buffer. Correct.

And be mindful. So one of the things we're just very cognizant that with, with our homeowners as well. And so even if it's just not so much from a perspective of something that is being requested from the town, it's something that we'd like to go above and beyond and do for our homeowners as well. So yes, I think we could figure out screening something that we can assess relative to pyrography and location.

And the other thing I had is on the right side of the community, on the big side, you've got utilities already in the right, in the buffer. You've got four poles, I think, with some distribution wires on there. I would love for you to take those down, but Union Power really doesn't want those to come down, okay, because I've talked to them about them. But anything new, feet across the street, it's got to be underground. Nothing above ground. That's what our UDO says. Anything new, it's got to be underground. Union Power will try their hardest to put it above ground because they don't want to get an accroachment agreement with the DOT. They just want to put a pole on the other side. And we've seen this in the past. Lunar is a good example. Put a three-phase pole with a pot right in your entrance over there at Lunar, which may not be there forever.

Who knows?

Just make sure that when you talk to them, which I assume that you do, you make sure everything goes underground. We can't do anything on that one side. We just can't make you do it. You're protected by that from Raleigh. But anything else has got to be underground.

So normally we always work with the power company to design the infrastructure. Everything that we typically design is always going to be underground. It's always in our best interest, again, from aesthetics and for kind of the final outcome of what we want to put forward from a design standpoint. It always takes into consideration of who our end user is. So, yes.

Well, I mean, I'm just going from past experience at Luna.

Yeah, I would have agreed. And there's been a lot of conversation. So one of the things that we do is that from a due diligence standpoint, we enter those conversations from the inception. Unfortunately, that was one poll that just could not be moved. But everything else that we had the opportunity to get them to amend, that's always a conversation that we have in the forefront to try to go ahead and alleviate polls because we're not excited about having polls in front of our community or within our community either.

All right, thank you. Ladies, Scott, anything? all right so moving through here uh i didn't want to say that we acknowledge that uh chad did send some emails but i believe we have uh like we have addressed his concerns with those and with the streets going private so does anybody want to make a motion make a motion that we approve this to send to council for council approval get a second second all right i have a question uh is there is everything in this new one that we're talking about here i got it i will i will at least say that i went through my highlighted portions and there is the army corps of engineer was not needed it was conventional that wasn't and then this whole bottom I feel confident that I would I would stick my neck out to say that this is a complete and we're what we're after so now we have a second do we all in favor unanimous easy enough again I want to thank toll for their diligence uh with dealing with us the neighbors and the timing so i know it's i know but but you stuck it through i think i think this is working out for everybody so very grateful thank you guys and gals all right i'm gonna move on we have no new business so moving to the next one is we will get an update from may town council meeting

A lot of administrative work went on. There wasn't really anything that went before them that you all had sent. So it was a quiet month. They worked on the planner job description. There's a subcommittee to, or they had a special meeting, approved planner job description. That went out last week. Gotten two resumes back already. So it's moving along.

Very good. All right. We'll go to board member comments. Start there with you, Bill.

uh i'll reiterate what i've said in the past i thought you guys did a good job hopefully i won't get beat up over at this time i appreciate all your work um i'm hoping the council the planning board will get to a point where we can get this process flowing up a little bit faster and i'm an optimist we're getting there we're getting closer and closer um appreciate all the work staff does can't end the meeting without that because people don't realize how much work they do do. And I would just like to recommend at some point in time, either the planning board has a work session to address, for instance, the tree ordinance and a couple other things, I think we can knock out pretty quickly, or maybe we have a subcommittee address it. That's all I got.

Thanks, Steve.

Yeah, I'd just like to echo, appreciate, like I said before, I appreciate Toad probably the best outcome we can get. So I appreciate that. And, and staff got the girls, uh, appreciate you. I know it's been difficult, but I mean, uh, I appreciate the hard work you put in. Um, and, uh, I just like to say the same thing about the board. I think you guys, uh, you put a lot of work into it and I appreciate it as a, as a person that lives in the town.

and as as well as a member of the planning so thank you okay again you know echo echo the appreciation so rose working you've worked with us today uh for over a year now to an awkward transition that we've had in redoing the udo and updating it i appreciate your work with us thank you everybody on staff karen miss taylor

echoing the same thing thank you for you know really getting through this addressing all of our concerns and the folks that came here today for public comment thank you for participating and working with toll and sharing your concerns with us it really helps us to do a better job and you know address the issues that you've brought up in the udo thank you same thing everyone else is saying thank you guys for working so hard on us i think that it will be a very nice neighborhood for our town

um staff always thank you you guys do so much that is so unthanked and it is we see it and um thank you for all you do everybody's already said it

very helpful to hear your concerns. Staff, you guys do a bang-up job for everything that you do. I'm very happy to be a part of this board. I think we are doing a lot of good things. I think we have some great board members. I appreciate the work that

yes i echo everybody but i really want to give a big thank you to karen uh i wish you the best i know that uh this is going to probably be our last meeting so very sad but congratulations on new endeavors we might watch it just burn down we don't know so but thank you for all you've done you've been here through all the ebbs and flows through this that and the other and We are where we are because of you, so thank you. And to residents. With that, can we get a motion to adjourn?

Motion to adjourn. I'll second.

All in favor?