Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right, good evening and welcome to... Recording in progress. Now that we're being recorded, good evening and welcome to the September 1st, 2026 meeting of the Chapel Hill Planning Commission. We usually start our meetings by taking attendance or roll call, so I'll do that real quick. Mike? I'm here. Chuck?

And I'm John Mitchell, the chair. I'm here. Those are the only members in attendance that I can see right now. I know that Libby couldn't be with us. Jeff may be able to drop in between work presentation commitments tonight. And I think that's the other three that I mentioned. So hopefully those will show up in the next few minutes, in which case we'll have a proper quorum. The agenda tonight is straightforward. We approve the minutes or not approve the minutes. And then we go into new business. which is part two of Taz's presentation on the LUMO and discussion of that. Is everybody okay? I'm

Okay, good. I looked at the minutes from the last meeting and they looked correct. To me, did you guys have any issues?

That's a good point. Okay. Are there any announcements or petitions either from members of the public who are dialed in or from planning commissioners? If you're a member of the public and you're dialed in, welcome. And you can... raise your hand and we'll bring you in if you have an announcement or petition. And also just for the benefit of members of the public, our main agenda item tonight is the LUMO item. The order of operations from that is that we'll receive a presentation from town staff immediately after that presentation. We'll take public comments and questions. The questions may no

Okay, hands still up. So Josh, you want to bring in Jake?

Okay, the hand went down. Okay, so with that, I'm going to turn it over to Taz if you're presenting tonight.

Thanks. Thanks, Taz. Great presentation as usual. And I'm sure we'll come back to you for the planning commissioner discussion portion with some questions and ideas. I'm going to open up the floor for public comment at this point. We have it looks like a dozen folks who have dialed in. Welcome. You can raise your hand using Zoom and we'll bring you in one at a time or a couple at a time. We just ask that you keep your remarks to three minutes and I'll just keep time on my cell phone here. I'm not going to bother you or interrupt you until after three minutes. I won't give you any signal, but a

give it another 10 or 15 seconds josh in case people are searching around for the button so the bottom of the screen for those who have dialed in there's a hand icon that says raise hand you can just click that and we can see that okay looks like some observers tonight josh we'll bring it back to uh the planning commission for discussion. Sorry. Oh, is there a hand?

Okay. We'll come back to that probably after the public comment period, Jake. Appreciate the question.

It'll probably end within the next 10 minutes, and then we're going to come back to a planning commission and sort of staff discussion, and I'll make sure that we touch on that.

Okay, so let's bring it back to the Planning Commission. I do want to touch on the questions they were asked, and Taz, I'm going to ask for your assistance here. As I understand it, Jenny and Caroline are asking about the additional density that's allowed in currently low density residential areas like R1. The draft LUMO allows up to four units, and this relates to Jake's point, not per acre, it's per parcel. And there's a minimum lot size, but it's four units per lot, whatever that is. And compared to today where you have a maximum of two units per lot in most of these areas, that is addition

type of building they're putting on the property just by virtue of how many lots they would be likely to build or likely to create on that land yes i think you touched on this but um because jake mentioned explicitly i think jenny and caroline did as well the tree canopy i think i'm right in saying that um currently in r1 on a property with a single family house on it There's no tree canopy requirement.

Right. So that's the current, uh, baseline under the, um, proposed changes to the Lumo. Um, that would change if, and if a new, I mean, obviously older properties are grandfathered if they're not redeveloped. Right. But for a new, for a new, um, single family unit. on that property, there will be under this proposal a 30%. So from zero to 30% is an increase in tree canopy requirement. Now, if the property is developed or redeveloped into two to four residential units on the property instead of a single family house, that standard, instead of 30%, would be 20%, 20% of the property tree canopy r

Okay. Thanks, Tess. So I hope that helps address the questions. So now let me open it up to Mike, Chuck, Liz, and I guess myself too. ask questions or talk amongst ourselves or provide comments to Taz on the draft LUMO. I suspect we'll probably want to limit it to the two headers, affordable housing and environmental protection resilience. But if there are any other LUMO related things, you know, that's fair game to bring up as well.

John, I'll go first. You were kind of leading the conversation that was in my head as well. The two, I think, are also very related. We're trying to improve the supply, the attainability, okay, in one case, and then environmental impact because now we've got more density. I think what I'm hearing, even from the public too, is I think TASI has done an amazing job trying to balance, in one sense, increasing the canopy and in another case, decreasing so we can get more done, build more. But maybe it's the fear of unknowns, right? At the end of the day, it's just the fear of unknowns. But is it re

Yes, and Liz's camera's broken. That's why we can't see her.

Sorry, I tried to turn it on, and it looked like I was in a dark, you know. So my camera's broken. Apologies. Thanks, Taz. We did go into this whole discussion two weeks ago, and I'm not going to repeat the whole thing. But I just... want to push back again on this idea that this LUMO is do no harm as far as stormwater. I think that that is a good philosophy. And I also think that this LUMO revision is most definitely better than the LUMO that we are currently operating under. It definitely strengthens multiple different systems multiple different stormwater requirements, but it leaves lots of

Is there some upper limit to how many of these sublots you can divide into?

And also things like, you know, recreation requirements. different requirements that you might have if you had a multifamily or if you, I don't know, it looked like there were all sorts of, as I was getting into it, it seemed like they were going down different trajectories depending on if you were subplot or if you subdivided. But anyway, so you've thought carefully about this not becoming a loophole.

So I just wanted to echo or express interest in a point that Liz made at the start, which is regarding stormwater overlays. I'm aware that the, and we did talk about this a bit last time, I'm aware that the LUMO has some overlays already related to stormwater that relate to, I think, drinking water quality, like the Jordan Lake drainage and that sort of thing. I don't think we have any stormwater overlays, the purpose of which is to protect human structures. I don't think that's a thing right now. And I'm not an expert on stormwater, but logically it seems sensible to me that given that some a

Okay, okay, understood. Thanks. Liz, oh, I see you're muted now. We were getting a little feedback. Mike, I see you're off mute. Did you want to chime in? No, I'm good. No, okay. Taz, I want to take us back to the housing portion. I forgot to raise for a discussion Kimberly's question about whether the incentives that staff is proposing to include for, it's called inclusionary housing for higher rates of designated affordable units in future development and future subdivisions, whether the calibration is sufficient to be economically attractive and impactful. I'm wondering if, I know, a year o

Got it. Thank you for that, Taz. I had just three other questions on the housing front. They're not all... extensive questions. Uh, so, uh, I really appreciated staff pointing together the map of collector and arterial streets. Um, I took a look at it a week or so ago, um, just eyeballing the arterial streets and made intuitive sense to me why, you know, densities would be higher there. Those are, um, higher watch, higher traffic streets, and they're the major type of streets, you know, your MLKs. And I can't remember whether SS Drive is one, but, you know, Weaver Dairy, I think, probably part

Just was wondering if you could put that map up while you're talking. I think it's much easier for everyone to understand what you're talking about if they could see it. Or Josh, would you mind putting that slide back up that Taz had?

While you're pulling it up, Taz, one thing I meant to ask is it seems like another approach to this issue is to create a zone, call it RF, since we haven't used F yet. Actually, we haven't used E yet. Create a zone. that we think of as the, no, here's a better idea. Create an overlay that we use just for our RA and RB, like an RA and RB overlay. And the overlay would be, this is the four unit per lot overlay. And then when it comes time to redo the zoning map, after the new LUMO. So the new LUMO creates a zone that's just abstract. It's not applied anywhere yet. We apply it during the zoning m

So I want to add some questions about this map and appreciate that last comment. Taz, I also have some other thoughts on what maybe we could do going forward. But my first point is in looking at all this, I looked through the LUMO to find what these arterial and collector streets were used for. John was talking a lot about housing density and I think allowing three and four units, but I also found that it was used for neighborhood scale retail, food, beverage, food and beverage, permanent supportive housing, general civic facilities, places of assembly, religious assembly, daycare centers, cem

Some of those might be legacy, too, in the old Lumo, right?

So, Taz, that kind of leads me to my suggestion. And that is, as John said, these arterial roads, really, they all are pretty major. And there's probably commercial on a very high percentage of those roads. Why not? I think people are freaking out at some of just You can't see. If you move this down, you'll see there's a road, a couple of the roads down there, which goes for a very long way. The thought that we would be encouraging density way out in some of these collector roads, why not... say that these rules apply to the arterial roads plus the first, say, one-eighth of a mile where they i

Well, that's good. But why not? I mean, Part of the idea of doing it right at the very close to say an eighth of a mile down the collector street from the arterial is then you're really encouraging densification. Otherwise, you're kind of spreading density everywhere.

But in which case, it should just be everywhere. If you're saying we're not dense enough, then why pick these collector streets that don't seem to make a lot of sense? I mean, that's just an argument for increasing density everywhere. Right.

OK, thanks. My other two questions. I saw in the density table, Taz, that in R3 and R4, the proposals that increase, I guess mainly in R3, existing residential density in R3 is two per lot, two units per lot. And the proposals that increase it to four or eight if it's near a Greenway entrance or along an arterial or collector street. And R4 stays the same except with the bonus. So it's really R3, I guess, that I'm asking about. It's an obscure zone. I don't know what R3, it just doesn't seem to come up in our planning commission discussions. How much of town is R3 and where is that?

Because we're doubling the density as a baseline, you know, in the proposal. It just caused me to wonder, well, R3, where...

So R3 and R4- You're leveling R3 up to R4.

Okay. And that's actually a perfect transition to my last question, which is, put aside Northside and Pine Knolls. We have a panoply of other NCDs, something like 10 NCDs in the town. And my recollection is those were created between let's say early 2000s and five years ago. Maybe more than five years ago, but we had none as of like the year 2000. We created this mechanism and it's kind of like a historic district light. They're not necessarily all historic, although they tend to be more historic than like just built in the last 20 or 30 years. but they have customized preservation controls la

Yeah, understood. Thanks for that clarification. Yeah. Other planning commissioners, any additional remarks or questions or comments?

I'd like to say one more thing about the affordable housing. If possible.

All right. My question, I mean, we're talking about trade-offs. If currently the LUMO is saying for multi-family units, there's a requirement for the affordable housing, but we're saying now we can get rid of that, offer incentives. Are currently the developers coming and saying, you know, we love to build in Chapel Hill, but this affordable housing thing is a deal breaker. And do we somehow feel like if we offer these, because I see the incentives look like they do look really strong and aggressive. But all of a sudden come running and say, look, yes, we want to build here now because This is

And Taz, what about Chuck's question about the gulf between tier one and tier two? You were saying, I think earlier that tier two was like basically Terala made for LIHTC projects.

This is my last one, unless Taz said something really provocative and I have another. So Taz, over the long history of you working on the LUMO, you've mentioned many times that the LUMO is not the solution to all the town's problems. And often we talk about it specifically in the context of complete community, where we want to really encourage these nodes of development, which are walkable and et cetera, et cetera. So my question is, when this is passed and you take a vacation and then you get back to work, what What is the planning department and the town staff in general, what are the other

Okay, thanks. Thanks again, Taz. We really appreciate you joining us, especially this week. I think our next LUMO-related meeting will be in October, correct me if I'm wrong, when the Council's legislative session on this subject will be open. Am I right about that?

I don't think we want to add an intervening meeting. I think we've had a great opportunity and used it the last couple meetings. So I think, correct me if I'm wrong, guys, Chuck and Liz, I think we're in a good position and prepared for October now.

Yes, I feel as much. I'm sorry that Libby and Jeff weren't able to come to either meeting, but that's too bad.

Yeah. And in September, Josh, I think you were saying that there is some sort of business for us to attend to. Well, this is September, but I mean, the next meeting in September, third Tuesday, we'll meet.

Okay. We have one other thing to attend to, but I should have said explicitly, Taz, You can have a great rest of your night. We really appreciate it, but there's not going to be any return to LUMO in tonight's meeting. Thank you very much.

Of course. Happy to. So I just want to tie up a loose end from the beginning of the meeting, which is voting on the minutes from the last meeting. I took a look at them. They looked fine. so uh liz i'm just gonna do a roll call vote since we can't see liz are you okay with the minutes from the last week yes okay mike yes and chuck yes and i'm a yes so we've approved the minutes from the last meeting and that was the last uh last thing to uh to wrap up tonight so uh anything else on your end josh or sneha okay um thanks everyone always Interesting, discussing this LUMO stuff. Yeah, go ahead, Mi

Just one clarification. It was the next meeting, not September 15. It would be in first Tuesday in October.

So we are going to have a meeting on September 15, but it's not going to be related to the LUMO. Okay, gotcha. It'll be, I don't know exactly what, some like conditional rezoning related stuff, I assume, right? What else do we have anymore? Okay. And then we'll also meet in October. I'm not sure which, it will be the first Tuesday in October, Josh?

And for that meeting, do you think there will be any other agenda items besides Lumo?

Honestly, I'm not sure how to productively use that meeting as it relates to the LUMO since we just had two substantial meetings.

It sounds like that's when we might try and put any thoughts together that we would pass on to the Council. Is that right, Josh?

And what do you anticipate as far as the sequence of council meetings? So they're going to start meeting on Lumo publicly. Is this in work sessions or in public, you know, council chambers, full business meetings in October?

It doesn't matter. But they're going to start meeting in October, and staff is prepared to do multiple sessions with the council, I guess, with a view to their potentially voting in November. I guess they could vote whenever they want to after the legislative session is open, right? Is there some minimum waiting period for them?

And Josh, what that report is, is up to us. Like it can be their thumbs up or it could be a 20 page document with all our, our specific ideas.

Well, you said we were going to talk about the Luma. Yeah, that's true.

So we'll noodle on how to productively use the October 6th, I guess it is, Planning Commission meeting and maybe the one after it. But I think we're all set for tonight. So thanks, everybody, for coming. Thanks to Josh and Sneha as well as Taz. And we'll see you on September 15th. Good. Thanks, Taz. Good night.