Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

should be good to go. All right, I will call to order this June 12th, 2025 regular meeting of the Moab City Planning Commission at 6:06 p.m. Thanks for patience, everyone. are us often having some technological difficulties here in chamber. Um first item of business is citizens to be heard. Uh we do not have anyone here in chambers um for citizens to be heard. So we will move on. We also didn't receive any emails um about anything or items on the agenda as well. Oh, also in attendance tonight are city staffers Johanna Blanco, Corey Sherliff, Marcy Mason, Kelsey Garcia, um our city council leazison Luka Jahowski, and then planning commissioners myself, Ka Marinfeld, Jill Tatton, and Miles Loftton. Um all right, first item of business is approval of minutes from our special meeting uh last week, our June 4th, 2025 special meeting. Um, if you folks have had a chance to look over that, can entertain a motion or if we need to make any corrections. I don't think so. I worked over it. I can't see anything. Yeah, I'll go ahead and move to approve the minutes from the June 4th, 2025 special meeting. Okay, we have a motion to approve from Miles. Is there a second? I will second that. All right, a second from Jill. Um, all in favor of approving the minutes from our June 4th meeting, say I. I. I Okay, motion passes. Minutes approved. Of course, I just exited out of my agenda. Here we go. All right. Uh, next, our action item for the evening, item 4.1, which is consideration of adoption of ordinance 20258, an ordinance amending title 3 of the Moab Municipal Code to update chapter 3.50, 50

master fee schedule and modifying certain fees and rates charged by the city. This is a discussion and possible action. Um and it looks like we have our city treasurer Marcy Mason um here at the DAS to present. Thank you guys. Just a second. Let me share. Apologize. I did have my computer muted. All right. [Music] Share. Okay. So, I don't know if you guys had a chance to review the ordinance and everything for this. This is a brand new process that we were informed of by our attorneys that we are now required to put the master fee schedule in front of planning commission for recommendation to city council because of the impacts or implications it may have on our community uh for building, zoning, all all kinds of stuff. So, um, anyhow, let me close this. Sorry, it's in my way on my screen. Okay, so we can't use touchscreen. Darn it. I'm not sure if you guys have any questions or if you guys want me to go through anything. I'm happy to just kind of review the changes we have that are associated to planning and spec like specifically which is building fees. I may additionally comment on that that um again specifically to what the state code update is referring to is development development review or development impact fees. So that's very broad and we're trying to negotiate what that is. But as Marc said, what we're looking at specifically on our fee schedule tonight would be the building fees uh which is the section we're looking at 165 and then the following section which is engineering and planning fees. Those are those are really what we have the authority to be reviewing tonight. So if there are

questions that are outside of that we have the treasur here, but that's not really what this recommendation will be based on. So like Marcy said, this is meant to be how these fees are being adjusted to affect what it is that falls within your perview. Yes. And we understand that you guys have probably not um seen this at this capacity before. This is our master fee schedule. This is every single fee that the city charges um to the community essentially. Um while you're streaming down, maybe I'll comment a few of these. Go ahead. that with building fees in particular, all that we're really doing within this section, if you did take time to review it, is there were adjustments given the requirements that again the state adjustments have been placing on the plan review and building permit process that we're essentially raising what is that minimum fee rate from 65 to 85 to compensate for the lack of a better term expedited requirements the building department's facing. So more staff time uh at a quicker rate. Um so these are specifically with building fees regulated that we cannot be charging more than it is the offset that it takes to exercise the service. Um that's kind of universal I think throughout most of the building and review fees. What we will see though is if when we get down to the planning fees they're they're a little bit larger fees than what we're seeing here as far as minimums go. However, given most of those exercises go through DRT, many departments and other review divisions, we're not even getting close to breaking even. We have done an audit on this and have the intention to someday bring us closer to a neutral revenue balance to our expenditures with this. Um, but at this time, we're we're within the planning realm. We'll get there. Um, just raising them that they're consistent within

themselves. Um but we when we did this audit back in 20 I want to say 20 22 I think late 2021 we found that we were grossly both in we did uh population uh like communities as well as um resort type communities. We were by far the lowest among all those. So even given that we're both we're a small city but we're handling big level projects and complex projects we still have fees less than and I don't want to call any municipalities out by name but some municipalities that are not dealing with the things we're dealing with were charging even less than they are. So we're we're well behind in updating this. Again this is just getting us to where it's consistent within itself. But I think that's my big spiel of facts. Thanks Marcy. Yeah no problem at all. And I think what you're trying to emphasize is eventually we would like to have a fee study done so that we can have it like you know a solid understanding of all of our fees and and be able to bring it back to planning and or council with a true recommendation depending on our expenditures and stuff. But that is like way down the road and um above my my head. So okay. So, um, do you guys have any specific questions that you would like to ask? Um, as Corey said, for the planning stuff, it is very everything that's changing is redlined to make it very clear on those changes. And if you guys have questions, I'd be happy to answer them or Corey. Yeah. Um, would you mind scrolling down to the planning engineering fees? Um, yep. So I think as we scroll down you're going to see as some of these red lines exist um

again minor edits um that are making some of these minimum fees for again some of our more complex projects at least match the minimum platting exercise process fees. So master plan development for example is a $350 base fee plus uh $50 per lot. that's what we're changing it to. That is just basically covered platting. That doesn't cover all of the additional plan review that goes behind what you can tell some of our most recent MPDs which are hyper complex. So again, just getting neutral. We're not getting neutral. We're just trying to make it consistent within itself. Sorry. Correct. And our and the ordinance that I prepared for this is very detailed. It's telling you if we're revising, updating what it changed from, what it went to, to try to have it compacted into one place so you don't have to scroll, you know, 55 pages worth of documents or 53 pages worth of documents. Yeah, the side by side is nice and I think the red line red line in particular You want to change coordinator in all forms because you're still planning director. Was that on the large scale projects? I'm seeing that now. Yeah. Yeah. We planning coordinator will be the term that we want to use and I'm seeing just below that that even planning director still exists. Bottom two. Um, so yes, I think the reason we I can do a find and replace. Yes, the landscaping is because we were currently going through that was when I got picked up. So, thank you. And yes, I think that'd be a great recommendation to just a nitpick, but consistent fee. No, definitely. And that's, you know, unfortunately for us, the building fee changes, that's exactly

what happened. They changed a series of them, but some of them got missed that should have been changed last year. Okay. That's the building fees that we're doing right now. That's already been premeditated. They're just making it. Yeah, just actually Thank you. We will make that I think amendment throughout the planning fees anyway. I mean, yeah, it makes sense. I, you know, I think for a, you know, always thinking about just informing the community on things like this or we had a public hearing that posted today. Yeah. So, I hope that Yeah. Yeah, it will help. And then it goes in front of council on the but like actual number comparisons to other communities. We don't need to call out Yeah. whoever it is, but say here's what a master plan development cost. For example, Park City and we were even looking at some non Utah, you know, communities and where they were at. So we we basically did the NAR communities and we did similar population communities and those are the ones we saw where they were a little closer because you can go to Summit County or Park City and you see what their planning fees cost and they're well when I would even do a cross comparison of like Canab and you know Springville Springville or Dale Dale Springdale Springdale yeah or even you know communities that are not to the level that we're at now just to show that like we're not far from them either. It's not just we, oh, we comparing ourselves to Park City, right? So, and that's it because we're not them either. So, jumping all the way up there. Yeah. Um, but really, it's a it's a matter of ensuring we're covering our our costs. That's really the idea. Um, so it is a bit custom of well, how many review agents do we have? Park C might have teams of review people where that is the the expense to the community. But, uh, yeah. state has criteria where we can't have like massive revenue coming in. Yeah.

For planning or I mean sorry for permitting and stuff like we have and we can still have a high but then we have to expect a low and so there that's what these fees are kind of flexing. With these particular fees though we haven't done a fee adjustment prior to last year. I don't even remember with the last fee adjustment. It was years and years since the fees had actually been looked at. So we just did a minimal minimum change which then was a ripple. Yeah. Effect. So these aren't even reflective of totally what we like Corey said what we should have done. They're just this is just us bringing up the 80 to $85 to cover a minimum fee. Yeah, that makes I mean I've been on the planning commission for a long time at this point. We have never talked about this. Yeah. So which is actually great point is uh I was gonna ask Marcy to talk about this anyway is that as we're updating the master this should be a living document. So yes, we're doing this right now, but it should be something that is evolving more concurrently. And when we had done that audit, obviously we've had some turnover in finance director position and how the admin structured where we we've been this has been on the docket, but clearly it's not been on fire enough, especially given the community continued outreach and say, "Hey, this stuff's too expensive." There's not a big rush to try to change this stuff, but the longer we let this go, the bigger of a jump it will become. Um, so with this audit, yeah, I think it can, it doesn't have to be at this regular annual time, which is what a lot of the previous finance directors had said, like let's not do this during master fee update. Well, let's do this as a separate audit somewhere else in the year, and we just never got to it. So, we're poised to do that. We're actually, I think, getting a really great handle on a lot of these things. Marcy, I gonna go into deep dives into auditing multiple systems that we have. Yes, we are. Um, so we're we're really bringing things back back up to speed. So this will be one we'll see probably soon. I don't know if in

the next year that'd be nice, but probably the following fiscal year. Yeah. Well, and that's come up in discussion before of like where we've tried to build incentives in by reducing building permit fees only to realize they're already so low there's no like we're already sitting on the floor and there's no room for adjustment. So, right, every adjustment I've like looked over upon reviewing these seems pretty darn reasonable. Yeah. Like these are not large jumps at all. I mean, you know, like a minimum fee going $20 up. Like for after how many years? Yeah. Well, and you speaking of someone who actively pays these fees on a regular basis. Yeah. the $85 to give you a little bit of background on why we chose $85 is we looked at what an hour would cost to do a review at the minimum and it's $85. It was like around there. We just did a flat 85. Um because staff time is is of course your wage plus your salaries and etc. So the $85 is only really looking at one person and commonly there's multiple people that review permitting, but we didn't want to hit or have a huge impact because sometimes permits are really simple. You know, they take 15 20 minutes for like the simple a roofing permit for example, as long as it's like, you know, a simple roof. I don't want to I don't want to understate anything, but they're a lot simpler. So the the rate of $85 is great. It covers whatever is needed, but then you have more complex that maybe it's a little too low. So yeah. Yeah. Frankly, I also just don't think a $25 increase is really going to be the make or break for anybody's roofing project. Great.

Do you guys have any other questions, concerns, anything? Great. Well written like it's it's simple like you said you need to start to come close to covering costs because I do think you know we're at a point where we're providing good service to the community from all the departments at the city and planning and zoning and building and everything. It's important that that it can sustain itself at least at the barest minimum which it kind of seems like you know that's that's how we right keep the departments working for people and how you guys can answer questions and yeah and I don't want to over talk this so much I think we're all on the same page now we're just talking philosophy but yeah our our city manager right now has a really great way of approaching this which is that we as a community are providing a level of service that has an equal amount ount to how much the community is buying into that. So where this can be balanced from a local perspective, we are in charge of that how what our services are and what the rates are that we apply. Where this is unique is both in planning and in building engineering. So auxiliary is the state is now infiltrating with its amendments to its land use code and placing additional requirements on us mostly for speed and increased levels of service. So it's not that we're we want it's the state is mandating we perform better faster all these things and at a certain point like you said if that becomes too out of balance we will have a fallout where it can't be sustained um at all so you know we're working that way excuse me all right reasonable Okay. Um, we don't have any more questions. Um, so on the table would be a possible recommendation to city

council to pass this ordinance. Um, as usual options are we can make a positive recommendation. Uh, make a recommendation with amendments if we see fit or um, uh, negatively recommend um, given specific findings for the decision. I don't really see any particular amendments that are required. It makes sense. I think just noting just cleaning up the language a little bit which we got would happen probably before the end anyways. Um yeah, as usual there is a uh I think I've noticed on city council we we're as you can tell we're amending our staff report frameworks. Yes, there's still a few kinks in there that we're working out. One of them being there is not a recommended motion recommended motion framing. I noticed that. Well, that's what so I Yeah, we had some annexations go through recently where the council did a great job in the spot, but I was Oh god, those I'm impressed. It's always a useful thing to have that just available. So, beyond the staff recommendation, we will start reintroducing recommended motions as well. Cool. But for now, sorry guys, that's okay. You guys do this stuff, right? You should be able to come up. I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna give it a shot. All right. Um, so I motion to forward a positive recommendation of ordinance 2025-08 without modifications to my city council. That'll work. I will go ahead and second that. Okay. We have a motion for positive recommendation from Miles and a second from Jill. Um, any other questions for staff or discussions? All right. Uh, all in favor all in favor of the motion on the table, please say I. I. Okay. Motion passes 30 unanimously. Thank you, Marcy. Thank

you, everybody. It's a long process, but little bits at a time. So, thanks. Perfect. Come back anytime. Well, you know, as the master fee schedule changes, I'm sure I will. Yeah. There you go. There you go. All right. Uh, next we just have future agenda items. Wonderful. Um, we don't have anything except for the EV readiness has been being reviewed by the city's attorney is ready for another discussion. That we'll probably be looking for final comments. we've refined to probably as much as staff can. Yeah, there may be uh some discretionary routes that we go. I know we talked about what we may do is lay out options. All the options are available, but they're again that kind of your body's discretion of how those options might work. So there are g there there are going to be some questions that we have for you but following that we're going to dive directly into the public process with public hearing and advance that ordinance for approval of city council. So this is kind of the last working session to to iron everything out. So of course if there are bigger concerns I know Caroline's been pretty well involved in this. Um it'd be favorable to try to get any of those in advance of the meeting so that we can come prepared with answers to have um some direction given to us. Yeah, I was going to say my my note on that was also if we could get what we're to review as far in advance of the meeting as possible just to be able to really fine tooth comically on behalf of Carolyn as well. Yeah. And this may be one that we um are advancing that material to you for review in

advance of the agenda as there may be items that we're kind of waiting on. We'll just send this to you as as a material of review. That'd be fine. Perfect. So that's what I think we'll do this and then also any ordinances. I think that's a good system. Uh ordinances typically will require that much greater review than timelines and any other items that may be holding up the agenda do. But, uh, I do think that's about all we have as far as action items go. Um, anything else, Kelsey's end that you're thinking of? No. So, that would be our regular meeting on the 26th then. I will not be here. So, yeah, sounds like not We will not be meeting on the 26th then. Okay. Which is all that's all right. Okay. Uh, and this is one where I don't think it would be essential for us to try to squeeze in a special meeting. I think we can probably move. I think we'll still won't have Jill that I won't have I won't be here. Oh, for the 10th, but I'll be here on the 10th, right? If I'm not, I can definitely zoom in. Tentatively aim for that. um as things come up and we're definitely having a lot of moving parts right now that there may be an item from the city council perspective or admin that's like no we need you guys to do this so we may have to get creative in the meantime but respecting you guys time of course cool we'll aim for July 10th I'm happy to make a special meeting work but there's going to be a chunk of time amount and I will for sure be back by the 10th okay that all righty well then maybe we'll have a pretty full roster of agenda items by that point hopefully should get a lot done because I may be gone the next meeting. Yeah. All things go well. I probably won't be here on the 24th. So, we're hoping for you keeping that fingers crossed. All right. Um that said, understanding that

we are under seated right now in our planning commission membership, as long as we can do remote meetings, um I will continue to do my dang to make meetings. I brought that up. We have um some department head meetings that uh we'll have regularly. I've brought that up that with our planning commission we are still short and they may be kind of in different time frames losing quorum ability altogether uh temporarily out permanently out in some cases possibly. Um so it's maybe not an urgent problem right now but the I think the light is starting to flash of really needing uh to reach out to the community. our communications director is again plugging away. um so we're I think everyone is doing what they can to to acquire attention but um if you're listening uh you know how to be a planning you're listening to this meeting and then just as a reminder for us I know you know within our individual circles within the community I think one of the toughest things that we're seeing right now is that there are people that maybe live within the county that are interested but as not qualifying as residents. Um, so again, just well, as you're out in your your native circles, try to circulate that. You never know who what rogue person breaking mustangs for a doctor might find out, which is how I got a planning commission. Yeah, there you go. So, it can be, you never know where you're going to find a planning commissioner. And it could lead you to being the planning coordinator for the too. Hope so. Uh, all right. Awesome. Uh, all that said, thanks everybody. Good short meeting.