Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Usually you can talk and he listens in and he comes. I don't know where I'll be. Hello. Welcome to the planning commission meeting. Today is February 26th, 2026, 6:30 p.m. We are going to get started tonight with a prayer by member Taylor and then when we have finished, please rise and join me in the pledge of allegiance. Thank you.

Turn on my microphone. Father in heaven, we're grateful to be here. We're grateful to participate in the governing of this county as part of this great nation. We're grateful for that blessing in our lives to be a part of it to be able to raise our families and to live here. We ask the spirit to be with us that we might be civil and respectful and conscientious about our decisions and discussions. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Do I have a motion for the approval of the agenda?

So moved. Motion by member Sessions. Second. Second by member King. All in favor? Any opposed?

Motion carries unanimous. Any conflicts of interest with anything on the agenda this evening? Seeing none, we will move into public comment. Um, our legislative item has a public hearing tonight. So, if you're here to speak about that, please refrain from doing so. We will have a public hearing at that time. Um, if there's anything else you'd like to speak to us about, please come forward and state your name for the record. Thank you. Seeing no public comment, move into our first agenda item tonight, the Bowman Rezone. Uh the Bowman Rezone is application number 25.047. Uh it's located approximately 3690 North Morgan Valley Drive. Um the property is currently zoned uh split residential RR1 1acre zoning and A20 and the general plan designation currently shows a majority village low density residential uh with a portion rural residential. Village low density residential is half acre which is um what they're requesting tonight. Uh the total acreage of the property is 1.39 acres. Uh staff has reviewed this application according to our zoning map as well as um the future land use map. As you can see on the future land use map um the bright yellow is uh village low density residential. It takes up a majority of the property. Um and then the remaining portion is rural residential which is typically one

acre. And then if you go to the zoning map, uh something's wrong with the zoning map. I'll have to get that fixed. It looks like when it was being edited, it got the property got dragged. Yeah.

So, I'll just have to get that um push back up. But property uh currently has split zone R1 uh and um A20. Um what they're proposing is to go to R120 completely, which is halfacre lot. Uh staff believes that because a majority of the lot on the future land use map shows um village low density which is halfacre zoning. Uh we believe it makes uh makes good planning sense. Uh staff is not making a recommendation but uh would like to turn the time over to the applicant and they can kind of speak their case if if that works for you. That's great. Thanks.

Thank you. Hi, I'm Brad Bowman. Um, just really was told I didn't really have to be here, but was here to answer any questions if anyone had any. Seemed pretty straightforward. This was property that was previously owned by our family. Uh, it's adjacent to our ranch down below, which is why I bought it. And uh the home on that property was moved to that location from my father and my uncle's uh cousin. Uh it was his home, Alfred Bowman. Home had to be moved because they were putting in the canal and that's where the home was. And so like family uh made an arrangement for them to have access to this land because they own some property down below that we now own. and uh ran a dairy there. So, they moved the house from the canal down to there and the barn. And uh basically, as you can see, all the adjacent property is property that's already R120. Uh the property to the east is also already been reszoned R120. And uh it's just part of the straight line that would go down. Otherwise, there'd be a little jagged area there that was carved out that isn't R120, which not make any sense in my opinion.

Are there any questions at all?

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions for staff before we move into a public hearing? Do you have a motion for a public hearing? So moved. Motion by member McMillan. Second. Second by member W. All in favor? I I.

Any opposed? Motion carries unanimous. We are now in public hearing. If you would like to speak to us about this item, please come forward and state your name for the record. My name's Russ Braithweight. Um, we live just adjacent to this property and it's more of not so much a comment, just a question. How many totals acres are there combined with these two lots that are proposed to be the same uh zoning?

Yes. So, this isn't a Q&A, but I will answer. It is 1.39 acres is the requested resone. Total acreage is 1.39 acres and you can see that on the map as well. I I thought that was just the one little piece on there, but that's the total there. That was my only question I had. Seeing no additional public comment, do we have a motion to go out of public hearing? Motion. Motion by member King, second by member Watt. All in favor? I.

Any opposed? Motion carries unanimous.

Any questions for staff? In the sake of Robert's rules, are you ready for any motion? Do we have a motion? I I have a motion. Motion by member sessions.

I move we forward a positive recommendation to the county commission for the Bowman Rezone application number 25.047 047 changing 1.39 acres from RR1/ A20 to R120 with an accompany amendment to the future land use map from village low density residential and rural residential to village low density residential completely based on the findings listed in the staff report dated February 26, 2026. Second motion by member Sessions, second by member Taylor. Any discussion?

No, seems simple. Cool. All in favor? I I.

Any opposed? Motion carries unanimous. Thank you. So, the second legislative item that was supposed to be on uh the agenda tonight, I take full responsibility. The wrong staff report was attached to the packet. It does not contain the actual language that's being changed. So, I would like to request a continuence to a date certain so I don't have to renotice it um either the 12th of March or the first meeting in April. Um, whichever one you want to pick, it's fine. 26. Please don't. That has the uh gun range.

I would imagine that will be I'll move to continue this item number seven to the 12th of March. Second. Motion by member Taylor, second by member King. All in favor? I I. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimous. March 12th. It is. Thank you. Thanks.

Also, uh Mike Newton had a uh conflict. Uh so he wasn't going to be able to be here tonight. Uh he had a meeting out of town. Uh so we're going to push the training off to either the 20 the 12th or the 26th, whatever works for Matt and uh Mike. Awesome. And then we may push more training off to a different meeting for the open meeting law uh to try to kind of get you some more training and meet your yearly requirement. Great. Thank you. Yep. Thank you. Appreciate everything you guys do. Any questions? I do have question. I can't seem to find the current zoning maps on the new layers. Okay.

Yeah, I' I've actually gotten that. I apologize. I probably should send you the link to where the map is located now. Um, if you go to our web page, you go to maps, instead of there being nine or 10 different maps, there's only three, right? If you click the middle one, uh, which I think it's called the ownership map on the left side, there's a box and, um, like a little it has different buttons to different tabs. One of them is the legend. If you click the legend, it brings up another box and you can turn and it's really slick. You can turn different uh layers on and off and it includes

all the zoning layers uh flood map zoning. It includes all the hazard mitigation maps. It's all contained in a single map now. And you can turn the layers on and off. I I tried but I can't see zoning. So, um I can I can walk you through right now. Yeah. Do we want to make this part of our training really quick? Like just show us how like how you use it? I can click on the planning and zoning. Make it for 15 minutes. Okay. I appreciate it. No, I I saw all the different layers and the soils. I I get that, but I couldn't

find the current zoning. Uh the other issue uh is um when the recorders put the map together, they didn't keep the same colors. They changed the colors. So I need to have a conversation with them about reverting back to Yeah. It would make it a lot easier for everybody old people. Uh not just old people. Um let's see. Oh, that's Morgan City. That's weird. It does that sometimes though. Yeah.

Uh if you come to departments, planning and development, P&D maps, you got the three. You have geohhazard. You don't really need to use that anymore because it's all incorporated into this middle map. Click on the middle map. This comes up every time. Yep. Uh there's three tabs on the left side here. The top one is the map layers. It looks like there's sheets of paper that are stacked. If you click on that one, um, it has all the Morgan City boundary. It's got the recorder layers, surveyor layers, uh, planning and development layers. You have the election. On the right side, you have this eyeball that's got a line through it. Um, if you drop down the planning and development layers, you can turn that on, but then you can go through and you can turn on or off individual layers.

That's awesome. So, if I if I zoom in, let's just zoom in here. Um, the closer you zoom in, a lot of the layers will populate at a certain uh scale. If you're outside of the allotted scale, it won't populate. So, you kind of have to zoom in, but you can turn the flood plane on and off, the faults, land, uh, the landslide scarps. There's a slope. This one, I'm glad default is always off because it really Here, I'll turn it on and show you. That one bogs down the system pretty good.

Yeah. Well, you can't tell what anything else is. So, um, that one, unless you're actually looking for slope data or whatever, I would keep that one off. it just kind of confuses everything. I'd keep the soil data off as well cuz that's another yellow layer on top and it kind of messes with the colors. Uh we do have uh a layer with development agreements, zoning info. Uh so you can turn on the zoning info. If you're going to do the zoning though, I would make sure that all the other layers are turned off. Where is the key on this? Like if you let's say you did soils or um it's the third tab down. Okay. So once you turn on zoning info.

Yeah. And let's just pretend that that's the only one that I have selected. If you come down to the legend, you can scroll through and the colors kind of tell you what each thing is. Mobile is a little bit different than desktop. I'm finding on the iPad. Yeah, I haven't used the mobile. I' I've only used the desktop. So I apologize. I can spend some time troubleshooting the mobile over the next couple weeks. Mine one I only have two. I feel like that's the case with kind of reverse. They don't work well on that. So if you see um shapes with like this horizontal yellow line,

those are properties that have that have a record of survey on those properties from the past. um they're not official plats or subdivisions, but they have a record of survey. So, at some point, we have a recorded record of survey for those properties. The ones that are the blue lines that are up and down, this is the really cool thing. So, if you click on a property that's got that up and down, the blue that shows there's a subdivision there, and you come up to the arrows, you can actually click it and bring up the plat. Nice. That's really cool. That is a game changer for this county.

Yes. Um, just a huge shout out to the recorders office, Sean and, uh, you know, Charles and Jamie. They've done a lot of work. That's awesome. So, uh, that's the current map. Obviously, uh, colors probably need to go back to what the zoning colors used to be. It would help a lot of people. Um, but that's great. Yeah. So, you just scroll down and then it's on there. Shows the key, right? Yeah, mobile is

Oh, yeah. So, uh, when I clicked on this parcel right here, it there's four sheets that that are affected by that where I clicked, and you can actually arrow through them. So, not only is there the subdivision, but there's an ownership trail. Um and then this actually verifies the zoning. Awesome. So if I like the colors are confusing. You just can very much Yeah.

Yeah. If if you just click and you can kind of see when a parcel is split zone, like if you see down here and I click in the middle, it highlights the entire parcel, but you see different colors in it. That means there's multiple zones. And you can click in the area of each one and it'll tell you the zoning in that area and it'll highlight the whole every property that's affected by that zone. It's really cool. Yeah, we like it.

Yeah, I was pretty impressed because I I've been asking for this stuff for a long time. Yeah. Uh any other questions? I'm getting a lot of pink. It almost looks like a a layer that Yeah, that's probably probably the flood plane. Yeah. Can I It should be How do you get rid of it? Oh, uh flood plane is actually one of the things you can turn off. It's one of the layers. So, I thought it was off. That's why I'm Oh, weird. Um,

so go to right this one. Yeah. Drop it down. Now turn them off individually. So, what it showed is she had she had one of the four items in that dropdown selected as off, but in the when it collapsed, it had it showing as off. Okay. But three of them were still on. You had to even though it showed it off.

Oh, weird. Okay. Um, I can talk to Sean and Charles about maybe we kind of troubleshoot the iPad or something. Yeah. Look at it a little bit more. Any other questions? Thank you. Thanks for showing us that. Um, motion to approve our minutes. They were Motion. Do we have a motion to approve February 12th, 2026 planning commission meeting minutes? So moved. Motion by member Sessions. Second. Second by member King. All in favor?

Oh. Oh. Do you have any comments? Oh, yes. We just need to change the Telford to Taylor and all of those. It's kind of intermingling. I changed the website. I'm just looking at the packet that I got

minutes at the end of the packet from this week's packet.

And there's one other in uh since I received an email from him. It was Banell, but I think in the minutes it's spelled B A N instead of B U. Okay.

Yeah,

there's a few I'm sure if you do a search it'll find the wall.

All in favor of with adjustments adjustments. I I I I Any opposed? Motion carries unanimous. Motion to adjurnn. So moved. Motion by member Taylor. Second. Second. Any discussion to end the meeting?