Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay, Miss Lynette, let's get started. Calling the May 2026 meeting of the Planning Commission to order. We do have a quorum. There are five of us here. Lynette, I'm sure you've already documented the five. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes or are there any corrections, additions?

Mr. Bennett, it would be the agenda first.

Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. I'm calling for a motion to approve the agenda for the meeting. Mr. Davis? Second. Second by Mr. Smyth. All those in favor of approving the agenda, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Same for the minutes. Any edits or comments regarding last month's minutes? If not, I'll ask for a motion to approve.

I'll make the motion. Second.

Motion's been made and seconded to approve the minutes of the April 2026 meeting. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Great. We'll turn it over to Mr. Stone for an update on planning commission recommendations to town council.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. In the month of May, Commission forwarded on three recommendations to council. It was a short meeting. They had a first reading on the 10 mile community overlays zoning district, and that was approved for first reading. Also had first reading on the request to rezone from commercial to residential, the lot on Clink Lane. That was denied at first reading, and that will terminate that application. And the final reading on the LDR amendment for enhanced standards for access easements for sketch plans and subdivisions, that was approved for final reading. So glad to answer any questions you all have on any of those items, if you have any.

Questions for Mr. Stone?

Okay.

We'll move to correspondence, just confirming that we received everything within the standards policy. Great. Now's the time for general public comment. I don't see members of the public here this evening, but now would be the time to comment. Seeing none, we will close the public comment period and move into our agenda this evening. We've got two public hearings, 7A is a public hearing for 883 Long Point Road.

Thank you Mr. Chair. I just want to preface that both of these requests that we are hearing tonight are requesting the zoning that they would be automatically designated. So hopefully that adds some clarity prior to jumping into these. But this is 883 Long Point Road and you can see that it is situated in between Whipple and Highway 17 in the portion of Long Point where it narrows down from four lanes down to two lanes. and it's adjacent to Snee Farm Country Club, but it is within the Snowdon community. Within this neighborhood area, you can see that water and sewer is available for this property. And the county zoning that it currently has is S3, which would be synonymous with our CC zoning. And I do want to mention that it is not located within a historic district. The Stout community has not received that designation. Again, the request for CC zoning is consistent with the comprehensive plan and the settlement community, and I'm glad to answer any questions you might have as you take any action on zoning.

So again, if you would, just clarify that this would be the equivalent of the county zoning for...

Correct. The CC and the S3 are basically synonymous. There are some other features the county has, but as far as density, dimensional standards, it's synonymous. Yep.

I have a zoning question just because the other lots beside it are R1. Could it come in as, sorry.

No, I think it's on. It's on.

It's just me. I apologize. Could it come in as R1?

It could. It is the path of least resistance to just request the automatic designation that they would have received. And I think the interest for this property is water and sewer. So, you know, R1 has a little bit smaller standards. So you do then have to ask the question, could it be subdivided? Under CC, it could not.

So that's the more conservative. Peter, I should know this, but help... Help me understand what are the triggers for requesting zoning of this type? Is it simply a property owner that is motivated by, in this case, water and sewer? What are the other sort of avenues toward requests for changes in zoning?

You definitely would see a lot for a potential subdivision. It's more rare, but oftentimes there are uses that would be unattainable in their current zoning, so they're reaching for that more intense use. But more often than not, it is a subdivision that they're trying to achieve. But in this case, with the CC zoning, it would not be possible. Okay.

All right. I don't see a representative of an applicant here confirming that. Okay, so I just wanted to see whether we were even eligible for either the applicant or a member of the public to comment, but I see neither. Any questions for Mr. Stone or staff? If not, anybody care to make a motion?

Mr. Bennett, we need the public hearing closed.

Yeah, thank you. I will close, formally close the public hearing element, even though there's no one here.

Okay.

Is there a motion on this particular proposal?

Motion to approve.

Motion has been made by Ms. Mansour to approve. Is there a second?

Second.

Second by Mr. Smythe. Any discussion? If not, we'll take the vote. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. 7B, the public hearing for 2405 Old Georgetown Road.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is a 0.73 acre lot across Highway 17 from Boone Hall. It's on the corner of Old Georgetown and Children's Road. And if you recall, a couple months ago, we had a pretty significant annexation of five acres. And that annexation allowed this property to become contiguous. And so they are now requesting annexation and CC zoning. So it's definitely going to allow more opportunities for other lots to come in. This is the 0.73 acres. Water and sewer is available and I believe that is also generating this request that you have for you. The current zoning in the county is also S3. Again, it splits that six and seven mile district, but it is not located within a historic district. And the request for CC zoning is consistent with the settlement community future land use. So it maintains the standards and the requesting that automatic designation they would have received. So that's all of it. So it's very similar to the previous request.

All right.

Again, just confirming for the record, I don't see anyone here representing the applicant. Otherwise, we might have questions for them. I will formally open the public hearing portion of this. Is anyone here to speak on this particular agenda item? Seeing none, we will close the public hearing. Further questions for Mr. Stone or anyone else? questions.

Otherwise, I guess we can move to requesting a motion.

I'm sorry, Mr. Berry, do you have a question? No, I'll just go. I'll second. Okay, Mr. Berry second. Mr. Smythe made the motion.

Any discussion?

If not, we'll call for the vote. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Okay. More discussion about the comprehensive planned recommended future land use.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This meeting is moving really smooth, so I'm going to be brief, but I do want to provide some context here. So this is back before you. I want to start in a little bit different place. I want to talk about kind of why we're here. In 2014, there was a big text amendment. There was like the whole code. There was a bunch of text amendments. One of those amendments removed density from the zoning code, leaving only a reference to the density in the comp plans. And this is what that section looked like. So when you went to the zoning code and you looked up density and you said, I'm rural conservation, I want to know what my density is. Well, it was X'd out and it said, look at the comprehensive plan future land use map. So when you did that, and I'll just walk you through what we used to have to do. So that was in 2014. So up until 2025, this is what you had to do for figuring out density. So if I had a property zoned R1, but the comp plan said something else, I would go to the comp plan and I would say, okay, well, the comp plan says that I'm zoned public institutional. So to know what my density is, I can't look in the zoning code. I got to go look in the comprehensive plan. So then I would look in the comprehensive plan and I'd have to read through every comprehensive plan future land use designation. So low density, I'm not that. That's three units an acre. Medium is six. High density, nine. Oh wait, I'm public institutional. There's no density, okay? So I've been zoned since 1975 as residential, but A few years ago, there was a comp plan update and my recommendation was change to public institutional. Well, there's no density. So what would happen from 2014 until we adopted our new code last year was if I wanted to build residential on my residentially zoned property, I had to amend the comprehensive plan. If the comprehensive plan amendment was denied, I had a piece of property zoned residential that I couldn't build a residence on. Mr. Pagliarini will tell you that's arbitrary and capricious and could be a taking. You can't deny somebody the ability to develop their property for what it's primarily zoned for. So in 2025, we realized this was a problem. It had been in place for 11 years. We were very fortunate. Nobody had challenged it, but it was only a matter of time. So we fixed it. We had land use attorneys that worked on our zoning code update and our own attorney was involved. And we said, we need to fix this. We need to put density back where it belongs in the zoning ordinance. Zoning establishes your buy right uses, and that also should establish your density. So we fixed it in 2025. Moving forward, this, and we talked about this. We had special meetings on it. during the zoning code rewrite we had it came before the planning commission we went to the committee and we also had special meetings at town council and talking about this and so the code was adopted and the fix was made to the code and moving forward so it it started to sort of after that everything was kind of calm and then people there started to be this rumbling of, oh my gosh, what did we do? Okay. So it was asked to be put on the committee agenda last month. And we discussed it. They asked to bring it to you. And it was capped as a general discussion. in in the broad how it's labeled on the agenda a discussion of future land use map as it relates to zoning this is really what it was about though but we brought it to you as a broad discussion um you all talked about it we talked about the fact that town properties school properties church properties and some mpw were all recommended for pi but never rezoned you all had some options to consider but not really a recommendation so we took that back to the committee The committee discussed it and we went through, this is the presentation I showed y'all last month. So we took that back to the committee and the committee said, well, how about we just look at school properties and take that back to the commission? Maybe we just start by rezoning all the school properties. So that's where we're at tonight. And I'm going to circle back to what I just talked about, what I opened up with. But I want to go through those school properties next. So tonight on your agenda is to talk about should we rezone our school properties that are recommended for public institutional

should they be zoned to public institutional michelle you may have already explained and it went right right over me um what was the rationale from council as to focusing on the school property specifically i think it was just a place to start okay i see um i don't know if they had some obvious concern but it doesn't sound like it it was just let's start with the schools

I think it was just the schools have the larger, the schools and the churches seem to have the larger properties. So there was some discussion of what if the church goes away and we have all this vacant church property? What if the school goes away and we have all this vacant school property? It's zoned residential. So they just recommended, let's start and look at the school properties, see what kind of impacts or unintended consequences that would have.

Okay.

So these are the school properties. I'm removing that one because it's actually Wando High School, Carolina Park Elementary, and that's in a planned development. And then I'm taking that one out and I'm adding in this one and I'll circle back on that in a minute. So if you look at school properties, there's approximately 75 acres. And so what I wanted to do was show each of those school properties, what school they are, and talk about that a little bit more. So the first one is Mount Pleasant Academy. It's on Center Street. You can see it there. There's an aerial. It is next to our town ball fields. And there is a street view of it. The second one is Jenny Moore Elementary in Langmedal, zoned R1. You can see that's a huge campus, new schools, and then you've got a street view of that one as well. The third one is actually Miriam Brown Community Center. This is owned by CCSD, but the town has the center on it. And town council passed their FY27 budget at this last week, I believe is when we had the meeting. And they included in this, they want to make some improvements to this. So there's Miriam Brown Center is not going away. It's going to remain as a community center. And in fact, council has allocated a certain amount of money to go to that spot and make some improvements to that building. East Cooper Montessori is zoned R2 off Rifle Range and Merrick Road. You can see the aerial there and the street view. And then we have Moultrie Middle School. Moultrie is a little bit different. And if you think back to when we used to have our urban corridor overlay district, this was zoned AB, which was appropriate because we wanted, because of its visibility on a main corridor, we wanted it to go to our commercial design review board. It was important that it fit in with the rest of the urban corridor overlay district. So that's why that's zoned AB. Then we have Trident Academy. So Trident Academy ends two parcels. That front parcel is where the school is. And then the back, and there's a street view of it. And the back parcel is actually has been soccer fields. I know my daughter used to play for Kane Hoy, so we always had our Kane Hoy practices back there. So I want to talk a little bit about future CCSD improvements. This came up in the planning committee meeting as well. I think Councilman Tienke mentioned maybe also look at school properties because the school district was here giving an update to our education committee. and they talked about some of their future improvements. So that was also the impetus for looking at schools. So I went back and looked at the presentation and these are some of the improvements that CCSD looks to do. And the reason this is important is because Churches are a permitted use in residential. So most of our churches are zoned residential, but it's permitted. Schools are a special exception. So they're allowed, but you gotta go to the Board of Zoning Appeals. So that was another reason to perhaps look at schools. So we know James B. Edwards has went through the Design Review Board and they actually went to DRB uh not because they're zoned av but because they are in our village scale pedestrian area so drb reviewed it there's going to be a new school there but it's actually zoned public institutional they did rezone to make those improvements easy Carrillo Middle School is going to have a band room expansion. Carrillo is zoned PD, so that's kind of out of our hands. It doesn't need to be zoned PI. Wando, same thing, zoned PD. Let's see here. East Cooper Montessori, it is zoned R2. And in the update, they look to do a new multipurpose room. I don't know whether that's going to be an interior or an exterior change. That sort of information wasn't provided. And then last is Lucy Beckin. They're going to have some exterior improvements over the next five or six years. And that's already zoned public institutional, so that's not an issue. So I wanted to talk a little bit about why are we talking about this. And now I'm going to circle back to the first few slides that I presented. We're talking about this because of the zoning code change that was made in 2025. to reverse what was done in 2014 and put the density back in our zoning code to avoid any sort of litigation. I think we talked about this last month. I have a piece of property that's zoned residential. It's been zoned residential for 30 years, and I wanna build a house on it. But the comp plan says it's public institutional, so I have to go before town council and get a comp plan amendment. And if council denies that, I've got a piece of property zone for residential that I can't build a house on. That is, again, what David would call arbitrary and capricious. It was a problem. And so we made that change. The other reason we're here talking about this whole issue is because there is a potential of a residentially zoned parcel to develop residentially. So I wanted to kind of drill down on that. the real kind of really why we're here and then throw out several options moving forward so the real reason I think we're here is because of this property right here. This is the soccer fields behind Kane Hoy, or behind Trident Academy. It's a six acre parcel. It has been zoned residential since 1979. And several years ago in a comp plan update, it was designated as public institutional. Now it's important to note, and I know we talk about this, comp plan is a guiding document, zoning is the law. they are not lockstep. They are not perfectly matched. I don't know that after a comp plan update, council has ever rezoned every property to match the new comp plan. I just don't think that's ever happened here. Some places they do that, some places they don't. And that's probably because more than one use is appropriate, right? So even though it's recommended for public institutional, a school might be appropriate, a church might be appropriate, or a home might be appropriate. So council never rezoned all the properties to match the comp plan. So we have this property sitting here, this R1, and the future land use says that it's public institutional. Under the old code, you would have to go get a comp plan amendment to establish density. Under our new code, you don't have to do that. Zoning determines your density. So if you went by right, R1, 6.5 acres, You have minimum 10,000 square foot lots. You have your minimum dimensions. If you went straight density, you're looking at possibly 19 dwelling units there. But if you apply our new tree protection zones, you apply, you put in all of your infrastructure, you got to do stormwater ponds. if you apply our low impact development requirements. And then we have a new, in our new code, we have a new 10 foot perimeter buffer, even where residential abuts residential. So by the time you do all those things, you're not gonna get your max density. You might be lucky to get, you know, a dozen homes there. So this is kind of why we're talking about this issue. I wanted to kind of quit dancing around it and just say, we're here because there was a code change that made density. apply to according to your zoning it did not apply to a corresponding future land use and this is an old slide i had but i wanted to remind you that there are a lot of uses that are allowed in pi that are not allowed in residential and so blanket zoning everything to public institutional could come with its own issues a lot of these schools sit in the middle of neighborhoods and so if you blanket rezone to pi you've got to think about what you're opening it up to So I think perhaps that's probably the reason a lot of these properties were not rezoned to PI, because that allowed more intense uses that wouldn't be compatible with the neighborhoods that they're adjacent to. So I want to talk about, based on all of that, some options that I think could be considered. One is you do nothing. What problem are we trying to solve, right? If somebody wants to come, if a school wants to come in and rezone the PI, let them do it. If a church wants to, let them do it. And we go forward as we are now. Number two, you could rezone all town properties in accordance with their comprehensive plan future land use map. I think to pick and choose, That gets a little iffy. Why would you rezone a school with 20 acres and not a church with 20 acres? And this, again, is something that council could do after a comp plan is adopted. You can go through and rezone. Now that opens up. You know, that's not necessarily a popular thing to do, but if you wanted your zoning to match your comprehensive plan, that is an action that can be taken, and council can take that action with your recommendation.

And Ms. Reed, what reminds us of the cycle we're on right now, the next time the comprehensive plan will be up for adoption?

So we just did our update, and it was just adopted last year.

That was the five-year update at 25.

Actually, was it adopted in January? No, December.

In December, yeah.

So in five years, we'll do a full update.

So yeah, that was the question, just trying to confirm. But yeah, so we did the five-year recently. Five-year update. But we've got five more years before we do the full.

Exactly, exactly. So, one, do nothing. Two, rezone all town properties to match what the comp plan says. Or three, we can undo what we did in 2025. We can take the density out of zoning. We can put it back in the comp plan against what I would say was legal advice. Okay. But that's a policy decision. We can do, town council can do that. So if that's what it comes down to is we rezone all the properties or we put the density back where it was before so that if I have a residential zone property but I'm recommended for something else, I can't develop it without council action. So that's a third option. So I wanted to put that out there and kind of explain the context of what the concern is in my opinion. and wait for feedback, and then I can take that back to committee.

That was going to be my next question. So from us tonight, you're looking for qualitative feedback, not a vote or a recommendation. Exactly. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. Well, I'll start. I'm not comfortable with doing nothing, personally, for the reasons you've already articulated. And it goes beyond just being open to potential for charge of arbitrary and capricious. But instead, I think it's more than that because of how precious any parcel is in our community right now. And so people are looking for ways where, hey, you know, there's kind of a, I'll call it a loophole, or there's one opportunity to do X, Y, and Z, and they'd be within their right to pursue that. But does this body really want that? Or for things to be a little more structured and even rigid about land use, especially all the effort that's gone into the comprehensive plans over the last five to seven years or so. So that's my opinion. I don't think doing nothing is a good idea. Now, on the other side of the continuum, I'm also not comfortable with removing density from the zoning code in no small part because a lot of the debate in our community has been about density and where density should be appropriate and places where maybe it's really not a good idea. So I don't think the community's had that debate and even arguments, I guess I could say, for last 10 or 15 years or so and i think we got to be careful about that as well um and so that i think leaves us with with two at least in my opinion um but i'd like to think through that a little more depth with the possibility if it's feasible to really consider each of the um uses that are defined by public institutional because it may be broader than makes sense maybe i don't know because but you're right there's a lot of uses in there you know yeah yeah and and we get accustomed to making this up you get accustomed to jenny moore looking like jenny moore you get accustomed to try it it's always going to be a school with some soccer fields no not always going to be that way at least possibly so anyway those are my comments Hopefully others have input.

So I have a question. So the soccer field. So would they be able to build houses on a soccer field if they wanted, if this was all changed around?

It depends on what was changed. At this moment in time with our current code, they're zoned R1, and that says you can have up to three units an acre. And so they would have to come before you all with a sketch plan like anybody else and propose a layout. And it might need waivers. I don't know. There's a lot of big trees on the edges and the entrance. But they would have to get approval for a sketch plan. and then go through all of our technical reviews, stormwater review, but like any other subdivision. And to get back to the chairman's point, by removing density from the zoning code, that would actually make it more strict again. It would mean that even though I'm zoned R1, I can't come to you and get a sketch plan. I've got to go to town council and get a comp plan amendment because I don't have density established. So it would make it more challenging. It's a tool to stop to stop them from being able to do residential by right.

And the reason I don't care for that is that I think it has the potential to just sort of bog our system. And I think it would also open up to open up our system or process to pretty subjective application of criteria. You know, what's different about this R1 or PI versus this other R1 or PI. And then you got people making judgments just based on the composition or other factors associated with your commissions. That seems to be kind of difficult as well.

But if we zone it PI,

then if they want it to make it residential they have to come and request a zoning change correct yeah yeah i mean looking at the uses there's negatives with each zoning designation does that neighborhood want like a hospital in their neighborhood like no so it doesn't really solve the use to zone it one way or the other there's negative uses you could have in both zoning designations well i think that's a variation of michelle's point that it would have to come to us and then we could make a judgment or this body would make a judgment as to whether a hospital made sense for that

parcel or a church or a daycare whatever the other permitted uses are but if it's an allowed use by right then they don't they wouldn't have to come to us i mean which is you know to your point i mean it's kind of uh could be a scary proposition on some of these oh yeah because some of these under pi i mean yeah it's a lot yeah is there any

I mean, I don't know if it exists, but it feels like in the zoning code, if you're changing the use of a property, even within the zoning it's designated in, there should be some sort of review of that, because it might not make sense. So is there a provision that would, who decides the acceptable use within that zoning?

well some of these properties have been zoned residential for 20 30 40 years and i suspect they were zoned they came in and they automatically were designated as residential because they're in residential neighborhoods um you think about some of these properties have been around a long time but we didn't have a pi zoning until 2010 and When that new zoning, PI zoning was adopted, there were no properties. Council did not automatically rezone all those properties to PI, probably because they recognize that many of them, the churches, the schools, they're in the middle of neighborhoods. So it's not to blanket rezone all of them may not be appropriate. Would you rather have 10 houses or a lay down yard? You know, and so thinking about what is appropriate and every site's different. You know, every PI site, recommended site is different. And so, but I guess I don't know if I answered your question.

Well, my question is right now that soccer field is a soccer field. I'm assuming that's a permit.

It's used as a, it's permitted in R1.

It's a permitted use in R1. Correct. But if someone wants to change the use to a different R1 use, is there any review of that?

Yes, yes.

Okay.

Yeah, so R1, the primary use allowed in R1 is residential, right? And then you can have other uses. You can have a church. You can have a community center, maybe. It's very limited.

There's overlap with the PI, though.

there is so so if they want it said okay we want to turn this soccer field into residences they would have to come before you all and do a if as long as the use they were changing to was still permitted by right they would come to you all with a sketch plan like every other sketch plan that comes before you and they would propose that and you all approve or deny that based on whatever standards are in place so yeah a change in use now if now if it's soccer fields today and tomorrow they go out and play basketball no we're only going to review it really if there's some sort of land disturbance land development something like that now if they wanted to change it to a use that was not permitted in r1 then they would have to go rezone it and that would be through a council action

I'm just thinking if people in that neighborhood, they're going to show up if someone is trying to do something to a parcel like that. To a different parcel that's just on a major road and not embedded in a neighborhood, you're probably not going to have as much interaction. I would feel leery of taking that situation, which is clearly in a neighborhood, and changing it to that other use, which I feel like has almost more negative potential, some of those uses in PI are not appropriate at all in a neighborhood. Right. Presumably, they'd still have to get it reviewed.

Correct. They would. They would. And you take, for instance, Moultrie Middle School. If that was zoned PI, it wouldn't get any review by the design review board. So AB makes sense there because we can review it as if it were commercial stuff.

Well, is that something that can be adjusted, though? I'm kind of surprised to hear that a public institution doesn't get design review.

Well, it depends. So James B. Edwards did because it was in Village Scale Pedestrian, right? But like most of our schools are in a PD. So you take Laura Hill, Pinckney, Cario, all those. Carolina Park has their own ARB. So staff reviews it at the staff level, but the Carolina Park ARB reviews it against their standards. I'm sorry, that's not Carolina Park, but Park West.

I don't, Park West PD school property, those do not go there.

through DRB those are staff level so most of our big school campuses except for like Jenny Moore and Lucy Beckham but that's already zone PI are in a PD and so they have their own standards that typically you know apply so staff reviews all of these some go to a board some do not it just depends

I guess what I'm saying is, like, if you're designating something as, like, public institution, it sounds like something that, like, the town cares how it looks. But you're saying it doesn't get any architectural review.

Actually, public institutional, the zoning designation, has more flexibility with not going to the board, I think, doesn't it?

That's correct. And if you think about some of these public institutional uses, there is such a unique need among these uses. I think we take, for example, like a boat ramp parking area. I mean, it is going through design review for buffering. You have to meet parking. There are certain standards. But architecturally, what is design review board going to look at?

Yeah, if there's no building, then there's no architecture.

And that's the case with a lot of these situations where whether there's no building or the building needs to meet such a unique public need that it really doesn't make sense to.

To me, like a college, university, hospital, medical campus to like have no architectural view seems kind of crazy to me.

Charleston County is really good about coordinating with us on the look and feel of the building they definitely coordinated with us on Lucy Beckham, and kind of addressing, they knew that our standards like we like to have buildings that address the street, and they, they've definitely worked with us on that but As far as putting it through our designer view board, that's something that you have such unique security needs and others that it just is a very conflicting process.

So if risk is defined as the potential for significant changes in present use, it seems to me that not applying the public institutional zoning district beyond what it is presently is appropriate. That's the more conservative path, right?

If I understood you right, so the more conservative path would be anything that's used as public institutional should be zoned public institution?

No, no, no. The opposite. I'm sorry. Actually, the opposite.

I'm sorry. Can you repeat it then? I didn't.

Yeah. So, I mean, because as we've all said, or most of us have said, the PI zoning permits more uses than I remembered or I would have assumed, especially with respect to lay down yards, sporting complexes, et cetera. If we think about the properties that where this could be applied, mostly schools, possibly some of the churches, if you define risk as major changes from present use, applying the PI district designation more broadly It would probably not be – it opens us up to bigger challenges.

Yeah. I mean, from a planning perspective, PI opens – it's way more broad than an R1. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. But for – if we don't – if it's a policy decision to not allow any more residences – Then maybe you want PI. Maybe you'd rather have a lay down yard than 10 houses. You know, and again, that's a policy decision. But from a practical perspective, PI allows a lot more broad uses with less review and oversight than an R1 or an R2. Absolutely. Yeah.

Michelle, I know you've flipped through your slides. Can you go back to the three options? I guess that last slide.

Yeah, and I...

And, you know, I'll tell you just my perspective. Number two, I don't think we should pick and choose there either. I mean, I get it with schools and that's kind of what we're focusing on. But I think you had a map earlier that showed the array of church parcels, too, that were in that district. um so i i definitely kind of have reservation there that we're just gonna say we're just isolating because i know there's a couple large church parcels around town too that you know and obviously there's constantly some changes, different denominations. There's a big one up 17 right now that I'm not sure what they're planning to do with. It's kind of a scary proposition too for some of these. Yeah. I don't think rezoning all of them is a good thing, I guess, at all. I agree.

Is there, like, a legal risk, like, if it's shown as PI in the future use plan, but it's currently R1... and someone wants to use a PI, but we say, oh, it doesn't make sense for where you're at, it kind of goes against like the whole work of the comprehensive plan. Like, is there any, like, do we have any leg to stand on to keep it R1 if it makes sense for the situation?

I would say the legal risk, the big legal risk was the way the code was written before. Zoning is the law. The future land use is a guiding document. Those are not lockstep. So the legal risk was when I had a property by right, I can develop residentially, but the guiding document recommended P.I., And my comp plan amendment to establish density and change the PI to low density neighborhood was denied. So I'm stuck with a residentially zoned property that by right allows a residence and you're not letting me build a residence. That was the legal risk. That was removed when we fixed the code. Now, if I have an R1 property, and the comp plan recommends PI, it's going to go through the process as usual. I'm going to come in and say, you know what, I've been zoned R1 for 30 years. I think I do want to go public institutional. We want to have a lay down yard. And I come to you all and I say, I own this property, it's R1, but the comp plan says I'm PI, I'd like to rezone PI. You all can recommend approval or denial and council can approve or deny. Council does not always make decisions. They typically use the comp plan as a guiding document. But, I mean, just as you all have, sometimes the comp plan isn't perfect. Sometimes if a property is recommended to PI, it may or may not be appropriate. So you always have the option to say we understand that the comp plan recommends PI. But this is zoned R1. It's been zoned R1 for 30 years. It sits in the middle of a neighborhood surrounded by homes. We don't think it's appropriate to have PI, so we recommend denial. And council can deny that.

Mm-hmm.

And that is less legal risk than denying somebody the right to their property as it's zoned. Does that make sense?

Yeah, so I guess, like, number one, what is the problem we're trying to solve? It doesn't sound like there really is a problem. Like, there's no legal problem.

There's no legal problem at all. The legal problem was resolved when we changed the code. What that did was take away the ability to deny something through the comp plan amendment. That maybe wasn't necessarily, I don't want to say not understood, but maybe it was not realized when the code update went through that that's what this meant. And so there are, I think there's some concern that now we have a residential property that could have a house or two or three or ten on it. That is the concern. if that makes sense. I'm trying to be very difficult. It's a density issue. It's a density issue. It's a potential density issue. It's a policy decision. Do we want 12 houses there, or do we want... A lay-down yard. A lay-down yard, or a hospital, or a medical clinic, or whatever else.

Yeah.

And I can't remember, but are all these potential land use, or future land use PI for all these properties? I don't think in the comp plan... it is is it for every single every all of these parcels like collectively all the ones that we've talked about tonight they're recommended for pi but they're zoned something else okay and they have been i just couldn't remember right there was yeah yeah so if there was any because like mulchery makes sense if the school failed to be ab because that is the corridor there is right okay

So from my point of view, looking at this from 35,000 feet, the fewer houses we allowed to be built in Mount Pleasant, the better off we are period.

Okay.

I think that's debatable, though, because, like, in that neighborhood, if you switch that to 12 houses, that's less traffic than if you made it a little medical building or one of those other, like, you could have a worse impact on that neighborhood. in a PI use than if it was just turned into like 12 houses where people leave once a day and come back once a day.

Yeah.

And plus, like as a school, people are coming and going more than they would at a normal residential use.

Right.

So I think, I think it's just debate. It's a, it's a use by like location by location issue, I think.

Yeah.

Like if Mount Pleasant ages out and there's no more kids and they don't need these schools anymore and they turn it into houses. I mean, I don't. So what else do you want to turn it into? Like if there's no need for a school anymore? I don't know.

So have we helped you here?

Well, you're grappling with the same thing.

Right, everybody is. You know, just to echo in, and I think you said it earlier, Michelle, with item one, while, you know, we can't deny stuff, we do still have some controls, right? If, if somebody comes to try to put 10 houses on, there's a lot of metrics, there's a lot of things. And, um, at the end of the day, you know, just talking about that one specific property, maybe that is the best fit in there. It's more houses, Gary, I hear you, but, um, Is it better than a lay down yard in somebody's backyard? Is it better than a pool or a water park? Maybe that's always one of the options that said aquatic resources. I'd rather have a soccer field than a bunch of houses. Yeah, yeah.

And I think the neighbors would like it to stay a soccer field, but someday it's not going to be a soccer field. So what is it going to be? And that's, that's what, you know, and I remember I was here in 2016 when they, they asked him in the comp plan and the neighbors came out and said, Oh my gosh, no, we don't want houses there. We want it to stay vacant. And it got denied. and why they never challenged us with a residential project. And I think it's just, we never were challenged on that, but it was a matter of time. It wasn't, it's not an if it's a win, you know, I can, I can drive without my seatbelt for 11 years and I haven't had an accident or gotten a ticket yet, but eventually it'll catch up to me. So you got to just, you know, just to be being responsible. And, and that's why I know the consultants we hired and our own corporation council was like, yeah, this is a problem. And why, why it's not, you know, reared its head yet. We don't know, but we need to fix it. And yes, that means if I have a property zone for residential, I can buy right, do a residence. Now, if I want to subdivide, there's a process for that and you all approve or deny it. And so it's just, I think given the context of why we're here, you know, we're looking at schools and churches and let's just get to the heart of it. The heart of it is we made a zoning code change that may have not been popular, but it was legally the right thing to do. Um, so we can go back to that. We can, we can rezone all the properties to meet what the comp plan says. And that's not just public institutional. If, if, if the comp plan says I'm recommended for nine units an acre and I'm low density and I'm only three units an acre by gosh, I, I might end up with not, you know what I'm saying? You can't pick and choose. Um, either we make our zoning meet our comp plan across the board, um, Or we don't. And it's a case-by-case basis. If somebody wants to do something with their own property, they want to rezone it, they go through the proper process. So it seems like in the context of why we're really discussing all this, these are kind of the three viable options.

So what happens in five years when we change the comp plan again? Are we going to have to redo this all over again?

Well, yeah. So the comp plan update we just did was just that. It was an update. The only future land use changes we made on our map were to match things that had been rezoned, right? So things had been rezoned and they showed something different on the comp plan. So we made that match. But like I said, I don't know that a council in the history of Mount Pleasant has ever, after a comprehensive plan was adopted, went and rezoned every property to match. Now they could do that. Um, but in five years when we do a full rewrite, this will be something that can be looked at and maybe all these PI recommended properties can really be drilled down and say, you know what, this one is still appropriate to recommend for PI, but this one's not. And, um, and, but yeah, these are things that you constantly look at because things change. You know, neighborhoods change, businesses go out, schools close, churches close, you know, and so those are the things that we'll look at again in five years. And there could be any host of changes at that point. But this is what we've been asked to talk about tonight.

Based on the conversation we've had, it sounds as though we've sort of migrated toward a variation of one because we believe that residential is the more restrictive if we think of restrictive in terms of this body and town council's ability to make decisions on use of specific properties, each and every one, right? You know, does that make sense? Yeah. So it's like Gary said, I mean, you know, not everybody would necessarily agree that another eight houses would make sense for somewhere, but the eight houses are probably going to be less, um, I don't know, controversial than a lay down yard.

And there are times, not often, often, but we have gone against the comp plan, as Michelle pointed out. There's plenty of times where we've had a lot zoned AB when it should be residential or vice versa.

Yeah, we did that last month, didn't we?

Yeah, it got denied by town council.

Right, I saw that too.

But we've had it go through in the Indian Village area. We did have the one that was on a few months ago that was... Yeah, R1 on Arkman, I believe.

And council's approved some of the recommendations you all have made. The rezonings on May Lane, they were recommended for commercial in the comp plan, zoned residential, and town council agreed with you all and went against the comp plan because it was appropriate. Again, it's a guiding document. It's not perfect.

Which does make sense by the zoning code list. otherwise we're going against everything right if we say oh you know the prior to 2025 anything I said was going against the comp plan was yeah of a more serious nature than it would be right now right yeah

michelle just to belabor this even more but i just questions in my head um there goes that quick sorry um if just say that um uh we went with item two uh or option two rather would everybody uh that owns those properties be notified that hey you're gonna be uh rezoned uh So it's got to be public notice that everybody, neighbors, everybody would know. Yes.

Yeah, we would post every, and I can go back to it, but there were 80.

162 properties? Something like that. Some were part of PDs maybe. Yeah.

So you have town properties, utilities, schools, private property, and church property. So yeah, they would all be posted. They would all be notified. You know, I've never, I don't know that I've ever done a town council initiated rezoning. I don't know what else we would do. Post it, notify them, and probably some certified mail.

Would they be, like, in that situation, would you be flooded with people, like, trying to fight it? Or do they have any?

That seems like a nightmare. I would, you know, I'm just going at it.

I think we would all be flooded.

It's like eating elephant all at once. I think that's what we're talking about. I agree with you. So, I mean, if this is right, 162 properties recommended for PI in the town. Um, and then I guess, uh, the second part question I had just, um, uh, well, I, I think that answers, that's all I'm going to get to.

I mean, this is just the PI properties. Right. In terms of like property is not matching the comprehensive plan. It's going to be like outrageous.

Yeah. Yeah.

So you would be saying everything now matches the comprehensive plan or would you just limit it to the PI?

Like that seems arbitrary in itself, you know?

Why pick just the PI and not commercial? That sounds like a good lawsuit there.

Right.

I think the plan should be like the goal and then as these properties want to do something, Like, you review it how we've been reviewing it.

That's what it is. Yeah. That's the intent. Exactly. That's exactly it.

I feel like that's the only way you can manage it. Yeah.

Like I said, I don't know that council's ever rezoned properties. We've created overlays. We do a lot of overlays. That's one way to get there without actually rezoning somebody's property, create an overlay. But I don't know that council's ever rezoned a property to match the comp plan across the board. But...

but they could um and i'm sure there are municipalities out there that do that after they adopt a new comp plan but and last question i promise for me at least um have you seen with any other uh municipal zoning ordinances um do they treat schools and churches different with uh zoning designations so is that something to look at in the future it's a good question you know If you had a specific zoning for that, still the comp plan could have whatever.

I'm glad you raised that, Kevin, because I had a similar thought. Is there a way for us to narrow PI and its uses as it's been presented to us?

would be just maybe just churches and just schools or something like that yeah I think the comp plan actually calls it community facilities and could there be a new district created that just has a church or a school and not all those other more intense, that's certainly an option.

That's a lot of work in itself, you know.

That's the five-year.

Yeah.

That's the five-year.

Yeah. But that seems like a better way to go, even though it's more work.

Yeah, so maybe we take that up.

I think there's something to be said for letting sleeping dogs lie. Yeah, for right now.

So maybe in 2030 or 2029 we'll start with, yeah.

And we can, you know, this can be a topic of discussion when the new comp plan, when we have to do a new comp plan is, hey, this has come up in the past. How do we want to handle it? And that would be a good time to make it right. Yeah.

Okay, so it feels like we've migrated mostly to one and looking toward the future.

Yeah.

Think about modification to PI.

Okay. Well, I appreciate it. It's, you know, it's like mental gymnastics trying to figure all this out.

That's for sure. Like from the user standpoint, like I would imagine there's a lot of people that don't even know there's a discrepancy between like their zoning and the future use plan.

Most people do not know about the future land use. They know their zoning because your zoning confers your rights. And that's what really matters.

I just, I'm wondering like, is the town considered like, you know, when they do these future use plans, at least notifying people, so that they because i don't know that the town can like granularly granularly get into like may lane and clink lane yeah without the input of the people that like live there

You know and that's a good point because with with the last comp plan we talked about doing hubs right or small area plans and that's where you get into the more granular small area plans and instead of doing small area plans we ended up with hubs in the zoning code not doing small area plans but just putting an overlay on it like I said so but that's something that could be considered at the again at the next comp plan rewrite is if we're going to talk about doing a small area plan let's do it and and look at some of these areas that may be are recommended for commercial but should be residential or vice versa so um but yeah when we do the comp plan the the big one not this last update it's a huge public forum public meetings there's people from the public that sit on the forum so people are notified of it it's a very public process but is 118 may lane notified that his future land use may change no because he still has his zoning. We're not changing his rights, so.

Yeah, for example, Corey, I mean, the last big update, I want to say there may have been as many as roughly 40 members of the community.

Yeah, that went for about a couple years.

Yeah. In fact, Pam served on that.

She served on it, yes.

That's why you hear when she talks about it. Yeah. When we did this a few years ago, that's her frame of reference.

Exactly, exactly. Okay, well, I think this has been a helpful discussion. I will share this. with the committee and um i appreciate it good thank you thanks ms reed yeah okay i think we're done