Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. You may ask city staff member after the meeting. All right I will not read the next thing because we have we have we this is a we we have a five member board up here and we only need three three yeas to pass. So I'd like to call the meeting to order and we have and Cell phones will be turned off. We have a roll call please.

Member Avery?

Here.

Member Ram? Here. Member Raikano?

Here.

Member Lewis?

Here.

Member Schreidner?

Here.

We have a quorum. Members of the board, as you heard, the chair and vice chair are not present tonight. This gives us an opportunity to choose an acting chair for this evening. The board can entertain a nomination and the nomination does not need to be seconded before the vote.

I nominate member Avery.

I second.

Can we have a vote?

Aye. Aye. I vote for myself, aye.

Aye. Aye. Perfect. Motion carries.

All right, at this moment, the citizens will address, we'll have a citizen's communication if there's anybody who has any, because we are subject to public meeting laws, anybody that wants to come forward and address the board at this time. Seeing none, I guess we're ready to move on. We have one individual item for consideration this evening. CS26-0073, public hearing and consideration of a request by the New Braunfels Independent School District for an alternative sign plan to allow one freestanding electronic message pole sign to deviate from the established sign standards for property within the C-1B General Business District currently addressed at 4150 Klein Meadows.

Acting Chair, could we please approve the minutes first?

Yes, we can. I'm sorry, but we did not do that. I'm assuming you've all read and seen copies of the minutes. Do we have a motion to approve the minutes from last year, last meeting?

I motion to approve.

I'll second it.

Can we get a roll call? Uh, member Avery?

Yes.

Member Ramf? Yes. Member Rykenow?

Yes.

Uh, member Lewis? Yes. Member Schradner?

Yes.

Okay, motion carries.

Do I need to repeat that or should we have staff make a presentation, please?

That's all right. We got it on the record of you reading the item, so that should be sufficient. Yes, thank you. Sure. Good evening, board members. Colton Barker with New Braunfels Planning, I'm sorry, Neighborhood and Community Planning now. Before you this evening is an alternative sign plan. This request is not a signed variance. Rather, it is the appropriate process for considering signage that may not fully comply with the city's sign code. Because of this, a hardship is not required, and approval may be granted by a simple majority of the board. The alternative sign plan process is intended to provide flexibility for applicants to design signage that complements the development's unique character, allow increases in sign area or height in place of multiple otherwise permitted signs, and to accommodate additional signage when there are unusual constraints on the site. SUBJECT PROPERTY THAT WE SAW JUST AT THIS LAST MONTH'S MEETING IS OVER 100 ACRES AND HAS BEEN DEVELOPED AS LONG CREEK HIGH SCHOOL. IT IS LOCATED ALONG WEST CLINE ROAD JUST SOUTH OF THE INTERSECTION OF CLINE MEADOWS AND LEGEND PASS. THE PROPERTY LIES WITHIN THE C1B GENERAL BUSINESS DISTRICT AND IS LOCATED BETWEEN THE DEVELOPING ZIP SPORTS PARK AND THE RESIDENTIAL LEGEND POND PLAN DEVELOPMENT TO THE NORTH. There are a few photos here. I've got a couple slides and we can always come back to them. This is of the subject property and the signs proposed location as seen from Klein Meadows from a couple different angles. The alternative sign plan proposes to install one freestanding electronic message pull sign that deviates from the sign standards for properties within the C1B general business district. The sign would be located along Klein Meadows, set back more than 100 feet from the property line and over 150 feet from nearby residential properties. The applicant has provided this exhibit here showing what the proposed sign would look like at the requested location. And the city sign ordinance allows sign types and sizes based upon a property's zoning district and specific street frontage. This property's C1B zoning allows for alternatives to the requested signage listed in the comparison chart here. Since the meeting in April, the school district has provided the following operational times for the signs electronic display. Additionally, mailed notice was sent to owners of property within 200 feet of the location. And as of today, staff has received three responses in favor of the request from property number eight, number 42 and 66. Staff recognizes the applicant's efforts to establish effective signage to represent the high school and recommends approval of the request with the conditions listed in the staff report. This concludes staff's introduction and the applicant has the opportunity to speak at this time. I can answer any additional questions.

Any questions for staff before the applicant speaks?

I have some questions. Sure. I read through the potential conditions that were provided. Would the sign as designed meet all of the draft ordinances that are proposed as it is currently being proposed?

At this time, yes. And I can flip to, I think I've got an example. of those draft ordinances here. A lot of the intricacies of these sections have to do with the display timing and kind of motion of what's being displayed. It has some pieces of being on or off 30 minutes before sunrise, but only if there's a solid white background. So a lot of little but those sections are these here in particular. Now these are still in draft, but for the purposes of this, we're using this as a guideline as for one of the conditions. This is kind of where our staff is going in terms of our newer sign code once that gets drafted.

All right. I think that's all the questions I have.

All right. I got a quick question. So I read it can only be turned on from 7.30 till 8.30 in the evening. Okay.

Yeah, so that was proposed by the applicant in response to how the last meeting went. And with the last meeting, I believe the board wanted to see notification to the nearby neighbors as well as some sort of proposal as to how that sign would be lit when it's dark out.

At this time, do we have any of your neighbor's response?

We have three. I can throw them up on the dot cam, but they are just little response cards. There's no additional comments on them. Just a check on the in favor box. All three in favor? All three in favor, sir. Thank you.

Any questions?

Well, you had mentioned the lot numbers or whatever. Were they along that street or were they more interior?

I can show you. They're a little tough to see on this map here, but property number eight is here. 66 is here. And 42 is tucked away right there. It's just covered up by the number there, so it's kind of like the back half of their back half. All right. Thank you.

And all of those people had the opportunity?

Yes, sir. We included with the notice as well the provided exhibit of the rendering of the sign as well as the proposed location.

Very good. All right. Any questions for staff? Okay, we'd like to have anybody who'd like to speak in favor of, have the applicant come forward and state their case. Please say your name and address for the record.

Yes, my name is Joe Alexander. I'm the Director of Construction and Planning for NBISD. So I'm the applicant for this proposed sign. Happy to answer any questions. I appreciate you all taking the time to meet with me tonight. But yes, any questions you all might have in addition to last month's questions?

I believe this item was tabled last month simply for two reasons, and if we could go back and see the motion, but basically it was tabled that we wanted to reach the people a chance to speak that are within 150 feet of what the sign would be. Second, we wanted to make sure that we had a timeframe that we were taking a look at and that we had adopted a sign that would fit within this ordinance or future ordinances that were proposed.

You, correct, okay. Yes, sir, yes, sir. Our proposed time was that, that we proposed was at 7.30 a.m. to 8.30 p.m. without, you know, that's just a, you know, kind of gives us a little bit after morning and, you know, right before, you know, sundown. So, you know, in the evening. So we figured before 10 o'clock would be, you know, an adequate time or even nine o'clock. So that was just our proposed times that we proposed.

Well, I was thinking about that on the way over, and sundown is about 8.30 now, but not in December. Is there any, how can we, will this thing go off when people are trying to eat their dinner at 6.30?

Right, and I gave that some consideration, and being that winter months, it can get dark at 5.30, you know, it's hard to give a in-between, you know, what's a good time frame because, you know, in the winter months, you know, three months out of the year, it goes down at 530. It can get dark by 6. So that's why I figured any time before 9 or 10 would be hopefully suitable because, you know, We're not planning, there's no need to advertise at night or do anything, you know, for us, you know, that needs to be outside of the, you know, 10 o'clock, 9 o'clock hours. So I figured that a healthy time would be 8.30, you know, because we get more sunlight here than we do at dark times. So that was kind of the thought behind that.

And this is 365, like not just during the school year, but every day, even during when class is out?

Yes, correct. I mean, that would be our proposal. And in our last meeting, like I mentioned, the – I will not operate it, Amir, because we're trying to build this, go through the process of building this sign. But the operation of it will be by the principal of the school. So the day-to-day would be what they do. So if they choose maybe not to run it during the summer, there's no need to. I mean, it may be on them, so I couldn't. I can't tell you what they plan on doing advertisement-wise or how they plan on running it. I mean, they may not want to run it on the weekends perhaps, but I don't know what that looks like from my perspective at this point because there's not any restrictions to that that I could see by the ordinance unless I missed that. So I didn't see any restrictions to that. All right, thanks. No problem.

I don't have any questions.

Any questions?

My only question is, I mean, this isn't like the first of its kind. Did you guys happen to call any other schools to see kind of what their hours are? Or did you kind of make up that time range internally?

Yeah, so to answer your question, in my experience, I have not experienced a timeframe. So that's an excellent question. So a lot of the signs that I've put in have not had a time restriction to it. And so this would be a unique situation at the request of the board that we acknowledge because we heard it the last meeting. We acknowledge that and if you all feel the need for a timeframe, we're okay with that timeframe. And then looking at the city ordinance and trying to abide by any kind of ordinance to that, I didn't see any timeframes associated with that either. So unfortunately, I just took a stab at it to see if this was something that you guys would be agreeable to. And I mean, if it's not, I'm happy to, to discuss that as well. So we're here to just try to get a signage and be able to display messages for the district and think it'd be a suitable fit for us in the district. So if y'all need to discuss the timeframes further, I'm happy to do that. But just wanna try to get our signs in.

All right, any other questions for them?

I do have one more question. Will there be content on both sides of the sign?

Yes, sir.

Okay, is there an option to turn off one sign or is it simultaneous?

That's a good question.

I brought the sign manufacturer with us from Spectrum and that's a good question. I don't have that answer if you wanna.

I actually don't have that answer because it can be done.

Could you say your name and address for the record, sir? Yes, sir, I'm David Cena with Spectrum.

And it can be done. It should be a master-master. It can be done. But the way it's designed is to catch the people coming out of the school and people coming in. So it's really not facing the highway, so it's trying to catch them coming in and out. Yeah, there you go.

Thank you.

I think it's easy to understand the concern that we might have for the people that are there, but they were given a chance to respond, but that's not gonna guarantee that they're not gonna call you up and tell you, this thing's blasting me at eight o'clock at night and it's been dark for an hour. And so they'll call the NBU or the city. And so that's the only reason that we were asking for that. But you have the ability to program that. David, you have the ability to program or get the principal an easy program for that thing to say, let's don't do that if we're getting complaints. It'll probably be all right.

Yeah, I understand the concern. And we can address that in a case by case. If it's a really irritating nuisance problem to somebody, we can be happy to address it. I mean, hopefully at the school level, we can take care of it.

And they do have a dimmer on them, so they won't be bright, bright. They should, when dusk hits, they'll dim way down. And you can make them, you can program it to be dimmer as well than that, too.

Like all the options. Any more questions?

All right, thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. We'll take a moment to see if anybody would like to come and speak in favor of the motion that's already been up here. I'm seeing nobody in the room. I think we'll move on to those that want to speak against the motion, or against the, well, let's say we don't have a motion, but against the presentation. There's nobody, so we'll entertain a motion if there is one.

Or do we need to, if we want to discuss anything? Yeah.

You need a motion to discuss though at this time, according to Robert's rules.

I'll make a motion for us to discuss.

No, I mean a motion to, we'll need a motion to.

Yeah, but we can discuss it amongst ourselves first, correct?

Actually not. According to the rules, we need to have a motion. on the floor to discuss the item or the agenda so that we can discuss it then. So either motion for or against, and then we can modify it, whatever. We don't have an attorney in the room, but he'll tell you that.

Okay.

I'll make a motion to approve. Okay. I won't second it.

I'll second the motion.

All right, motion's been made and seconded. Now we can discuss it.

Okay. What I was proposing to discuss was there are some proposed conditions to the approval and I think one of them discusses the display time. So assuming we put these conditions on the approval, I think it somewhat overrides the proposed time on here to deal with sunlight and sun hours more than 7.30 to 8.30. So if that was a concern to anybody and the... about the period 30 minutes after sunset to 30 minutes before sunrise is in the proposed conditions.

If I could just point out as staff for a moment, because I felt the same thing. I saw the 30 minutes before and after it's proposed on here. I don't have the... the pointer. Um, but in that number five, letter a sign luminance won't exceed the, the brightness of the luminance there. Uh, so it discusses the brightness of the sign, not necessarily if the sign is on or not. Gotcha. Um, and then I believe letter C under there, um, it discusses having a solid white background at those times as well, but it doesn't really make mention of it being on or not. So in this instance, the school district is proposing a more restrictive condition than would be typically enforced with these.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Okay, those are all.

So we have a motion and a second. Are we looking to amend that motion is what we're doing?

I would like to amend the motion to include some conditions. Okay. I would like to, do I amend the motion or make a new motion?

You can amend the motion. He has to accept as a friendly amendment, so.

Okay, I'd like to amend the motion to include the following conditions for approval. One, no additional freestanding signage on the property is allowed. Two, the proposed electronic message pole sign must conform with the updated sign display standards introduced in Article 7.3.6 of the Draft Land Development Ordinance A, 7.3.6C3, display standards. B, 7.3.6C4, display time and transitions. C, 7.3.6C5, display brightness. D, 7.3.6C6, display technology. And three, the proposed sign be oriented perpendicular to Klein Meadows so that to minimize any potential light trespass on the nearby residential properties.

Can I remove my motion and just let him make that motion?

Okay.

I'll remove my motion so that he can make that motion. So you're just reading off of the new LDO requirements, right?

The city proposed some potential conditions that we could attach to tie it closer to the proposed future LDO that will be in place.

So you have a motion to pass, but as is, but we have a friendly amendment to the motion. All you have to do is you accept that and the motion still stands with that amended as he spoke.

Okay. I think it's pretty reasonable as it is. So I I wanna keep the motion for approval.

And I'll second it again.

Good. Motion's been made and seconded as amended. Are we good with that?

I believe so, but let's make sure what we're voting on. So we had a motion from Seth to approve as it was presented, which would be the 7.30 to 8.30 time. It was presented with staff's recommendations, so it might be good to make a motion either with staff's recommendations that were in the staff report, which were the three that Member Schneider listed, Is it still okay to withdraw your initial motion if we don't wanna continue with that phrasing? But the new motion can be phrased in that way, if I'm hearing that correctly.

Sure, yeah, I'll withdraw it and then he can just make his motion. Yeah, I withdraw my motion. Well, the motion's been, yeah, okay, that's fine.

I'm gonna make a motion to approve the alternative sign plan with the following conditions. One, no additional freestanding signage on the property is allowed. Two, the proposed electronic message pole sign must conform with the updated sign display standards introduced in Article 7.3.6 of the Draft Land Development Ordinance. A, 7.3.6C3 display standards. B, 7.3.6C4 display time and transitions. C, 7.3.6C5 display brightness. D, 7.3.6C6 display technology. And three, the proposed sign be oriented perpendicular to Klein Meadows so as to minimize any potential light trespass onto nearby residential properties.

Do we hear a second to that motion?

I'll second it.

Motion's been made and seconded. All those in favor? Can we have a roll call for that?

We can get a roll call for that. Member Avery?

Aye.

Member Rand? Aye. Member Reikinow?

Aye.

Member Lewis? Aye. Member Schreidner?

Aye.

The motion carries.

Is the applicant good with that? Okay. Is there any other business? Hearing none, before we adjourn, I'd like to thank everyone for the time that you allowed me to spend with you guys the last four years. I'd like to thank staff, who has always been very helpful. I'd like to thank Frank Onion, who is not here anymore, and who I'm sure everybody here will miss, our attorney. So I'd like to, with that said and done, I say this meeting is adjourned.