Planning Board - Regular Meeting

It is 6.01 on Thursday, September 10th. I'd like to call the planning board meeting for the town of North Topsail Beach to order.

I have a motion to adopt the agenda. I'd like to make a motion to adopt the agenda with the caveat to add an amendment under organizational B announcements.

Okay, can I get a second?

Second.

Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Motion passes. We are at the oath of office. Welcome, everyone. And for purposes of voting tonight, since we have two people who are I'm not here. We're only a group of six, so everyone gets to vote. And their votes count. Okay. Next on the agenda is the announcements. Okay.

So I have the pleasure of introducing the new town manager, Stephanie Dollinger, in case you haven't had the opportunity to meet her yet.

Hi, everybody. Hi.

She's a certified public manager and ICMA credentialed manager with over 15 years of service in municipal government as both a manager and as an elected official. She began her career in New Jersey and is now a proud North Carolinian for the last three years. We'll take her. I'm staying. As a native Tar Heel, I will stamp her passport for her. She has three adult children and is a proud newly minted grandmother. Thank you.

Yeah, there we go.

So we have a couple of new people that may not have met your planner, your other planner. James Brady Golden is from Beaufort. I always have to check. Beaufort, North Carolina native. He graduated from Eastern Carolina University in 2022 with a bachelor's in science degree in urban and regional planning with a minor in coastal studies, magna cum laude. Three years experience as a planner one in Oak Island September the 22nd second will mark his first year as a town planner in North Tops Beach He is passionate about serving the community environmental preservation and guiding development in a way that respects both people and place He's a dog dad to a six-year-old Catahoula Leopard Red Heeler mix. He's a follower of Jesus, connoisseur of food, and a fitness buff. And within the first 12 months of his eligibility to sit and take the American Institute of Certified Planners exam, last Friday on September the 4th, the first time out of the gate, At the tender age of 26 years old, he passed said exam. So North Topsail Beach has its second AI-centric planner. So hopefully you can hear me. For those of you that don't know, I know that planning is very boring to some, but since you're on the planning board, I know that you're going to appreciate this. Uh, so on the American Institute of certified planner certification is an important part of, it's an important professional milestone for planners. It demonstrates professional competence, enhances professional credibility, supports career advancement, and it most importantly, it's a commitment to ethics. AICP certified planners must adhere to the AICP code of ethics and professional conduct. This demonstrates accountability, integrity, and commitment to serving the public interest, which is especially important in local government planning roles. AICP certification is less about meeting minimal qualifications and more about demonstrating commitment to professional excellence and leadership within the planning profession. And as an AICP planner myself, welcome to the club. So, thank you. All right. We'll do the next one. So, if I can remember where I sent it. So I just have a little blurb and I have this relationship with the town of North Topsail beach, uh, especially my planning board, especially my planning board and my board of adjustment. And I had just realized this labor day weekend that it was going to have special meaning. Uh, to me, because 20 years ago on September the sixth, I started working for the town over the years. The town has afforded me, uh, to be able to buy a house, live independently, obtain my certifications and planning floodplain management zoning, and provided me health insurance to site to survive breast cancer. And to be the best planner that I can be also very importantly, to be able to mentor the next plan. I think I'm doing a pretty good job on that last one. And soon to be able to retire and do whatever in the world I want to do. There's so much more that I can add to that list, but I'll just end by saying happy 20th anniversary to the town of North Topsail Beach, and thank you so much. I had another picture before I just received that last bit of artwork, last minute artwork from my sister. And it was a picture of the zoning map upstairs and a Hill Street sign that I kept up there for a very long time. And just so you know that that Hill Street sign came from the vicinity of Boston. Uh, in approximately 1978, I don't know what the statute of limitations is. Uh, so I did not want to leave any photographic evidence for, you know, so we changed the, we changed the picture. All right. So I'm going to turn this over, uh, back over to the chair and we'll, uh, be able to discuss the next topic.

Well, congratulations to both of you. We appreciate your, both of you and your commitment to the town. Next on the agenda is the approval of minutes from our previous board meeting.

I'll make a motion to approve the meeting minutes of September 3rd.

Second.

August, sorry. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Motion. Okay. Do we have anyone signed up for public comment? No public comment. Okay, moving on to old business, the wetland protection buffer. We have Brady and Chip.

so we also have uh the town attorney chip pink on the um uh screen with us uh joining us this evening uh brady's going to present the his report in response to the planning board's direction to present a draft buffer. And then we're going to have a discussion about down zoning. I keep saying downsizing, that's why he's laughing. Down zoning, and so we'll have a discussion about down zoning and then whatever recommendations

whatever direction that we decide to get that you decide to go on after the discussion presentation and the discussion with the town attorney's input okay all right so for the new members we'll do a brief uh report from the last meeting we had and going over the wetland protection On August 13th, 2026, planning board continued to discuss potential higher environmental and flood resilience standards. Staff introduced framework for wetland protection buffer ordinance intended to provide supplemental protection for wetlands and adjacent upland areas while clarifying how accessory structures may be located near the delineated wetlands. The planning board directed staff on the following motion. uh establish a 50 foot wetland protection buffer include limited exceptions for identified water dependent structures and related improvements further evaluation of the ordinance language concerning private bridges and preparing a draft text amendment for the planning board to review at a future meeting One thing that I do want to cover before we get back on that topic is a discussion that me and Deb and staff have been internally discussing over the past week or so. So in the packet that's titled Coats Cannons, It is a, Coats Canons comes from the UNC School of Government, covering a wide variety of different legal topics. But back in the end of 2024, during the, there was the Helene bill that passed, you know, mainly Helene support in recovery. But during that time, the North Carolina General Assembly amended state law to greatly restrict local government discretion to amend local zoning ordinances. The statutory provision amended as part of the Disaster Recovery Act of 2024, also known as the Holene Recovery Bill, it broadly defines down zoning and provides that local governments cannot adopt a down zoning without written consent from all impacted owners. The precise interpretation and breadth of impact of this law are not perfectly clear. Now, this was written back in December of 2024, and still to this day, it is still not totally clear. So that's going to be a part of our discussion today in talking with Chip about if this proposed wetland buffer would be classified as a downzoning. And then if it is, You know, how are we, how can we still work towards providing protection for the wetlands that, you know, are the beautiful wetlands that we have a duty to protect? There is on the back, the back two pages of that handout. It kind of goes down, has an evaluation list on there, and it helps to determine if a proposed amendment or any new language would trigger down zoning. And it's very broad. If you look at... You have a handout... I don't think I have it, but it gives you an example of what, what down zoning may be. Um, and, and basically it would be any amendment that would further restrict density. Um, so I'm not sure what the example was given to y'all, but so you say you wanted to, the town wanted to increase a setback. So you have a 20 foot front setback and the town wanted to increase it to 25 feet. Um, In order to pass something like that, you would have to get written consent from every person in that zoning district that they would approve that type of change because it is further increasing the restrictions on their property affected in that zoning district. Here we go. The example on here, imagine you have a 10-acre tract. Under the current zoning, a developer could build 40 homes. After a down zoning, the same tract might only allow 10 homes. The land is still usable, but its development potentially has been reduced. So it's very broad. It can impact a number of elements when it comes to zoning, whether it's impervious area, whether it's setbacks, whether it's buffer areas. So that's going to turn it over to Chip to provide some insight and maybe some discussion, unless we have a question.

I have a question. With this down zoning, I mean, we were talking about the wetlands and the buffer areas. with this though, this law apply to anything ocean front too. So the, the law that are the ordinance that we put forth to the board of Alderman that passed about adding that five feet, that would also be impacted by this.

It's not retroactively enforced.

So that five foot, uh, dune buffer that was implemented before 2024, but anything doesn't matter where on the Island, this is not specific to sound.

Correct. It's just an overall reduction of density in any form. It kind of is how it's looked at.

All right. Thank you.

Yeah.

Any other questions? All right. The 50 foot said substructure, so it's not primary structures. Yes. It's just things associated with the structure that's already existence with their primary one.

There's a list of exemptions, which would be the water-dependent structures, docks, boats, piers. Yeah, I saw that. And there were a couple of other items, I think, that we had listed.

Oh, retaining walls was one of them.

Uh, retaining walls would be allowed. They would be exempt. Uh, pools would have to meet that in this initial proposal pools would have to meet that 50 foot buffer. There'd be a number of other items. Sheds would have to meet the 50 foot buffer, but the primary stays the same as it is.

The primary stays the same.

Yes. Thank you.

All right, chip.

All right. Thank you. Uh, can you hear me?

Yes, sir.

All right. Thanks. So I think Brady did a good job touching on this. Back in December of 2024, the legislature, in their infinite wisdom, amended 160D-601 subsection D. This has caused a lot of problems in municipalities across the state. And subsection D is entitled downzoning. And I just want to read a little bit of this because I think it's important to understand. So no amendment to zoning regulations or a zoning map that downzones property shall be initiated, enacted, or enforced without written consent of all property owners whose property is the subject of the downzoning amendment, right? So there it starts out with the bar. Now it carves out the exceptions or the definitions. For purposes of this section, down zoning means a zoning ordinance that affects an area of land in one of the following ways. And the third way deals with land that is not in residential zoning. So I'm not even gonna touch on that, but the first two are important and I think applicable here. So down zoning means a zoning ordinance that affects an area of land in one of the following ways. One, by decreasing the development density of the land to be less dense than what was allowed under previous usage. So that's the development density that Brady was referring to. The second one is by reducing the permitted uses of the land that are specified in a zoning ordinance or land development regulation to fewer uses than were allowed under its previous usage. So that one's getting to reducing the permitted uses of the land. Now, a number of municipalities have attempted to, and some have been successful, and North Topsail Beach back in February of 2025 tried to do the same thing, which is to have a resolution filed and passed by the legislature basically exempting the town from 160D-601D and it did not pass, unfortunately. So the issue becomes twofold, whether this proposed wetland protection buffer decreases the development density of the land or reduces the permitted uses of the land. And if it does either one of those things, then we've got a down zoning problem.

Thanks, Chip.

So basically then what you're saying is what we were discussing last month's meeting of the 50-foot buffer, if that looks like it's impacting this way the law is written, then we cannot even bring that to the Board of Aldermen to look at?

If the 50-foot buffer decreases, if that 50-foot buffer is on somebody's piece of property and it decreases the development density, they can't build on that or it reduces the permitted use of a portion of that property because that 50 foot buffer is on their property, then that's down zoning and that's not allowed.

And where does the environmental impact then come into this? Cause I can see them just kind of butting heads.

It does not.

It does not.

The purpose of that was to transfer the power from the local governments to the property owner when it comes to use of the property. And so to, you know, prohibit or to address what may be considered, you know, Uh, government overreach by local governments and to protect property owners. That was, that's the, that's the intent of, uh, that down zoning law passing. And so it's, so it's frustrating when, you know, you're a town, you know, as a property owner, you're thinking, thank goodness. I'm, you know, I'm getting a little bit of elbow room. I'm not getting smothered by all these regulations, but then as a member of the planning board or a member of the community or a member of the local elected officials, you're starting to get a little hamstrung on how do you address density? How do you protect the natural environment? When the state is coming and saying, town, you need to back up, you don't have the authority to make these restrictions. So for, for laws or for ordinances that were already in place, they're already in place, but we can't then, um, today make more restrictive, um, ordinances on use of use of your property that would affect your property value or the use of that property.

So basically we would need to then figure out if what we are discussing as far as the buffer would fall into number one and two as outlined here.

Yeah. I, you know, I, I tend to agree that it, that it would reduce it. And it, whether I agree or disagree at the end of the day, and the same thing, you know, Brady and I've discussed this at the end of the day, it's the town attorneys that have to represent the town in court. So, you know, how we're very adamant, you get your passion, you kind of, you, you, We don't want to allow our passion to protect the environment to get us over our skis and put the town in a no-win situation if we had to go to court. Right, no, absolutely not. So as we discuss this, and I'll go ahead and kind of cut to the chase on this and go ahead and make a recommendation, if you don't mind, is rather than fight that fight, What we're trying to do is we're trying to protect those wetlands. Okay. We already have a wetland protection ordinance that we passed before 2024. Didn't we? The $10,000 citation. When did we pass that? Was that before 2024? Does that fall under that category? Chip, do you know?

I think it was passed before 2024, Deb. I don't really recall, but I don't recall it coming up. So it seems to me that it was passed before 2024. Yeah.

So let me see if I have a hard time reading little tiny things, but in the event, in the event that the wetland ordinance that we have met that time, you know, that it's protected, then one of the reasons that pushed this forward is we had uh one property owner a couple uh property owners that came down and even though they should have known better because of their profession without permit they constructed a deck within the wetlands and to this day have refused to move it remove it they're that started back in march or even before march they're still working through the the permitting process with cama in army corps of engineers as far as i know but you know when when you're in violation and i say miss brown you're in violation can you please remove this and you go no deb i'm not going to uh pretty please You know, like, like what can I, what do I need to do? You know, what can I do to persuade you, you know, to, that you're, you're not doing yourself a favor doing what you're doing. Right. And so in, in our attempt to enforce and to issue a $10,000 citation, which was approved by the board of Alderman. On this specific instance where they went into the wetlands and the 404 wetlands without permit, I could not, I was advised that I could not issue the citation because in that citation, in our ordinance, I did not define what damage was. So what I would offer to you is that you make a recommendation to the Board of Aldermen or because the town attorneys serve at the pleasure of the Board of Aldermen, they don't take direction from either you or me or the town manager, that you, the planning board, makes a recommendation to the Board of Aldermen and say, we make a recommendation that you direct the town attorneys to work with town planning staff and lock that ordinance, that wetland protection ordinance down solid as a rock to where that whenever there is a violation, that we can go out, issue a citation, and be done with it. Period. Because even if you had a 50 foot buffer, if we would have had a 50 foot buffer three years ago, these individual, it would not have made any difference. These individuals would have still have done what they did. They still would be refusing to remove it. And we would still be in this headlock that we're in right now. That buffer wouldn't have made any difference at all. And so my recommendation is exactly like I stated that we go back, we, we tighten up with the assistance of the town attorneys, the language in the protection ordinance that we already have, and then if they violate that ordinance, here's your $10,000 citation. You don't correct it. Every day is a separate violation. Now you owe us $20,000. Now you owe us $30,000. At what point in time is it going to be worth it to you to pull that damn deck out? Feel free to disagree or discuss.

Okay, so in light of Ms. Hill's comments, how do we feel about a motion to, would anyone like to make a motion?

I would like to make a motion to recommend that we ask the Board of Aldermen to direct the town attorneys to work with the town planning staff on the Wetland Protection Ordinances to lock that down so we don't have things like this blow through the cracks. Do I hear a second?

I'll second.

Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. All opposed?

Are you okay with that, Jill? Are you okay with that?

Sorry, I lost my mute button there, Deb. Yes, I think that's appropriate. Okay.

Thank you, sir.

Does that mean that we're going to move beyond the rest of the discussion on this item? Yes. but we all agreed that we will not be talking about the proposed amendment to the ordinance at this time. Okay. Um, okay. New business, Brady flood resilience, resiliency blueprint for the white Oak river basin. Yes.

There you go. Mike's on. So I'm coming to y'all to present to you an update to an ongoing project. So just a little bit of background and some information about this project. So North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality provided a status update for their flood resiliency blueprint for the White Oak River Basin on August the 25th of 2026. The blueprint is intended to establish a repeatable statewide approach for identifying and prioritizing flood mitigation and resiliency strategies. The project is currently in phase three. And to give you some more background, The actual project kickoff for this river basin, and the state's actually doing this for multiple river basins, the initial kickoff was back in March of 2025. They've had several meetings since then. Most notably, there was a local action survey that we were a part of and all the communities in the river basin were a part of where they went and identified these areas, these project areas that can contribute to resiliency for flood mitigation. Let's see. But as of now, they're currently in phase three and the blueprints process document and online decision support tool are complete, which that online decision report tool is what we use to upload our areas projects. and the project is still in progress. So a little bit on the River Basin Action Strategy. It combines existing planning information, community engagement, vulnerability assessment, flood risk modeling, and project prioritization. Projects are first screened to determine whether they directly reduce flood risk or flood impacts and are then scored based on flood resiliency benefits. Also, local support, feasibility and readiness, and consistency with the basin's guiding principles. The top 25% of scored actions are identified as high priority projects. The draft currently identifies 87 projects, including 20 high priority projects. The strategy is organized around five main goals, protecting people and life safety, strengthening critical systems, protecting and restoring coastal natural systems, reducing flood risk through land use, redevelopment and property mitigation and establishing a durable pathway from evidence to implementation. For North Topsail beach projects we have a few projects that we were able to include including debris removal, North Topsail stormwater project, the beach material placement from a dredging channel and property and infrastructure retrofitting. The next steps, NCDEQ anticipates releasing the draft in September of 2026. So they haven't released it as of this date that I'm aware. I checked yesterday, so I didn't see it come through. So hopefully by the end of the month. And then the final plan is anticipated to come out in October of 2026. As far as a staff recommendation, Staff should continue to monitor the process and review the draft strategy when it's released. We'll come back next meeting and give you an update with hopefully some more information. The town should evaluate North Topsail Beach's projects identified in the draft for consistency with the existing town plans, capital improvement projects, stormwater initiatives, and other resiliency efforts. Staff should also consider providing comments during the upcoming public comment period, particularly regarding the prioritization implementation of projects affecting North Topsail Beach. Um, also in the agenda, there is a PDF from the slideshow that I attended on August the 25th that does give some more information, some graphics and, um, Just some more information for you. Any questions?

Is there somewhere that we can look and see what the detail is about these projects that got assigned? Is that map open to the public? Like the debris removal, what does that mean?

The debris removal should be after a major storm event where the town has a contract and has the debris removed by a third party, by a contractor. But we can put that link up on either the planning the planning board has a separate web page so we can put these documents i can send ricky and ricky and put the links on there that'll bring those documents up and then if you'd like to discuss them further or if you'd like more information you can either shoot us an email or let lisa know that you'd like it on the agenda for further discussion perfect thank you so this this was really a a really big regional project that the town participated in. And the information that we provided, we didn't go back through the planning board and through the Board of Aldermen. What we did was for the mitigation actions that we'd already submitted for the hazard mitigation plan that was adopted by FEMA earlier this year, we submitted those since they had already been approved by the town and it was fitting to submit it with this water basin blueprint.

Thank you very much for that update. So if you want to take one of these and pass these down. All right. Okay, next item is the Rules of Procedure.

So in January of 2025, uh, we updated the, uh, planning board rules of procedure consistent with the Roberts rules of order newly revised, which had just come out. And so my intent is just, especially since we have new members, that this is your own personal copy. You can take these with you and then read through them. If you have any changes at our next meeting, we can go over and say, you know, I'd like this changed, et cetera. But what I would do is I would request that this planning board readopt those rules, and I'll have it formatted. For the chair signature in the clerk certification on that and it's nice to do this every year and especially if there's you know kind of a turnover and The planning board or members and that kind of brings everybody up to speed So you recommending we review them before we I Yeah, I'm requesting that you take the time to review them, look through them, be familiar with them, and then we'll have it on the agenda, the next planning board's agenda in October for your, hopefully for your re-adoption of it. Okay.

Okay, thank you. And everyone can review those. That is the last item on the agenda. Is there a motion to adjourn?

Sure.

I'll second it.

All in favor?

Aye.

We are adjourned at 6.42 p.m. I messed up because I...