Remarks by Jonathan Mitchell
189 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 2 of 8
- Play at 57:41
“So Jeff, you're going beyond what I was suggesting, right? You're saying even the arterioles and collectors seem a bit arbitrary to you.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 1:00:05
“The school aspect of this is new, and I don't understand what the policy rationale was for that. Could you explain that, Tess?”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 1:01:38
“Just to react to the school's sort of logic, and I haven't thought about this very much, but with the rest of them, the blue lines, the green lines, the red lines, We're trying to figure out what the surrogates are or the proxies are for general transportation connectedness in town. Whereas the schools, it's just connectedness to one destination, which is the primary sort of daily destination for exactly nobody in this town. I mean, you go there maximum twice a day. You go, you come back. The vast majority of families in the zone don't have kids to go to the school at any given time. So from…”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 1:04:57
“So just to put my cards on the table real quick, I'm on record in 2023 saying I'd be fine with quadplexes townwide, and I still feel that way. My concern is if we're going to do something, have it be a defensible policy and not just sort of like arbitrary with weird results. I am perfectly happy to acquiesce to the Collector Street and arterial Street thing. I think it's defensible looking at them with sidewalks with sidewalks Yeah, looking at the map. I think it's it's defensible even if you have to squint a little bit the Quarter mile of a greenway thing to me just doesn't pass a laugh test…”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 1:08:07
“And I think what I can do is separate out the Greenway stuff, because I think we have a majority, I haven't heard from Chuck yet, that's skeptical of the Greenway thing. And then the schools could be a separate thing that we can just look at, see what it looks like, and maybe we reject it next time. Okay.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 1:10:57
“Exactly, yeah. Okay, so let's go to the trees category. And Libby, I'm going to look to you on this. Unless you want to come back to it.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 1:12:01
“One second. I've got it. So I'm just going to read it out loud, a note from Mike. First of all, he took his hat off to Taz and the team. Second of all, He said his primary concern is stormwater management and downstream drainage impacts. I'm just reading a quote here. Residents who invested in Chapel Hill many years ago and who made significant investments in building and maintaining their homes in our beautiful community should have reasonable protection as the town naturally grows and development increases. My, Mike's current residence was built in 1958, and over the years I've spent…”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 1:25:43
“I knew it. I knew that was Eastgate. I thought you hired an artist.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 1:45:56
“how random it appears. It's hard to see patterns. Obviously, it gets more dense as you go further down. But between commercial and residential, between subdivisions and non-subdivisions,”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 1:48:38
“Okay, so putting aside maybe some discrepancies between the proposed LUMO and this diagram, I do think it's concerning if we just ignoring the second to last row if we have so much variability because we're slicing and dicing different uses and whether it's subdivision or not a subdivision it's it seems desirable just as a policy objective to be”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 1:49:34
“What about the commercial versus residential differential?”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 1:50:03
“If you treat it like commercial development, which is- So you're saying it's all defensible if you preserve blanket exemption for single family. The rest of this is just anti-circumvention. Is that what you're saying?”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 1:51:29
“I follow you. Liz, you're saying you don't support a blanket exemption for single family. And furthermore, you don't even think the number of families should be relevant.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:01:51
“Just to chime in with some random thoughts. agree fully with Jeff that exempting single family from things that you're not exempting two to four from is not really consistent with our objectives here in the strategy of promoting missing middle housing. So I'd be interested in exploring why not. Obviously, you can't retroactively impose stormwater and existing properties that aren't redeveloping in fact there's a north carolina law barring that so um we're only talking about redevelopment of existing properties and if we're talking about that i don't see why you would exempt redeveloping…”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:08:24
“So let me just ask, to what extent is it plausible that some recommendations set of recommendations that comes out of this discussion could be addressed you know promptly like this year and to what extent should we be thinking about similar to jeff's original housing point are recommending that the town ask staff to do some analysis and make some proposals after the limo. That's just a question about timing.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:10:06
“Okay, so on number one It sounds to me that it would be useful for the commission to know exactly which things you'd want to tighten up on this chart.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:10:19
“So maybe you could come back on the 20th with some.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:10:32
“But it may help us, you know, figure out if we can get on board with it or not as a group. if there's some discrete like two or three things what they are and it sounds like there may be some resistance to whatever that is, if it involves privileging above single family, right? So we heard that. I'm just trying to summarize.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:11:46
“Right, just one other thing on the, I think it was your third point. So the second point is the overlay thing, which it sounds like we've already gotten feedback or you have that that would have to happen after. But the third point, let me make sure I'm understanding this correctly. The current LUMO proposal, I shouldn't use those words together. The LUMO proposal, what's that current? has a provision in it which gives discretion to the town manager to require additional downstream analysis or i should say some downstream analysis for additional properties to the extent that the manager…”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:12:47
“Right, do it by a certain date, a typical sort of like enabling legislation. Yeah. There's an expert that works on it and the legislature doesn't get into the weeds, so they say, we want you to create a system for this by a certain date, you know, go forth.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:13:05
“That makes sense to me because I don't understand how the town manager is otherwise going to exercise or could exercise the discretion.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:14:14
“But whatever it is, it's reigning back the authority that's currently being delegated, which is totally open-ended with no criteria.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:14:27
“I can. But it sounds like it would be useful for you to work on this.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:17:14
“Case by case? Yeah. You get a new stormwater engineer next year, you know, they're just starting over.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:19:13
“But directly, you're focusing on the downstream analysis discretion. Right.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026