Remarks by Jonathan Mitchell
189 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 7 of 8
- Play at 1:24:53
“Right. But, you know, when we open the public hearing, I think we have to take public comment probably. Yeah. And then even if we keep the hearing open, we don't have to take more comment.”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 1:25:13
“My thought. Yeah, I think probably we'll just do it the way we originally planned. Open the public hearing, take the comment after Taz's presentation, assuming he makes one, and then we'll just have our own discussion. I don't want to prevent people from the public from speaking to us at the first public hearing, given that the last two meetings we had weren't officially a public hearing. So I don't want to do that. So maybe I should just um not make this suggestion okay good so i think that's it uh meeting adjourned and see you all in um a few weeks okay thank you thank you good night…”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 0:01
“All right, good evening and welcome to... Recording in progress. Now that we're being recorded, good evening and welcome to the September 1st, 2026 meeting of the Chapel Hill Planning Commission. We usually start our meetings by taking attendance or roll call, so I'll do that real quick. Mike? I'm here. Chuck?”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 0:25
“And I'm John Mitchell, the chair. I'm here. Those are the only members in attendance that I can see right now. I know that Libby couldn't be with us. Jeff may be able to drop in between work presentation commitments tonight. And I think that's the other three that I mentioned. So hopefully those will show up in the next few minutes, in which case we'll have a proper quorum. The agenda tonight is straightforward. We approve the minutes or not approve the minutes. And then we go into new business. which is part two of Taz's presentation on the LUMO and discussion of that. Is everybody okay? I'm…”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 1:16
“Okay, good. I looked at the minutes from the last meeting and they looked correct. To me, did you guys have any issues?”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 1:33
“That's a good point. Okay. Are there any announcements or petitions either from members of the public who are dialed in or from planning commissioners? If you're a member of the public and you're dialed in, welcome. And you can... raise your hand and we'll bring you in if you have an announcement or petition. And also just for the benefit of members of the public, our main agenda item tonight is the LUMO item. The order of operations from that is that we'll receive a presentation from town staff immediately after that presentation. We'll take public comments and questions. The questions may…”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 2:57
“Okay, hands still up. So Josh, you want to bring in Jake?”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 3:26
“Okay, the hand went down. Okay, so with that, I'm going to turn it over to Taz if you're presenting tonight.”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 37:37
“Thanks. Thanks, Taz. Great presentation as usual. And I'm sure we'll come back to you for the planning commissioner discussion portion with some questions and ideas. I'm going to open up the floor for public comment at this point. We have it looks like a dozen folks who have dialed in. Welcome. You can raise your hand using Zoom and we'll bring you in one at a time or a couple at a time. We just ask that you keep your remarks to three minutes and I'll just keep time on my cell phone here. I'm not going to bother you or interrupt you until after three minutes. I won't give you any signal, but…”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 43:26
“give it another 10 or 15 seconds josh in case people are searching around for the button so the bottom of the screen for those who have dialed in there's a hand icon that says raise hand you can just click that and we can see that okay looks like some observers tonight josh we'll bring it back to uh the planning commission for discussion. Sorry. Oh, is there a hand?”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 47:42
“Okay. We'll come back to that probably after the public comment period, Jake. Appreciate the question.”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 47:54
“It'll probably end within the next 10 minutes, and then we're going to come back to a planning commission and sort of staff discussion, and I'll make sure that we touch on that.”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 50:39
“Okay, so let's bring it back to the Planning Commission. I do want to touch on the questions they were asked, and Taz, I'm going to ask for your assistance here. As I understand it, Jenny and Caroline are asking about the additional density that's allowed in currently low density residential areas like R1. The draft LUMO allows up to four units, and this relates to Jake's point, not per acre, it's per parcel. And there's a minimum lot size, but it's four units per lot, whatever that is. And compared to today where you have a maximum of two units per lot in most of these areas, that is…”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 58:44
“type of building they're putting on the property just by virtue of how many lots they would be likely to build or likely to create on that land yes i think you touched on this but um because jake mentioned explicitly i think jenny and caroline did as well the tree canopy i think i'm right in saying that um currently in r1 on a property with a single family house on it There's no tree canopy requirement.”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 59:23
“Right. So that's the current, uh, baseline under the, um, proposed changes to the Lumo. Um, that would change if, and if a new, I mean, obviously older properties are grandfathered if they're not redeveloped. Right. But for a new, for a new, um, single family unit. on that property, there will be under this proposal a 30%. So from zero to 30% is an increase in tree canopy requirement. Now, if the property is developed or redeveloped into two to four residential units on the property instead of a single family house, that standard, instead of 30%, would be 20%, 20% of the property tree canopy…”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 1:00:15
“Okay. Thanks, Tess. So I hope that helps address the questions. So now let me open it up to Mike, Chuck, Liz, and I guess myself too. ask questions or talk amongst ourselves or provide comments to Taz on the draft LUMO. I suspect we'll probably want to limit it to the two headers, affordable housing and environmental protection resilience. But if there are any other LUMO related things, you know, that's fair game to bring up as well.”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 1:08:45
“Yes, and Liz's camera's broken. That's why we can't see her.”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 1:17:44
“So I just wanted to echo or express interest in a point that Liz made at the start, which is regarding stormwater overlays. I'm aware that the, and we did talk about this a bit last time, I'm aware that the LUMO has some overlays already related to stormwater that relate to, I think, drinking water quality, like the Jordan Lake drainage and that sort of thing. I don't think we have any stormwater overlays, the purpose of which is to protect human structures. I don't think that's a thing right now. And I'm not an expert on stormwater, but logically it seems sensible to me that given that some…”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 1:23:22
“Okay, okay, understood. Thanks. Liz, oh, I see you're muted now. We were getting a little feedback. Mike, I see you're off mute. Did you want to chime in? No, I'm good. No, okay. Taz, I want to take us back to the housing portion. I forgot to raise for a discussion Kimberly's question about whether the incentives that staff is proposing to include for, it's called inclusionary housing for higher rates of designated affordable units in future development and future subdivisions, whether the calibration is sufficient to be economically attractive and impactful. I'm wondering if, I know, a year…”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 1:28:55
“Got it. Thank you for that, Taz. I had just three other questions on the housing front. They're not all... extensive questions. Uh, so, uh, I really appreciated staff pointing together the map of collector and arterial streets. Um, I took a look at it a week or so ago, um, just eyeballing the arterial streets and made intuitive sense to me why, you know, densities would be higher there. Those are, um, higher watch, higher traffic streets, and they're the major type of streets, you know, your MLKs. And I can't remember whether SS Drive is one, but, you know, Weaver Dairy, I think, probably…”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 1:33:16
“While you're pulling it up, Taz, one thing I meant to ask is it seems like another approach to this issue is to create a zone, call it RF, since we haven't used F yet. Actually, we haven't used E yet. Create a zone. that we think of as the, no, here's a better idea. Create an overlay that we use just for our RA and RB, like an RA and RB overlay. And the overlay would be, this is the four unit per lot overlay. And then when it comes time to redo the zoning map, after the new LUMO. So the new LUMO creates a zone that's just abstract. It's not applied anywhere yet. We apply it during the zoning…”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 1:38:49
“Some of those might be legacy, too, in the old Lumo, right?”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 1:47:09
“OK, thanks. My other two questions. I saw in the density table, Taz, that in R3 and R4, the proposals that increase, I guess mainly in R3, existing residential density in R3 is two per lot, two units per lot. And the proposals that increase it to four or eight if it's near a Greenway entrance or along an arterial or collector street. And R4 stays the same except with the bonus. So it's really R3, I guess, that I'm asking about. It's an obscure zone. I don't know what R3, it just doesn't seem to come up in our planning commission discussions. How much of town is R3 and where is that?”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 1:48:05
“Because we're doubling the density as a baseline, you know, in the proposal. It just caused me to wonder, well, R3, where...”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026
- Play at 1:48:54
“So R3 and R4- You're leveling R3 up to R4.”
Planning Commission · Sep 1, 2026