Planning Board - Regular Meeting

That said, we do still have a certifiable quorum. Um, before we before we get into the agenda, I would like to introduce our new staff member, Lauren, or I should say I'll let her introduce herself. I am pleased that we have enlarged our department. This is Lauren. Hi everyone. So today is my first day and I'm very excited to work with you all in the future. So um are we on? Are we on? Okay. Well, um it is wonderful to meet everyone. I'm very excited to work with everyone in the future. So thank you so much.

Great. Thank you, Lauren. We're excited to have you. Yep. All right. Um, has everyone had the chance to go over the agenda for tonight and have any modifications they would like to make? All right. Uh, hearing none, I'll take a motion to approve the agenda. I'll move to approve the agenda. Motion by charity, second by James. All in favor say I. I.

Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. We will go into approval of the minutes for November 17th, 2025. Does anybody have anything they've noticed on there would like to make any uh modifications to All right. Hearing none, I'll take a motion to approve the minutes for November 17th, 2025. Move. Moved by Alan Wilson. Second. Second by Connor McAdams. All in favor say I.

I. I thank you. All right. Uh public comment period we do not have anyone signed up for. Uh we also do not have any old business and so we can move into new business. Item 71, ZTA 2025 01 UDIO text amendment.

Good evening. Hopefully I don't break this thing first time around.

Good evening. I won't open this hear me well enough there. Um this is some minor updates to the UDO language. Um, simply we're going to swap the standing planning director to development services director to broaden the piece and then that way I have individuals that come back as my if I'm not here or if it if the office is empty then there's the planning director, the engineering manager and the downtown um director for development. So the first one is to swap out the planning director to develop service director there. Um, where is it? There's a 229 instances where it references planning director that need to be swapped to the development director and that starts with 9.2 and runs through all the the sections that go through there. Um, and then specifically the review responsibility set forth in the exhibit A which is the table where is the table? It's the table of development review procedures. which is just swapping the heading from planning director to development services director under the reviews authorities section. That is the only piece in that one that also swaps. And then and there's a star besides the the the engineer portion that allows it to be the development director or the engineering manager. There's not engineer in the development director's role. And that is every single one of them are based on just that simple swap out. and that isn't the design. That's the only pieces for this one. Um the staff recommendation is to motion to approve the ZTA 2025 01 quarterly text amendments to the UDO and adopt the ZTA 2025 in the quarterly amendment and the

consistency statement. And there's the suggestion motion as well um to recommend approval of the ZTA 20251 quarterly text amendment to UDO and to adopt the ZTA 202501 quarterly text amendment to state. All right. Um does anybody have any questions on that?

A couple. Um I'm I'm glad that my number correspondent with yours as far as the number of changes that need to be made. So uh just want to focus here on uh 9.3.1 uh the the plan what is now the planning director and will soon be the development services director. So um in essence what we're doing in a is we are deleting that section of that paragraph that says except for those which the town engineer is responsible under 9.3.2 town engineer. Yes. The town engineer will have no role in this whatsoever.

The development services director can be the town engineer at the same time. If the development services director is not the engineer, then the engineer manager and they will take that position. Okay. Where the say that here with that specivity it would have been on the table piece not on that

there that is specifically in the table. It just has a star and asterric that if the development director is not the engineer then there would be the PE that is established currently would take that role. Now, you're going to think that this is really minute, but since we have already said uh or about to say that uh all references to the planning director are changed to the development services director, really wouldn't the only change to 9.3.1. A uh be a strike through of that uh reference to the town manager. It would just stop at ordinance and then you would strike through except for those.

Yes. I believe this is just what it was to look at that without the strike through written on it. It's just just be the way it would be written without the strikes through on it. Right. I'm I'm just wondering if it wouldn't be cleaner to just incorporate that uh first section uh since we have already adopted or saying that we're going to adopt uh planning services director in li planning director just to keep that the way it is and do a strike through of the remainder of that paragraph. Governor,

that can be done. Yes, sir. It's either or. So if that's the perference then I believe that can be done the same way. Yes. I mean it accomplishes the same thing and then you know you don't have to make another reference that you're changing uh the development services director out for the planning director in its own separate piece. Okay. Um, do we have any more any other questions?

I I just need some clarification. Um, I've been on the planning board for a year now and I just finished the PBO 101 academy and and I'm a little confused about the relationship between the planning department and the engineering department. The development services director is in the engineering department, right? No, the development services director is the department. Both planning, engineering, and downtown are all under the development services department. They're all divisions of that development services department.

Okay. So, so what is the role since since we're deleting planning director and replacing that with development services director? What what role then does the planning director? He's my designate under the planning area. So, in my place, if I'm not present, he is the acting. Okay. Does that answer everything you had? Okay. One more question. Now, I'm assuming that you have a formal job description. Yes, sir.

Okay. And that formal job description aligns with the changes that are being made here. Yes, sir. It does. It's directly over all three and making sure that everything is within the development side handled through that route. Yes. All right. I have a quick one. Um, are we I don't I just don't know. Do we approve the text amendment or is this a recommendation to go to the town board for approval? This will be a recommendation the town board. Okay. That's what I thought, but I just didn't know if our motion to approve. Didn't sound like that. So, okay. Thank you.

Yeah. Motion to recommend approval and then the consistency. Yeah. Okay. Um, if we have no further questions, then I will accept a motion to recommend approval of the ZTA 2025 01 quarterly text amendments uh with the amendment by Alan Wilson. Anybody would like to make that motion? Um, I move to recommend approval to the text ZTA 2025-2 as submitted but with the amendment by Alan Wilson as discussed in this meeting.

01. Oh, my bad. 01. Okay. So, motion by James Buster. Do I have a second? A second. Second by Terry Dalton. Um, all in favor say I. I I uh all opposed. Sorry, did I didn't hear a Yeah. Oh, I sorry.

Connie, did you Okay. All right. Sorry. All right. So, the motion passes unanimously. Thank you. We will move on to our item 72 ZTA 20252 UDO text.

All right, we're going to we're going to shift gears a little bit. I hope so. There we go. Okay. On uh July 1st of last year, 2024, we uh formed a technical review committee and uh this may be one of the least understood functions of local government. Involves internal and external staff that review multiple types of development processes. We've been operating as an ad hoc group with no formal rules of engagement. There's proposed textmen that formalizes the process and specifies the composition. So you look here, it's made up of internal and external. I've separated them out according to who is an internal department and who is an external department. And it isn't that every one of these people show up for every single meeting. It's sort of like a this is who you select from depending on what the project is about. And so you see that there's a lot of people over on the county side. There's a couple of federal agencies as well. And then over on the left hand side there's the group that are in the house. Okay. So the committee mostly meets on Tuesdays uh throughout the year. Developers attend and directly interact with the staff. This step in the process allows developers to obtain feedback that refineses their project prior to next steps which is you all and the planning board or staff approval for site plans. And the committee size is determined by the components of the project being discussed. So if you don't have a need to have certain people there, they don't come. Questions do you have

if any? Are these public meetings and are they publicized in advance? No, because it's really it's an internal review meeting. It's sort of like reviewing allowed. So this these changes would not make it subject to the open meetings law. Yeah. Because it's it's no different than sending out a project and asking everybody to comment separately. Except this assembles everybody so the developer can come in and talk about their project a little bit and then we can actually give them feedback on the design itself. these requested by the developers or by staff or right

because before it was like hurting cats you know you would send out a thing and say I need in 30 days I need this stuff back and sometimes we got it and a lot of times we didn't so it's a way to codify it and get it back together now once you've been to technical review once you do not go back your project is either approved or it isn't and you have to make the changes but if it comes down to some sort of engineering sort of tedious this engineering detail. It's literally the engineer on that project talking with staff, engineers, and you don't involve everybody else. We only need to hear from the postmaster once. Only need to hear from DOT once unless there's a road issue that's serious. Um,

yeah. So, these outside agencies, the fire marshall, he does not get very involved until you get around constructions. Environmental health very much needs to be involved because you need soil erosion sedimentation control plans. You need plans for what's being cut down. E911 used to be an address that happened at the end of the process. They now wanted a preliminary plat so that it happens more regularly. and um county historical association very obviously you know sai and he uh goes in and gives us the history of a site or if there's any graveyards or anything that's of importance. So what we did uh in your packet on I guess the second or third page you should see something in there that actually is the actual um text of how it works. And uh there is also consistency statement in your packet. Uh if you're not a technical professional on one of those agencies right there, you're not allowed to participate. This is this is not community input. This is professionals who've looked at the plan. You know, if something catches fire, can you put it out? Is it going to create a attractive nuisance? The police department's going to have to deal with. This is a downtown issue. We need feedback from downtown. Parks and wreck is involved in almost everything because there is a recreational component almost everything. But we've been meeting, like I said, since July 1st of last year. And um some of our legal folks in the community, not our attorney, but other attorneys have said, "Well, where is this in the process? I don't I don't know where this is." So, this is an opportunity to say, "Well, it's right here."

Is this stuff optional or is it mandatory for each? Okay. If you were to say, "I refuse to do that." Are we going to send it to the postmaster, the NC DOT, fire marshall, environmental health, addressing building inspections, and the county historical association? Yeah, we sure are. So there's no way out of it. You either withdraw your project or you subjected to this. This is just sort of a formalized meeting. It's also time for us. It's our it's our times up on the commenting that we're doing. I don't know if Cory's been to any of ours, but we've had quite a few.

I don't typically uh get involved at this this stage, but I hear about it. So this is like a final revision of projects as they're heading into this body or things like site plans are done in house already and final plats are too. So this is your last clearing house before you get approved or you don't get approved and projects can just sort of boomerang back and forth until they're correct. This is one chance to get people together so that you don't have a developer that says, "Hey, I don't have any idea why you don't like my roads. What do you mean this violates the fire code?" Well, I don't mean anything, but the fire marshall has something he'd like to say to you about this. So, the county sets aside uh two hours on every Tuesday to do this task.

All right. any consideration to just giving a standing invitation to the external agencies rather than pick and choose who's going to be at specific meetings. I'm just wondering if it would not be beneficial just to say here's where our meetings and you know if they don't feel that because let's say that we need something from DOT whether you attend or not we need your comments in writing.

If you are the postmaster and you've already told us the kiosk location is okay probably don't want to come and talk about a shopping center that's maybe reconfiguring long as the kiosk isn't moving they don't care. You get an address once. So, um, basically, I mean, for a while there, we were sending out an invitation to everybody, but our conference room. We're trying to, uh, encourage in-person meetings because they're more effective. And it's very hard to make room for 18 to 20 people in a room. It also takes up more than an hour. We try to keep this down to 45 minutes. And if you tell the developer, you're done pitching. I've heard your pitch. I'm not going to buy one of your houses. I just need to know how this relates to our ordinance, which is what the topic is. No, standing invitation I don't think would be nearly as effective. It doesn't feel like the specific people who need to be invited are being invited. Just sort of feels like come if you want to. You'd also be amazed how many times someone like, you know, environmental health may say, "Well, I'm not really feeling that. This is about me." And then you get there and the entire meeting is nothing but soil rows and sedimentation control or nothing but oh I may have left off Tri River which we also have them on there for you know we have to talk about water and sewer that's that's our provider. Well, and that sort of gets to the heart of my issue is that, you know, if the uh inviteee list or required agency list is sent out, somebody that's not included on that,

they can always come over. They can always Okay. All right. As long as that's not preempted by the Okay. The actual ordinance itself simply says that um there's two internal departments that absolutely have to participate along with development services director and planning manager should say planning director uh representatives of town departments involved but then at the request of development services director representatives from other town departments also outside agencies um are allowed in. Oh, and I guess the two words that are hanging me up here is on request. It seemed to me that that was a a requirement

that they be requested by the development services director in order to participate.

Let's say that you're doing a doing a redesign of a place and all the streets are town. It's a town road. This is a town road. Every road around it town would have absolutely no reason to be there and they would find it to be a complete waste of their time. Again, if there is a city street and it also intersects with a DOT road, we'd like to say fire marshall typically does not comment until we get to construction drawings, which means site plan maybe. Uh subdivision never. Um but when you get around to construction drawings, which are done entirely in house, he's got to be there. We have to know about line lays and how much uh pressure for the water and what the suppression level is. Can they really keep it up for two hours? He cuts everything. So, it really depends. He's very short staffed and doesn't have a lot of people. Building inspections rotates their person.

Sometimes someone comes to the county and does more than one function, but always we solicit email. We do actually ask for an email the minute the plan goes out and people know where it is or they find out, you know, through open gov that there's an actual application, then they're expected to respond within 30 days. And Dorian does send out a notification to everybody that they got 30 days to comment. Now, if they want to comment the first day, delightful. Can't wait to hear it.

So, so then let me make be clear or try to. So the intent of this paragraph is to say that the development services director will request relevant. Okay. But that others on this list here may participate. They can if they want to. Okay. All right.

One one one caveat. You're holding up the meeting with jibber jabber that has nothing to do with the germaine points. Then you get told this is for you. you and you yeah we we don't have a lot of people participating. Also these technical review meeting sessions are like an invitation. So if there's six developers or five developers who are on a list who are supposed to be having something and two are scheduled for that day. They don't sit in on each other's meeting because we don't find that to be productive. Now, if you're the if you're the developer like Chattam Park and you have two in the same afternoon, we may start one. We are running way ahead of schedule. Then we may ask the people who are participating, would you like to move into the next item? We we do like a bio break every once in a while, but we do want to uh stay on track, but it doesn't serve any purpose to have complete strangers who have nothing to do with the project should sit in and listen to how your yours is going.

Okay. I mean my only concern was that no one's excluded who feel that they needed input into this. Okay, good. Great. Have any any more questions? All right. Um I'll uh accept a motion to approve text amendment. Recommend approval text amendment ZTA 202502 as submitted. So moved. Move by Alan Wilson. Second. A second. Second by Charity Dalton. All in favor say I. I. I.

I. All right. Abs unanimously. All right. That is the conclusion of the excuse me new business items that we had. Um going to board comment. Does anybody have anything they'd like to like to share with everyone? No. Um, I am excited uh last week that Miss Connie and Miss Charity or sorry, not Charity, but uh Christina uh were both uh nominated for another term. So, I'm excited to serve with you guys. Thank you.

For another term. Um I think that's it. Welcome our new staff, Lauren. Um and uh that's all I've got. Um, with that, take a motion to adjurnn. So, move by motion by Connie, second by Allan. All in favor say I. I. Uh,