Planning and Zoning Meeting - Regular Meeting

All right, well, it's six o'clock. We'll go ahead and call this meeting of the Shirts Planning and Zoning Commission to order. Tonight, I believe we, no, we have Commissioner Grady joining us this evening, and... So glad you're here. Thank you, sir. Moving on to the hearing of residents. We have anybody signed up to speak? Nope. All right. Pushing on. The consent agenda, the minutes for the June 3rd, 2026 meeting. Commissioners, any questions, comments, motions?

Mr. Chairman, I make a motion. We accept the consent agenda as submitted. I second.

Yeah, it was a motion to approve the consent agenda from Commissioner Outlaw, seconded by Commissioner Hughes. If there's no other comments, please vote. I have seven, can we publish that please? That motion carries. All right, moving on. PLVAR-20260154 sign waiver. Consider and act upon a request for a waiver in relation to a wall sign located on Lot 8, Block 12 of the Verde Enterprise Business Park, Unit 10B, approximately 3.5 acres of land located at 17720 Verde Parkway, more specifically known as Guadalupe County Property Identification Number 199145, City Shirts, Texas. Daisy? PLVAR-20260154, a sign waiver.

for a wall sign in the Verde Enterprise Business Park PDD, Daisy Marquez, Senior Planner. So good evening commissioners. This property is located along Verde Parkway with an address of 17720 Verde Parkway. It is an approved extra space storage development. And if you are unfamiliar with our wonderful Verde Enterprise Business Park PDD area, it's this larger area outlined in blue. It's located on the northern side of I-35 and kind of intersects with our Shirts Parkway development and that larger building there is the Amazon development and then behind it is our Enterprise Industrial Park kind of to just show you the the scope of this So why are we here today? If you're familiar with the Verde Enterprise Business Park PDD what we also call the Verde PDD It was adopted in 2007 via ordinance 7 s 14 a and And this PDD specifically states that if the development standards are not listed in the PDD, then it must follow the 1996 UDC that was at that time adopted. So the site design criteria are very restrictive and the site design criteria as well. But now with the amendments done to Article 11, we have this avenue to request a sign waiver with the Planning and Zoning Commission, where prior to having this avenue, all of these sign variances had to be requested to the Board of Adjustment. And kind of just some history, due to the restrictiveness of the Verde PDD, BOA actually granted Verde PDD sign waivers if they met the current Article 11 requirements. And kind of just to show you some of them since 2013, essentially. In blue, you'll see the Verde PDD area outlined in blue. This is all the development within it. And all the stars indicate a wall sign or a multi-tenant sign variance that was granted by the Board of Adjustment back in the day. before P&Z was allowed to essentially grant sign waivers. And all of these sign bearances back in the day, because they went to BOA, essentially met the Article 11 code requirements that any other property within the city of Shirts that wasn't in a PDD had to follow. So again, kind of just showing the rules and regulations between the two. The Verde PDD in 1996, UDC would only allow the applicant one wall sign with the maximum sign area no greater than 15% of the wall space or 80 square feet, whichever was less between the two. But in addition to that, the maximum letter and logo height was defined by their distance from the right of way. So we don't, look at this now when it comes to our current Article 11 but back then essentially the applicant would be restricted to only 12 inches in height in addition to working with whatever wall sign area that they had based on their elevation. Currently with Article 11 they would be allowed three wall signs with the maximum wall sign area depending on the roadway classification which would here be 100 square feet. So significantly more and they wouldn't be restricted in height. So again, just showing you the approved development of the extra space storage. Verde Parkway is up here to the north, planned north. And again, just showing you the total proposed signage of this extra space storage. The red is the wall sign we're discussing today that's pointed towards Verde Parkway. So this is the only wall sign they're proposing. And then in addition to that, they have a monument sign placed in this area or proposing to be placed in this area that's already permitted. They should be starting the work momentarily. But essentially, these are the only two signs that they're proposing in total. And this is a sign that they're proposing. Again, one wall sign. This is the one facing Verde Parkway, 30 inches in height. So again, it exceeds that 12 inches and 83.3 square feet in area. Again, our current UDC would allow them 100 square feet and three wall signs, but they're only proposing one. And then looking to the criteria for approval for the sign waivers, the subject property is within the Verity PDD. If the Verity PDD doesn't list those specific requirements, it must follow the 96 UDC, which again are very restrictive on the number of signs, the height of the signs based on the distance to the frontage, which is very antiquated based on how we look at signs today. Again, they're less than 100 feet from the right of way, so they would only be allowed a sign 12 inches in height. So if you think of a ruler, that's a very small sign for extra space storage. And again, what they're proposing tonight is essentially allowed and actually under what our current sign code would allow. And then when it comes to existing land uses, there's industrial and commercial along the area per this PDD. And again, the Board of Adjustment has granted sign variances in the Verde PDD if they meet the current UDC sign requirements at the time of application. Again, the applicant is meeting the current signed design regulations. So granting this waiver would not be detrimental or injurious to other properties in Verde just because historically BOA had granted these signed waivers if they meet the current Article 11 requirements. Again, what they're proposing meets the current Article 11 requirements, and the applicant is not requesting to have anything more in addition to what would they even be allowed currently in the City of Shirts. They're not asking to be treated special beyond what anyone in the City of Shirts would be allowed. And again, strict interpretation of the Verde PDD and 96 UDC would actually deny the applicant of the rights commonly enjoyed by others in the Verde PDD that have been granted these signed waivers to meet the current signed code. And then again, staff recommends approval of this proposed signed waiver because the applicant is only proposing one total wall sign that exceeds the letter height allowed and signed area within the Verity PDD and 96 UDC requirements, but it meets all the current Article 11 UDC requirements.

Well, thank you, Daisy. This is not an item for, there's not a public hearing, so we'll open it up to Commissioner questions, comments. Anybody? Motions?

I make a motion that we approve the variance for PLVAR20260154, sign waiver 417720, Verde Parkway. I second.

All right, so that was a motion to approve POVAR20260154 by Commissioner Hughes, second by Commissioner Laredo-Reyes. If there's no other comments, please vote. I have seven, can we publish that? Motion carries. All right, moving on. Item 6A, we're going to conduct a public hearing workshop discussion and possible action in relation to implementing new land use category definition and specific use parameter process for data centers. Daisy.

Good evening. Once again, commissioners, a workshop on data centers. Daisy Marquez, senior planner. So per the May 6th, 2026 planning and zoning commission meeting, we had a request to add data centers to the permitted use table and require an SEP. So we thought we'd just do some research and have a bigger discussion on this and provide that essentially avenue for y'all to discuss. So staff conducted some research and looked at essentially what our data centers, what do they look like? What are our target cities doing? So essentially they're defined as a physical facility that houses and runs these larger computer systems, computer servers, data storage devices, and network equipment for processing, storing, and transmitting of information. So think of essentially everywhere that hosts the cloud. Apple doesn't just store it in the air, but you're paying 99 cents for extra storage. so that off-site someone else can process that information and store your pictures for you. But essentially, these two images, the one in the top is the inside of a Google data center. And essentially, all those racks are racks and racks and racks and racks of servers that are within a controlled area. So it uses a lot of electricity, a lot of AC. And then in the bottom, you'll see the outside of a Midlothian data center here in Texas, kind of seeing what they actually look like when they're built. You can see they have more of an industrial feel. You can see all of the accessory equipment that's necessary to actually run these type of things. Back in the day, these were getting really popular because of Bitcoin mining, where you found that imaginary money on the internet, but you needed essentially computers to look for that for you on the internet. Now this is becoming a discussion. It's becoming popular again because of artificial intelligence. It requires a lot of processing and machine learning. So these data centers are becoming really popular since there's this AI boom. Currently in our UDC, there's no Article 16 definition for data center. And we would currently classify it under the warehouse definition land use. We also did some further research investigating on what the American Planning Association had on data centers essentially and what zoning practices they had out there, what best practices. So essentially some of the biggest concerns or things that could be regulated or looked at when it comes to data centers is electricity use and water use. You are Running computers, the computer systems have to be cooled, so you have that heat waste from the computers constantly running, but they also use water for cooling. Water is the cheapest way for them to cool these machines. There are alternatives, but essentially, how do you enforce these alternative methods? methods if water is the cheapest. Also noise production, so not necessarily for what's inside because inside they do have a lot of interior noise reduction measures. It's that exterior noise pollution from the accessory structures, so like the AC compressors that can cross property lines depending on what it's adjacent to. Also just enhanced safety and security needs. It houses very expensive equipment, tons of it. But also some concerns are low employment destinies. From this article we found that it says that there's far fewer workers per square foot than professional officers or light industrial uses in data centers. So they might say we have 60 jobs, but in reality there's two guys that come in and make sure nothing's blowing up during the day. And essentially, this only really provided guidance on what's minimizing or mitigating potential adverse impacts and what those concerns can be. And again, we always look at our target cities. We wanted to see how they define them, if they even define them. So Temple does allow data centers in light and heavy industrial zoning in some commercial based on their square footage. So they have less than 10,000 square feet and greater than 10,000 square feet. So essentially think in M1, M2, they would be permitted by right. But then you start thinking, okay, is this permitted by right in GB2? Are we going to permit this by right in GB? Those are You know, just some things to consider. The city of McKinney defines it as a land use in their definitions. It does require a specific use permit in their regional commercial, but it is permitted by right in their office, regional office, light industrial, heavy industrial, and government complex, but there's no specific site design regulations when it comes to that. The city of Frisco just defines it as a non-residential use, and it's permitted by right in industrial zoning districts, but it does require an SEP in commercial zoning districts. And then the city of Seguin, we had some of our planners reach out to them, and they just said that UDC amendments to require an SEP in industrial districts is being worked on. So nothing's implemented yet, but they're working on their own UDC amendments. And then just looking at definitions, depending on what city you go to and what UDC you're looking at, it really depends on how broad or how defined their definition is. So if you look at the city of McKinney, they really encompass everything that can really happen within there. Because again, these data centers can be, for example, only one company or they can be shared between companies. So it can be a thing where essentially there's multi-tenants within this data center that share the servers. They're sharing the facilities, but essentially one larger one is at least hitting it out to them. So think of, okay, Amazon is building this giant facility, they're putting the money in it, but Microsoft is gonna use some of that capacity for themselves, and gaming institutions are gonna use that capacity for themselves. So it really depends. And then whereas Frisco just says it's a building or group of buildings used for housing computers, related equipment, et cetera. Whereas Temple breaks it down by square footage and essentially what employees are actually there or not. So some things that can be done are essentially some amendments or potential avenues for amendments. I was looking at Article 5, our permitted use table, is essentially adding a definition to data center. Either in Article 16 definitions, we can expand to office warehouse if you'd like. You can add a new definition of data center. We would just request essentially guidance on whatever direction you would like to go. But essentially, if you want to add it to the permitted use table, we would want to know essentially what zoning districts you would want in it if you want it to be permitted by right, if an SEP would be required, and essentially justification so that an amendment comes through, then we can take it to city council and provide explanation. Another option is that we have this Article 8, which is special uses in general regulations. Usually we don't spend a lot of time in there, but an example is Section 2186 for telecommunications antennas. It has its own permitted use table, essentially, where it says if it's this so many feet within residential, if it's a residential use, if it's an industrial use, an SEP is required or it's permitted by right, depending on height as well. But essentially, if someone wants to come in with a telecommunication antenna and it requires an SUP, they have to provide site plans that meet all our current UDC requirements. It's explicitly written in the code. They have to provide elevations. They have to provide studies that this telecommunication antenna is required in this area because no other telecommunication antenna can provide a service that they need. They have to demonstrate that there's so many feet from this other antenna or co-location site and there's a valid justification and valid studies that are prepared by engineers that demonstrate that it can't be done or this is absolutely necessary. But it's more than just meets and bounds, a letter of intent, a TIA summary like we would usually see. So essentially, those are the two directions. Again, this is a public hearing and discussion so it needs to be opened up for a public hearing. but for the discussion, it's more of what direction would P&Z like to move forward in, and please provide us as much guidance as possible when it comes to the discussion.

Thank you, Daisy. Well, like she said, it is a public hearing. It is 6-18 on the dot. Go ahead and open it up. Anybody? No? Were you here for a specific item? No? Just hanging out? Okay. Okay. Well, it's still 618. We'll go ahead and close the public hearing. So if I could start the ball rolling. Daisy, when y'all were doing the process, I know when I first started talking about this, it was probably April. And so this was pre the San Marcos ban. Is that something that y'all considered at all in this?

Chairman Wallace, I don't know how we would ban a use without getting sued, to be quite honest. Yeah.

Okay. And that was going to be my... Because I think I had the same thought in terms of when they did it. I didn't get specifically into how they actually went about doing it. But that thought was... Is that something we can do? Or is that more of a...

I would treat it the same as...

Is it something that's kind of pending? I know.

So I would say that we have not consulted our legal team on how far we could take this. We wanted to come tonight, see what the pending zoning commission direction was, and then go back and talk to legal on what mechanism we have. So we have not consulted legal on if we could just outright ban.

Okay. So with that in mind, I think in my original thought process was to put this as a specific use in our most intense industrial district. So into, with, and then I do like, can you go back to the antenna slide? I do like that thought process of, in addition to that SUP, you have to provide all this additional documentation. And I know there's a couple Hill Country counties who have started to do this in terms of you have to provide water studies, environmental studies, impact to... you know, your actual community. Because frankly, just being opinionated for a second, I don't think these have a place in our community period. I think looking at the existing conditions with a lot of these facilities and the way they're built, if you go, there's actually a really great example of one being built on the kind of southwest side of San Antonio where it has, I believe they have 14 to 16 large facilities natural gas generators, backup generators, built across the street from a residential community. And this is out in the ETJ, so there really isn't a, in terms of land use opportunities, but this is the reality in a lot of cities where you have these large high consumption uses that you then have to, if you're allowing it, you then have to allow the corresponding infrastructure, which in recent, I mean, unless things are going to change, has been diesel or natural gas generators. And the noise and the pollution and just all the negatives, I've not seen a single positive associated with these uses. So my goal in this, frankly, is to make it as difficult as possible, difficult as legally possible, to put these facilities in Shirts, Texas. I'm sure the state legislation would like it. At this point in time, I don't know their opinion, but I'm sure it would be, oh, you can't outright ban it. But if putting an SUP and M2 with additional supporting documents required, that would make it would make the development harder to occur here than other places, I think would be the direction to take. So I'll go ahead and open it up to others. I know Commissioner Hughes, you wanted to.

Yes, some other things to consider, Daisy. Each one of these facilities now requires a substation. So we're gonna have to put a power substation right beside that. Again, that's gonna generate more problems, more pollution. So it needs to be very specific because I believe that's a federal requirement is they have to have a substation attached to it. So now we deal with more issues with the substation being built, coordinating that with the, whether it's CPS or GVC. Secondly, it's the light pollution too. Those things are bright light all the time for security reasons. So not only do you have the noise, but you also have the light effect and everything else. So considering Randolph, we need to be real concerned of, we don't want them to be put any place where it can mess up. randolph's landing zone and land at randolph's pathway um there's a lot of water usage a ton of it um if they go off of if they go in our water how much is that going to impact the citizens um that's something we need to look at as far as our concern i don't think they belong here we have enough warehouse and enough light industrial that i think support and with the new developments that are showing in commercial that's going to impact the quality of life for the citizens but I would look into the substations requirement for electrical and see if they require a substation, because that's gonna put it into heavy industrial at that point, and that may be a consideration where it's not only this antenna, but also even greater because of that usage. And then you have to deal with the water, how are they gonna contain it, even though when they first put that water in to cool the systems, is there potentiality of that leaking, and how does that affect groundwater, and how does it affect ground surfaces, And is there contaminant levels? So I think a heavy industrial should be more of our ploy. I don't think they fit with us. I mean, slowly but surely we're growing out. One day we won't have any more green space except for a few parks, but that's going to be years down the road. But in the time being, having a data center, I mean, it's one of those things where solar was big for a while, wind was big for a while, and data centers are big for a while. If Data centers go out for whatever reason. Are they changed to a different platform? And we have this monolithic building with all this material. And what do we do with it? Say if it's a Google, Microsoft, Amazon, they sit there and go, oh, we can now do it smaller. And we don't need this massive building anymore. So now we have a building that we can't get rid of. There's a lot of considerations, but I would definitely look at the heavy industrials. and look at the requirements on the substations, because if they're requiring a substation, that may take it from a light industrial to a heavy industrial impact.

Commissioner Awa.

Well, I think the direction, my personal opinion that we should take M2 is our, that's really the biggest industrial we've got, right? M2 with an SUP. Now, starting there, number one, as a Texas resident, I can't tell you how disappointed I am in ERCOT. that, you know, we all remember it was what, four years ago when we had the rolling blackouts and they turned my power off and when they went to turn it back on, it didn't come back on. And I went without electricity for 11 hours. And yet ERCOT, And our friends in Austin sit there and say, oh, no, we don't have any problems, when, in fact, from what I see, they can't even provide enough electricity for current users, let alone these big data centers. So I'm really disappointed. And if you have any doubt as to how it's going to go in Austin, I don't. OK? And I think if we don't do something now, that after the next legislative session, we won't be allowed to do anything. I did want to comment that, Commissioner Hughes, you mentioned Amazon. You're talking about the big one up off of?

AWS. AWS is their data center ports.

Oh, okay.

So it's not the same thing.

Because I was just going to tell you, their big distribution center, the original plans had that building is designed so that the day Amazon leaves, they can subdivide it. They already have loading. I mean, the building is designed to be a multi-tenant.

Yeah, that's a multi-tenant, but for this specific, for AWS, it's data center built, so it looks like a small barn with an electronic quarter.

But I did want to comment that... Excuse me. Um... You know, if we try to, you know, even if we make this an SUP, if somebody were to come and jump through all the hoops and meet all the requirements, we can't just say no, okay? I mean, that'll land the city in court faster than, you know, ice will melt in mid-August, right? But I did want to ask about, see, things have changed a lot. And I'm afraid because we used to have, and I, you know, having been out of the business for a while now, don't know if they're still there. But I'm pretty sure Verizon, their switch station is still there. Sprint across the street, I think, is still there. And then we had at least one, if not two, data centers built. And they were buildings that were, their whole purpose was to house computer equipment. And they would do offsite processing for other customers, banks and people like that. And then you can think about rack space that used to be in Windcrest there in the old Windsor Park Mall. Windsor Park? Windcrest. I don't remember what it's called. But that was their job. They were a data hosting, and yet it looked like just any other building. And so my concern is that if we cast too broad a net Pardon me. I mean the ones we're seeing that are making the news are the big ones with the noisy cooling stations and the generators and the high water use and the high electrical use. And yet right here in the city, I'm going to assume they're still there. We already have maybe four of what I call data centers. And I'm afraid if we cast too broad a net, because the ones you really want to watch out for are these Bitcoin mining and the AI places, because those are the big, those are the ones you see in the pictures with all the electrical infrastructure and the cooling systems and that kind of stuff that If we make this too broad a definition, then we're going to catch things like Verizon and Sprint. And I wish I could remember what these other two data centers were called. And one of my wife, right after we moved here, a couple years, so it was probably 90, 91, my wife went to work for Citicorp. And they were building a big data center over on research on the far west side of San Antonio, Bexar County. And again, that place was a data center. But my recollection of there, they had a couple of big backup diesel generators that sat in a separate little house. I don't remember how they cooled it. But in my mind, I see a difference between a rack space and a Bitcoin miner or a Google AI facility. And so again, I don't know if those two computer places are still there. I know Verizon and Sprint are. would we then, if we do this, would we be creating non-conforming use conditions, say? So I guess what I want to try and avoid, I think we need to do something, okay? But I think that I'd like to see us be a little more surgical as to what we scoop up in this, and I don't know, maybe we can do that with square footage or water use or find some way to make sure that, oh, I'm sorry. I think you understand where I'm going with this, okay? So that would be my only concern. I do agree that I think we need to do something, but I just think we need to be careful about how we go about it. Thank you.

Glenn, we could always look at it with the addition of the substation. If they are requiring a substation, which is required for these large data centers now, that's actually a federal policy, is if they require that substation that we're going to have to plant, then that could be one of the tip-off points of this is what we don't want. Because you have the secondary substation in there now, We've drawn a lot of power, whether it's on CPS side or GVC side. And ERCOT shut down that Amarillo coal mine years ago, coal plant years ago, that caused half the problems we have. So looking at it from this, the power point of view, if they pop a substation, we know it's going to be massive. We know there's going to be a draw. They're required to put that in now. And so you'll see them all have a substation next to it. And at that point in time, that could be a special consideration of that you have a small Verizon that basically runs off normal power and a small 100 gallon generator instead of a substation and a 5,000 gallons worth of diesel that are gonna be going off every single day. So that could be one way we utilize it. And we could also cap the water usage. We need to look at how much is Verizon using for water usage. And then we could cap that water usage like anything above X amount requires special consideration.

Maybe we could look for some kind of category. You know, have one, two, or three different categories. You know, I don't want to make things too complicated. But yeah, that's the kind of thing, David, that we might look at when we're... Because what they're doing now is they've built in San Antonio in several locations.

Several homeowners are extremely unhappy. I'm pretty sure the city of San Antonio just doesn't even answer the calls anymore. So they're going out areas where there's even one proposed somewhere between New Braunfels and San Marcos in kind of a no man's land area to avoid the financial costs from the homeowners. Microsoft is paying, I think, one homeowner, because of lack of enjoyment of their pool, they're still paying them, I think, 10 years later, $2,000 a month because they can't swim when they want to because of the noise from the data center. And they're paying that check, which is great. I mean, $2,000 a month, hey, pay a mortgage, awesome, thank you, but I still have to deal with the screaming lights. It's one of those things we need to be very careful how we're doing this, and that's why you see a lot of data centers that are moving further and further out where there's less restriction. So you see in a lot of incorporated areas.

And shirts, you know, when Verizon and Sprint and those other two that I talk about, I believe there's a huge fiber optic backbone that runs right up 35. And it made shirts a good location. I don't know if there's any 35 frontage that would be

And we also need to keep in mind, too, the Air Force Base. If we can't put anything on Shirt South for a data center, those lights are going off so bad that they're beacons. If you've seen one at night when they're fully operational, you can spot them for miles. You can spot them in fog. They do that for security reasons, and that's well within their rights to secure the building with having as much light on there as possible. but with the flight pass from Randolph and the restrictions for that, we had to be careful on building homes, so we definitely need to be careful on building a data center.

So real quick to rein it in. I know Commissioner Auella has listed four centers. He said for sure two are still functioning. Do we know about those? And would we classify it as a data center, or is this more of like a switching station like what he's saying?

The only one that I have directly been involved with is the Verizon on Tri County. They did an expansion, a small expansion, two, three years ago. From the outside, you would think it's just any other office warehouse on Tri County Parkway. In the current code, they're classified as office warehouse. That is what they would be classified as. We don't have a set definition, so that's kind of where we can go with this, whether it's the square footage or some of the points that Commissioner Hughes mentioned. We can look at that and maybe create two different categories.

So let's say we didn't do that and we just had one. I mean, they'd be continued to allow to operate until they wanted to make changes before they would need to come back and get an SUP.

That's correct. They would be considered non-conforming, subject to Article 7. They can continue to operate. It's just if they wanted to expand, then they would have to come and try to get an SUP.

And so, not to say I think that would be the best route, but versus getting into the nitty-gritty of size requirements and, well, if you need a substation, if you need this, I would look at it in the lens of, let's say we have four. I would be open to the four coming back and saying, hey, we've been here a while, we'd like to continue operating, and we consider those SUPs.

So the only thing I would say is I believe all of the properties that Commissioner Outlaw is mentioning are all zoned M1. And I don't know that we would necessarily support a rezone to M2 just so they could get the SUP.

Okay.

So that complicates it.

Yeah. I mean, so. Yeah, so yeah, I guess having a definition for a smaller center that could focus more, and I know, can you go back to the definitions from a couple of different cities? I know McKinney's is a big word vomit, but maybe getting into something that doesn't necessarily get into the that's maybe something more specifically targeted to what they're doing specifically. I think I could argue that a telecom center is different than a data storage facility, and maybe we could base it on that, but I think the issue with getting into size is then they're locked into a size. We're going, based off the size they are right now, I mean, how big are these facilities? Just kind of like a, do we know? That's okay. That's okay. You know, I don't inherently want to lock them into a size type of thing, but I think if you're starting to get bigger and bigger and bigger, you're potentially starting to push into these other issues. Like if we're bringing up the fact that all these things have generators. Well, if the Verizon Center now needs three generators to keep their facility running, then it's defeating the purpose of what we're trying to do. You know, I It's definitely something that I think we should consider with the four that are existing, like the hypothetical four that are existing, but my preferred way of seeing it would be to have a non-conforming use or having a situation where we can work with those specifically versus create multiple different layers to the onion of,

I can see where you're coming from. I do think the struggle is, and I can maybe pull up the Verizon, maybe that would help. Yeah, let's do that. For the conversation. I think unless you're willing to open up the SUP in M1, which I'm not sure that that's what you're looking to do, I truly don't think that the property that we're talking about would be supported as an M2. Okay. So they'd never be able to even come in and request that SUP. This one. Just a second, let me. Yeah, the additional parking that they did.

Yeah, that's it there. You see the shadow of the tower.

So, I mean, would it be more beneficial to create a definition for like a telecom facility? And maybe put that, I mean, while we're doing this, you know, I'm just trying to think of what is a way that, because I agree, I don't think M2 would be appropriate. I don't necessarily want to break everything down by size, because then you're either locking them into a size requirement, or you're you know, or creating a condition where we just have all these little micro centers that meet the, oh, we're a small data center.

But I think if the concern is the extra power and the extra water, right, that A small center like this is probably never going to be able to warrant having that extra substation. And I think you can see on the site here, when they came in and did the expansion and the additional parking, they're pretty much capped. There's really no more room for them to expand.

Okay. Okay. Anybody else?

Well, I... I don't necessarily disagree with you, but, um, you know, we keep trying these one size fits all things and they don't work. And, um, you know, you can see from this example that this one fits right in with, with everything else that's up there. Um, so, And I wish I could remember where the, the other ones are somewhere up there. Um, and honestly, I don't remember where they are. I remember being, um, scared to death of their fire suppression systems. And so when it came time to test them and certify them, we just stood back and let a contractor do it. Yeah. But, um, I did want to say the other thing we've got going on right now is you see these facilities are in industrial parks to where the only people there may be disturbing are their industrial park neighbors. They're not keeping residents awake and bothering people in the community pool. But Again, I think, you know, I've given you some ideas and Chairman Wallace has given you some ideas and Commissioner Hughes has given you some ideas. And, you know, I haven't heard anything from left field over here, but... You know, you guys can just slap me if I talk too much. Okay. You know, you guys take this back and mull it over with yourselves. Talk to E.D. Talk to Brian. And get some input. Maybe talk to, I don't know if the chamber would really be interested in having any input or not. But...

Commissioner Hector?

Thank you. So has there been any data that you all have or looked into regarding the impact to the residents within the community, like utility costs going up?

So typically when it comes to utilities during the site plan process, they would have to provide us essentially confirmation that the utilities can service them. So if they run into any issues with getting utility service from utility providers, it would be during the site plan process. So that discussion happens with the utility providers, but us conducting our own research and looking at that. No, sir.

Oh, okay. So I think there's something else to consider, you know, what's going to be the net negative to the residents within the community.

It's a very new type of use. It's a very hot topic right now. There isn't much of essentially data for these data centers. All we could really find was the APA zoning discussion paper that we found when it comes to planning related issues. like zoning discussions revolving data centers.

Okay, I'll have to look it up. So Loudoun County, Virginia, right outside of Dulles Airport, one of the most affluent counties in the state of Virginia, it's become a major issue there amongst their residents. for things like utility costs, other environmental impacts to the community that's impacted the residents and the quality of life of that community. So I bear to say that there are probably some things out there. I just know that one from spending a lot of time in that area and it was, It was a huge deal. It was a lot of land out there, and I think the developers got in first, built a lot of houses, and then the data centers came. So, I mean, you had people building, you know, had just built million-dollar homes that were looking to get out of them and couldn't move them. because of that. So I just think that there's some impacts to the community and that would be my concern. You know, I am, you know, I know we live in a capitalistic society, a free enterprise society and, uh, yeah. And, and they need those things in order to support their business. But, uh, just some very leery at that coming at the cost of the residents of this community. Thank you.

Commissioner Loretta Reyes.

Are there any current applications or discussions about wanting any areas turned into data centers? Currently, right now, no, ma'am. Would we know? I mean, like, discussions of it, probably not?

Probably not, ma'am. Okay. If they come in for a pre-development meeting, it would be more based on site design requirements and development process utilities, and that's where we can be like, you need to reach out to the utility providers to see if there's utilities available to you, if, you know, they can provide that level of service that you need.

Okay. And so they couldn't just... request or say they're going to do a warehouse, we would have to know what they're putting inside the warehouse currently.

We wouldn't know until the building permitting phase, because that's when they start showing the layout of the interior of the building. So essentially if they're proposing a use that's allowed within the zoning district, we allow it. So that's why we're saying now, right now we consider it office warehouse. If utilities are available to them and they're able to meet all of the requirements, then they can operate within that zoning district, within those parameters.

Okay. Okay.

Okay. Would it be easier just to piggyback off that to add, like the Verizon uses to the definition of office warehouse? Or would you, you know, I'll put that in the thing. Maybe we do either or.

Well, like Commissioner Outlaw said, we can look back at the ones that are existing that he referenced, do some more research on that. look further into what Commissioner Hector was saying in Virginia and come back and provide y'all with that information at a later date.

Yeah, do you need all that as a motion?

No.

Okay. So just for the things I would like to see with it, creating that definition for a small center or updating our office warehouse definition, and then a definition for large center, similar to, I think it was Temple that had, so based on the size, a substation requirements, employees, energy consumption, adding the large center use to M2 as an SUP, And if we move forward with small center, add that to M1 as an SUP. And then look at adding requirements to Article 8. So with this, having tied to an environmental impact study, a water quality or consumption study, a JBSA slash lighting study, and then potential buffers related to water quality environmental impact tied to the approval of the SVP. Okay, anybody else?

I'm sure he's also just kind of look up and see, I think they're restricted from the recharge zone just because of the water. If you want to verify if they are just because of, because they are, because Edwards is so sensitive that they may be outlawed from there. And if we look at that, that may, how is that going to disturb us? One thing to consider for that also. But what I was thinking is that if someone's putting in and we may not know about it, but I'm pretty sure it's going to give us a big tip off if they also come in and say, oh, we want an electrical substation, but we're not going to tell you what's in our building. It's kind of like, oh, you put an electrical substation up, we kind of know where you guys are going with this. So it may be helpful for us because you're going to have to draw that plan for the substation also because it's a private build substation.

Thank you, sir. Commissioner Outlaw?

Well, really quickly, I just want to make sure that when you go back and you start brainstorming this thing, that you consider all of the comments you heard tonight and see how you can smoosh those together and come up with something. Thank you.

All right. Anybody else? No? Well, if there's no other action, we will move on. to our sign workshop. Conduct a public hearing workshop discussion and possible action in relation to Article 11 signs and advertising devices. Emily.

So excited to talk about signs with y'all again. So this is a workshop about signs, Article 11, Emily Delgado, Planning Manager. So some background, Ordinance 25S-024 was approved by City Council on June 17, 2025. And that was that full rewrite of Article 11, which is signs and advertising devices. And then in May, Commissioner Outlaw requested a workshop on signs. It's taken us a little bit to get here. And then at the last meeting in June, Commissioner Outlaw kind of gave two points that he specifically wanted to talk about. So I want to make sure we hit those tonight and talk about the rest of Article 11 as well. So that one was unique considerations for larger scale development projects with tenants that are interior to the development. And then the second one was discussion on how the sign area is calculated. So if you'll bear with me, I'm going to give kind of a spiel. going to talk about what our code currently has and then I have some target city research that I did to show you how they're looking at these signs and then we can do public hearing and then we'll do discussion.

Cool.

So starting off with wall signs as you remember back when we did the article 11 rewrite the kind of main purpose of that rewrite was one to make the code more clear because our sign section was confusing for applicants, property owners, for staff interpreting it, make it more clear, make it a little more flexible for property owners and to increase signage kind of across the board. So with that, wall signs are now classified based off of the roadway classification. That is actually how the old code was, but the old code had it as limited access, unlimited access, and even being a staff member, every time I reviewed a sign, I had to go look at the definitions to figure out and remember which one was limited, which one was unlimited. So imagine being the property owner trying to figure that out. Now it's interstates and farm to market roads, and then all other. You basically know if you're on an FM roadway or the interstate. A little easier for you to figure out which sign requirements apply to you. So if you're on 10 or 35 or on one of the FM roads you have a max area per facade of 250 square feet. If you're on any other road it's 100 square feet and then the max number of facades it's the same for three per building or tenant. And then we have some caveats that if your building is over 100,000 square feet you get an additional 100 square feet so if it's a really big building you get a little more signage. And then we also have some requirements that, or some additional items that if you're on Main Street with a facade facing the railroad, you're allowed an additional 250 square feet of signage facing FM 78. For freestanding ground signs, so the previous Article 11, didn't have just one category of freestanding. There was freestanding ground signs which people typically think of like a pole sign. You got the pole on the ground and the sign up top. And then we also had different requirements for monument signs that have, you know, the more rock base, things like that. was really confusing for folks as well. So in the rewrite we combined them all and said everything is a free standing sign. If you're not a wall sign, you're a free standing ground sign or a free standing sign. Which is what you see here. We did break it down a little further so there's interstates, farm to market roads and then all other. And as you can see kind of as the roadway classification gets a little more intense, the sign gets a little taller, So interstates, 250 square feet in area, 50 feet in height, and you can only have one per lot frontage. Farm to market, 250 again, but shorter, 35 feet, and again, only the one. And then everything else, it's 150 and 20. And then we have temporary signs, which was really the hot button back then, feather flags, inflatables. I know you all really enjoyed all of those conversations. Haven't really gotten a whole lot of questions about the new temporary signs, but I wanted to point that out, that this is really the other big category of signage that we have in Article 11 now. And then the other thing that happened with Article 11, the rewrite, was 21-11-15 waivers, which you all are very intimately familiar with now. Waivers, if anybody previously to Article 11, the rewrite, wanted to deviate from the sign code, they went to the Board of Adjustment and were heard as variances, which had the legal hardship requirement, meaning that it was much harder to meet those legal hardship requirements per state law and get that variance approved. So we saw the need that there are times that there's unique situations that there needs to be some ability to deviate from the code. And that's where kind of the waiver section was born. And that does go to planning and zoning. And then if somebody does appeal a waiver decision by planning and zoning, it does go to city council for final action. And that was the other thing with variances with Board of Adjustment. If somebody wanted to appeal that variance decision, it actually goes to district court. So a little different. So one of the things that Commissioner Outlaw specifically wanted to talk about was how we calculate area. So this is the definitions, and then I have some examples on the next slide that we'll go through. But the height of sign, that one's pretty easy. Everybody seems to understand it's from the ground to the top of the sign, right? That's the height. It's the area that sometimes we get those questions on. So we have two definitions. There's one in 11 and one in 16. So the one in the 11 says the maximum effective sign area shall be the total square footage of a single face specified for each type of sign within this article. Then the one in 16 says the area of any sign shall be the sum of the area enclosed by the minimum imaginary rectangles, triangles, or circles which fully contain all extremities of the sign including the frame, all words, numbers, figures, devices, designs, or trademarks by which anything is made known but excluding any supports. To compute the allowable square footage of the sign, only one side of a double-faced sign shall be considered. So how that actually happens in practice when we're reviewing sign permits, So I will say we currently utilize a software that we can, we don't have to rely just on the measurements that they give us. We can calculate the square footage. We utilize Bluebeam to get down to the minute square footage of area. So when you see this sign here, Hopefully you can see the green line. That is how we calculate the area of the sign. So we're not just drawing a big rectangle from top to the bottom. We're not going to count any of the dead space against the applicant. We're going to draw exactly around where the sign is. So this sign was proposed and was permitted on an all other roadway classification. So that's a max height of 20 with a max area of 150, which is what you can see here they capped out, it's a 20 foot sign, 150 square feet in area. The one in the middle I think is the exact what you picture in your mind, that's a pole sign. That is on a farm to market road, specifically FM 3009, which has a maximum height of 35 feet and a max area of 250 square feet. Now this one, we do not count the pole as that is the support structure. We would only count the sign piece up here. So now you're probably wondering why we counted this. On a sign like this, I got some education from our building inspections. What you're seeing here is veneer. That veneer is not actually supporting any piece of that sign. It is there for decoration. It's there to make the sign look pretty. And there's actually poles inside of that veneer case that are the actual support structure. So we would classify that as part of the sign and would count as part of that square footage. So same thing here. This was a sign on 35, max height of 50, and a max area of 250 square feet. You'll see that the sign that was permitted, it's only 25 feet tall. So they opted for a shorter sign so they could get a little wider sign. Because if you go the full 50 feet on this type of sign, it gets really narrow trying to stay under that 250. And again, this is the same way. These down here, veneer, it's not actually supporting the structure, it's not supporting the sign, it's decorative. So then going into Target City research, I looked at Georgetown, Cibolo, McKinney, and New Braunfels, just kind of picked a couple so we had some point of reference. So the first one, Georgetown, The first piece that I wanted to include was this master sign plan concept that Georgetown has. I think that goes kind of towards the conversation about a larger development. We want to advertise the interior tenant. So Georgetown has a master sign plan. that's required for all multi-tenant buildings and PUDs and all other multi-building, multi-occupant commercial developments. And in looking at their code, that master sign plan is established at the beginning of that project. So right from the beginning, say during the PUD process there or like the PDD process here, if we implemented something like that, we would know from the beginning where those signs would be, how large they would be, all of that. Variances for signs in Georgetown, they are heard by their Board of Adjustment. They're considered special exceptions. And then the sign dimensional standards, so they have a full table that outlines the sign area and height maximum along with setbacks. They don't just base it on roadway classification. They base it on roadway classification and zoning, so it does get a little more complicated. You gotta figure out, okay, I'm this zoning, but I'm also on this roadway, so that means I'm this. It's a little more challenging. So point of reference, all properties along IH 35 in Georgetown, they can have a pole sign maximum area of 225 and a max height of 28 feet. Monument signs are the same, 225 square feet, 28 feet in height. So you'll see shirts, we don't do that breakdown, right? They're all the same. But we would allow 250 square feet, so just a little larger, but we would allow a 50-foot tall sign where they would only allow a 28. And looking at how they come... compute and calculate their area, they also, as you can see here, say shall be inclusive of the sign base and sign cabinet, so they also include that in their area calculation like we do. And then height, same thing, from the base, from the ground to the top of the sign. And then looking at Cibolo, in terms of area, they have their sign code, is fairly extensive, fairly complicated in terms of how much you have to read to try to find the substance to it. So you'll see area, the entire sign surface within a single contiguous perimeter excluding support structure. So they do do it a little different than us in terms of it's not as clear on if it's like that veneer like I showed you if that would be calculated in or not. It does say that they don't count that support structure. And then they have two different height requirements. They have a height ground clearance and a height maximum. So the height ground clearance is the distance from the ground level to the bottom of the sign structure. And that can be a certain height. And then they have the overall maximum height of the sign. So when we look at that, this is a table out of their code. you can see for signs on 35 or 10 that are in the city of Cibolo. If it was a monument sign, if it's a single tenant building, monument sign, they can have 80 square feet of a monument sign. If it's a complex where there's multi-tenant buildings they can have 90 square feet and then that monument height 12 feet 13 feet so again significantly smaller than shirts and you can see that kind of across the board the 78 requirements and then all the other streets as well they have like Georgetown had a sign you know, kind of a master plan, they have what they call a sign program. And it's, as you can see, it's typically needed when a large scale development such as a commercial subdivision with multiple retailers is built and requires multiple signs for the buildings or businesses within the development. A sign program is necessary to adequately identify the development in a form so as to provide a good visual environment. So if we were going to try to apply something like this here, right, shirt station, they would need a sign program if we had something like this in our code. The thing that I want to highlight is that in Cibolo's code it says signs proposed under the comprehensive sign program shall be no larger than a maximum of 50% of the standards of the sign regulations unless the applicant can demonstrate a site specific consideration. So you have this sign program but you're actually further restricted on how many signs you can have unless the applicant can justify going above 50% of what would be allowable. And then in Cibolo, if you want to appeal or get any deviations to their sign code, it's a variance. It's heard by the Planning and Zoning Commission for a recommendation, and then it goes to City Council. Okay, McKinney, we're almost there. There's McKinney and New Braunfels, okay? Stay with me. McKinney, the sign effective area, it's the area enclosed by drawing one or more rectangles. So similar to us, we're drawing those imaginary rectangles that fully contain all extremities of the sign. drawn to sale exclusive of its supports. And then in McKinney, they have what they call detached signs and a really helpful kind of diagram. I do like this. It makes it really easy to see what's permitted. So in McKinney, if you're on the freeway, you can have 150 square foot sign, 35 feet in height. Again, just calling back to ours, we'd allow 250 and 50 feet. And then you can see as the roadway right-of-way width gets smaller, the sign gets smaller. their variances are heard by, they have a sign board, specific board that hears variances to their code and then if it's content based it goes to city council. Okay, New Braunfels, their regulations are based on zoning designations and roadway classifications similar to Georgetown so again it makes it a little more complicated, you've got to kind of piece together which ones apply. properties along 35 have a pole sign maximum of 400 square feet so larger almost you know twice as large as we would allow but a max height of 40 so a little shorter and then in commercial districts monument signs 48 square feet in height max height of 10 feet so shorter monument signs And then when they're looking at area in New Braunfels, it's the area of a sign shall be computed as the entire advertising area of the sign, including any framing or trim contained with the respective sign cabinet. And then their variances are heard by the board adjustment. With that, public hearing, and we can talk about it.

Thank you, Emily. Well, it is a public hearing, so we'll go ahead and open it up. It is 7.09. Going once, twice, all right. Public hearing is closed at 7.09. I'll let Commissioner Outlaw start, since you requested it.

All right, thank you. Can you go back to your, where you had the three different kinds, where you had the, okay, yeah, right there. I don't know if anyone's seen the poll sign that's up now in the new retail center on 3009, okay? I'm sure it meets all the requirements, but ugly, okay? Whereas if you remember, I think the reason we approved the variance for sure station, was because the actual advertising part of the sign was less than 250 square feet. So what I see here between sign one and sign two is that we penalize developers and builders for giving us nice looking signs. And so one of my inputs to Emily was, well, maybe we look at, when we talk about how we calculate sign area, maybe we don't include, like on sign one here, we would not include that mason area, even if it's just a veneer. Maybe we wouldn't include that. We just... shoot an x-ray through it and say, oh, that's a pole sign, okay? And only count the top part. Because I certainly don't want us to get too complex with the sign ordinance. But one of my major thoughts was maybe we don't calculate Well, in some cases, like both signs one and two here, the frame is inconsequential. In other words, it's just like a picture frame. Whereas you look at the one that we approved the waiver for search station, they had a fairly wide frame down the left side that said, Or was it shirts across the top and station? I don't remember. So they had a fairly wide frame. Yeah, okay. That's probably the first one that came in.

This is the shirt station sign that is actively up on 35 right now. So this right here says shirt station.

Yes. And so you can see... their frame takes up a lot more of their available 250 square feet than either of the other two. So, one of my thoughts was that we don't count the frame. We don't count the pole, so why should we count if they decide to put it on a nice masonry platform? base, why should we count that base as part of their 250 square feet? That was thought one. And the other thing I thought was, again, and I'll use the new retail center up here on 3009, there by Forest Ridge. Everything, everything in that, facility faces 3009. So every one of those tenants is gonna have their own sign on the front of the building visible from 3009. And yet they still put up this humongous, I assume it's only 35, that it meant all your requirements. But then you look at something like Church Station where you have interior buildings Yeah, they get to put signs on their buildings, but who sees them until you take the interior driveways? So at first, I thought of maybe coming up with a different category for those developments that have interior buildings. number one, that complicates things, and number two, I'm not sure we really need to go there if we can give them adequate signage up front where people will see it and say, well, gee, I know there's a, you know, triple B barbecue in here somewhere, you know, because I see it on the sign. So I think at this point, I would maybe like us to consider how we calculate that sign area and potentially not include the frame and not include the supports, whether it's a pole. Because in my mind, if you're going to include this masonry one, then by golly, you should include the pole, even though it's going to be, you know, it just seems like a double standard there. And that way, maybe we encourage builders to give us a nicer looking sign. Now, I will tell you, we've talked about signs for a long time. You know, I've been on PNZ for a while, and we've talked signs a lot. And when even back as far, and I wasn't on PNC, but I don't think, but back when Walmart was built and they put up that humongous pole sign. But yet when I drive some of the other areas, for instance, if you go into Houston, and get off the interstate, take State Highway 6 and go down south into some of the communities, suburb communities, and you will never see a sign like any of these, okay? All you will see are little four or five foot, maybe six foot monument signs. And that's it. And it doesn't matter who's there. You'll see Home Depot, Walmart, you know, Whataburger. All of the big names, no, they're constrained to these little, and I think that's kind of where Cibolo, it seems to me when you went through it, that maybe that's what Cibolo was aiming for. Unfortunately, I think for us, that ship has sailed. Okay. Well, I don't know what's going down my throat tonight. So anyway, right now that would be my idea is that we limit, if we decide we want to propose an amendment, that we just limit that to how we calculate the sign area. Because if you remember, Church Station was more than, I mean, you know, when you look at what they came back to us with, it still exceeded, if you measure it the old way, it was still more than 250. But if you took out the frame and the support base, it was under 250. And they were happy with that. And I think that's because of the physical appearance of that sign, I think that's why we granted them the waiver. And so yeah, those are my thoughts. I've given up on the idea, I think, unless somebody else thinks it's a good idea, giving up on the idea of having small ones versus big one, you know, developments. I think we can, if necessary, we can come back to that in the future.

And we've talked internally as planning that, you know, when someone's coming in to do one of these larger retail developments and they're, you know, short station, they're going to come and do a PDD. We mentioned, hey, do you want to look at the sign ordinance? I think we need to do a stronger, you should look at the sign ordinance, make sure that it's going to meet. It looks like you're going to have interior lots. Do you want to look at changing the off-premise sign? Us advocating a little more for, you might want to ask for this stuff now rather than having to go through all these waiver processes in the future, at least to try to make an effort on some of the larger developments that have interior lots. The question I would ask back to Commissioner Outlaw in terms of not counting any kind of the, you know, veneer If we don't count this at all, there would be nothing stopping this sign from coming in and literally building a 21-foot wide veneer all the way from the top to the bottom. And are we okay with that? Because we would have no limitations. It wouldn't count towards their area. We'd have no way to stop them. So we could have this like giant veneer wall and then 250 square feet of sign on top of that. Mm-hmm. So I will say this, the one in the middle, I was trying to take the logos off so we could just talk, you know, the sign. But I think it might help. So the sign in the middle, if you've driven down 3009, that is the new spec sign. And I think when you're driving down 3009, it's almost like, wow, that's a really big sign. even did it when they put it up and I went and checked and checked the permit to make sure that it was the right size right and it does it meets all the requirements it was permitted but if we start thinking about if somebody wanted to I don't know that anybody would want to go to that extreme but if they did would we would we be okay with this like giant than your fake brick wall.

I think to Commissioner Outlaw's point, I think it's definitely something that we should consider in terms of we'll remove it with the, like we'll remove it from your square feet max, but with the implications of maybe there's height requirements, maybe there's things that are tied to it in terms of we'll give you this if you give me that. Like this, like the example of, they're gonna have a 10 foot base, so maybe setting a max height of, we'll give you that space back if you build it within this type of limit. But then, this might also be an appropriate time to go back and revisit The sizes in general. I agree with the specs thing. I even remember making the argument when we initially had it, because I think the original proposal was like farm to market and interstate were going to be considered the same thing. And so, hey, maybe we don't want signs that big. And so coming back and maybe saying, hey, we definitely don't want signs that big.

Now that we can visually see what that looks like on 3009, do we want that?

And it's hard, I think in these situations where you have like a lot of tenants and you're trying to like, because the one on the far, like the multi-tenant sign looks different. I mean, I don't want to say they're basically comparable. It's the same amount of square footage, but this looks a lot more, not appetizing isn't the right word, but appealing than big, correct. And so I, I like what he's saying. I don't want us to get too complicated. But I think we need to find some ways to incentivize good design. over just here's your height max, here's your size max, give me what you want. And maybe saying your initial, maybe the initials can be smaller of your current, like on farm to market, your max height is set at like 20 feet and 150, but if you give me a masonry base, you get an additional amount of signage. If you have multi-tenants and you do this, you get more signage. I don't know if it's necessarily too complicated, but.

I will say, right, I think our old code, we had the freestanding kind of pole signs, we had monument signs, and we had different requirements for multi-tenant signs. I'm not saying we necessarily have to go back to having all three again, but maybe combining all of them into one was too far. Maybe a multi-tenant, maybe we need to have freestanding ground signs, whether that's a pole sign or a monument sign, and then we need to have a multi-tenant sign. That if you're advertising multiple businesses, you get a little more square footage, but if you're If you're specs, you're a little smaller because you're only advertising your one business. Yeah. Just food for thought.

I think that would be appropriate. I know Commissioner Loretta Reyes, did you have something? Okay. Commissioner Awa.

Well, I just want to address the comments you made about, you know, now what would keep them from building these tall masonry structures. And I've seen those somewhere. where rather than a pole running up the middle, they build these two masonry structures and then they put their advertising sign between that. And again, if the signage in between meets the maximum signage, then wouldn't that, you know, why would we be against that? Wouldn't that be what I call a nice looking sign? To have a couple of masonry pillars and then the 250 square feet between them?

And I would say if those masonry pillars were legitimately holding the sign up, we wouldn't count it against them.

Okay.

It's just when it's, you have a pole in there and it's just, you built a box around it. But if, the way that the code is currently, right, if it's truly the support structure, it would not count against them.

Okay, but again, my house was built, well, it was built back in 89. And I don't know what the current shirts architectural standards were back then, but it's a brick veneer on three sides to make the house look nicer. That brick veneer doesn't hold up anything. All it does is make it look nicer. So again, I'm not sure why we care if the guy, like this sign, if specs wanted to take that ugly pole and wrap it in something visually pleasing, why should we care that the pole is holding the sign and not the nice looking facade?

So if... would it make a difference if they had their address? So say that they have their address here, or if it said, um, the name of the subdivision, not necessarily maybe the business, but the name of the subdivision, would that make a difference?

Well, yeah, well, I don't know. See, that was one of the things that I argued for search station was the fact that, um, uh, looking at sign three there, that, um, wide border that were counting against their square footage provided identity. I don't know, maybe you should ask the fire department, like on sign number one, would they like to see nice big address numbers on that sign?

And address numbers might not have been the best example, but if it was the shirt station logo, it didn't say shirt station, it was the leaves, right? It's advertising their development.

Yes.

Ultimately, it's advertising for them.

And I think I argued, one of the reasons I argued in favor of the waiver for shirt station was identity. Mm-hmm. So I don't know, even if you want to take sign number one and you exclude the masonry veneer support structure, because I'm not sure, let's just say, because church station keeps popping in my mind. So they want to put this sign up, but on the masonry, they want to put church station. Is that really, in my mind, that's more of an identity and a location than it is advertising. Unlike the above where it's gonna say Home Depot and Panera Bread and whatever else you're gonna put on it. If you kinda see where I'm going, it's more of an identity than it is an advertising. That makes sense.

Yeah, so like placemaking versus...

So do we only view that as the development name, the subdivision name, right? Because I could see someone arguing, well, I'm placemaking that this is whatever restaurant.

I would argue it's like the city, like you could put the city logo, something, no? No. You couldn't put shirts in general?

You could put shirts, but you couldn't use like...

the official logo the official seal anything like that so i i would yeah like what he's saying i would tie it to the development name the subdivision name nothing that directly advertises a tenant a tenant or like a business or something like something more on as a whole uh commissioner hector i'm sorry thank you hi

So I just wanted to state that I think that this speaks to kind of the core tenant around the discussions regarding the signs. But I also think it provides us an opportunity to look forward to determine what we want the community to look like, right? So I would just tell you the poll sign, anywhere but along the interstate, I just wouldn't even allow it, period. Hard stop. That way we drive what the community looks like, you know, especially knowing that, I mean, do we really need a poll sign on FM 3009? I would say no. But it does give us an opportunity to drive what the signage looks like, like interior to the community. So that was my thought, but I do think that that pole sign is hideous.

So would you envision that more as, so this is the freestanding sign section, a requirement for the farm to market roads and the all others? that they have to be of a monument style.

Right. Absolutely. I mean, I've been in cities where there was intentionality built into what they allowed people And it definitely made a difference in, you know, the aesthetics of the city, even the feel of it. I mean, even if you go in neighborhoods and you see some people are deliberate about the types of street signs that they have. I've been in some nice ones, and it just makes you feel better about looking at signs. I mean, you know, driving home every day, you're like, oh, that's a nice sign, you know. Yeah. We had to wait a couple years and spend a little extra money, but I enjoy driving into the community. And I see the signage within the city the same way. We have an opportunity to be intentional about what we want shirts to look like. Thank you.

Commissioner Hughes.

I was going to go along the same way with making the monument signs mandatory on FMs and Church Parkway. I think that's a better look. We can also look at someone doing that even on the highway, kind of incentivize that where instead of having the huge Walmart sign that's ugly we can make it where people come in it's a nice thing if you go to like dripping springs and places like that they are very very intentional on their signage and it's consistent so basically you have a building this is the consistency no matter where it is and if we have that with the monument signs i think it's going to really help us because we have monument signs already for the city when you come in offshore it's parkway so taking that same look and putting it elsewhere I think will really enhance the look of the city and will probably generate more business and probably help out the residents too going, yeah, it looks good. But having specs, huge sign along the other side that I saw the one that today when I was coming home for down 30 or nine, I was like, whoa, that's kind of, I think I jolted a little bit. I think I got out of lane just to see it. It's like, well, great. At least it's not neon and flashing. Thank God for that. but it's massive. I just looked at it going, that sign I think I swear is bigger than the footprint of some of those buildings. And so I think if we kind of work on downsizing those a little bit with the monument sign and making them requirements, I think we'll get a better feel and I think we'll see a better impact.

So just so I can kind of keep us, and I'm hoping y'all are taking real good notes on this, can I get a head nod if we're kind of all in the agreement that on FM roadways and all other roadways, so think businesses on Main Street, you know, Shirts Parkway, because Shirts Parkway wouldn't classify as that farm-to-market, so farm-to-market, and then all others, we don't want pole signs and we want monument-style signs. Can I get a head nod?

Is there a significant cost difference? Is it going to impact somebody who's just starting their business and they're going to have to have this additional cost?

Yes.

And we're okay with that? Absolutely. Okay.

Okay.

Okay, so head nod check, head nod check. I'm not, we've got some shoulders shrugging.

I'll see what you come back with.

Okay.

Go for it.

Okay. All right, so then let's talk interstate. So 3510. I'm going to ask multiple times. Poll signs? Yes, no? We want monument signs everywhere. Is that... So what if we did kind of a, if you have a monument sign, you get a little more square footage, but you can still have a pole sign, but it's a little smaller. Try to like cut the difference.

I would agree with that. If you're on 35 or 10. Because it's incentivizing the things that they're talking about. And especially with what Commissioner Owl has said in terms of maybe not measuring certain things and you're getting that space back in other ways. I would agree with that. And then having... excuse me, lower minimums in terms of like, if you're just doing a pole sign, you have a smaller square footage. Yeah, go for it.

Well, it's not entirely relevant to the discussion, but I'd like to share a little story with you that I was on my way over to Leon Springs today. And of course, I take 1604. And That new ramp from 1604 to I-10 looks like it's about 20 miles long. But what I noticed as we started up that ramp is you look over to the side, and here's all these big monument signs, kind of like maybe sign number three. And the only thing you can see now are maybe the top two panels. And so now this flyover, or whatever you want to call it, and maybe from 1604, you might be able to see the bottom three. So, again, not really relevant to what we're talking about, but I just thought it was kind of a funny anecdote that, you know, somebody put a lot of money into those signs, and they're doing them no good right now.

Yes, I'm not sure you should be trying to look at a sign going around that ramp anyway, but... But I do think that whatever we do within this community should be done with intention. And that's why the question always comes up, even when developers come in and they want to build something somewhere, it's like, what do we want the community to be like? So starting with signage is a perfect place to start. And if you want to do business, this is the cost of doing business. That's just that.

So to land the plane do you feel like you have enough to start?

So I make sure that I'm on the same page right our goal is to incentivize even on 35 and 10 the more monument style sign So maybe letting them go Maybe if it's it's keeping the square footage that we have currently but I'm not counting the masonry veneer base whatever it is against them and then if you're just giving us a pole sign and Shorter, smaller.

Yes.

And then monument on FM and all other. No poles. And we'll start there. Right there. Cool.

Any other comments?

While we're doing this, right, because we're going to be touching 11, is there anything else in there?

Do we want to look at farm to market road size and height requirements and maybe make it more aligned with all others?

Sounds good. We can look at that.

Because really, it's just 3009 and, well, 78, but I would argue there's, yeah, no. I would, interstates, all others.

Okay.

I'm sorry, Commissioner Velazquez.

On the same note, since we're going to do a motif, I mean, in my previous experience, we call it design guidelines for the community. These veneers can be yellow, brown. Are we going to also look at having a motif on it? Because now we're going to have a certain amount of colors all over the place.

So I would say we don't even regulate building materials or building colors. So I think to start regulating that on signage would be a stretch.

I agree.

Anything in, so we've found a couple things that we think could be a little more clear that we'd want to kind of roll in this too, not substantial changes, but just to make them easier to understand. And then maybe looking at the waiver section, any thoughts on changes to waivers, maybe limiting what you can ask a waiver for, maybe beefing up the criteria for approval.

Yes. I think you need to show hardship, like what, not necessarily what they're doing at BOA, but if we're gonna start, if we're gonna have the conversation of we want things to be intentional, and we want things to look a certain way, for everybody to start applying for waivers. And maybe it is something, you know, I know you talked about like the sign plan, maybe having that be a requirement as part of a large-scale development? Because, I mean, I think the only waivers we've really gotten are tied to large-scale developments. You haven't had individuals come in.

So we have. They just have not made it this far.

Oh, okay.

We haven't made it to P&Z yet, but we have had others inquire about doing waivers to have additional freestanding signs on their lot besides just the one per frontage.

Yeah, if you all want to think of ways to increase the criteria, I think it would be open to it. And I think that's what we're looking for.

We're not set on we want to add these things. It's just would that conversation be at least welcome to at least hear out maybe adding some more meat to the criteria.

Yes. Yes. Awesome. Thank you, Emily. Well, it is 739. Are there any requests by commissioners for items on future agendas?

No.

Announcements? Anyone? Anyone? Staff? No? All right. Well, there's information in your packet online about current city status projects, and it is 740. We are adjourned.