Planning and Zoning Meeting - Regular Meeting

You know, what do you think of the mayor getting that space museum?

You heard about that? Trying to get the space museum down in ACF.

And this space museum is just... I just got back in town. Well, that's where they put their city hall, so yeah, I guess they bought a bunch of that ground as part of the shutdown. That's a lot. I think I'm going to have to just do it myself. Do you want to introduce the new member? So can we do that without Roger being here and just reassign him? You can, as long as you have a quorum.

You know.

Does he have to agree to it?

Kyle, I mean, since you have a quorum here, you could go ahead and do that tonight, or you could ask to be put on the next month's agenda, either one.

Okay, we can handle it.

Well, Jennifer's secretary. I don't have any more to be in the city. Yeah, so there's only one of the three of us here.

I just found that out when I looked at my bill. None of them are property taxed by the city. In all honesty.

All right, let's go ahead and get started. It's 7 o'clock. So welcome to the May 20, 2026 Plain and Zoning Commission meeting. At this time, everybody, please turn your cell phones to mute and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic on which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Applications for temporary fireworks stands heard during tonight's meeting will be voted on by the planning zoning Commission and these votes will be final only a recommendation for denial will be heard by the County Council at their June 8th meeting the following documents are introduced as a matter of record for this evening's public hearing and regular meeting of planning zone Commission that's the unified development ordinance of Saint Charles County including the zoning maps the year 2030 master plan in Saint Charles County which includes the 2030 future land use plan map. And the rules of order procedure for the planes only commission adopted by resolution, 21, 0, 1, it appears we have formed we have a motion to open to me. All in favor say aye. All right first I don't our gender or changes into additions to the agenda. I see none will move on to our first action item and that is action item. for a fire work stand at 3, 2, 0, 5, North highway 94 this is FWK 26, 0, 7, property owners are in a shorter workable truck. The applicant is can fireworks Tony kinder for the use of a fire work stand at 3, 5, 0, 2, having 94. At this time of the applicant come forward and after the applicant will open up for our public hearing and for anybody wishing to speak I do have to swear you in. Do you solemnly swear or affirm or tell the truth, nothing but the truth, on the pains and penalties of perjury?

Yes.

Please state your name and address for the record.

Troy Kinder, 3582 North Newtown Avenue, St. Charles, Missouri, 63301. All right.

I missed the staff report here.

Sorry. This CUP is for a temporary fireman. This is actually a new location, so we've never had a CUP for this location. Right now, the current property is being used as a landscaping contractor yard. Due to the temporary nature and limited retail of the use of the property, we don't see any major impacts in the area.

surrounding land uses, sorry. Planning and zoning division is recommending approval for this use with the conditions listed in the staff report.

Any questions for staff? Anything for you to add? No. Any questions for the applicant?

I have a question. This is actually supposed to be. Just how close are you to the one coming up? You're 3502 and they're 3640.

Yeah, same side of the highway, probably half a mile.

Okay. Not that it was going to be an issue, but I just was wondering.

I got you.

Any other questions for the applicant? All right. We'll open the public hearing for FWK 2607. Anyone wishing to speak? Seeing none, we'll close the hearing for FWK 2607, bring it back to the Commission. Any questions for the staff or the applicant? If not, I will seek a motion to approve FWK 2607. Motion to approve.

Second.

There's been a motion and a second. Mr. Ellis is gone. Mr. Baker, how do you vote? Yes. Ms. Barnes is gone. Ms. Kushner?

Yes.

Mr. Niemeyer? Yes. Ms. O'Mara?

Yes.

Mr. Nolan?

Yes.

Mr. Goodwin? Yes. Mr. Quinn? Yes. And I vote yes, so motion carries. All right next thing on the agenda is that WK 26, 0, 8, this is at 3640 North highway 94 properties owner window and Robert and Glenda my like application at P FM highway 94 LLC doing business as powder monkey fireworks Chris Sanders.

This is another CU P for temporary fireworks stand Right now the property is being used as a vehicle storage yard according to a site plan we have on file, but I drove by it recently and it looks vacant so there's not much on the parcel right now besides a metal building. Likewise with the last application, due to the temporary nature of this use, we do not see any land use impacts on adjacent property owners. So we are recommending approval with the conditions listed in the staff report.

Any questions for staff? All right, moving on to the applicant. Do you solemnly swear, affirm, or tell the truth, nothing but the truth, on the pains and penalties of perjury? Yes. Can you state your name and address for the record?

Chris Sander, 302 Palisades Court, St. Charles, 63301.

All right anything to add to the staff report or any of the comments.

Yeah, the pfm having an important to PMF like powder monkey fire. I don't know if you put that on the permit, but it will need to be. And then. We operate and well in spring for maybe in 2007 already and then this will be our first one in the county. Helpful with the practice of getting all the drawings everything I made a couple phone calls that was great. I should have done a long time ago. I appreciate it. If you have any questions, I can tell you all about anything you need.

Chair Greg Musil Any questions for the applicant? All right. Thank you, sir. This time we'll open up the public hearing for FWK 2608. Anyone wishing to speak? All right see none will close the public hearing for after we K 26 0, 8, bring it back to the Commission does anybody have any further questions comments for good the group or staff. I see none will seek a motion to approve of WK 26, 0, 8.

Motion to approve.

We have a second. Mister Baker I yes. Yes. Mr. Niemeyer. Yes. Ms. O'Meara. Yes. Mr. Nolan. Yes. Mr. Goodwin. Yes. Mr. Quinn. Yes. And I vote yes. So motion passes. That brings us to the next item on the agenda. See no tabled items is the election of 2026 planning and zoning commission officers. We have not done that for 2026 yet. Robert had mentioned that because we don't have the secretary or the chairman here, we could elect to push it to next meeting. We have them here as well. Or we can throw everybody back in the hat and redo it. It's totally up to you guys.

Do we need their approval?

I don't know if they necessarily need approval. But I don't know that it would be, probably we are in the best interest to ask them, make sure they're willing to participate again. Right.

Decline, I guess, theoretically. That's true. Make sure that they give their assent. Yeah.

I'd say we carry it over until next meeting. I agree.

Okay, so let's table that and we'll put on the Jennifer next minute that right, yeah, okay. I next item on the agenda is approval of the minutes from the March 18th meeting. They're in our packet there's any changes or discussion needs to be had otherwise we'll seek a motion for approval.

Motion to approve second.

The motion and second to approve the March 18th minutes as presented all in favor say aye. Aye. Any objections?

All right Robert any updates? A few quick items first I want to thank Kurt Goodwin for our newest planning zoning commissioner. So now we have 10 commissioners again thank you for agreeing to serve. Two are gone tonight. So the one reason I wanted to mention it is it's been years, honestly, since we've had 10, you know, the full membership role. So when we have all 10 people here, it's a little crowded. So I just wanted to let you know that in advance. I mean, we'll all be set up. We'll have everything set up for you. But things will be a little close, you know, if we have all 10 people here. know on any given meeting we may not have 10 we may have nine eight seven who knows but i just wanted to tell you that in advance or mention that in advance so again thank you kurt we have several new newer members who we welcome your service for st charles county also i wanted to mention that st charles county has a new flooding resource web page at sccmo.org slash 2422. If you go to that web page, sccmo.org slash 2422, you'll find a resource page for flooding for St. Charles County for property owners, prospective property owners, business owners, residents, etc. You can look up a property and find the flood risk and download some documents like elevation certificates that we have on file. You can sign up for flood alerts, learn about your flood risk, report storm damage. There's detailed guidance on what to do after a flood. And two of the key things I want to get across to anyone listening tonight in the universe out there is that one, you can get flood insurance whether or not you live in a flood zone. In fact, if you don't live in a flood zone, your flood insurance is probably less expensive or even a lot less expensive. Two, FEMA tells us that 40 percent of the claims, the flood insurance claims for people in the National Flood Insurance Program are for buildings outside of flood zones. So just because you live outside of a flood zone or own property outside of a flood zone, it does not mean that you have no flood risk. It just means that it's a different risk. You know, it's a lower risk. But you can still flood outside of a flood zone. We have so many people who say that, oh, I don't live in a flood zone, so I'm okay. Well, there's always flood risk, and it may be from a river. It may be from other sources as well. Sometimes in built-up areas, it's just the fact that There's just too much water at that moment to to flow away quick enough and it can cause flooding, even though you may or may not be close to a creek or river. So that's something I wanted to two pieces of information. I want to get across to everyone listening tonight. The third thing I want to mention is Next Thursday, we have a master plan steering committee meeting scheduled. And so at that meeting, the master plan steering committee will be reviewing a full draft of the master plan, including the future land use maps. And I think that this will be a really important step forward for the master plan steering committee and for the master plan itself. I would mention that unlike in past master plans we're suggesting to the master plan steering committee for their review of course and for their for their approval or their changes whatever however they want to approach it but we're looking at land use in a little bit different way future land use in that right now it's kind of an all-or-nothing approach or either have sewer service and can do this whole host of things in this particular district or you're outside of that sewer service area. But now I think we're suggesting a more nuanced approach that takes into account like natural constraints of properties, including things like steep slopes, flood zones, and tree stands, to take that into account in terms of the capacity for future land uses and how those land uses should be arranged. Should they be clustered? Should they not be clustered? Some things like that. So I think you'll find that interesting when it gets to the Planning and Zoning Commission. The Planning and Zoning Commission will play a role in this process, but I will say it's the master, under the county charter in our code, it's the master plan steering committee that actually makes the recommendation to the county council for the draft master plan.

Got a question for Robert yeah data centers have been a real big thing obviously lately in the region is there anything in our master plan that speaks speaks of those.

On specifically on data centers. Not that I can recall not specific to data centers, but I can tell you that it's something we're looking at closely in fact the community development director myself will be attending in a few weeks. a day-long session for municipal and county folks in Missouri and data centers. Also, I've been undertaking some training recently on one of the land use impacts for data centers. And I can tell you up front that it's a whole range. There are actually little micro, mini data centers that are no bigger than, say, a truck And there are some that cover 500 acres, and there's a whole range in between, and they have different impacts. Some have very limited impacts, not much different than an electrical substation, or sometimes even less than an electrical substation. Other ones are much larger impacts on energy, electricity specifically, and water. Some of them are water cooled, some of them are air cooled, some are a combination of both. So there's not necessarily like one size fits all in terms of data centers. The one that's gonna be built in Montgomery County, for instance, it's a large scale data center, but the plan is for that one to be air cooled about 93% of the time and water cooled about 7% of the time. So the impacts on water is different than for a data center, say, in Oregon that's using all water to cool that data center.

Under our current ordinances, where do data centers fall?

We don't have a specific land use category for data centers. The closest that we have is there's a category for in the commercial office district. And I'll read you what it says. But it's not an exact fit, and I'll tell you why. There's a land use category for, let's see, computer and data processing services in the commercial office district and in all commercial districts and industrial districts. But we've been interpreting that to mean an office where they do work with computing services or computer repair. Again, we're looking at it as like an office environment that does that sort of work. I think that what we're talking about is something different because the primary use there is computing and data processing on a larger scale. You might have a similar analogy might be a local bakery where it's like to walk in bakery on Main Street here where you walk in and and you buy your bread. They bake bread on a daily basis versus a large scale manufacturing bakery that might be 400 acres or something like that. I mean, those are two different scales and two different types of, you know, land uses and they have different impacts.

I would just say that probably something that the steering committee should probably put some thought into on where, if these are to be located in the county, where might those go?

Yeah, I agree with that. I'll give you an example. There's a, we were looking at one in Oregon that uses about a million gallons of water a day for cooling. But if you look at the General Motors plant in Wentzville, and that produces about a million gallons a day of wastewater that goes into Wentzville's sewage treatment system and is treated every day. And they certainly have capacity to do that, and it's not a problem. But you just have to coordinate the utilities, I think, with these land uses, the ones that take a lot of energy and water. And again, some use a lot of water. Some of them don't use as much water.

Some of them have sealed cooling systems, too. They're pricier. But some of them have it where it's sealed, but they don't actually take the water, too.

Yeah, that's interesting. But I think that goes back to the fact that I don't think there's one description of a data center that people can use. I think there's like a range, and they have different land use impacts depending on how they're designed. But I do think we have to coordinate our utilities and the construction of data centers wherever this takes place.

It'd be my suggestion, and I don't know if the board could weigh in, but I think all data centers should probably be under a conditional use permit. And maybe that needs to be done via a St. Charles County ordinance. I'm not sure. But that's just my two cents. Okay.

Thank you.

I just have a question. On the north side of 70, there's all these electrical panels.

Can you turn your microphone?

Just get it down. On the north side of 70, there's all these electrical grids. I mean, hundreds of them in a field. Were those built in anticipation of the data center? Because the data center is almost very close to being directly across the highway from it.

Okay, you may be referring to, there's a solar panel, solar farm.

It is, solar farm, I'm sorry. It's been there a long time.

I think it's totally separate.

Yeah, there's a solar farm that's been there for years. I think it's in the city of O'Fallon. But this kind of brings up, right now there's already eight or nine data centers in St. Charles County. And some of them are on, you know, like on the campus of MasterCard and things like that. I mean, there's just, and you don't hear about them creating these impacts necessarily on neighbors. But at the same time, I've got the town in Kenosha, Wisconsin. It's in the Milwaukee area. They have a data center that's like 10 million square feet in 20 buildings, something like that, on this one campus. It's the largest, I think, I've ever heard of in the US. So again, you have a whole range of data centers.

There's one that they're trying to get approved in Hannibal, and they actually want to put an eight gigawatt solar field to feed just the data center.

Okay. Yeah, the land you're talking about, I think, is Zona Industrial, and that's where that solar farm is located. Solar farm is, yeah. Okay.

All right. Anything else? Not a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn second. All those in favor. All right we stand adjourned. Thank you guys.