Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Okay, good morning everyone. Seeing that we have a quorum, let me call to order the regular meeting of the Sunset Beach Planning Board for May 21st, 2026. Let us stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, first item is always a conflict of interest. Does any member have a conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest with regard to any item on the agenda? And if so, please state so at this time. Richard?

I do not.

Michael? No. I do not. Stuart?

I do not.

Okay. Seeing no conflict of interest, we'll move on. The next item is amending or approving today's agenda item. And unfortunately, I'd like to make some changes, and then let me tell you what I'm planning on doing, and I'll make my motion. Just looking at the order here and thinking about it, and also this relates to, unfortunately, Rule 16 of our new Rules of Procedure, I'd like to change the order of this agenda and then permanently change all the orders of the agenda, which probably means rule 16 also has to be slightly adjusted in order.

Did our rules get approved? So we can amend.

I think we still should make a motion to vote on this and then make that rule change. And it's a simple change. What I think we should do is move the public comments up. It's currently nine just before the adjournment, to what in this case would be position seven. just before planning board comments, then administrative comments, and then adjournment. And the reason I'm thinking we should do that is, as opposed to today where it appears to be no public, if there are public, general public comments, we normally do not engage with the public directly, but it may be something that if the public has a great idea, we may want to discuss.

And if we've already passed our

planning board comment period.

We've got to like wake them. So I'm thinking let's hear from the public. Like today there will probably be none. We'll have nothing to discuss. But if they come up with a decent idea or something that we may want to do for a future meeting, we have time to discuss it in planning board time and then right after that staff can kind of follow up with that and then adjournment. So.

And I think that's a good idea.

So I'm going to make a motion that we amend this agenda to move public comments up to number seven, planning board comments number eight, administrative comments number nine, then adjournment 10. And that we likewise adjust rule 16 in our rules of procedure to reorder it same. And the other, so I'll make that motion. Any seconds?

I'll second. All in favor?

Aye. Any nays? There are no nays. So the motion passes. Is staff OK with that little change?

Yeah, staff from a moving forward level.

What I've got to figure out is how do we do that in the rules and procedures that you guys have already voted on and moved forward to council. I think we can do that from our end, Kimberly. We understand the intent.

Right. Do you want a copy of it? No, I've got it.

I think I understand. Okay.

If you want to give it to me, it's fine.

Right.

Okay. Okay.

Next, first of all, any public comments on agenda item? Seeing no public, we'll move on to item five. New business, excuse me, old business, which is amending the overlay district. I'm not gonna read the whole thing here. We previously worked on this and we sent it to the council and the council did not approve it basically because the appendix C had too many paint colors. So what we've done is we now have a revised appendix C, which it all should have in your packets. where myself and then I think I emailed each of you individually for your comments, so it was just two at a time, reviewed this and we trimmed down the list. I believe there are 48 exterior colors listed now. Some totally removed and some reduced down to only accent trim colors. So what we're looking to do here is to re-vote on this with a revised appendix and send it back to the council with the shortened list. And again, I guess for the record, my concern is two things. I don't believe we have an enforceable set of colors in our current code for two reasons. One, there are no color numbers showing in those bars and every time you print those on a different printer and look at it on a different screen, they're different. So depending how you adjust your, I forget what it's called, gamma on your color on your screen, you can change how those colors look. Because no one bothered, no one listed the color number that it could be matched. I tried to find them, and they're completely different. If you search some of those names, they're like different colors for the same name.

Is there an... I mean, I totally get what the issue is. The problem's going to be is by selecting a color... we are almost by default then selecting the brand.

No. Once you have the color number, like these are SWs, so they're Sherman Williams. Okay. You can take an SW7006 and go to Benjamin Moore and it'll match the color. And it'll match it? Okay, right.

And just for further clarification, you know, support what the chair is saying is the intent was never to say that someone has to use a particular brand.

Well, I think we mentioned that in the way you wrote the index. It's the color.

But this does allow someone to take a number, hey, this is whatever number I can go match it somewhere else. Right.

And that's an industry standard within which we have sufficient confidence that we're not going to worry about.

Paint providers can figure it out. And the second problem I have is we have structures out there with colors that are not, in the current chart, particularly the yellow on the store. There are no yellows in that chart that we provide. So we've approved structures with colors that even on the wildest view of that chart, those bars we got, ain't there. There are no yellows. So I believe, in my mind, what we have now is unenforceable. If anyone puts up a building there, it would be hard-pressed to make St. Ron's a

Rejected on a permit the color is in it because they could say well you approved other colors And I think the deep blue and that one little store there also is not in there so in a perfect world we would Find the colors that are essentially grandfathered in be on the basis of these buildings are built and painted and Second, we would... I did. Take... Butter up is the yellow. Okay.

Take the list... And the deep blue that's down is sort of like what I thought was pretty close to Mediterranean.

Okay.

So they would actually come into compliance.

Okay. And they would be added to the list of 50 that we'd... 48. 48. And then we would...

designate based on whatever brand we choose the color number that is now enforceable by code once council assuming council approves this amendment as movie and again assuming you guys vote on which i believe you're going to someone wants to build a new building either in that they're subject to the urban design standards or the um gateway overlay requirements, gateway overlay, they're going to use this color palette or whatever variation is approved by council to select colors. And my opinion on how it should work is when the site plan is submitted, you know how we get elevations that show height in most cases, we're also getting colors Color palette, if you will, what they're being proposed, whether it's going to be, whether it comes to you guys for approval or staff, whatever we end on, you know, with amendment.

So they'd be required to provide an elevation with colors. And which colors they choose. Embedded into the plan.

Or they could just state it by list probably, right? Yeah, yeah.

The exterior is going to be painted this color, trims this color, and that's it.

But what we can't, what I don't think the purpose of this is to say, well, we don't, even though color whatever is listed on this, we don't want you to do that color. We want you to do another color. If it's listed in this group. Yes, it's approval. The applicant can choose amongst those colors of what they want, how they want their exterior to look.

And this is only for, now do we get, are we in any danger of,

triggering a down zoning appeal no because the the intent there is with the down zoning is you cannot create non-conformities with these colors and i believe the current uh as the chair says if there's some buildings that already have been used some colors that even aren't in the color palette And if they're being brought over with this packet or this proposal, then they should be.

I believe all the colors that were intended to be in the first group are in this group, but with a number and a reputable way of doing it.

And the preliminary plat that we just approved, oh, he's in the mud district, so he's exempt.

This is only in a gateway district. Urban design.

Urban design, which is outside the mud. Okay. Non-residential. Obviously. It's not to say that clearly residential can paint their house any color they want.

This does not regulate.

This does not. It's only non-residential.

It would regulate multifamily.

Right. So the Logan development that is going to put multifamily residential along 904. Now, how far back from 904 does the Gateway District go?

I'd have to go...

It's a measurement.

It's a measurement. Give me a minute to look at my code. It may actually...

So I want to ask a question, too, though, before we get... In the code, it never says that you must use these colors. I mean, it just says the overall color Exterior color scheme must be selected to be harmonious with the neighborhood and blend with the natural surroundings of the site. Earth tones must be chosen. Colors shall not be used to cause the structure to stand out. I think what the code is saying is that they can pick any color as long as it is similar to the examples that we're giving in Appendix C. I think we're trying to be descriptive and not prescriptive. I don't think we're trying to say that you can only use these colors. But if they got something close to one of our 48 colors, I think they could use that. I think what we're trying to do is say, hey, this is kind of your color scheme, not that you have to use this particular color. But if they do use that particular color, it's obviously, that'll be approved.

I think they were trying to give some leeway. Right.

To matching.

I guess that's the way I view it is. If you're trying for butter, you know.

I think, you know, again, I don't want us to be so rigid that.

Well, would this be something that, where the planning board would have some discretion? and the applicant would submit and say, this is a color similar to a color in code, present it to us, and then would we have the power to say, yeah, that's fine.

I believe so.

I think so.

If they say it's essentially, we're going to paint essentially the same as Stonebriar.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah. Now, I'm not going out there with, I forget what the color meter is, to see what the color is.

Yeah, I think the way I interpret it is, here's. Am I right?

Mr. Jones is correct. It outlines, it says this as an example. It says, and I'm looking at both urban design and the gateway.

Basically, the language is the same.

Overall exterior color scheme must be selected to be harmonious with the neighborhood and blend with the natural surroundings. Earth tones must be chosen as the site's predominant colors. Colors shall not be used to cause the structure to stand out. In the gateway, it even goes further to say, let me go back there.

Compatibility of colors to those existing in the vicinity.

And it also mentions signage.

And size of the structure.

Earth's color shall not be used. What does it say?

There's also a thing about sites with good tree coverage providing shading.

Building and roof color so it consists of earth tone colors. Primary colors or bright colors should be limited to trim and signage.

So again, I think. It's a guide. It's a guide. And I wonder if. Some of our terminology in these colors where we say not to be used. I didn't have a way to remove a color. So I guess I'm wondering when it goes into code, is it going to look just like what we've got in our packet? Or is it these colors just won't be in there?

Likely, just they won't be in there. Okay.

The only way to do that is I don't have the tools to remove it other than put a white box over it. I don't know which ones I took out.

Right, and that was the intent of keeping it like it is.

Right. I understand, and then you get to count it the same way so they know what we were doing. But again, I think we need to be somewhere in here. I think it needs to say that these are examples.

Well, it does say an example of additional acceptable color palette in the red line.

Yes, it does say that. Okay. And the answer, Mr. Dyson, is 300 feet. You've got the gateway. How far is the gateway measure? It's 300 feet.

I mean, I'm particularly concerned about the Logan development, which constitutes most of the 904. gateway approach. And in that conditional zoning, there's a variety of, so what happens when a building spans at 300 feet? Is it included or is it exempt?

I need to look at the language. There's some language in there about how that handles. I don't remember what it was.

So there's a gateway corridor overlay, standard shell pod, all buildings on lots are open uses of land, constructed, reconstructed, or established whereby the lot either fronts directly onto the corridor or to the buildings within 300 feet of the center line. So if the building is within 300 feet of the center line, even just like the front facade of the building is within 300 feet, that's what's going to be. Okay. The backside, then the back wouldn't apply anyway, but the backside would.

So the front side facing the corridor away. Right, as long as it's within 300 feet.

That's how I would quickly, just looking at the language, quickly interpret that.

So back to my examples thing, I just want to reiterate. So we took eight examples of colors and we expanded it to 79 colors to give people more flexibility. We sent 79 colors to the council, and they said that 79 colors, examples, were too many examples.

Because they wanted, well, they said they wanted more consistency.

Right. Okay.

We've trimmed it down to 48. and I believe it's looking through and looking at the colors and what was there before, I think we're consistent with the original earth tone concept and get consistency in the commercial area and also embrace the colors that are there now. That's what I tried to do. Such that anything that they could repaint the way it is if they needed to, not be non-conforming, and any new building come in, if they chose from this list or, again, some reasonable view from it, everyone's going to be happy and in compliance and not be forced. I do recall there was an issue with the Dollar General store because one of their corporate colors wasn't in our building. We allowed the color that was out there.

And just keep in mind, though, that both urban design standards, and I don't know how this applies to the dollar store. I'm not saying this to support or not support what you're saying. Both urban design standards and the gateway reference primary colors can be used for trim and signage. Both of them say that. Primary colors are, you know.

White and black.

White and black. Well, primary colors will be. Red, white, yellow. Yeah.

Blue is a primary color.

Yeah.

Red, orange, yellow, green.

Orange is really not primary, I don't think. There's three primary colors.

It depends how you look at that. Yeah. I understand.

Yeah.

You take a prism, you get all the primary colors.

But what you've done, what this proposal does, though, it is outlining what could be accepted for trim and exterior. It does broaden it in some ways, but I do agree with Mr. Jones's point, is if someone comes in and says, well, this color is like that color, it can still be used. Because this is an example. It is not a set in stone. It has to be one of these prisms. whether it's the current code or the new code. Current proposal. Current code or proposal.

I think there's enough choices they could pick.

I would agree with you. Right. I would agree with you.

And come up with a, and again, a decent looking commercial there. I don't.

Okay. I agree with you. What's your sign?

Oh, sorry.

Does this cover signage as well?

It says that in both situations, it says that signage could have primary colors. To me, it says roof and building exterior color.

T-Mobile. It says to me. Approved commercial plat. Sorry. At the corner of. 904 and old Georgetown road. T-Mobile decides to put a storefront there. Well, they're magenta and they're not changing their colors. What happens?

Well, you may, you guys may interpret this differently, but the way I interpret the code, it says building and roof color shall consist of earth tone. Sign is not a building. It's not a roof. They could put their corporate sign up. And then it further says primary colors or bright colors shall be limited to trim and signage. All right. So a bright yellow dollar general sign, a bright green dollar tree sign.

Got it. Okay.

Could be proposed and used.

Interesting. Okay.

And that's current code language, and it's being proposed to be retained.

And also, remember in this, I mean, we got mixed back or returned to us because of the colors, but we were making some other small changes here to clarify the Gateway District and urban design standards, the trees, making it sort of, it got sent back, it didn't get adopted, it got sent back to us. So I still think we want the other small changes Particularly bringing the trees up to date to our current extent.

And also the code, which applies, because if there was a conflict, potentially... That is bringing the tree thing up to... Is that going to get us in trouble for down zoning?

I don't believe so, because you're expanding the tree. We got more trees now.

Okay.

Yeah.

And I believe, I did not back check this, but I believe most, not all of the trees that are listed are included in the current.

As we'll see later, down zoning has a definition. It doesn't include that.

It's a different language of what the down zoning means.

Right. which we can review in the next segment. So where I'm at, I still want the text changes we make, and I want to at least give the council a second crack at the colors, and I guess I'll state where I'm at. The colors I think that I put together here with you guys is a reasonable color palette that gives the developers and applicants a choice to pick colors that are nice for their building, meet the original intent of their code, the earth tones and the eight bars or whatever we had, and provide the uniformity and consistency that the council requested.

So, barring any further discussion, Michael? I got one question on page seven. Just help me understand this. Under contrast, it says the use of black, white, and off-white is typically aborted. Where are you at? Page six, I'm sorry. No, page seven.

Page seven, okay. Where on page seven?

Page, the staff report you're looking at or the? Well, it may say six, six or seven.

Contrast is top of page eight on the staff report, I believe.

There's a contrast on page seven. Okay. Paragraph.

Page 7, yeah, contrast.

Ah, so that's I, I, I, the three I's section?

Yeah, at the bottom, the last sentence, the use of black, white, off-white is typically avoided, yet we have white in the Appendix C. I just thought that was a little odd. Black, white, or off-white.

What section is that applying to? that's right below the color stuff two is color hue and three is contrast very last sentence in three

Yeah, the last sentence there, use of black or white.

Seems like you couldn't use white trim then.

Well, it just seemed odd to me that one statement's in there.

You could have a blue building, but you couldn't have white trim.

Right.

Too much contrast. A slightly darker wall color in the bottom story of a two-story structure may help reduce the visual height. The use of black, white, or off-white is typically avoided and may be approved only. Is it vague enough that it gives approval? I mean, I'm not sure what they were trying to get to there.

Well, to me, the whole language is unavoidable.

Right, because it's typical, may be approved, right?

Yep, and it says, yes, typically avoided and may be used. And may be used.

So under what parameters may be used, and to me that's a discretionary call.

This board nor staff, again, I'm saying that we don't know where the site plan is going to land, site plan approval is going to land. This board is not authorized to have quasi-judicial decisions. Staff is not authorized to make quasi-judicial decisions. And to me, that's a discretionary issue. I don't feel like it's an enforceable language.

Right. Should we strike it or just leave it because it ain't?

Strike it or make it more objective?

Well, I don't understand what he's trying to do.

Or you just leave it. It's a valid point.

It's a valid point, Mike. I appreciate you bringing it up.

I don't understand what it's trying to achieve even.

Didn't we take black out of the appendix?

No.

We didn't?

For trim only.

Trim only.

Yeah, trim only. Okay. I think we can just strike that sentence.

Yeah, from the word the use.

I just thought it was confusing.

From the word the to the period after warranted and just redline that off.

And you probably want to make the same under the urban design standard.

Urban design probably has it somewhere, right?

To me, it's looking like it's on page eight.

Page eight. It's in the same spot, right? Yes. Yeah. So we'll strike it there also. Very good, Michael. Thank you.

So noted. I've got it noted.

Okay. Anything else, Michael?

No.

Okay. So I will make a motion that we... Let me find my statement here. Hold on.

Where is it?

There it is. I make a motion that we adopt action A on planning board summary. And I'll read that, and then someone can second if they choose. The planning board hereby recommends approval of the modified one modification proposed proposed amendment to the unified development ordinance and finds that them then one consists is consistent with the town's comprehensive 27 2017 town of sunset beach land use plan and as the amendments to the gateway overlay and urban design minimum standards and current design requirements, and two, that it is in the public interest because the amendments may encourage commercial development along the major corridors in accordance with the goals outlined in the 2017 land use plan. Any second? I can't jump in front of him. Go ahead, Mike. I'll second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any nays? Hearing no nays, the ayes have it. Action A with the one modification and the new appendix of colors is approved. And hopefully the council staff is okay presenting to the council and everything like that. And we can put that to rest. The next item on our agenda was for discussion, and I'll turn this over to Ron, too. is 2025 legislative item updates regarding new legislation may require, and again may, might be the operative word here, amendments to the town UDO. It's all yours, Mr. Ron.

Sure, thanks. So this is similar to what we did last year, although last year I think we did a little bit earlier in the year, taking the school government legislative bulletin, which you should have a copy of, that outlined all the changes to land use, the building inspections, and other planning-related items that occurred in last year's General Assembly approval. So some of these session laws, we need to take into consideration and look and see what we may need to change in our code. I've tried to go through the legislative bulletin and highlight areas of interest. Doesn't mean that you guys shouldn't focus on some of the other things, but the items that I highlighted, what I believe we might want to center our conversation on because it has potential implications on our UDO, not on other things.

So that's what I tried to focus on.

first one is adjust our zoning practices to account for limits on down zonings and i've held off on bringing even though this was in last year's legislation i've held off bringing this to you because first of all i'm aware of it and know what the rules are and we've and you guys are aware of it so we've had some good conversations on what we can and can't do from a down zoning perspective the second reason was there last year there was several pieces of legislation that were brought forward but never made it past committees and to to revert the down zoning regulations back to what they were previously a lot of it was you know counties and municipalities in this one county or this one district or you know the specific town and there was but there also was some that were that would occur statewide That said, I believe that we still need, at this point, we're ready to take action. And what I likely will propose to you is to just amend the definition of downzoning in our ordinance to say per general statute 160D, whatever the reference is. So as that legislation changes, our code changes automatically and we don't have to keep

Changing the code. Changing it back and forth. Right. I mean, they have a definition of what down zoning is, right? Yes.

Yeah, and our code also has a definition of down zoning that was consistent with the previous down zoning. So again, my proposal to you would, assuming we move forward next month, is just to take our current definition and refer to the general statute definition Don't quote it, just refer to general statute 160D, whatever that citation is.

Yeah, 160D601D.

Yeah, so as that changes, it changes in our code. I don't always like to do that because it's good for people to know what the definition is.

Yeah, the downside of that is you don't know what it is unless you pull this up all the time.

But if you have that citation, at least we can go to it and find it fairly easily. So just with the uncertainties, that's what I likely will propose to you guys. unless the discussion here takes a little bit different. Yeah. I mean, obviously when we move forward with it, you will see the definition change.

I guess that's the problem is you're never, I mean, reading the definition, I mean, this particular definition, I guess that's okay because it's just, it's going to be hard to attach to all the time. If we write it down somewhere, we've got to keep updating it. Right.

But the problem is... By the time we update it, it might change back again.

So I guess we're going to have to rely on staff all the time to reflect to us what is the current, since we don't have the written version, always to know what it is.

Sure. That's just a quick Google search. It's a quick look in the General Statute 160D. It's no different than I just looked up the measurement.

But the problem is, you know how legislation goes. They could do new sections that modify that section to modify it.

a new section that's another section understood understood so then you get uh you get multiple sections falling back and rolling up on that i understand i understand so but that's that's kind of just my thought process anyway is to reference that instead of having to change it each time because who knows if i've already seen legislation introduced for specific jurisdictions again already in this short session right to to so is our sense that

And I've heard this, that there is a trend to reduce the impact of that term down zoning. Are they going to make it less restrictive?

There's some conversations that were some legislation that was introduced last year, again, to specific jurisdictions. And I think there was one or two out there that was floating around that would occur statewide that would have reverted the The down zoning definition back to its original form, basically allowing counties and municipalities to initiate a zoning change that might be considered a down zone.

That piece of it, not all of it, but just that's the piece I'm talking about.

However, until they act on it, we are still bound by the state definition. And I think there's some thoughts out there that the longer that legislation sits, it becomes more likely to become permanent.

But it's not likely that they're going to make it worse.

I can't answer that.

The problem is, again, the public view of these things, because they're not into this, And probably if we polled the public, they would think this doesn't exist this way. Local planning boards and town council can control, but that's really no longer the case. You can never make it the way it is now, essentially, under the definition. You can't affect any of that to make it harder to develop anything. That's what the law really says. You have a law, you're not allowed to make it any harder for anybody to develop their rights on their property.

Right. I mean, there's some jurisdictions that have recently gone through an updated land use plan.

Is there a way?

And incorporating those policies have been difficult because of this down zoning. Yeah.

This is something that comes up a lot. Why can't you guys do more to fill in the blank? I'm a little uncomfortable with kicking the can down the curve. In other words, when you come to our site, we don't tell you what it is. We say, go to the North Carolina statute. Is there a way to provide a summary that can be more general?

That always ties us into the language at the time. I thought of

I mean, the general purpose of the downzoning law is to limit the ability of municipalities.

We can't put a hot link in our code, right? You can, but I don't know how that works.

Because once the hot link expires for some reason, it could become a problem. Right.

That's the problem. So the issue, though, is I don't want to put words in the legislature's mouth and say what they were intending to do with this. I would not advise our code to say the intent of this was to do X. Right. Because I don't know what the intent of the legislature was.

Well, yeah, we do.

Well, but I'm not – I don't think we need to be – We know what the intent is. We don't need to publicize that in Arizona. Okay.

All right. So the plan, the way I see it now, is to – adjust our UDO to reference to existing state law on downzoning.

That was my thought process.

Which is the law and its definition of what downzoning is. That would be my recommendation. And then staff would bring to our attention what that code is when any item comes up that may or may not be a downzoning topic.

Yeah, that's the staff's job to do that anyway.

Okay.

I think that's the right way to do it. Instead of us going through UDO amendments every few months to update the code, it seems like, because that costs the town money every time we could do a public hearing announcement, they've got to pay for that and the paper and everything.

And either way, if the state changes the law to be more flexible, we'd immediately be on the same page.

I guess I'm not comfortable with a lack of ability to share with our community what the impact of this is.

I do that often with conversations with citizens.

Yeah, but if it's a conversation 10 times, it's already too late.

Maybe it's something they could put in a newsletter. and what maybe when this comes up and we make this change right this will be a text amendment right and it'll come through us in council the newsletter could reflect and put the hot link to state law and if somebody wants to research that on their own which encourage the citizens to do, they can then look up the state law.

And when you get this next month or the following month, whatever, move this forward, you will see that all, in my mind anyway, this case, the staff report will say we're doing this to bring our code in compliance.

Well, it would be nice on the community website. you know, definition of design zoning, click here, and then off they go.

It could very easily be in a newsletter when they describe this action.

And the code already states, like, if the statute is in, if our code is in conflict with the statute, the statute

Yeah, because the thing that this does is the implication, I mean, we get the heat because, you know, we're kind of, even though we're the tail end of the dog, we're the closest thing to where it's actually happening. And so the community comes to us and goes, what the hell are you doing? Or why aren't you doing? And In some respects, at that point, it's already too late. We're wearing the scarlet A.

In some respects, but this already took forth in 2024.

I don't know if there's a way to fix that, but it's just frustrating.

we're never going to be able to educate 100% of the community on every single wall and situation that are out there. That's why you have staff. That's why we're here anymore. Board of adjustment for his check valve, et cetera.

So I guess it, and this will be my last comment, believe it or not. Um, You know, my response is, if you want to change this, you know, you've got to go upstream. Got to go to Raleigh. Yeah, you got to go to Raleigh. Okay. Talk to Frank Eiler.

Right. Okay, so that's our plan on that one.

Yes. The next one, I'm looking at page five of that legislative bulletin that's at the top. So it's page 24 of your packet, but page five of that bulletin. Next thing I highlighted was the American and Ocala flags.

Yeah. And my looking at it, it relates to our 3.41C1R. Is that correct?

Yes. I believe that's the right citation. Right.

So do we need just to exempt the U.S. and North Carolina flag in R? We're saying you're allowed up to three flags. Now, size 4x6.

What was the citation again, Mr. Labrador?

3.41. Yes, sir. C.1.R. It's on page 149 of my book.

No, that's not R. Thank you. Yeah, so currently the code says flying with the three flags size shall not exceed four feet by six feet. All three flags may be flown on a single flagpole or individual flagpoles but not exceed three flags and any flagpoles shall not exceed a height of 25 feet. As I read this, and you guys correct me if I'm wrong, you have a chance to read it, this says that we cannot regulate the size of an American flag or a state flag. Right. And so we regulate the size in that citation. We also regulate it by poll height.

Well, the poll is not the flag.

Right, it's not. But if we say, if we limit a poll to 25 feet in height and someone wants to have a 40-foot flag, then in essence we're regulating the size of the flag. No, we're not.

You could put it on there. Anyway, that's... The American flag can't touch the ground.

This... Well, I don't know. It's supposed to be down at sunset, too.

Or lit.

Or lit, right.

But my thought is, do we just, in R, would we do an item for IV that says... The United States flag and the North Carolinas are exempt.

That's a possibility.

I haven't figured out how I'm going to move forward with it yet.

I haven't decided.

I haven't determined what's the best course of action. That is certainly one way to go.

But consider that this is already code for them, right? Cession law 2594. If somebody came here with an American flag 10 by 12.

We'd have to allow it.

Yeah.

Well, it's not an allowable thing. Somebody puts one up.

It's allowable because it's state law.

What they're talking about here is action to stop them.

It's not regulated.

So all it means is we would take no action. This is talking about Enforcement. Enforcement. It just becomes unenforceable.

Right.

We can even leave our standard the way it is and just never enforce it for a U.S. flag or state flag.

Yeah. Doesn't some of this apply to the municipal code?

That I don't know. I have to look in the municipal code.

Some of this enforcement stuff seems like more municipal code than...

I have not done a deep dive on this particular one yet. In fact, this is one thing that I wanted to bring in our opinion from our attorney on if administration, if I'm allowed to do that.

Because flags can be a very controversial matter.

It's come about as there's been some certain businesses, not only in our state and region, but in other areas of the country that they have these large American flags that jurisdictions have been saying you cannot display that because it exceeds our standards. And it was changed as a result of, my understanding is as a result of that. But I will look in Unicode as well to see if there's any changes necessary for that.

So I guess in my view, we either change subparagraph or exempting those two types of flags as a free speech item. or just never enforce our code is unenforceable.

Yeah, I'd prefer not to have unenforceable language and language that contradicts because while we may have, we understand what the intent is, the next person may not or the next board may not.

I mean, in my mind, it's still enforceable. If Richard wants to open his T-Mobile shop and put three T-Mobile flags up, this code applies.

Yes, absolutely agree. Absolutely agree.

Right. That is completely enforceable. But if you want to put one T-Mobile flag up and a bigger than 4x6 North Carolina flag and a bigger than 4x6 U.S. flag, you can because nothing will happen to it.

I 100% agree with you.

Well, that's good to know.

What if you have a 40-foot-long American flag, and the flagpole is 20 feet off the property line. It could potentially be 20 feet on somebody else's property.

And then it depends on which way the wind's blowing, I guess. Right. No different than a tree being planted in the tree limbs at some point.

If it's over your property line, you cut it off. So you can cut off the American flag?

If it's over your property line, yeah. And it's below the highest point in the town.

I'm just wondering if we could mandate that the flags have to totally maintain on the property.

I can look into that a little bit.

Yeah, I see what you're saying. Because that's part of the problem when flags get so big is that... I mean, they're taking up so much real estate.

Usually those poles are much higher, too.

Yeah, much higher, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't be 20 feet off the property line.

In other words, you put the pole at the corner of the property, most of the time the flag is over your property line, depending on the wind, right?

So I don't know.

But basically... Well, okay. So we need to look into something on that.

Yes, sir. And the intent of this was not necessarily to say I've got the panacea for how to fix the code. It's just bringing these items to your attention.

But right now, anyone putting up a large America and North Carolina flag is protected by state law.

That's how I understand it.

Right. OK, next.

The next item is page six, waiting period. And we've talked about this a little bit already. So it's something where I'm going to say enforcing now because we're of enforcement made the wrong word because we've not had anybody do this yet. But we cannot put a waiting period on when an issue has been denied or when it can come back to whatever the process is. Currently, I believe there's a 12-month waiting period.

I think we should amend our text to remove all that. One, I don't even think it's a good idea. If someone gets denied and they want to come back the next month with a new proposal, why would we not want to hear it?

It's a new proposal.

They have to repay application fees, et cetera.

I think that only happened once a while ago.

So we need to certainly comply with the law. Also, I think it's the better way of doing it. In practice, we are complying with the law. So we need to adjust our code to match that.

Pender County just amended their code. I'm familiar with that because I serve on the planning board. Pender County amended their code a couple months ago, and they wanted to make sure that it was cited the reason why it was happening. But I'm not suggesting we need to do that here.

Simple solution may just be remove it. Just remove it.

But again, Mr. Dyson, this is kind of what you're talking about. The public may not be aware of this. But we can't put commentary in the ordinance on why it was removed. We can do that in the case summary.

Right, in our public discussion. So, yeah, we should comply with that state law. In this case, the private estate law is correct and a better way of doing things. If someone is denied, they want to retool their proposal, they should be able to come right back and go through the process again. Okay. Okay.

All right, the next one up, bottom of page seven, land use law clarifications.

Highlighted this, I believe this, we need to go through, or I need to go through the code to see if we need to do anything particular with that, but I wanted to bring it to your attention nonetheless.

Nothing jumped out at me? Nothing jumped out at me either, but I wanted to at least make sure you were aware of it. I'm a little more interested in the family, care homes and the pavement.

Right. Number eight is pavement standards, which basically says that we cannot have more strict paving requirements than the Department of Transportation.

So the way I read our current 4.9.D.1A, our 18-inch undercut, 8-inch of base, 2.5 inches of asphalt, does it not agree... I can't get it. With the North Carolina Department of Transportation subdivision role minimum construction standards. So my thought is, like the first one, we're just going to have to, I think, reference these sections.

Yeah, and it's something I've briefly reached out to Matt Sorrells, a public works director on this, to see how... do our standards conflict with, and if so, how much? And I do believe they do.

They do right now. Ours is a much simpler standard.

And it may just, we need to just say, reference the statute.

Well, I mean, it's a handbook. It's not really. That's what I meant, to reference the handbook.

Yeah, that handbook is used all over the state.

And as that changes, then our code changes.

I mean, we have a simple one. We have one standard. They have several. At least I see five here. No more than that.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

Eleven different standards depending on the base, the soil type. It did come up, I think, with Logan or somebody, didn't it, on the undercut and everything?

Yeah. So. Yeah, it has to do with the part of the state you're in too.

Right. The soil and everything.

Is that an improvement on what our standard is?

I'd say no.

It'd be a little less. It'd be a little less.

It'd be a little less.

Okay.

So the town has to think about this. It's a down zoning. No, it's a down zoning for the town. Right. Because in council, we need to think about this a little bit too. If we adopt this, which we're going to have to, because there are no more private roads, be public.

subdivision. No. Yes.

There are a few in C-Trail.

Yeah, but new roads. Going forward, we may not even have this case anymore.

It's just requiring the pavement design standards.

Yes, for all private or public roads.

Right. We can still have private roads, but they would just have to use this standard.

Yes, but Anything being built in the future is going to be a town road.

The code requires, with exception of ETJ, all new streets shall be constructed and dedicated for public purposes.

Right, which means the town is taking over a road that is probably a little less than our original code. So obviously what I'm saying is the town may be open for more maintenance in the future because we've got a two and a half inch asphalt on the top, and most of these are between one and a half, well, they're all between one and a half and two. There are no two and a halves on this list.

So... What you may be getting at is that the town wants to entertain allowing private streets again? No?

It doesn't make any difference because it says private or public.

It's just that... But they're required to be public. New streets are required to be public.

That there's going to be a further expense to the town because... Unless you go back to the NC DOT and say, increase your standards. Right. And that ain't happening.

Right. Is that something that we could recommend to the developer?

What, that they're public streets? Mm-hmm.

No, that they use more asphalt?

That they use more asphalt.

They don't have to.

No, we wouldn't have any power by ordinance.

I mean, can you ask? The answer is could you ask? The question is can you ask? Sure. Can you require? No.

Now, when was this? Well, it is in the interest of the community they're building.

It only applies to anything approved, initiated after January 1st. this year.

Right. So all the previous ones before January 1st are using our previous standard. Two and a half over eight.

So all of Angel's Trace is what our current standard is. Right.

And going forward... Sanctuary is an example of a previous standard. Right.

So anything after that which were not a lot, we approved.

Not going to be much.

Right.

But going forward... Yeah.

Uh... The state standard will apply and not our local standard.

Okay.

But all I was saying is council have to be aware when they're doing their road maintenance planning budget, if there is a new development, it may require more maintenance over the lifetime than before.

Right.

Absolutely. Okay. And the next item, and I went through this, I tried to get pretty clear. thorough so if I've overlooked something I apologize but the next item that jumped off to me that we might could consider doing I'm still trying to find it page 25 top 25 child care facilities hold on staff report page 24 staff report page 44 page 25 for the legislative board

Yes. Yeah, I looked at that one.

Modify the definition of family child care home.

So that is our 3.7E, right?

Yes, sir.

Our special use. We call it family care home. They're calling it family child care home.

No, this is a daycare, basically. This is a daycare in a house.

Not necessarily. I didn't exactly read it. Child care.

It's a child care facility. In a home.

Yeah, it's a child care facility in the house.

So that's under our... So that's an approved residential use.

That's the current code. You can have a daycare.

Yes. So residential and related uses. We have family care homes. as permitted, P.S., permitted with a special use standard? Or are you saying that's non-table?

This is a daycare facility.

In a private residence.

In a house, yes.

Right. Wouldn't that be likewise covered by E, 3.7E? Or that is...

Let me look at 3.7e. No, 3.7e is up to six special needs persons which are defined by the statutes.

That's somewhere like, that's different because we have to treat them as a residential home period. We cannot require a special use permit or anything for those.

I'm not sure what this thing's telling us to do then, because it seems like mostly fire safety standards. We don't have a place to do anything.

These are in-home daycares up to so many children. Let me find that system wall.

But we have daycare facilities as a non-residential use.

These seem like building permit issues.

It could also be a home-occupied patient potentially. So family child care home by the new definition is a child care arrangement located in an operator-occupied private dwelling where at any one time more than two children but less than 11 children receive child care provided the arrangement in accordance with general statutes.

That are not your kids.

Yes, correct.

So we need a new box completely. In the residential use table, we need the new category called family child care. And then a new special use standard.

A new definition to go with it.

And again, I'm just bringing it to your attention of a possible contract.

I was thinking that we could take that one and roll it into both, that family care home or child care home can be merged into one.

Yeah, there's a different thing. There's a difference.

So we need to add a, I'm looking at table 3.1, that are residential and related uses. So we have family care home in there, but you say that's separate from a family child care home. Yes, it's different. So we will need to create a whole new use, probably with the same PSs on there, and then a new section, three-point whatever, whatever letter we're up to. This one was an E. We've got to go to F, actually. It's the next one. So there will be a 3.7F. that puts these standards in here, you know, such that the exit has to be on the same level, et cetera, et cetera.

Again, this is just bringing to your attention the solution. I have not come up with the best way to solve it.

It seems like we're going to have to do it because it's certainly a possibility someone could do that is take a residential home. And you said what's up to two, more than two children or less than 11, you said?

uh statute says three i thought any one time more than two but less than eleven okay so three to eleven three to ten yes three to ten which is you have two kids you could easily take care of two other right that would apply so yes i guess we need to do this in reality the only the difference that the change is used to say a family child care home as a child care arrangement located in a residence where at any one time but not less than 11 and it changes they strike through residents and say an operator occupied private dwelling

Right, but this is also adding these, what I would call sort of safety standards. I don't know if it's applied. Yes, yes, we'll need to look at that. And the first one, I think, applies to the UDO. You know, rooms and areas within the family care home where the occupants receive care shall be on the same level as the exit. Okay, that's, to me, sort of a UDO thing when you're looking at a home. Where the kid's going to be on the same level of the exit. I don't know if the last part we can do anything with. fire safety evacuation and lockdown plan compliant with such as we can.

That's got to be part of their permit. That's got to be part of their building permit application. We can't.

Right.

We can't do the 45 travel distance and all that without knowing what the inside of the home is. Right.

So how does currently somebody in Sunset Beach decide to have a child care home?

I've not been asked that question yet, so I don't know.

Can we just make this an unacceptable usage?

I mean, that's a possibility. That would be a down zoning. In my mind, it potentially was a home occupation, but I don't know that a definition of home occupation covers it.

I mean, in Sunset Beach, we're the oldest demographic. That is changing, but I don't.

Well, as you have new developments like Angel Trace and Sanctuary, you're going to see your demographic change.

You're going to see the demographic change. There's going to be somebody in there that wants to do this.

It could be as simple as a vacation. You come here and you want to go to the beach and don't want to take your kids. There's like a daycare to drop them off at.

That's true.

So, yeah, I think we have to address that. I just don't know how it works. I'm not clear. Certainly, I started out being unclear between what we already have versus what we need. So I need to wrap my head around that a little better and figure out if somebody wants to do it now, do they just do it and they don't need a license or a permit or anything?

They'd have to get something from the state at a minimum, but... This use has not been brought to my attention in my two years here.

I can tell you in local communities where this is actually done quite often unlicensed, it's not a good situation.

Right. Well, certainly the safety standards seem reasonable.

If we're going to create an acceptable application,

Or should this be in a municipal ordinance, not outside of the UDO?

I think it's a UDO issue.

Okay.

But at least the use is.

The allowance.

The allowance of the use, yeah. And as you guys talked about, we wouldn't dabble in the fire code requirements. I believe that was all that was in my attention. I don't know if you found anything, if you reviewed that and found something. I did.

I found one other one that I just wanted to bring up. Which one? Staff report, page 30, and it's man-made ditches. It has to do with CAMA and exempting man-made ditches from designation as waterways. lands flowed by tidal waters. It has to do with the definition of marshland. So I'm just thinking since we're a coastal community, some of this stuff may apply. But because we've got properties where the people have come in and dug ditches and then states tried to apply protection over that. So now they've taking some of this away, is saying that you can't designate it as an environmental concern. Somebody's already dug a ditch. I don't know if this needs to be something in the UDO or not.

I'll look at that. I don't know either. Right at the top of my head. In my perusal, I didn't think it did, but it doesn't mean that I didn't overthink it.

Yeah. It came up when we were talking about that plot that... We were doing the grading permit, or the grading standards change, and they had a ditch. The man-made ditch had been dug down the side, and that question came up. Is that a protected ditch, or is it environmental concern? That's all I was thinking. I just thought it might be worth looking into. Okay.

Yeah, because it's referencing a General Statute 113-229. No, General Statute 113A-103. But I can look into that a little bit further. I don't know how it impacts our code or if at all.

Okay. Okay. Priority reasons, I guess, I don't know. You're planning on doing this as one swoop or trying to break this up? What's your plan?

Initially, it was to bring it to next month. As one package?

Okay.

Because I think most of them are fairly clear-cut things we have to do, like the waiting period, the downzoning definition. I don't know that we have to do anything with a family child care home or not, but We can break him up as well, whatever the purpose of the board is.

I think it would be better to keep them together so there's one public hearing. Right.

If all possible, if we could do it that way, it would probably be better, even though it adds to a little bit of confusion because you're on kind of a lot of diverse topics at the same time, right?

Right. I don't know that they're very controversial topics. Right.

Okay.

Anybody else got any questions on any of this? No. So the plan is to try to incorporate this in a series of text amendments presented either at the next meeting or the following meeting.

Right.

No later than the following meeting. So it would be the June or July meeting as a series of text amendments presented. broken down such that we can go through them one at a time.

Yes, sir.

Okay. If that's okay with the board.

Yes, I believe we're fine with that, correct?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

oh sure i did notice i did not see this in this but uh city of wilmington just changed something related there are floodplain ordinances that they had to do and i'm i want to pull their package to see what was changed on that as well but uh as i've mentioned that I do know that the state has proposed some new floodplain regulation requirements, and Carrie and I need to get together and go through to see what needs to be changed in our code.

What's an absolute has to be changed to comply with that.

So that's going to probably be more of a July timeframe. I do know there's some, at least the way I was quickly looking at it, there were some optional requirements. So that's... I want to say, we have a code, the code that is compliant and consistent with what we were told we had to do to be part of the National Flood Insurance Program. I want to make sure we maintain that ability and compliant with that criteria. But I'm still not certain exactly what has to be changed versus might need, nice to change kind of thing. Me too. Okay. Regardless, either way, you know, you guys will see it straight through on the line.

All right. Based on the revised agenda, number seven now is public comments on any topic. See, no public comments. We'll move on. Planning board comments. We'll start on this side so Richard can go left. Any comments or thoughts from the planning board on, I guess, anything?

all right so i want to take a minute to talk about something totally new um dr ron about this a little bit but um and some of this was going to come up when we did a land use plan but now seems to be in the nethers um but someone handed me a book a few months ago that i then read and kind of fell in love with because it kind of embraced some of the transportation design elements that I've always used as an engineer. So in my 35 years of designing mainly streets, I used some of these technologies and ideas as I went along, not knowing that somebody else was out there doing kind of a movement. And this movement is called Strong Towns and Strong Towns. And it really didn't hit with any force until after I retired. So I didn't really know what was going on until I read this book and realized that there's a whole movement out there to change how we think about transportation. And it relates to transportation engineering It relates to pedestrian safety. And it's a whole different way of looking at it. I mean, for an engineer, it's looking at things totally backward and different than how I was trained. And as I... Design streets. So one technical difference that the book pointed out is that roads are basically highways to get you from one town to another. So 17 is a road. Old Georgetown is a road. But a street is where you live on or you shop at. And those streets should be designed for pedestrians. Yes, for cars also, but pedestrians should be the priority. Not because, I mean, the difference being that once you're at a street level, you have already, the speed levels should go down because people are walking, biking, and they're moving around instead of on a highway. Nobody's walking or riding a bike, theory. So it's just a different way of looking at it. So I wanted to read a couple of paragraphs off their website that kind of incorporate some of these ideas. One is, street design is the primary factor in crash prevention and safety. The design of a street is the single most important factor in whether people drive safely or not. It's not about how many signs you put up, how many tickets the police write, how many public service announcements you run. If a street is designed to feel like a highway, people will drive it like a highway, even if the speed limit says 25. And just relating back to my experience, I bought, for years, transportation engineers. I never considered myself a transportation engineer, although I designed thousands of But I always thought for my subdivisions to control the speed by mechanically designing the streets to lower the speed limit. You can't do a one mile straightaway with no vertical curves in it and then post it at 15 miles an hour. People are going to drive 50. And you can't expect them to drive 15 just by putting a sign. Second point was streets should prioritize human movement, not automobile movement. Most of our streets have been designed like roads. They're optimized for moving cars quickly and efficiently, which often makes them dangerous and unpleasant for everyone else. When we flip the priority and design streets for people first, we get places that are safer, inviting and more economically productive. Slower speeds, narrower lanes, more crossings, better lighting, and active frontages all contribute to a street that supports human life and interaction. Ironically, when you do that, even drivers benefit because the street becomes more predictable, less chaotic. So, you know, it's kind of a mind-blowing thing for civil engineer to think about some of these ideas. But I went through the book and read through what he was talking about. He had specific examples in there of pedestrian safety. And he had an example in there of he lived three miles from his office. And between his office and his house, the speed limit was from 30 to 45 miles an hour. There were six traffic lights. So he started timing himself how long it took to get home. He said, because he always hit one to six of the traffic lights, that that trip took him, I don't remember the number, it was like 15 minutes. But he said, you know, if you removed all the traffic lights, you posted that street at 20 miles an hour, he said he would have gotten home faster every day he said because the traffic lights make you stop a certain time and plus there's the slowing down the speeding up you know all that and that's part of the chaos thing that he's talking so one specific example i'll give you i've been thinking about this as we were talking about land use plan you know i kept bringing up We need these small area plans to talk about Sunset Boulevard. And these were some of the ideas I was thinking about, but he's kind of given me some background and some a little bit more oomph to go with my ideas. So here's one example. So Sunset Boulevard from the roundabout to North Shore Drive on the island, 1.1 miles. Right now it's posted at 35 miles an hour, right? So that would take you a minute and 53 seconds. If we posted it at 20 miles an hour, it would take you three minutes and 18 seconds. So that's a minute and a half, less than a minute and a half longer to go across the bridge and get onto the island. But what it's done is it's taken that, Speed differential of a car versus a person walking at 5 miles an hour. Cars going 35. You've got golf carts going 20 miles an hour. You've got bicycles going 10 miles an hour. Why is it so important that we get somebody from the roundabout to the island in a minute and a half faster? So these are just some of the ideas that I wanted us to think about. If we can take that speed differential between a vehicle and a pedestrian or a biker, then what we're doing was we're making the bridge feel safer to pedestrians and bikers. I go across the bridge a lot. Almost every time I go across, there's a pedestrian or there's a bicycler. They need to feel safer. It's not, I've run across the bridge, I've walked across the bridge, I've biked across the bridge. It does not feel safe. When a car's gone by you at 35 miles an hour, it does not feel safe. So it doesn't make you feel like, I want to go do that again. But there's a way we could narrow those lanes, we could widen the walking, biking lanes on that bridge, reduce that speed limit and make that drive much safer for everybody and it would encourage and again we got people complaining about golf carts go too slow over the bridge well this would reduce I mean now the car would be going the same speed as a golf cart so now there's again that's we've reduced the conflict and we've made the whole bridge experience safer so that's just one example of But I'm kind of thinking about, and we could look at different areas along Sunset Boulevard. We could look at areas of 904. Because if we could slow people down and get more pedestrian crossings, I think we could improve that whole mud district area. Because nobody on the mud district side feels comfortable walking across the street. I've been, you know, you go down Sunset Boulevard and every now and then you'll see somebody race across the road. That's because they don't feel safe enough to walk across the road and they should be given the priority, not the cars. That's my little spiel for the day. It's kind of fascinating to think about, but I guess I would like to open this up for more dialogue. and even see if I can contact Strong Towns because they have people that will come do speeches and presentations and things like that. So instead of just listening to me, maybe we can get somebody from Strong Towns in here. And maybe if, as a planning board, we open some of this dialogue whenever we get the land use plan working again, these are some of the ideas we could start talking about. And again, why are we moving Why does traffic from 904 on 179 have to go so fast, 45 miles an hour, from 904 to the roundabout? Why? Why is that extra minute or two that important if we slow those people down? That whole environment becomes totally different.

Fascinating.

Yeah, I did only take a cursory look at it yesterday. It's a lot. It's a lot of stuff.

Yeah.

But I, well, let me tell you some stories I get. So where I previously lived was in a much higher density suburban environment. Right. My suburb had 55,000 people and it was considered a small, medium-sized suburb in Chicago. And I rode my bike a lot. But at that time, I was a few years younger. And I sold my bike when I came here because when I looked at this area, to me, it's not a safe area to ride a bike in. I agree. They're not designed that way. That's right. Where I previously lived, they spent money, time, and put bike paths that were not part of the thoroughfares.

Or streets, for that matter, in some cases.

Right. Where there was either sidewalks or bike paths that got you through town and utility right-of-ways to get to lakes. That's how you got around on a bike. You didn't go on to... You tried not to go on to streets.

Well, some I would say were roads.

Right. You stayed off the roads with bikes. You know, like the little bike path we have out here is... There was something like that, but there was not.

They were trying to get and put you on what would be what we were kind of calling a multi-use path. Now, this was before the e-bike thing.

Right.

E-bike didn't exist when I was doing that. I'm sure it's probably changed things because I recently spent a week in Hilton.

And they have an extensive, completely town-wide multi-use path system for pedestrians. Bikes, I believe they must be addressing e-bikes now because they have little stop signs on the path that they didn't have the last time I was there.

Speed limit signs.

Speed limit signs and stuff on the multi-use, you know, which didn't exist in my day. Riding the rollerbladers were the biggest problem because they take such a... Their strides are way wide, right? Right. And they're hard to bike around because you never know how far left or right a rollerblader is going. So anyway... I understand, it just, unfortunately, I don't know how to apply some of this stuff because we have hard infrastructure already existing. And it's, I think, next to impossible to change hard infrastructure once it exists. Is it a cost? Going forward, Ken, we've tried, and Richard's been a proponent of these sidewalks that nowhere go somewhere. You know, and we've tried to widen some of these things to get multi-use. So I think certainly we can do a lot of that in the land use plan if we get it back. I won't assume we are going to get it back at this point. We've talked about incorporating. So I don't know. I mean, we have some street design standards, I think. We went through block length and curves and, you know, whether some of that could be re-looked at again to, I think we've, I mean, I agree, we're trying to make it as much pedestrian-friendly and non-motorized vehicle-friendly as possible is a great idea. And I agree, trying to get from the mud to the Gateway District. We're just talking about the Gateway. The connection between the mud and, let's face it, really, you need an underpass or a bridge, right? We can start with a big walk and a stop sign or stop sites or whatever, but really the way to do it is an overpass. I put Esther in overpass or an underpass, right?

I'll be here in overpass.

But anyway, so I think our thought process, I don't know what we can affect, though. If we get the land use plan, maybe we can have, as we talked about trying to do before, you get some of the interconnectability in the land use plan. And then, again, the land use plan then flows to the UDO and then flows to other things to get it done. So I just don't know how much of an effect we can have other than looking at the standards we have and keep trying to move them in a direction for pedestrian interconnectability, motorized connectability.

Even if we don't have the land use plan, it doesn't come back to us. If we do these kind of, discussions or engagements, the public's going to hear about some of these ideas and they're going to say, hey, I like that idea. And at the public engagement sessions, hopefully some of this stuff will come up just for me.

And we can create, depending on word, a meeting agenda to talk about. We can have a topic, a discussion on a topic based on this. I guess I don't like to get too broad on these, you know, If we can, whether the public shows up then and listens or talks, it's up to them. But I have no objection, especially if we don't have a workload, a plot to go over or whatever, it's going to take time to have a discussion item on sidewalks or multi-use paths or whether traffic circles are better than intersections, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, part of this.

I don't think we can control speed limits at all, right?

On IDOT roads, not at all.

Only on town roads, right?

They're DOT roads, but we can ask. We can petition for them to change the speed limit.

We did. We just did on Georgetown Road, right? About a year ago. It was 55 and now it's 45.

There's a process. That's what I was going to bring up is with those being DOT roads and with a town like Sunset Beach, a lot of their major corridors are DOT. We'd have to partner with them on whatever, any infrastructure changes.

I think what you're really, in my mind, is creating a mindset. A planning mindset that takes this into consideration.

Maybe not

you know, what's the end all, what can we accomplish, but having sort of a mindset, and I believe we've kind of been there, is that creating a more walkable town, bikeable town, safer town, has been in sort of our mindset, but maybe looking at some of this stuff topic by topic gives us a bit more tools or different way of thinking.

Yeah, and I think that's the right way of doing it. Part of it is just changing the whole mindset of, because people... I bet nobody in the town's thinking about that speed differential across the bridge. But there's other places on the island specifically that speed is a problem. And I'll tell you how it really works.

My street that I live on, which probably none of you have seen, it's a divided road, a boulevard. So you've got lanes in each direction, 3,960 feet long, not a curve on it. So it's a speedway. So it's a dragway. It's a dragway. And, I mean, we got posted all kinds of signs, which is useless. The police don't. It's a private road, so police can't do anything. And here comes the other thing of it. And there's no sidewalk. So the road is the sidewalk. And it's only 10 feet wide. So you understand what it's like out there. And I walk quite a bit. So the POA decided this is an unsafe situation. So installed traffic quieting devices, which are quite effective. There was quite a pushback from the town to remove those. So in the fire code, there cannot be most traffic quieting devices in a street that has safety vehicle access to it. Some of the things you were talking about, my two here makes it harder. The fire cone and the fire chief made me say, I don't want all those curves that slow you down or a circle or a bump or a brick area.

I can tell you, I've fought many fire chiefs over, you know, they thought that that curve was too sharp or this.

And I timed what the difference was.

Yeah.

going that distance with or without traffic quieting, and it's 15 seconds. Making 3,960 feet with traffic quieting and another street that didn't have it, it's only like 15 to 18 seconds difference. Yeah.

Anyway. Part of this issue is political. Yeah.

Well, I guess what I'm saying is sometimes there's going to be a balance of I won't say necessarily loggerheads, a difference in priorities that we have to face.

And a big part of this Strongtowns thing, too, is trying to save money. So they don't advocate more lanes. They don't advocate this. It's all about pedestrian safety and access. So it's more about can we think about one additional pedestrian crossing Sunset Boulevard you know and then next year could we do one more you know it's not redesign the whole road and it's incrementally can we head towards this direction and some of this is cultural I mean oh yeah I was just in Charleston and it's it's kind of an odd

I mean, there are streets, but, you know, they still, but there is a culture that if there's a crosswalk. They stop. They stop.

Mm-hmm.

Right? And, you know, so sometimes just a can of paint, you know, and a little education. Right. And ordinance. In other words, if you hit somebody in a crosswalk, it's on you no matter what. And.

We like to avoid that.

Yeah. I mean, that's not what we're doing, but, but I think those are things that, um, and the other disadvantage that we have is that sunset beach came into existence as a variety of planned communities. And each one of them has their own issues, you know, origin story. Right. Um, And, you know, they all kind of feed in to... So the roads essentially became... I emerged from my planned community. I want to get somewhere, right? I want to get to the store. I want to get to the doctor. But those things are far away. You know, the thing about the mud district... that I, you know, practically preach is, you know, it gives a sense of proximity to the things that I want. And if I have that sense of proximity, I don't have to be in a hurry. But if my doctor's in Shalote, and you tell me I can only go 20 miles an hour, I don't think that's going to be well received. But So it's difficult because when you do this organically from the beginning, and there are communities out there that have done that, and it's obvious, but when you're trying to impose it after the fact... On an existing system. It's tough. But, you know, I think in some respects... And that's why I thought the land use plan, because the 2017 land use plan really doesn't deal with this at all. And people want to know, well, why do we have a land use plan? And it's kind of like, well, if you don't have a plan, how do you know where you're going? And we may be very limited in what we can accomplish in terms of those goals. But if you don't say, hey, this would be a good place for us to be,

You'll never get there.

You're never going to get there. So, anyway, those are my thoughts on it.

Michael? Well, I really am interested in this because I ride my bike, mainly ride on our street and shoreline. Shoreline? Yeah. Well, I have to to get over to the other streets. Yeah. I have no choice. And I walk probably two miles almost every day. Mm-hmm.

If you want to connect the town by path, the bike path should go through Colony 2, through Oyster, through C Trail, all the way to the mud district. Not go on shoreline.

The path should cut through all the residential areas. I would never go down west shoreline. It's east shoreline. A little bit less traffic there. Anyway, yeah, I'm kind of fascinated by this.

Well, good. So I guess for Stuart's point of view, if you'd like an item added for discussion, you need to propose it to Ren, and we can add it to the agenda.

Okay.

But again, my preference is always not too broad. If it's some specific topic that maybe we could do something with, street design or sidewalk design, I'm just throwing these crazy things out here, you know. Right. Okay. That that we can educate ourselves on, educate the public on, that eventually may go to some sort of UDO thing or not is my original preference. Obviously, if you want to do something with DOT, NC DOT, I guess go through Ron and then see what the procedure is on that. Convince the town administrator, I guess, kind of to consider it, right? Does council vote on those type of things? It's your floor now, Ron, too.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's a very broad conversation and topic. I don't know the best. I'm happy to get Mr. Jones to see what his ideas and thoughts might be, at least in putting on the next planning board agenda for a general discussion, but if that's what I'm hearing. But I don't know. I mean, it's bringing in Strongtown as an example. They may want some type of honorarium or something to pay for the guy to come in, and that's a budget issue.

Nothing I can commit to as an example.

That's just my experience with using not Strongtown per se, but other, bringing in guest speakers or someone.

Any other areas that you're, Previous been with or currently with that are on similar thought patterns or.

With strong towns in general? Well, we.

Well, not only through, not only their concept, but similar. There's other price. I mean.

I mean, yeah, there's been, I'm familiar with bringing in some of the same type of concepts, having streets being used for linear parks with a focus on pedestrians and first vehicle, second, not roads, streets, as Mr. Jones is trying to point out. um incorporating you know traffic calming measures on the onset of a subdivision design versus the after you know trying to retrofit them later making sure you don't have those long blocks or long stretches of a street before you know so yeah i'm familiar with that we've done that in wilmington when i was there as an example um incorporating the removing minimum parking standards in the udo in wellington before I left was the result of having some of these same kind of principles and concepts. I played a Chuck Marone, who's the founder of Strong Towns, video at council meeting when we were talking about our land use code at the time on why we don't need to be regulating, having so many parking spaces, particularly if the intent was for that Friday after Thanksgiving.

We did the same thing on our non-residential. Yeah, we did. We've not done anything on our residential side. Is it something we should look at?

Residential is tricky. We kept them for residential in Wilmington because of the college influence, making sure there was enough spaces for maybe a two-bedroom apartment, but probably four people might be living there to make sure you have enough cars. So we didn't touch the residential in Wilmington either. So yeah, I'm familiar with the concepts and Strongtown is definitely an advocate for better design, an advocate for better, more efficient-run government. He points out how your downtowns really need to be, downtowns generate the tax base. I'll just use Wilmington as an example, how the suburbs really are being funded by the downtowns, if they're properly designed.

In our case here, we don't have a downtown, we have a...

your beach property a gateway district or whatever you want to call a commercial lane a lot of your beach properties that may be the sub you know subsidize some of the other things so it's it's different we did some of those heat maps you know that shows you know here's based on property tax values you know you see where we had some areas you know downtown obviously then you know some some more fluid neighborhoods kind of showing the the tax base was impacted but It depends on where you want to take the topics and who we bring in and what the impact. So ultimately, we may need to get further discussion or direction from administration and from council on how far we go with this. You mentioned the sidewalks are nowhere, and I'm hearing that too. How come you guys aren't requiring them to connect or build? We can't. By state law, we can only require the improvements along the frontage. When a development occurs, that's where the town could have a sidewalk replacement plan or, you know, gap where they can fill the gaps or whatever, if they have a capital projects.

But again, that's just what else is important.

Stormwater is important. Traffic's important. Sidewalks and bike, pedestrian, bike and pedestrian facilities are important. Where, where's it all fit in the.

Now the town has a lobbyist, correct?

I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

Because I think one of the things as we explore these issues is we're going to discover what state or regional ordinances make this... I'm thinking specifically about sidewalks to nowhere. What ordinances make this more difficult and perhaps can focus... upstream in terms of getting those ordinance, getting relief in some way from those ordinances.

Sidewalls from nowhere requiring a developer to connect 300 feet somewhere else, as an example.

Off their property.

Off their property. That's state law, and it's also court cases that have substantiated state law. DOT has a little bit more flexibility than the local government does. But there's even cases that have said they've pushed the limit on things. D.O.T.

is a big issue in this because D.O.T. is all engineers, and they don't particularly care for pedestrians. And they like pedestrians because they are pedestrians, but roads aren't designed for pedestrians. Sure. They think of safety as how can we move that car fastest from this point to this point? Not, you know, how do we get this person across the street? They don't typically like sidewalks because then they have to maintain them. It's always a battle with the OT. It's just, again, it's a mindset, it's a philosophy. And this guy points out in this book, it's so true. This is how we were trained. These are all the design handbooks are built around these old philosophies from post-World War II.

Yeah. And the development philosophy post-World War II was, we're going to build a lot of residential over here. Everybody's going to have a carport or garage. We're going to put all the commercial over here. And people, the way things are going to work is... God, the 50s are wonderful, wasn't it? Huh? I know. I know. And we'll funnel all this traffic onto this one road. Onto this one road, and then they'll go to the shopping center, they'll execute their commercial interactions, they'll get back in their car.

Well, I guess the short term, as we bring this to an end here, is yes, we can discuss these topics. I'd propose them to Ron if he can add them to the agenda, but trying to be as focused as possible at a time so that we can, one, get our heads around it, and then if public wants to listen in, or come in, they can at least understand how you eat an elephant, you know, one bite at a time.

That's right.

So, and then, of course, our mindset, and I think we've already had it, is to kind of incorporate this mindset into what we do and how we write the, you know, changes. And I've said before in front of the public is, this is the important part, right? Right. Is the planning. the mindset, what we put into the written language, because as we said today, it has to comply with the state law, because later on when a developer comes and you don't like the development, if we haven't already written this stuff, as long as they comply with what's already written, it's a done deal. So it's harder to do because you're trying to look out further, but if we have this as our mindset and we learn more about it, when we're looking at a sidewalk ordinance or block lengths or whatever these mundane what seems to be mundane right textural items is that oh well if we do this a little bit we get a little better outcome out of it or canopy trees or whatever right right that i think that's how to do it is to keep that and always be in our mind now and if we do get the land use plan back i'm not if we do or we don't i have no idea As we talked about before, trying to incorporate this in, and maybe we need to make sure the planning board, if we are going to get it back, maybe note the council as, we should be more involved possibly in designing, if we're going to hire a consultant or a firm to do this, on what is going to be in the scope of the thing. Because we had discussions last time, you wanted some more things in the scope.

Yeah.

They didn't scope it that way. They didn't do the RFQ, whatever they call it that way, and issued a contract and it wasn't there. We're trying to add afterward. So possibly the better way to do it, if we're going to do a do-over here, is to be more involved in putting the RFQ out or whatever you want to call it, that this is the scope of doing our land use plan, which is the minimum CAMO requirements or whatever, plus these other things that could incorporate some of the stuff.

Well, the other point of this, too, and the light bulb goes off, when you compare communities that have executed this pretty well to communities that haven't, it's about a 30% bump in home value. The difference between a Sunset Beach and a Pacific Palisades is about $400,000. for a 2,500 square foot home simply because, and they're in California, but they've done the math. There's sidewalks everywhere. There's shopping centers embedded in the community. You don't need to have a car, right? Okay.

Anything else from the town? No.

For the planning board comments, I have two. First off, just so everybody knows, Ron and I had a meeting, a two-on-two, with Mike Postle and Christy. I thought the meeting went very well. I circulated a summary of the meeting to all of the participants in the meeting. I was hopeful that Christy would take it upon herself to circulate that to the rest of the council. I ran into Katie yesterday at a sea trail event, and she had read the email. So I'm assuming that Christy circulated it to the council, and hopefully we'll see some impact. That's the good news. The bad news is, on May 14th, I was served with a summons from Riptide Builders accusing me of libel. I am now in the process of working with the town to see what resources I have available from the town. There's an organization, I don't have the name on the top of my head, but basically an organization that supports the defense of town officials who get sued by other folks. Don't have a resolution of that yet. The one thing I do want to share is both to the council, to the planning board, to the community, and to Riptide, that in no way will this impact my impartiality that I think I've been totally consistent on as a planning board member here in my four years of service. In no way will it impact my impartiality in the event of anything that comes up from that applicant. And that's it.

Okay. Staff, anything else for us?

June meeting?

I have nothing new. We do plan to meet in June. I believe I have a conditional zoning application that I need to look at for the Seaside Methodist Church here, the street. I've got to go through the packet to figure out exactly what they're proposing, and we'll be meeting there.

They picked up?

Parcel they picked up plus their current parcel. I believe they're potentially future building plans as well as some other conditions they'd like for consideration. But I'm still analyzing that. It was away the last 10 or 12 days, so I'm not spending a whole lot of time on it. But they did meet the deadline for the June meeting, but I'm going to talk with them a little bit. My goal is to talk with them a little bit.

So right now for June, that's the only item we have other than some minutes to approve and

minutes and potentially the legislative.

I will not be here for the June meeting. I will be in New York, but I just want to make sure that everybody else is intent on attendance, so we have a quorum.

I'm assuming I have no update on an ETJ member.

I have Believe it or not, I met a gentleman walking his dog in front of my house who lives in the sanctuary. And when I asked him about this, he says, you know, I have a person that I think would be perfect. So she is kind of the den mother of the sanctuary and kind of convenes an informal sanctuary HOA. And I gave him my number and said, have her call me. So I'll keep everybody posted. And she may reach out to you, Kimberly. I gave him your name for her to reach out to. Okay? I'm not sure if that was the best way to get to the town. All right. Thanks.

It's an application online, I think. It is an application.

Oh, I wish I knew. I would have suggested that she use that. I'm sure Kim will. But anyway.

Kim will. Yeah.

I have nothing else.

Okay. Any update on the land use plan?

I have nothing.

Okay.

Okay. Thanks to everyone today. Do we have a motion to adjourn?