Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

And I did get into graduate school. Yeah. Yeah. But I said, remember, this is your opportunity to steer. Yeah.

Now we're going to change the world. Yeah. It's a community building.

Yeah. All right.

Well, we, we can get through these two items. Oh, you do.

Yeah. Yeah.

She's moving on to somewhere else.

First of all, congratulations. Second of all, and more importantly, we're in a fight.

Where are you headed? Where are you going to, as you can tell us?

Wow. That's not what I expected. I was expecting you to say, you know, Layton or Morgan, Bountiful or, you know, another city.

Good.

It might be.

Two, three, four.

I'm going to steal my mic. Noah, how are you guys? In some nights, we say, thanks for the test. How about yourself, sir? How about you? I'll take a picture.

Bye.

So do we have a new you yet?

I saw that post, the planner one or something. Is that replacing yours? That's awesome.

Congratulations.

I was thinking that we were expanding and getting additional. I was like, oh, that's interesting.

Good. Good.

Bye.

Or were you in the red area or were you at the blue fireworks?

Oh, you're okay. I looked at that map. Anybody in the red area? I mean, it seemed like it was just kind of the outlying areas, right? Yeah, it seemed like it.

Which is a couple of random spaces that were kind of funny that they were red. My thought is...

it probably makes it easier for emergency response to focus on like small areas to keep going kind of triage a little bit and we don't have randoms going out today we've been there for like three years now they don't have to control the whole city they can kind of focus on the high priority i need to joke to my wife it's like what if i asked the fire department where do you guys want to respond to tonight No, I mean, yeah, just just from a practical standpoint, there's no way there's no way you can just like the police, the whole city.

This is it.

It'd be a waste of time and energy and just thank you.

I mean, I personally. All right. Shall we get started? I handled it. All right. We're going to go ahead and bring the city planning commission meeting for July 7th, 2026 to order. We'll have an invocation of thought by Commissioner Baker and then the Pledge of Allegiance will be led by Commissioner Haddock.

Thank you. I was actually going to share a little story with you guys. So this last week, my neighbor, who's a plant lover, gave me a lavender plant that she had in a pot with all the good intentions of planting probably three years ago. completely root-bound. In other words, the roots could no longer get the air, water, nutrients it needed. The soil was totally depleted. The growth was stunted. It wasn't even blooming anymore. She gave it to me. By giving it a piece of ground, mulched it, watered it, it has space to spread out. I can prune it. I can trim it. It'll thrive. It'll have flowers. It'll add beauty to my yard. And I just thought that was a a way of thinking about how we organize, set up codes, set up processes for the city. We can offer kind of that garden space, so to speak, where people can come from other places and thrive. It's important that we cultivate an environment through guidelines, city codes, et cetera, where businesses, where people can feel comfortable, housing developments of different styles, densities, whatever, to allow different people to mix and become a vibrant community. At the same time, you have to weed. You can't let unchecked growth just do whatever it wants. You have to keep things under control. You have to keep it... in a way that can cultivate blossoms and beauty and growth and be an attractive place and not let it run rampant either. And so my thought is, I think we can have the perspective of offering an opportunity to allow our city to bloom and grow, encouraging growth, but without letting it run rampant. I think there's a, kind of a balancing act that we can try and do as we give recommendations to the city council, and hopefully the city can continue to be a place that attracts businesses, people, and makes our community a better place. Thank you. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,

Thank you, Commissioner Baker and Commissioner Haddock. We'll take a motion to adopt tonight's agenda. It's been posted in accordance with state law.

So moved. Do we have a motion?

We have a second?

I second.

Okay. All in favor? Aye. Thank you, folks. the agenda has been adopted. We will move to the meeting minutes for the regular Planning Commission meeting of June 16th, 2026. I will abstain from this particular vote since I was not there, but barring any changes or updates that need to be made, I'll take a motion to adopt the minutes.

Chair, I've reviewed those minutes and didn't find any need for corrections or anything, so I move that we approve the regular meeting and the work session for June 16, 2026. Second. Do we have a motion?

Do we have a second? Second. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion. Meeting minutes are adopted. We'll move on to the public comment section of our meeting today. This is an opportunity for the public to address the Planning Commission regarding items that are not on tonight's agenda. If you have a comment that is open for public hearing, we would ask that you save your comments for that time. But if you have anything that is not on tonight's agenda and you'd like to step forward, please do so. Seeing none, we will close public comment, move to public hearing item number four, Potential amendment to adjust the requirements needed to issue billing permit within the subdivision.

Okay stuck with me on this item Right here. Let me get to it We we have some standards in the city that are adopted the Syracuse City engineering standards and construction specifications It's a mouthful If you read through it it says how power and gas are to be installed and The depth, the location, and there's an accompanying drawing, set of drawings that go with it. The yellow is gas and the red is power. Gas is in the park strip and then power is just right behind the sidewalk in the utility easement. And you can see the depth that they're supposed to be buried. And there's primary power and secondary power and then gas. So it's pretty standard about, you know, 99% of the homes in the city have a gas furnace. but but there's been some changes and technology changes you don't always see a gas water heater you see a lot of tankless water heaters that are electric you also see a lot more electric furnaces mini split ductless systems and things like that they're actually more efficient but There's also wisdom in having two sources of energy in case of emergency. And I know a lot of people in Syracuse are into emergency prep. And if the power goes out and it's a cold day, you could still fire on a gas fireplace. Yeah. From a city's perspective, we have these standards of how they're supposed to be installed, but we don't necessarily have it spelled out that it has to be installed prior to getting a building permit. We do have a list of items that have to be completed before getting a building permit. And most of the time, both gas and electric have been installed and it's no problem. But we did run into a situation where it wasn't and then it wasn't entirely clear. So we're wanting to make this correction and make it clear that what we expect as a city is to install the natural gas and the electric to every building lot within a subdivision so whether or not a house decides to go all electric or not is up to them but it it will be to the lot and then of course we want them to make sure that they install it in compliance with our specifications so that's the scoop this is a text amendment so it does need to go to city council we're looking for a recommendation

All right, we'll go ahead and open public public hearing of this item. And if anybody has any comments from the public on this, we would ask you to forward or make yourself heard. And please let me hear comments or three minutes or less. Seeing and I don't see anybody online, right? Okay, so we'll go ahead and put close public hearing. We'll bring it back to commission questions, comments. This is one of those things that you go, oops.

I do have a question. For the gas, would they have to have the gas line ran to a meter? Or is running a pathway for the gas enough?

The gas meters are always on the side of the house. And so this wouldn't have a meter or anything.

So this is just not actually referring to the gas line, but just the sleeve itself?

Yeah, and maybe that's why we have more eyeballs on it to make sure it's clear. We're not talking about running it to each house just in the street.

It just has to be stubbed.

Yeah, well, not even technically stubbed. It's just in the roadway in front of the lot.

So the larger main, not each stub.

Right. Okay. Maybe there needs to be a sentence or something that clarifies that. I don't know. What do you guys think?

And would this apply to any commercial subdivisions, or is this purely residential subdivision?

This says within a subdivision, and we do have commercial subdivisions and residential. I think we're mostly focused on thinking about residential, but it technically would apply to commercial subdivisions.

Well, and it might help to clarify having it in the street, not necessarily stubbed out. Because if it's commercial, I could see them not wanting to do it until the building permit. They might want to do it at the same time as the building permit in a commercial scenario, whereas residential, it needs to get to the street. I think it's straightforward. But if this applies to commercial subdivisions too, that might be worth considering.

There is a line that says in compliance with engineering standards and construction specifications. So in my mind that I would address a lot of those concerns. I don't know. I feel like this handles it succinctly, but without leaving too much wiggle room personally.

It locks down the problem where the problem exists, but still leaves the open for the other options.

Yeah, whatever you guys think, we could add some sort of sentence that clarifies that we're talking about the main and not the lateral in the street or, I don't know, sometimes there's private roads. So that wouldn't be to every lot. It would just be to in the public street adjacent to the project or something like that.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, you know, just adjacent or along. I'm trying to think of the verbiage I'd want. As Blake said, but, you know, even refer to utility easement section, you know, so that they see these drawings and say, okay, this is, it's just right up to the property line. And if they don't build there, the gas line is still on the edge of that property.

Yeah, we could say to the property line. I worry that if if it's a residential project, they wouldn't run it through all the streets.

Alright, if we have If we have some Comments that we can add to the motion obviously do that as a recommendation to the council.

Yeah, we don't have to necessarily wordsmith it right this minute, but if there is a general recommendation, you can include that in your motion and we'll forward that on.

Can it be as simple as saying C specifications? Yes.

Yeah, it already says that.

Are there other specific... I mean, you guys have included the pertinent pages, but are there other... What I'm afraid of is that being too prescriptive, right? Like, it has to be installed with everything in the city's standard details, and some of that might be... more appropriate at the building permit time for commercial subdivision, right? So maybe, unless this is all that is there. So the reference is not too broad.

Yeah, if you read here, there's a lot more detail to it, but they are third-party utility companies, and they have, I'm sure, manuals of all kinds of stuff. But this one just says, improvements shall comply with the current Utah Power Department standards, which is not Utah Power anymore. And then it also says gas provider standards. with comply with the standards of the gas provider as a minimum so each one of those companies will have really specific things that we're really not getting into we just know we want it to serve each unit do we need to just for the purpose of keeping everything you know current we need to update that utah power to current power company We could, but it's a separate document. We've got our city engineer here. Maybe that could go on his list of next time we amend that to make a note of that.

Yeah, I mean, it's not that big a deal. It's just we took power a while ago.

Yeah, they're always changing, it seems like.

I mean, I like that the gas is the gas provider because, I mean, we've gone from West Star to Dominion to Enbridge to who knows what they're going to go next.

Just say power provider.

But yeah, again, I think that's tangential to this issue right now. But yeah, I think that, like Noah said, we don't need to wordsmith it out right now. But whoever does make a motion, if you want to include making some verbiage additions as part of your motion, then please feel free.

So clarify for me, I'm the slow one today, this document is not requiring that gas and power be stubbed onto the lot, just that the main line for those be where you've specified them to be?

Yeah, and it's really never been a problem because everybody needs power. But we have had a situation where development didn't want any gas. And we're like, well, I guess we can't stop you. And so we do have about half of RC Park West that has no gas. The single family lots have gas to them, but the townhomes are all electric.

This is smart to codify this, I think.

Yeah, that's a good loophole. I think this is a good loophole. If everyone feels good, take a motion.

I'll make this attempt. Commissioner, I propose that we send a recommendation to the city council to accept this change in this ordinance wording and with the concept that some of it is going to be cleaned up between now and then. Is that legit? To include referencing the utility companies in a more generic fashion.

I think, weren't you guys wanting something to clarify that it's talking about a main in the road adjacent to the property and not a lateral property? Yes, what he said.

All right. So the motion to basically recommend it to the council to approve change, changing the verbiage to correct. All right. Yes. Thank you, Commissioner Nielsen. We have a motion. Do we have a second?

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Moving on to the next item. This is a public hearing for a plot amendment, minor plot amendment to the Syracuse Arts Academy subdivision to dedicate the land as a public right.

Okay, here's another somewhat straightforward item. This won't change anything on the ground if you drive out here today. You'll see that this road is in, and then there is a, I guess I'd call it a road slash driveway that goes back to the school. The BMX parks here, and then there's a city pump track feature right here, and there's a trail that goes along and cuts through. With this subdivision in the school, the city negotiated to make a trade for some right-of-way access for some land over here, the C1. The city ended up getting that C1 as an expansion to our public workshop. And then the deal was that we would grant this to them in exchange for C1 with no money or anything being exchanged. But when it came time to actually, I guess, dedicate the land to the school, we learned that UDOT, because of the way the city acquired this land from UDOT as a as it was free and UDOT didn't want us to or it would be a violation of UDOT's rules if we were to dedicate it to a private party even though the road is there and the trail is there it's all public stuff there's no buildings or private buildings or anything on it and there's no money transacted but Just to make sure we're in compliance with the UDOT standards, we're proposing a joint submittal from the city and Syracuse Arts Academy to just keep this in the city's name, but dedicate it as a public roadway instead of being dedicated to the school itself.

Okay.

So this is now a, it was proposed to be a road. It doesn't meet our road standards. Our roads are supposed to be 60 feet and they're supposed to have a cul-de-sac. But there is an associated maintenance agreement with the school that says that they'll take care of this non-standard roadway. They'll plow it, they'll resurface it, they'll take care of the landscaping. And then as far as fire access is concerned, there's two points of access. There's a crash gate down here and then over here. And as far as I understand that it meets all the fire code, as far as turnaround requirements and things like that. So there's no concern there. So on the ground, nobody will ever know any different. It's just the legal background of it. Ownership is being maintained by the city or being ownership is being retained by the city. That's all.

All right. This is open for public hearing. Same rules as before. We'll go ahead and public hearing. Seeing none, we'll go ahead and close public hearing. All right. Back to the commission. It's pretty straightforward. I don't have any issues.

Yeah.

Okay. Let's take a motion.

Okay.

I'm not going to slaughter another one.

I'll do it.

I moved that the commission recommends to city council to amend the plats.

Is this a recommendation or is this a stay?

This stays here, so you don't have to recommend anything.

OK. So what's the adopt? OK. We approve the Platt Amendment for the Syracuse Arts Academy subdivision to dedicate the land as a public right-of-way to be in the city's ownership and to be maintained by the Arts Academy.

OK. Thank you, Commissioner Baker. We have a motion. We have a second. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion passes. We move to item number six, motion to adjourn to our work session.

We'll make a motion. So moved.

All right. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. We're adjourned to work session. Department of Business, City Council, Liaison. I don't see Abe here today. Oh.

I'm here. I've been a month, so I can come.

Aha.

So there's no report. I don't think so.

All right. So the attorney is not here. Do we have anything that he left for us or anything like that?

Not that I'm aware of. Do you have anything?

No. Upcoming agenda items.

um so we do have quite a few that are just kind of swirling around uh all the all the ones in that west uh west lake landing subdivision there on 2700 south and 2000 west are still waiting uh we also did receive some updates recently on the rocky mountain wellness project just west of city hall hopefully we'll see that soon i'm hoping one more revision And that will take care of it, and then we can schedule it. So let's see. We also have holiday oil. That's also possibly one more revision. I'll be bringing that in. Let's see. We've got... So I guess in terms of final plots, we did have with Falcon Landing, the applicant did point out to us that the state code has been changed to make it so the final plots are no longer under the jurisdiction of the Planning Commission. And so that becomes a staff level thing. So we're currently working on an ordinance amendment, which I'll mention in a moment, but that will officially change that in our code. So we've received a couple of applications for final plots that we're going to start processing at the staff level. So just so you're aware, but we will still bring preliminary plots to planning commission. So we do have a Falcon landing phase one and two, but that'll be nice staff level. See Walmart, they applied for some charging stations. We hopefully we'll see that next time. That one seems like it's pretty straightforward. They're just converting some of their parking into EV charging. Let's see. We're also looking at a potential ordinance amendment next time to explore zoning expiration. Yes, not exploration. So if the city council approves zoning that after a certain period of time, if no development occurs, it can revert back to its previous zoning. We're just exploring mechanisms to make that work legally. We should have that for you on the 21st. And then Let's see. We're also looking at an ordinance that would address drone delivery in the city and also just drone regulations in general. It's a technology that's moving rapidly. We want to make sure that we have regulations in place. Other than that, I believe that's it. Thanks.

Awesome. Thank you, Royce. All right. We'll move on to Commissioner Hortz. Anybody have anything they would like to discuss? Bring it in.

I would just say out of curiosity, maybe Noah or Royce knows, have you guys had any feedback on Costco? I mean, I know my wife has been there five times in the last week, so it's got to be doing well.

As far as I know, everybody's happy.

Do you get any kind of interaction with the manager for tax projection reasons or anything like that, budgeting?

We do get a sales tax report, but it's usually a few months behind. So we haven't seen any data or not data that we've, I'm sure that there will be an increase.

That is good.

All right. A couple of quick things I want to bring up. First of all, Kayla, it's your last meeting with us this time. I want to make it public. Thank you for all the work that you've done. You filled some really big shoes with Michael up, and so we really appreciate it. Hopefully the next person will be able to do half as good a job as you have done. So thank you. Also, welcome our newest commissioner, Commissioner Haddock. I know that they did it officially, but... on record from the south as well and then i do have a quick question for our city staff regarding uh does the city have a It was described to me as a safe place for business transactions that are non-commercial locations. In other words, if somebody sells textile stuff out of their home and wants a regular place to meet up, is there a place in the city that we have that? I know that there has been some concern with being to sell things like that. I would defer the official answer to the police department, but I know in front of the police department, there is a, I think there's a stall that's labeled with a sign that says,

where I think you can, if you're selling something on Facebook, you can go there. Or if you have, I don't know, a baby or whatever, you can drop it off. I can't remember what it's called, though. So that's why I'm saying this is not really in our wheelhouse in the community development department.

Is there any problem if they regularly meet at a city?

I don't see that as being like selling to the public or anything. We have a ordinance that says that you can't sell items at a park like to the general public. And they recently revisited that because we were getting more and more requests for concessionaires, for water, ice cream, carts, all kinds of stuff, snow cones. Yeah. coffee shops fireworks you know everybody's wanting to rent city property out to conduct private business and city council weighed in and just felt that it was almost getting out of hand the dumpsters are overflowing there's the parking stalls are being taken from people wanting to go to the park for recreation leagues and things like that so they just said we're not going to do any more leasing of the city property as far for concessionaires at least there's i think the the the door is kind of still somewhat open as far as it's not like a city will never rent city property out formally um but if they do it has to be approved by city council with a an agreement um And I know we have like ag leases on city property. We've had like grazing, alfalfa, like some of our excess parkland that this guy growing wheat on it. But what you're asking is just, can you meet to sell something off of Facebook marketplace?

For example, if you made multiple previous sales and you want to stay there, I'll be there for an hour. I'll be at this location for an hour. You can come pick up your stuff. That's the reason is because it's not just a five minute meetup and a 10 minute meetup. It's a, I'm going to be there from noon to

Um, that's probably a little, a little bit different. I know that there's a pair guy and he, every year he gets a shipment of pairs and he tells his clientele like, Hey, the pairs are in come meet me. And we made him do it in agreement, um, with the city. And it says that he's got to clean up his boxes and that if somebody gets ran over, they do something weird. Like the city's not liable, but yeah, the, the, Public property, you know, a street is like the ultimate right of way. It's open all the time. You can't park there for longer than like a day or whatever if you're... But a park is kind of a step down, I think, from a street, but it's still public property. It's open. we're not but yeah if you're if you're advertising like i'll be a next parking lot every saturday from the hours one to two like i don't i don't think you can do that just just curious i've actually had multiple people ask that question last year i would finally present that question That's my off-the-fly answer. The city wants business. We want people to be industrious and start business and supplement their income and also generate new products and services available to the city, but And sometimes when you're fledgling business, it doesn't make sense to be all the way registered, but we have to be careful because it is still business. And if you're selling a product, you should be charging sales tax and you should have a business license and you should be in a commercial area in some cases. But we're not going after lemonade stands or little onesie-twosie things. That doesn't really move the needle as a concern.

Just curious.

Thank you.

Briefly, it said someone mentioned baby drop-off or legal things, and most police stations do allow that, and every single hospital has a thing where a newborn can be dropped off.

Yeah, I think it may be in front of the fire station as well. I don't know. Safe exchange, that's the term, safe exchange. And apparently I was wrong. It's not in front of the fire department. Police. Police has two stalls.

Cool. All right. Thank you. Any other comments from the commission? Having none, we'll take a motion to adjourn.

I move we adjourn.

All in favor? Aye. You're adjourned. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.

We had one that was like 15 minutes.

We actually milked that one a little. Good night.

Good night, guys. My kids came last time. They were so excited.

We were going to go to dinner after. They made it about 45 minutes.

Then I got out of the car. I got a lot of...

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, we did it today. Right. And this guy, I've been very good with online courses, but there's some testing.

Right. One of the things that happened. It was almost to the extreme.

Last one. It was almost to the extreme. Last one.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, Oh, yeah.