Planning Commission - public_hearing

So much better. It's still, it's still bugging me, but I like going much better. Surgery? No, you know, I got, I got a diagnosis that wasn't too stoked at all. And so that's the reason why. Obviously, that's not good news, but it's good news in the sense of... I know what to do. They'll have to... Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was talking with a friend of mine up in Montana over the weekend when he was in a bench press competition. Oh, boy. We're not much more excited. Yeah. doing the slight change in weather. Yeah. A little bit of rain. I love September.

Fuller temps.

This is the heaviest months I've ever experienced since I've lived in Utah. That's good. Just in general, I think September is probably my favorite month. I thought like that, it was never going to rain for the rest of the month. Years ago, we had 105 on the 5th of September. So yeah, it's a lot better. My kids' birthdays are the end of September. I mean, we may

Make sure you know the wrong link. All right, are we good? Okay. All right, we'll go ahead and bring to order the Syracuse City Planning Commission meeting for September 1st, 2026. We'll have the meeting invocation or thought by Commissioner Haddock and the pledge will be led by Commissioner Baker.

Thank you. I'm excited on the timing of this because this is my first time doing this and I was also gone last time. So where I was last meeting, I was in Hawaii starting law school, which I'm very excited about. Big, exciting adventure for me. But that week was all orientation and a bunch of. focused on the values of the university and the values of the school and one that we're focusing on this month and they keep reminding us about i think applies perfectly to this group as well and so i thought it'd be a fun one to share um it's a hawaiian word called kuleana and i don't speak native hawaiian i will also not possibly do justice to the full translation of it but loosely it response really translates to responsibility And, you know, as students, we all have this responsibility to the legacy of the founder of the school and all these things. But here in this context, I think it's really cool because it's more than just a straight translation of responsibility. It's sort of responsibility and the privilege of an honor that comes with having been granted that responsibility. And I think that's directly applicable to this group because we, you know, we've received these appointments. We're here in this space to act as one more layer of stewards of our community and that, that link back to the community and is very, very important to that concept. So I think it's just a good reminder for us to always remember that, that we're here as stewards and we have a responsibility to the city and the community as a whole.

Awesome, thank you.

You guys have been a pleasure. Thank you.

All right, we will take a motion to adopt the meeting agenda, which has been posted in accordance with state law.

I move that we adopt the meetings from our meeting from August 18th, 2026.

Adoption of the meeting agenda. Oh, I apologize.

No worries. I move that we adopt the meeting agenda.

We have a motion. We have a second.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. Next, we will have an adoption of the meeting minutes for the regular meeting and work session for August 18th, 2026.

I make a motion that we approve the minutes as recorded for August 18th, 2026.

We have a motion we have a 2nd, 2nd, all in favor. Any opposed. Motion passes the meetings have been adopted. We'll move on to the public. Excuse me. We'll move on to the public hearing public comment section of our meeting tonight. This is an opportunity for the public to. Address the planning commission on items that are not currently. on the agenda for tonight. If you have any comments, we would ask that you step forward and be heard. I don't see anybody here. Do we have anybody online? Awesome. We will go ahead and close public comment section, move on to the public hearing for the ordinance amendment, many city guidelines for inorganic landscaping.

Okay. We talked about this last time. We are going out on a limb here. This is not something that the city council asked us to work on. So there is a chance that we'll run this by them and they'll just say like, no, thank you. But at least we'll go through the, through the motion here and develop into a, hopefully a solid concept that we can present to them. So the idea is that we require plant material in each contiguous landscaping area. And last time, if I remember right, you recommended adding the words at projected mature size so that it's 60% coverage of Um, when they first plant it, they probably won't have 60% coverage, but that's okay because the plants will grow in theory. So, yeah, every area has to have 60% plant coverage. But the, quote, landscaped areas with rock and weed barrier or whatever that don't have plants, they still count towards their overall calculation. So we just wanted to clarify that. I put that both in the commercial architectural standards and the industrial. Let's just... Same language in both sections.

I have a couple of questions. Is there a list of. Acceptable or maybe it'd be easier to have a list of prohibited plants. I know there is street-free recommendations. Is there something similar that would be available for contractors in those circumstances?

You're right. Within the park strip, the city's goals are to not mess up the curb and gutter sidewalk with routes that crack it and or block traffic safety. Beyond that, oh, and if it's a skinny park strip, we won't allow turf because it's hard to irrigate it. So you're supposed to use drip irrigation. Beyond that, we don't really have a... I don't know if the city has a list or a preference. We do, in other places, encourage water-wise landscaping, and I know that there are lists available. We have an architectural review guide that even says that our department will maintain a list of recommended plants. Nobody's ever asked me for that list. Right. But we do have some good resources. The Weber Basin Demonstration Garden up the street, they publish recommended plant lists. There's also the USU's Utah House. They publish recommended lists.

I guess my main concern would be maybe somebody got a hold of some noxious or invasive plant for really cheap and they just threw it in the ground to just move on and it became a nuisance. For example, the whole reason why we have goat heads in Utah.

We do have an area in our code enforcement chapter that says you can't have noxious weeds. If somebody purposefully planted a weed and it's on the list at the county, we would make them tear it out. I can't do that. We do have a little paragraph that says that they're required or recommended to

required water wise landscaping so it does leave a little bit up for interpretation yeah i'm not worried about b budget batman villains going around planting thorny weeds around but just more of a concern of maybe unscrupulous developers thinking hey i can save a few bucks my buddy just scraped a bunch of junk off of some development and i'm just throw it in there and save some money and You know, it just becomes an eyesore. We want the 60% of maturity. Well, what if it dies in six months and they check the box and then, you know what I mean?

So one of the standards is also to have a stamped landscape architect plan. So if you're a licensed landscape architect, you know, you're going to add, you know, that doesn't, and we still see this at times where we'll have that site plan, we'll have a nice plan, and then they'll go through construction, and then that plan changes. Like they do some budget, you know, Yeah, value engineering at the kind of the finish line. And so sometimes we do have to bring a copy of the plan and say, hey, this is not per the approved plan. And then they have to go back and plant that.

So the landscape is reviewed before it's installed?

Yeah, as part of the site plan that we have a planting plan that's required.

Okay, I answered my question. Thank you.

No, isn't there also a requirement that the time frame that the vegetation has to survive a year, two years, something, or be replanted?

So you're required to have your landscaping for a commercial project in before we sign what we call a gold card for occupancy. In a residential scenario, what do you have? Eight months, 18 months to get it planted in the front yard. So if it's publicly dedicated, and this is something that's actually changed because of some legislation recently. at one time the city had more control over what happened as far as landscaping on private property. We could hold up occupancy. Um, but now, um, as long as, as long as they, they plant it per plan and there's not like a warranty period or a bond or anything, unless it's a public improvement, we can make a warranty. We can make a bond and provide a warranty period for, for publicly, um, dedicated type things so it we do have control we also have an ordinance that says that you're required to maintain your site the way that it was planned at site plan so say they say everything dies a bunch of things die we can go back to them and say hey your your approved landscape plan and your site plan had xyz and now it's not there you need to restore it Now there is some planned and acceptable amount of vegetation that might die over time. And so we're not going to go back to the building owner if one tree dies out of a whole thing or something like that. But we've had problems in our commercial areas where they're just not reinvesting or maintaining the properties and they're removing architectural items and they're you know, letting the whole thing turn into something different than what was originally approved. So we do have ordinance that kind of protects us there.

Is that on code enforcement or is there some other mechanism to inspect that?

Code enforcement.

The single officer that has to check out the whole city.

We're a complaint based that we have one code enforcement officer, but the staff in community development will see things sometimes and work with her too. And, you know, she's, if it's an aesthetic thing, something that maybe we might notice and that's okay if it's important and it was something that was on the site plan, we can make them maintain it like they should.

This item in particular is open for, is up for public hearing. So we will open the public hearing now. Seeing that we don't have anybody to do, unless we have new people that have come online. Okay, we'll go ahead and close public hearing on this and we'll bring it back again to the commission and after question. I do have a, quick follow-up and when we get into work session on the commissioner reports, I wanna have a quick, I have a couple of quick questions about the discussion of upkeeping for the business landscaping maintenance and whatnot that I'll wanna go over, but that's not for this particular item, so. The one question I would have is what specifically was brought up to have us investigate this?

It was the Walmart EV. The Walmart EV parking was taking out some parking and some landscaping. So they came in with their revised site plan a few times ago, if you remember. And the portion of the parking lot that they were removing was just gravel. And so there's an argument that, well, that doesn't count as removing landscaping. It's just gravel. And so this would clarify that when you remove gravel, it still counts towards the total because it was improved for weed suppression and all that stuff. And then we are seeing more and more. So we have another project. that they have a detention basin and they just want to do all rock. And we said, no, you need some plants, and they scoffed at it a little bit. And we had enough in our ordinance to require it, but this strengthens it. So more and more we're seeing people just want to have these large swaths of rock With no plants. And they do it because of maintenance. Can't blame them, but you could still have something that's low maintenance and low water, but still have something less than like a Mars scape, you know?

Okay. Comments or questions from the commission, otherwise, this is obviously a recommendation for city council to...

Yes, sir.

Uh, no questions. I feel like this is a pretty straightforward requirement. Um, we require. Minimum of 20% of your lot to be landscape. So. To be able to place 60% of. 20% of your site really not a hardship.

All right, we'll take a motion. We'll make a motion.

I move that we recommend to City Council the adoption of the ordinance amendment for the inorganic landscaping as cited in the red text and submitted to us.

Okay, we have a motion, we have a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Moving on to option, or, uh, Number five discussion motion for the ordinance amendment amending municipal code to allow for commercial drone operator.

Okay, we had some good discussion on drones last time. If you remember, the idea was to have the drone delivery just as an accepted, permitted use with really nothing other than getting a business license or maybe a building permit if required by building code to stand in their way. And we did have some concerns and we talked about adding some safeguards. If somebody wants to create a commercial drone delivery in the city, that they would be required to, it would just be some checks and balances to make sure that their FAA certified these are all things that they have told us that they already want to do so we're not like inventing anything that they said that they don't already do but because this is a general term that we're adding to general commercial it could be a different company the wing is just the one that is paving the way but there could be other companies and so we're just wanting to hold everybody to the same standard. And so it took a little bit of research, but there, there is a, this is the name of the certificate that they hold for drone commercial drone delivery. Uh, there's also an, an exception that, that basically talks about unmanned drone and night type stuff. And then there's some standards for the pilots to have certificate of training. And then for the aircraft, you know, these are all things that the FAA would require, but it would be just some checks and balances to ensure that their aircraft is are registered with the FAA and that they're actually durable and reliable enough. So there's some testing requirements, all things that they say that they're already going to do. And some of the other things that we talked about is a distance requirement between the drone port and sensitive areas. we took the plans that they had provided and just kind of measured and then looked on a map. So the number of feet that they have between the proposed drone port and the closest residential boundary is about 250 feet. So we just kind of went with that as something that makes sense. And then if just reference that they do need to follow our noise ordinance that's already in place. And also if they were to have an issue or a situation, say something crashes or runs into city utility or something like that, we'd want a report, voluntary report to know like what if something's going on. And then lastly, and this is maybe up for debate here, is do we want to put a limit on drones taking off and landing on public property, parks, schools, city hall? Or do we care? I put it in there because I know the last time the debate was centered around some of those concerns. It's doing some research. It's somewhat common. That was some of the confusing part is what's within our ability as a city and what's just FAA. Because it's true. A lot of things are hands-off. We can't dictate when. Or where or how they fly. Can't dictate flight paths. None of that. It's all FAA. Once you get up in the air, it's not our deal. But we can dictate where the business operates through zoning. And, you know, if there's concerns about it landing in a school or on city property or in a park, you know, we could prohibit that. And so the proposed language is included down here. Beyond the first part of this is just adding a definition for the use. And that's, we already talked about that. That's not, no changes to that. But this would be what we look like, what we would require for somebody to operate a commercial drone delivery. So this is what we went, what we just went over. Oh, this one also. Drone cameras or visual data capturing devices utilized during residential low-altitude package delivery cannot retain or store video footage of citizens or private yards beyond navigation validation. They've told us that their cameras don't... I don't know what just happened. Somehow I edited the PDF through the internet. Anyway... Yeah, they told us that their cameras do not record people. They have sensors, LiDAR, that sort of thing. So like I said, none of these things should be anything out of the ordinary for what they've already proposed, but that what they're telling us and selling us on is a really high standard. And so this would just be holding it to what they're already told us they're going to do.

No, if you'll stay right at the very bottom of this page was one of my questions and it might be legal that helps me with this.

But then here it says they shall self-report any ground level structural collisions. cable strikes or accidental payload payload deployments but also is there some provision in here that we have them accept that liability for any injury or anything that may happen if it crashes into a car or even though above on that yeah or person above under under aircraft tells us it must be made out of foam or plastic so that it limits that light you know that

possibility of damage but it does say in the requirements that the drone has to be and I don't know how to say this word correctly frangible lightweight and frangible to minimize possible injury but I agree I think yeah they ought to be liable I mean if the UPS truck knocks over your mailbox you know you're going to be calling UPS after you call your attorney this was a new word for me frangible

If you look it up, it's like squishy.

No, it means that it would break apart.

My understanding is it's like foamy, so if it hits something, it's not all sharp and metal-y.

Blades are...

Commissioner Garner, I would be reluctant to put liability issues into a zoning ordinance, but I will tell you that I do believe civil liability issues are out there. It's a very well-developed area of law, so if one of these runs into a person or a dog or a cat or a car or something, no doubt the insurance companies will work that out.

Thank you. Does that answer it?

And frangible does mean easily breakable.

Yeah. Thank you. Anybody who deals with firearms.

Would we need to require some level of insurance or is that implied as part of their registration and certification as a part of doing business?

Again, I wouldn't put it in the zoning ordinance, but it's probably required in the business licensing aspects of our code already.

Thank you.

I have a quick question I know last week or last time we talked about whether or not we can regulate something like. require them to adhere to the noise ordinance I know it says ground operations and low altitude drops must comply for low altitude drops is there a specific height in which we do have some control or. what's what's kind of a cut off there.

You know, that's a little bit of a gray area. You know, some people, like when you buy property, you don't own air rights and wear that. But you do own the rights to not have noise or privacy infringements. And so I've heard 100 feet, but... If you look at the videos, the thing probably comes down to about 20 feet and hovers, drops a cable, and then it's gone. So our noise ordinance is measured at a certain number of decibels at the property line, and it has to be sustained for five minutes. So I don't think that this would constitute a noise violation, but like we talked about last time, if whatever blades or technology that they have is constituting a noise violation, they may need to use better technology or if it's such a convenient service and benefit to the community. Maybe the city needs to look at changing our ordinance, but I guess that's up in the air. Literally.

The noise ordinance part, at least to some extent, anybody who lives in Syracuse knows there is a certain amount of air noise that we deal with four, five, six, seven times a day. So

for less than five minutes at a time usually, but really intense.

I was in Walmart parking lot and the jets ran over and there was a couple from Oklahoma and they were heads were on a swivel. They were like, what's going on? And I just, I said, that's the sound of freedom. Yeah.

I did call, you know, there are dozens of Walmart stores in operation and I called a few of the local cities and they're all dealing with this the same way we're proposing to deal with it. They have a special use or a conditional use permit. The person I talked to had inspected it and You know, just she wasn't too concerned. They hadn't received any complaints. Nobody was worried about it. One of the things, you know, if this really does take off that has a potential benefit, I don't mean to keep doing that. You know, it does have a. Yeah, you guys are on your toes. But if it is really popular, it could actually reduce traffic. And so that's probably one of the biggest benefits as far as reducing congestion and things like that.

Question, and this is partly because I'm catching up from last week, but you mentioned a lot of the other cities, they have it as like a conditional use permit or a special use permit. Are we proposing that this is going to be a by-right use in our commercial zone or will it be a conditional use?

It's under conditional uses. Got it. But yeah, I mean, I guess the way it's worded, it could be as a buy right permitted as long as they do this. The only difference is if it's in this category, they pay a fee and we issue a permit and maybe we have a little bit more time to review things before we give the green light.

That was one of my concerns, too, was that, well, it goes back to the look of the whole setup to me just feels like a temporary setup. I'm expecting to see jack-o'-lanterns and corn selling there next to the drone. And it just doesn't look like a permanent. That's my concern. It is a conditional use. That does give us the authority to. I don't know. I don't like the way they look. I've watched the videos, and I think it's a great technology, and I'm a big drone supporter, but I don't like the way it looks. It looks like a construction yard fenced-off section, and someone's going to pull in and say, well, can't I set up my food truck and throw a fence around it and leave it in one spot and set a generator outside? and power my food truck, you know, and we need to be careful we don't set a precedence here. My only other concern is the wording on the limits where they can't be delivered to schools and churches and city buildings. I don't know that we want to intentionally exclude that i mean my wife received deliveries at the junior high from amazon every day so i would if this became available that would be a regular occurrence at the school um churches it's a it's essentially a business they could receive deliveries city building here um

Yeah, that was something that was common among other cities. But if we didn't want to, if we were, if there wasn't a concern, we can remove that.

Would there be a way that we could include some language that would allow certain public or private entities, schools, hospitals, whatnot, to be on a do not deliver language? through the ordinance. In other words, let's just say Buffalo Point Elementary says, yeah, we don't want those flying around the kids. So Buffalo Point can go, we're off the list. But Island Park Elementary says, I know it's West Point, but Island Park Elementary says, yeah, we're good with that.

Yeah, the schools made the list, but it was a little bit reluctant because the city doesn't control what the school does or doesn't do. So the school district may be able to implement their own policy.

I was thinking the same for schools and churches. They're separate from a public entity and they can deliver or they can determine their own policy for their own property.

Exactly. So they would be enforcing if they've got employees that are ordering them to the school. I mean, whoever they would.

And we, with our code, we just.

Okay. So strike the last part of this city owned properties, churches, schools.

I would just do schools and churches.

Yeah. Okay. So keep the prohibition on city-owned properties?

I would strike city-owned properties as well because I'm going to want a Reese's peanut butter cup dropped off about three times a week. As an employee, just have it drop whatever my package is.

My argument was is those entities just determine their own policies.

Yeah. I would think that there are going to be some city-owned properties that you're going to have people that are going to want to be able to have things delivered. What about parks? I would say parks would have to be, you know.

I agree.

Streets, sidewalks, parks stay on the list.

If I'm enjoying the park, I don't want a swarm of 30 slices of pizza going overhead to all the different picnickers.

And it's not just that. It's not just the safety issue or the noise issue or the congestion issue at the park. It's also a system of Let's restrict something that is kind of ridiculous to do. Why would you have something delivered to a park? Right, exactly.

Because I can. My wife would say, hey, we don't have enough plates. Hit the Walmart thing. Boom, down that you come. There'll be a novelty search.

People will have a roll of toilet paper delivered while they're sitting on the toilet just to have the convenience of the drum, right? I mean, it's just

I noted my candy bar comment in jest, but I can see that maybe someone at Parks and Recreation or Public Works might need a tool or a piece or something, and they just get on and say, Walmart, bring this to us. So I would say do allow city-owned properties and let the city make its own rules and regulations.

Right.

I agree. Okay.

So streets and sidewalks stay, though? We all agree that it's probably not a good idea? Yeah.

City-owned yeah city-owned stuff is okay just the private home takeout yeah yeah you leave streets and sidewalks but everything else you can you could probably strike there does everyone agree with that i agree yes i'm questioning if

Hella Pannewig-Gorski, might be overkill because I can't think of any scenarios in Syracuse where we wouldn't have them, they should it be public parks or city on parks or something that there might be park like areas that are not I don't know, maybe something in nature, a development that. privately owned or it's where I could see areas that might be park-like that are still private. And we're talking about this park right here. We're talking about our public parks, right? Would it be worth clarifying streets, sidewalks, public parks?

I thought we were taking the words parks out of the, cause this is, this would read commercial drone takeoff landing or package drop-off may not be allowed on streets, sidewalks.

And then we were going to.

So, yeah. So if we strike parks, schools, churches, or city-owned properties, that means that you can get deliveries there.

I was thinking we didn't want deliveries still in parks. Maybe that's a good straw poll vote. Did we want... Does everyone agree striking parks from the lift?

I was just going schools and churches.

Yeah, that's where I'm at, too. Striking schools and churches. And maybe if the city attorney says strike city properties, too. Why don't we... Because the city would...

I would think that... A struggle would be kind of a good idea to do because I think we all agree. Uh, uh, schools, churches, definitely off the table, uh, city owned properties. That's been discussed as well as partners. So. Does everyone agree city on property? Off the off.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Okay.

Deferred the city.

Yeah, fine. Okay. Let's talk about parks really quick because that's the other thing that seems to be up in the community right now. Yeah. Start with Commissioner Merchant. Parks on or off that list to be restricted?

It makes sense to not restrict it, but then it also makes sense to restrict it. I mean, you can imagine the amount of time that our community spends at parks when you've got all these little leagues and all these different types of sports going on. It could be very helpful and efficient to be able to receive a delivery with your whole group there, you know, time it for the end of your Uh, game or whatever it may be, but at the same time, I can see a lot of liability being introduced through that and just a lot of danger for the people there. So. Um, I think striking it would be the best.

So, leaving it off on the restriction correct? Yeah. Commissioner.

I tend to lean that it's easier to boost restrictions than to add them later. So especially with something novel like this, there's going to be a surge of activity and excitement for the first six months of the year. And if it becomes a non-issue, then I could see us relaxing it. But my gut is to say that we restrict it initially. Okay.

Okay. Commissioner Gardner. I was going back to Commissioner Havik. So again, I was going to say public department. Okay, I was just saying it may not be allowed on streets, sidewalks, public parks.

So you would be in favor of restricting it? Yes.

Public parks, I think I agree that we can restrict it now and then we can relax it later if it becomes a non-issue. So even though my wife wouldn't appreciate it if I said no, we can't have extra plates slivered while we're having our picnic.

I think that I agree that we need to

Let me get the wording right, that we should restrict it on streets, sidewalks, and public parks. Because private parks, we don't have the right to.

That's restricting that. Yeah, it's private property. Correct. What's your comment?

I agree. I think until we have some sort of designated drop zone for a park, because I mean, some parks, it's just adjacent to the sidewalk and that's it. It's like, where are they going to drop something without, you know, putting someone in danger or violating the street and sidewalk part. So I would say for now, yeah, no parks.

Okay. And I wish we had it. I just kind of wanted to expand on what you were talking about, the private versus public part.

Well, I mean, I don't know that we have a lot of private parks here in town, but I think the clarity is probably good and helpful so that you don't have someone that maybe lives in a private commercial development that might have a park area and their neighbor is delivering something and they're coming and saying, no, you know, we're talking about public parks.

We have retirement communities that could technically have an HOA-controlled park. Right. There are.

We have a swimming pool with an adjacent barbecue area.

That's not the intent.

To that point, there are plenty of HOAs that would be able to say, this is the part where we control it. So yes or no. And I tend to agree. And thank you, everyone, for your input specifically on that. Because I kind of agree with that. It is easier to say, Okay, now we'll rather than now we're going to take this up after we allowed it for six or eight months, then you're putting out it.

Exactly.

So, um, It would be worth noting that if on the motion that we say to strike the language specifically about basically churches schools and churches and public parks.

Other comments, questions? I do have a comment. I don't like the idea of, and not specific to this, but all over the place, I don't really like the idea of basing our code around the first applicant that's coming looking. And so the idea of saying, yeah, the Walmart parking lot, this is how we can set this up to use it. I would suggest looking into whether this is a general commercial requirement or if we can kind of steer it towards industrial parks and have it as a industrial use only because it's not really an end user coming to, you know, be a patron at your business. It's more of a distribution center.

Yeah, that's a good land use related debate to have is which zone would this be appropriate in. yeah general commercial is where it's proposed to go i don't think that walmart has a distribution center anywhere in the city so it would essentially kill it but um the the goods need to get from where they're being stored to the delivery port or the drone port somehow makes sense to be close to where they're being stored either at a warehouse or at a store

Right. But I just I'm not sure. And like I said, basing it around this one use. And so I'm picturing this nice little facility out in the parking lot. And every 10 minutes, there's somebody pushing those giant carts that they use to, you know, load up and do your pickups through the parking lot out to that. And now we're creating a safety hazard. We're just creating kind of a situation where this business is operating safely. in a haphazard kind of way. So I'm just curious how they would actually move the goods from in the store out to this remote drone area. They use a drone.

They use a robot loaded inside Ronson. That's right.

Thank you. I try never to interject in your meetings, but I want to exercise a point of privilege here. Well, I think what's being overlooked is that the company has already done a lot of the work that you're trying to do right now. they have no delivery zones so all these areas you're trying to say the city won't allow them to to go the company already has a policy that says unless it's an independent address they won't deliver there so they've they understand there's a liability on their part that they tried to deliver a product in a public space and then somebody says well you delivered it to the wrong person or the wrong person picked up my product so they have a liability so they're not even going to touch So I'm only taking this point of privilege to try and make it a teaching moment that we're really thinking about a lot of things that are not in play because the company won't take this risk. So, I mean, we can regulate this to death, but. they won't do it. They're just not even going to take the risk. So they've been in operation for quite a bit of time already. They've already learned from their mistakes of trying to do it or deliver in public or to go where there's more than one person's address. They told us on the phone, we just won't do it. So... Anyway, I just, hopefully we can think about this from both sides. And that is, would they even try to do this? And I think they won't. I hope they'll give Colin his Reese's because he gets grouchy if he doesn't get one. So that's important, but they're going to be very limited on where they'll deliver. And yet, if we were, if we could talk them into it, which I don't think we even could. And we said, we're at a church and we've run out of napkins. Can you please deliver some here? You know, that actually solves somebody else's problem, but in general, they just wouldn't do it. So anyway, thank you for your moment.

Thank you for that clarification.

That was actually something I was kind of thinking about as well. It may even be a non-issue, but whether or not we want to have it on the ordinance is, is

it's probably a non-issue and maybe we'll only deal with wing but we're trying to craft an ordinance that maybe there's another company out there in the future that's willing to drop it on wherever and we assume that they'll have some things are self-limiting with the liabilities and stuff they don't want to be causing problems with deliveries can you imagine if it goes to a public park

Oh, something just delivered a speaker here.

Well, I, I do really appreciate the, the mayor's clarification. Thinking about commissioner merchants message, though, we. We're not necessarily only going to deal with this singular company. It might be other entities. We're creating. Kind of a precedent for. different groups, different companies that may be delivering different goods to different customers? And do we wanna be in a situation where maybe, I don't know, a medical device company or whatever with different issues and different liabilities and whatever, do we wanna go through this kind of as they come and just leave it loose now and rely on the company? And I think the mayor makes a very relevant point. Or do we want to tighten it up and maybe discourage future companies from coming here or to protect ourselves? I guess I don't have an answer to that, but I think they're both relevant to consider.

The other point that I think is worth noting is that this is for the general commercial zone. Something like this would need to be implemented for our industrial zones as well once that becomes a potential issue as well. Should somebody bring a distribution center or something out, if we do expand our industrial zone along 193 and we get something like that, that may be something that we need to discuss at that point.

Okay.

For the purposes of general commercial, I think it covers it fairly well. It puts in the restrictions that are required by the FAA. It puts in restrictions that we would want as citizens of our city. And of course, as the mayor pointed out, liability-wise, those other things are 99.999% non-issue.

I do have one more question. I'm not sure if they discussed this with you, if you had asked, but is there a plan or is this already in place where the drone uses AI to fly and only gets the pilot to take over control in the event of something kind of like a Waymo? And should we have the requirement that a pilot must be in control the entire time?

I think we're already there. My understanding is that one pilot may be operating as many as 10 to 12 aircraft at one time. So I think it's already operating off of some automated systems.

I've had some experience with drones and you do not want a human flyer responsible for all that. You put in your waypoints, you put in your program, you submit it to the drones and they follow it meticulously how you submit it. It is very difficult. to accurately, consistently, manually fly.

No, I understand that. But my point is, it's also very difficult to remotely manage 12. And so you can log in and you can take care of this incident. And if there's three other incidents happening, you're just prioritizing what you think is the worst. And so maybe, I mean, we can't really cap their operations. So

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense because you don't want one pilot to be overwhelmed with too many drones. But I think that might be more in the territory of the FAA certification for pilots. And the FAA will probably put a cap on how many unmanned drones that one pilot could be in charge of at one time.

I agree. I mean, those are the size of a DJI without payloads, as far as I know. Yay.

I have one more question. Kind of back to Commissioner Nielsen's comment earlier about the aesthetics of it. So because it's a conditional use permit and it triggers that application process, does that have some architectural standards baked into it somewhere? Or is there anywhere that we can link it to something else that's already in the code that already has some architectural standards for any permanent or semi-permanent stuff that's going to be in that parking lot or a parking lot, wherever it is?

I was going to ask if we could require, even if it was just solid walls, that the storage container is slid behind and the diesel generator is slid behind so that we don't just see, you know, a pink storage unit sitting there, you know, and...

I believe that was addressed with the wash from the propellers would be affected by a solid structure. Is that right?

Yeah, but maybe one side could have something. You know, I grappled with this and... They're pretty smart about the square footage of their storage container. It's less than 200 square feet, which means that building code does not apply. And so they know that they don't have to get a permit. and they don't have to meet building code, but the city could put some sort of regulations on it if we wanted to. I'm just not sure what. Do we want it to look like a little cottage or something? I don't know. We could write that in there. It's up to you guys.

Can it be something like permanently installed fences and visual screening as approved by the Planning Commission? Something...

So any conditional use permit, you know, these are the – we have a list of required conditions, but any time you open up anything to a conditional use permit, because every scenario is unique, the idea behind it is that we could implement – you know, we could add to it, but that's where sometimes planning commissions and staff – So this would be a minor condition. So it would be staff adding conditions as they felt appropriate. But if you go too far, you know, you could add a condition that you're not supposed to. Sometimes planning commissions have added or a lot of cities get sued over conditional use permits for arbitrary and capricious conditions that they just make up on the fly. Again, I did it again. I don't mean to keep doing it. so yeah I don't know if Colin has an opinion if we if we want to we just don't want to interfere with their logistical operation of safely deploying drones because if we had an ornamental fence and the thing crashes into somebody I think that we'd rather have it not crash into somebody than but I get it it's up to you guys

But in theory, whatever their zone of no-go is, immediately outside that, you could have a pedestrian standing there. So whatever the parameters are, there's got to be a zone that is clear, and we could implement some sort of screening or something.

And that would be part of the conditional use process.

Yeah. Yeah, it depends on how far you guys want to go. I haven't seen, all of my research has returned the same template. They've just been deploying everywhere. I've never seen like the Taj Mahal version. You know, they said that sometimes they can put like a pitched roof on it, but it's basically a Connex box with maybe jazzed up a little bit.

And do we cover that a little bit when we say in here the minimum physical separation of 250 feet from drone launch and delivery centers, sensitive environments?

Yeah, so this is the buffer between where the drone is, and that would be measured from that outer fence to the property line. So there could be people... In theory, he's just walking right outside this side of the fence.

I do have a question. If this were not to be voted on and approved right now, and they came and applied for the CUP, would they be barred from doing this, or do we just have nothing to stop them from doing it?

Well, our position right now is that they can't do it until we allow it in our list of permitted uses.

So if we didn't vote affirmative on this right now and we took more time to really think about the architectural elements and that kind of thing, they're not going to go set up operations?

No, they can't.

And our vote tonight is just pushing it on to city council. It's a recommendation to city council, and if they wanted to tighten it up, they're at

Yeah, we don't have to wordsmith it, especially being, you know, especially since this is, you know, our role as planning commission is to make land use related things. And city council's job is really to kind of wordsmith it and pull it home. And if you want to leave it a very high level concept, like it'd be nice if you could add some sort of architectural requirements. Like you could just pass that on and they can deal with it.

So I think the motion would be, even though it's not an issue, if you want to keep in the restriction and remove the restrictions on what we discussed earlier, and as far as letting the recommendation go to City Council on any architectural review items, be done at that time.

Agree.

If there are additional questions, please do so, otherwise we'll take a motion.

Okay, with silence, I'm going to jump in here then. I'll make a motion that we make a recommendation to forward this to the city council to amend the municipal code to allow for commercial drone operations with the changes that we've talked about and to ask the city council to look at the landscape restrictions. Is that correct?

Are you guys talking about landscaping or architectural? Architectural, sorry. I mean, we're talking fencing, the connex box, screening.

Architectural.

I mean, if they had to do landscaping around it, that might be another thing.

I missaid that, and I mean architectural.

Thank you, Commissioner Gardner. We have a motion. Do we have a second?

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. We'll take a motion to adjourn to work session. Move to adjourn. All in favor? Aye. All right, we are in work session. I'll start with Department of Business, City Council. Thank you, Wade. Appreciate it. City Attorney.

Nothing for me. I just want to get out of here and eat a Reese's.

Thank you, Colin. Before he gets mad. All right, upcoming agenda items.

All right, so we still have the ones that we've been waiting on there 27 hours south and 2000 West nothing updated there. The property west of city hall so no updates we've see. So we've received a couple of applications currently working on a site site plan review for a chick fillet on the corner of 3000 West and 1700. And then a minor subdivision plot that will split a property on the corner of basically the intersection of bluff road and 3700 South. um we also received an application for a seven brew coffee shop on the corner of uh 1700 and 2000 um and we also have a that would be uh the where they always do like the fireworks and the pumpkin sale and everything but they'll love it Yep. Yeah. So finally developing, it's been a long time. And then we also, for the Dutch pros, it's currently under construction. That property is being split. So that'll be a subdivision plot. So we'll see that one as well. And we also have a ordinance amendment to change the business license fees. So currently I think if there's anything additional. Yes. Currently that is it.

Thank you. Thank you, Royce. All right, Commissioner reports. The particular note that I was going to bring up about business landscaping maintenance, I'll hold off for another time because our discussion kind of went long tonight and it's fine. I'm probably going to hit you guys up for some questions about that anyway between now and our next meeting. So any other items, Commissioner reports that need to be brought up?

I was going to bring up that next week there is the Utah chapter of the American Planning Association Conference in Layton, Wednesday and Thursday. If anybody wants to go, let me know.

Can you send that to us?

Yes. Thank you. I can do it again.

I know.

Of course you had seen it and checked it, I'm sure.

Check your email. All right. If there are no other comments, questions, we'll take a motion.