Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

you know, people, people can't help it if they're poor, you know, and you know, Dudley school is over there and stuff. And, you know, they always help the rich people first. And, you know, Dudley is probably the poorest district. So that's going to be last, you know, if you're rich, people love you. If you're poor, they hate you, you know, and I wish they could, uh, take some kind of action, you know, cause the city of Victoria don't need any bad publicity at the city council or, uh, the KABU 25 and the retired teacher isn't going to back down. She wants it fixed. She had the documentation since 2021 where they planned on fixing it. Five years later, they've done nothing and they couldn't put together $6.46 to replace a net. So I went ahead and took care of it today. And I told someone, if you just hold the step letter, I'll take you to Dairy Queen. So That's what they did, and I appreciate Rick Madrid for helping with Victoria Oaks Trailer Park a few minutes ago. There's a severe plumbing leak, and that's going to be passed down to the tenants and stuff. They're going to have to pay extra for the water bill, and there's a branch about to fall on the trailer park manager's home on on trailer number six, and it's a big giant branch and stuff. I wish the personal injury lawyer could do more for it. I know he's struggling. He only has $120 million in investments, and he probably wants to make it go to $150 or maybe $200 million. It's hard when you only have $120 million. and investments, but I wish he would do a better job. He's done a very poor job in the trailer park, and also at Summerstone Apartments, we have rats, mice, and everything else, and I would like it taken care of, and Code Enforcement has helped. Thanks, and have a good day. Thank you.

I have one question. Can I ask? Yes, yes, yes. I can't? I'll ask you afterwards. Well, did you bring it up to Parks Commission?

Any other citizens? Are you speaking for? I'm speaking. I'm here because 703 Lawndale is my house.

and this new mechanic thing he spoke there, you know, talking about. So I don't know if I speak now or I speak later. I can't hear what you said.

Yeah, we couldn't hear what you said.

I speak later. He says I speak later.

Oh, OK. Thank you. OK, now we'll move into our business. Our first item is a variance request for minimum separation distance at 704 East Crestwood Drive. May we have the staff report, please?

Good evening, Commissioners. The subject property is located at 704 East Crestwood Drive. The owner wishes to rent the building to Cantu Racing to operate a light auto repair facility, small retail office space, and storage facility. A light auto repair facility is required to meet the minimum separation distance of 150 feet from single family residential properties. According to the Unified Development Ordinance, a light auto repair facility shall not be located within 150 feet of any detached single family dwelling, patio home, zero lot line home, cluster home, duplex, triplex, or townhouse measured from property line to property line. There are eight single family residential properties that are within the required minimum separation distance. The Unified Development Ordinance allows for the applicant to seek a residential to commercial separation waiver, which waives the separation distance requirements. The applicant has attempted to contact the owners of the surrounding single family residences, but was unable to collect 100% of the residential commercial separation waivers. Staff recommends approval of the variance to allow for the property to be used as a light auto, use despite not meeting the minimum residential to commercial separation requirement of 150 feet. Conditioned upon, the variance is to Cantu Racing only and the property owner is to construct a screening fence along the rear and east sides of the property as well as adding a shrub buffer along the screening fence to help absorb the noise that is created by this type of land use. Staff believes the approval of the variance would not have a detrimental impact on the surrounding single-family residential neighborhood as the conditions should mitigate any negative effects and nature of the proposed light automotive use.

Can I ask questions?

Let's wait for the you. Let me open it up to public hearing first. We'll come back later. We will open the public hearing. If you wish to speak on this item, please come forward at this time. You will have three minutes to talk.

I live at 703 Lawndale. You can see me on the corner there with the trees. And I don't have an issue with the noise, but if they're going to be spraying and that stuff is in the air and it comes to me, I have asthma and allergies. I have animals on my property. I don't want them to make it where it's unlivable for me. This is basically my only issue. I don't want, if they're spray painting and that stuff, and it will come to mind because when the neighbors burn and do their smoking, it always comes to my place. So like I said, that's my issue. So what kind of guarantee can I have that it's not going to do that?

Go ahead.

You can go ahead and do the public hearing portion. Once that's closed, we can address.

Okay. You can actually call the people back up if you want to. Okay. Thank you. Okay, ma'am.

Anybody else? State your name and address.

Yes, sir. My name is Greg Scherer. I'm the owner of the property at 704 Crestwood. And we are proposing with the Planning Commission's help to have a variance to allow an automotive shop to run there. My mother started that business in 1976 to run a flooring store there. and then we've run that for many years. We rented it, the most recent tenant was a flooring store, but he couldn't continue the business. Whenever Crestwood was redone, the business just fell off quite a bit, and he just couldn't continue to operate there. So we've remodeled the property quite a bit over the past two years, and all the prospective tenants that I've had, I've had like six that wanted to run an automotive shop there, and I've come to agreement pretty good with Mr. Cantu, and everything works out pretty well. To address one of the residences nearby, and I think Rolando may speak to it a little bit also about what type of automotive shop that he operates, but he will not be doing any spray painting. We're not gonna be running a body shop. He's just gonna be doing automotive work there. So we appreciate your consideration, and we will comply with the recommendations that Luke has put forward in his variance to build a fence and then plant some shrubs there along that backside, and it'll be the north side and I guess the east side, and that would help with the visual and maybe some noise. But again, Mr. Cantu can talk more about the automotive shop that he's going to run, And then Mrs. Cantu is gonna talk about obtaining the variances and some of the issues that she encountered while trying to get those signatures, if that's okay. Any questions from you guys?

Actually, once all the public comments are made, then y'all can have your discussion and call folks back.

Hello, how's it going? So for several years, about 11 years, I've had my high performance.

Your name, sir? My name is Orlando Cantu. Yes, sir.

I own Cantu Racing. I'm looking to lease Mr. Gregg's building. So for many years, I've ran Cantu Racing out of 805 East Rio Grande Street, which is right next to a residential area. So we're very familiar with noise ordinance and not making, you know, any public disturbance or anything of such. We do not do any spray painting or anything like that. What we do in particular is people bring in high performance sports cars and we modify them and then we take them out of the states to race on several different levels and several different places. So we don't do anything in town or anything like that. We just build the vehicles here in a private area. I've been here, you know, I was raised here in Victoria, so I've been doing this for a long time. I'm pretty familiar with the do's and don'ts of everything, so that's pretty much it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Nancy Rivas Cantu, and I assisted as the notary for the waivers. We were given eight properties, four signed, Three, including the lady here, we knocked on her door. Nobody answered. We went two separate days. Two of them did not, they were afraid that it might be a scam because we showed up with a document that has the city logo, yet neither one of us was city employees. So they wanted to hold off and not sign anything. And the fourth one, He is deceased. And there was no will, so there is no one that can sign the waiver. Nobody seemed to mind. The other four were fine. And like he said, like Orlando Cantu said, this is not technically a repair, typical mechanic shop. It's high-end vehicles, very customized, and it is pretty much an elite group of customers that come to his shop. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else? We will now close the public hearing.

Any further discussion, questions? I have some questions. So if she had got the eight signatures, no variance would have been required? Correct. OK. And then you explain you went door by door to all those eight residences. OK. And then I didn't see it in here. Was there a timeline to put the green fencing up and then the shrubbery?

It will not be issued a CO. A CO will not be issued until all of those things are completed. I also wanted to address the spray booth concerns. So nowadays spray booths are heavily regulated because of overspray or all the concerns and environmental issues in the past. And so spray booths are both inspected and regulated by our building inspections department, but as well as the fire marshal's office. And if for some reason the booth were to malfunction and There be you know any over spray or something that is such an offense that even TCEQ can come and Help with enforcement actions For spray Bruce so the spray boost that we kind of think about of yesteryear Don't really exist today. It is a very heavily regulated activity because of the past environmental issues that come with that I

I understand. I think it's a set of regulations.

And I have a question pertaining to the variance request itself seems to be for the amount of parking and for the minimum separation distance. And the only thing I see addressed in the body is the separation distance.

So we were able to work with the applicant to meet the parking requirements they would need. Understood.

Any other questions?

This is a race car shop. Are you gonna have a chassis dynamometer? Thank you.

We do all of our chassis dynoing in Houston, Texas. Yes, sir.

And I have one more question. So there was a reference in here that operating practices would be implemented to minimize noise. What are those?

Can you come up to the podium? Thank you.

So the vehicles that we do build, they are loud. We don't do any revving or anything of sort. It's just whenever you turn a vehicle on, it's louder than a normal vehicle. So our operating hours are very specific. As I'm used to it, on real grand, I can only operate during certain hours because, of course, people sleep and whatnot. So, yes, sir, typically we work from 8 in the morning until 5 p.m.

Okay.

Yes, sir.

I understand. Yes, sir. Thank you.

Will that apply in this case? Is that a condition of this variance? Not that I'm aware of. Not that I'm aware of. No.

What was your question? I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you.

Celeste, I was asking with the hours, the restricted operating hours that he just described, will that apply in this new location?

So our city's noise ordinance would apply regardless, which has really strict noise requirements from 7 AM to 7 PM. So if they were operating after and were to exceed, and I think it's only 55 decibels in the noise ordinance, which is actually a pretty low threshold. So the city's noise ordinance would really cover all businesses.

Thank you.

Do we have a motion to accept staff's recommendation?

Aye.

A second. Who said that?

Who said aye? OK. Second?

I'll second.

All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion passes. OK. Our second item is a variance request for street design standards for the Gin Creek Estates. May we have the staff report, please?

Good evening, commissioners. Gin Creek Estate is a proposed final plot of 55 acres located southeast of Farm to Market Road 1686 and Gin Road intersection. The subject property is currently located within the city's extraterritorial jurisdiction. The property is currently not plotted but is proposed to be subdivided into 10 rural detached single family residential lots and one commercial light use with proposed water wells and septic systems. The proposed lots six through nine and lot 11 do not have frontage onto a public street. For this reason, the owner is requesting a variance to street design principles frontage in order to subdivide the property into 10 rural detached single family dwelling lots and one commercial light use lot. The proposed lots six through nine and lot 11 do not have frontage on a public street. Access to the proposed lots will come from a dedicated 2.18 acre private access easement from lot 10 connecting each lot to Gin Road. The approval of the Gin Creek Estates plot will assist in formalizing existing ownership patterns that were established through meets and bounds and will guarantee future owners a legal access easement to Gin Road. Staff recommend approval of the variances to allow the property owner to plot the property into 10 rural detached single family residential lots and one commercial light use lot. with the proposed lot six through nine and lot 11 not having direct access on a public road. State law exempts plotting of lots over 10 acres with access to a public right-of-way with many exceptions regarding the dividing of land with access easements. This plot will provide an easement in perpetuity to the proposed lots, which have already been created by Meats and Bounds Deeds Approving the variance will not have a detrimental impact on the area. Staff recommend approval of the final plot for the Gin Creek Estate, finding it meets all applicable ordinance and regulations conditioned upon the approval of the variance.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We will now open the public hearing. If you wish to speak on an item, please come forward at this time. Citizens will be limited to three minutes.

Hello, my name's Robbie Reese and I'm the owner of the 55-acre track that we have split up. And just a little history on this. If you look at the drawing in front of you, lot nine, which would be the last one that you can see on the bottom of your screen, everything forward, that is the 55-acre track that I bought. The property behind that on the bottom of your screen is, there you go, is existing. There's an oil field location that's been in operation for a really long time. It's been a dedicated easement. It's been used for years. When we bought this tract of land, we included an easement, or the owner that I bought it from included an easement, granting us and retaining themselves an easement. And we didn't realize at that time that we had to get a variance for that. And so we went ahead and platted everything. But this easement has historically been used the way that it is. It really just comes down to access. Like I said, there is occasional oil field traffic down that road. That's why it makes sense to maintain that road as a private road so that the oil field company can continue to maintain that and it not be a burden on the county or the city. As far as the five front lots, they are next to or on an existing public road. So it's just the variances for the easement that goes down to serve those four different tracks and I request that you all approve it. Thank you.

Thank you. I don't see no other citizens. We will now close the public hearing. Any further discussion?

One question. The road's going to be maintained by the residents? The resident? Who's maintaining the road?

Sure. So the road is actually maintained by the oilfield company that has it back there, which is kind of hard to see, but it's the very bottom right part of that. That's where your oilfields are now on the top right. They maintain that road by agreement. It is a dedicated easement. Anybody could, as far as any of those landowners, they could put a maintainer on it or something like that. But the road is in very good shape and that company has done a very good job of maintaining that.

Thank you.

Yes, sir.

Any further discussion?

Okay, I'll entertain a motion to accept the staff recommendation.

I'll make a motion to accept the variance. Second?

I'll second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. OK, our third item is the amendments in the unified development ordinance. Celeste, the floor is yours.

Good evening, commissioners. So you've kind of seen us pretty regularly every six months, kind of still updating and amending the UDO as we continue to use it by staff. So of course we're bringing you some kind of updated things. We've also found that we're trying to clean up and improve our UDO. One of our first amendments that we are suggesting is we noticed in our Article 3 building codes, we were still referencing our old floodplain maps. So with this proposed amendment, we've kind of struck out all the old ones that are ineffective and saying we are adopting the effective July 17, 2024. Our next proposed amendment is to our land use table. We are proposing to actually list out Bus Depot under our transportation land use, which would adhere to the same setbacks, total square footages as all the other transportation uses. Our next proposed is in our infrastructure for data centers and crypto mine farms. So we've kind of amended our UDO last year to add about data centers and crypto mine farms as we've learned about them. So things have continuously come up and we've continued to educate ourselves on those data centers and crypto mine farms. So what we've kind of decided to also propose to add into our UDO is that if these data centers do come in or crypto mining is that they would use a closed loop cooling practice or similar cooling technologies to eliminate the need for this facility to continuously draw from our fresh water, the city's public water supply for cooling the equipment. We've also did see to be prohibited any open-loop cooling system, which the open-loop cooling systems are those that take from our public water supply. Then for number three, we've added, we originally had crypto mining farms only, so now we're proposing to put data centers and crypto mining farms shall be located 500 feet from any residential property line, and that would be measured from the residential use to the data center property line. If you want, I can answer your question now or we can go through the amendments.

I have a specific question of this one. So these limits, for example, the 500 feet, 55 decibels. What are those based on?

So that's the noise that these centers produce. So we align the 55 decibels to go with our noise ordinance. So that's why we've kind of limited to those. So many of these data centers have to be self-contained in some sort of building. So with that 55 decibels keeps that noise down. And then to assure in case there's any residentials, that's why we've also added that separate

standard in there to protect those residential uses thank you we got any other questions or I can if I may is there any sound regulations like how many decibels is permitted what when you're saying permitted so noise from these data centers

So we're trying to limit them down to 55. The planners have did some research and they've had some different decibel sounds based on how far they are from, if they're enclosed, the type of cooling systems they're using. So they can produce various decibels, but the way we're trying to at least control them and help maintain the residential is keeping it at 55 in conjunction with our noise ordinance.

And is that a regulation? Is that written?

That for the 55?

That's within our noise.

Yeah, and then it's also here in our UDO that we adhere to.

Thank you.

You're welcome. So where we added the bus depots in our land use table, we're also kind of extending it over into our overlay and special districts. So in our historic overlay standards, we've kind of put some things that we didn't wanna see in those historic districts and overlay districts. Originally, it was just the manufactured homes, RV parks, and industrialized buildings. We have now included bus depots, bus terminals, and heavy industrial uses into that to help preserve our historic districts and overlay districts. In the design overlay, we also noticed that there was a reference that was to the wrong section, so we kind of fixed that to put it into the correct reference. So for our minor plats, we've kind of, what we require once we file have changed. So we've kind of adhered to what we actually have our applicant to bring in once we're ready to, which is the one mylar and now three hard copies. And then they don't pay the filing fees to the city of Victoria. Those are to the Victoria County Clerk. So we were just kind of cleaning up those. And that's the same for these recording plats overall. In our definition section, we have now added the definition for Bus Depot and we clarified our bus terminal definition. Then we also defined what closed loop cooling systems were for those data centers We also defined open loop cooling systems, and then we added some clarification on transit stations in our definitions. If you can see kind of on this slide and the previous slide, you can kind of see the numbers have been crossed out. We didn't show the whole definition section, but because we have added new definitions, our numbers have changed all the way through, but we just wanted to kind of highlight the changing definitions on those. And those are all our current amendments we have that we are proposing to y'all. I'm happy to answer any additional questions.

We will now open the public hearing. If you wish to speak on this item, please come forward at this time. Seeing none, I will now close the public hearing. Any further discussion?

I think they did a good job doing that. I move to approve the amendments. All in favor?

Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Now, there are four items on the consent agenda, which are the minutes of the February 19, 2026 meeting, the final plat for the Jean Creek Estates. There's only two.

There's only two. It's a typo, right? OK.

So there's only two. Do we have a motion to approve?

Move approval. Second. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. May we have the monthly development report, please?

In May of 2026, we had 107 building permits issued, which was less than last year at this time. We had 121 MEP permits issued, which is also less than last year. And then we had a total of $100,846 of permit fees collected, and that was more than last year at this time. And in May as well, we had four minor plats submitted, zero major plats, five site plans, three site modification plans, and no city council actions.

Thank you. Are there any items from the commissioners? Nope. Seeing no other business, I will adjourn the meeting at 5.47 p.m. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.