 staff of a staff staff testing one two one two Mike Mike check Mike check one staff are we ready welcome to the city County Planning Commission the members of the Durham Planning Commission have been appointed by the City Council and the Board of County Commissioners as an advisory board to the elected officials you should know that the elected officials have a final say on any issue before us tonight if you wish to speak on an agenda item tonight please go to the table to my left and sign up to speak for those who wish to speak please state your name and your address clearly when you come to the podium please speak clearly into the microphone as this is being televised each side those speaking in favor of an item and those speaking in opposition to an item we have 10 minutes to present for each side the time will be divided among all persons wishing to speak finally all motions are stated in affirmative so if a motion fails or ties the recommendation is denied so April the 12th the Planning Commission meeting it's called order could we have the roll call please mr. Brian present mr. Busby Freeman mr. Gosh present mr. Gibbs mr. Harris present miss Huff miss Hyman present mr. Kenshin mr. Miller Mr. Van present mr. Whitley miss Winder's and mr. Gibbs just came in so with quorum present do we have adjustments to the agenda yes we do grace Smith with the planning department we sent notice out to you via email and we also renoticed or sent notice to the neighborhoods and registered neighborhood associations for case 5a North Rocksboro Road retail case 815-0002 and case D-15-0006 that the applicant requested a referral until the May 10th regular Planning Commission meeting that deferral request was granted by the Planning Director so that item will not be heard tonight it will be on the agenda for next month so that's the first adjustment actually I don't have another adjustment but I have a couple of other announcements of course required notice has been executed in accordance with the UDO standards and all affidavits for notice requirements are on file in the planning department and I would I also like to say at this time that we have an announcement that's it's been kind of a gloomy day here in the planning department we found out that we're gonna lose one of our employees Miss Amy Wolfe has decided to try something different and she's making a change in her career and we're gonna miss her greatly but I wanted everyone to know that she will not be here next month so make sure you take a moment to and tell them what time she when she's leaving she'll be gone April 26th the last day in the planning department this is her last planning commission thank you for indulging me Mr. Chair yes I have I'd like to add an item under new new business okay anyone else okay anything else if not the chair will entertain a motion that we adopt the agenda as modified so moved motion and seconded by motion by Commissioner Brian and seconded by Commissioner Miller that we adopt the agenda as modified all those in favor please raise the right hand all those in opposition okay unanimous vote approval of the minutes you receive the minutes with your packet or their questions corrections omissions if there's no corrections the now I was just gonna make a motion okay I'll take it Mr. Chair I move approval of the minutes and the attached consistency statements second motion by Commissioner Brian second by Vice Chair Hyman that we adopt the minutes with the attached attachments along with it all those in favor let up be known by showing the right hand all those in opposition unanimous vote okay item five and five a has been moved to next month so we'll go to item five to the multifamily a-one five triple zero thirteen and z-one five zero quadruple zero six all right thank you Amy will put the planning department I want to chair will now open but for public hearing gotcha thank you Amy Wolf with the planning department I want to thank Miss Smith for her kind words it's been a pleasure to serve Durham and the community and I will certainly miss the opportunity plan amendment a-one five zero zero zero one three for TW 55 multifamily is a request from Hopper communities it's been reviewed under the city's jurisdiction this request along with the rezoning as part of a consolidated land use item that will include an annexation and utility extension agreement when it goes to council after this board makes a recommendation the request is from the present future land use designation of industrial and medium density residential to medium high density residential and the acreage of this request is a total of seventeen point seven four acres it differs from the zoning request by eight point three four acres for the site area because there is eight point three four acres of recreation and open space on these three parcels that is not included in the plan amendment the site again is three a portion of three parcels at fifty six twenty seven NC fifty five highway at the intersection of NC fifty five highway and TW Alexander Drive it's in the suburban tier it is in the FJB watershed protection overlay about a half mile to the north is the suburban transit area associated with the fifty highway fifty four and highway fifty five intersection a quarter mile to the it's a quarter mile west of a research triangle park and the southern boundary of Durham County is about an hour to the south excuse me a mile to the south the quite a job. Derm is growing. So the site again is a portion of three parcels. Three point six six acres is presently designated as industrial which is right on the corner of NC fifty five highway and TW Alexander Drive. The portion with the future land use map designation of medium density residential which is six to twelve units an acre is fourteen point zero eight acres. There is four criteria for plan amendments that staff is reviews required by the unified development ordinance whether or not the proposed change would be consistent with the intent goals and objectives policies and guiding principles and programs of any adopted plans criteria B is the proposed change would be compatible with the existing land use pattern and or designated future land uses criteria C is whether the proposed change would create substantial adverse impacts in the adjacent area or in the city or county in general and criteria D is whether the subject site is of adequate shape and size to accommodate the proposed change. So in consideration of criteria A for the applicable policies that are listed here and as well as in your staff report staff has found that these policies are met a little more detail policy two five two E the demand for land uses with the proposed change there'd still be a surplus gap for both industrial and residential and the water demand generation rates and the infrastructure capacity. There are related studies associated with the zoning map change that are mitigated through the zoning map change and the water would certainly be considered with the annexation request and utility extension agreement. At this time the preliminary data for the annexation would accommodate this request further detail will be provided at council. Again in the context area there are there is multifamily development to the east of this project. There is a railroad corridor also bound on the boundary of the east burdens Creek is north of the site. There is a tributary Creek feature into northeast Creek which runs on the west side of NC 55 highway. There's a wastewater treatment facility on the opposite side of NC 55 highway and it's vacant south of TW Alexander Drive. So given the request for medium high density residential it would extend the existing pattern of development from the east to the west and in provide housing for close to proximity to employment associated with RTP and the region as a whole criteria sees substantial adverse impacts. Again it's similar development to the properties already developed in the area. There are undeveloped properties. Staff feels this is an extension of the multifamily to the east and would not create any substantial adverse impacts. It is of adequate shape and size to accommodate residential youth in on this property and staff feels it meets criteria D as well. So in summary it meets the four criteria for review under a plan amendment. We have considered that with our recommendation staff recommend recommends approval based on consideration of adopted plans compatibility impacts and site dimensions. And again it's from for 3.66 acres of industrial and 14.08 acres of medium density residential to medium high density residential. That concludes the staff amendment excuse me the staff report for the plan amendment. The zoning map change which is associated with this request is as follows case Z 1 5 0 0 0 3 2. In this case the applicant is technically the city of Durham since it's associated with an initial zoning related to an annexation through the request of Eden's lamb court. We have reviewed this under the city's jurisdiction and the request is from commercial neighborhood and residential rural to residential suburban multifamily with the development plan. The site is 26.08 acres. It's the same three parcels as the plan amendment but it also includes the recreation and open space area. And the proposed use is for 192 to 300 multifamily units and that multifamily is a committed housing type. Again 56 27 and C 55 highway at the intersection of NC 55 highway and TW Alexander Drive. It is south of burdens Creek. There's commercial neighborhood along the frontage of the property along NC 55 highway residential rural to the rear. Again it's the same context as the plan amendment and it is presently in the county with consideration for annexation following the recommendation of this board. The development plan and the request meets the minimum standards for the residential suburban multifamily district. The site is presently undeveloped. There's a riparian feature through the center of the site and associated floodway. Excuse me floodplain. This is a tributary to northeast Creek through the side burdens Creek is to the north. But it's the site is is forested. The development plan associated with this request shows two building and parking envelopes one. The north is to the left for orientation. So one to the north of the riparian feature one to the south. Commitments on this development plan are the tree coverage areas the possible stream crossing that is something that's required to be identified at the stage of application and then there's three access points one to NC 55 highway one to TW Alexander Drive and one to the north. Commitments of this plan are the intensity at a density of eight point zero zero zero to twelve point five zero six dwelling units per acre which would yield one hundred ninety two to three hundred units. There's one potential stream crossing. There's three side access points impervious surface maximum would be 70 percent which is the maximum for the FJB protection water watershed protection area and tree coverage at 20 percent. Graphic commitments are the location of the access points tree preservation and building and parking envelopes. There's several commitments with this request. This development will be multifamily residential uses construct a bus pullout and concrete pad shelter and additional four feet of asphalt along TW Alexander Drive for to allow for a bicycle lane eastbound left turn lane on TW Alexander Drive at site access number one and northbound right turn lane at NC 55 highway and site access number two. The request is not consistent with the future land use map you've just heard the report for that they are requesting a future land use density that would accommodate the proposed density on this zoning which is medium high density residential staff is recommended approval of that. This request does satisfy and meet the standards of the other comprehensive plan policies that apply to the site. The staff determines that should the plan amendment be approved this request would be consistent with the future land use map of the comprehensive plan and other adopted plans and ordinances and staffs available for any questions. Thank you. I have one person signed up to speak or the other members in the audience wishing to speak to this item. Okay. I have one member speaking in favor. Jared Eaton. You have 10 minutes. Thank you. Good evening. Jared Eaton's with Eaton's Land Corp. I'm here representing my client Hopper communities. Before I begin as a quick note about Amy I know we used to have protest petitions where you could oppose a rezoning. I would like to start a protest petition that poses Amy leaving the city. I think everybody in this room would sign. I'll sign that. I appreciate it. Amy's been great to work with really appreciate it. I hate to see you go so I just want to and I'm not butterned up to her because she's leaving. So I really feel this way. Anyways just to summarize Amy's report of the project. We've got about 26 acres. You got a land use amendment and a rezoning being proposed for multifamily development. We don't know at this time what the final product is going to be. It's just it's laid out to where it would support townhomes and or apartments or a combination of both. There's no end user for the site at this time. So we're just trying to get the zoning out of the way now. As you heard we have staff support of both of our requests. We did perform a traffic study for this project. This parcel sort of unique in the adjacent roadways have significant extra capacity beyond what's currently traveling on TW and 55. But we did complete the study that was approved by DOT in the city. We got a couple roadway improvements as part of that study. We did have a neighborhood meeting back in July of last year. Very small attendance. We have no opposition that I'm aware of. And just in general we feel this is a good location for for multifamily and a little bit more denser development with access to 55 and TW and being so close to RTP. So again I'm glad to answer any questions you have. Thanks. Thank you. Do we have any other. Members of the audience wishing to speak. If not we will close the public hearing and bring it back before the commissioners. Do we have commissioners wishing to speak. And I'm looking directly at you. All right. Commission to her. OK. This is for Jared I think. What happens to this area here that's on the future land use map that is determined to be open space. What happens to that in this rezoning because it looks like it's a lot more than the part that you say is not available. Well I believe that that line follows. I don't have the map in front of that. That line follows the floodplain limits the recreation open space designation. We're not proposing to make any changes to that. OK. So you're going to develop on each side of the area. Yeah. It just looks like the numbers here. And it doesn't look like they match up because it says side area. Let's see. Side area with him. The gross area is 26 acres and the developable area is what 23 is almost 24. So that would be that's only two acres that area. It just looks like more. Well the twenty three point nine because of the the state recently passed legislation where the stream buffer portion of the floodplain area now counts towards density. So technically that counts as developable area buffer but it counts towards correct. And I think that was around three acres or so three or four acres that's in the stream buffer. I know we work with Amy on this. I can confirm that we did work through that calculation a couple of times given this legislature change and the applicants and property developers now have can get credit for the riparian buffer features. They're still protected but they get the density credit for that. Right. It just is because you're looking at the you're looking at a drawing here and it didn't look like it matched up with the numbers. The other question I have is about this. You're going to. I don't see how you can not build a some sort of stream crossing here. I mean it was looked like you're going to need house votes. I mean we do have a the arrow to the north. Yeah we do have a stream crossing identified. We just have it located outside of the floodplain. But we will have a stream crossing. OK. Commissioner Gouche. I just wanted to say it will first of all. I plan on voting in favor of this project. I grew up in this area. When I was a kid I passed by this site all the time and I live there now. So I passed by it basically every day. I cannot understand how this site has not yet been developed. So I'm excited to see that something's going there. And as always you know Durham is growing. And so I'm excited that it's going to be a residential opportunity for people wanting to move to Durham. It's pretty much all I have to say about it. Looks like a good project. Thank you. Commissioner Brown. Thank you. I have a question for the applicant. Your site plan or development plan rather doesn't show sidewalks. There's a comment in here from the bike paved commission about needing sidewalks. And I think sidewalks are required. So the question is will there be sidewalks. Yes there. I don't think we've had a development plan yet that showed sidewalks on the development plan because that's required by code. And generally we only show the required items on a development plan or something that's above and beyond the code requirement. But at site plan I'm sure we'll be asked to install sidewalk along the frontage on 55 and TWN. That's what we'll do. Thank you. Commission. Thank you Mr. Chair. First question would be for staff. I'm not sure if it's Ms. Wolfe or Mr. Judge. I just wanted to hear from staff the reasoning behind the unresolved transportation concern that's mentioned on page five of the zoning map change report. And it talks about a second crossing. Yes. Bill Judge with transportation. That request was due to the needed stream crossing in order to serve the northern portion of the property for public safety and circulation. The ordinance has a requirement that no more than 90 units but it's defined as external points of access. This is sort of a unique project because they have the two external points of access to TW Alexander and NC 55. They'll meet that requirement. But our concern was that if they developed more than 90 units north of that crossing that if anything ever happened where that crossing had to be taken out of service for some period of time that there'd be a public safety issue with that many units on the north side. So we had requested of basically a text commitment to sort of address that. And they were unable to do it. But so it otherwise meets the ordinance. So that's why it was listed as an unresolved transportation. Sir. Great. Thank you very much. And just to follow up for Mr. Edens I'd just like to hear from your perspective why you felt you weren't able to meet this request. And Bill said it otherwise meets the ordinance. I mean it does meet the ordinance that the current plan does meet the ordinance. There's nothing on here that doesn't meet the ordinance. So even at site plan if we propose the one stream crossing with 100 units on the other side of the stream or 85 or whatever it is it'll be approved because it meets the ordinance requirements. We didn't want to serve an ongoing battle on Durham floodplain in Durham is Durham really tries to protect floodplains. But then we have some issues where people want us to impact floodplains and build roadway crossings and things like that. And I just didn't think in this case it was warranted going to council and getting a special approval to impact the flood plane for a crossing that's not required by code. So that's why we decided not to do it. Commission. I had some concerns. I started off with the with the trans unresolved transportation issue thinking about this. And it it seems to me that that is a large piece of very environmentally sensitive area there. And to get that many units on the rest of it of course we we now know that everything is completely clear cut. So there will be silt going into into Northeast Creek and and various wildlife and and flowers and things are will will be damaged by this. I don't think that it's a really good place for a lot of residential development since it's got a sewage treatment plan on one side of it and a railroad on the other side. And I can't I don't think it's going to be a very good quality development to have many houses packed into the non flood plain part of this development. And then then with the inability to make and about the sidewalks. I also ask Mr. Judge by email about sidewalks. And at I understand that at the site plan level they will be required to either add a sidewalk which is terribly needed in this situation. As I watch people try to walk up and down Route 54 with no sidewalks. And 55 is a much larger road and is a much bigger problem. When people are in apartments and the bus goes by there and everything you know. We really need the sidewalks. And I think we really need a commitment to have a sidewalk not a payment in lieu. And the payment in lieu. I don't know whether it's adequate for for the city to build a sidewalk or not. But the sidewalk might not go in that place. It seems to me. So I would feel a lot better if the development was less density. I think it should be the density of the of this that the part to the the apartments across the railroad the orange color rather than the than the brown color that is being requested in the plan amendment and would be more compatible to the neighborhood and better for the the environmental sensitive nature of this open space part. And then we need to have a commitment to have the sidewalks. So I'm voting against it. Okay. Would you like to respond to her. Sure. Well regarding the sidewalk again this I bet if you go back and look at all the previous development plans that have come before the Commission I doubt sidewalk is ever shown because it's required a site plan. So I don't know why this project would be different from all the other development plans that you guys review and approve. The payment in lieu that the city puts in place is very costly. I have not applied for a payment in lieu that I can remember in the last 10 or 12 years in the city during for sidewalk. I just can't remember doing it because it's very costly item and it's always cheaper to try to build the sidewalk. We have every intention of building the sidewalk here. I didn't want to make a commitment if I ran to a five foot section somewhere because of floodplain or topography that I can't build you know five feet out of three thousand feet or whatever. I'm not about to commit today to doing whatever it takes to build that five foot section when I haven't designed the sidewalk yet. It'd be crazy for me to do so. So all I can tell you is we'll meet the code requirements and that's why you see sidewalks and Durham all over the place that right now lead to nowhere because every time something gets developed the sidewalk has to be constructed. Another comment also about the environmental protection that the comment that sediment is going to enter these areas. That's just that's just an assumption. I mean there's nothing behind that. We have to control our sediment with our storm water. We have to install storm water ponds and if they're installed correctly there won't be sediment entering this area. So I don't know what that was based off of. But if we do it the right way it's not going to happen. I can tell you that's based off the experiment experience with the Parkwood Lake. This is not part of the sidewalk. I have nothing to do with Parkwood Lake. Commissioner Freyman. I just on the traffic side I was trying to piece it together and understand. So I know that the second entrance or driveway entrance would be will I guess is it changing or is it the same at level C. I think it's in its own name. The both both proposed driveways. The NC 55. Well the driveway NC 55 will operate at level C both in the morning in the PMP. The driveway to T. W. Alexander will operate at the level service B in the morning in a C in the PMP. And that C is that. D is our threshold. D is acceptable. Anything D or better is considered acceptable. So the C is B and C are both acceptable. And it's not changing from B to C because of this. No because they are well the intersections don't currently exist since at the two proposed driveways. And the other intersection they looked at was NC 55 and T. W. Alexander. And that's not changing. It's staying the same in the A. M. And then also I just wanted to ask Mr. Eden if they had conversation with any of the community around this annexation case. I mean we had a neighborhood meeting where we talked about the zoning the land use amendment and annexation. But only two people showed up. And one of those people works for Durham County. It was just there happened to be there. I just have to say I'm my main concern in this is that I know that R. T. P. is starting to add residential units and this site is right along 55. And I know you said that you don't have an end user in mind. But I don't want to miss an opportunity to create a density affordable housing bonus in addition to any other options for affordability along 55. And I don't see the reason to move from six to eight units. And I mean if there's no end user. I'm trying to understand why we're doing this now. It's currently six to twelve. And we're applying for eight to twenty but we're capping it at twelve point five. So in reality we're applying for eight to twelve point five because the zoning conditions cap it at twelve point five. I mean again I'm biased obviously I think density here on a bus route near a major employment center makes sense. I'm not sure why it wouldn't. But if there was a possibility to go from twelve point five to twenty four point five you don't see the reason to hold on a little bit longer. No. I'm not sure I understand the twenty four. We can't go once this is approved we can't go over twelve and a half an acre. Exactly. Right. Which is a max of three hundred. Which your typical apartment project is about three hundred units. Have a couple more questions. Okay go on. And then I know commissioner Winder's mentioned the sewage treatment facility how close is that to the property. Yes directly across the street. The funny thing about that is before someone moves here they're going to know that the sewage plan is there. And we can't force people to move there. So they're going to move there. They know it's there. And if it's an issue for those people they won't buy there. That's how that will play out. Do you know what the current the current medium housing prices are in that area right now. I have no idea honestly. My client did go to. Tallis management who manages three of the single family properties west the sewage plant to find out if there were any odor issues and things like that they've had no reports at Tallis management. You know developers don't just throw money out willy nilly and just hope that it works out. They tend to do their homework before we get to this point. So we don't feel that the sewage plan is going to be an issue. And that's why we're moving forward. I think I have one more for staff. Just on the. It was in the. The. I'm sorry. The. I wrote all my notes in the document. Sorry. I can come back. We will come back to you. Commissioner Miller. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Help me understand how the development plan works here when we when the development plan says potential stream crossing location. Does that mean what does that mean that that's the only stream law. The word potential makes it sound like it's optional. It is. It is an optional without having that identified on the development plan. A crossing would not be permitted if the applicant sought that crossing at the site plan stage. So identifying a potential stream crossing which is the language specifically calls out in the UDO for development plans to use that word potential stream crossing. The developer at site plan is not required to pursue that. However it gives them the option to pursue it should their ultimate design require it. If they wanted to put it somewhere other than where it's indicated could they do it. There's typically a director's discretion on on location of it. So you know it's a scale drawing but that is typically not a specific dimensioned access point. There is some discretion on that but generally right where it's shown. All right thanks. And Jared I wanted to ask you what device would you use to make a stream crossing there because that is an exceptionally wet swampy low areas matter of fact kind of hard to determine exactly where the stream is. Would you put like a causeway with a culvert or you know that would be a very long bridge. Yeah I mean at this early stage I wouldn't know. I mean it depends on the drainage area to that point. So if it's small enough it would be just a standard you know 48 inch or 60 inch corrugated metal pipe crossing. If it's much larger you know we've used box culverts on other projects that have really large crossings but without knowing the drainage area to it would be some sort of raised drive. Yeah you would have you would have something to carry the stream with fill over top of it. But not a bridge structure with pylons or that would be unlikely. Yeah financially I don't think that could be supported. But that would that has to get permitted. I think through the city as well I mean we have a certain limited amount of stream that we can impact with the crossing. As far as the location goes Tom just going back we're talking to. If you go just just west of that that's where you hit the flood plane. So we're not going to be proposing anything that impacts the flood plane. So that arrow may move five ten feet to the north or south of where it's at. But it's going to be in that corridor. That means where it is. Yeah. All right. Because I don't see how you could do it hardly anywhere else. And you want to cross it at the highest point of the stream you can because you've got the less least amount of drainage area and it should be the most shallow stream. That's all I think Mr. Commission of freedom. You have a question to go. Commission gives. Well most of my questions have been asked and answered. But just a comment. Excuse me. When a developer goes into a place I'm sure. They. The number of units that they put in or plan for. They take into account. What's going to be surrounding and the sale ability or market ability of of these things. But that that was just a comment. My question is I missed. Amy's. Statement on the location of the bus stop. And how many there were. Could you. Tell me. I think the way the condition is written is we were committing to providing one if data request one. At the site plan stage but we don't have the location identified. Maybe maybe Bill you can help me out on that. So there is bus service out here and I. Well. Correct. It's similar with an apartment project on fifty four of Barbie that the board approved a year or so ago. With a similar comment we got the site plan. Data said this is where we need it and then we designed it at the site plan stage. Sure. So if they request that we have to provide it. Okay. That's that's something that I think. Goes along with. Our plans for mass transit and. This area especially. The way the RDP is growing. But thank you that's that's my question I appreciate it. Commission for him. Just to staff. Is there any tool that you use or could use to assess affordability in a community. Like the medium home price. And the development before it comes before us. Okay commission of freedom could you speak into the mic so that people can hear you at home. At this time we have provided some data. For our compact neighborhood tears of those potential areas. I'm not aware that we have that level of information for other areas. That proposed residential development. We do. Have there has been an effort and we've provided those numbers in our compact neighborhood tears because of other studies that have gone on but I'm not aware of anything. Countywide that could provide that. And I'm I'm only mentioning it. Because I do recognize that this is probably the start of the research triangle Park developments around the county. Sure. And being able to track. What the changes are ahead of time you know like from the beginning is probably a good idea to get started now. I'll say we'll take a look at that but as you heard. It may not be a we. But I will bring that back to staff and let your. Comment be known. Thank you. And then just one more comment or question Mr. Edens. Can you actually determine the viability of a development without an end user. And. Place. Well it's the development plan allows two uses town homes and apartments. And so you've got a range of unit count you've got between. One ninety two and three hundred. If it's developed at one ninety two that's going to be town homes. And it's developed at three hundred that's going to be apartments. So we have a general idea what the yield will be with either scenario each scenario has a certain value assigned to it and then we just go from there. Okay. Commission have. This is a question for a staff. The stormwater remit mediation in this case. Can it be in this floodway fringe can it be where I mean this is a very wet side. Forgive us we were conferring on that. The we don't get to that level of design. Typically at the zoning stage I know that. We have various staff. Who sometimes come to these meetings who have that information. Who deal with that on a regular basis. It is my. Believe. That. Stormwater facilities cannot be in a in a floodway. However. We. And it's addressed at site plan according to how it's designed but I'm not aware of what that criteria is. Okay. And anyone else. Just to comment. You don't expect to have to use pilings do you. Pilings. It's not that wet. That's what I'm I'm not a geotech engineer so I don't know. Chair may I I wanted to correct a statement I made. We. I have been corrected that there are situations where those facilities can be in riparian areas. But that is assessed at site plan and I don't have specific information on that so I do apologize from the speaking. Chair will entertain a motion. If. All comments have been heard. Mr. Chair commissioner Brian. I move approval of a plan amendment case a one five zero zero zero one three. Second. Motion by commissioner Brian second by. Come on. Reverend willing. That we approve. A one five zero zero zero one three. Are you comfortable with your hands would you like roll call roll call please. Okay so we call roll. Mr. gosh. Mr. Busby. Mr. Brian. Miss Hyman. Yes. Mr. Gibbs. Yes. Miss Huff. Yes. Miss Freeman. No. Mr. Harris. Yes. Mr. Kenchan. Yes. Mr. Miller. Yes. Mr. Van. Yes. Mr. Whitley. Yes. Miss Winders. No. The motion carries eleven to zero. I'm sorry eleven to two. We'll take eleven to zero. Thank you. We will now have a public hearing. I'm sorry that was just for the amendment on it. Okay. Mr. Chair I move approval of rezoning case Z one five zero zero zero three two. Second. Motion by commissioner Brian second by commissioner Busby that we approve. Z one five zero zero zero three two. Roll call please. No. Mr. Whitley. That'll be a yes. Yes. Mr. Van. Yes. Mr. Miller. Yes. Mr. Kenchan. Mr. Harris. Yes. Miss Freeman. Miss Huff. Yes. Miss Hyman. Yes. Mr. Gibbs. Yes. Mr. Gouche. Yes. Mr. Busby. Mr. Brian. And Mr. Whitley. Yes. Motion carries eleven to two. Okay. This time we will open the public hearing for Witherspoon Garrett Road. A one five zero zero zero two three. Thank you Mr. Chair. Amy Wolf of the Planning Department for Garrett Witherspoon Garrett Road case A one five zero zero zero two three. The applicant is cultural teams. The site is in the city's jurisdiction. It is from the present. Future land use designation of office and recreation and open space to low density residential. The site is four point five eight acres. And you've probably read the staff report. This is somewhat of a complicated case. So bear bear with with us on this. As we try to explain this and staff is available for your questions at the end. This is one parcel at forty eight hundred Garrett Road. It's between US fifteen five oh one highway in old Chapel Hill Road. I have to make a correction from both staff reports related to this item. I had indicated that there is a a dance previous dance studio on this site that is actually the parcel to the north that the site was currently owned by it's owned by a place of worship. So it was used from from a place of worship not the dance studio as referenced. The site is in the suburban tier. There is natural inventory upon a portion of the site. It is not in a watershed protection overlay and the site has the designations of four point two acres of office and point three acres of recreation and open space. There's four criterias of a plan amendment that staff looks at when making a recommendation. As mentioned in the previous case whether or not it's consistent with policies objectives goals guiding principles and programs of adopted plans criteria B is related to the existing and future land use patterns criteria C is if the proposal would create substantial adverse impacts to the area adjacent areas to your county in general and criteria D B D whether the site can accommodate the proposed change. For criteria A the applicable policies we looked at the comprehensive plan policies listed. It met most of them. It does not meet the first one policy two point one point three B recreation and open space defined basically the point three acres of recreation and open space on the site is a map as a special flood hazard area. So staff cannot support the request meeting this policy. This the request does satisfy the remaining policies. It the request removes the office designation. There's no guidance on on whether or not we remove this the office uses of the transition is in relation to an adjacent commercial use there's no adjacent commercial here. So removing office is is not does not cause any policy concerns and the demand for land use uses the remaining by removing the four acres of office. It still projects a surplus so we have no concern there and certainly adding residential could be accommodated in our future land use map and this is where it starts to get confusing because as we know the related zoning map change does commit to an agricultural use. We are evaluating this on the residential future land use change and acknowledging that there are committed uses on the zoning map change. However our recommendations are based on changing it to a residential use. So for criteria B fitting in with the existing area and the existing land use patterns and the proposed future land use patterns and development. Again the site has a structure on it that was used from a place of worship not the dance studio. It is it so it has the building and associated parking most that development is kept towards the eastern portion of the site creating changing this site to low density residential for a non residential use is similar to the existing non residential use although we do acknowledge that commitments on the development plan do appear to make it more intense. But the residential at this location is reasonable. Criteria C the proposed change to the future land use designation would allow similar development to the properties developed in the area that was the non residential uses in the area. As the zoning commits to there are residential uses in the area as well. So it does fit in with the patterns criteria D it is of adequate shape and size to accommodate the proposed use. So it meets the four criteria of plan amendments with the exception of not meeting policy three point one point three B to keep recreation open space the category for the map special flood hazard area. And staff recommends denial based on consideration of adopted plans compatibility impacts and site dimensions. This request does not meet the comprehensive plan policy two one three B for designated special hazard special flood hazard areas as recreation and open space on the future land use map. And again the request is four four point five eight acres of office and recreation and open space to four point five eight acres of low density residential. The accompanying zoning map change provides a little bit more detail for this project witherspoon Garrett road case Z one five zero zero zero three seven applicant is the same culture dual teams in the city's jurisdiction the existing zoning district of the site is office institutional and the request is for residential role with the development plan and along with that comes some commitments. The site acreage is the same four point five eight acres and the proposed use which is actually a committed use agriculture and support uses including retail. Again the sites at forty eight hundred Garrett road between us fifteen five oh one highway in old Chapel Hill Road in the suburban tier. The new Hope Creek and associated floodplains run west of the site for context the request does meet the criteria and standards for the residential rural district the residential rural district does allow and permit agricultural uses. And those have been reflected here. The existing site has an approximate six thousand square foot building and associated parking area along the front frontage of Garrett road. And the proposal shows the building and parking envelope and access points there's no tree coverage required in the R. R. district. And there's a number of commitments. The maximum floor area for the building area is twenty eight thousand eight hundred square feet the maximum area for cold frames is thirty one thousand two hundred square feet for total of sixty thousand square feet. There's two site access points and pervious serve in surface maximum would is committed at a hundred percent. The graphic location of the two site access points and building a parking lot envelopes are committed. And there are some text commitments the useful will be agriculture and accessory retail sales. Northbound left turn lane on Garrett road at site access and the applicant commits to constructing a bus pull out and concrete pad or bus shelter and dedication of right away along Garrett road. This request is not consistent with the future land use map. However you did hear that request prior to this item. This request does satisfy the policies or meet the policies that are applicable to the zoning map change. And staff determines that should the plan amendment be approved this request would be consistent with the future land use map of the comprehensive plan and other adopted plans and ordinances. And staff is available for your questions. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. I guess a point of privilege if I may. After consultation with staff I did want all the members of the planning commission to know that I have a contractual relationship with these applicants in that they take care of my roses. And while I do not believe that that qualifies as grounds for recusal or disqualification it is something I wanted everybody to be aware of. I'm one of their customers. So if if that causes anybody to be concerned about my participation I understand that and I will recuse myself. So what's the pleasure to grow. Is anybody in opposition to Commissioner Miller sitting and participating in discussion. Okay so you stay. But we do expect roses. I have one person signed up to speak or the anyone else in the audience that would like to speak to this. Item. Okay Dan Jewels. In speaking in favor. Thank you Mr. Chair members of the commission yes I'm Dan Jewel with culture jewel Thames at 111 West Main Street. We're privileged to have been asked by the pike family. To help them with the proposed relocation of their business witherspoon rose rose culture from the current location at Watkins Road. To this the former Yates Baptist Association it was not a place of worship it was actually offices for the Yates Baptist Association which I understand was a consortium of a hundred and twenty churches that do. Phil anthropic efforts in the community. And have now relocated with me here this evening are. The owners of witherspoon rose. David Pike and. Ronda formerly witherspoon pike. They are the third generation owner family owners now of this business. Which goes back. Over sixty years in Durham. They've been at their current location. For nearly sixty years. And they have. Thirty. Durham based employees who they put to work. Every day. Doing what they do best and which is. Keeping Durham beautiful and and doing good in the community. In in in including taking care of Mr Miller and and many other people's roses in the in the community. Also interesting side note with me here tonight. Andy Porter. The landscape architect in my office who's taken the lead on putting the application together. Actually used to work for witherspoon rose several years ago before he he he came to work for us so he has a special connection to what they do in the design. As I will advance this really quickly. As as Amy said. Are we have two requests here tonight one is for a plan amendment. To a less intensive designation office to low density residential for the majority of this property. And a down zoning from the current office designation. To rural residential. I have a map up here that shows you what's going on of course I think many of you are familiar with with where weather spoon. Currently is hopefully you visited their rose garden. It's a great place to go take photographs look at roses and that sort of thing. Literally they wanted to stay close to the neighborhood. They're moving about three quarters of a mile away over to Garrett road. You can see though that the proposed site is about half the size of the current site which means they're going to have to be much more efficient in their use of the property and their layout. Which is which is one of the things that we're going to talk to you about. This evening. Their current location as you know is you know when they started. There was nothing out there it was the country eat when I first moved to Durham. Little over thirty years ago. There was nothing out there they were just in the middle of the country and since then now they're now in the middle of Patterson place they have. Restaurants and hotels and office buildings and. Stores and apartment buildings all around them. And I think the key thing for future use. Is that they are literally across the street from the proposed Patterson place. Light rail station so it. It it sets up an opportunity for some future development of some at some point. By every measure. What we are proposing. Is a less intensive land use than what. Would be allowed under the current zoning and land use design designation. This goes to traffic. Building height. Water use demands. School impact etc etc the list goes on. The site is already partially developed. So the new development would be an incremental addition to what is already out there. As opposed to starting with a totally. Undeveloped. Site. The the the rub though as we know. Is that. There is a. Small portion three tenths of an acre. Designated as recreation and open space on the future land use. Map. This plan. Shows that overlaying with a few other things so if you. If you can see this. Southwest corner of the site there's there's this finger about forty or fifty feet wide. Which which intrudes up into the site. That was designated as as recreation. And open space. Because of that we know the staff. Was compelled to. Rec say that we are not consistent with the with the future land use map and and we know that they had no choice. But to do that. Please keep in mind though there are. Several compelling reasons why we think. We are actually. Providing a better contribution to the community of. Better. Of. Of. Better thing for for for wildlife and and and open space. By making some modifications to that. By by what we're proposing tonight. First and foremost. This has a air photo overlaid with a few other things that are going on there. If any of you are familiar with this property. There's a huge stump dump out behind this thing probably. Thirty years ago it may have been used when they were building I forty there are these all over the place. Literally this mountain. Is six or seven acres at its base and it's fifty four feet high. It's probably the most imposing bit of terrain. In in southern Durham. The Fred Astaire studio is on the north. And there is they've started construction on a multifamily development to the south which will literally come right up to the southern property line. The second thing I'd like you to keep in mind. Is that the small amount of flood plain that is on the property and that's what compelled the future land use map designation for recreation and open space. Is not part of the flowing waters of Sandy Creek to the far north. It's not part of the flowing waters of New Hope Creek. To about a quarter mile to the rest. What rather it's simply an area. When those two flood plain start filling up. It backs up into this area during a hundred year flood plain a small amount. We've had our flood consultant look at this. And she thinks that when this stump dump was built it actually displaced the water in the flood plain and pushed it into this area so think of a think of a puddle and dropping a big shovel full of dirt in there and what it does it sort of pushes the water out around the edges and she feels that that's probably what happened here into this what she calls ineffective flow area. And also keep in mind that the blue hatched area on the site that I've shown that's a 40 foot wide city of Durham sewer easement. So most of this area shown as open space and recreation is actually a city sewer easement and there it is right there the city water management department maintains it they keep it clear they've gotten mowed every every couple of years so that is what we're we're actually dealing with. We do respect the efforts of the steering committee that worked on the future land use map back about 10 12 years ago I actually sat in on on many of those meetings and they had a tough task because they were looking at literally thousands of tracks of property in Durham and trying to determine land use and using the FEMA flood maps as a guide for open space was a a reasonable guideline at the time. They did not have time to go out at every site and see whether every little finger of floodplain actually had a good potential for open space and recreation space and and that's why we think that this little three tenths of an acre finger on this site is actually not a good candidate for open space and and recreation what we are committed to doing though is if you again look in that southwest corner of the site a little green notch there. So there is an area of New Hope Creek bottom lands inventory that was identified on the site. Now the the ordinance does not say that we can't do something in there but we are choosing to preserve that. So that is an area of habitat and vegetation that is contributing to the contiguous New Hope Creek bottom lands which are adjacent and to the the south and west. You can see on this map the development to the south they are saving those bottom lands along the back. We are connecting up with that and even providing some landscape buffer on the back side and that'll help screen that that stumped up area as well. And and so we think we are actually creating a a an equal or better situation than we have today. When you take into account that this project will require rigorous stormwater management that does not exist today that we are much less intensive use as as Amy said then then then exist today and that we are freeing up eight acres of land right in the middle of the future the Patterson Place light rail station area which could allow transit supportive development which of course will require rezoning which of course you will all see someday. We think that's a win win for for Durham and that's why we hope and and respectfully request that you would actually grant our request for changing the entire property to low density residential and that we are actually providing a commensurate amount of environmental benefit by changing the small amount of of recreation and open space to residential. I thank you and the pikes thank you. Happy to answer any questions. Okay thank you. Is anyone else in the audience wishing to speak to this item. If not we'll close the public hearing and bring it back before the commissioners. Do I have commissioners wishing to speak. Anyone down here. Hands. Yes. No I didn't. I didn't see your hand. Commissioner Freyman. My first question was just on the the rule. The residential rule with development plan. If you could explain that a little bit. What that is. The proposed zoning. The request is for the residential rural district which allows agriculture as a use there are slightly different standards that apply to a non residential use in this residential district which includes you'll notice the setbacks for farm buildings is different than a residential structure. The other requirement that would be required of a of a residential development and suburban tier would be tree coverage which is not a requirement of the residential rural district. Those are reflected on the development plan and what you see in the staff report is typical of a development plan where it shows the required elements with the building and parking envelope and all the other items. In this case with the exception of tree coverage because it's not a requirement. Identified access points. And intensity and impervious surface and those sorts of things. And then also that mound that I'm sorry Mr. Joule explained is that owned by the United States like government or is it because I'm trying to understand if it will be addressed. I did it won't it's not part of this request. That is my recollection as a private owner it's not owned by the federal government says on the map was United States. There's property behind that that is owned by the a different entity a government entity. But not that particular piece. If I might Amy is correct yes that is not owned that is not part of the Army Corps of Engineers land it's owned by a private developer and interestingly the only person that showed up at our neighborhood meeting was that owner and he tried to sell that to the pikes and they respectfully declined so. And then also Mr. Joule. I'm sorry it was back to staff so removing the hazard. That would that was placed on this property. What effect would that have like. If you'll permit me to interpret what I think you asked. The special flood hazard area. Yes. Okay that that is reflected on our future land use map in the green color which is recreation and open space. Yes. And so. Your question was what if we removed that if you will if you remove it. What effect will that have if we if we change the RO their recreation and open space designation to something else. Yes. Then it would be something else our policies require us to designated as recreation and open space. And so removing it to a different category is that the the purview of council approval. But we are guided by the principles of the comprehensive plan that direct us to keep it as recreation and open space. Now there's different applications. When you get into the zoning which is why the zoning does meet all the criteria of the comprehensive plan because there's no specific guidance on what development intensities can be applied in the recreation and open space areas. Our only guidance between the two application requests is that we keep it identified as recreation and open space on the future land use map. OK. Commissioner Gibbs. Amy I'm I need to follow up with you on what. Man. On this conversation. So. This. This land being. Their their request is to change it to residential. And this is a business I guess then this is an allowable use. Correct. OK. Well that answers that question and I. I have a question. For Dan or anybody. I think this area. Across the street isn't there. It's not a nursing home. What do you call it when you. Assisted living assisted living I think it's Carol on is what is called yeah yeah. This area is developing quite nicely I think into a. Pretty nice neighborhood. And I think this is a good use for. Distractive land. Everybody knows about. With a spoon roses and. I was certainly like to keep them in the area so I. I would support this. I don't see any reason why not. Commissioner. Thank you Mr Chairman. So. Well let me ask this staff Dan. This is kind of a goofy sort of thing we don't see business in residential we don't bring rural into the suburban tier very often so. It's a lot of things that are kind of cross ways to what we're accustomed to that I mean necessarily that we shouldn't do it. What other zoning districts could this particular use go in. Does it have to be in rural residential to exist at all. She just gave me the finger. Oh wrong finger never mind. Well it was your last chance. To clarify that was my index finger. So. There are two districts that permit an agricultural use. It's the residential rural district and the residential. The residential suburban 20 district. The request when it came in the director reviewed what the existing use was at the operations current location. And they request requested a use determination from the director and they. The determination what is it was at agricultural use agricultural uses do permit a certain level of retail sales along with them. So based on the information provided to us. There's two districts that this use could be. So you're going RS 20. RS 20 and our are. And our are. Based on the information and the determination made. And is it Dan. Is one preferable than the other. From from the applicant's point of view we we always try and strive for the least intensive district when we come in front of you and the council so that's what we chose the rural residential. I appreciate that. So my next question is with regard to the conundrum regarding the other finger we talked about which is this. On the future land use map. That protrudes into the property. Since a lot as you pointed out a lot of that's already in a city seweries but where you're not going to build anyway. Could you increase or change your commitment your development plan to to make more of that. Finger area. Open space and so consequently less jarring to less jarring to change. So we as I said the we have we have designed a site plan for this site we are actually on the verge of submitting a site plan which is a risk because. The bikes have a they had everything revolves around their growing season and then when they get this get stuff in and that sort of thing so they're they're they're hopeful that this will move ahead expect expeditiously and that's why they have us working on the site plan. So they they will need to put some. Truck movement and you know lay down area hoop houses that sort of thing so some of it may be paid some of it not may not be paid but again that's all going to be handled a site plan as part of our stormwater management plan so they'll be slow water down and that sort of thing so. That that's a long convoluted answer your answer your two questions saying that we we we we will probably do something in that area other than just keep it open but again that's why we we we went ahead and committed to the bottom lands area which is about two tenths of an acre which is a three tenths and why we also showed that we've got a landscape buffer along the back side so we have at least that much is much green space as we have today and it won't be mown by the city. So when we went out and looked at property last week commissioner Huff and I we went over and visited the current site. And it looks like it's there are on that side there are two residential structures which are not part of the business I don't believe. There is a retail structure. There were some garages and some sheds and things like that. And then there were lots of there were some permanent buildings and some impermanent buildings which were used for handling and preparation of roses for sale and then a large part of the property was a garden. What are you going to put on this property so we sense it's only half the size. Yes so so to clarify the residential looking buildings on the current property were were houses at one time some of the family lived in those houses but now they are offices and things of that nature so every building out there is used for the operation. So the plan right now the site plan we've shown is the existing Yates Baptist Association office building will be both offices and the small retail center. You'll walk from there out into the garden because one of their big things is have the rose display area. There will be one additional building though that will account for where they have to keep the equipment inside that needs to stay out of the weather so if if somebody were to have asked us to master plan the original witherspoon property where they are now with all of the complex of buildings and I came up with that solution I should have taken my license had my license taken away from me but it they have grown over the years that's what they did they they built as was needed so this this will be much more organized as I said is it needs to be so since they're going to be in half of the acreage that they are today. And so does your site plan involve the portion of the property which is on the other side of the easement the sewer easement. Yes. Yes it does. You're pretty much taking up every so when you what you show is your building envelope is pretty much all going to be involved. Pretty much it what it doesn't show though on all sides and we just decided to illustrate on this side is are we are going to be required to have landscape buffers which would not be required if we built just a single family house out there is as Amy was saying so they'll be landscape buffers around the property but the rest of it will be pretty well developed out other than we're using the existing driveway in the existing parking area. And on the the very helpful illustration you gave us here where will the garden be. The garden will be roughly to the west of where the existing Yates office building is. So we wanted to put the other building in to create a space which would define that garden area and the idea would be that you could walk through the garden and walk out the retail space and buy some roses or some potting soil or whatever or walk into it. So roughly in the middle of the site just to the west of where the existing building is. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Commissioner Hyman. Mr. Jewel you probably I think I'm probably the third person to ask or re-ask the same question concerning the recreation and open space area because I always like to look at the you know what are the consequences of you know basically changing that designation. So what I'm hearing is that it's basically sewage area currently or really designated so that it could be used as a recreation. It's predominantly a sewage sewer easement that is mown by the city so if your idea of recreation is to hang out in a sewer easement then you've got your thing going there but other than that that's what it's being used for. That's essentially what I'm asking for clarification because it sounds like we're going to have something in that area that's much more pleasant than what's currently there and that we can look forward to having with a spoon of roses for sometime to come. I have some in my yard as well. Perhaps not they haven't been cared for as much but I love and would love to see it grow so I'd like to support this. Thank you. Thank you. Rather than tree coverage we're going to have rose coverage. Right. Commissioner Wendell. You've got to go say something. Yeah I'm I'm pretty sure I understand although you're asking for low residential you're not planning on building housing in this area you're just going to. No no sir and if you look at our our cover sheet of our development plan and the first phase and our committed elements I mean we are actually committing to a specific use which is a agricultural business with accessory retail sales and and as you can see we've also committed to maximum square footages and building heights. We normally don't do that but we know we know exactly what we need to build so that's why we've committed to that and I think that's that's pretty well tied down on our development plan. Okay question for staff. Yes you. Go on with the finger. Sorry we have several staff over here how can I help you. Listen now we're we're being asked to allow building in a recreational area. We'd be said we'd be setting a president. Typically when we have zoning map changes here I would say the majority of those applications show the building and parking lot envelope outside of those areas but not all development that comes before you are required to show a building and parking envelope. Single family development is not required to show a building and parking envelope by committing and being required to commit to a building parking envelope on the development plan at this stage would allow the applicant to create a site plan based on that so the building and parking envelope for non residential uses which this is as agricultural use in a residential district typically a single family residential district however the building parking envelope is required. Typically we do see building and parking envelopes outside of the recreation and open space areas in this case it's the recreation and open space area is consistent with this mapped special flood area which would require an additional level of approval at site plan should the design include development in those areas at site plan. So you are being asked by the applicant to approve development in these areas it's not it is permitted by the ordinance however just to be aware that that's not the end of it there's additional levels of approval that are required once the designs are submitted through the site plan stage. So I'm to understand that it would be making a president I mean we'll be doing something different. And if another applicant came with a different project I'm thinking if someone came with a different project it wouldn't be coming with an agricultural structure to be coming with something completely different. So I'm not sure what you're asking me. I'm just trying to get my head around why I mean if if I vote yes for this will I will I have the opportunity to vote yes I mean yes or no if something else comes and they ask for the same thing but but this is unique in that it is for agricultural structures that something is going to have an address on the door. It's not to house it's not housing. Correct it's a committed agricultural use. Right. Thank you. Mr. Brian. Thank you Mr. Chairman. The one thing that really bothers me about this recreation and open space area when I went out and looked at the site parked in the parking lot walked up to the building and then walked out toward the recreation and open space area I saw a ravine which I estimated might be from where I was standing about 30 feet deep and I'm having a whole lot of problems seeing how you're going to be able to use it. It's a hole in the ground. Are you sure you stayed on this property. I was on that property and not only that but I happened to be out there after it rained and down in the bottom there was a little full of water. Yeah there's a little ditch little rivulet of water it's not a jurisdictional stream there's a wet lens we've had that done so it's not 30 feet deep there's a low area I'd be happy to go out there with you with our our survey equipment and verify. We can we can do that but it looked to me like this is a problem spot. I can't say how you're going to use it whether it's 30 feet 20 feet even 10 feet. And I respectfully say that's one of the reasons that we've set aside this corner as part of the bottom lands inventory which is the deepest part and best I could tell them but I would prefer that you save the recreation open space area all of it. Understood. Thank you chair Harris question for staff. I guess I wonder if you can give me any insight on how the recreation open space is determined like that. I realize this was determined some time ago but you know what kind of criteria we're looking at generally speaking. In this particular case that well the policy reference spells out which property would be mapped as recreation and open space. In this particular case this property has special flood hazard area mapped on it. And so that line when the map was created in 2005 followed that line simply put. And at that time was there no consideration given to in this case the underlying utility. I can't speak to that by my observation there's easements typically are in areas that are low and nearest a riparian feature by my observation. So I think that's a common thing to see in a low area. OK I mean and this is in response to a comment we heard not necessarily a question. But I would take issue with the idea that building or whatever is not generally allowed or done in recreational open space. In fact you can look at this case right here. There's a utility line that's construction in the open recreation space. So I mean I personally don't have any qualms with allowing specifically this recreation open space to no longer be considered such given that it's really not going to be maintained in any kind of natural state. You know that line were to break for example. I guarantee you they dig that up. So you know I don't think it's really a great candidate for recreational open space to begin with. So changing it doesn't really bother me too much. I also would like to ask and maybe I'm out of line here but I am interested in you know the possibilities out there Patterson Place where the business is currently located. I think that that's a huge aspect of this project that we should not lose sight of. That is a you know my mind on the map it looks like it might be like a three minute walk to the light rail. So moving moving the business to Garrett Road I'm wondering if maybe you could speak to what what might be going on out there in the future because certainly seems like great opportunity. I don't believe I can speak to it other than the comprehensive planning effort that's in place right now when the location of the light rail station literally across the street would speak to me that anybody getting control of that property would be interested in doing some sort of a dense mixed use project that would be transit supportive. And hopefully by the time that comes forward there will be an adopted comprehensive plan. The the expectation will be there of the type of zoning that would be in there and all of the conversations that go on with affordable housing and everything else and hopefully we will have a policy in place by then. So that every developer coming forward knows what the requirements are not what the requirement or expectations might be. So that's all I can speak to but I I can't see why anybody would not build something transit supportive from both a density and use standpoint on that almost nine acres of land over there. Let's let's pray that you're right on that. Also just a question for the pikes. I imagine you are accustomed to growing things like roses for example. I mean is the site wet. Is it fertile. I mean I imagine you guys have looked at this site for the viability of your business and I'm wondering if you could speak maybe a little bit to why you chose this site specifically. It seems I mean it sounds like a great site to me. I'm just wondering sir would you come to the mic so they can hear you at home. I'm sorry to make you walk all the way up here. I'm David Pike the president with the spin rose culture. We've had the luxury for 60 years to spread out and take advantage of that land and develop it is a rose garden. Speaking from an employee side it's not user friendly for our staff pulling carts of roses from the bottom that property to the garden shop day after day wears on you and it's not efficient use of that land for us. We've made it work for us and this new site will be more efficient will be tighter and can control ourselves better instead of just spreading out and not using things efficiently. I don't know if that's. No I think that makes perfect sense and I guess you guys have evaluated this. In our bed prep when we go into a site we use the native soils there and we'll select a site there and then once we get into preparing the beds we build up the areas with lots of organic material and to make the native soil there enriched so it's better suited for growing roses. So none of the current existing environmental features of this property concern you think that this would be a viable site for your business. It will be challenging but I think from what our staff has looked at and mapped out we can do everything on that site that we're currently doing. Great. At our other site. With your approval. It may be obvious but I'll just go ahead and say I plan on voting in favor of this. Thank you. Commissioner Heff. This is a question for staff. What can kind of things can go across that sewer easement. What kind of you know what do you can you put over it driveways pathways. What kind of stuff. I think it depends. I think it depends on the language of the easement. I'm not familiar with easement language. I think I think it's certainly. It would have to be looked into before. Before approving any any type of development over easements. So I can only confirm that it's worth. Looking into. Well. Presumably they're going to be able to traverse the easement. Right. Some kind of. I will I'm not staff but we've we've done this a hundred times. We cannot put buildings in the sewer easements. But but we can. Put pavement in their pathways. Gardens things of that nature. The caveat though is that the Durham Public Works Department says. If you put something in there. And we have to dig the sewer line up to fix it. We're not going to put back put it back the way it was it would be up to the the owners to do that. But you couldn't put a hoop house in there. The hoop house. Probably not probably not because it has a it has a wooden foundation and I think the the public works department consider that a building. Thanks. Commission middle. So Dan. Back again to this. Finger of recreation and open space land. If we were to expand the committed open space area. To include. More or all of it. Would the site be usable for these applicants. If in the in the current configuration. It is not usable. It is it is that tight. As Mr. Brian said the the challenging most challenging portion of the site is that southwest corner. That's also the area that is part of the inventory which was why we felt comfortable in setting that aside. And of course there is a landscape buffer on the south side to but it's a. If this finger of land had followed the southern property line or the western property line. It would not have been a problem but the fact that it angles up and intrudes. That is what would create more than a challenge as Mr. Pike said it would it would really make the site unusable for them. And is. I know you told us this is the landscape buffer that you've run against the stump dump require. Yes it is. I mean the obvious trouble here for some of the planning commission members is to. To. Not make a recommendation to the city council. That is contrary to. Policy in the comprehensive plan. There are a lot of unusual things about the zoning proposal we have a. Moving rural into the suburban we're using a residential designation for. An exceptionally low intensity business. So there's a lot of things that make make this different in the two and it's how to weigh them out. I know that a lot of people here would feel better if we could say this is okay because. Most of that. Area that is designated. As open space recreation use it has been preserved by this development plan. I would feel a lot better about it. I was just wondering is there a way to add more. To what you've already reserved. Or to. Even if you plan to use it to designate in committed elements. A the lowest possible intensity of use for. The area that's described by that green line on your very helpful illustration. In other words I don't know exactly what your site plan proposes for that area. But I suppose instead of just saying it's just going to be open space the only thing we're going to put in here is rose garden. Or something like that. I would make me feel. Better about making the recommendation. That we're going to make. To the city council going forward. I'm looking for a way to make this work. And resolve this point of tension. I appreciate that. Mr Miller. And. Again we have done a site plan for this we've looked closely at it. And and to make this work for them. We do need to use. The building envelope area of this property for. The additional building we need to make make the truck moving area the hoop houses things of that nature. I suppose we could go to the public works department and see if maybe. Hoop houses which are. Partially a green thing rather than a. A a a a you know a gravel paved thing for. Carts or whatever. Keep in mind though that we are going to have a substantially large rose garden. Which obviously they're they're happy to commit to. But the the way the site is laying out nicely is for this additional building that would be built which would be roughly. Just to the east of the sewer easement area. Sets up a very nice space for a garden to go in you know gardens are made even more special if they have. Walls around them and that would be. Be the case. Case here so I think right now would be tough to commit to not. Do. To do only soft stuff in that. In that last. Point one five acres of finger or whatever that goes up into the site. It's not that big is it. The whole the whole finger is like three tenths of an acre. Right so wouldn't be point. So it's it would be point one five. Well the portion. It's half the thing. Yeah it's half to the knuckle. It's half the finger and Andy just did a quick calculation and we're a little over we're about two tenths of an acre on this committed bottom lands area so it's not. Quite one for one but we're. We're two thirds of the way there but but certainly. We're going to have some some nice garden areas out there that will. You know it is that. Is that a reasonable offset. To this. Mone sewer easement area. From what we have today and I. I take Reverend Reverend Whitley's comments to heart also. You know precedent is always always important. But you also. I know are always very thoughtful and looking at every request that comes to you on a case by case basis and seeing if there are. Extend waiting circumstances that that would would give you a reason to do. Something different so. That's why in zoning cases precedent is maybe not quite as. Is is is critical because everybody has to come forward to you and plead your case. How many remind me Dan how many total what you're committed maximum for building. Square footage. Twenty eight thousand square feet. So a little over half acre on a four and a half acre site four point six acre site but you probably don't propose to use all twenty eight thousand of that. Twenty thousand is about what we're going to end up with but that includes the hoop houses. Does not include the hoop houses yeah. Thank you thank you Mr. Chairman. I'm sorry Amy. I I did want to clarify the development plan commits to twenty eight thousand eight hundred building square feet so just for a point of clarification. Thank you commission frame. That's just Amy if you could come back I'm sorry. Just a question how are sewer easements usually classified how about that. They're they're not a classified use in terms of a future land use or or in our use table it's it's it's a feature of site design of building. Our communities. So in this in this case. I don't. The easement is not so much the issue in that I mean. I want to know why it was classified because this this pipe this line that runs underneath the property runs across that Garrett road. Sure the it was classified as recreation open space simply based on the map the FEMA maps the special flood hazard areas. And it so happens to have a sewer easement in it. That happened over time. Commissioner Bryant. Another question for staff. You mentioned that it was created by looking at the FEMA flood hazard areas but these do have a tendency to change. Has this been updated anytime recently. This is my understanding that so the original point three acres I believe or the green area shown on the future land use map. Was provided or mapped in 2005. And we have gotten updated FEMA map since then. And it is my understanding that those increased. Over time there has not been an update to the future land use map so the area you're seeing on our map future land use map is actually smaller than what we believe. The special has flood hazard area is today. Okay thank you. Just to the applicant. I very much appreciate the situation that the rose garden witherspoon rose garden is in. I'm going to be voting no not because I don't appreciate you I think you're trying to do a very good thing. I don't feel comfortable going against the staff when it comes to recreation open space area. I personally feel that that's a decision that really needs to be made by the governing body. Commissioner Burks. Thank you Mr. Chair. I was actually going to make very similar comments. I appreciate the proposal. There's a lot of great opportunities here and appreciate the great business but I'm concerned as well especially with flooding concerns it sounds like this may still get additional clarity as it moves forward. I hope it does. In that situation I might be able to support it but without that clarity tonight I'm going to vote against it. Commissioner Wheatley. I plan to vote for this. I just I feel uncomfortable but I plan to vote for it. I think it's unique. And Durham is about a lot of the good things we love about the city are those unique things that we put in place. So give them a shot. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Gibbs. I'd like to kind of go along with the comments just preceding me. But the Yates Baptist Association has been operating on this piece of property for years. What's planned to go there is I think it's going to be an improvement on that. And I plan to support this. I think it's a good use of this land. A floodplain is going to wash away or the 100 year flood or whatever that may come may require an arc or whatever. But it would affect the Yates Baptist Association building just like it would with a spoon rose culture or Sam's Quick Pig whatever goes there. So I and I don't I don't think it's that far off from the future land use for this area. So I do plan to support it. And I think we should send it forward to the City Council for with a recommendation to approve. Is that a motion? OK. So I got. OK. So. So I have a motion from Commissioner Gibbs that we move forward with the plan amendment a one five zero zero zero zero twenty three. I have a second second by Commissioner Bryant. Roll call please. Miss Wonders. Yes. Mr. Whitley. Yes. Mr. Kenchin. Yes. Mr. Miller. Yes. Mr. Van. Yes. Miss Freeman. Yes. Mr. Harris. Yes. Miss Huff. Miss Hyman. Yes. Mr. Gibbs. Yes. Mr. Ghosh. Mr. Busby. No. Mr. Brian. The motion carries 11 to 2. OK. And the zoning case. Mr. Chairman, if I may. I move the approved that we send case Z one five zero zero zero three seven forward to the City Council with a favorable recommendation. Second by Commissioner Whitley that we move zoning case one five zero zero zero three seven to City Council with a favorable recommendation. Roll call please. Miss Huff. Miss Huff. Miss Hyman. Yes. Mr. Gibbs. Miss Freeman. Mr. Harris. Yes. Mr. Ghosh. Yes. Mr. Busby. No. Mr. Brian. No. Mr. Kenchin. Yes. Mr. Miller. Yes. Miss Winder's. Yes. Mr. Whitley. Yes. Mr. Van. Yes. Motion carries. 11 to 2. OK. Thank you. OK. And now we will have the public hearing open for the UDF. Texas Amendment to the Unified Development Audience TC one five zero zero zero zero two. Thank you very much. Good evening. Michael Stock with the Planning Department. Texas Amendment TC 150002 provides new graphics or revisions to existing graphics for current standards within the Unified Development Ordinance. They are these are technical amendments. They consist primarily of new graphics for infill standards in section 6.8, revised graphics for yard definitions in section 16.3, graphics for fences and walls in section 6 section 9.9, new graphics for bicycle parking standards in paragraph 10.4.4 and associated minor technical corrections or clarifications that are related to the graphics. I'll be happy to answer any questions. I do want to make one note. I received an email from Commissioner Huff regarding a proposed technical correction to section 10.4.4 B1B, which goes into the placement of racks being placed end to end. And she proposed some clarification language to allow for a shorter distance when it's along a wall. And yeah. So instead of 96 inches, it would be 60 inches for separation of different racks in a linear fashion. And we can make that adjustment as before it moves forward to the elected bodies. Be happy to answer any questions. Do we have anyone wishing to speak? Still OK. OK. If not, we'll close the public hearing and bring it back before the commissioners. I see three on the end. Bam, bam, bam. Miller. And OK. Commissioner Huff. There were a couple of concerns that Bike Pit had. One of them has to do with the size of these images, especially the diagrams illustrating minimum side by side placement where you've got all of the numbers. Those are very tiny. Anything that is ultimately produced in the ordinance, we'll make sure that is clear and readable. OK. That was it. Thank you. And thank you for these nice illustrations. Sure. Commissioner Gush. I had a question on page three of my handout. The blue line in the middle of the two parcels there? It's a strike-through line. OK. That's what I was, I didn't understand. That's all I really needed to know. Commissioner Brown. Looking on page three again, I guess it's a double frontage lot diagram. You've got streets on both sides. And you've got street yard noted on both sides. But then you get over to page nine when you're looking at fences. And here you've got another situation where you have actually got the house on the left. You've got street on both sides. But suddenly the street yard, the second street yard just become a rear yard. That is not listed as a rear yard as just indicating rear of the primary structure because there's different requirements for allowances for fence height when fences to the rear of the property. And we can clarify that. OK. Because the word yard is attention. Correct. Yeah, I was just confused. We can take a look at that and see if we can clarify that for us. Thank you. Sure. Commissioner Miller. That's you talking already. Commissioner Freeman. I'd like to make a motion that text commitment TC one five zero zero zero zero zero two be approved. It's been motioned by Commissioner Miller second by Commissioner Bryant that we move Freeman. OK. That we move forward with a favorable recommendation of the UDL amendment TC one five quadruple zero to the UDL graphics. I have a question. Is that with or without the change suggested by Commissioner Miller on the bike rack? OK. We'll take a look at it. We'll make the changes as necessary. Yes. With the change. He said he's taking a look at it. He didn't promise a change. We will make we will make it. We'll address the issue and we'll make changes accordingly. OK. And that's with the with the change. OK. Roll call please. Mr. Brian. Yes. Mr. Busby. Yes. Mr. Gosh. Yes. Mr. Gibbs. Yes. Ms. Hyman. Yes. Ms. Huff. Ms. Freeman. Yes. Mr. Harris. Yes. Mr. Kenchin. Yes. Mr. Miller. Mr. Van. Yes. Mr. Whitley. Yes. Ms. Winder's. Yes. The motion carries 13 to 0. Thank you. Next we have open open hearing on TC one five quadruple zero six reasonable accommodations. Good evening. Commissioner members. Commission members. This is Supriya with planning department. I'm here to present to you the reasonable accommodation regulations and procedure that staff has developed. First federal housing administration and the American Americans with Disability Act prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in housing. So to better comply with the FHA and ADA requirements staff is proposing a regents to the to establish a formal procedure for persons with disabilities to seek reasonable accommodations and application to the UDU of the UDU and to establish criteria to be used when when considering such a quest many jurisdictions in North Carolina have relied upon existing variants and or or special use permit procedures to handle requests for reasonable accommodation. However legal standards for granting a reasonable accommodation the first from that of a variance or a special use permit application. These were the reasons staff decided along with the guidance from the attorney's attorney office to develop these regulations. Staff has established a procedure that provides the purpose and the instances in which the process is applicable. It will list the information the applicant would you would have to provide with the submission such as current use of the property approved of their disability. The process will require quasi judicial hearing and approval from the board of adjustments. The board of adjustments will have to make a decision based on the following following findings that the accommodation will be used by an individual with disability and that it is reasonable and won't impose financial burdens upon the city that it is necessary for the individual with disability to enjoy the use of the subject property. The amendment also changes the definition of family to include where a reasonable accommodation has been approved. This amendment will make subsequent changes to the UDO to accommodate the reasonable accommodation process such as powers and duties of the board of adjustment, common review procedures and notices and public hearings. Staff recommends that the Planning Commission approve this next amendment. If you have any questions, I'll take them now. Thank you. Thank you. No members in the audience wishing to speak. So we'll close the public hearing and bring it back before the commissioners. Do I have commissioners wishing to speak? OK, Commissioner Freeman and Commissioner Miller and the three down there. OK, Commissioner Freeman. I just wanted to ask if it's always been included or, I should say, excluded for individuals with handicaps or disabilities, juvenile offenders? I'm sorry, say that again? It lists of the list includes a definition of individuals with handicaps or disabilities. And they're not included? Juvenile offenders? That's included, I guess? They're not. No, it won't be. Speaking to Mike, please. No, it will not be included. Juvenile offenders are not persons with disabilities. Commissioner Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm a little concerned about outside limits on this. And so here's a scenario. If I'm a person with a handicap that severely limits my mobility, but I am able to buy and sell and I can have things delivered to my house, would I be able to apply to the Board of Adjustment for an accommodation in my RS10 zone at home to have a retail shop there because I am of limited mobility and cannot go to an appropriately zoned retail building? Would I be able to ask the Board of Adjustment for that accommodation under this? I am pretty sure not. Where does it say that? Help me understand. This only allows accommodations for living. That was not a living accommodation. Conducting a business or anything like that. OK, that wasn't clear to me. Where living and working and things stop, especially since the definition of handicap frequently talks about life functions, including work. So that was one concern about this that I had. I would like a clearer statement of outside limits of what is an acceptable accommodation. And having actually worked in this area a little bit before I retired, it concerns me. I don't want to see the Board of Adjustment placed in situations where they're going to, where the staff to turn away these requests because these requests are going to be difficult to turn away. So a clear upfront statement of what you can ask for in my opinion is would be helpful to everybody. Thank you. Commissioner Whitley. The only comment I want to make here is to staff and to those that did the writings, I thought this was very well done. Thank you. And I too have done a lot of legislative work on accommodation. And this was very, very well done. I think it, I'm very proud of you. Thank you. Thank you. And I would ask my commissioners to support this measure. Yeah, you got an edible. Commissioner Bryant. Thank you. The statement about people who are not included in the definition of individuals with a handicap, persons convicted of the illegal manufacturer or distribution of a control substance. Why is that there? Why is it there? Current users. So the current users are excluded from this. If you're recovering, then you are under, I mean, you would, I'm sorry. That's not, it's persons convicted of the illegal manufacturer or distribution of control substances. Oh, it's on page two. So you're asking why they're not included under? Yeah, why is, why are they on this list? Oh, this says that the following persons are not included in the definition of individuals with a handicap or disability. OK. Why are they not included? That's lifted directly from the federal law, Commissioner Bryant. OK. Certainly does seem to hurt. No, I mean, the federal law might change. So I'm assuming that there's been a lot of people convicted who've gone to prison who've served their sentence, they've come out, they've cleaned up their lives except for things that may happen in prison, such as getting HIV. Then, you know, and when we say they can't do this and can't get that and they have this record, it can make their lives outside pretty bad. I can certainly see that point. We would prefer not to stray from the federal law that we're trying to comply with. And it is for manufacture and distribution, so not doesn't say people who've been convicted of taking drugs. There have been a lot of people convicted on distribution under the, under the sentencing laws that, you know, third strike, you're in prison for 30 years for having a single marijuana cigarette. That's true. I just found it harsh. Commissioner Gush. I've got maybe a comment and just a couple of things I noticed in the ordinance as proposed. I'm wondering why and I appreciate that you guys have looked at other jurisdictions and how they do it. I'm wondering why this has to go through kind of like a public hearing process. My concern is that if someone has a disability for which they are trying to receive an accommodation, they may not really want to make that publicly known. And I mean, I appreciate that other jurisdictions do it this way as well. I'm wondering if we have to and if we don't have to, maybe we can look at another way to do that. Commissioner Gush, because this is a discretionary action, it has to be done through a quasi-judicial hearing. The state law doesn't give us any wiggle room on that. And this is not, this is for, if you're asking for something that is not currently permitted by the ordinance. For example, having seven unrelated people with a qualified handicap living in one single family home, which is a pretty significant change in what is normally permitted. Sure. Sure. I mean, I appreciate that. I'm just, I thought I would make the comment and I mean, I do agree with the direction here that we're moving away from hearing this or considering this as a variance and making its own category, which seems to be, the bar seems to be lower than a variance. I think that's the appropriate method here. I just have concerns that maybe someone who would otherwise seek an accommodation might be deterred from doing so just based off the fact that they do have to go through this public process. But I mean, I appreciate the direction we're moving. That being said, on page 2, 3.24.2, letter B, and I hope I'm on the right topic here. That'd be nice. I think the wording of that is a little bit awkward. A request for a reasonable accommodation may be made by any person with a disability or handicap. His or her legal representative or provider of housing for persons with disabilities or handicaps in the city land, I mean, or handicaps in the city land use and zoning regulations, policy, or practices. When the application of such may, I mean, like, I just don't understand. It seems like there's something missing in there. It's just saying that. Too much is one sentence. Yeah, I mean, something is getting lost there. I mean, you're listing the people who can apply for an accommodation. But I think the list. Yeah, yeah. And then I think you get the grounds in there as well. And I think that gets a little bit confused. Yeah, I want to separate it. That's all I'm saying. On page 3, 3.24 or 3.24.6, notice in public hearings. It says, and give notice as fourth in paragraph. I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be a set fourth. Just a typo. I think those are all my comments. Make those changes. Thank you. Commissioner Gibbs. I would just like to make a comment on this whole thing. This is based on how the ADA defines disabilities. That's where the Fair Housing Act has and any other act to help people with disabilities is based on. And it's described an individual with a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities. An individual with a record of having such an impairment or an individual regarding as having such an impairment. And that covers the gamut from blindness to not having use of your legs, quadriplegic, hearing and all of that. It does not cover a question was raised. Current users of illegally controlled substances. And I have read of cases where a smart lawyer says they're addicted to these. So they commit these crimes to support their, I'll say their habit. I'm just taking that as an example. It's not the same thing as having an ADA defined disability. And that's what the basis of all this is. But unfortunately, it gets to be really complicated when you try to cover all of the situations. But that's basically what this is. Helping people with disabilities get a place to live and that land, let me finish. Landowners cannot discriminate against renting or selling a house or whatever to someone with a disability because it may put some requirements on them that they don't want to handle. But anyway, I wanted to try to simplify that and I hope I haven't complicated it. But if so, if anybody would like to straighten me out on that, I'm willing to listen. All right, thank you. Commissioner Huff, I haven't spoken. I think the point is that Commissioner Bryan was making is that a person in a wheelchair who sold pot is not going to be able to take advantage of these accommodations. I think that's it. And that is not fair. Well, that stands to the reason he has a handicap. Hello, sir. Hello, sir. You need to get in the queue. I'm sorry. Commissioner Bryan was in the queue. I'm sorry. Hello, Seth. Sarah Young with the Planning Department. I just want to clarify because I think there's some confusion about the whole people, persons convicted. What the memo says, and that language is not in the ordinance. It's in the page two of the memo. And what it says is that under the definition through the ADA of what a person with a handicap is, not included in that definition are folks that have been convicted of illegal manufacturing distribution. So someone cannot claim that, oh, I have a disability because I was. So I think it's actually the reverse of what you're saying. If those people had a legitimate handicap under ADA, they certainly can apply for a reasonable accommodation. It's just saying that that conviction in and of itself is not a handicap. Right. So just to clarify, I think there's some confusion. Thank you. Commissioner Bryan. I want to go back to page two paragraph B under section 324.2, third line which reads in the city's land use and zoning regulations. I think this is going to both the city and the county. So should the word county be in there somewhere? Yes, we'll make that change. Thank you. Commissioner Whitley. Well, given that we have some changes, I still think this is very well written. And Charlie, one of the reasons why this is being brought forth is so that we can better take care of those that are handing out. So that's the reason we have this measure to vote on this evening. You know, this opens some doors so that more accommodation laws that can be applied to two different structures. OK, any other comments? Commissioner Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The one thing I did forget, I would like for the thing to be clear that an order allowing accommodations is personal to the applicant and doesn't continue with the property after the applicant has left. Sometimes we have those questions with cases that go to the Board of Adjustment is whether or not the thing that the Board of Adjustment has allowed runs with the land or whether or not it's personal to the person to whom it was given. Here I think it's clearly personal, but I would like to just go ahead and say that the accommodation, whatever it may be, that's allowed is lasts only so long as the person who has requested it is residing at the particular property where the accommodation was requested, since this is an accommodation for a specific property. That's correct. It does not run with the property. It is a personal. Yeah, but it does. You owe you that. Oh, you want it. OK, we'll definitely look into making that change. Well, that's the case. If that's going to be added, then shouldn't it also add that they also have the option to grandfather it? The owner of the property should also preserve the right to grandfather it once it's there to keep it. If the owner is a person with disability, then it would, as long as he, I'm sorry, if they put a ramp for a wheelchair on the property, shouldn't the owner also have the right to keep it? I think the current court allows us to do that. Yeah, we certainly, Sarah Young, again, we certainly would not, just because someone who got a reasonable accommodation was allowed to build a ramp per se, and then maybe they move on. We're not going to put that property in double jeopardy that after they leave, if the approval runs with the person and not the property, they would now have a violation. That's not the situation we intend to create. So we'll have to look carefully at wording. If that, if I understood Reverend Whitley, your question. That's right. Okay, any other comments that's not personal between two people? If I may, then, Mr. Chairman, you may. So we're not talking about ramps here. This is that's an accommodation you don't, you wouldn't have to apply to build a ramp in front of a house, but people build ramps all the time without going to the board of adjustment or asking for permission. But the chair's ready for a motion. Well, be that as it may. You get to change the seating around you. You don't get to limit the debate. Yeah, so I mean, it's really about uses, about what you can do in the, it's not about whether or not you can widen the doors. This doesn't run to the building code. This runs to the zoning code, right? This is making sure that there's nothing in the zoning code that prevents a person with a handicap from being able to use the property on an equal basis to the person who doesn't have a handicap. If you've got a building code problem, that's a different process and a different code. Commissioner Gibbs. I would tend to think that it could possibly include some modifications. To me, this is, if someone with a disability is turned down by a landowner, I'm not going to rent to you because you have such and such disability. This is, to me, an appeal for that. The property owner doesn't have to go to the board of adjustment to accommodate a person with a disability. To me, this is more of an appeal if they need help. Is that a fair assumption? Because it's, you can't, the ADA already states you can't, and civil rights already states you can't deny somebody accommodation based on race, gender, all those other things in disability. So this is more of an appeals process. Is that the way I understand it? Am I wrong? Yes, you're wrong. I mean. Well, I hate to prolong the conversation, but the more I think about it, the more questions I have, but I do in general believe this is a help for the situation. It's not only for the land owner or the apartment or house owner and also the applicant, it gives them standards. That's all. Mr. Bugsby. Mr. Chair, I think we've had a robust discussion. I'm comfortable with this proposal. I'd like to move favorable recommendation on TC15 quadruple zero six, noting that there were a few minor comments that staff recognized that they would work on. Yes, second. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to ask Mr. Bugsby if he would like, I would like to specifically list those if we can. Yes. And so the way I wrote them down is these things. In 3.24.2, the word city needs to be changed to city and county or something appropriate to the UDO to make sure that this isn't just a city-only ordinance. That with regard to that same section, Mr. Ghosh's comment that somehow it doesn't work very well, it starts off being a rule on who may apply and it finishes up with having actually some grounds. I would like to see that split out. I don't think that works very well and I agree with him on that. There was also the typo where we left out the word set and set forth. And then the final thing, if everyone agrees, is I would like for there to be a sentence or a C in 3.24.9 action by the Board of Adjustment, a statement that says that the accommodations granted are personal to the applicant and don't run with the land. I would second that. I disagree with that last one. We'll vote against it, Dan. Okay. The amended motion. I'm comfortable with that motion and would accept those clarifications on the move. The motion states those minor changes have been defined, okay, and as he stated. So it's to move favorable TC quadruple 06 with reasonable accommodations with a favorable recommendation to the elected bodies. Roll call, please. Ms. Freeman. Mr. Harris. Yes. Ms. Huff. Ms. Hyman. Yes. Mr. Kienchen. Yes. Mr. Miller. Yes. Mr. Vann. Yes. Mr. Gibbs. Yes. Mr. Ghosh. Yes. Mr. Busby. Yes. Mr. Brian. Yes. Mr. Whitley. Yes. Ms. Wonders. Yes. Thank you. Motion carries 12 to 1. Okay. And next we have an open hearing on the technical change legislations. TC-15 quadruple 07. Thank you again, Michael Stock with the Planning Department. TC-150007, are technical changes to the ODO to reflect statutes passed by the recent session of the North Carolina General Assembly? Those statutes have been listed in your staff report and actual hyperlinks. And along with those statutes, a recent court decision bird be Franklin County. I'll be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. No one in the public wishing to speak. So we'll close the public hearing and bring it back before the commissioners. Anybody? Okay. Linda too. Okay. Ann Miller. Anybody else over here? Okay. Miller. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. What is left of the Tuscaloosa Lakewood neighborhood overlay protection? How badly does this damage the program that that overlay set out? To me, it's a pretty substantial. It's just like it's hardly worth having. I would agree that it is a substantial change to the overlay. It does leave in a number of landscaping provisions, tree coverage provisions that are in there. And there are some multifamily or non-residential provisions that the state statute didn't touch. So we left those alone. But you're correct. It does do a significant gut job of that MPO. And I realize that these, that we only have one MPO and this is it. And that the process has been fraught with strife. I do think at some point we probably ought to revisit what's left. I'm not suggesting and then get the stakeholders involved to see whether or not and look at the whole MPO thing and see whether or not with this design limitation, whether or not we've got, whether there's another way to get it what we were after or whether or not, we ought to perhaps just drop it out of your ordinance since it's not going anywhere. Yeah, I mean the provisions that are left for Tuscaloosa Lakewood are pretty minimal. That doesn't mean that there aren't other opportunities for other neighborhoods to propose an MPO that don't get into the design or aesthetics aspects to get into more of the massing or scale aspects of a neighborhood. We do have Old West Durham in and I think they kind, we haven't begun work on that yet. That's I think being proposed as part of our work program. But they get to the heart more of more of what the state statute lets zoning do, which is the massing scale, height, other dimensional standards, not the aesthetics. So you're getting to actually the bottom line of my question, which I was not getting to very effectively is that even with this new legislation that the MPO still offers a very real program for specific neighborhood protection and our ship isn't sunk. It could, depending upon the wishes of that neighborhood. Even when we did Tuscaloosa Lakewood, I remember at the beginning of that, they had a whole laundry list of items that the MPO couldn't even at that point reasonably tackle. And we had to narrow that down and then they did their own narrowing down when they developed a grassroots support for it. They made a lot of compromises. But yes, there's still opportunities for viable MPOs. Thank you. That's all I have. Commissioner Gush. We'll recognize that I'm being nitpicky, but I'd like to think I was asked to do so. I'm here for it. On page six, garage's access and parking. And I don't know that necessarily everyone would agree. But on E3, it says, except for single family and two family residential structures, the construction material of the garage shall match that of the primary structure. It almost seems to prohibit the same for single and two family. Now, I know it doesn't specifically say that, but perhaps there is some wording that would make it more clear. Sure. Clarify. Yeah. I'll take a look at the structure of that and clarify it. Sure. Sure. Right. So I mean, that's all I got. Thank you. Commissioner Huff. I was a little bit annoyed by the defined terms that we're in here, because what we have is a defined term impervious surface. And then we are told to go look at NCGS 143 to 1 blah, blah, blah, as amended. And I don't know why you can't actually put the definition in there rather than send somebody to code. And there's a second one of these definitions that's a dwelling unit. And it's just not a definition. You're right. There are instances where it's better to write it out instead of relying on other statutes. But in this case, what is being done is trying to meld what are stormwater impervious surface built upon area standards and have them correlate with what the UDO says. So it's aligning them. And the real fact is in the same thing with the dwelling unit, the state statute says that you can't have a definition that goes beyond what is within a defined dwelling unit in some other state statute or code. And the other problem is that those tend to change, particularly the built upon area issue. That has changed from session to session, gravel, not gravel, a certain type of gravel, a certain application of that gravel. So instead of having the UDO have to constantly catch up, it's much easier in certain instances. And this is one to just have it linked to that. It occurred to me that you could have a, well, I mean, this is, I guess, a definition section of the UDO. 16.3, is that just definition? Those are just definitions. Yeah. I just feel like something that's a little bit more specific ought to happen here. I would be very unhappy if I were a developer and was told to go look at these statutes. Well, I would be comfortable in saying that most developers are pretty well aware of those requirements. Anybody else? Commissioner Miller? So with regard to the categorizing uses, since we kind of had a case where the existing ordinance was deployed with the Rose Garden, Rose Business, can you give me an example and walk me through how this new language will work? So you're talking about the bird v. Franklin amendment for categorizing uses, the last part there. So currently, so I'll give a little background. The case basically says that an ordinance cannot, if a specific use is not listed within your ordinance, you can't just say, oh, it's prohibited. You have to allow it. And our UDO says it's prohibited unless the planning director can come up with something that is, he takes a look at the existing, the list that's there and finds something that's reasonably similar. If he can't do that, that's prohibited. We're getting rid of the prohibited part, leaving that first stage. And then that second stage is saying, okay, if you can't get to that specific similarity, he or she should be able to get to a general category, the overall residential or overall commercial or something like that and then apply standards within there. So it's just a two-tier level of, without just a blanket approval. And that second stage would send it to the Board of Adjustment. Sure. Mr. Chairman, I move that we send forth the amendments embodied in, excuse me, let me get it. TC quadruple zero seven. Yeah, TC one five quadruple zero seven. Second. Thank you. With a favorable recommendation. It's been moved that we send, with a favorable recommendation, technical change legislation TC one five quadruple zero seven to the elected bodies with a favorable recommendation. Roll call please. Second by Busby. By Busby. Mr. Gibbs. Mr. Goche. Yes. Ms. Hyman. Yes. Mr. Busby. Yes. Ms. Huff. Mr. Brian. Yes. Ms. Freeman. Yeah. Ms. Wonders. Yes. Mr. Harris. Yes. Mr. Whitley. Yes. Mr. Kinshin. Yes. Mr. Vann. Yes. Mr. Miller. Yes. The motion carries 13 to 0. OK. Thank you. And before we do the work program, would it be appropriate for Ms. Wyandist to bring her or her new item up in the work program session? OK. So we will hear the presentation and then you can bring it. Yes. No, no. OK. You can do the presentation first. OK. Because this will be in addition too. All right. Sarah Young with the Planning Department. You have before you the department's proposed FY 17. That's fiscal year 17 work program. Every year we are required by the interlocal agreement that formed the City County Planning Department to submit to the governing bodies, along with our budget, a proposed work program of all the activities that we will undertake in the coming year. As you know, the Planning Department provides a range of services, including a lot of ongoing, legally mandated development reviews. That is a large portion of our work program. However, there are a lot of discretionary type items in the work program as well. And what I would like to do is actually highlight those because those tend to be the things of most interest and influx. So if you would indulge me, I will kind of walk you through the highlights for next year. On page 11 of 23, which is in the Part B, the program descriptions, you will see item 3.2.3, a patrol program. And this is actually in our development side of the house under the zoning enforcement section. This is our new program to ensure that every street in the entire county jurisdiction gets patrolled annually and hopefully multiple times. Currently, I don't know how much you know about zoning enforcement, but it functions mostly on a complaint basis. And so our staff resources are allocated to deal with those complaints. So this is a proactive effort by the department to reach beyond the complaints. So that's one thing of note. If you will flip to page 12, there under section 4, our policy and urban design section, 4.17 is a UDO text amendment to rewrite the entire sign article. And this is something that we actually propose to have done through a consultant because we have limited resources. However, we have identified monies in our budget to be able to hire a consultant to do this. This is in direct relationship to the US Supreme Court ruling in the case read versus the town of Gilbert. So that will be new, and we will be managing that consultant to do that. 4.1.8 immediately below that is Compact Design District Update for suburban stations. And one of the things that you will recall having heard staff say over the years is that while we have Compact Design District zoning, that we are aware that when we place that zoning in some more suburban greenfield sites, it's not necessarily going to work the same way. And so we need to develop tweaks to deal with environmental conditions, kind of master planning aspects of a large greenfield site. And those are aspects that are not currently captured in our zoning ordinance. So that would be the purpose of that amendment. Flipping to the next page, page 13 towards the bottom and skipping over onto the top of the next page, you have items 4.2.5, 0.6, and 0.7. And before I talk a little bit about these, I will say that one of the things that we're required to do is present our draft work program to the Joint City County Planning Committee. That is a committee that your chair sits on, along with three city council members and three county commissioners. And that is a body, it's basically our advisory body to the planning department that works through planning related issues. When we presented our initial run at a draft to them in January, I believe it was, or February somewhere in there, the main comment that we got back was a desire for us to move more aggressively with applying the design district zoning to the future light rail transit station areas. And we had originally proposed one district to be initiated next year. They asked us what it could, what would it take to do more, start faster, go further? So we went back to them this month with this revised work program proposing to initiate three, Patterson Place, Irwin Road and Alston Avenue with the intent of initiating the final two, the year following in fiscal year 18. That would give us time to do the tech, can it complete the current text amendment we have underway to do some refining, if you will, of our current districts and get the suburban one kind of underway and have regulations in place for Lee Village when that one comes online. And item on the top of page 14, item 4.2.8, we are, we have partnered with GoTriangle as well as the town of Chapel Hill on an FTA grant for planning, TOD planning. There, the grant has a varied scope of work of which we are providing some in kind services, planning services, so that is what that entails. It will also entail some consultant work to provide for us some additional, I guess, mileage on the SASE project, if you will. And wrapping up here, the last thing of note is on page 16. We have item 4.8, which is a community, comprehensive plan community profile. We have long said that it is time to update our comprehensive plan. We have requested funding for that in the budget. I'm not sure, I have an inkling but I'm not sure what the official disposition of that will be, however, we are anticipating beginning some background work to be prepared for the time when that is actually funded and can happen. And then item 4.10 on that same page 16 is Andrew Driver Commercial Infill. This would be a project to apply the Commercial Infill Zoning District in that area to help kind of boost the revitalization there. That district as hopefully, at least some of you will recall, relaxes a lot of zoning restrictions in older, denser, more urbanized areas that maybe cannot meet many of our modern day, more suburban type standards in an effort to help revitalize these areas. So the intent is to apply that zoning there. We have applied that in the West Chapel Hill Street corridor a handful of years ago and we intend to do that here. And then this was alluded to earlier, item 4.11, the Old West Durham NPO, which is something that has been submitted, but honestly backburnered for lack of staff resources. So that is one that we are proposing to move forward. As you can probably imagine, this is a fairly aggressive work program. We are very hopeful that the funding stays in place for the consultants to not just do the signs, but we're gonna bring in a consultant to help finish out the SASE project as well. That's through the end of July, right? Right, so, yep. Next July. Next July. Yeah, not this July. We have the last year's work program that we're working on for this year. But with that, I'll take any questions that you have. Okay, I see we have public comment. Okay, I will let Ms. Winder's make her comment and then I will have the public comment and then close the public hearing. Because I want you to speak to what she's talking about, right? Oh, it's different. Okay, well then, if you wanna speak to this item, I don't see. Mr. Hale. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Members of the commission, I appreciate these long meetings and your service. Please state your name and address, please. I'm sorry, my name's Dick Hales. I live at 809 Damarius, number K-4, in Durham. I'm a member of the Coalition on Affordable Housing and Transit. It was a community organization formed about three and a half years ago with a lot of different community groups involved. I think last count we were at 20. If you include all the groups that are a part of CAN, it's some 30 plus groups. We've had a fairly narrow focus from the time we started. It was to try and be serious about putting more affordable and mixed income housing around the transit stations with this historical billion and a half dollars public infrastructure planned in the light rail system from Chapel Hill to Durham. And two years ago, city and county both adopted a resolution, set a goal of 15% affordable housing at each of the transit stations. And I think the role of the Coalition since then has been try and take that seriously and look for opportunities to advance that, both in terms of resources available and opportunities to move it forward. With that in mind, we've had some dialogue with elected officials and the staff for the last six months in particular about some of the trade-offs between moving forward with the stationary plans and the city-initiated up-zonings that will result, like happened in the Ninth Street area, as opposed to allowing opportunities for the community to have dialogue with some higher-density zoning requests that come through, such as the Farrington Road proposal that came before you a couple months ago. And while in North Carolina and in Durham we're not allowed to have inclusionary zoning, where affordable housing is required by the ordinance, we think that trying to encourage opportunities to have active dialogue between the community and developers and the elected officials as proposals come forward is a positive thing. There's 20 units of affordable housing pledged by the Farrington Road development now in the city council-approved conditions on that project. We think that's not insignificant. We'd like to encourage those kind of discussions to continue. We think as a result, and I've helped put these work programs together before, so I certainly respect it's a lot of work and there's a lot of great things called for from the staff, the great staff for next year. But specifically, and the coalition hasn't taken official position on this, but we have discussed it generally and I think they're supportive. We'd like to suggest that what we call the stationary plans, I know they have a different title with the staff. I recently had a meeting with Sarah and Steve Medlin be pushed back a year and in order to give more time for more dialogue. Another specific thing that the coalition's interest in bringing forward is a significant, we feel, UDO text amendment that will provide significantly more incentives to provide affordable housing than what we have right now. The staff has brought forward a number of changes in the last year or two. We've applauded that. We've supported that, but we think there's at least one other option we'd really like to move ahead on as soon as possible and which would perhaps be most effective during this period between the current situation and the adoption and up zoning around the transit stations in the years to come. So because of that, we're suggesting that there be at least a one year delay, I guess pushback out of this work program. Sections 4.1.8 and 4.256 and seven to delay the compact neighborhood design district update and the start of three station area plans. And we would propose in its place to add on to 4.1.9 which I believe is the sassy item to support a city county initiated UDO amendment for affordable housing development option for station areas and the compact neighborhood tier. We are actively working on trying to draft, get comments on and bring forward this additional text amendment that we think is very important. Don't have it for you tonight, but we are offering this as a modification in a delay of the proposed work program. And we are planning on making this case to the joint city county planning committee and others in the coming months. One additional point, I've got two copies of this, I'm sorry, I don't have one for everybody. In the 2014 resolution that was adopted by the city and the county to support the goal of 15% affordable housing and all the transit stations, it called for special coordination efforts between city, county and other agencies to try and make sure everyone's pulling in the same direction. I think some members of the coalition feel like that hasn't been as strong a collaboration and coordination effort as it could have been. So we are proposing to put in this work program and it could very well be modified by city and county managers if they would prefer to recommend something else at the direction of the city and county and the Durham Housing Authority. This is in conjunction with Karen Lado's, the city's housing consultant recommendations of trying to start at coordination meetings among different city, county and housing authority and other partners and to also make that group responsible for overseeing and implementing some of the new recommendations coming forward from the city's housing consultant. I think we feel like we've been patient for two years, there are certain aspects of that adopted resolution. They called for more of that to be happening than is. I know not every department in city, county have a work program. So we thought this was a good way by adding in the work program to get the issue out on the table, get some positive discussion on it and hopefully some action. So that was to add a new section to section 4.2.4 called affordable housing and station area strategic infrastructure planning. I know it's pretty technical, but we're trying to sort of avail ourselves of different opportunities on matters that come before public bodies to advocate for affordable housing in these important areas. We only get one shot at this and we're trying to do what we can to help move things forward. And Dr. Winder's is a member of our coalition and as well. Thank you. Dick, so you know, the joint city county planning committee is not meeting in May. Our next meeting is in June. Okay, thank you. Okay, is no one else wishing to speak? So we'll close the public hearing and bring it back before the commissioners. I see commissioner Whitley, commissioner Winder's, commissioner Miller. Who else was in by his name? Brian Gibbs. Okay, commissioner Winder's. What I wanted, I wanted to bring up another, a different topic, which I'm not, I'm not sure it's work program. I'm sure that it's budget. So, so. Somebody have to do it. It might be a little bit of work program, but I don't think very much. I would like for us to talk about the notification requirements. I think when in our training session last week, you know, we heard about the state's minimum requirement and then I think our local requirement is to go to property owners within the, of the affected property, I think. And then our local requirement is a little bit broader than that in that it includes a, how many feet of the boundary? So for rezoning, it's 600 feet from the boundary and for a plan, complaint amendment, it is a thousand feet. Okay. So, you know, we are not, we are sending letters to all of the property owners whenever there's a rezoning or a plan amendment who fall within that, that area. But we're leaving, we're leaving out a lot of residents who are also affected by those, by the actions. And I, the, this has come up with the Coalition for Affordable Housing also, that we would like to see the notification change so that there, a notice went to the site address as well as the owner's address. And I know that there's, some things have to be worked out about it because I mean that works fine for, for a single family, I guess. But if you have a big apartment complex with a whole lot of people and you know, you might not have all the addresses or something. I'm not sure whether all the details have worked out, but how the details have worked out. But the point is, you know, we need to notify the residents in the area as well as the owners of the property. Okay. And you just take that as a advisement. You don't have to respond to it right now. We have already shared your request with the planning director. Okay. Well, I would like to see the, you know, have a reaction from the planning board and not just being me, you know, and possibly have a motion about it. If I can address that, Mr. Chairman, I don't think it's practically possible to notify tenants because Howard, how do you know, I don't find that, in other words, you create a legal requirement in the ordinance that I don't think the staff can fulfill, which then makes every case that comes before us, on shaky grounds because of ineffective notification. There is, I'm not aware of any source out there that tells you where anybody's living at any given time, especially with tenancies of a year or so, that information is always going to be substantially out of date. And if you put in the ordinance that says, I was a tenant and I lived here and I was entitled to get a notice and I didn't get it. So consequently, that rezoning's invalid. I just don't see that that has been particularly practical. I think Durham takes a liberal view with regard to notification by expanding the radii that we use for notification, but I think to add tenants is for notification other than the signage that we put up. Now, I suppose we could do a better job with signage, any kind of, I would oppose any move to increase mailed notices to persons who are not property owners, at least with property owners, we have a database through the tax records that even that is frequently faulty. But at least that we've got statutory protection there. If we mail to that, we know we've done what's required. I don't, to add to it in my opinion, is to make everything loosey-goosey since the statute says, and as we learned in our proceedings, that a challenge of rezoning action on inadequate notice is what's gonna put you in trouble for the quickest. I'm against it, actually. It's a beautiful idea. Maybe we could do better with signage, so tenants who come and go. We could put up more signs. I've been to other jurisdictions where the signs have tons of information, or they're actually placards where you have a sleeve and you can put in some text so somebody can go up and look at the sign and read what's going on. I wouldn't oppose that, but the notion of expanding mailed notice, in my opinion, is impractical and I would vote against it. Commissioner Goose? Yeah, I would echo Mr. Miller's comments and I would also say that there are, you know, to my knowledge, there are like five or six kind of like neighborhood groups that in any rezoning that I've been a part of in Durham, we've had to notify them because they're on the list of people we've notified. Those kinds of groups are able to spread the word more effectively and I think what Tom's point is, is exactly what my concern will be expanding this mailing requirement is that if your notice is ineffective, your rezoning case is on shaky ground. So, you know, to the extent that we really cannot know at any given time who is living in an apartment, you know, I don't think it's wise to require one to notify tenants. Property owner's yes and I think our ordinance is effective. I mean, I would even argue that a thousand feet is a little bit too much but, you know, I think we have an effective ordinance in that regard and I think there are other mechanisms out there. We also, as Mr. Miller mentioned, we, you know, there's signs posted. I guess we could consider beefing those signs up but they're certainly noticeable and do direct one, you know, if one were interested or so inclined, you could look at the sign and figure out, oh, maybe I should look into this but I agree there probably could be more information on the signs but I too would vote against any, you know, requirement that we be, that we require more mailing or mailing to tenants. Good. Mission to Huff. I brought this up some time ago and in fact, the planning department, we, I talked to a person whose name I don't remember now in Carbura, apparently Carbura does notify renters. I don't know how they do it. I don't know, you know, what their mechanism is but certainly in many of our cases I feel like people affected by the rezoning don't know about it and I don't think that's good and I think if we had, if we did beef up our signage, if we had signs that had a pocket in them with some kind of information I think that would be extremely helpful and I can think of, you know, one instance where I think the developer would have profited from hearing what people in the next door rental property had to say about runoff, you know, it'd be nice if these people came to a public hearing and they said, you know, this is what happens when it rains whereas you don't get anybody, you don't get anybody from these neighborhoods. You don't get any information. I don't think it's good that these people don't know. That's my thought. Commissioner Brown. I also agree with Commissioner Miller and Commissioner Gosh. It would be difficult, I think, to really do much more than we do now and we also have the newspaper advertisements and I'm assuming that we could also even have something on the departmental website about upcoming cases. What I wanted to do was raise a point that actually came up some years ago as to why we have differing distance requirements between text amendments and rezoning cases when it seems to me that we ought to be able to agree on a single number for both. That did get suggested some years ago and the planning director at the time was enthusiastically in favor of it but the governing bodies apparently didn't care for it. Would staff like to address that? Mr. Chair, this is Scott Whiteman. It's my understanding that when we first started doing plan amendments, they were right about the time we adopted the comprehensive plan, they were kind of a shiny new thing and we thought they would be rare and kind of far reaching and so we thought wider notification would be important but I think after a decade, we can say that they're usually neither. They're frequent and usually pretty focused. Now I was referring to the distance of notification. Well, that's what you're saying. I answered a question, you'll have to give me that. That's the right question. A thousand feet is a long way. We get a lot of people who call us like, why am I getting this? And they're like, well, you're within a thousand feet. Then they start tracing it and like, wow, that's a long way away. So 600 feet is probably sufficient in my very, very humble opinion. What's that? Attendance, the tenants? We have no reliable way to send notice to tenants and I don't say it's very often but I fully agree with Commissioner Miller that especially if it's a legal requirement, it could put us in a very tough spot and we could have zoning changes overturned because we missed a tenant or something like that. Commissioner Gibbs? Well, just simply, I think we should make better use of the newspapers and not so much technology but what everybody does, read the newspaper or watch the news on TV and not just channel eight. I mean, the more people that are accessed or that access regular TV, I doubt very seriously, very many people besides those like us who are interested tune in to channel eight and I have some more things to say to them about that too but Dick, I appreciate your comments and what your group does and Dr. Winder's and this is just indicative of how I knew when this process started and I think everybody knew it was gonna be a slow moving process. The first round of community meetings and you've heard me say this before, they ended up being mainly either gripe sessions or people were expressing concerns, legitimate concerns in some cases of what was gonna happen to them. Are you gonna move me out? So it almost seems like a second round of community meetings and organizations like yours, depend on them to help spread and spread the word and intake information and pass it on because it's gonna be a teamwork and I wanted to ask you along the lines you mentioned. Okay, Mr. Gibbs, before you start on that, let's finish what Commissioner Winder's started. Let's finish that discussion first before we go to. Okay, I just, I will just have, I've got a question to ask about the housing report. I'll give you an opt-in to do that, Commissioner Winder's. I see your point about adding to ordinance requirements and I possibly shouldn't have prefaced it with that but I think that individual letters gets a lot more attention than for such, for things like the compact neighborhood planning, there was all kinds of publicity done to, and yet people are still saying, we didn't, how come, I didn't know about this, how come I didn't get involved and I think that if you just sent a letter or a postcard to occupant at the site address, it would be quite doable and would not have to be an ordinance requirement but you need budget to do it. So, but I think that I would like, and maybe I don't wanna direct attention away from the comments that we've had about parts of the work program because it's getting late and we do need to talk about that later also so maybe we should table the discussion of a notification for the next meeting but I think we need some kind of strategy for making the planning meetings more inclusive. Okay, so let's now go to the work plan. Commissioner Bryant. I got you in the Q-mail. Thank you. Couple of things about the work program. I'm looking at page two, sort of the bullet list there and this sort of pegs on to some comments Commissioner Miller made earlier. We've got the Old West Durham neighborhood protection overlay. In view of the changes and after looking at the changes that had to be made to another neighborhood overlay, I'm wondering if, and I don't wanna slow Old West Durham down if they're eager to go but I'm wondering if staff time might be better spent going back through and seeing exactly what can be done now with neighborhood protection overlays or you've talked some about design and things like that, but I think that maybe we need to redefine what can be done before we do any more. Well, I think we've been, Old West Durham has requested this maybe four years ago, so it's been a little while and they're fully aware of what's been going on in that city next door and we've talked to them since then to make sure that the NPO could still meet their goals even without the design restrictions and I think in those who know Old West Durham, the houses are pretty small and the biggest issue is that the new houses are way bigger so we can still use the NPO to limit size or FAR setback or other height, those sorts of things, which can be agnostic on the design of the structure itself. So I think we've certainly believed that because they've been waiting patiently and are getting less patient that this is a good time to do that. Thank you. I have another question. I just wonder if staff can sort of briefly comment what Mr. Hales brought up because he's suggesting some changes and I wanna hear what staff says. Sure, staff would love to comment and this is no surprise to Dick we've talked and he knows kind of our stances of department. So the first thing that Dick mentioned was delaying the projects by a year, those three that were slated to start and I mentioned earlier that we basically got direction from six individual elected officials through the Joint City County Planning Committee to actually do the opposite and accelerate. So I think that's kind of a moot point if that is in fact what the governing bodies want then they will approve the work program. The second item was he mentioned doing a UDO text amendment to deal with affordable housing and kind of the notion that had been thrown out about an option to develop kind of an intermediary. And we feel again, we have talked. One of the things that I didn't mention earlier but hopefully you saw in your review is we currently have a design district update text amendment underway and one of the things that we're looking at doing based on the enterprise partners report and our consultations with Karen Lotto on that is to see if we can in fact, through that text amendment that we are working on currently in this fiscal year, make some adjustments to how we deal with density for the future light rail station, the station areas that could kind of accomplish that. That is something that we're currently working on. We don't have to wait a year and hope to do it. We had a meeting with her today in fact to get started on that work. So I would say that instead of delaying that to do some intermediary measure, let's proceed with trying to figure out if we can implement what the consultant has actually recommended. And that is what staff is proposing. On the last two points about kind of coordination and meetings and having a kind of an oversight group, I mentioned to Dick earlier that that's not really the purview of the planning department. Affordable housing as an overarching strategy is the purview of the community development department and that is where this most appropriately would live. There is in consultation with Karen Lotto, excuse me. She did mention that she expects to come on for a second phase of work with the community development department. So that would be their purview to manage that. Planning department has a very small role in this kind of density bonus business. But beyond that, all of the other recommendations from her report are really the purview of that or the department and that's where it's most appropriate. So that is why there is no such item such as that. However, we will of course participate to the extent that it is required necessary or beneficial with community development as this progresses. Thank you. Commissioner Whitley. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You just, Mr. Hill, I think she explained it and I'm in strong support that we escalate, not delay. Developers are coming with projects and they want to know what the rules are and to delay it when there are members here and city council and county commissioners that want to vote on projects to add it in would be hindrance to development. So I'm with the city and county in wanting the rules set and that we know exactly what our developer knows exactly what he has to do when he comes to us with a project. Thank you. Commissioner Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Actually, I have three things that I would like to be considered in the work plan for the coming year. The city council will probably next month approve the adjustments to the boundaries of the Irwin LaSalle compact neighborhood district which has that kind of rump on the other side of I-85 that's really a part of the Ninth Street district. I would like to see a work plan bullet on, since we already have the Ninth Street plan we know what its zoning categories are, talk about having a city initiated rezoning of the area inside that rump area along Hillsborough Road which is right now a patchwork of zones. I mean, how hard would it be to involve the community in a meeting or two and I think the proposal would be making it an S2 for pretty much the length of it. I don't see adding a new core over there. So I would like to add that. One of the things that's worried me about the compact neighborhood planning for Alston Avenue is when you look at these, you gave us a zoning context map in connection with that case last time and you look at that whole Eastern area both inside and outside the proposed compact neighborhood tier, what a mishmash of zones it's almost like every lot and to me that is a symbol of long-time sort of neglect. We haven't been treating that area. We've just been granting rezonings. You need somebody who wanted to rezone a lot, we rezoned it and now there's no planning. It doesn't seem to make sense to me. I would like to have a review and see if we can sort out and make what I would say is a level and a reliable regulatory environment for the rebirth of East Durham. Right now I don't think you can get it if every lot's a different zone. That's just not good planning. So that's a bullet I would like to see. The other thing I'd like to see is do we have an affordable housing policy that we spend a lot of time talking about but it's not part of the comprehensive plan. I would like to see our affordable housing policy or some aspects of it moved into the comprehensive plan. So that was sorry to interrupt but that is actually the fifth or sixth item of last month's agenda was comp plan text changes that morphed that language into the comp plan. So that is moving forward to city council. Yeah, I saw it but I didn't, I don't think that that actually does what I wanna do but nevermind we'll drop that one. And then before I give up the mic, could you come and answer a question? Cause you've asked for a delay and I have actually been arguing to council that we ought to be doing more. I don't want to switch from that position. We ought to be moving faster on these things while they're hot and why we have people involved before we have more Farrington roads jumping in and saying look, the council's gonna make, this is a hot point. We're gonna get in there and get in in front of it. Cause that happened at Night Street and the results were unsatisfactory. If we delay, I think we are inviting more of that. I would like to understand better what we would be waiting for. And I didn't get that from your presentation. What is it that you guys plan to bring forward? Make me believe that a delay is a good idea. I mean, I think there's two main points that have hit us. Number one, the downtown plan and the Night Street plan and the subsequent city initiated upzonings have resulted in a lot of development but not a single affordable housing unit. And that's thousands and thousands of market rate units have gone through. So we're looking for something better than that. And number two, I think it's our general observation that as we've seen some projects come through Erwin Terrace and Farrington Road and so on, those developers are coming in working with staff, looking at the guidelines already in the ordinance for other areas and they're applying them to these other locations that are in station areas. And while the ideal is to have a plan in place that gives you full guidance and it all laid out and you hand it to the developer when they walk in the door. From a practical point of view, we think the design guidelines are laid out. The density targets are laid out and the developers can know what to expect. I think if you see what happened with the partners proposal, how that evolved and so on. I'm not sure if there was a plan in place for down there, it would have been that different. I'm sensitive to the general charge of not taking a piecemeal approach but the same time some of these guidelines on density and design and so on are all throughout the ordinance. You see them around town. I realize that, but what are we waiting for? What's gonna happen in a year that's gonna make it better? This is what I don't understand. I know the problem. What's the solution that you're proposing? I think there's a good chance of having three, six, eight, 10 more projects such as Farrington Road come through and to work with staff with the design guidelines and the density targets and then to work with the community on a dialogue of providing affordable housing as part of their proposal. Why can't we do that starting now? Why do we have to start a year from now? Because if you start now, that moves up the city-initiated upzonings that follow those plans several years forward. I mean, it's a reality issue. It's not a planning issue. I realize that it's gonna move it forward, but I don't understand what difference a year is going to make. Why can't we, as we develop the plans for, I mean, I went through the Night Street thing. We first developed a plan and then we implemented the plan. If I had had the experience of Night Street, when we did Night Street, I would have put a bunch of stuff in the plan, would have insisted on it that we didn't do because I didn't know what was going to happen. But now, being armed, we could put in a bunch of policies because we have some experience now. We've certainly massaged some of these issues a lot over the last two years. I think that we can develop plans and what have you that would make it and also implementation measures with regard to the way these zones work. In other words, the S1 that we have or the core that we have at Night Street doesn't have to be the same one that we do for Austin Avenue. It doesn't have to be as big. See, I've been arguing against giving away the zoning for years instead of making a great big core which is end game for the city-initiated rezoning. I'd like to see the core in each of the, I'd like this plan to say here's what the initial core should be. And then we designate these other areas that could be core if we meet A, B, C and D and one of them might be an affordable housing target. And so the developer will have to come in and say, we're over here, we want to expand the core into this area. And then we can say, well, we're gonna do it if you can show A, B, C, D and D is the affordable housing component. I don't see why we have to wait a year to start planning that way. Our argument is really not against the plan. It's against the city-initiated upzoning that will follow which will convey value to developers without having had the community dialogue and possible additional affordable housing resources offered up. And those are substantial. Farrington Road all by itself, we're talking... Well, in my opinion, the approval of Farrington Road means that we ought to just give up on a compact neighborhood in that area. We've already, we just approved it. It's sucked up all the resources. It means what's left to plan is not much. But again, I don't think what they're proposing in the work plan is leaving the community out. And I don't think that the work plan means that the resulting three design districts are gonna come up with are gonna be mirror images of Night Street. I hope that they will not be. Not that I am totally unhappy with what happened at Night Street, but certainly we're gonna learn every time we do these. I have very specific ideas about how these plans ought to go forward. And I hope maybe we can have some dialogue about that. But you're talking about the problem of giving away the zoning. And I don't see why we have to give away the zoning. If we're smart enough to say right now, that's a problem. Why we're gonna be smarter a year from now. I just don't understand what we're gonna get in a year. So if I may, it may help. While the work program proposes to initiate to begin those three, it takes we're at best case, we're talking three years. And depending on the amount of community concern, et cetera, that may happen through this, you may be looking five years before you actually get a rezoning on the ground. That is ample time to work out whatever we need to work out. And like I said, we're currently willing to work on it in the text amendment that we have live right now. So that is kind of the staff's stance is this is not something because it's in the work program that it will be adopted at the end of next year. That is not how this works. There is a ton of community engagement that happens. And honestly, that is the part of the whole process that takes the longest that eats up the most amount of time. For those of you that were with us through the implementation of downtown and Ninth Street, those were not for the faint of heart. Those took a long time. And when we finally came here. I made Dine Street as painful as I possibly could. You sure do you excelled at that, Tom? Thank you. But I think in the end, the product was better because we had more or less community support for what was brought forward minus a few details. And that is always staff's intention when we bring a large project forward is to have built community support and have revised our proposal along the way to garner that kind of grassroots feeding of the project. So this is not something that would go live in a year. Commissioner Wyandas. Well, I would, I think that what I would like, what Dick is talking about, if it's gonna take five years before we get to the rezoning. This idea for having an option where people, for residential development, where you can get extra, like up to compact district level zoning, conditionally, you can zone at the current zoning. I mean, you can build at the current zoning, which would be a maximum of 60, I mean, a maximum of 20 units in the suburban tier, or if you take this by-right option or something, you know, you could get maybe up to 50 or more density provided that you included affordable housing, you know, as an option that will work until you do the major rezoning. But then when the design districts take over, then that option will no longer be attractive and everybody would use the design districts instead. As that, if it's gonna be five years, it would definitely be worth working on that sort of interim thing because it wouldn't be, you know, he's done most, he's done a lot of the work for it, you know, it wouldn't be a big, it wouldn't be a big item that we, to add that in, you know. And I think that was one of them. Is that on our list here, Dick? Is that how to add, you know, I can't say it well, but to add working on this option, is that this conditional option or whatever it is, we have a name for it now, you had a name for it. I think we've been calling it the transit-oriented development option, not conditional and not overlay. Okay. And maybe Sarah knows more about this than I do, but my impression is there's a lot of work left to put this in place, a lot of vetting of a lot of folks and if you can get done by June, we'll be very happy, but we think there's a lot of work to go. That's why we suggested it be added to the work plan for next year. Is that what Sarah, you were talking about? No. What Dick is talking about is a, I understood from our conversation the other day is an option under current zoning where you could get essentially a density bump. Staff's concern with that quite honestly is if you can get a density bump without having to comply with all of the form and character standards and all of the other things that we're trying to implement to build a pedestrian-friendly actual TOD environment, you know, we're gonna get an onslaught of people that are gonna come in and try and take that option now before all of the sticks come into play with the design district zoning. One of the things that staff's tact has been, if we can get the compact neighborhoods in place and change the future land use designation to design, that gives the council a very real and very clear reason to say, you're rezoning to whatever is not consistent with future land use, therefore it is denied. And so it gives them a much cleaner way to kind of put the type of development that may not be desirable at bay while we work on the long-term picture. So I don't know if they would in fact apply it that way, but that is some logic. And your design district changes text amendments that you're working on, which in a couple of items, but 4.1.5 design district update, is that going to include affordable housing as part of the design district? That is our intent, yes. That is what we are attempting to work with enterprise partners on. Okay. So when this design district is, if we change to the compact neighborhoods to designate it as design district, then the design district that they would be able to change to would have an affordable of better conversation about we don't have anything in place would be moot because we would have something in place. That's the goal behind it. Okay. Again, assuming I want to caveat this and even Karen Lotto will tell you this, assuming that once we do the analysis, it is actually worth it to put that sort of bump there. She was very careful in her report to kind of caveat that she's not convinced that it's a done deal, that it'll work, or even that it'll work the same in every area. It may work for some, it may not work for other. We just have to see. So I just want to carefully caveat that we're more than willing to go through the exercise and try and figure it out, but we don't know what the answer will finally be. So. Commissioner Gibbs. Oh, I thought you meant to. And then the other thing about the stationary infrastructure planning, I would argue that the city's housing goal for requires not just community development department, but also the planning department because, and I think it comes, it will come in. We need to do sort of little comprehensive plans for each of the design districts. And we need to know where that affordable housing is going to be. And we need to, we can maybe incentivize it with infrastructure as well as through zoning. So, you know, it should be part of this, as Dick said, it should be part of the SASE process. So I will honestly beg to differ. The SASE, the Stationary Strategic Infrastructure Plan is just about the infrastructure. Now how that is applied as a tool going forward after the study is complete, if the city wants to use that as an incentive of where infrastructure is needed and where potentially they want to see some development happen that includes affordable housing, they can do that. But the study itself is really about assessing where are the needs, where are the gaps, what are the needs precisely, how that tool gets applied afterwards. That could be a variety of ways. So I don't want to tie that. I feel uncomfortable tying that just specifically to housing. But density is related to the needs, you know, and there's a decision, you're making decisions on density and that relates to the needs for infrastructure. It also relates to, I mean, if you're not. Commissioner Freeman, please wait and get in the queue. I just wanted to make sure that they said that would. Please wait and get in the queue. Please wait and get in the queue. I yield, I yield my. Well, Commissioner Gibbs is the next speaker. I just wanted to comment on her comment. Commissioner Gibbs is the next speaker in the queue. Well, my comment is Karen Lotto's affordable housing report. I don't know how many of you have read it or looked at it, but the Durham area designer sent me a link to that. And this is very apropos and supportive of what you were just talking about. It's not going to happen overnight and it's not gonna happen the same everywhere at all these stations and everywhere else that some compact neighborhood may be. It's about, what, 200 pages? It's, I started reading it and I got so frustrated. And if y'all would like, if you haven't seen it, I'll be glad to send a copy or forward the email to all of you. It's a very eye-opening and I understand now why it may take years before things can be settled and we can, like Dick was saying, put it in the guideline so that each developer knows exactly what he needs to do. And I'm sure that the hub and concentric circle design that you've been referring to, Mr. Miller, is that's probably the way things are going to evolve. But I just wanted to be sure that everybody got a look at it and you'll see what we're up against and what all the entities involved in fair housing and affordable housing it's a, like I said, I got frustrated after a few pages. Very in-depth. Commissioner Buksman. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think the staff already addressed my main issue, but I do think it's worth pointing out when you look at the three compact design districts that are in this work plan, the deliverables are the issue identification and the first public meeting complete by the end of fiscal year 2017. So that is 16, 17 months from now, the first public meeting. So we are still just slow walking this process and I appreciate the concerns and I share the concerns about the need to adequately address affordable housing. I would agree with Commissioner Miller. I think we need to move forward with this process or else we may find ourselves in a position where there isn't gonna be a need to do any of this work, that we are dealing with one by one these proposals coming in. So I think it's important number one that we do move forward, but I do think you've raised an important point which is there is a key point in this process where we need to have the public input, which will happen with the staff working very diligently on this process to make sure that we think carefully about upzoning as we're looking at these design districts. But I think that will come in this process. So I think we need to move forward and I agree. I actually appreciate that the elected officials have said let's do more of these because my concern is if we don't get this moving now, again, we're having decisions happening right now that are starting to make the decisions without being this thoughtful about the process. So I'm gonna support moving this forward because I care about affordable housing and because I do wanna see us make progress on that issue. So thank you. Information of Frayman. I think I initially felt the same way, but speaking to, I'm sorry, I don't know your name. D.K.L. Mr. Hale, Mr. Hale's comment, moving forward fast doesn't solve the problem. We're not even talking about the problem. So if we're doing a SASE study and we're not looking at income, it's gonna be a missed opportunity to provide the information that's gonna be needed for an affordable housing plan or a comprehensive plan where affordable housing could be addressed. So similar to my point earlier in saying like, it's not just station areas, it's also, I mean, in the county, people are gonna be displaced by the decisions that we make here. And if we don't stop and think about what we need to do in order to avoid that, then it's gonna happen and you can claim unintended consequences but it's not unintended if you keep speeding through it. And that's all I'm gonna say. Okay, I have a couple of questions with Rhett to the first thing you mentioned, patrols. Are you talking about what the zoning enforcement officer controls? Patrols? Yes, zoning enforcement patrols. And you're gonna hit every street a month? Are you adding additional staff to do that? I know Patrick is, he's good, but I don't know if he's that good. Yes. No, we are not proposing additional staff to do that. We're proposing a restructuring in how that group kind of does its work. You know the way they go ahead there. Stop taking such a long coffee break. Okay, I'm sorry. No more four hour lunches. And then the second question was signage. Explain what you, I know each department have, you know, they do these, bring these specialists in and they go over signage and why can't the city just pay $150,000 and develop a uniform signage throughout the city and county. So a couple of things. One is this effort to divert enough staff resources to work on implementing the compact design districts, which we do not feel comfortable, should be done by an outside consultant because we feel like there needs to be folks that understand kind of the community and the history and where we've been and what we're trying to do and all that. So part one was an effort to redirect live staff resources to that effort. However, the sign article business is something that really needs to happen. We are not, although Mike is excellent with the tax amendments and we do have an excellent attorney's office. None of us are constitutional attorneys and this is a constitutional kind of issue dealing with speech that is really not our bailiwick. So we felt that that was an easy switch to say, okay, we could bring someone in to fill that niche that we don't really, we cannot fill and have the bonus of allowing the staff resources to be moved to do this other effort that we can fulfill. Does that help? Yes, Commissioner Friedman. So I'm noted before I got all turned around with that sassy. There was a neighborhood outreach. It was listed as like number five or is it nine? I'm sorry, community outreach. And then the customer service and engagement. Is this numbering like listing in order? I just wanted to. What do you mean in order? So like this is the fifth area. Is it just by the list that's on page one and two? Is this list by priority or is it just, okay. And then just noting that the community listening sessions, if we can make that a huge priority, I think that the, that would address what? Yeah, so I can talk about that very briefly. One of the things that we really try to implement this year couldn't get completely off the ground just because of lack of time, but it is our intent to move forward with is usually we do a lot of community engagement when we have specific projects, right. Hey, we've been given some directive to do X. Let's go ask the community around X about what X should be, okay. What we do a really bad job at is just asking in general to the community, hey, what should our projects be? What are some community issues that you see that you want addressed? So this community listening sessions is intended to be kind of that bigger kind of broader input that could be done earlier in the year to help inform when we put together our proposed work program. Are there things that maybe are not in the forefront of our thinking, but we've heard enough community concern about that we should address. So currently we don't have a venue to get that kind of broader input and we would like to put that into place. And then I also wanted to add that I know that the current budget is around seven or the requested budget was around $750,000. Is that for the planning department as a whole? Can't give me a number. But I just wanted to make sure that we would really push to support the staff's request or the department's request for the budget to be accepted in. It's really important because we've been pressuring them to do more and they've actually laid out a plan to do more that we actually support them with the needed funds that they've asked for. As you can imagine, our budget is personnel heavy. We don't produce widgets. We provide a professional planning service. So the majority of our, we don't have, we have relatively very small operating expenses, except for things like notice, et cetera. But the majority, the vast majority, like 90 some percent of our budget is personnel expenses. People to do the, we like to think intellectual work for the community. But it's important. We heard that laugh back there. Did you guys hear that laugh though? So anyway. And I want to thank you for putting that community listening session in there. It really says a lot about listening to the community. Thank you. All right. We finished with this item. Mr. Chairman, if it's the appropriate time and if everybody's had an opportunity to speak, I would like to make a motion. You may. Mr. Chairman, I move that we send forward the fiscal year 17 planning department work program to the city county, the city council and the board of county commissioners with a recommendation for approval with two additions. One is to include. Speak it in my. Pardon me. One is to include a city initiated rezoning for the, that portion of the Irwin Road compact neighborhood that is north of I-85 to rezone that consistent with the zoning categories in the ninth street compact neighborhood tier and design district. And then the second item would be to initiate a review with a view to propose city initiated rezonings in East Durham to resolve what I call an inconsistent patchwork of zones. This would be outside the proposed Austin Avenue compact neighborhood tier. Second. We have a motion by Commissioner Miller, second by Commissioner Freeman that we move a physical year 17 work program with a couple of additions that was stated by Commissioner Miller. Roll call please. Mr. Brian. Yes. Mr. Busby. Yes. Mr. Ghosh. I would like to note that I do not have any form in my packet to vote on this item. My vote is yes. Vote. You can vote verbally. It's not the decision. Okay. Okay. Okay, thank you. So Mr. Ghosh, yes. Mr. Gibbs. Yes. Ms. Hyman. Yes. Ms. Huff. Ms. Freeman. Yes. Mr. Harris. Yes. Mr. Kinchin. Yes. Mr. Miller. Yes. Mr. Vann. Yes. Mr. Whitley. Yes. Ms. Winderz. Yes. Motion carries 13 to zero. Okay. Before everyone decide to get up and leave, Ms. Samilla has an item. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In view of the information that was given to us today about the departure of Amy Wolfe, I was wondering whether the commission thought it would be appropriate to adopt a resolution of thanks and good wishes to her. The planning commission does not actually have intersection with all the members of the planning staff and they are all valued and they come and they go. But Ms. Wolfe, I view as a special case, certainly for as long as I can remember and all the time that I have served on the planning commission, she has been a steadfast supporter of the work that we do. I know it was her assigned job, but nevertheless she has done it well. And I would like for us to consider and adopt a resolution tonight. So this item doesn't wait until we meet again after she's left. And so I have actually scratched together the resolution and if you wanna hear it, I will read it, it is fairly brief. So this would be a resolution by the Durham City Planning Commission in appreciation of the service of Amy Wolfe. Whereas the welfare of the people of the city of County of Durham depend in no small measure upon the professional knowledge and hard work of the members of its planning staff. And whereas Amy Wolfe of the planning staff has during her years of service with the planning department exhibited a high degree of professionalism, patience and good humor, in her service to the development community, government officials and ordinary citizens. And whereas Ms. Wolfe has served the planning commission with her careful review of and thoughtful reporting on hundreds of rezoning plan amendments and other development proposals. And whereas the planning commission has come to rely on Ms. Wolfe's service for the quality of its own work, therefore be it resolved that the chairman and the members of the Durham City County Planning Commission hereby express to Amy Wolfe, it's heartfelt thanks and it's best wishes to her for the future. That's my motion. I'll second that. Let's move and second that we present this resolution to planning senior planning planner Amy. All those in favor of that, please by raise their right hand. It's unanimous and you gonna type it up or you gonna give it to give decision. Okay, two announcements along with you have, what's coming up next month? So we have next month, we in addition to North Roxburgh retail, which was deferred from this month to next month, we have, it looks like one, two, three, four zoning cases and one plan amendment case. So a total of five zoning cases and two plan amendments. Okay, would you speak to the planning academy? I cannot speak to the planning academy. Ms. Young might be able to, I'm a very, very small familiar with it. Sure, so planning academy is again, one of our additional outreach efforts that was begun this year. It is intended to be a followup to neighborhood college. So if neighborhood college is kind of the 101 course, this is the 200 level course. It's currently designed as a series of three sessions. I think one week apart basically where people actually will have homework, but hopefully that people won't shy away where folks will get a more in depth kind of look at planning related stuff, you know, how decisions are made. They will do things like run a mock planning commission meeting where they will review a case and sit in here like you all do and kind of take them through the legal requirements that we have to go through what certain things mean in more depth. The idea being that as people get more comfortable with these things, they're better informed. They can help their friends and neighbors and communities better understand and better participate in the public process related to planning. So the first academy is slated to run at the beginning at the end of this month into the beginning of May. We are limiting seats to 24 at a time so that people can actually interact with each other and keep the group size kind of manageable. That one is full. We have planned a second one. The second one is full and we're now at a waiting list for the third one which is yet to be scheduled. Mr. Chairman, Aaron Kane told me that within seconds of posting it, they had, they filled it. So I think it's a great thing and he wanted to get one under his belt before get the bugs out of it before they got too deeply involved in scheduling too many more. I think it's an excellent thing. I am really pleased. Yes, so am I. This hopefully will give us a kind of our long-term vision is that these folks may be these certified or whatever could be ambassadors. Then we could call them back if we need steering committee representation for something from certain areas. It could give us also a pool of people to help kind of get the word out and get involvement in projects. So we see it as a big plus. In the second, the last year we submitted a resolution for $1,000 for each of the elected bodies for our training and the director has submitted that again this year. So I don't know when those classes are and in Chapel Hill, but so if you would like to get the additional training hopefully we'll have budget for you to do that. So I think I'm supposed to come up with an application process for you to apply. So I'll work on that. But hopefully the money is there so if we want to be trained we can at the sitting counter's expense and not ours. Is there anything else? Yes, sir. Do you have, I understand you were gonna have some copies of the training session we just had for? Yes, you're absolutely right. I do have them at home. I looked at the past and what in the world is this, you know, so I put it in. But yes, I do have the extra copies for the people that weren't there's two. The two of you weren't there. Everybody else? Yes. I do have one last thing. I received an email that the county is trying to put together a PowerPoint presentation for a celebration they're having later this month and that if I could get a picture of the board. Would y'all let me just snap a quick picture on my iPod pad if you guys, do you mind? Yeah. Can we do, I mean after you adjourn can we meet like out there in the lobby and we'll do it out there real quick. I think you have better lighting in here. Well, Susan took your name plates down. If you stand right in front of here, that would be good. Yeah. Well after you adjourn, I want to do that. Not until the pictures, thank you. No, no, no. Okay, yes, we are currently in adjournment.