 and we are alive. Good morning. The meeting will now come to order. Welcome to the January 26, 2021 meeting of the city of Durham Board of Adjustment. My name is Chad Meadows and I'm the vice chair of the board. I'd like to start by acknowledging that we are conducting this meeting using a remote electronic platform as permitted by session law 2020-3. The Board of Adjustment is a quasi-judicial body that is governed by the North Carolina general statutes and the city's unified development ordinance. The board typically conducts evidentiary hearings on requests for variances, special use permits and other requests. Today's meeting will proceed much like an in-person meeting of the Board of Adjustment. On the screen, you will see the members of the Board of Adjustment. Additionally, planning staff and representative from the city and county's attorney's offices are attending in the remote meeting. Applicants, proponents and opponents were required to register in advance and are also attending the remote meeting. When a case is called for its hearing, speakers will be promoted within the remote platform so their video can be seen. The chair will swear in applicants and witnesses at the beginning of each case. Staff will present each case and applicants will then provide their evidence. Control of the presentation and screen sharing will remain with planning staff. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on the city's YouTube site and a link to this broadcast is on the website for the Board of Adjustment. Before we begin the evidentiary hearings on today's agenda, I'd like to provide some important information about the steps taken to ensure that each party's due process rights are protected as we proceed in this remote platform. Each applicant on today's agenda was notified that this meeting would be conducted using a remote electronic platform. During registration, every applicant on today's agenda consented to the Board conducting this evidentiary hearing using this remote platform. We will also confirm today at the start of each evidentiary hearing that the participants in the hearing consent to the matter proceeding in this remote platform. If there is any objection to a matter proceeding in the remote platform, the case will be continued. Notice of today's meeting was provided by publishing notice in the newspaper mailed to property owners within 600 feet of subject properties, posting a sign at the property and posting on the city's website. The newspaper website and mailed notices for today's meetings contained information on how the public can access the remote meeting as the meeting occurs. These notices also contain information about the registration requirement for the meeting along with information about how to register. All individuals participating in today's evidentiary hearings were also required to submit a copy of any presentation, document, exhibit, or other material that they wish to submit at the evidentiary hearing prior to today's meeting. All materials that the city received from participants in today's cases, as well as a copy of the city staff's presentations and documents were posted on the Board of Adjustment website as part of the agenda. No new documents will be submitted during today's meeting. All decisions of this Board are subject to appeal to the Durham Superior Court. Anyone in the audience other than the applicant who wishes to receive a copy of the formal order issued by this Board on a particular case must submit a written request for a copy of the order. So with that, good morning. Let's go ahead and call the roll. Madam Clerk, will you call the roll please? Yes, Jacob Rogers. Chad Meadows. Present. Regina DeLacy. Present. Micah Jeter. Present. Ian Kip. Michael Retchless. Pisha Waimour. Here. Natalie Bouchain. Present. Jessica Major. Present. Michael Tarrant. Here. Thank you. So we do have a quorum. That is great. I would like to vote on some excused absences. We have three members who are absent today and I would like to get a motion for excusing Jacob Rogers. Is there such a motion? DeLacy. Go ahead Tisha, you can take it. Tisha can take it and I'll second. So I have a motion to second. All in favor, please say aye. Raise your hand. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, Jacob is excused. I would entertain a motion to excuse Ian Kip. Mr. Chair. Yes. Christa Kukro, city attorney's office. I believe that Mr. Kip did not request an excused absence in advance and my understanding is that he is trying to access the meeting at the moment. Oh, okay. So I think for now, perhaps it would make sense to just excuse Mr. Retchless because he did notify us in advance. Thank you. Thanks, council. I'll entertain a motion to excuse Mr. Retchless. DeLacy, Tisha, you can take it again. I'll second. Motion to second. All in favor, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. You guys are like Sampatica this morning. Great minds think alike. All right. And I'm quicker off the button. That's what it is. Hopefully Mr. Kip will be able to join us. Let's go ahead unless there's anything else and approve the minutes from our December 15, 2020. I assume everybody has received those and reviewed them and I will entertain a motion. I'll, Bo Shane, I'll do the motion. Thank you. Is there a second? One more, second. Awesome. Motion and a second to approve the minutes from December 15. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Mr. Chair. Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry to interrupt the vote. Crystal Cougar city attorney's office. For this and the future votes, the clerk will need to do a roll call vote. Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Meadows call the roll. Mr. Meadows. Yep. Mr. Lacey. Mr. Lacey. Yep. Sorry. Ms. Jeter. Yes. Ms. Waimour. Yes. Ms. Bo Shane. Yes. Ms. Major. I was not at that meeting. I'm sorry. Mr. Tarrant. Yes. Motion carries. Six to zero. Thank you. And thanks to council for keeping me honest. I appreciate everybody's patience while I figure out how in the world to do this. So thank you so much. Are there any adjustments to today's agenda? Well, in that case, I guess we should proceed with our first case. Madam clerk, will you call the first case please? Case B2-000046, a request for a variance from the required rear yard and street yard setbacks in order to construct a single family dwelling. The subject site is located at 2806 Canada Avenue is zoned residential urban and in the falls of the news, Jordan Lake protected area and in the urban tier. This case has been advertised for the required period of time and property owners within 600 feet have been notified. Notarized affidavits verifying the sign postings and letter mailings are on file. And to verify seating for this case and Mr. Kipp is now in attendance, the seating for the case B2-000046 will be Ms. Delacy, Mr. Kipp, Mr. Meadows, Ms. Wymore, Ms. Jeter, Ms. Major and Mr. Taren. Thank you. I would like to go ahead and swear in any witnesses. If you plan to speak on this case, if you could please turn your camera on and unmute yourself, administer the oath. Is this everyone who's going to speak? Yep. David Wagner also signed up to speak as a proponent of this case. Mr. Wagner, is that the case? I was a proponent of the summit case. I don't know if this is the correct one. This is my first time. Gotcha. Okay. Sorry, I'll move you back over as an attendee. In that case, this Mr. Guido, Chad. Thanks, Eliza. All right, so Mr. Guido, do you swear or affirm that the evidence you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? I do. And do you consent to this remote meeting platform? I do. Thank you. Eliza, is this your case? Yes, it is. I'm going to go ahead and screen share. Good morning, Mr. Guido. So everyone can see the screen and see the presentation. Okay. Good morning, everyone. Eliza Monroe here representing the planning department, planning staff requests at the staff report and all materials submitted here to public hearing be made part of the public record with any necessary corrections as noted. So noted. Thank you. Case B2000046, is there a request for a variance from your required rear yard and street yard setbacks in order to construct a single family dwelling structure? The applicant and property owner is Peter Guido and the subject site is located at 2806 Canada Avenue. The case area is highlighted in red. The subject site is zoned residential urban five or RU five is located within the urban tier and within the Falls of Neuse, Jordan Lake protected area watershed over watershed protection overlay district. The site area is currently vacant. Per UDO section, per section 7.1.2 of the unified development ordinance, otherwise known as the UDO, the required street yard setback for a single family dwelling structure in a RU zoning district is 20 feet. The required rear yard setback in the RU zoning district is 25 feet. The applicant is requesting a 10 foot variance from the street yard requirement and a 15 foot variance from the rear yard requirement resulting in a 10 foot street yard on Canada Avenue and a 10 foot rear yard. The street yard infill development standards within UDO section 6.8 are applicable to this site as it is a residential zone lot less than four acres within the urban tier. Within the infill development standards, a context area is used to determine their prior yards as well as the building height of a subject lot. The context area normally would consist of any existing residential zone structures along the same block face. However, as you'll note in the previous aerial, there are no other lots within the context area that have a structure. Therefore, the subject of this lot would be subjected to the base zoning districts as previously mentioned. And for the attachments we have here, this is an attachment that was created by Mr. Pito that shows if meeting all of the ordinance requirements of a 20 foot street yard and a 25 foot rear yard, this area here would be the remaining buildable area for the lot. And the second attachment shows the request if meeting the 10 foot requested street yard and the 10 foot requested rear yard, this would be the proposed location of the structure. UDO section 3.14.8 establishes the four findings that the applicant must make in order for the board to grant a variance. These findings require approval identified in the staff report and the applicant's responses to these findings are identified in their application, both of which are within your packet as well as these two documents. Staff will be available for any questions as needed during the hearing process. And as Mr. Meathers mentioned earlier, staff will have complete control of the screen should anyone need a specific attachment pulled up. Thanks, Eliza. Any questions for staff? In looking and chat, I have everyone so I can see them. I don't see anyone raising their hand. If I'm missing you, please speak up now. Thanks, Eliza. Okay, Mr. Ido. Hey guys, how are you doing? It's Peter Gitto. I am. Thank you, sir. Yeah, you're, it's okay Eliza. I've talked to you only, you know, just a couple of times. So it's all right. My name is one of those. So you guys saw the original survey of what my building area would be. It's tough to build a house that small. So I came up with these setbacks. You just can't build on that. The alley's not constructed. It says no intent to be constructed. And so I came up with the setbacks. It appears as there is a driveway cut there and there might have been a house there at some point but nothing that we can see from the previous pictures. So Eliza, can you go back to the proposed house? Okay, so that's what I'm looking to build. The house will face Canada. It won't have a garage and it'll fit in that box as my intent there. So please let me know if you have any questions. Hope to get this one approved and we'll go from there. Thank you, Mr. Gitto. Is there anyone here to speak? I'm sorry, are there any questions of the applicant? Mr. Lacey has organized. Regina. You're setting your hat. You're trying to create a backyard by putting the house, I don't know which direction to the south of the property. I'm just wondering why you put it where you put it. The driveway cut out. If you see the driveway cut out there. Oh, along the way. Yeah. Okay, so and if you go there and look at the Topo, it doesn't make sense. I could move the house inside that box, obviously, because that'll be the new building envelope. But my intent is to set the house on the southernmost part of the property. Given the driveway cut out, so I can give them off-street parking. I believe in off-street parking, so I like to do two parking spaces there. If I did a garage, the house wouldn't fit and be very, very long. So I figured I'd just do off-street parking right there. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. I do not see any other hands raised chat. At this time. Thank you. Okay, is there anyone here to speak for or against? I don't think there is, since nobody took the oath. So any further questions for the applicant? Hearing none. I'm sorry, go ahead. I was gonna say, I don't see any hands raised, but I'm gonna stop sharing so you all can see one another. Thank you. All right, so discussion. Delacy, I think this is an illustration of why we have a Board of Adjustment. Having somebody build a house that's five feet wide is not a good idea. And it would give us the opportunity to have another developed piece of property, giving income to the city and creating more housing at a time when Durham is just busting the seams looking for places to live. Anyone else? I agree with Mr. Lacy. It looks like this parcel was recorded sometime in the late 70s, perhaps early 80s. I can't exactly tell from the maps online, but I think there's definitely a hardship that was recorded well before the current ordinance was in effect. And so I think there's significantly, there is a hardship here. I do understand that the infill development standards don't particularly apply here, but it does look like there's a structure, unless it's been demolished, I didn't physically visit the site, but just to the north, that's built just a couple of feet off of the property line. So while the infill standards will technically apply, I do feel that the setbacks that are proposed with this variance would be appropriate in this particular context would be within the spirit of the ordinance. Thank you, I agree. It seemed to me that while the infill standards don't apply right now with the creation of this, this home, there will be some new infill standards. And that in that way, this home is kind of setting a precedent, at least for that block. And I concur that the 10 foot front yard, as long as there's parking that it's not extending into the right of way, it should be okay. So thank you for that, Mike. Delacy, we can't set precedence here, as I'm sure the attorney was going to say in a minute. Yeah, I'm not talking about- Can we get approved this house? The infill standards will turn on existing structures that are there. At some point in the future, this house will be there and the infill standards will turn on it. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Any other comments, questions? Motions? I don't believe, since this is a variant, so I don't think there's a staff recommendation. So. You are correct. I will, I'd love to hear a motion if someone has one. I'll make a motion. Karen. Please, sir. I hereby make a motion that application number B2,00046, a request for variance from the required rear yard in street yard setbacks, unproperly located at 2806 Canada, NADA Avenue, has successfully met the applicable requirements in the unified development ordinance and is hereby granted. Subject to the following conditions, the improvements shall be substantially consistent with the plans and all information submitted to the board as part of the application. Thank you. Second. Delacy. Back in the kip, sorry. Kip, let him have it. All right. We have a motion to second. Madam clerk. Mr. Lacey. Yes. Mr. Kip. Yes. Mr. Meadows. Yes. Ms. Waimour. Yes. Ms. Jeter. Yes. Ms. Major. Yes. Mr. Tarrant. Yes. Motion carries seven to zero. All right. Well, thank you, Mr. Jitto. Your motion or your request for variance has been approved. Thank you, guys. Go forth and good luck to you. Thank you. Appreciate you guys. Have a great day. Be safe. Thank you. All right. Let's move on. Madam clerk, will you call the next case please? Case B2000048, a request for a minor special use permit for a place of worship in a residential zoning district. The subject site is located at 3261, 3263, 3301, 3305, and 3311 Rose of Sharon Road is zoned residential suburban and in the suburban tier. This case has been advertised for the required period of time and property owners within 600 feet have been notified. Notarized affidavits verifying the sign postings and letter mailings are on file. And to clarify the seating for this case, it will be Ms. Delacy, Mr. Kip, Mr. Meadows, Ms. Wymore, Ms. Jeter, Ms. Boshane and Mr. Tarrant. Ms. Major may have to leave early, so Ms. Boshane will be seated for this case. Thank you, Susan. So I'd like to administer the oath to everyone who's going to be speaking during this case. If you are here to speak on case B2000048, please turn your camera on and your microphone on so we can do the oath. Mr. Meadows, we're still adding some people, Eliza Monroe staff speaking, we're still adding some people that are coming over to speak for this case. So there's a little bit of a lag. I think after the addition of Jeffrey Menace, I think that might be everyone. And Chris, please correct me if I'm wrong on that. There is a- Yeah, I'm bringing in Holly and Pete Rem as well. They were registered as opponents as well. I see Mr. Rem there and I was waiting on one more. Thank you, Chris. So I see several folks, some of which are still muted or haven't turned their cameras on. If you're planning on speaking, please turn your camera on if possible and please unmute yourself. All set? Okay. It looks like just Eliza Monroe planning staff speaking. It looks like Holly is just the only person that does not have their camera on. Holly, please let us know if you have camera capability. I do, it's just doesn't seem to be coming up. My husband's on, so he can speak for me. I'll get out of the oath part, sorry. Okay, gotcha. All right, thank you. Thank you, thank you everyone. Okay, so if you're planning on speaking, do you swear or affirm that the evidence you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Yes. Thank you. And do you consent to today's meeting? Yes. Okay, great. So, Mr. Wagner, did you, are you planning on speaking? Only if needed. Okay, and you swear and affirm and all of that? Okay, thank you, thank you. Okay, very good, thanks. Okay, Cole, I guess this is your case. Yes, that's correct. Okay, thank you, sir. If you can please provide the staff report. Okay, I wanted to say, good morning. I'm Cole Reniger, representing the planning department, planning staff request the staff report and all materials submitted to the public hearing to be made part of the public record with any necessary corrections as noted. Thank you. Case B20048 is for a minor special use permit for a place of worship in a residential zoning district. The case area is highlighted in red. The site is in the suburban tier, so residential suburban or RS20, as in the city of Durham's jurisdiction. The existing use is vacant. The summer church represented by Todd Irvin, the owner and the applicant, is proposing a one-story 38,950 square foot building located at 3621-3263-3301-3305 and 3311 Roads of Sharon Road. The project is on a 19.36 acre site that is currently used as single-family residential commercial coal sowing and vacant lot. It is on residential suburban RS20 and is located in the Eno River Watershed Protection Overlay District. Per UDO section 8.7.2.B1, the maximum pervious surface allowed for the site in the high-descending option is 70,000 of the acreage, sorry, 70% of acreage. The proposed site plan is in compliance with UDO section and will have 30% in pervious surface for place of worship, use and residential. Darling District, a line of special use permit is required per UDO section 5.1.2. A site plan, case D, 20,00091, is currently under review of the project and is included in the attachment to the application attachment four. UDO section 3.9A and B established four findings and 13 review factors the applicant must meet in order for the board to grant these permit. These findings and review factors are identified in the staff report and the applicant's sponsors and the findings and the review factors submitted in the application, both within your packet. Staff will be available for any questions during this time. Thank you, sir. Any questions for staff? Any questions for staff? All right, can the applicant come forward please? Who is going to be talking today? I guess that would be me, David Wagner. I'm the representative from the Summit Church. All right, thank you, Mr. Wagner. Would you like your testimony and evidence included as part of the record today? Yes. Thank you. Please proceed. The Summit Church started in North Durham in 1963 and we've been an integral part of the community since then. We previously had a special use permit approved, but we had to make adjustments to the site to fit the needs for the church. And so we are here to get it approved once again. Okay. I'm sorry. If I may add one thing, this is Jonathan Allen. I'm a civil engineer with NV5. I'm assisting Summit Church with this. And just to follow up on what David said, we did have a minor use special permit approved at this location three years ago. But like David said, they made some changes to the program which required us to have to go through the process again. So I just wanted to reiterate that this was approved three years ago and now we're going through the process again. So. Thank you. Any questions of Mr. Wagner or Mr. Allen? Lacey, will you all be illustrating the changes that you've made compared to the approval that you had last time? We don't have a site plan here, but I think the building, the church building grew by about between 10 and 15,000 square feet. It was just enough for the threshold that it required us to go back through the process again. Thank you. Mr. Tarrick. I just had a question regarding the wet pond and I guess if you could explain the design intent there, it looks like it might be either draining to the existing pond as well as a level spreader. Can you just elaborate on that for me please? Sure. In accordance with Durham stormwater regulations, we are required to treat impervious surfaces of both water quantity and water quality. So that wet pond will be collecting all the runoff from the impervious surfaces, treating it and then releasing it through a level spreader and into the existing pond. And those are all measures to reduce the nutrient runoff of the site to pre-existing conditions. Thank you. Other questions? Okay. Is there anyone here to speak in favor of the application? Mr. Chair. Yes, ma'am. Christa Cucarociti, Attorney's office. I just wanted to mention to the board that the prior approval is not particularly relevant for this application. The board is still required to make an inquiry according to you the factors in the UDA for this approval. And so those are laid out in your staff report. I'm not gonna read them to the board, but you all are aware of what those are. And so I just want to remind you of that. Thank you. Thank you, counselor. Thanks for keeping us honest. Is there anyone, Mr. Tarrant? I'm sorry, I just had one more clarification. I was just curious what that is it relates to traffic, what the hours of operation are for the church and how what's the overlap of the services and so forth. David, you want to speak to that? Yes, our intent is to use the church, our normal permanent facilities have a Saturday afternoon service and Sunday morning service. And depending on the number of attendees, we will make two services available on Sunday morning, two services available on Saturday afternoon, if needed. I have a question, will there be evening activities through the week at the facility? Will you be doing any other sorts of school or daycare or anything like that? We do not have plans for daycare or schools in this facility. The intent is for it to be a permanent facility for worship. There can be the occasional use of the space in the evening for let's say a youth event or a prayer night even, but it would not be the capacity of a Sunday morning or a Saturday afternoon. Okay, thank you. Other questions for the applicant? Lacey, will you be holding outdoor events and will you be having broadcast speakers or microphones to amplify sound? Well, we do intend to have speakers on the outside of the building for welcoming music to welcome the members as they come in for the service. Outdoor events, the only time we've had outdoor events is due to COVID and so the intent is to use the interior of the facility other than the playground and for the children. Thank you. Shane, I have a question. Please. With the increase of the building, the church building itself, how did that impact the parking? Did you have to get rid of some of the parking spaces or did it impact it at all? There was really no impact. I think we had the exact same layout as we had before, just the interior island where the church sits, it grew slightly, but I think the parking stayed the same as it was before. Thank you. Okay. Is there anyone here who's opposed to this application? Yeah, I have a couple of concerns. Mr. Rean, please. Yes. So I'm a resident of Marywood and my primary two concerns are traffic and safety and they kind of tie together. So I know that there's a sidewalk that goes across the front of the property along the road, but I don't know if there's plans by the city to extend that sidewalk further beyond the property lines because there's other areas of Rosa Sharon that has sidewalks and then they just disappear. And so those sidewalks are either not used or it leads people to have to walk along the side of the road. And there's really a very narrow shoulder on that road and people can drive fairly fast. So with an increased traffic and potentially people driving along the side of the road, I'm concerned if there isn't a plan to extend that sidewalk on further across the rest of Rosa Sharon, there's a potential safety issue that I'm very concerned about. Thank you. Mr. Wagner, Mr. Allen, do you have a response with respect to the sidewalk question? I don't think we can respond to that. I mean, we're required to provide sidewalk along our property frontage. We have no rights to extend the sidewalk and on other people's frontage. Right. That would be a city question. Thank you. Cole. Yes, so they are providing the required sidewalk that they're required to provide on their site. If the sites across the street were developed or if the sites next door were developed, it would be on the person who I guess develops the next property to provide the required sidewalks as well. They can't provide sidewalks to the property they don't own. So the majority of that street is residential and so it's not practical for homeowners to provide sidewalks. So if they're not, usually, and they're not usually required by sidewalk, but we can't, the city can't say we're gonna put sidewalk on the property without their consent. But I don't think the city as of any plans has any plans to add sidewalk in this area to the places that are already existing. Mr. Wagner, Mr. Allen, was there a traffic analysis completed as part of this project? Yes, sir, there was. And we are making the improvements you see being made to Rosa Sharon Road are the results of that TIA. Do you have anybody present today who can talk about the transportation impact analysis? We do not. And I was just thinking about that this morning. The TIA was done three years ago and the person was there at that meeting. A new TIA was not required. So they were not re-engaged for this part of the project. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Staff, any, is that no changes to background traffic over the three-year period or the current regulations don't require a new transportation impact analysis? So if it did require a new TIA, transportation would be the one to request that. I see. Since they did not, I would assume that they are fine with the changes. Thank you. Okay. All right. Any questions for Mr. Reem? I have a question, if I may. Please, sir. Obviously a lot of parking, I'm sure this is all required parking, but just wanted to ask, and I'm having trouble seeing this too well, is there, are there any bike arrangements for bike racks or ride sharing? Because it's just a lot of impervious surface. And I understand it's probably the code, but my knee jerk is to see a beautiful forest become a parking lot. It just kind of upsetting. So is all that parking required? I guess is my main question. Mr. Wagner, Mr. Allen, do you want to speak to that? Yes, it is required parking. I believe there is extra parking above that that still stays within what's allowed by code. And to your point of the sea of parking, that is kind of why the site was set up the way it was so that you're not seeing all the parking from the street. And to answer the bike parking question, there are 20 bike spaces being proposed with this site as well. Some of the split between the front and the back. Other questions? Yes, I'd like to make a comment. Please, sir. My name is Jeffrey Manis. I live on Marywood Drive. And Rosa Sharon is a narrow two-lane road. And the traffic on that road has increased tremendously in the last few years because of new subdivisions and so forth. And we've seen a lot of wrecks and at least one fatality. What I'm concerned about is so much traffic at that intersection going in and out. I wonder if maybe they could put some flashing yellow lights or something there to get people to slow down before they get to that intersection. And just wondering if what they're doing now is gonna be adequate for the amount of extra traffic. And I've talked to several of our neighbors and they're also concerned about it. Thank you, Mr. Manis. Mr. Wagner, Mr. Allen, would you talk in a little bit more detail about the off-site improvements that it looks like you're gonna be making based on the site plan? I don't wanna interpret this. So can you give us a sense about what's being called for as part of the project from a transportation standpoint? Sure, I can speak to that. So Rosa Sharon is a two-lane road section. For the property frontage, we will be making it a three-lane section. So that will be a dedicated left turn lane into Marywood, dedicated left turn lane into each entrance for Summit Church. So that's how we are addressing the traffic concerns for the church itself. Is the smaller entranceway, I guess the one that is closer to Hillendale, is that right in, right out, or is that either direction driveway? It's either direction as well. And did you guys explore the possibility of signage or other warning devices about intersection movements at the Marywood Road driveway entrance area? There will be the typical signage that is required for dedicated left turn lanes. And what DOT requires of this will be provided. Is this a DOT street or is this a city street? DOT. Okay. All right, so it being a DOT street, I assume that DOT is the one that decides what sort of light, signage, warning, et cetera, will be on the street. Is that accurate? That's correct. Okay. And they have reviewed this plan? Yes, they have. Sorry. Here. Thank you. Other questions? Let's have some discussion. How do people feel? Delacy, I hear from the people who have objections or concerns about this proposed project are concerned about traffic and safety. And I believe their concerns were addressed by DOT and this plan. Of course, we can't do anything about sidewalks aside from where your people own their own land. And I think we're constrained by the realities of the ordinances. Thank you. Anyone else? Mr. Carrot. Yes. I do have a concern regarding lighting. I understand the plan meets the UDO requirements for site lighting. The specific concerns along the Northern property line with the amounting height of 25 feet in the pole being located 13 or so feet below the adjacent property line. To me, that could be a pretty big nuisance for somebody if that property were to be developed. Again, I can't base determination on something that doesn't exist but something to consider. Certainly would have appreciated more testimony regarding the review factors that are before us today. It does seem apparent reading through the application materials and the associated site plan that this proposal does, in my opinion, meet the review factors. I just would have appreciated a little more a line book from the applicant on that. I agree, it would have been helpful to have a little bit more detail on the transportation impact analysis and the safety considerations that were evaluated. I agree, but it is a DOT street and they have reviewed the plans and approved them. So, assumedly, they've passed muster under state requirements. Anyone else? Motion. I'm sorry, would you like a recommendation from planning staff? I would, sir. Thank you, Mr. Regenard. Yes. You're welcome. Planning staff recommends the approval with the case that it is, and with the site plan submitted, D-20-00-0091, that it meets all the applicable review factors. Thank you. Does anyone, would anyone like to make a motion? Sure, I'll make a motion. Please, sir. I hereby make a motion that application number B-2-0-0-0-4-8 in application for minor special use permit on property located at 3261, 3263, 3301, 3305, and 3311, rows of Sharon Road. As successful, we met the applicable requirements to the unified development ordinance and as hereby granted subject to the following conditions. The improvements shall be substantially consistent with all the information submitted to the board as part of the application. Thank you. Is there a second? A second. Micah, Jeter. Thank you. Thank you, Micah. Madam Clerk. Yes, Mr. Lacey. Yes. Ms. Waimour. Yes. Ms. Jeter. Yes. Mr. Meadows. Yes. Mr. Kip. Yes. Ms. Boshin. Yes. Mr. Tarrant. Yes. Motion carries seven to zero. Well, sir, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wagner. Thank you, Mr. Allen. Your application has been approved. You'll receive an order written order from the board shortly. So thank you for your application. Thank you. Have a nice day. Thank you. Okay. It is 9.20 and we are getting ready. I am expecting that the next case will be lengthy. Do people want to go ahead and start or do you want to take five before we start this case? I'd say let's start and take a break later unless anybody has an objection. I'd like to get this rolling as quickly as possible. Sounds good to me. Anybody have any thoughts other than that? Alrighty. Madam Clerk, would you please call the next case? Yes, B2000051. A request for minor special use permit for a school in a residential zoning district. The subject site is located at 4622 and 4804 North Rocksboro Street. Is owned residential suburban and in the suburban tier. This case has been advertised for the required period of time and property owners within 600 feet have been notified and notarized at the Davids verifying the sign postings and letter mailings are on file. And to note the seating for this case, it will be Ms. Bochine, Mr. Tarrant, Ms. Jeter, Ms. Wymore, Mr. Meadows, Mr. Kip and Ms. Delacy. Thank you. Mr. Meadows, Liza Moreau with the Plain Department speaking here, there will be a little bit of a lag as we are moving everyone over. So before you start, those people that are being moved over can't hear anything. So just to give you a heads up, we are currently moving everybody over. Can you just let us know when everybody's in the house? Yes, we'll do. Myself and Chris are doing that on the back end. Should be a couple more moments. Want to save you from having to repeat yourself. I'm sure everybody would appreciate that. This is Chris Beerson playing part. Do we wish to bring in all opponents as well at this time? Yeah, I believe we'd like to administer the oath and get consent from everyone. Okay, thank you very much. I believe that is everyone, but if you are not in the panelists and you wish to speak, please use the raise hand function if we did miss you. But I believe we might have everybody, oh, and I see there's one more individual, David Harris, stand by. So I count one, two, three, four, five, six, seven people, or that's what I'm seeing. Are there more than seven folks? There are more than seven folks. You'll have to use, there's an arrow that usually shows up on the side to go to the next screen. Okay, yeah. Jonathan Allen, great. How many folks do we have approximately? We have 20 people listed for this case on the registration. All right. Sorry to cut off, Mr. Meadows, Elizmond Rose speaking with the staff department. Jonathan Allen, are you from the last case or you're for this B2000051? If you could unmute yourself real quick, Mr. Jonathan Allen. Mr. Allen, speak now for ever hold your peace. I know he did speak on the last case. I don't know if he's for this case as well though. All right, so I'm gonna move Jonathan over to an attendee and then I think that is now everyone, Mr. Meadows. Madam Attorney, I cannot see every person. I don't have enough screen real estate to see everyone. Is audio acceptable? How do you feel about this? I think if you want to be very sure that everyone has taken the oath and consented to the meeting, I think what you can do is call people by their name in sort of order as you sort of see them or if you need assistance from staff, you can call their name and then you would measure the oath, they would say yes if they swear or you'd administer the remote consent. And then we'd move on to the next. What's your opinion about the best way to do this? Eliza, would you be willing to help by saying the person's name who is attending the meeting and then Susan can administer the oath and then Mr. Meadows can, or sorry, Mr. Meadows can administer the oath and then also ask for the consent? Yes, I can definitely do that. Just give me a couple of moments to pull up that spreadsheet that has everyone's names and we can do it that way. I think that's a great idea to just make sure we've got everyone on board. Mr. Chair, if I may. Yes, ma'am. My name is Lindsay Smith. I am a lawyer with Darrington Smith and I represent the Darrington Public Schools in this and I'm happy to introduce the set of experts that we have here to speak today if that would be helpful prior to them taking the oath. No, I think we, I'd like to go ahead and do the oath and we'll pursue, we'll just do, we'll try to make it as quick as possible. Just want to be sure that everybody is sworn and everybody can sense since this platform is a little bit different. Then I would mean, and my computer is queuing up. So like two more seconds, it should be loading. Apologize for the delay. I've got a bunch of PDFs open right now with all the attachments for this case. So it's making things move a little bit slower. I'll let you, Liza, call the person I'll administer the oath and then we'll move on to the next. Liza, this is Heather Rimes. Hello, Heather. Hi, I will not be giving testimony today. So I can be removed from this screen. Okay, I will promote you back to an attendee then. Thank you. And that will save a little bit of space and I'll make sure not to say your name when it comes up. I wanted to get a follow up. Okay, I have everyone ready to go. So I understand that there are those I've signed up as proponents and or opponents. This will be written. The list does not include those teams. So have we already called the, who will be seated for this? Yes. I think we've called seating. Yes. Yep. Okay, Lucas Helms. All right. Mr. Helms, do you swear or affirm that the evidence you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Please turn your microphone on, turn your camera on. Can you guys hear me? Yes. Yes. And do you consent to this remote meeting platform? I do. Thank you. Joshua, Renke? Mr. Renke, do you swear or affirm the evidence you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Yes, I do. Thank you. And do you consent to this remote meeting format? I do. Thank you. Bernard Hall? Mr. Hall, do you swear or affirm the testimony you are about to give will be the whole truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? I do, but Mr. Chairman, I am not planned to speak. I am available if needed, but to your question, yes, if needed. Okay, thank you. And I assume you consent to this meeting platform? Yes. Thank you. Lindsay Smith? I'm sorry, I didn't get that, Eliza. Lindsay Smith? Ms. Smith, do you swear or affirm that the evidence you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Mr. Chair, I don't intend to give evidence today as I'm representing the Board of Education, the door to public schools, but I do consent to the meeting. Thank you. Kyle Forester? Right, Mr. Forester, do you swear or affirm that the evidence you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? I do. And do you consent to this platform? I do. Thank you. Dr. Campbell? Mr. Campbell, do you swear or affirm that the evidence you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? I do. And do you consent to this platform? thank you Emily Earl it's Earl swear affirm the evidence you're about to give will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but I do and you can set to this platform yes thank you Jarvis Martin mr. Martin do you swear affirm the testimony you're about to give will be the truth the whole truth and nothing about the truth I do and do you consent to this platform yes thank you Frederick Davis mr. Davis do you swear affirm that the evidence you're about to give will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth yes and do you consent to this platform yes thank you sir Kenneth Loring Mr. Loring do you swear do you firm or swear that the evidence you're about to give will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth I think you're muted I do thank you and do you consent to this platform I do thank you Keith Downey mr. Downey do you swear affirm that the test the evidence you're about to give will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth I do and do you consent to this platform yes thank you Mark Madison apologies for pronunciation do you swear or affirm that the evidence you're about to give will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth I'm actually scrolling through now to see if mr. Madison is I don't see we will go back and if we need to if he appears later we can add him and get those later Julius Bartel do you swear or affirm that the evidence you're about to give will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth I do I do and and do you consent to this remote meaning platform yes I do sir thank you Mary Abrams miss Abrams do you swear or affirm that the evidence you're about to give will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth yes thank you and do you consent to this remote meaning platform yes thank you Leon King do you swear or affirm that the evidence you're about to give will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth yes thank you and do you support this remote meaning platform yes thank you Carolyn young do you swear or affirm that the evidence you're about to give will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth yes and do you support this meaning platform I do thank you David Harris do you swear or affirm that the evidence you're about to give will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth yes and do you support this platform I do thank you Gary Korsy or affirm that the evidence you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He's muted. All right, Gary, you'll have to unmute yourself. Almost. Looks like you're muting and then unmuting, and you're still muted. Yes. Thank you. And do you support this remote meeting platform? Yes. Thank you. Okay, Mary Vickers. Do you swear or affirm that the evidence you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Yes. And do you support this remote meeting platform? I do. Thank you. Mr. Chair, I believe that was everyone. If we missed your name, please say so. If we did not, if you intend to speak and we did not administer the oath to you, please wave your hand or unmute yourself and let us know. Thank you. Sorry for the delay there, but we wanted to be sure that we were following all the rules. At this point, I think it's time to hear from staff. Yes, it is. And in my computer is now not responding. So I will just need a quick moment. I think it might be all of our videos so we can see each other's faces. Sometimes my wifi does not like that. So just a quick moment here for the presentation. Okay, I think I've got it folks. Thank you for your patience and working with us on that everybody. Okay. Can everyone see the screen that's being shared? Yes. I see some thumbs up. Okay. Good morning everyone. Eliza Monroe speaking, representing the planning department, planning staff requests that the staff report on material submit that the public hearing to be made part of the public record with any necessary corrections as noted. So noted. I think you child. Case B2000051, is a request for a minor special use permit to allow a school to be located within a residential zoning district. The applicant is CLH design PA and the subject site is located at 4622 North Roxborough Street and 4804 North Roxborough Street. The case area is highlighted on the screen in red. You'll see the two individual parcels. The site is zoned residential suburban 10 or RS 10 within the Eno River Watershed Protection Area sometimes referred to as EB and located within the suburban tier. The site area is currently covered as you can see mainly in forest. There are a few small structures that are located on those two parcels that will be demolished or proposed to be demolished. In this case, if the board's approval of the use permit is granted today. I'm gonna exit out of this now. This case does have quite a few documents. So I will note that I'll have to switch in between those PDFs to pull them up. So please give me a moment to do so for the site plan. My computer and I have not, don't really have a great relationship right now. CLH design, which is the applicant on behalf of the property owner of Durham Public Schools Board of Education is proposing a 1800 student at educational facility on the sites located at 4622 and 4804 North Roxborough Street. The project is about 76.05 acres. It's zoned residential suburban 10 as mentioned before and within the EB Watershed Protection Overlay District due to the proposed use of a school being within the residential zoning district. They are before the board today for the issuance of a minor special use permit. The educational facility requires this based upon UDO section 5.1.2 and they are subject to limited use standards of the UDO section 5.3.3K. A site plan case BD, excuse me, is in dog 2000059 is currently under review for this project and staff would like to know that there were some minor changes to the cover sheet of the site plan that was originally sent out and therefore there is an updated site plan that is available on the agenda within the applicant presentation. Those changes did not warrant a change within the content of the staff report and they also did not bring about any additional comments from the departments. So therefore the application and the site plan is clear which is required for the UDO. UDO section at 3.9.8A and B established just four findings and 13 review factors that the applicant must be in order for the board to grant a use permit. These findings and review factors are identified in the staff report and the applicant's responses to the findings and review factors are identified in the application both of which are within your packet. Some of these findings do have individual reports. There was an appraisers report provided. There's also a TIA, a transportation traffic and impact analysis report. There is also an MTSA report that was done by the municipal schools transportation authority. So all of those reports are available and staff can pull those out throughout. The changes that were made to the cover sheet were in relation to a couple of notes from the dorm water department, I believe, as well as the case notes because this case originally was supposed to be a slightly larger case and made your special use permit and was downgraded to a minor special use permit that the board of adjustment hears. If there's any quick questions about those changes, I can definitely go into further detail but they were small changes on the cover sheet where there are notes and I can share that now. Any questions from staff at this moment? I do apologize, my computer has been trying to open the site plan and it just did so I can now pull that up and that way the applicant can refer to specific site plan sheets during their testimony. Thank you, Eliza. Any questions for the staff? And Eliza Murrow staff here again, board members given the way that we are all laid out, I cannot really see everyone clearly. So you can either raise your hand or feel free to speak openly in this case for this hearing as we're having to cycle through the two screens due to the amount of attendees. Eliza, I have one question for you. I think I heard you say that this site plan is substantially clear of comments. Is that accurate? Did you say that? That is correct. The UDA requires that a site plan be substantially clear or ready for action is the language before it comes before the board of adjustment. And could you, is it possible for you to quickly indicate why this was a major special use permit and is now a minor special use permit? What does that, you know, what precipitated that? Yes, of course. So it actually was triggered by transportation rules and requirements at the original time of submittal. Those transportation requirements and rules were triggering what's called a transportation special use permit. Transportation special use permits and major special use permits are actually reviewed by city council and not by the board of adjustment. So staff does offer the option if you're coming in for a transportation special use permit to elevate the project to then a major site plan so you can go before the board for a major special use permit, excuse me, the city council for a major special use permit. So essentially the case was elevated to an MSUP due to the transportation special use permit and would allow the applicant to see one body as opposed to having to come before city council for the TSUP and before the board of adjustment for the minor special use permit. When the transportation special use permit regulations changed based upon changes within the ordinance and the TSUP was no longer required, the applicant was then presented the opportunity to then downgrade back to a minor special use permit. And here we are today as a result of that downgrade. I hope that summarized without confusing anyone. So there were some changes to the development regulations in the transportation realm that removed a requirement that was in place before and the removal of that transportation requirement allows the applicant to bring this case to us. That is correct. The TSUP was no longer triggered. It's really done by generation of trips is what can trigger TSUP and there was changes there. And so therefore, since that was no longer required technically all along they could have came and gotten a minor special use permit given that they were already gonna have to go to the city council. It's a little bit simpler just to group it all together so they can go to just one hearing, one deciding body as opposed to splitting up between the two. Thank you. Of course. Questions for staff? I'm not seeing any hand raises. So please feel free to speak out if I'm missing you, I'm sorry everybody. Ms. Smith, I assume you're leading us today. That's correct, Mr. Chair. I will be organizing the presentation on behalf of the Durham Public Schools. Well, please take it away. Thank you, sir. My name is Lindsay Smith. As I mentioned before, I am an attorney at Beringdon Smith and I represent the Durham Public Schools. As you all know, and as you heard, I'm joined today by a number of individuals in support of the special use permit. And I wanna introduce them briefly before we go on. Several of them will be providing affirmative testimony in support of the SUP. And then we have others with us today who are also experts who are available to answer questions if the board has follow-up questions in response to the affirmative testimony that we are providing. So Frederick Davis is with us today. He is the director of design and construction for the Durham Public Schools, as well as Bernard Hall, who's a project manager for the Durham Public Schools. We have with us Keith Downing and Ken Lorring from CLH Design. Keith Downing is a landscape architect and Ken Lorring is a professional engineer. Emily Earl is the architect, one of the architects on the case or on the matter. And she is a representative of ratio who has designed the project. We also have Steve Campbell and Kyle Forester here from Progressive Design Collaborative. They are both have worked on the lighting for this project and the electrical plans for the project. And then we have Joshua Ranky and Lucas here there with Rainy Kemp. Joshua Ranky has prepared the traffic impact analysis and addendum that were provided to the board as part of your packet. Lucas Helms has also provided input on the roadway design as part of this project. And then finally, we have Mr. Jarvis Martin. He is a professional real estate appraiser and provided the market impact analysis that we submitted to the board as part of our presentation. So, you know, as you- Yes, sir. Would you like your testimony and evidence included as part of the record? Yes, sir. We would like the evidence of all of the experts here who testified today to be included as part of the record as well as the reports, the market impact analysis and the traffic impact analysis and any other supporting documents that are identified in the agenda to be included as part of the official record. Thank you. And staff, you've received all of those, right? There's nothing new coming in today that we have not seen or has not been part of the agenda. That is correct. On the agenda, you'll see the resumes in which Lindsay provided of all the individuals she's gonna probably introduce here shortly as well as all of the supporting documents that those individuals might be bringing up today. And we can bring them up on the screen as well to see so everyone can view them, but they're also available in the agendas. Thank you. Yes, and thank you. We would also like the resumes to be included as part of the record. We would, Eliza, if you could possibly pull up the cover page of the site plan because I do think that some of the folks who are testifying here today will be wanting to refer to that. And so with that in mind, I think we'll go ahead and move forward with our presentation unless there are any further questions before we move forward. So the first person that we're gonna be hearing from today is Mr. Keith Downing. And I wanna go ahead and ask him to unmute himself. Good morning, Mr. Downing. Good morning, Mr. Downing. Can you go ahead and describe your role on this project for me, please? Yes, I'm the project landscape architect leading the team for the civil design. Thank you. And can you give us a little bit of background on your education and your credentials and your experience? Yes, I graduated from the Ohio State University, which a bachelor in science landscape architecture in 1992. And I've been a licensed practicing landscape architect in North Carolina since 2002. And been mostly, most of my body of work has been K through 12 since 2008. I would like to go ahead and tender Mr. Downing as an expert in the area of landscape architecture, Mr. Chair. Anyone have any objection to that? Don't know to thank you. Thank you. And Eliza, I apologize. If you wouldn't mind, I think it's the second page, the overall plan for on the site plan that I think Mr. Downing is gonna wanna refer to. That's it. Thank you very much. So Mr. Downing, can you go ahead? I know Eliza's already kind of given a broad overview, but if you could go ahead and give us an overview of the proposed school design and the plan. Sure. First, thanks for the board for hearing us today. And thanks for staff for all their help through pulling all this together in the plan review and getting us ready for this presentation. What you see before you is an overall site plan of the proposed development. You can see about a third of the site is bisected by a stream. We've had the state and the core out there to identify the stream, the wetlands and the buffers. So those are all delineated by legal jurisdictions. The primary building is on the east side of the stream. And then you have staff parking to the south of the building and student parking to the west of the building. And a lot of the athletics to the north of the building. And then the stadium is on the west side of the stream crossing. So the way that the site is accessed is there are two entrances off of Roxboro Road. The southern entrance is the parent and visitor entrance. That'll be the primary entrance, main entrance to the school. So as you head east, there's 2,100 linear feet of onsite stacking, which is required by the NCDOT MSTA per the TIA report and reviews with NCDOT in the city of Durham transportation. They come into the site, circle around to the front door, drop off the kids, come back through the parking lot and then exit back out to 15501. There's a gate, you can see the student parking lot. The south of that, there's a gate across that drive which prohibits students and parents vehicular conflicts. The second drive north of that across from Argonne is the student and service drive. So the students will enter the site at this drive west across the creek and directly make that first right hand turn directly into the parking lot. If you go any farther than entering this student parking lot, you'll see a gate right there as well and that's to prohibit students from continuing to the rear of the building. If you notice, there's a third entrance to the site what comes from the north of Old Well Street. That's primarily for bus and limited staff and they will use this entrance to come to the rear of the building, drop the students off, go around the loop and then exit the site back through Old Well Street. So with the gated option there, that separates the bus and staff. And then so what we've done is we've used all three drives and we've separated uses to increase safety and reduce vehicular and pedestrian conflict. And I can let Lucas and Remy Kemp talk later but there is a signal at the parent drive to the south and there's a signal at the student drive at our own drive. Thank you, Pete. So I think that's a great overview of the general project. What I'd like to do now is just dive directly into the requirements, the UDO requirements for the special use permit and get your opinion on the projects whether the project meets those requirements. And so the first question I have for you is whether the project fits in harmony with the area. In your opinion, does the project fit in harmony with the area? Oh, yes, educational, yeah. There are other educational facilities located within residential districts that is proof of harmony with schools being in residential zoning areas. Thank you. And can you confirm that the project is in conformance with all the special requirements that are applicable to the proposed use? Yes, and all those requirements are listed on the cover sheet in the special conditions of approval box. A couple of those are we need to record a recombination map and then we need to contact the city of Durham to inspect all the tree protection fencing before land disturbance. And then we have to meet the transportation requirements from NCDOT. And have all of those things been done? Yes. And can you confirm that the project will not adversely affect the health or safety of the public? Yes. This is a, I should have said this earlier, this proposed school is actually a replacement school for the existing Northern high school. So the population of the existing Northern school will move to this new facility. And the new school will provide a new identity, sense of community and meet all the current design design guidelines for safety and security. The new facility will implement current design guidelines and technology and will not affect the public health safety and welfare in an adverse way. Thank you. And so then there's a number of review factors that are listed in the UDO that the special, special use permit needs to demonstrate that this project meets. And so I'm gonna ask you about those specific review factors. And so the first one is whether the site design provides adequate onsite circulation for pedestrians and vehicles. And so in your opinion, does the site provide this adequate onsite circulation? Yes. As previously tried to explain, we've separated all the uses and there are sidewalks along all the internal drives to all areas of the site for pedestrian travel. And are there sidewalks that are provided? Yes, there's onsite sidewalks internally to the site. And then there's a sidewalk from the South property line on the East side of 15501 up to Argonne Drive that was required by NCDOT. And are there any other recommendations that were recommended or required by NCDOT or by the TIA? I would like to let Josh answer that question. I can speak to it. That's fine. We can ask Josh about that. But in your professional opinion, the site provides adequate onsite circulation for pedestrians. Yes, onsite circulation. And we've met, we've provided all of the requirements from the TIA recommendations from NCDOT. Thank you. What about the second review factor speaks to providing sufficient off-street parking? In your professional opinion, does the design provide sufficient off-street parking and loading areas? Yes, we've met all the UDO requirements that have been reviewed and collaborated with city staff. And then as far as service entrances and areas, does the site design provide adequate service entrances and areas as required by the UDO? Yes, so the service entrances across from Argonne Drive with the students and mostly service arrives at off hours or off times from when the students arrive. So they come down that drive and go to the rear of the building. If you notice the little inset on the west part of the building, that's the service location. So the service vehicles use the bus lot to back into the service area and then come back out. Does the site design meet the city's lighting requirements? Yes. And we have some, and just for the board's information, we do have folks from the lighting design, who work in the lighting design if the board has any questions. Yeah, so for as far as the lighting goes, there's two different, the parking lot lighting and the site lighting was designed by Duke Energy out of their Charlotte office. And then the athletic lighting was designed by PDC. Thank you. And then tell me about the signage that is planned for the site. There's a monument sign planned at the main entrance. And then there are, I don't know what the technical term is, maybe the lines can help me, but there's secondary signage at the parent entrance or I'm sorry, the student entrance that identify athletics, student parking. So there's only two signs really proposed. The main monument sign at Wellington Drive where the parents enter and then secondary signage at Argonne. And in your professional opinion, is that signage appropriate? Yes, it meets the UDL requirements. Okay. Does the site have utilities available? Yes, there's water, sewer, gas, electric, all that are available and adjacent to the site. Thank you. And for the board's information, Ken Lorrain will address more specifics about these utilities. Does the site meet the requirements for yards, open spaces and preservation of existing trees and other natural features? Yes, the UDO open space requirements have been provided. The project dedicates a minimum of 10% of the growth site area to open space. The required buffer yards have been provided which include preservation, natural tree cover within these areas and street yards have been provided where required. And what are the requirements for the preservation of tree cover during inventory sites, flood plain, stream buffers, wetlands, et cetera? The dedication of the 10% gross area of the site, what am I trying to say? The dedication of 10% of the gross area of the site towards open space and tree coverage is met. No wetlands are being disturbed. 100 foot buffers and the additional 10 foot buffer setbacks are shown on wetlands and stream features where there are impacts to these areas, specifically the site access drive and utility connections, the city of Durham, no practical alternative authorization has been applied for in the state as the authority having jurisdictions for the no practical alternative authorization approval. In addition, individual impact permits have been applied for with the state of North Carolina where the two site drives and construction activity, impact environment and features. NCEQ permits will be obtained for erosion control and disturbance activities and are currently in review. Thank you. And then have, is there a plan to install the screening, buffering and fencing necessary to project any of the adjacent property? The UDO required perimeter. So yes, the required perimeter buffer is satisfied on the proposed plan. Some of the areas of the plan use natural areas greater than required perimeter buffer to help screen adjacent property. The street yard and all screening, buffering and landscaping requirements of the UDO are met on the proposed plan. And does the project in your professional opinion have any adverse impact on the adjacent properties? Oh, no. Why not? The proposed high school is on a vacant wooded lot. A natural tree buffer will surround this site along with environmental features and extended natural areas in both the east and west portions of the site. Lighting for the site is designed by lighting professionals to meet UDO standards. For these reasons, nearby properties should not be affected by noise, odor or lighting. Traffic impact analysis has been reviewed and approved both by DOT and the city of Durham Transportation Department. All TIA proposed recommendations are included in the proposed plan submitted for approval. Stacking for the parent drivers is designed to be fully contained on site. For these reasons, the increase of the traffic is not expected to have an adverse impact on the surrounding area. Thank you. And just for the board's information, we will be tendering Mr. Jarvis Martin, the real estate appraiser, who will speak in more detail to the property valuation impact on the surrounding areas. Mr. Downing, in your professional opinion, is the site compatible with nearby properties and impacted neighborhoods? Yes, the proposed high school is on a vacant lot. The primary structure is plus or minus 320 feet from the south property line, plus or minus 600 feet from the east property line, and plus or minus 600 feet from the north property line, and plus or minus 900 feet from the west property line. The high school will serve the surrounding neighborhoods in the area and is intended to have a positive impact on the community, architecture, design, and landscape, west ethically enhance the surrounding area. Thank you. And then finally, or I guess almost finally, is the site design consistent with the city's comprehensive plan and the applicable development tier guidelines and zoning district intent statements? Yes, the proposed northern high school replacement falls within residential suburban district. The intent of this district is to provide for orderly suburban residential development and redevelopment. Limited non-residential users' uses are allowed and are subject to the restrictions necessary to preserve the suburban character. The proposed plan meets all the UDO requirements as well as special provisions and restrictions required within. The school is a permitted use within the approval of a minor special use permit. The architecture, design, site elements, open play fields, preservation of streams, wetlands, natural areas, and buffers keep this proposed development consistent with the applicable tier guidelines, overlays, and zoning district intent statement in article four of zoning districts. Thank you. And finally, in your professional opinion, does the site meet the intent and requirements of the city's UDO? Yes. Thank you, Mr. Downing. That's everything that I have for Mr. Downing. And I'd like to go ahead and tender Ken Lorrain, who's going to be our next witness. Mr. Lorrain, if you'll go ahead and unmute yourself. The last minute, staff. Yeah, go ahead, Eliza, please. I just wanted to chime in about some of the testimony Mr. Downing gave in relation to signs. As mentioned in the staff report, signage is not something that's reviewed during the site plan review nor the special use permit review. So although they may be doing things in accordance, that's not something that's reviewed during this process. I just wanted to mention that here. Nothing that the board does today would approve any proposed signing as done. So just wanted to mention that and reiterate, which is already in the staff report. So Mr. Meadows, please take it away. Thank you, Eliza. And thank you, Ms. Smith. I have a question for you and for the board as a whole. You've tendered Mr. Downing as an expert in a wide variety of areas, traffic, environmental protection, compatibility, et cetera, et cetera. I assume are you going to want testimony from everyone you listed or will we just be speaking to select people and then calling on others if questions arise? Thank you, Mr. Meadows. We just intend to call on select people. We're going to, I'm going to ask Ken Lorain to speak specifically to the utilities piece and then speak to Mr. Martin, the real estate appraiser, the property valuation. The remainder, the remainder we'll just reserve as experts who can speak if additional questions arise. Okay, thank you. I have a question for the board. How do folks feel about holding all questions until the applicant has made their presentation or would you like to ask questions of the individuals? I would normally say we wait. However, Mr. Downing was tendered as knowledgeable in every single review factor. Therefore, if you guys want to ask questions about some of these aspects, we can do it now or we can hold. Does anybody have a strong feeling? Delacy, I think the presentation was very thorough but I'm not sure that Mr. Downing could qualify as understanding the real estate market. And I believe there are others in the team that may, he may be acting as the spokesman for the other, the other experts. And I'd like that clarified. Okay, so does anyone else have any feel about asking questions of Mr. Downing now or allowing the applicant to continue and finish their presentation and then doing questions? So, Terrin, I would move to continue the presentation. Whole questions to the end. Thank you, sir. Let's do that. Ms. Smith, please. Thank you very much. And just to clarify to Ms. Delacy's question, she is correct, Mr. Downing has been tendered as an expert in landscape architecture, has not been tendered as an expert in property valuation. And so we will be talking to Mr. Martin who is our expert in property valuation. Before we get to Mr. Martin, I'd like to talk with Mr. Lorraine. So Mr. Lorraine can unmute himself. I am. Good morning. How are you this morning? Fine, thank you. It's nice to be unmuted. Mr. Lorraine, can you just for the board briefly describe your role as part of this project? Yes, I've been the civil engineer designing the grading, the storm water, the sewer, sanitary sewer and the water distribution systems. Thank you. And just briefly, can you describe your background, your education, your credentials and your experience? I know the board has a copy of your resume, but if you could just give them a brief summary of your background, that would be helpful. Well, sure. I graduated from UNC Greensboro in 1983 with a geography degree. I worked in instruction and surveying, land surveying business and became licensed in, I think, 1989. And then I've worked in site design and civil engineering work, became licensed as a PE with North Carolina in 1998. And I've been a partner working at CLH Design for, I guess, about 24 years. Thank you, sir. Given that, Mr. Chair, I would like to tender Mr. Lorraine as an expert in the area of civil engineering. Does anyone have any objections? We, yep, we accept that. Thank you. So Mr. Lorraine, I would like for you to, given the, we're looking at the site plan now, the overall site plan now. And one of the review factors is the, that we're supposed to be looking at for the special use permit is the availability and location of utilities for the school. Can you just confirm that the utilities will be available and where specifically they are going to be provided? Well, sure. There are public water mains along the Rocksboro Road as well as the neighborhood to the north at Old Well Street. And we're making two connections off of a Rocksboro Road heading east, one to the north servicing primarily the field and athletics and then one to the south that extends east and will dead end at the eastern side of the driveway. And then it taps midway with a loop that runs around 360 degrees of the building and then also extends around the tennis courts up the northern driveway to tie into the water line up at Old Well Street. And there's a public sanctuary, excuse me, sanctuary sewer line that is running along the stream in the middle of the site running from south to north and we're making two connections to it, one for the athletic facilities and on the western side of it for the main facility. Thank you. Is there anything else with respect to utilities that the board needs to know about? We're meeting requirements of the city of Durham for necessary fire flow and domestic service. Great. And so in your professional opinion, the utilities for this site would meet the review factor for the special use permit. Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. Thank you. I don't have any other questions for you Mr. Lorrain. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. If the board has no objections, I will move on to talk with Mr. Jarvis Martin, the real estate appraiser. Please do. Thank you. Mr. Martin, can you unmute yourself? Yes. Good morning, how are you? Good morning. Can you describe your role as part of this process? Yes, I was asked by the applicant if I would visit the site and question as well as the surrounding neighborhoods that have joined this site and complete a market analysis looking at what potential adverse impact this particular development may have on the adjoining properties. As a part of that, I did visit the site, did drive through the old farm neighborhood as well as along Denfield Street. And then I chose three high schools which is currently located here in Durham, Hillside High School, the School of Math and Science and Southern High School and looked at those schools, the location of them in proximity to adjoining residential communities and try to gauge if there was any adverse impact over time from the sale and resale of properties in close proximity to these high school facilities as well as comparable homes that were further away. And doing so, I provided sales data as it relates to what homes were selling for, days on market, list price ratio which indicates any substantive discount for homes in proximity to all three high schools and homes that were a little further away. And based upon that analysis and the information provided, it is my opinion that the construction of this facility in proximity to the adjoining properties would have no adverse impact. And that generally in the real estate market that schools in close proximity to neighborhoods, particularly when they are walkable can have the effect of being more desirable for potential buyers that may have children that would be attending these facilities. Thank you, Mr. Martin. And just for the purposes of getting you on the record as an expert, can you just provide a little bit of background into your professional experience and background so that the board has that for its review? Yes, I'm a proud graduate of North Carolina Central University with two degrees of BS in business and a master's. I hold a state of certification as a state certified appraiser and have held that since the early 90s. I'm designated through the appraisal institute as a senior residential appraiser. I'm a principal in the firm of Stuart Martin and McCoy and I've had the privilege to work to serve the Durham community in this capacity as a real estate professional for over 40 years. Thank you, Mr. Martin. And so, Mr. Chair, we would like to tender Mr. Martin as an expert in the area of property evaluation and appraisal. Any objections from the board? Thank you. That's fine, Ms. Smith, thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Martin, I think you already gave us a very nice overview and detail of your analysis. Is there anything else that just makes sure I understand this correctly? In your professional opinion, the proposed school will not substantially injure the value of the properties in the general vicinity. Is that correct? Correct. Is there anything else that you want to add that the board should know about your valuation with respect to this particular piece of the analysis? No, in summary, as I indicated, that the property would be in harmony based upon schools that are currently located throughout this city and throughout North Carolina in residential neighborhoods and that it should not have any adverse impact on the surrounding properties. And recommend that this minor special use permit the approved. Thank you, Mr. Martin. I appreciate your testimony. So the board understands where we're at right now. That is all of the affirmative testimony that we were planning to provide in terms of making sure that the Durham Public Schools hits all of those criteria on the special use permit. Based on the testimony of these experts, we believe we've prevented presented competence, substantial, and material evidence that's been accepted into the record to support approval of the minor special use permit. But like I said earlier, we have a number of experts here with us including traffic, experts regarding the traffic impact analysis as well as lighting for the athletic fields and of course, Mr. Downey, Mr. Boring and Mr. Martin whom you've already heard from. If the board has questions, we are absolutely happy to entertain those questions. Thank you. I suspect there probably will be numerous questions. Do you want to take the opportunity to have someone from Raimi Kemp at least explain the, I believe 600 page transportation impact analysis report that was included with the packet. If somebody could give us a quick overview of the transportation analysis, that would be helpful. Certainly, we can certainly do that. And that would be Joshua Rankie from Mr. Rankie. If you don't mind unmuting. Do you want me to just jump into it, Lindsay? Or did you have any questions for me or should I just kind of overview and describe what I did? I think we'd like to go ahead and let's get your qualifications and get you tendered as an expert first. So if you could just, first of all, just provide us a general overview of your role in the project. Yeah, so first off, Josh Rankie with Raimi Kemp and associates registered professional engineer in the state of North Carolina, bachelor's degree from Valparaisa University in civil engineering, over 17 years experience pre-qualified by the NCDOT to perform school studies. And we were brought on board to perform the traffic impact analysis. The part of the reason it is probably about 600 pages is there was originally a traffic impact analysis that was done and then an addendum that focused on some alternative analysis for the two driveways along North Rocksboro. So all in all, we did work with the NCDOT and town staff within NCDOT. There are three different groups that we worked with. That is the MSTA group that works specifically with schools, the district level, and then also congestion management at their central office. And then we also worked with transportation staff at the city and we performed the traffic impact analysis and provided our results, at which point the NCDOT asked us to consider some alternative analysis scenarios and that is what the addendum was. So that's kind of the long and short of it. We did have seven study area intersections we considered. We looked at the improvements that we were shown for mitigation. Keith kind of covered those, but along Rocksboro, there was a need for some mitigations and roadway improvements. We've got two traffic signals that are going to go in place at the two site driveways and then the northern of the two site driveways is going to have a channelized northbound and southbound left turn lane. So they will be channelizing those. Thank you, John. Can we quickly, before moving on, can we go ahead and Mr. Chair, we'd like to go ahead and tender Mr. Renke as an expert in the area of traffic analysis. Objections from the board? So tender. Thank you. And I'm sorry, I believe I interrupted you. Ms. Monroe has got something to say. Yes, Eliza Monroe playing apartment staff before we get too deep in the weeds, the term transportation improvements has been continuously mentioned throughout this hearing. So I just want to, on the record, ensure that there's an understanding. And so there is a language from general statutes with regards to improvements and whether or not they are required, as well as who has the sole expense for those. So I want to further the record ask, I don't know if this would be you, Lindsey or Mr. Renke, whether or not the developer voluntarily proffers and agrees to construct the transportation improvements and whether or not they agree that that all of the transportation improvements are their sole expense and there will not be any reimbursement by either the city of Durham nor the North Carolina Department of Transportation. So I wanted to bring that up before we get further into the testimony about transportation improvements. So I can jump here quickly. I'm not sure that we're necessarily in a place to be able to proffer that, but I can at least let Mr. Renke expound a little bit on the extent to which some of these improvements are being provided voluntarily or being required. Mr. Renke, I'm not sure if we're at a place now where we know who's going to be shouldering the cost of some of these yet. Well, I guess let me hopefully say enough that it'll kind of clarify the improvements that were recommended in the addendum and are actually planned and that Keith has discussed and I covered again. They were also, NCDOT did agree with the addendum and require those improvements. So NCDOT is an agreement in their review with those improvements. I think what Eliza is getting to is there is legislation in place that they, either NCDOT or municipality that is requiring the improvements would potentially be responsible for reimbursement of those. And so right now I would say that the improvements shown in the addendum were agreed upon with the NCDOT and being required by them. Yeah, Eliza, my staff, thank you, Josh, for Mr. Renke for providing that information. And you hit it on the nail in the head there. So the thing that staff is wanting to stress here is that these were recommendations by both the city of Durham and NCDOT and not necessarily requirements in order for the conditions of approval. These were recommendations that are now being put into place and these recommendations are the sole expense if going forward of the developer and or parties, they are not the sole expense of the city of Durham nor the NCDOT and nor will those things be reimbursed by the city of Durham nor NCDOT. So that's kind of what staff was hoping to get into the recommendations versus requirements. And I will reflect to legal staff if I've messed up any of the language in that because I don't usually use proffer in my vocabulary. Mr. Chair, I can jump in. Please. Thank you. Chris, you could grow city attorney's office. Thank you, Eliza. I appreciate your explanation there. I think that you were correct in highlighting recommendations. I do think that we, of course, as the city need to be mindful of this statute and it sounds like there's maybe some clarity that needs to be provided in terms of what's happening here exactly. And I guess if we're not clear moving forward, the city does need to be prudent and we might need to continue this case. So I do want to just note that just so that we can get this issue cleared up. OK. So let me pose a question then. Madam Attorney, are you suggesting that we continue this case pending additional research and investigation? I am not suggesting that, Mr. Chair. I do believe that I don't believe that there's any additional research and investigation that necessarily needs to be completed at this point. The traffic analysis impact analysis have been completed. The addendum have been completed. I think the only question here appears to be whether the proposed improvements are, as a legal matter, improvements that are being done as the result of a recommendation or as the result of a requirement. And I think that's the only piece right now that maybe is in question. I mean, I think maybe we can, I think what my understanding of Mr. Ranky's testimony here is that they were completed as an agreement between the North Carolina Department of Transportation. And from that perspective, it appears to me that that's an agreement that the approval of this plan and then the traffic impact analysis was contingent upon. And Mr. Ranky, you may be able to jump in. Yeah, and once again, I'll kind of break it down simplistically. And if Lucas wants to jump in or somebody from school staff, when we perform the traffic impact analysis and the addendum, we provide recommendations for what we think is necessary out there to make the traffic operate in acceptable levels or meet the UDO, meet NCDOT guidelines and such. What then is, it's reviewed. We're provided with feedback, which I guess at that point is still recommendations. And I think when things get tied to the driveway permit. So once again, NCDOT's recommendations, usually they say this is a requirement of the driveway permit. I guess at that point, to kind of simplistically break that down, that would be when somebody requires it. So kind of to get back to what Eliza was saying, I would like to clarify that it is NCDOT that has indicated these are the improvements to move forward with city staff while they did review and agree with the study. They were not, I guess, from a standpoint of funding issues. I think it is NCDOT is my understanding. And if there's anybody on school staff or if Lucas Helms from Ramey Camp and Associates can come in on the driveway permit to maybe provide more clarification than that. And I can just sort of offer Mr. Helms or Mr. Davis, if either of you would like to provide any clarification. Mr. Davis is the director of design and construction for Durham Public School. And Mr. Helms is a professional engineer with Ramey Camp who's worked on the specific roadway design. If either of you have clarifications that might help the board in understanding this, that would be great. Good morning. Go ahead. This is Frederick Davis with Durham Public Schools. Good morning, Chair, board of directors. Good morning. And so basically we are also, as Durham Public Schools, under the understanding that these are recommendations and this roadway work improvement, which we have budgeted for, similar to another school that we're doing in the county. We will make those recommended repairs in our budget. Originally, they were, we did receive historically reimbursements from the NCDLD, but unfortunately now we are not receiving those, but to let you know that we have budgeted those road improvements in our overall school construction. But thank you, Mr. Davis. Mr. Helms, do you have anything to add? I don't have anything to add at this time. Thank you very much. Thank you, Frederick. Is there any other clarification that the board needs on this particular piece? I have a question about the future Hebron Road, which seems to be at the very south of the site. Is that gonna be parallel? I mean, it looks like it's parallel to site driveway too. Is that right? I mean, obviously it's a future road. It's not funded, but it seems to be, my question is, does the future Hebron Road come into the school site or not? And perhaps I know Keith Downing, long before the traffic impact analysis and such, he was involved and or town staff possibly can speak to this the best, as there's been a lot of history with this. I know even in considerations of how we should be studying this in the traffic impact analysis, we did look at it multiple ways. So is there anybody from town staff, I'm sorry, city staff and or Keith that would like to comment on that one and maybe provide a little more clarification? Yeah, I can try to speak to that a little bit. It's currently shown a line on a map with the Chapel Hill, Carborough, Durham, transportation plan, long range transportation plan. So that line does show up on the southern, just north of the Southern property line connecting to Wellington Drive on that map. They're not to get in the weeds of it, but there have been numerous discussions of when and how that will come online and when it's to be funded and should it be part of this project? It's been looked at extensively by NCDOT in the city of Durham Transportation Department. And ultimately it was decided that it's like you mentioned, it's not on any current funding schedule. It's not on any immediate plan to be constructed. At this time, it was decided that a private site drive to serve the school was the direction to take. Eliza Monroe, city planning department staff here. As Mr. Downey mentioned with these offline discussions, planning staff was not aware of or a part of those discussions as I was the transportation department review. So therefore I don't have any specific information to add about that matter. So I hope that answers your question, Mr. Kibb, the testimony that Mr. Downey just provided at this time. It does not. It offers absolutely no clarity whatsoever and you know that. Unfortunately, the transportation department nor anyone from NCDOT is here today to add further testimony. Could I get reflection from legal staff as to whether or not this question is in line with a specific finding and therefore we can maybe reword it or utilize the information that's being provided to address it. Thanks, Eliza. Christopher, city attorney's office. Can you clarify for me or Mr. Kibb, can you repeat what your question was because I was working on the previous matter that we were talking about. I think we've sort of departed from it. Sure. Basically Monk Road is a future planning, excuse me, not Monk Road, it's north of Monk Road. It's a Hebron Road extension, is a future DOT project not funded, but it goes right by where that driveway to is. So I guess the burning question is, I mean, is Hebron Road? And again, I know you don't know and maybe the transportation people know, but would Hebron Road then hook into the driveway to? Which would effectively make it a site into the school. So I just would like clarity on that because roads are very expensive to build. They're also very bad for the trees and nature. So it would be better to not build two roads if they're right next to each other. So my question is, will it in the future attach to the school that is Hebron Road? Well, I think that that, I appreciate that question, Christa Kukuro City Attorney's office. I think, the board is sort of constrained with the existing, by the existing conditions. And so anticipation of future projects that may or may not happen, I think unfortunately can't really weigh into the board's decision-making today. I think you have to sort of consider what's being presented to you as is. Okay. Yeah, please. Madam City Attorney, please, I wanted to follow up on the prior matter that we were talking about, please. Christa Kukuro City Attorney's office. The prior matter that we were talking about was the recommendations for roadway improvements. And I think the crux of the matter is who will be paying for them. And I believe that Mr. Davis spoke on behalf of DPS saying that DPS was expecting to pay for those improvements. And most certainly if that was an inaccurate hearing on my part, please, please correct me. But if that is- I'm sorry, for the record, we said we had budgeted for those improvements. So we are in a seam at risk of construction delivery method. And so as we get further along in terms of bidding this workout, those as well as other budgeted items will be considered at what time. Thank you. With that being the case in other projects of this type, the city will sometimes require, excuse me, there will be a condition on the approval just stating this that kind of the nature of the improvements and the expectation of payment. And I realized that this is a matter that we're discussing sort of in real time. And so Ms. Smith, we have a motion. I need to check in with staff about the language specifically, but I can drop it into the chat for your consideration and for your client's consideration as we sort of proceed. I know that you mentioned not wanting to necessarily continue the case, but I do think that this is a matter that has to be addressed because there are significant consequences for the city if this is not clarified. Can I respond to that briefly, Mr. Chair? Please. I mean, one question that I have is, I'm not entirely clear why such a, I guess the ask here was a clarification. Like where in the review factors or the findings for the special use permit is this a consideration? I mean, I understand that it is absolutely a consideration for the city to be thinking about, but it doesn't appear to me to be something that the board needs to be reviewing at this time or making a finding on this time in order to approve the special use permit. And it may just be that I have missed it. So if maybe the city could clarify that, that would be very helpful. Mr. Chair, may I? Please. Thank you. Christopher Grocery, Attorney's Office. So there's a statute that sort of kind of governs this. And so in addition to what's being considered today, there's a statute that influences this decision-making. And I see that my colleague, Don O'Toole, who is also in the Attorney's Office has joined. And I believe he has a bit more experience dealing with these types of improvements in the statute. And Mr. Chair, if it's okay with you, I would like Mr. O'Toole to speak on this. Please, thank you. I apologize, may I jump in briefly just so that I can understand what Mr. O'Toole is gonna to speak on. I just, I understand the statute and I'm aware of the statute and I've worked with the statute before. Again, I understand that that is something that sort of overlays some of these projects. I guess my question, and maybe Mr. O'Toole can speak to this. My question is really whether that statute is something that the Board needs to be considering today as part of its findings on the review factors for the special use permit. That's the only question that I have. So I'd appreciate any clarification that Mr. O'Toole can provide. Planning department, Eliza, I was speaking one night, stop sharing the screen because we do not have to swear and don to speak before we can provide any type of additional information. I'll also just note a little bit to speak precursor to Lindsay's question. The site plan, part of the special use permits, the site plan has to be quote unquote ready for action. And therefore, in this case, the transportation improvements are part of that site plan. Therefore, we're just wanting to make sure that if the Board hypothetically goes forward with approval of this case and subsequently the site plan, and then there are changes as a result of the transportation improvements, not being within budget or things of that sort, those changes would then result in you all having to come before the Board again because those would be considered consensual changes. So I do understand that it may seem as though this is not in line. However, this is an effort from staff as well from all of us as staff to ensure that we can proceed forward one time in hearing this. So that's, I want to add that in. I'm sure Don might have more to add in. That probably sounds a lot better than what I just said. So I will turn the floor over to Mr. Meadows to swear in Mr. Atul. Thank you, Eliza. Good morning, Mr. Atul. How are you, sir? Good morning, Board. It's my understanding that as an attorney, I don't need to be sworn in. But I don't know if the Board actually needs to take the practice. I thought that attorneys were always sworn. However, I'll defer to the wisdom of Ms. Kukaro. Mr. Kukaro City Attorney's Office, we do not typically swear in attorneys because we are governed by kind of our own code of ethics. So. Thank you. Thanks. Mr. Atul. Good morning, Board and Ms. Smith. Sorry we're meeting this way. We'd love to meet you in person and the applicant. Donald Atul, I'm with the City Attorney's Office. And I agree completely with what Eliza just said. A concern I have in moving forward with approving this minor special use permit, showing the current transportation improvements in places, that means that those improvements have to be bill. But as I'm sure the Board is aware of based on the discussion this morning, at this point, we don't know who is gonna pay for those improvements. And the way the statute works is once Durham Public Schools gets all of its improvements in place, and if it gets a minor special use permit approved that shows those improvements, they're free to build it, build those improvements, and then later send a bill to either DOT or the city for the construction of those improvements. And so what I think is critical at this point, just speaking for the city, but I know the DOT has similar concerns based on other schools I've worked on, there needs to be some agreement upfront of who is paying for the transportation improvements. And typically, if the applicant is not gonna pay for them and the city can't or doesn't want to pay for them, then the city doesn't want those improvements shown on the plan that's presented for approval. And so to Ms. Smith's question, without knowing whether agreement has been reached on those issues, it's unclear to me whether this plan should move forward or not, because I don't know if the city or DOT is gonna agree to pay for those improvements. And we don't have clear language saying that this DPS is voluntarily proffering this and they are gonna build it despite this minor special use permit application. I hope I didn't muddy the waters too much. Lacey, are you saying Mexico is gonna pay for the wall? My guess is that Mexico is not gonna pay for these streets either. And so the only, I agree with Ms. Cucarro's position that I think this case should be continued until DPS and city transportation and they're not at this meeting and DOT agree what improvements are really required and who's gonna pay for them? Because I know even DOT sometimes takes the position that if the school isn't gonna pay for them, then they don't wanna construct them either. So we need to know that information before this minor special use permit is approved that shows these improvements being made. May I respond, Mr. Chair? Please. So I understand Mr. Toul's argument and position of the city. It is a bit of a surprise because it was not flagged in the recommendation by the city. So it is not something that I haven't had an opportunity to discuss with my client. Would it be possible? I know Ms. Cucarro has said that you were working on a motion, I think the recommendation here is to continue this. Would it be possible to take a brief five minute recess so that I can consult with my client on whether Durham public schools would agree to continue this so there could be these conversations behind the seat before we come back to the board? Let's make it a 10 minute break and yes. Thank you very much. Do we need a motion or can we just take a recess? We need a motion. I will entertain a motion for a 10 minute recess. The LACM moved that we'd take a 10 minute recess returning at 10.55. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any post? We are in recess until 10.45. Thank you. 10.55. Correct Delacy, 10.55. So Chad, Chad, can you hear me? I can hear you. Right, so as chair, you got the authority to manage the meeting. So you don't have to ask for a motion with regard to how the meeting is conducted. If you want to take a 30 minute break, you can, you actually have the authority to do that. Thank you, sir. I just want to let you know that that's all. You're the man. Thank you. I appreciate that. Okay. And we are almost back. Give everyone another moment. I appreciate everyone's patience while we work this out. I do not see Ms. Smith at her desk. She's back. I think we are ready to proceed. Ms. Smith, do you have any in likeness on where we are? Thank you. I appreciate it. So, first of all, I just want to make sure that it's on the record, the Durham public schools, you know, our position is that the, you know, who is paying for the roadway improvements is not one of the factors for a special use permit. I understand that the city's argument is that it underlies the approval of the site plan. My understanding based on the city staff's presentation is that the site plan is free and clear of comments and ready for approval. So it's a little bit irregular that this is coming up at this place. And as a point of procedure, we would just like it to be on the record that this is not something that we feel is appropriate at this juncture and is appropriate for consideration as part of the special use permit. That said, and I don't know what the, I know that Ms. Coocrow had said that there was a, there was a, some language that was coming up. I would say that the school district is willing to at least, you know, concede that it is, it is not intending to request reimbursement from the city for these roadway improvements. Thank you. Thank you. I will mention that, you know, we have a site plan before us. The site plan has a circulation system proposed upon it. We're asked to make a decision about whether or not the circulation system is or is not safe or healthy or meets the review factors. If we come to find that the plan that's before us might not happen, it's difficult for us to make that determination. So it puts the board in a difficult position in terms of approving something that may actually not exist or might not exist at some point in the future. So I appreciate you working with us and resolving this. I believe staff is working on a condition. While that happens, I think there's still a fair amount of other items to discuss and so, you know, with that, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, if I may, just one, I just wanna address one concern that you just raised before we move on. I will say that there is a plan to make these roadway improvements and these roadway improvements will be made. There is no intention for the plan to change. The site plan that is under approval by the board, there is no intention for that to change. The only question here is whether, you know, who is going to pay for those improvements. So just in case the board continues to have questions about that, that, you know, I'm hopeful that that will alleviate any concerns about that piece. Thank you. Have you, are there any other experts, professionals that you would like to call at this point? No, Mr. Chair. Again, you know, we, I think that unless Mr, I don't believe Mr. Ranky has anything else to add to his description of the traffic impact analysis, but if the board has questions that may need to be answered by experts, we will have those experts available. Thank you. Thank you. I do anticipate some questions from members of the board, but before we move to that, I would ask that whomever you would like to speak on lighting, give us a quick understanding of what is proposed on the site plan with emphasis on the athletic facilities to the, I guess, the Northeast and Northwest of the site. Absolutely, Mr. Chair. And I believe that the, it is either Mr. Campbell or Mr. Forrester, who have worked, or maybe both of them who have worked on the lighting specifically, and I'd ask them to go ahead and unmute. It's Mr. Forrester. Mr. Forrester, hi, good morning, how are you? Good, how are you? Good, can you just provide the board with a quick overview of your role in this project? Sure, I'm the electrical engineer responsible for the design of the power system and lighting systems for the building itself and for the site lighting, building, mounting, site lighting, and the athletic site lighting. And what's your, what is your general experience if you can provide a general overview of the project? I have a BS of electrical engineering from Virginia Tech, graduated in 2008, and I've had my electrical PE license since 2012. Thank you very much. Mr. Chair, I would like to attend Mr. Forrester as an expert in the site lighting. Is the question for you, is the license from North Carolina or is it from another state? Yes, North Carolina, thank you. Any objections from the board? So, Tinder. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Forrester, can you provide a general overview of, well, first of all, in your professional opinion, do the, does the lighting design in the site plan meet the all applicable requirements? Yes, they do. Can you provide a general overview of the athletic lighting and give us a description of what that looks like? Sure. I don't know if it'd be possible to bring up maybe an overall site plan so we can kind of look at that. Yep, I will bring that up here now. The same sheet from before. There might be a little bit of a lag in which you all see it. All right, so the portion of the design that we focused on or that we performed was the athletic field lining for the soccer fields, the football fields and the baseball fields and the tennis courts. And so for those facilities, I guess I'll start with the soccer field. We have four athletic lighting poles. There's 70 foot poles. Yes. I'm sorry. Would you be able to turn your video on, please? I'm sorry, I don't have video capability where I'm at. Ferny, we go with that. Is that okay? Chris, I could go to city attorney's office. It is our preference to have video. I think in the past we have an instance where people either call in or don't have access to video. We have allowed, obviously, not having videos. I can move into Steve Campbell's office. We're in the same location and use his video if that's acceptable. That would be great if it can be done in a timely fashion. If not, it's fine to go ahead. Sure, let me just move over there real quick. Can you guys hear me? And see you. Awesome. Sorry about that. Thank you very much. All right, so back to the fields. We were talking about the soccer complex that has four poles surrounding it. They are 70 feet high poles. I think most of the poles we have on this project are 70 foot high with aimable sports field lighting. The basis of design for those lights is Muscoe, which I don't know how familiar you may be with that, but it's generally that system has aimable fixtures and they aim the fixtures and set the lumen outputs for those fixtures basically to meet the North Carolina Sports Field Lighting Association requirements in terms of the lumen output. The UDO requirements when it relates to sports field lighting, basically the requirements have to deal, have to do with the distance the poles are from surrounding residential properties, which that distance limitation is no closer than 100 feet, which we have met that with the design parameters. And then there are some limitations on the hours which those light poles can be operated and it deals with basically when the events are occurring. So with that being said, the control system is going to be programmed to operate within the hour criteria and we've met the distance limitations to the surrounding sites. Not sure what else you may want to know about those various fields. Just wanted to make sure that you had an opportunity to speak, I would anticipate there to be some discussion about lighting shortly. Okay, gotcha. Mr. Forrester, I'd like to ask a follow up question. Just clarification, the height of the lighting you said there are 70 foot poles. How does that compare like the level of the lighting, the height of the lighting, how does that compare with the properties, the closest properties from the residential property? I was looking at that, the closest property that just based on rough measurements because we show locations for the poles but in all reality and construction it's not gonna get installed exactly where we showed it but the closest properties are between 130 to 140 feet away from the closest pole. Thank you. And do you have information regarding the height of those poles versus the height of the properties in terms of whether those poles are lower than the properties or the same level of the properties? The actual structure on the property. I don't know that, I don't have that information readily available. Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you for that. Are there, if you have nothing else, Ms. Smith I'll ask the board if they have any questions for you or for any of the experts that you have tendering. I have no other, I have nothing else at this time. So again, we're happy to answer any questions at the board. Thank you. Any questions of the applicant? Lacey, I have a question for the lighting and Mr. Forrester, can you tell me, talk a little about light spillage or light pollution? You said it was a hundred feet away. My next door neighbor's house has got a light that's a hundred feet away and I can read by that light. How much pollution can we expect the spillover to be? We have not performed the lighting calculations at the property line because the UDO specifically states that we are not required to meet any particular light spillage requirement when it comes to the athletic lighting. The only requirement in the UDO is that it needs to be at least a hundred feet away. And then it has to operate within those particular hour timeframes. So I don't have that information to be able to speak to exactly how much light would be spilling over during the actual events. Thank you. Other questions? Mr. Tara. Yeah, a few for several folks. I guess, let's start with traffic with Mr. Renke. Just looking at the district boundary for Northern High School in location, the existing school location of both site. It looks like we're really kind of shifting this towards the southern part of the district, this new facility and that would lead me to think that the majority of the traffic is traveling up and down Roxboro and through the intersection of Infinity and Lada, which is a very challenged intersection in many ways. And now NCDIT has some plans for redway improvements along this corridor. And it was just curious looking through your TIA, but like you didn't study or analyze anything north of Seven Oaks. And just curious if during the scoping meeting or any other part of the process you had conversations with DOT and expanding your study area and if their future plans were factored into your analysis. So to answer that, you are correct, Seven Oaks was included in the addendum where we considered that it actually wasn't even in the original TIA as anything that was required by the city or NCDIT to study. Also correct, we do have the majority of the traffic. Some of the things that came up during many meetings with the DOT and city staff was just the nature of a lot of the parent trips. The reason we've gotta have signals is you've got a lot of left turns going into the site. It's hard to do along Roxboro, especially in the evening when everybody's kind of heading back home it's got that sort of very distinct pattern where it's got a lot of southbound in the morning and then a lot of northbound in the evening in that area, a lot of traffic overall. One of the things is we actually not only followed MSTA guidelines, which is once again the NCDIT branch that deals specifically with schools to look into things like trip generation and all but we studied the existing site also to kind of see patterns and trips and such. So there was some consideration that some of these parents would likely be possibly going into work in the morning and heading southbound dropping off students those sort of things. There were no reductions that were taken but in terms of the study area sort of some of the reasons they determined that is some of the traffic's currently on the road for the existing school some of those parents would likely to be so they didn't extend it that far out the city or NCDIT due to some of the reasoning that came up with those sort of things. So it was not studied. It is a fairly sizable for a school it's got about seven study area intersections that we had didn't extend that far beyond. I think the logic there is some of that traffic is already on the road. Some of the trips that would be expected for the school would be like I said parents that'll drop off their children on the way down to their job, things like that. But it is something as you get closer to the site they definitely wanted us to study seven Oaks and then the site driveways that is a big reason what you were saying were a large percentage of the traffic. I think there's also some that would be coming from the east that technically comes from the south but not far south because we're right on that boundary line. So does that sort of answer? I know like I said, I don't have data or information or any analysis there. It wasn't required by city or NCDIT staff in any of the scoping. It wasn't actually even brought up to discuss potential problems there or anything. Okay, and so your analysis took into account existing conditions today with the additional sort of future projections for DIT and didn't. Correct, so this has been going on long enough that the counts were done pre-COVID. So there's no problems with adjustment factors and some of the things we had to do with newer studies but we were projecting up to the future year in terms of growth and such in the area. And then like I said, there were, you know that things where there might be some potential roadway improvements that would be planned as we're outside our study area. So we did include the growth of the area as well as the school site traffic itself. Thank you. Then I had a question for Mr. Loring regarding stormwater strategy. Now I understand we're in the falls basin here which is challenging in its own right but looking at this plan, I see I'm counting correctly six stormwater control measures which is very expensive, not just to construct but the fees and the annual inspections and the maintenance and so forth that go with these. We'd just like to hear a little bit more about your stormwater strategy and how you came to this being the best solution for the site. Sure. Well, the targets that we had to meet for Durham were basically there's two, I don't wanna get too much in the weeds but we were designing these basins to meet the one year, the two up to the 25 and even included looking at the 100 year storm. And so we did analysis at each buffer location where each pond was for the one year and then overall impact analysis at the Northern line up against the neighborhood where we have the stream the perennial stream in the center and then of course the other one to the east. And a lot of the primary reason why they are located where they are is there are a lot of discharge points that are occurring and we're also trying to get the proposed grading to actually get the runoff to each one of them. So each one is placed such that we can get the impervious areas to each location. So the fields to the Northwest primarily drain to the stormwater control just to the Northeast of the track the driveways to the South are lower in some ways. And so that drainage and plus with working around retaining walls because there are retaining walls on this site that get directed to the one just south of that middle drive. And then the one that's just north of the Southern drive is primarily covering drainage from that Southern drive. The parking lot, the student parking lot is primarily entering in the stormwater control just to the West of the student parking lot. The large one to the Northeast is primarily covering the building and the parent loop and the bus loop and the ball fields and half the tennis courts. And then the small one to the North is picking up the driveway that's running to the North and some of the tennis courts. So due to the slope of the roads trying to tie into the existing connection points in the nature of the grading for a large, well, we can just say multiple pancakes or plateaus or whatever, there's a lot of big flat areas that are involved with a school site. So one of the challenges is to also keep the drainage patterns similar to what we're out there. So we're part of the analysis is trying to keep the drainage to go in the relative basins that they are in. Obviously, you know, when you have a flat area some of it will go into say to the East and some of the other to the North of it might go to the West. But generally we're balancing that out because we're also utilizing these SEMs for erosion control purposes as well. So, but that's how we got there. And so we're meeting Durham's requirements as far as all those different storm events. Essentially existing environmental conditions and constraints kind of lead to everything having to be broken up the way you've done it here versus, you know, one large facility, is that there? Yes, yes, there are essentially two primary ones. They both go to the North, but the way to get the programming in for the school with the parking lots and the fields and whatnot, you know, based on the impervious areas that they generate you have to provide space and sometimes you have to do it in a couple of locations rather than a single one. I understood. And are you capturing and treating the runoff from the athletic fields as well or just the impervious surface? The athletic fields are all going into these storm drainage systems. So, yeah, I would say they, yes, the fields, the grass areas are going into the devices as well. Just concerned with proximity to the buffers that any fertilizer or so forth would, you know, naturally drain also appreciate capturing that. I think the last comment I had at this point really pertains to safety. Looking at the soccer field and the proximity to Roxboro Road, it looks like the Southwest corner is only going about 50 feet off the edge of the roadway. It looks like if I'm reading the plans correctly, there's a six foot fence. Having been a former club and high school soccer player, I know that some athletes sole purpose of being on the field is to clear the ball as far as they can from the box. At this level of play, you know, some of these athletes can kick a ball 50 plus yards without even trying. So, I'm concerned that six feet is not adequate for that fence that close to Roxboro and that soccer balls will be kicked into Roxboro Road fairly regularly. Then just curious if anybody for an applicant team could speak to that. And if there was consideration for a taller fence, either 12 or maybe even 16 feet along the section of the field, along Roxboro Road. If I can piggyback off of that for a second, that's also gonna be used for lacrosse and lacrosse balls travel very far as well and can damage a windshield. So. Before the applicant chimes in, this is Eliza Monroe with the playing department with regards to the fence height. There are standard permissible heights for fences. I believe it's not when it's not within the street frontage, the maximum it could be is I wanna say six feet without the approval of a minor special use permit. So the heights that you mentioned, Mr. Tarrant, the 12 feet height is a little bit higher than what's standardly permitted. Even if it's out of the street frontage, the maximum height is eight feet, as opposed to 12 feet. That height would need actually to come before you all for approval for a minor special use permit. So I wanted to chime in with a UDO tidbit about 12 feet as in the order for a height before the applicant responds. Is that specifically for athletic fencing? That's for all fencing. So that would be for a storage yard, for a home, a commercial facility, a school in this case. The maximum height outside of the street yard permitted by right is eight feet. Street frontage, excuse me, is eight feet. Anything higher or taller than that would need to come before the board for a minor special use permit. And Ms. Smith, while you're talking about this, please also talk about the discus area that is not within offense, if you wouldn't mind. So if you could kind of wrap all that up in a nice set of responses, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you. I think maybe Mr. Downing might be the best person to speak to this. Yeah, so I thank Eliza for jumping in there. So that's exactly why you're seeing the six foot fence. There's strictly the code requirement. I don't think that the school system would necessarily object to providing a taller fence in that area, a plumber quest or a part of this minor special use permit approval. If it were to be approved, maybe add a condition to approve a certain height fence in that area. The discus, we have the cage where there's fencing around the cage where the discus throwers throw, but we have not provided fencing in the throw area. I imagine we could do so. I don't know that that would necessarily keep the discus in that area, but I think adding fencing there would not be a problem. Other questions? I have a few. These relate to circulation, parking, lighting, compatibility and safety. And so I'll start with the circulation kind of a question. If you wouldn't mind, could you please give me a better understanding about what is going on with Old Well Street? I believe I heard you say that's an entry for buses and for staff. Is that, did I hear that correctly? That's correct. That's for bus and limited staff. And there's no gate there. I see that there's a gate on the student driver service entry, which I guess is designed to keep students from going past their parking lot. The plans show a hammerhead inside the property for Old Well, I guess if somebody makes a mistake and goes down this road when they're not supposed to, is that hammerhead proposed to remain or is that coming out? It wasn't clear. So the hammerhead is reserved public right-of-way. Okay. They're per UDO requirements. They needed a public turnaround. So that's what we are. We are reserving the right-of-way for a public turnaround. It is not being built at this time. So basically it's a straight shot for the buses as limited staff. And you're correct that there was a gate at the student drive to separate that use. Okay. So that would prevent a bus from making a right. Were it to come down Old Well, it would have to take a left because there's a gate there. That's correct. Okay. That's very intentional to keep bus and student separate and keep students and staff separate. Right, right. So I assume all of the bus traffic will be coming that comes to this site will come down Old Well Street. Correct. Okay. Next question. Parking for sports events. I assume people who are coming to sit in the bleachers for the football stadium or the track or the soccer will park in the student parking lot? Is that the plan? That's correct. Okay. And there's a pedestrian access way and lighting for them to get back and forth safely. Correct. Along the north side of the drive that crosses the creek there, there's sidewalk. Okay. Will there be no parking signs along the student driver service entry exit road from Roxboro to the parking lot? There currently is not. Okay. I ask because I have a student athlete who attends night things and we often have a lot of on street parking that makes for a very unsafe situation, particularly at night with parked vehicles along the access way. So that's why I'm asking the question. I assume that there will be a PA systems for the stadium and also for the soccer field. Will there also be a PA system for the softball field and baseball field? I believe we're providing infrastructure for a PA system but I believe the PA system is going to be furnished and installed by the owner. Okay. So there will be the ability to have PA though you may not be installing it. It could eventually make its way out to the baseball and softball fields. For all the fields we're providing infrastructure. Okay. And could you tell me the relative elevation of the baseball field and the softball field relative to the homes to the Northwest? I see the building average grade is 364 feet. I assume the baseball and softball fields are approximately at that elevation. The homes and development that are outside to the North and West. Are they above or below the 364 elevation mark? Let me check the blow up grading plan. If you got another question, let me look. I do. I've got one more question about existing tree cover particularly along the, I guess it's the Northern lotline the one that's shared with the residential lots that are shown to the North of the multi-purpose field and the in the stream area. Yeah, we've had all the trees surveyed on the site. I don't know if you've gotten a chance to look at the sheets that there is existing trees in the 30 foot perimeter buffer. Okay. I asked the question because I see retaining walls for portions of the softball field and I assume that the wetlands are lower than the baseball field. And so I'm thinking that perhaps the baseball field is higher relative to the homes but I'm not sure and I wanted to ask that question. Yes, the baseball field is higher. It looks like by about, I don't have a topo much into adjacent property but maybe about 10 feet and that's the infield. So yeah, it's about 10 feet higher than the brick building there right there at seven oaks where seven oaks stubs out. Okay, last question. I saw that there was bleachers and so forth for the stadium, are there bleachers or spectator seating for the softball field and baseball field? There is. Okay, where is that sort of? So on the softball field, if you kind of see the two dark rectangles, those are for the softball and then the two dark rectangles for the baseball or just to the south and east of that. Thank you. Those are my questions, thank you. Mike, you still have your hand up. Yeah, sorry, I said one question. I was curious if will the football field be used for competition or is that really a practice field? As far as I know, and Frederick, you can correct me, the stadium is definitely for conference competition play. This proposed, because I guess what I'm asking is just as it relates to lighting and timing of typical football games, I believe Northern currently uses Durham County Stadium. I'm just curious from a noise and lighting standpoint what the alternatives might be there. This is it's this school's own stadium, its own identity and they will plan on playing their competition games at this field. Fred, can you speak to the, I just want to make sure that Mr. Tarrant's question is answered. It sounded to me like you were also asking about practices as well, Mr. Tarrant. More curious about the competition because typically our football games are usually Friday nights around seven o'clock or so. And so football practice is typically just after school. So I was just curious as far as the level of noise if there were going to be games hosted here that extends the lighting hours, extends the noise hours, et cetera, understanding all within the city's ordinances, but just trying to get a better sense of what impacts it might be on adjacent properties. Thanks and Fred, can you jump in with that from that one? Yes, good morning, it's still morning. We do intend on having competition games on the football field. We do have a multi-purpose area to the east of Old Wells Street. So that's where practices will be primarily held or yes, so that's ideally where those practices will be held. Thank you. Other questions for the applicant? I've got one. Oh, please, please. Sorry, handicapped parking near the football stadium and the soccer field, will that be in that little circle? That's correct. That's specifically for those spaces are specifically for ADA and any special use that the athletic director and principal deems necessary for the event parking. Okay, thank you. Weymour also has her hand raised, Eliza Monroe from the playing department calling on Ms. Weymour. Thank you. Just to go follow on onto the question about the bus traffic on Old Well into the neighborhood. Was there any consideration of sidewalking into along Seven Oaks or into that neighborhood coming from the property for pedestrians? There was no much like the traffic improvements. There's no requirement to provide offsite improvements. It's not owned by the developer in this case during public schools. And we have not been requested to do that or it's not been required in the union. Well, will there be sidewalks along Old Well where the buses are still on the property? Coming up. The Durham public school system there, we are providing a sidewalk to the property line at Old Well Street. Okay. Other questions? I'm not seeing anyone from the board child that has their hand raised. I probably will stop sharing my screen to open up for any other deliberation from other people that are signed up just so we can see everyone. Thank you. That sounds, we may need to bring it back up, but yes, please. At this point, I think we would like to hear from the folks who are interested in speaking in support of the application. Eliza, I think there's maybe, I don't know, 10 or 11 people or so. Is it possible for you to call on those people so that we've got a little bit of a semblance of order about getting through that testimony? Is that a possibility? That is a possibility. So when everyone signs up, they just sign up as proponents and that does include the applicants themselves. So in that case, Lindsay's considered a proponent. So if those individuals who are here as proponents to speak in favor and not just proponents to provide expert testimony, if you could please raise your hand, that would be the easiest way. If not, I can go through really quickly and try and get a list for everyone. It looks like Mr. If you're speaking in favor, please raise your hand so that we can call on you so that Eliza can call on you. I will remind you that we would like to keep testimony to three to five minutes. Please try to limit any discussion of hearsay and please try to avoid repetitive comments. If you're simply there to support someone who has said something who spoke prior to you, you can just say that and that would be great. We don't need to hear. I love this project nine different times. So with that in mind, Eliza, please. I'm looking through the list very quickly and it looks like a majority of the proponents that signed up for this case are experts in this testimony. The only person who has what looks like a personal email address that signed up as a proponent is Mr. Madison, who we mentioned earlier, did not say here when we called roll for him to attend. So I don't think there's anyone else that is here from the general public that's not an expert that is here to speak for this case. If I'm incorrect, please speak now. But I do think that it was just that individual and the remaining persons on this call are proponents and or opponents of the case. Okay, last call for anyone who wants to speak in favor of this proposal. Please raise your hand or turn your microphone off. Hearing none, we will now give the folks who are here in opposition to the project an opportunity to speak. We will try to do that the same way. Eliza will call on you and the same elements that I mentioned before about trying to be concise, try to avoid repetition and try to keep your comments civil, that would be great. Thank you. Eliza, please. I'm going to Eliza and our staff speaking. I'm going to speak in advance of, I'm gonna call Mrs. Vickers, Mary Vickers in advance. From what I understand, Mary has kind of created a agenda of persons who will be speaking and that they have all self-appointed themselves as a specific representation for certain concerns each person. So I'm gonna actually turn it over to Mary Vickers to kind of orchestrate how they would like to proceed forward. Very fantastic. Thank you, Ms. Monroe. There are six of the old farm neighbors who wish to speak as opponents to this. We will begin with Ms. Mary Abrams. Thank you. My name is Mary Reader Abrams and I am a proud member of the old farm community. As a property owner and a resident of the old farm neighborhood, I adamantly oppose the minor special use permit requested to allow a school to locate within a residential zoning district. To this end, I will discuss the character of our neighborhood. Old farm is one of the oldest and most active neighborhoods in Durham. Though we are a mixed community, it is predominantly black with a large number of retirees. My husband and I moved to Durham in 1973 and into the old farm neighborhood at that time. We chose old farm for a number of reasons, the layout of the community, the different types of homes they offer, the spacious living arrangement of the homes, the large yards where our children could play and roam safely, great school districts, great location to easy access to community resources while maintaining a degree of privacy. During the seventies and eighties, we witnessed an increase of a number of homes being built in our area and today approximately 500 homes are in the old farm area. Many of our neighbors made a lot of upgrading and expanding and other type of improvements to their homes and all of these improvements increased their values significantly. We are a close knit community. We communicate with each other on a frequent basis. We have a neighborhood association that meets monthly to discuss issues of concern as they relate to our comfort but our safety and the upkeep of our community. Our meetings are open to all of our neighbors who are encouraged to participate with us. We discuss all issues impacting our neighborhood and try to come to some consensus as to where we stand. In addition to open meetings, we also hold three affairs during the year that we invite all of our neighbors to come out and play with us. They are held at the old farm park. We also, excuse me, maintain frequent communication with each other throughout block captains and through flyers and through quarterly newsletters and through telephones and informal friendship and network groups and as well as posting on the next door which is a neighborhood social internet platform. As a community, we strongly oppose and object to any plan that promotes access all to or between the old farm neighborhood and the proposed new school. As a matter of fact, we strongly recommend that a restraining wall be erected to separate completely the two entities and prohibit the possibility of any free movement between them. We are also adamantly opposed to the erection of a stadium on this proposed site. Instead, we stress and highly recommend that Northern Continue to utilize the nearby recently renovated Durham County Stadium for the following reasons. It is close in close proximity to the school. It is ideally located away from established neighborhoods. It is easily accessible from both Duke Street and Roxbury Street. It possesses adequate facilities to accommodate the football program and most of all, it possesses adequate parking to accommodate all attendees coming to those activities. We also feel very strong that it is good financial sense as well as save taxpayers dollars to utilize an adequate existing facility. We do not oppose progress, nor do we oppose education, but we do oppose the invasion of our peaceful and wholesome neighborhood by buses and other vehicles requiring access to the proposed Northern campus. We know all too well from past history that such activities ultimately lead to the deterioration and destruction of neighborhoods, particularly neighborhoods of color. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Abrams. Ms. Abrams or Ms. Vickers, there was a mention that there is a neighborhood association in place. Are either of you speaking on behalf of the neighborhood association or are you here as neighborhood residents? I am actively involved and I think all of us that are speaking are very actively involved with the association and we're discussing various aspects of what we see as interest to us as a community. But is there a chair or a representative of the neighborhood association present who is speaking on behalf of the association? Yes, Leon. Who is that? Leon King. Okay, okay. All right, thank you. Our next speaker will be Gary Cossi O'Connor. Good morning, please. Good to unmute Gary. Unmute. Unmute. Gary needs to unmute. He's up. I can't hear you. Yeah, we're having some trouble hearing you. Well, we can help now. That's better, yes. Is that good? Yes. All right, should I start again? Please. Okay, sorry. All right, good morning. I'd like to thank the board of adjustment for allowing me to speak this morning. As a property owner or resident of the farm, I'd like to share my views in opposition to the minor special use permit requested to allow a school to be located within the residential zone district. I am Gary Cossi O'Connor, as I said. I am the owner of Flowers by Gary, a retail business located at 4914, almost at the intersection of Seven Oaks and Rocksville Road for the last 15 years. Also a resident of Old Farm Neighborhood for many years. We moved into Old Farm partly because it was literally in our backyard of our business, but mostly because it was quiet and a friendly atmosphere of the neighborhood. As an avid marathon runner, I like the ability to run my neighborhood with little window traffic and Old Farm provides it. Most time I'm able to run at any given day and see very few cars, but see many times morning and evening, neighbors walking, riding bikes, walking dogs. If Old Well was to be opened up as a bus route into New Northern High School, it would add approximately 100% more traffic. We would be dodging not only cars, but buses at a minimum of four times each day. This would be very hazardous for me as well as other people with kids riding bicycles, baby strollers and walking their dogs in the neighborhood. In researching the impact of property value in Old Farm, I looked into research as of March of 2020 done by Duke University, showing schools in a predominantly black neighborhoods may affect the selling price of homes as much as 20% less than other neighborhoods. Therefore, if a resident of Old Farm decides to sell a home, it could potentially bring 20% less than other homes in adjacent neighborhoods. Therefore, that would affect the tax base for homes sold in Old Farm and would be conserving less for many years to come and a decrease in the tax revenue for Durham County, not only affecting Old Farm neighborhoods, but Durham County as well, where the tax revenue builds and support buildings of future buildings and local programs. Also, I'd like to recommend on the Durham Public website school, website under bus transportation program policy, 6,400-6,460 states that public school buses shall be routed on state-maintained highways, municipal streets or other streets with publicly dedicated right-of-way. Policy 64.2 states that school buses shall not be routed on state or city-maintained primary roads and not into side roads or housing development. I do oppose a granting of this minor special permit. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Mr. Chair, this is Lindsay. Yes, ma'am. I'd like to object to Mr. Corsio-Connor's testimony. My understanding is he is not an expert in property valuation or appraisal values or in transportation issues. And I don't believe that he has been tendered as an expert. Noted on your objection about the property values as far as expertise on traffic, I'm not sure that he was positing one way or another. He does live there. I'll defer to the attorney if the attorney has any more guidance. Mr. Corsio-Connor, city attorney's office. I think it's your call, Chair. You said noted on the first objection in regards to property values. I guess I'm sure council for the applicant would clarify, but they may be looking for something more specific in terms of sustained on that objection if that's what you were intending to do or were you just noting it for the record? Yeah, I will agree that Mr. Corsio-Connor is probably an awesome florist and flower guy, but he is not a property appraiser. At least he did not indicate as such. So I agree that testimony regarding property value is probably not something that we'll be able to include in our deliberation. Our next resident is David Harris. Good morning. My name is David Harris and I am a resident of Old Farm. I'm also the parliamentarian for the Old Farm Neighborhood Association and also the safety committed chair. And I'm here opposing the approval of special use amount of special use permit. I'm a lifelong resident of Northern Durham. I'm 72 years old. So, and I'd like to thank you for allowing me to speak as I'm gonna speak with reference to concerns about traffic issues related to Roxburgh Road and Roxburgh Street. I remember as a teenager when US 501 was a two lane highway from Durham to Roxburgh and Old Farm was indeed a farm. As people began to move from the inner cities to the suburbs, subdivisions started popping up all over Durham, including Northern Durham. As a result, the North Carolina Department of Transportation has been steadily making improvements to the 501 since the 1960s. I moved to the River Forest subdivision in April, 1972 which is just north of the Eno River at US 501. At that time it was referred to as city out neighborhood because the developer and development of the neighborhood included some city services, but the area was still located in the county at that time. So, as a result, we paid special rates for those city services until the area was annexed into the city. I moved to the Old Farm subdivision in January in 1878 which is across the street from the Eno River from River Forest and adjacent to the proposed new location for the Northern High School. My wife and I are very active parents of three sons all of which attended Northern and attended and graduated from Northern High School. I was a member of the Northern High School Advisory Committee and also chair of the Booster Club for several years. Now, with reference to the concerns that I have with the site access points to the new proposed Northern High School, a vividly opposed opening up Old Whale Street to any Northern High School traffic due to safety concerns about 56 bus trips daily through the neighborhood with also bicycle and pedestrian traffic. Our neighborhood does not have sidewalks. So, the walking, the bike and pedestrians would be walking in the street with 56 bus trips daily through our neighborhood. Second, regardless to how you label the entry, it can say buses, pedestrians and bikes. If you open up the road, all the Northbound traffic would be coming through our neighborhood utilizing our streets without sidewalks. It's projected from the TIA that about 1800 students, 166 staff members and 28 buses and parents will be utilizing the school on a daily basis which will be generating about 19, a little bit over 1900 total additional trip per day. About 45% of that traffic would be going Northbound. 35% would be going Southbound. And... Mr. Harris-Ramskop, I have to be fair to the applicant and I understand exactly what you're talking about. You're concerned about the traffic. Are you a transportation engineer by trade or by expertise? I am not a transportation engineer. I am a resident. Understood, understood. And you looked on the website, that the school put together and that's what gave you the number of bus trips and teachers and so forth. Is that correct? It came out of the TIA, yes. Out of the TIA, okay, okay. So, I mean, again, would 1800... Please try to limit your testimony. If you're not an expert in traffic, I mean, I understand that's the concern but try to avoid making analysis or conclusion if that's not an expertise area. Okay, well, okay. Could I just refer to the TIA again with reference to delays in traffic? The 2019 TIA recommended it from a minute to a minute and a half delay with this additional traffic. In 2024, they were related to two to three minute delay in traffic, that's on Roxbury Road, but my concern is about opening up old Wales because old Wales will definitely deteriorate our neighborhood because of the additional traffic coming through there of the people going northbound from this location. Okay, thank you. Thank you, thank you, sir. And Mr. Chair, this is Lindsey Smith. Yes, ma'am. Just for the record, Durham Public School would like to object to Mr. Harris's testimony to the extent that he purported to provide analysis on the impacts of traffic to the old farm neighborhood. Understood, thank you. Our next resident is Carolyn Young. Morning. Carolyn? Yes, I'm there, I'm sorry. Good morning, I think we are just making it for morning. My name again is Carolyn Young. I'm going to be speaking as a property owner and resident and in terms of any of us being experts or none of us are, we are concerned neighbors. And in terms of the amount of time that we had to present this information to you in terms of getting expert witnesses, that has been an issue because of the, we were given this information at the beginning of January and you guys have had this information for way longer than we have. So just want to say that up front. Understood, yes, ma'am. Okay, thank you. I will be sharing my view as an opposition of the minor special use permit request to allow a school to be located within a residential district. I'm discussing the issue of flooding in support of my opposition. I've lived in my home on Rippling stream for 45 years and during that time, I've had three children attend Northern. I'm situated in a picturesque spot with the Inna River in my backyard. When we first moved here, we were told we were in a 100 year flood plan. Wow, 100 years sure has passed fast. I love being outdoors and working in my yard and that has always brought me great pleasure. As time has passed, I've become more and more concerned about the amount of flooding we are incurring from the Inna River. Many times, heavy rains have caused the river to rise, fill the bow-like area between the river and my backyard and then flow over into my yard. Over time, this incessant process has washed away my landscape timbers, my flower pots and my soil. In 1970s, heavy rains caused floodwater to damage at least two homes in the neighborhood that had to be demolished. One of these homes was only three lots away from my house. The old farm park, which is located at the end of my street, has suffered significant damage. The playground equipment had to be removed and will have to be relocated to higher ground. In addition to heavy rains causing flooding, we've also suffered damage from two hurricanes. When Hurricane Fran came through, my home was surrounded by water. We were told to evacuate. Some of us were taken out of the neighborhood by boat. Hurricane Florence also surrounded my home, but this time I left ahead of the storm. Upon my return, I had the insurance company sent out a flood adjuster to assess the damage. I was told I'd had 10 inches of water in my crawl space and three in my laundry room. Some of my neighbors and I had to replace duck work, insulation, HVAC units, et cetera. A rainy day should make you want to kick back and be lazy. If it's a long, hard rain, I have to be on alert. I keep a go bag ready in case I have to leave in a hurry. Sometimes I've just moved my car to higher ground in the neighborhood and waited out the storm praying for the best. I've spoken from my personal experience, but I speak for all my neighbors, even those who don't live on the river. We don't want any dredging or anything else done to the river or the creek or the tributaries that might cause more flooding than we already have with Mother Nature. One last note. Sometimes when we have heavy sustained rains, Rippling Stream Road floods. This impacts the whole neighborhood as Rippling Stream is one of only two roads that you can enter or exit the old farm community. Thank you. Thank you. I will speak next. My name is Mary Vickers. I am a retired nurse. I have a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Shaw University, a medical technology certification from Duke University and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I have been a resident of the old farm neighborhood for over 45 years. As a property owner and resident of old farm, I will be sharing views that are in opposition to the minor special use permit requested to allow a school to be located within a residential zoning district. I will discuss health and safety concerns as well as health disparities found in minority communities to support this opposition. Opening Owell Street and routing traffic through our neighborhood will have a detrimental safety impact on neighbors who use our streets for daily physical activities. It will also pose an additional safety hazard to the residents of the JFK Towers housing for the elderly and disabled. Some of these residents use motorized wheelchairs to access services offered in the business portion of our neighborhood. These residents already face significant challenges as they try to navigate busy roads in wheelchairs. Emissions from cars, trucks, buses and other vehicles are a concern for residents of this neighborhood because a vast majority of school buses are powered by diesel fuel. Diesel exhaust emits very fine particles of carbon and a mixture of toxic gases and chemicals. The United States Environmental Protection Agency has classified diesel exhaust as carcinogenic to humans. Benzene, a known component of diesel exhaust has also been classified as a human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. This agency is part of the World Health Organization and one of the goals of this group is to identify causes of cancer. They have found sufficient evidence that Benzene causes several forms of leukemia and increased risk of lung cancer and symptoms of allergic reactions. There's also some evidence of a positive association between diesel exhaust and bladder cancer. Light pollution has been associated with migraine headaches and seizures. As stated in the article, five things to know about communities of color and environmental justice by Jasmine Bell, April 25th, 2016. Communities of color have higher exposure rates to air pollution than their white non-Hispanic counterparts. Therefore, introducing and increasing the release of toxins into our neighborhoods is not in the best interest of our residents. Old Farm is a neighborhood comprised of predominantly black and brown people. It is of extreme importance to us that the residents of our community be given equitable consideration as policymakers, boards, and planning committees make decisions that will impact the health and safety of our community. The 2012 National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences article entitled, Environmental Inequality and Exposures to Airborne Particulate Matter Components in the United States by Michelle Bell and Kaita Ebisu described the concept of environmental inequality and environmental justice. They discussed larger health burdens from environmental stressors on minority populations. The United States Environmental Protection Agency uses environmental justice to refer to fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. And they note that such conditions reflect not only adverse consequences, but also a lack of positive environmental health, economic, or social benefits. Described in the article referenced above by Jasmine Bell are the higher incidents of air pollution, environmental toxins, and other disparities that impact the health of our minority communities. The article states that decades of studies have proven that environmental racism is a threat to the health and overall safety of communities of color across the country. But this is not a problem without a solution. Indeed, policy makers such as yourselves already have the tools to address this injustice and to develop policies in communities of color with these disparities in mind. We ask you to keep these issues in mind as you make decisions that will impact our community for years to come because we do not want our community to become yet another statistic. In conclusion, we the neighbors and property owners in the old farm neighborhood are opposed to granting this minor special use permit as it is planned. We respectfully request that any roads that connect directly from our neighborhood to the proposed school be stricken from the plans until another route is designated and approved for buses, pedestrians, and bicycle traffic. Thank you for this opportunity to share my view. Our next speaker will be Leon, I'm sorry. Go ahead, go ahead, Mr. The Durham Public Schools wants to object to Ms. Vickers' testimony to the extent that she is attempting to opine on the environmental impacts of environmental toxins and air pollution. She's not an expert on those issues. And also there is no evidence that she's presented that the school will in fact have any kind of environmental deleterious environmental impact on surrounding residents. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Leon King, our last speaker. Leon, Mr. King is our last speaker. Okay. Yes. Yes. Please sir, go ahead. Thank you. Thanks for coming. Please feel free to start. Good morning. Once again, I guess it's almost evening. My name is Dr. Leon King. I'm a retired research toxicologist for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. I have three degrees, a Bachelor of Science or Masters of Science from North Carolina Central University and earned a PhD in Toxicology from NC State. I have spent 27 years of my life examining the effects of diesel exhausts and emissions and classified, most of my work at EPA was used to classify diesel emissions and its particulates, gases and chemicals as carcinogenic. What I'd like to do in this proposal, one, I've been a resident of Old Farm for 47 years four of our children are graduates of Northern High School. And I would like to, as a property owner and resident of the Old Farm community, I would like to call the committee's attention or the Board of Justice's attention to the letter that was written and submitted to your board from the Old Farm Neighborhood Association and signed by our president. And it addresses the three concerns that we have in opposition to the special use permit. And it's clearly defined. So I don't have to read the letter, but briefly, we object to entrances and through fares, the dredging and filling of waterways and the proposed location of its stadium. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you, Mr. King. And thank you for submitting the letter. Are there, is there anyone else to speak on this application? Does anyone have any questions? Anybody on the board have any questions for any of the speakers? Okay. I think council, unless you advise me differently, I think it's appropriate to give the applicant an opportunity to respond to some of the comments that were made by the speakers. I need to speak. I'm sorry? I need to speak. Mr. Elizemore's staff here, Mr. Meadows, I do think there's some individuals that were not a part of that neighborhood association group, Mr. Bartel, and there might be some other persons. If we miss you, please speak now or raise your hand, but Mr. Bartel is the only person I can see. Hi there, Mr. Bartel, I see you, yes. Did you take the oath at the beginning of this matter? Were you here? Yes, sir, we did. Please take it away, sir. Okay, on your truck map, on the top, on the right-hand corner, the large part of land is mine. As far as the... No, okay, the water retention pond is big. What happens if it collapses? Number one, number two, how many gallons of water will that retention pond hold? If it rains one inch, a little over 27,000 gallons of water falls per acre. And all this water is gonna run off to my property, which some of the matters which is across the street from me puts about 3 million gallons of water on my property. They just approved another subdivision at Hebron and Denville, Hebron Village. That's gonna put another 3,000 gallons of water on my property. And with this project here, I'm gonna get another six million gallons of water from that property. So when it rains one inch, I'm gonna have 12 million gallons of water running across my property. I have talked to Deaner about cleaning the ditch out. Deaner told me that I could not touch the ditch unless I hand dug it. And I'm talking 400 feet of hand digging through woods. I can't do it. I'm 70 years old. You have a creek that's running across the property, which Deaner gave you permission to reroute. You know, to our creek and... Without discussing with us. Without discussing with us. Also your children, the kids are gonna go to go to school. They're gonna go up to Rocksville Road, walk down to Rocksville Road, go to stores and get hit. There's already been two fatalities on Rocksville Road as is. Monk Road and Rocksville Road needs to stop light. There's a wreck there almost every week. You can check it during police department on that one. All the buses is gonna come from Stadium Drive, up Hebron Road, turn down Monk Road, and then try to go on to Rocksville Road. You will have to have a light there at Monk Road. Now, my wife hopes to see a couple of things. Just a moment. Is she sworn? Yes, sir, she is. You might not have heard me the second time, but I did say, yeah. Okay. Would you mind speaking your name for the record so we can ensure that we have an adequate record of who all spoke today? My name is Diane Bartel at 4911 Deadfield Street. And I'm Julius Bartel. E-I-A-N-N-E. B-A-R-T-E-I. D-I-A-N-A, yes, ma'am. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Please, go right ahead. Okay, we have a lot of problems with the subject, well, the problem up there with the school. The noise would be horrible, plus all the bands playing and the games. And the old place you used to have was a whole lot more rural to do all that in. For instance, I can actually own a certain atmospheric conditions and the fall of the year, hear the games that they play over at the stadium and sometime even hear the score from my front porch. So I don't know what it's gonna do right up at me. All right, water retention pond is so big, if it collapsed, we figure that it could flood possibly half of our sub-anacres. And that's not right. Also, many gas station stores, food places to get beer, sigs and other stuff, though where they get a friend to go in and get it for them and then you're gonna have a lot of that going. Some kids will go over to Bojangles and Hardys and Taco Bell, et cetera. In other words, they'll be hit by traffic when they run across the road or in their car, they're gonna get hit, because that's horrible traffic any time of day. Quarry pit is to, you know, like we have the quarry, y'all do about a thousand feet from that end of that property where it comes into ours. The quarry pit is to be used for raw water storage in case of a drought. And many years ago, we had a drought and it was rationed and grown, and this area has grown a lot. The whole city and county of Durham has grown a lot since then. Also, school or other would pollute, causing runoff to the outlet for the quarry. Now, as you'd be, it's not other side of the outlet for the quarry, see. In other words, it would be putting oil, gas, brake fluids, et cetera, plus fertilizer and pesticides from that site right just before the outlet to pull it in from a high flow water into the quarry. That's in with the city already too. And quarry is owned by Durham, but they don't own around the quarry. And this dangerous calls Hanson, who owns the area around it that does, you know, aggregates. Hanson refuses to put gatekeeper or security there. Neither does the city. We suggested city put code box to let in cops, fire and ambulance. They said no. One child already has been hurt at 4.30 p.m. Sunday, July 12th on a motocross bike, a kid lost the control of the bike and he may lose his vision. Three years earlier, someone jumped to land in water from one of the rocks in the quarry. And he's now paralyzed. And that's just two of the worst. Then, let's say, the properties in area have had 40 plus years of dynamiting and are very unstable. And a lot of the houses in old form and Argonne Hills plus us have damage from blasting. All right, the quarry can no longer legally blast, but many houses and businesses already have damage. So no blasting. More rock on proposed site than old site. Well, you're complaining, but you didn't want to do it where the old system was because of the rock. Well, guess what? You're at the quarry now, you got even more rock. That's been proven by them. And do them. Yeah. Ma'am, we'll ask the applicant to talk about whether or not they'll do any blasting. The quarry that you're referring to, is this on the property in question? No, it's not, but it's about 800 to 1,000. You got kids dying in it, man. I understand, ma'am. Thank you. But the applicant doesn't have any control over what goes on in that quarry. Sure, we understand that. But to inform you what kids are going to do. Sure. I appreciate that. As a thousand feet from the end of your property line. Right. The concern is that it'll be an attractive nuisance to students on the campus. Moral responsibility, moral. Okay. All right, thank you. Is there anyone else to speak? Anyone else? Last call, anyone else to speak? Last minute of staff here. I'm not seeing any hands just to reiterate. If you want to speak, you'll need to unmute yourself and speak out loud. Okay. All right, thank you. Ms. Smith, please, if you would care to respond to any of the points that were raised, in particular, there was a direct question about the retention pond and its structural security. So please, anything that you would like to respond to. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, I'd like to re-admit some additional evidence from some of the answers and respond directly to some of these concerns that have been raised by the old farm residents. With respect to the flooding concerns and the retention ponds, I believe Ken Moran can speak to this. Ken, do you mind unmuting yourself? Sure, I'll be happy to. I'll speak first to maybe reinforce some things I had mentioned earlier. We did the analysis up to our property lines as required per the UDO. And we analyzed up to the 100-year storm. And that is generally the larger event that we follow and practice. And it was required by Durham. As far as the dam, the concern primarily of the, I guess the large stormwater device in the Northeast, the elevation of the embankment is really about, let's say eight feet at the highest point. When we start running into requirements to meet with the state regarding dam safety, we start approaching 15 feet as a requirement for the height. So we're about half that height. The structural intent of the design is to use an impervious clay core as well as putting in collards to prevent water leaking along a barrel. Which are required by Durham as well. The discharge point is at the top of the bank to the stream, which is a requirement from the state DWQ to provide a high-flow bypass of the larger storm events through the buffer, which is a requirement. That's why you see each one of the control measures across the site with the extensions to the streams. And the emergency spillway is a little further to the south. If it is incorporated during a large event, it would still enter the same stream in question. The stream just north of the east of their site, it does appear to be quite defined. So as well as the, I guess the question was also about the verticals, the elevation, the stand, the permanent pool of water is about elevation 341, which is comparable to some of the adjacent elevations of the property. So when there is a large event, most of the water will be going through the barrel. The rest would be going through the emergency spillway and the maximum height of the water is probably five feet inside the device during that event. And the other question I think was some concern about during construction, our plans are being reviewed by the state, the emergency control department, and we're meeting the 25-year storm design, which is a requirement because we're in the watershed. I see. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lorrain. Good question. Any additional questions for Mr. Lorrain? I do have some additional responses, but I didn't want to move on if the board wanted to pause for additional questions. I'll do that. Do any of the board members have any questions of the applicant on this matter? Okay. Please proceed, Ms. Smith. Okay. So I would like Mr. Rankie to go ahead and unmute himself. And I do think Mr. Rankie, can you speak to the concern? I believe there was a concern that was raised about the intersection between Monk and Roxburgh. Can you speak to that concern? Sure. And once again, to know the exact timing, I wish we had NCDOT here, but one of the reasons that wasn't considered as part of this study is that's already a spot safety study they've got going on at Monk and Roxburgh, as it is, I think it was mentioned there, is a crash history and such there. So I'm not sure where it stands with the funding, but I know that's something that during the scoping and TIA process, they indicated that that's something NCDOT is looking at providing a signal there. Once again, I'm not sure with the exact timeframe that would be if somebody from NCDOT were present, they could give more information, but it is something that it is acknowledged that there are safety concerns there. The reason they're not saying this as part of the school is there's already the idea to put a signal in at that intersection because of those existing safety concerns that aren't necessarily triggered by the school, but are already happening out there. And Mr. Ranky, just as a point of clarification, with respect to when you were going through the traffic impact analysis and you were working with both the city and the North Carolina Department of Transportation, did any party deem old well or the old farm neighborhood a capacity or safety concern throughout that process? No, they had us consider where essentially it would, most of the traffic would come out at seven oaks and Roxborough, they had us consider that intersection just because that's sort of your pinch point. I guess Roxborough has the heavy traffic so to see what's going on there, but the addition of the 28 buses coming and going and then some staff, it's likely not gonna trigger any capacity issues. So that wasn't anything where they had a specifically look at any of the interior intersections there, just where it would be at its worst at seven oaks and Roxborough. Thank you. Does the board have any questions for Mr. Ranky on this particular issue? I do and the other board, do any other board members have a question for Mr. Ranky on the transportation issue? I would appreciate a little bit of discussion about the bus routing and the decision process that was gone through to make the determination to route the buses through the neighborhood. Okay, that I think might be a school system question more than me. So I'd like them to address the exact reasoning of the bus routing and that's something, we considered in our analysis, but the reasoning I think would be best coming from them and I think it had to do with the eliminating conflict of students and buses, but I'll let them speak to that. Fair enough, thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Ranky. Yeah, Mr. Davis, is this a question that you can field? I will, however, I've recently rejoined during public schools about six months and so the initial decision was made prior to my arrival. However, historically, as we look to bifurcate student drivers as well as buses and staff, we look for opportunities where we can safely route students on the buses as well as student drivers and staff. And so it would be, it being necessary to find opportunities in which oh well, suffice that need. Could I ask another question, Mr. Davis? Sure. And I understand this is not your expertise and if I'm posing this question to you and there's a better person, please let me know. The buses that are coming through the neighborhood, that access way for the buses and the staff, do you expect that there will be an equal amount of traffic along old well that you would see at one of the other entrances or do you think that there would be less fewer number of vehicles along old well relative to the other entrances of the site? And I'm gonna save Mr. Davis as that's probably more of my alley. So it would be significantly less. A lot of the interior circulation and stuff, like I said, and I'll kind of weigh in to what he was discussing because it did come up in a scoping meeting where they were separating out the buses and students. So this is once again me speaking on behalf of something that was mentioned by Durham County Public Schools in a scoping meeting with the DOT and city staff is to eliminate that interaction between students and buses. They have the different access points. That access for the buses, like Keith was mentioning, there would be some, sorry, students and buses. There would be some staff that enter at the bus but it's a more direct route to kind of come in off of Rocksboro for probably most of the staff. So it would be mainly the buses. It would not be anywhere close to the traffic expected coming in off of the Rocksboro entrances just because you have the parents and the students coming in off of those which are much higher trip generators than the buses and some of the staff. A lot of them are no staff here. Just wanting to note that Mrs. Young has her hand raised. So I do not forget about that. Thank you, Eliza. I saw Miss Young raise her hand and I would like to give her an opportunity to ask a question of the staff. I'm sorry, of the applicant. Please, Miss Young. Yes, thank you. One of the things going, talking to transportation when you're talking about the traffic on Owell to access Owell, you've got to either come down my street Rippling Stream or Seven Oaks, the parallel road coming in. We've got, as I said, almost 500 homes out here and there's a lot of traffic out here. I know sometimes I can't cross the street going across, just to go across the street to see a neighbor, to walk across because of traffic coming in, because of the park traffic, the, what is it, what else is back there? There's the park, there's a Holt Association, there's a swimming racket club back here and seems like there's something else going on back here. So that's an issue that I'm concerned about. So how are you accessing Owell other than coming in from Seven Oaks or Rippling Stream? The other question I had was about the flooding issue. Some of that was, like I said, technical. All I know is that my land, my backyard floods a lot. Even with a heavy rain, it comes up. So with what you're building and the quarry and everything else that's going on, what guarantees do we have that there would not be more flooding? As I said, my road, I mean, I've had the water come up in my driveway that just comes in and floods in. So how do you address that? Pretty soon Rippling Stream could become, if more stuff comes out here, Rippling Stream could become part of the Eno River. So I'm just very concerned about that. Thank you. So a couple of questions posed there. Please, to the extent you're able, there was a question about access to Owell and then a question about flooding. Sure. Mr. Renke, can you provide information regarding the question about Owell? Sure. So the way NCDOT requested us look at that is kind of going very conservative and saying they had concerns about Seven Oaks and Roxboro. So absolutely most of the traffic, if it's not generated within that development, it would have to kind of come off of Roxboro. They had us consider that all of the traffic would come in at that intersection. So the traffic was considered, like I said, Roxboro has the very heavy volumes. That's the intersection that they were concerned most about capacity and safety. And that's sort of how we looked at that is, yes, we definitely considered the traffic coming in there. We know as it disperses throughout the neighborhood, some of those roads, they're not as heavy volume as Roxboro. So we kind of looked at the worst case and we had to make sure that it operated an acceptable level of service and delays and such. And so we did recommend signal timing adjustments out there, which is something the NCDOT is taking into consideration to better accommodate the traffic. Just from a standpoint of what's going on out there today, even just optimizing timings and with the new signals going in, sort of making sure that it will operate as the best it can at an acceptable level of service. Thank you, Mr. Ranky. Mr. Lorraine, do you have anything else to add with respect to the stormwater control measures? I know you've already spoken extensively about this, but is there anything else that you can add that might respond to the comments? Well, I think from the owner's perspective and for this project, I mean, we really can only analyze what we are required to analyze and meeting the 100 year storm event is above other communities. So I think that requirement is a little bit more conservative. Obviously, you know, river or any kind of an analysis of that impacting, that's way beyond the scope and probably not something that would be a part of the site plan review in my experience over all these years. It certainly wasn't a requirement for the UDL. Thank you, Mr. Lorraine. Mr. Chair, if the board has other questions, we'd be happy to entertain them. Otherwise, at some point, I would like to make a brief summary statement for the board. Any other questions from the board? I just had one clarification. This is Tarrant for Mr. Lorraine. Just wanted to confirm it as it relates to this application. There is not any floodplain on the subject property at all, is that correct? I can answer for him too. It's correct. There's no floodplain shown on the most recent FEMA floodplain maps. Thank you. Other questions? Okay, Ms. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the board and to the community members who have provided their feedback as well on this project. What I'd like to do briefly is just remind the board that the issue here today is approval of the minor special use permit. As we have discussed earlier, the site plan is under consideration. It is ready for approval. It is free and clear from any comments. And so it is appropriate for the board to consider approval of the minor special use permit today. There are a number of factors that under the UDO that the board must consider and take evidence on in order to approve this minor special use permit. Now, just to remind the board that the standard here for evidence is that it must make its decision based on competent material and substantial evidence. And so today here, we've provided you with a number of experts who have been qualified and tendered as experts in landscape design, in lighting design, athletic lighting design, in engineering, in traffic engineering, and in real estate appraisals and who have provided their opinion that this particular project meets all the requirements of the minor special use permit. And so, I know that the board has heard significant concerns from the community regarding traffic in the old farm neighborhood, the potential for floodwater and other concerns related to health and safety. And I would hope that the board would look at those in a couple of different ways. I think the first is, to the extent, as we mentioned earlier, to the extent that some of these folks attempted to provide analysis and opinion on traffic, the impact of traffic, the impact of real estate prices or the impact of this project on real estate prices. This particular testimony is not really appropriate for the board to consider because it has not been presented by experts. Now, that said, certainly the board can consider the concerns of the community members. However, many of them are not really... It's a little bit hard to say how they are related to, or if there's any evidence that they've really presented that this particular project will, in fact, have these significant negative impacts on their community. They have concerns about that, they have concerns about floodwater. Many of those are outside the scope of this project and outside the control of the Jordan Public Schools and the planning team here. And so I would simply say that with respect to those concerns, I think that the experts here have responded to many of those concerns. And also, to the extent that there are concerns raised about hypothetical impacts, there hasn't been really any competent evidence that has been presented to support those negative impacts. And so I would say that those should not really weigh into the board's consideration today. The final thing that I wanna raise is I believe that we had spoken earlier that the city would be seeking a continuance to address the issue of payment or reimbursement for the property improvements that are on the site plan as we conveyed earlier, the board, the Jordan Public Schools is certainly willing to, you know, proffer to the board today that, you know, that it is willing, it is absolutely committed to making those roadway improvements and obtaining the required permits for those and it will not seek reimbursement from the city for those. Now, I understand that the city still would like to seek a continuance and I'll certainly lead that to the city attorney to address. However, I would say that, you know, as I mentioned earlier, the payment for roadway improvements really is not a part of the factors for consideration here today before the board. The consideration for the board today is the proposal, the application for the special use permit and the site plan. You know, it as submitted is ready for approval. You know, the Jordan Public Schools intends to move forward on that plan if approved. And so I do think that the board has, you know, the information that it needs today in order to approve the special use permit. That's all that we have today. Certainly appreciate the time. I know it's been a lengthy hearing. And of course, this is an issue of great impact and importance to the community. And so certainly want to make sure that the board has all the information that it needs in order to make its decision and certainly appreciate the time today. Thank you so much. Thank you. With that, I think we'll close the public hearing and move into discussion. I've got a question. Sure. Okay. The gentleman does strong water. He did not answer the question. How many gallons of water will it run off of the school property onto my property? He just said it'd be five feet. That doesn't tell us anything. You know, there's going to cover five feet of my property or how many gallons of water that it's going to run off if it gets a one inch of rain or an inch and a half of rain. So from that, from that large retention pond. Jason, to my property. I'll let the applicant speak to it. I will say this, you know, the applicant has to get permits through the state to operate facility to make, to construct those devices, to maintain them, to operate them. And as far as we can tell, they're within the parameters, the framework of the state's requirements. Okay, but what I'm asking for is what is the flow rate that's going to come off the retention ponds after they're built? What's the flow rate coming off the retention ponds if it rains one inch? I'm going to let the applicant choose to answer that if they wish to. And if they're not able to answer it here, maybe they can answer it for you offline. I don't know that the flow rate is absolutely germane to the decision that's before us, but I will let the applicant address that if they want to. All right, and I'm going to ask you another question. Sir, we're getting ready to close the public hearing. So this is not an opportunity for you to think about questions and ask them. What else is it that you need to know? Well, close way, as the gentleman with stormwater has to know how many gallons of water that retention ponds will hold for how long before it overflows in order to build it. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm not sure if the Durham Public Schools is in a position to be able to answer that position for Mr. Bartel, Mr. Loring, do we have any analysis on that? Is that something we can answer? And if not, you could just let us know. Well, I don't have numbers of gallons per minute or cubic feet per second or measurements at my fingertips at this moment that I don't think is really a good idea to put on public record to an exact square footed or something, but I will say that we've analyzed it. We're reducing the one inch storm. We're reducing the 10 year storm. We're reducing the 25 year storm and we're reducing the 100 year storm. So I cannot say that there's any other requirement that we have and we also have other than treatment as well. So all the impervious areas we're gathering and we're treating in these ponds, they're being released through low flow orifices, probably about an inch and a half range. So most of your regular storm events are gonna be coming out through a little hole that'll then trickle down through the barrel to the stream. The larger events up to the 25 will generally stay inside the pond and be released through the barrel that are controlled by different notches or orifices or holes or whatever layman's terms we wanna use. And then a large event is 100, let's say the 100, most of it goes through the barrel but there is some that will also go out through the emergency spillway that the elevation throughout there is basically a range of where at least that pond will get up to. Yes, there is a large amount of water that is contained within that, but it's all water that is designed to be released at a slower rate than what is currently anticipated to flow through the stream based on standard engineering practices that are accepted and accepted by Durham. So I'm not sure I can answer it any better than that. So I'll leave it at that. Thank you, Mr. Warren. Thank you. With that, I am closing the public hearing. I appreciate everybody's attendance and questions and comments. We are going to discuss among the board now and talk about it. So with that, I will again, close public hearing. Board members, discussion. Oh, I'm sorry, we need a staff recommendation. I apologize. We first a staff recommendation and then we'll discuss my apologies. Sorry about that delay. I was trying to get comfortable. Planning staff would actually recommend the continuance for this case B2000051 in terms of the possibility of having the NTDOT, the Interfinement Department of Transportation available to answer some of the questions that came up today, as well as resolve the matter of the payments for the improvements that is not currently resolved. That is all I have to say. Mr. Meathers, you are muted. However, Tisha and Mr. Tarrant have their hands raised if you want to repeat what you're saying. Thank you. Continuance to a date certain? Staff will allow the board to determine the exact date, but yes, continuance to a date certain in which we could reach out to NTDOT to have their testimony here and their or their attendance here and they could provide testimony. There was many people that mentioned, I wish NTDOT was here. That's kind of a direct quote from some of the individuals here. So I want to make a recommendation for continuance to allow that to occur. Understood, thank you. Discussion, how do people feel? Delacy, please. Delacy, hello. Yes, thank you. Does the motion for continuance supersede any discussion or do we do discussion first? Delacy, that was a recommendation by staff, so it was not a motion. So I believe you all are good to go. Okay. You're free to make that motion if you'd like to, Ms. Delacy. Why don't we vote on the motion? And well, we should have the discussion before we vote on the continuance or what do you think? I think we have spent a long time on this case. If the preponderance of board members are comfortable continuing, I don't think we should belabor this anymore. However, I'm open to the will of the group. Well, why don't I put forward a motion for continuance so that it can be voted up or down and we can decide? So I'll put a plan. Therefore, I move that we continue this case until the date's certain of whenever the chair chooses. I second. I think. I'm sorry, planning staff want to interject really quickly for Mr. Meadows. The next date of the BOA meeting is February the 23rd if we wanted to have an exact date. How was our case load for the 23rd of February? Well, Mr. Chairman, I think we're going to be, go to putting this first and all of the testimony except for whether Mexico pays for the wall is done and you've already closed and set it up for discussion. Is that correct? That is correct. So Eliza Monroe staff speaking here with regards to Mr. Meadows question about the case load for February and also about the order right now for February. So February is slightly busy. We do have about six cases on the docket currently for that agenda. In terms of Mr. Lace, please comment about the order. We do need to speak logistically about the case that is supposed to occur after this one since we do have a couple of members. We have a shortage of members today. So we do want to speak about logistics of hearing the case that's on the agenda after this one. So following that discussion, there may be a chance that that case would need to either go first or we would have to play around with the agenda. So the order is not something we can establish today. However, we can say that we can either go to February which has six cases currently not including the potential for B202000052 and then March is wide open as well. And the date for March is that fourth Tuesday which is also the 23rd. Mr. Chair, may I make a request? I don't know if we can receive request. I will have to reflect to Krista about whether or not we can do so. Just cause at this point we technically close the public hearing. So it should just be staff and the board speaking. Actually, I don't really even want to be talking to. Thank you. Krista. Thank you. Krista Kukrosity, attorney's office. I would feel comfortable if that request is presented to the chair. Mr. Wardell, do you have any input on that? What is the request? I would simply request just for the record that the grounds for the motion be stated. I know the recommendation was made and the grounds for the recommendation were made but I would request for the record that the grounds for the motion be stated as well as the motion for continuance. I think that's appropriate. I also think it would be appropriate to have the applicant weigh in on what their position is with regard to a continuum. I think it would be appropriate for the record to accept that as well. Mr. Chair, may I weigh in at this point? Please. Yeah, and thank you very much, Mr. Wardell. As I mentioned in my closing, the Durham Public Schools position is that we don't believe a continuance is necessary or advisable at this time simply because the grounds that were listed in the recommendation, I mean, if the board has additional questions about the actual transportation plan that's set forth in the site plan, then perhaps so. That does not sound to me as if the board, I guess we don't know yet, right? There hasn't been discussion by the board, but it certainly doesn't sound like that. But what it sounds to me is that if the recommendation has been made in order to work out this issue of reimbursement. And again, if you look at the factors, the issue of payment for and reimbursement for the requested and the recommended improvements is not one of the factors. And it's inappropriate that the board's position is that it's inappropriate at this point for the city to request a continuance in order to essentially make the approval of this special use permit contingent on getting some kind of agreement from the Durham Public Schools to waive its right to request reimbursement. I think that's simply inappropriate at this point. And so our position would be that the board should not grant a continuance because that's just not one of the factors that needs to be considered today. And that's all we have to say. Thank you. Okay, so... We have a motion on the floor in a second. There is a motion on the floor. Is there a second? And it's... This is Jeter. I think I seconded the continuance. You seconded. So we have a motion and a second. The basis for the continuance is to allow the DOT to be present to provide additional information. Is that accurate to everyone's understanding? Yes, sir. Mr. Chair. Call the question. Mr. Chair. Are you ready for roll? Yes, ma'am. Ms. DeLacy. Aye, yes. Mr. Kip. Yes. Mr. Meadows. No. Ms. Waimour. We're voting on the continuance, correct? Not on the case. Correct, that's right. All right, then, yes. Ms. Jeter. Yes. Mr. Tarrant. Ms. Boshane. Yes. Motion carries five to two. Okay, so we will continue this case until 8.30 a.m. on Tuesday, the 23rd of February. Thank you. Good. Do we wanna try to press on or do we need to take a break? Planning department staff here, before we press on, I think there was some discussion we wanted to have about the case that might be hearing after this B2005-2, the appeal and the logistics of it. So Chris and myself will be moving individuals back over to the attendee side and then we can see everyone and have this discussion among staff, the attorneys in the board. So I think just left is Gary. Okay, I believe we are now just members of the board. So I'll kind of head it up a little bit or open the floor to Brian or Krista, whoever prefers to head it up. I believe we have to have Don go to the waiting area because he's representing the city. Yes. Any appeal? Not that I don't like Don, I love Don. Yep, I just switched him over to an attendee as well. Thank you for catching that, Brian. I think now we have just board Brian, Krista and staff. Okay, no, this is not closed session. I think Mr. Lacey was asking if this was closed session. No, this is not closed session. We are just discussing the parameters of what's going to happen in this next case. So this next case is an appeal of a notice of violation. And so you'll be sitting more like an appellate court, right? So you'll be receiving evidence and then based on the evidence that you receive, you'll make a decision as to whether or not the notice of violation is proper, okay? So the city is going to be represented by Donald tool and then there may be an attorney for the appellate as well. So the appellate will make an argument, you'll listen to the argument and the criteria is whatever the violation says. So you'll look at the violation and you'll see what the wording is within the violation and then you just have to make a determination based on the evidence, whether or not the appeal is either appropriate or not appropriate. So you would be voting to either uphold the NOV or to not uphold the NOV, okay? And the NOV is notice of violation. Any questions about what your role is here? I have one, Mr. Willow, and that is we are confining our decision to whether or not the notice of violation was issued properly, not whether or not there is a violation on the property. Is that accurate or am I just mincing words? It is accurate, but they're almost in lockstep because the city will have to show that there was sufficient evidence to support the NOV. And so when you look at the evidence, you'll have to weigh whether or not that was sufficient to show that there was a violation of whatever provision of the UDL has been violated. Okay, so upholding the notice basically means we also uphold the fact that there was a violation. You're upholding the validity of the notice of violation. So for example, you can have a situation where there was possibly in fact a violation, but there could have been a technical problem with the notice of violation, okay? In which case the notice of violation would be moved because of the technical issue. Right. So typically they lockstep, but there are times when you can have a violation and the notice still might be affected. Okay, any other questions about what you are tasked to do? Brian, I may have missed something else, get the switch between rooms there for a minute. So did I understand that we're not asking questions as we typically would, we're just here listening to the testimony on both sides and then making a decision from that? You are allowed to ask questions. Typically you are listening more to the evidence in the arguments, but if you need clarification, you certainly can ask for clarification to determine whether or not there's sufficient evidence to support the notice of violation. And so that argument will be made by the city attorney. And then there'll be a counter argument that'll be made by the appellant. Because the appellant is saying, for whatever reason, I don't know what the reason is that the notice of violation is defective in some way. Okay. Thanks. How many people do we have seven for this case? Yeah. Yes and no. Majors, I believe it's going to recruse herself from the case. So then that would leave Meadows, Feuder, Roshani, which Natalie, I'm probably saying her last name wrong. Mr. Kitt, Weymour, Tarrant, and then Delacy who's joining us via audio, which I don't think, since she has been here this whole time, I don't think there should be a reservation. So we do have seven. Okay. So if we have seven, that's fine. If we would have had six, then we would have needed the consent of the appellant to go forward. If there are no other questions, then I say, you know, this is our first appeal in a while. So just listen to the evidence and decide whether or not the NOV is what's properly issued. Just have it like to request, like maybe like 15 minutes, I just need to do some quick runs around the house and then come back. Should we, how do people feel? I wouldn't mind taking a five or 10 minute break. I really wouldn't. You know, I would suggest we take more than that and maybe 30 minutes. Okay. It'll give people time to get something to eat. And then when we come back, we can finish up. I don't know what everybody's schedule is like, but it's one o'clock right now. Delacy, I have to leave at 2.15. Okay. Do people feel okay? Taking a break for 30 minutes, coming back at 1.35. Yes. That's nodding. Okay. Let's do that. Let's stand adjourned until 1.35. We'll see you back then. Thank you. Anybody who sees her? I think we are back. If you're here, if you could, okay, Regina, we can hear you. We might mute you, because you've got a little bit of white noise. Yep, you've got a little bit of white noise, Regina. So I might ask you to mute yourself, Oli. Okay. How do I mute? I can mute you. All right. It's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. I guess we're ready to go. Yes. Madam clerk. How was everybody's lunch, by the way, other than short? We're still missing someone. I'm at the board, Peter. Micah is nodding. Two, three, four, five, six. Yeah, we're one shy. Jessica, I thought you were, are you in this one or are you, you're nodding this one? So there's only one, two, three, four, five of us. And Miss Peter. And Regina, six. So we're waiting for Micah to come back. Is that right? Yes. All right. Everybody who's joining, we're waiting for our seventh member to rejoin us so that we have seven. We'll give her another minute, and then we will proceed. Aliza, who is the applicant? So this is an appeal. So it'll be the appellant. Is Miss, Mr. Faisen and Mr. Satterfield are going to be. The reason I'm asking is I might have to ask Mr. Faisen if he wants, if he consents to going forward with just six members. Gotcha. We can definitely do that. Mr. Satterfield, or if you wouldn't mind unmuting and putting your camera forth as well as Karyn, Dawn, Landis. And we can go from there. So I thought we had seven. We, Micah is not back with us. We thought we had seven as well, but she has not rejoined us yet. Okay, and where's Regina is via telephone? Yeah, but I still don't see her. She's, I see her. Are you here Regina? Can you unmute yourself please? To unmute on it's. I'm here. I'm unmuted, but they're gonna mute me again because I've got white noise. I got you, okay. And we'll ask Miss Major if you can turn off your video just so we can make sure that we're only seeing those that are gonna be participating. So wait, she has to. On record, yes. Thank you, Brian, for bringing that up. Let's go ahead and do that. Or should we ask about the six, six, should we ask for consent for six members? What should we do first? Well, let's, Micah is back. So she's here. Awesome. Okay, let's go ahead and proceed. Shall we call the question before Miss Major recuses us? I mean, should we read the case? Yes, please. B2-00-052, an appeal for an administrative decision to administer a notice of violation for operating a business from a residential zoning district and the storage of heavy equipment. The subject site is located at 1828 James Street is a residential suburban and is in the urban tier. Thank you, Miss Major. Yes. Are you going to be joining us in this case? No, I will not. I have a conflict. Okay, Mr. Wardell, I assume we need to have a motion and a roll call. No, if she recuses herself, she just will not be called for the seating in the case. And then she would essentially just log off because she would have no participation in the case at all. Great, all right. Madam Clerk, could you call the seating? Yes, Mr. Lacey, Mr. Kip, Mr. Meadows, Ms. Wildmore, Ms. Jeter, Mr. Tarrant and Ms. Boshane. Thank you. Before we get started, I need to administer the oath. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Real quick, Susan didn't finish her full spiel when she was calling the case. She has to say the whole, you've written the other, I think David saw that stuff. I got excited. Sorry. This case has been advertised for the required period of time and property owners within 600 feet have been notified, notarized to affidavits verifying the sign postings and letter mailings are on file. All right. For those who are going to speak, either in favor of or against, can you please turn on your cameras and turn on your microphones so that we can administer the oath? I assume that everybody who is going to has. And so if you would please, do you swear or affirm that the evidence you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? I do. I need to hear from everybody who's gonna speak. I do. Yes. Are you muted, Mr. Phasen? I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. Yeah, I can't hear Mr. Phasen. Something's wrong with his audio. Mr. Satterfield, are you here representing Mr. Phasen as his legal representative? And then I would like to ask Mr. Wardell if he's the sole representative, could we still proceed if Mr. Phasen was not able to unmute himself? Well, Mr. Phasen is the only witness I would anticipate they would have and if we can't hear him, we can't go forward. Understood. And this is Chris Peterson planning department. One recommendation I might have is if Mr. Phasen has a secondary phone, we can have him on camera and then he can also use the call-in line and we can grab his audio from that. Would that be acceptable to the board? I think so. Mr. Phasen, I will send in the chat the phone number to call in, bear with me one second. If you're unable to get your microphone turned on, this is Chris Peterson planning department. If you're unable to get your microphone turned on, I submitted a phone number in the chat. I can also read it out loud if you wanna try to call with a phone number and the phone number is 301-715-8592. And then the webinar ID is 947-2342-2731. Promise of technology. All right, I see a phone number ending in 1-997. Is that you, Mr. Phasen? And press star six to unmute, please. Can you hear us now, Mr. Phasen? Oh, yes, oh, yes, oh, yes. Please lower the speakers on your computer so that we don't get the feedback like that. And then press star six again to unmute your phone. All right, let's try this again. Can you respond? Can you speak, Mr. Phasen? Can we hear you now? Okay, I can hear you. All right, terrific. Thank you. It was really a master deal. Thank you. Okay, so do you swear or affirm that the evidence you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Yes. And do you consent to this remote meeting platform? Yes. Great, thank you. I think at this point, I assume there is a staff report or a report from staff. You would be correct in that assumption. I'm pulling that up now and sharing my screen. I would like to note before we get started that this is the first time that the board has heard an appeal in a while is specifically in this virtual platform. So if there are any questions or comments, please feel free to ask them as we go along. I know typically what we wait until the end, but if there are any procedural questions or comments, please feel free to ask them. But hearing none at this time, I'm going to go ahead and get started. Good afternoon, everyone. Liza Monroe here from the planning department, planning staff request that the staff report and all material submitted here at the public hearing be made part of the public record with any necessary corrections as noted. Though noted. Thank you. Case B2000052 is an appeal of administrative decision to administer a notice of violation for operating a business from a residential zoning district and the storage of heavy equipment in a residential zoning district. The appellant is Calvin Faison and the subject site is located at 1-828 James Street. The site in question is highlighted on the screen in red. The site is zoned residential suburban M or RSM and is within the city of Durham jurisdiction. Currently on the site, there is a single family dwelling structure. It is my understanding that there is not someone dwelling there but there is an existing structure on the site. Staff will now go through a summary of how we ended up here today. And during that time, I'll go through the administration of the notice of violation as well as the analysis. On October 8th, 2020, the notice of violation was issued to Calvin Faison as the owner of 1828 James Street, which as I mentioned before is residentially zoned RSM for operating a business in a residential zoning district and storing heavy equipment on that lot. Based upon physical evidence and research done by staff, it appears a contractors building is operating here. Pursuing to unified development ordinance, section 5.1, the use table, the retail sales and service, which was mentioned originally in the report and after federal evidence, this commercial use of an office are not permitted to be operated in the RSM zoning district. Pursuing to UDO section 10.2.3, vehicle parking permitted in residential districts and usages, heavy equipment is not permitted to be a part of the residential zoning district. And the heavy equipment within the unified development ordinance as defined in section 17.3 is defined as vehicles such as buses, tow trucks, furniture trucks, fuel trucks, refrigerator trucks, dump trucks, or submit mixers. Vehicles with a class of seven or above that would typically have a gross vehicle weight of at least 13 tons or any construction equipment or within city limits, any farm equipment except in the RS20 or RR districts. In this case, onsite, there is a furniture truck that was photographed by staff and is located to the rear of the previously mentioned structure. Based upon these findings, which we would consider that type of truck, a panel truck as a furniture truck, which was a part of that definition of heavy equipment. Based upon these findings, Karen Swope, the code enforcement officer conducted, I feel this inspection at 1828 James Street during that inspection, she took this photo here and then zoning violation was observed as the business, which at that time, if you went to a simple search on Google would come up a space and home repair, appear to be operating out of the unoccupied residential property located there. Additionally, there was the truck that you see parked and that was deemed to be determined as heavy equipment. Code enforcement officer Swope drafted and issued the notice of violation and that violation is what we're now here before you all talking about as it has been appealed by the appellants. The appeal, the appeal was actually submitted on November 30th, 2020. That day is important because it does show that they were within the amount of timeframe that's permitted by the rules of procedure. The appellant states that these violations do not, the proposed dimension violations within the notice are not existing on this property. As they claim, there was not a good business operating at the reference property and they say that there was no heavy equipment as defined by a UDO part on the reference property. Staff would like to note that the building, the truck that you see was photographed on site in October as being on site and that is what we would define as heavy equipment. There are additional photos as well of other things being stored on site that were taken more recently within the past week or so by staff as well. And those were provided in the agenda and they're also available here on screen. So I'll go through those momentarily so that you may see what we're referring to. This is another shot of the furniture truck from, this is taken from right-of-way, public right-of-way so therefore not on property. These are more shots of that. There are also other things that are being stored here which was a part of the notice of violation to be removed off site. This here is the sign in which was noticed that this case was coming before the board today and that is the residents, the existing dwelling structure that is currently vacant. So at this time, I will note that UDO section 3.15 has established the guidelines for the procedure that the board must embark on when reviewing an appeal of administrative decision. The staff report, the applicant's application as well as any supporting documents received by staff in a timely manner are all available on the agenda and have been given to the board and staff will be available for any questions as needed during the hearing process as we will remain controlled of the Zoom screen. Any questions at this time? And I can stop share in a couple of moments but in the meantime, I'm just gonna meet myself and kind of open up so I can allow anyone to speak. Does anyone from the board have a question of staff? Kisha? Yeah, hi. Just to reiterate, maybe I lost me in the translation. The impetus for the violation was the sign in the front yard. Sorry, let me go back. Sorry, I was trying to unmute myself. The sign in the front yard there is actually the notification sign for Board of Adjustment meetings, that blue green sign. The impetus for the violation is, I'm gonna go back to the actual NIV itself so you can see that language. Operating a business, which at that time in October, if you search Google, if you search 1828 James Street, the name phase and home repair came up. So the violation was operating that business from a residential zoning district in the storage of a vehicle, which we gave as heavy equipment, the right truck that has been mentioned and shown on site within a residential zoning district. There are also the parameters for correcting this violation here as well as instructions of whether or not someone, if they would like to appeal this decision. This letter is what was given to the applicant in October that we are now seeing. So I hope that clears up a little bit. That sign is a notification sign. Those photos are very recent within the last week. So that is the sign that is there based upon general statutes were required to notify neighbors to be a letter as well as signage posting. So that is what that sign is. I understand that. I guess I was wondering how did this, how did they find out that this was operating there? Was it just because the truck was there and they, someone drove by or confused as to how that came about? Planning staff would like to possibly allow that question to be answered by Karen Swope, who is the code enforcement officer that has been involved. I will, before we open up, I think Brian has perhaps hand raised and also Don might have some things to say as well. Before we go any further, I have one more question I'd like to ask about the site itself. Do you have the aerial photo, Eliza? Can you go to that please? The aerial photo should be now shown on the screen. No, there we go. Okay. I see there's a red parallelogram that outlines the site itself. And then it looks to me as though a portion of the site is occupied by, I don't know what that is, but is that, is that a permissible activity or is that storage thought to be part of the violation? Yes, Mr. Meadows, if you, I'm gonna switch back now to the actual notice of violation. There was that first part about the correction of the violation. It mentions the removal of all construction-related materials from this property within seven days of the receipt. It is staff's understanding and once again I'll allow Mrs. Swift to chime in here. It's staff understanding that those things that you see there are those construction-related materials that were being requested to be removed from the property to correct that violation. Okay, thank you. And Brian had his hand raised as well. So I wanna make sure that we, Brian's kind of running the show here everybody. No, Chad is running the show. Chad is running the show, Brian's got the GPS in the passenger seat. Ms. Weymour, I know that there are questions that you might have, but since this is an appeal of the NOV, just listen to the evidence presented. And then if you have questions at the end of the evidence, then just jot it down if those questions aren't answered during the presentation. Okay. Thank you. Mr. O'Toole, did Don have a question? I can't remember. I thought I heard Eliza say he had his hand raised. You know, by the way, this is Don O'Toole from the city attorney's office. Thank you. I think Ms. Swope when she testifies will be able to explain what initiated the NOV process, but it wasn't, it was not initiated by staff. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions for staff? Okay. I guess the next step is to hear from Officer Swope. Yes, this is Karen Swope. I am a senior planner, zoning enforcement officer with the Durham city. The warden has got his finger up. He's telling me to- Sorry, just procedurally, typically the appellant will present first nail and they will sort of present their case as to why they believe the NOV is not supported by the evidence. And then the city would support the NOV. Would support the NOV. My apologies for messing us up on process. This is my first- It's okay. That's okay, that's okay. Mr. Faisen, we would like to hear from you or your representative about the notice of violation and how we got to this point. Hello, everybody. I'm Darren Satterfield of you all in mind. I will ask my client questions and he'll answer them, kind of direct the evidence if that's okay. That's just fine. All right, Mr. Faisen, can you hear me? Yes. According to the city, this property is owned by a phasen home repair. Is that accurate? Okay, I can barely hear. Okay, say that one more time. Is the property at 11th Street claims owned by phasen home repair? Okay, it's my name, phasen home repair. My wife's name owned the deed. Have you ever operated a business at that location? Pardon? Have you operated a business at that location? Okay, when you say a business, I store materials there and I put my trucks there. I'll be specific. Have you accepted or performed work at that location? From other, from customers? No, I haven't. Have you accepted money? Okay. Have you accepted money for services before? Let me ask the question and you can answer. Have you accepted money for services performed at that location? No. All right, do you have no receipts for work or contract or met clients at that location? No. Is there a specific reason why the property is still in the name of phasen home repair? When I purchased it, it was on a finance and I put that name, my wife's name on the deed. Who's first initially got it? What do you currently work, Mr. Phasen? Okay, say that again now. Where do you work? Okay, I work for myself but I work out of my house as far as the office part of it. In regard to the vehicle that's at a location, how long has that vehicle been there? I got it roughly a year after I purchased the building. I think it was like 1995 or 1996. It's somewhere in that neighborhood. It's when I purchased from Charlie McBrown. To verify that I was in the debt of deed. And do you know the dimensions of the vehicle, the size of the vehicle, height, length, width? Well, the length on it is roughly between 14, 16 feet and so single axle box truck. And the space was being parked in the same area either the location, they took the picture or back in the fence, it normally be in that same position. Ms. Phasen, do you have anything to add in regard to your business or you operating a business at that location? Like I said, I operate the office part of my business at my personal residential house. No transaction goes on at that particular address. In regard to the items that are stored at location, are those your personal items? Yes, I own rental houses and it's my personal stuff for my rental houses. All right, any further questions? Are there, does anyone have, and Mr. Wardell, correct me if I'm wrong. I believe that it would be appropriate to allow the board to ask questions of the applicant or the applicant's representative. Yes, and cross examination as well at this point would be acceptable, but the board can certainly ask any questions that it would have and then the city would be able to ask questions that they may have as well. I see, does anyone have questions? I do, Bo Shane. Ms. Bo Shane, please go ahead. Thank you. So did I understand you to say the truck had been there since 1995 or 1996? It's been there that long? Someone in that neighborhood is when our person said building, I can't give you exact date, but it's been there pretty much ever since I have owned the building. And it does run, correct? Yes, it does. It has plates on it? It doesn't have plates on it at the moment. Okay. Other questions? I have a couple. Mr. Faisen, you said you work out of your home. I assume this 1828, James Street is not your home. Is that right? Your home is somewhere else? Yes. Okay, okay. And I'm sorry, I'm confused about the ownership of the property. You had mentioned that your wife's name is on the deed. So what does, is the deed in the name of Faisen, Faisen Home Repair, or is it in your wife's name without any reference to Faisen Home Repair? It's in all three. This is the way it was over there. So I think Calvin A. Faisen, it should be Bernie's Faisen and then Faisen Home Repair on the deed. Okay. All right, so it's all three of you. It's you, your wife, and the business. Okay. And you are, there's material that is stored in the location and that material is, or is not part of Faisen Home Repair. No, like I said, this is my rental property materials. Uh-huh. So you have Faisen Home Repair and Faisen Home Repair doesn't operate rental homes. Faisen Home Repair does something else. That's correct. Okay. I have a question for staff. I don't know if that's appropriate or not. Is that an appropriate question to, is it an appropriate time to ask staff a question, Mr. Wardell? I think my follow-up is which staff? I think it's the Plasmon Road Planning Department staff, because there are two roles of staff here. So, okay. If you, Chad, if it's something you can put opinion in. And- If I can. Okay. Because I'd like for the board to ask whatever questions they may have, then the city representative to ask whatever cross-examination they have, examination they have, and then you can ask staff- Thank you. If I will. No problem. That sounds great. Thank you. Okay. I have no further questions. Anybody else questions? Mr. Tarrant has his hand raised. Please, sir. I guess this is Tarrant. I guess I'm still not clear is what the use of the property is other than to store materials. Do you elaborate on what you use the property for please? Could you repeat that one more time? I'm not clear on how the property is being used. It sounds like you just use it to store materials for your rental. And this is it. This nothing helps man down with it. Other questions for the applicant? All that's one last clarifying question for myself. The house is vacant now. Yes? Yes, it is. How long has it been vacant? Ever since I owned it. So, and you purchased the home in 95? Just a minute. Okay. Thank you. Okay. I guess it's appropriate for the city's representative if they have questions. Thank you, chair. Good afternoon, Mr. Faison. I guess we've been here a long time since we started at 830. I just wanna clarify some things for the board about the property ownership. I think you've said that you're an owner, your wife and just looking at the property records. I believe her initials are VR, Faison. She's an owner as well, is that right? That's correct. Okay. And then the other entity that's listed on the property records is a company called Faison Home Repair Company. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. And it's also my understanding from looking at some of the records with the North Carolina Secretary of State's office that you changed the name of Faison Home Repair Company in 2001 to new All-Star Builders, LLC. Is, does that ring a bell? Yes. Okay. And then I guess in 2005, you decided to change the name of your general contractor's business again to new All-Star Builders Incorporated. Does that sound familiar to you? That's correct. Okay. So your current general contracting business goes by the name new All-Star Builders Incorporated, right? That's correct. Okay. And then I also looked up your general contractor's license and you individually are a general contractor, right? Okay, say that again then. You individually are a licensed general contractor in North Carolina, right? That's cool. And I guess you also include the name of your company on your general contractor's license. Is that correct? Okay. Say that one more time now. Sure. I looked up, I did a general contractor's license lookup on the North Carolina general contractor's website and your license number is 44-857. And it identifies you as an individual licensee but it also identifies your company All-Star Builders Inc as a corporate licensee. Is it your understanding that you're licensed both ways individually and as the corporate entity? Yes. Okay. Eliza, would you do me a favor and can you, there's an exhibit that was part of the agenda and it's from the North Carolina Secretary of State's website. And there's two, so I wanna make sure we get the correct one. So I just, Eliza Monroe staff here. So I just shared something on screen as a business corporation annual report. The next document was... The first one is the one that I wanted, Eliza. That's perfect. Okay. Mr. Fason, I'm sure you're familiar with the fact that your business is registered with the North Carolina Secretary of State's office. Are you aware of that? That's correct. Okay. And you file annual reports which are part of the requirement to be registered with the Secretary of State's website. Is that correct? Right. Okay. And as we just discussed, your business has gone through several different names but this is a report that was filed and it's the latest report. It's my understanding that the next report is not due till April, but that it's in the name of All-Star Builders Incorporated. Is that your company's name? That's correct. Okay. And the other thing just so the board knows that this is an official public record, if you look at the box over in the upper right-hand side of the document, you can see that this was electronically filed with the North Carolina Secretary of State. So I would contend that this is an official public record of the state and that it should be admissible before the board. And then in section A, Mr. Fasen, do you see that you're identified as the registered agent of this corporation, Mr. Fasen? You say that again now? Yeah, I was just saying, if you look at section A of this document, do you see where it identifies you as the registered agent for All-Star Builders Inc? Yes. Okay. And then the other thing that I just wanted to point out to the board is if you look at section B, which deals with the principal office information, number one under B indicates that it's a general contractor's business. And then just read for me if you would, what it says in response to question four, which is the principal office street address. What was your response there? Mr. Fasen? Okay, say the 1828 James Street. Correct. So you had identified 1828 James Street as the principal office address of your business. Is that correct? Yes, on the corporation, yes, I did. Okay. And then in section D, this is who submitted the report. Did you as president of All-Star Builders Inc submit this report to the state? Yes, I did. Okay. Then as far as the truck, the box truck that's on the property, do you own that truck or does your business own it? I own it. So you own it individually? Yes. Okay. And it is operational. I think you indicated that already. Is that right? Yes. What do you use it for? Pretty much just storage right now. And what is stored in the truck? Some of my materials from the rental. So materials for your rental business are stored in the box truck? Yes, it is. Okay. And I think as far as the dwelling on the property, you indicated that it's been vacant since you purchased it. Is that right? That's correct. Do you use the structure for anything? Do you use it for storage? Do you ever do that? The reason I bought it, the reason it was purchased because I was gonna rent a storage unit. And I looked at the price of the storage unit versus the building. And I thought I would be paying basically the same amount of money to store with a storage unit other than a building. So I actually purchased the building. Got it. That was the better deal. Do you use the structure on the property to store materials for your rental business? That's correct. Okay. Do you store anything else in the building? That's pretty much it. Okay. And what about, you know, the staff report or the NOV, both of them strike that. Ms. Monroe showed some photographs of material in the backyard of the property. Basically, there was some material lying against the rear of the building. And then there were also materials in the far back of the property behind the box truck. Are those construction materials? This recycled materials I took off the house is that I just keep the materials shipped on it away for usable materials. And do you plan to reuse those materials in your contracting business? Well, I mean, it's done brought up a lot of issues. I was gonna go through it and look at what I could use and pretty much try to condense it. So it wouldn't be as much there? Are there still materials in the backyard of the property that you made on some of your construction projects? Like I said, I use them for my rental houses. Okay. I think that's all the questions I have for Mr. Faisen. Thank you very much. Mr. Wardell. Yes. Is it appropriate for us to, where do we go from here? The board can follow up with questions. If there are additional questions that his attorney wants to ask him for clarification, they can do that at this point. And then we'll go to the city's presentation. Okay. Does anyone have any questions for Mr. O'Toole? No, the questions would not be for Mr. O'Toole. They would be Mr. Faisen if they would follow up questions. Yeah, I have a follow up questions. Please sir, go right ahead. All right, thank you. Mr. Faisen, can you hear me? Yes. I wish the volume could be turned up a little bit because it's real hard to hear. I don't have no control on this end to turn it up. All right, well, I'll speak loudly so you can hear me. Now, I'm looking at the annual report dated in 2019. Since 2019, or since you filed this report, have you conducted any business activity at the location of 1828 James Street? No sir, I do not translate any business there. All my mail, all my mail go to my P.O. box. All right. Is that P.O. box 11643 Durham, North Carolina 27703? That's right. All of all saw Bill mill go exactly there. It doesn't come to 1828 James Street. All right. And that's the same address that you also have listed as the principal office mailing address on the annual report. Well, they told me I could not use a P.O. box. I had to use a street address while I put the 1828 James Street there. All right. Was there a particular reason why you didn't just use your home address as opposed to 1828 James Street? I didn't think at the time it was the issue. I mean, that needs to be changed. It can be. All right. But the fact remains, you still have not conducted any business there. Physical, actual business at that location. No business. If you look at section C, I do have my personal address there on that 41 here, Grove Ridge. All right. And have you filed another annual report for 2020? No. All right. Is that report due? I think it's coming due. Okay. I understand. Is it your intention to use the 1828 James Street for your new filing and for the 2020 annual report? No. It's just an issue. I will change the address on that. All right. No further questions for me. Mr. Tarrant, you have your hand. Yes, this is Tarrant. Mr. Faysen, you had indicated that you use the property to store recycled materials for your rental properties. And looking at the imagery that's been provided, it would appear that there are at least two other vehicles being stored behind the white truck. Is that accurate? Okay. I heard part of the statement. You had indicated that you use the property to store recycled materials for your rental properties, but it appears based on the images provided to us that there are at least two vehicles being stored within the fence behind the white truck. Is that an accurate statement? It's two old trucks. They don't run and I'm gonna be getting rid of them. So they won't be there as long. The other question I had is who owns the rental properties? Are those listed under all start builders? No, they're not there. My wife's name is my name. Oh, I have, thank you. Other questions for Mr. Faysen? Okay, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's time to hear from the city. Right, you had a question that you wanted to get clarified by staff. I did. You could do that and then go to the city's presentation. Okay, okay, thank you. And so does the storage of material for use in a separate location, is that considered a business use or a home use? Is the first question. Okay, say that again now. This is a question for staff. Okay. Eliza Monroe from the planning department chiming in here. It would be considered a commercial use. And I would like to clarify in terms of what is permitted within the city of Durham in regards to commercial uses within residential structures. You can have a home occupation permit, which you do have to apply through the development services center for. And that would allow for minor work to be done, like bookkeeping, maybe answering phone calls on that site. That being said, there's not a home occupation permit for this location. So the uses that you're referring to chat to answer your question is considered a commercial use, not a residential or office use. We would call it commercial, which is not permitted within a residential zoning district. And then there are certain parameters to permit work to be done for a business within a residential structure. But that's through a home occupation permit, which the site does not have. Right. So it's a... One more time, Chad, you went out just a little bit. It's a vacant home. There is storage. I'm sorry, I'm getting a note that my internet connection is unstable. Has it squared itself away? Yeah, you're better now. You're better now, yes. Apologies, technology again. Goodness. So vacant home, storage of material for a rental activity. And that storage could be permitted if there was a home occupation. Am I interpreting that correctly? No. So lies in our staff, minor work for a business can be done with a home occupation permit, like bookkeeping, possibly receiving mail, those minor things, more like clerical work can be done through a home occupation permit. The storage of materials, no, sir. No, so that wouldn't be allowed even if there was a home occupation permit, but there is not a home occupation permit. That is correct. There is not an existing home occupation permit for 1828 James Street. Okay. Thank you. That's my question. You're welcome. I, Eliza Moreau staff here, I will unshare my screen just so we can see everyone. I see Mr. Wardale wants to speak probably about some presiding matters, but I just wanna unshare so we can see each other. Now, I was just going to say to Chad that now it's appropriate to have the city to present their evidence in support of the notice of violation. Thank you, sir. And I appreciate your patience as you deal with us. So let's hear from the city. Thanks again, board. I appreciate your patience. We only have one witness and that's gonna be Karen Swope and Karen is in our planning department and she is a code enforcement officer. Just one question before I completely turn it over to Ms. Swope. Ms. Swope, I wanted to ask you a question on the record. How did you learn of the potential violation at 1828 James Street? Was that city initiated or did that come in from some other source? Yes, this is Karen Swope. I am a senior planner, zoning enforcement officer with the Durham City County Planning Department. On September 24th, I received a complaint, an email complaint through our Mojo Complaint System, which is the system the city has set up to receive complaints, concerns through our Development Services Center. So I did receive a complaint. Thanks, Karen. And I'll turn it over to you. I think it would be helpful for the board just to understand you received the complaint and then what did you do in order to decide that an NOV was warranted? And after the complaint, you would explain about the photographs that you've taken for that property. After the complaint, I went to the site and witnessed that it did appear to be storage, some type of storage for a building or building business back there behind the fence. It has since been read, well, I went out and I did an investigation, I came back and I issued the notice of violation. I Googled that address and FaZe and Home Builders came up. If you Google that address now, All-Star Builders comes up. So there is definitely a business being advertised at that address. And Karen, it's my understanding that you took photographs on your initial visit and then I believe you went out last week just to confirm what the current state of the property is. Could you just explain that to the board? Yes, I originally took pictures on September 28th and that's what I used to base my notice of violation on. Then I went out on January 20th to recertify that it is still in violation and it is still in violation. The truck's still out there and it is still being used for storage. And Karen, just to close the loop, the pictures that are part of the agenda, catch to the agenda. You took all of those photographs, right? Yes, I took all the photographs. I don't have any other questions for Ms. Swole. All right, Mr. Wardell, I assume it's appropriate to allow the applicant to ask some questions. Yes, the applicant can do cross-examination and the board can ask questions if they need clarification. Okay, let's let the applicant ask the questions and then we'll see if the board has any questions. I'm Ms. Swole, I'm Darren Satterfield, Mr. Fasen's attorney. I just got a couple of questions. You mentioned in your testimony that the property is being advertised. I wanna make sure I'm clear on that. You didn't see a sign indicating that there was a business being operated at the location, did you? No, sir. All right. And as far as you could tell, you never saw any actual people or business being operated at the location you just received that information online as far as who the owner of the business is. That is correct. All right, no further questions. Does anyone on the board have any questions for Officer Swole? I do, Bo-Shane, this may not be an appropriate question, but have there been complaints from the neighbors about this residence? And that may not be an appropriate question, but I don't know about it. The original email was a complaint. That's how I went out to do the investigation based on a complaint. But after all these years of him being there, there's only been one complaint. Is that correct? I can't answer that. That I'm aware of, I don't know. Okay. I'd like to ask a question if I may. The complaint that you received, was that about operation of a business or was that about outdoor storage that may or may not be permissible? It was about a bunch of junk, vehicles, the large truck, a lot of storage, yes. And is it permissible to have a large truck in the backyard of a property, of a residential structure? The property is zoned residential. That is considered heavy equipment. Heavy equipment is prohibited in a residential zoning district. Okay. So there's a big truck in the backyard and it's not allowed in the district? Correct. Okay. And there's storage in the backyard and that might be allowed as a commercial activity if it was permitted, but there is no permit for that kind of commercial activity. Is that right? No, sir. You cannot have that outdoor storage. Okay. If somebody lived in that house and it was a resident, you could have residential outdoor storage based on a resident. If you wanna have junk in your backyard, I can't control that. Right. But nobody lives there and once you have outdoor storage in the house that nobody's living in, that's where this kicks this in. Thank you. Any other questions? Mr. Wardell, what do we do now? All right, at this point, the applicant should be given the opportunity to do a brief summary and then of course the city would be able to give a brief summary as well. Thank you. Mr. Satterfield or Mr. Faisen, would you like to give a summary? I'll summarize. First of all, thank you all for hearing this matter, giving it your consideration. I know everybody probably has other things that they could be doing right now, but I appreciate your due diligence and your service. Thank you. With regard to my summation, I will be brief. This has been a long day. I did not anticipate being on this call this long. The violation itself, and I wanna stick with that, says that Mr. Faisen was operating a business from Residential Zoning District and a storage vehicle on white truck, which meets the definition of heavy equipment. Part A of that simply deals with the business. Now, we understand that there has been testimony, that there has been equipment on the property. Yeah, junk from Ms. Swope. She testified that there's junk on the property, which I'm sure some people may identify or characterize those items as junk. Question rather in the violation itself was whether that meets the definition of a commercial business, whether it meets the definition of Mr. Faisen operating a business at that location. The testimony from Mr. Faisen is that there has not been any activity, commercial activity, no receipts, no work performed at that location, no customers met at that location, no work being performed. The city's testimony from Ms. Swope even testified that there's no advertisement on that location for the business repair company or the contracting company. There's no advertisement. Yes, that may be indicative that there may be some property there, but the question is whether there is a business being operated there and I do not believe the city has met or shown any evidence that there's an actual business at that location. With regard to the heavy equipment, what I pulled the general statute definition of general equipment in- Based on the general statute- I mean, it may be some discrepancy here with regard to the city's definition of, and I see Mr. O'Toole shaking his head. So I may be totally off base here. So it seems as if, well, I'll just say it. And you've got to- I'd just like to object to that because as the UDO itself says, definitions and terms are the definition that's included in the UDO. There is a definition of heavy equipment in Chapter 17 of the UDO. I agree. I don't find that the statutory definition is particularly relevant as it pertains to the Durham UDO. I agree with that. Very well. I'll stand on my argument for regard to the business. Do not believe the city has shown through their evidence presented that there was a business being operated. And with regard to the annual report, which was submitted by the city, that annual report was in 2019. Mr. Faison has again testified that although that annual report was submitted, the address that he used in conjunction with his PO box is not the actual address where business was being conducted. Moreover, it is his intent this year, obviously, since this has created an issue not to use that address with regard to the annual report. I believe the city must show more evidence than an annual report from 2019 is 2021. Has any activity, has any work been performed at that location recently? The answer is no, based on the evidence from Mr. Faison. Thank you. Nothing further. Thank you. Mr. Atul. Thank you. I think the board has heard everything it needs to hear to uphold this NOV for Mr. Faison himself. It is clear based on everything that Mr. Faison has testified to, that he bought this property to be used for storage for his business. He bought the house so that he could store materials for his business. The box car is used to store materials for his business and he's acknowledged that the materials lying against the back of the house and in the far back of the yard that those are all materials that he uses to conduct his business. I think it's clear based on his testimony and what Ms. Monroe told you that this is a clear case in which residential property is inappropriately being used for a commercial use. It's not being used for a residential use. So there were two sided violations. The first was use of residential property for a commercial use. I think it's an open and shut case. You've heard everything you need to hear. In addition, there's the definition of heavy equipment in the UDO itself and a box truck like this, I believe clearly falls within the city's definition of heavy equipment, which is not permitted on residential use own property. I believe the board should uphold the notice of violation. Thank you. Mr. Wardell, I believe we would now have discussion. Discussion and then a motion. I asked a question about what happens when the violation is upheld, what are the consequences of repercussions or actions thereafter? Or is that not relevant to me? Great question. That's an appropriate question. Okay. The notice of violation has I haven't seen this particular one, but typically there's a time to remedy the violation. And then if you don't remedy the violation by that time, then you can be assessed penalties. So you can either remedy the situation. If you don't, you have to pay the penalties. And then there are other options that you have that typically are spelled out in the notice of violation or you can appeal to superior court as well. And so his appellate rights don't end here. If it's upheld, and if it's not upheld, well, then it's not upheld. Then the notice of violation is basically moot and he can continue to operate as he was operating and lessen until he gets another notice of violation. And so we can assume or we can find or figure out or conclude that the opportunity for him to rectify the situation has not been set yet because we're currently in this process or it's been set and then he appealed it. So he had like, where are we on that? Right. So when there's an appeal pending, the interest or penalties or anything related to the notice of violation has stayed until there's a decision. Then once there's a decision, then the clock starts to run. Okay, thank you. Mr. O'Toole. I just, I completely agree with everything that Mr. Wardell said. I do want to confirm though that the city's goal is not to get penalties. We have no interest in penalizing someone. As stated on the face of the NOV, there's two simple things that the city wants. And that's for the residential property to not be put to a commercial use and for the heavy equipment to not be stored on the residentially zoned property. So it could easily be brought into compliance. Other discussion, comments from the board? I'm gonna weigh it in. Try to make sense of this. It seems that there was a complaint and the complaint wasn't filed about whether or not a business was operating out of this structure. Rather, it seemed to me the complaint was filed because there was a bunch of storage of vehicles and material on the site. And that the storage of the vehicle is a violation of the ordinance. I don't think that's even remotely in dispute. Then the question was, if the house is vacant, can you have storage there with no one living in the home? And the answer is no, you can't. So nobody lives at the house and there's stuff in the backyard. There's photographs, it's all there. So can you have stuff in the backyard of a vacant house? No, so to my way of thinking, you've got a truck there that shouldn't be there because it's not allowed in the residential district and you've got storage there that shouldn't be there because there's nobody in the house. So from my viewpoint, there seem to be violations that exist. And I don't wanna get wrapped around the axle of, well, there's a business operating there, there's not a business operating there. I don't know that that was the source of the violation or the source of the complaint. The source of the complaint was, hey, there's a bunch of junk in the backyard. Why is it there? So that's my standpoint. I'm going to uphold the violation or at least I'm gonna vote to uphold it because I think it's clear that that truck's not supposed to be there and that material's not supposed to be there. If Mr. Faysen was living in the house, could that stuff be in the backyard? Maybe, but he's not living there. So it should not be there. And that's my point of view. So Lacey, I agree. No, I agree. He put it succinctly. That's it. You can mute me again. Mr. Tarrant. Thank you, Mr. Tarrant. Mr. Meadows, I agree with everything you said. As it relates to the actual NIV and the other part of operating the business, I understand that Mr. Faysen has made some efforts since the NIV was issued to change a few things. But for me, at the time the NIV was issued, the current documents on record with the Secretary of State clearly listed that there is a business associated with this address. So I also support the NIV as it was issued. Other board members? I agree as well. I think that, like you said, the truck shouldn't be there, the stuff in the yard shouldn't be there. And then the paperwork states that that's his business or business address. So I have to agree. Anybody else? If not, I will entertain a motion. Why is my role with the playing department here? I do remember Ms. Jeter did try and speak a little bit. So if you have anything to add, please feel free. And then I also wanted to mention that there is a motion at the end of the staff report. However, I'm unsure as to whether or not Mr. Wardell thinks there used to be any changes with the language that's at the bottom of the staff report. If so, we can do that as well. Can you send me that language quickly? Yep, I will do that right now. Micah, did you have more? Did you want it to come in? No, I think you all summed it up just fine. Thanks. I would just say ditto at this point. So we're good. Micah, you've got your hand up. I'm going to have your hand up. Sorry, I'll lower it. Mr. Wardell, I'm copying that language over and I am putting it in the chat to all panelists. So everyone also will have it easily accessible. And we can go from there. So give me a moment to make sure I select everybody. And OK, that is in the chat for panelists. So all the motions have to be in the affirmative. So I would say that the motion would need to essentially say that make a motion that the Notice of Violation be upheld. You would have to vote yeah, that it is upheld or nay, that it should not be upheld or affirmed. I don't want to take a stab at it. I'll try it. So I hear by motion that the application number B2005052, an application for the appeal of an administrative decision to administer a Notice of Violation on property located at 1828 James Street be upheld. OK, I think you just made a motion that the Notice of Violation should be denied. Upheld. No, I said upheld. I said upheld. Right, but application B2005052 is an application appealing the Notice of Violation. OK, let me try again. I hear by motion that the application of number B2005052, an application for appeal of the administrative decision to administer the Notice of Violation. No, I don't have it. No, it ain't in there. I would recommend, and this is just a recommendation because I don't make motions right, that he moves that the Notice of Violation, that is the subject of the appeal denied. No, the approved, the upheld. Be denied. That is the subject of the appeal be affirmed. Is it possible for the chair to make a motion? No. Is that appropriate? Absolutely. OK. All right, I hereby make a motion that the Notice of Violation issued in this case be upheld. In this case, B000 whatever it might be. 000052 be upheld. I hereby make a motion that the Notice of Violation, the subject of B200005052 be upheld for property located at 1828 James Street. I second. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mr. Meadows. Yes. Ms. Jeter. Yes. Ms. Waimour. Yes. Mr. Kip. Yes. Ms. DeLacy. Yes. Ms. Boshane. Yes. Mr. Tarrant. Yes. Motion carries seven to zero. By a vote of seven. DeLacy, I have to leave right now. Thank you. I'm sorry. Oh, yep, I did call you. Thanks. You called me, but I have to leave now. OK. The meeting. By a motion of seven to zero, the Notice of Violation for B2000052 has been upheld. Thank you. So one thing we do need to add is to let Mr. Faison know if he chooses to appeal that to the Superior Court. I believe he has 30 days to do so. But that's obviously his choice. That's right. So Mr. Faison, you have the ability to appeal our order within, I guess, 30 days from the date that it's delivered. I'll let the attorneys clarify if that's not the case. You have the right to appeal that order to the Superior Court for Durham County. That's it. All right. Thank you very much. Is there any old business that we need to attend to? Nope. Is there any new business we need to attend to? Hey, guys, I have to judge three. I don't know if you still. We'll rush through these. We've got some orders that we need to deal with. First one is B2000042 from December 15th. Neither I nor Mr. Retchless can vote on that one since we voted no. And Ms. Major was also out on that one. OK. So I will entertain a motion for approval of order B2000042. One more second. Chad was not saying a motion. He couldn't because he voted no. So someone else needs to actually make the motion. So Tisha, if you want to make it, and then someone else second it. Tisha is in front of me. I can't. Oh, so no, Tisha. We're just making a motion to approve the order. OK, so I'll make a motion to approve the order for it. You have to tell me the number. Brian wants to chime in real quick. So I think I might have a question. How many people are present that voted for that particular permit? I might have to ask Susan for the exact list. The following one. It looks like Regina was here who's not. So OK, actually, let's see. Let's see. December 5th. There are three people. Ms. Major was out on that day at that meeting. So it was Delacy Meadows, Rogers, Retchless, Weymour, Kip, and Bo Shane who were seated. Of those only, Kip, Weymour, and Bo Shane are available. So Brian, are you saying that that's not in the persons to proceed forward with voting for approval? That's the question. Well, yes, I'm actually asking the question. So I'm assuming that's the answer. It was five to two was correct. That's right. Of those five, three are here. Of those five, three. OK, so if the three of them vote for it, then you can do it. So Tisha, Ian, and Natalie, one of you will have to make the motion and then the second. And then the three of you will need to vote in the affirmative. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Did we have a motion? Someone has to make the motion. That wasn't. Yeah, those yeses didn't count for anything. OK. What property address are we talking about? I'm sorry, I'm a little bit fried here. What property addresses is Pine View or another? That's correct. Pine View 3600, Pine View Circle. Yeah, this was the site that, I guess, was inside the flood plain. That's correct. Where there was a neighbor that came and had some concerns. So is there any of those three individuals that's willing to make a motion? We're getting closer to 3 o'clock and Micah does have to leave. So I want to make sure we do everything before she has to leave. So Ian, T-shirt and Natalie, anyone need to, anyone feel the urge to move second and then vote? I will. Go ahead, whoever said that, Ian. OK, well, I mean, I'll try to make a motion. I'm sure I'm not sure if I have it right here, but. You're just moving to approve the order. OK, so just moving to approve the order B2000042 for 3600, Pine View. Yeah, right? Yes, and one more second. Yes. OK, so I'm going to call roll for that. Miss Weymour. Yes, Miss Boshane. Yes, Mr. Kib. Yes. Awesome. OK, we've got a couple to do from today. So I'm sorry. Only the one from today, the very first one, given the deliberation for the other ones, we are not doing those today. Those will be drafted at a later time. So we're just going to do the first one. So 4851 to 52, we are not doing today, but 46 we are doing. And Mr. Kib is not voting on this one. So I will entertain a motion for the order for B2000046. Karen, so moved. Is there a second? You don't have to read this. No. Kip, second. Susan. OK, Mr. Kip, Mr. Meadows. Yes. Miss Weymour. Yes. Miss Jeter. Yes. Mr. Taren. Yes. Awesome. And so that's the only order we're going to do today. Is that right? OK, very good. Thank you guys for sticking in. I know it's been a long day and a tough one, especially for the attorneys. Anyway, I will entertain a motion for adjournment. Chair Meadows. Yes. Would you please let the clerk finish the vote? She has to tell us how it was approved, please. I'm sorry. I apologize. That's OK. I know you're excited. I shut my. That motion was approved five to zero. I didn't vote. But I approved. So Jessica, we need to ask if you. Jessica was not called Susan in that time. So that might be another. So Jessica and Ian need to be called. Need to vote whether or not they approve it. And then we need to go from there. I'm sorry. My internet, Eliza, you were cutting in and out. Yeah, so Jessica Major and Ian Kip, they were not called when you called the roll just then for that vote, which is why we might have gotten the five zero as opposed to seven zero that we need. So we need to on record ask Jessica and Ian whether or not they would approve the order for a number B20 plus zero's 46 and then read out the approval amount. The seven or five of. OK, Miss Major. Yes. Mr. Tarrant. Yes. Miss Jeter. Yes. Miss Weymour. Yes. Mr. Meadows. Yes. Mr. Kip. Yes. Motion carries six to zero or a delay seeds vote. Does that. She's not here, but we don't need her. We still have the majority. Yep. Selected six to zero. Yep. Awesome. Thank you. Is that it? Staff. Attorneys. All I've got. Thanks, y'all. Thank you. Is there a motion for adjournment? Yes, motion for adjournment. Best of all, in favor, aye. Aye. Thanks. Bye, guys. Thanks everybody. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you. Bye.