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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2003-06-23 MinutesMINUTES OF A MEETING OF THE PLANNING COMMISSION A regular meeting of the City of Fayetteville Planning Commission was held on Monday, June 23, 2003 at 5:30 p.m. in room 219 of the City Administration Building, 113 W. Mountain, Fayetteville, Arkansas, 72701. ITEMS CONSIDERED ANX 03-02.00: Annexation (Shiloh Community Church, PP 322) RZN 03-17.00: Rezoning (Shiloh Community Church, PP 322) ACTION TAKEN Left on the Table Left on the Table ANX 03-03.00: Annexation (James Coger, PP 321) Left on the Table RZN 03-18.00: Rezoning (James Coger, PP 321) Left on the Table ANX 02-01.10 Annexation (Harrison, PP 256) Left on the Table ADM 03-15.00: Administrative Item (Zoning Map) Forwarded to City Council Page 2 ADM 02-28.00: Administrative Item (Hillside/Zoning Study) Page 5 Administrative Item (2003 Work Program) Page 7 COMMISSIONERS PRESENT Bob Estes Loren Shackelford Alice Church Christian Vaught Alan Ostner Jill Anthes Sharon Hoover Don Bunch Nancy Allen No Action No Action COMMISSIONERS ABSENT STAFF PRESENT STAFF ABSENT Tim Conklin Dawn Warrick Jeremy Pate Renee Thomas David Whitaker Planning Commission June 23, 2003 Page 2 Hoover: Welcome to the June 23`d Planning Commission meeting. Renee, will you call the roll please? Roll Call: Upon the completion of roll call there were nine commissioners present. Hoover: Shackelford: Bunch: Hoover: Thank you. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes from the June 9, 2003 meeting? So moved. Second. There is a motion by Commissioner Shackelford and a second by Commissioner Bunch. Renee? Roll Call: Upon the completion of roll call the motion to approve the minutes of the June 9, 2003 meeting was approved by a vote of 9-0-0. Thomas: The minutes are approved. ADM 03-15.00: Administrative Item (Zoning Map): An ordinance adopting a new official zoning map and incorporating the renamed zoning districts on the new official zoning map as adopted in Title 15 of the Unified Development Code of the Fayetteville Code of Ordinances. Three copies of the new official zoning map have been filed in the office of the City Clerk located at 113 W. Mountain Street, City Administration Building and are available for public examination prior to the passage of the ordinance adopting the new official zoning map. A copy of the new official zoning map is also available for review and examination in the Planning Division located at 125 W. Mountain Street. Hoover: Thank you Renee. At this time I would like to say that items one through five, the old business listed on our agenda, these items were tabled at the last meeting. Would any member of the audience or the Commission like to remove these off the table? They are still tabled. Seeing none, these items will remain tabled, these annexations. We will move on to item number six which was FPL 03-05.00 which was tabled at agenda if anyone is here for that item it has been tabled also. We will move onto item number seven which is an administrative item that I believe Tim is going to present our very own updated zoning map with the corrections. Conklin: Madam Chair and members of the Commission, this evening we are presenting the proposed new official zoning map. 1970 was the last time the City Council or Board of Directors adopted a new zoning map. Over the last 33 years this map has been amended hundreds of times through the rezoning process. In the mid to late 90's we converted what was a hand drawn map at 1"=1,000' to a digital zoning map. At that time we Planning Commission June 23, 2003 Page 3 discovered that there were some corrections and some rezonings that were not shown correctly on the digital map Over the last year we have gone through hundreds of ordinances verifying that they are shown correctly on the map. What you have before you this evening is a map that is produced through our geographic information system. It is a digital map. It reflects what was approved in 1970 and the hundreds of amendments that have occurred over the last 33 years. We have also gone to an atlas format zoning map This method is used in other cities in Arkansas, Little Rock, Jonesboro, Springdale. That is what you see in this lower corner here. It is at a scale of 1" = 200'. It will be signed by the Mayor and attested by the City Clerk. Those will be kept in the Planning Division. Anytime the official map is amended a new atlas sheet will be printed out and will replace the old one with the amendment noted on it. We are not proposing to change any zoning classification that has not been through the Planning Commission and City Council process. What we are asking is to start with a new official zoning map as a base map and go forward here converting what was once a hand drawn map at 1" = 1,000' to a digital map that we now can zoom down to the individual lot level. The atlas map also will contain the imagery that we have available here at the city of Fayetteville. You will be able to see existing structures. It also contains the property boundary information that we have. It contains address points so you will be able to see individual addresses on structures. It is a tremendous improvement over what we had with regard to trying to understand and interpret what zoning was when you got to a very small scale of trying to determine an individual lot. It is an improvement on the overall map. Staff is recommending that you recommend approval to the City Council for adoption of a new map. Thank you. Hoover: Thank you Tim. Do we need to have an administrative item or do you want us to make a motion? Conklin: I would request that you make a motion moving this forward to the City Council. I would also request that you open it up to the public if the public has any comments on it this evening. Hoover: Thank you Tim. Is there any member of the public that would like to address this ADM 03-15.00 the zoning map new and improved technology here? Seeing none, I will bring it back to the Commissioners. Are there any comments about the great job that Tim has done so that we're accurate every time now? MOTION: Allen: Tim and his staff have done a wonderful job. They have put in hours and hours and hours of work and we appreciate it very much. With that being Planning Commission June 23, 2003 Page 4 said, 1 move that we move forward with ADM 03-13.00 to the City Council. Anthes: I will second. Hoover: There is a motion by Commissioner Allen and a second by Commissioner Anthes. Is there anymore discussion? Renee, will you call the roll please? Roll Call: Upon the completion of roll call the motion to forward ADM 03-13.00 was approved by a vote of nine to zero. Thomas: The motion carries nine to zero. Planning Commission June 23, 2003 Page 5 ADM 02-28.00: Administrative Item (Hillside/Zoning Study): A progress report on the Hillside Study which is being prepared in response to City Council Resolution No.130-02. The Resolution directed the Planning Commission and the Planning staff to consider looking at areas zoned R-2 that have slopes over 15% and those areas that have a recorded, platted subdivision where the infrastructure has not been built. Hoover: Item number eight on the agenda is ADM 02-28.00, the hillside zoning study. Tim, are you going to tell us our status of this? Conklin: Yes. Staff has been working on this hillside zoning study update. The City Council last August asked staff to look at those existing areas zoned R-2, 24 units per acre, located on hillsides of 15% slope or greater or in areas of undeveloped subdivisions or paper subdivisions, to look at what can be done to protect those areas, possibly down zoning those areas to reduce the density. When staff brought this before the Planning Commission the Planning Commission did ask that we research what other cities have adopted across this country to protect and preserve their hillsides, we are in the process of that. I did include some emails related specifically to density and slope. There are different ranges across the country with regard to what is appropriate density on certain different types of slopes. There are many different methods communities have used including a maximum percent of disturbed area on a site, requiring vegetative buffers, setting floor to area ratios of how much the site can be covered by buildings. In looking at the Mount Sequoyah area, and let me just thank the Mount Sequoyah Neighborhood Association and residence up there, they collected a tremendous amount of data. I summarized it here because we are not prepared this evening to give a recommendation to the Commission. The overall density in the R-2 areas on fairly steep slopes is 1.7 units per acre so it is fairly low density in a lot of these hillside areas. Let me just point out that includes the areas that are currently undeveloped and including those areas that do not have the current infrastructure built, the paper subdivisions. That really brings the density down in some areas and we have not broken that out this evening. What we are asking this evening is to have the commission appoint a sub committee to work with staff to review the ordinances and the information that we have collected from around the country. Since there is not just one method cities have used across the country we would like the guidance from the Commission so when we bring something back forward to you there has been an educational component to this to understand what is the best means to protect our hillsides and these steep sloped areas. That is what we are asking you for this evening. We intend to make this a priority project earlier we just heard about the zoning map adoption. We had also spent some time this last winter and last fall getting the UDC, Unified Development Code up and ready. We pretty much put a stop on most of our long range Planning projects until we had our code book up to date, Planning Commission June 23, 2003 Page 6 our development ordinances and hopefully on July 1St we will have our zoning map updated. Those two basic Planning documents and ordinances we wanted to get set. We're excited about setting this as one of the next priorities to complete over the next thee months. Hoover: Tim, from us tonight you want the task force designated is all we need to do on this? Conklin: Yes. This is just an update. We don't have any formal recommendation at this time. Hoover: Thank you. Can I make a recommendation or ask if Commissioner Ostner, Bunch and Hoover would be on the task force for hillside ordinances? I got a yes from Bunch. We will have food meetings. Anthes: Are we double dutying people that are on Subdivision and other committees? Hoover: We are but the other thing is we already have one task force going right now that has not completed their mission yet and so I don't want to double duty those and I was trying to keep the new people still letting you all adjust a little bit longer because your time will come don't worry. Is that ok? Anthes: Sure. Hoover: Ok, then the task force is Ostner, Bunch and Hoover. Thank you Tim. Planning Commission June 23, 2003 Page 7 Administrative Item (2003 Work Program): In February, the Planning Commission prioritized items for the 2003 Work Program. These items have been compiled by order of importance for Planning Commission approval. The Work Program is a list of tasks that are in -progress or anticipated for the upcoming year for the Planning Division and Planning Commission. The tasks stem from the guiding policies and implementation strategies in General Plan 2020, adopted by City Council on December 17, 2002. Hoover: Item number nine is the 2003 work program. Tim, are you presenting the work program too? This is what happens when you don't come to our meetings anymore. Conklin: Yes, I realize that. I did want to take this opportunity this evening to go over our 2003 work program. Over the last two years the Planning Division staff has met with the Commission at the beginning of the year to kind of set our priorities of things we wanted to bring to you. This first half of the year, once again, was to complete our UDO codification, adopt a new official zoning map. I have brought into the Storm Water Phase II long range Planning and assisted with the Storm Water Phase II Individual permit application. We've also been working on our impact fee collection procedure including training of staff and the building community,. We are also assisting in the master traffic and transportation plan. One of the items also we have just recently received funding from the City Council was the Downtown Master Plan and of course we just talked about our hillside rezoning study. In 2003 we had several changes in the Planning Division including Shelli Rushing taking a position up in the City of Bentonville and we hired Julie Bland as her replacement. We have integrated our Tree and Landscape Administrator and Program Coordinator into the Planning Division and recently hired a new Tree and Landscape Administrator Over the next quarter we intend to finalize our hillside study and continue working on our tree ordinance amendments. I am going to have Ms. Warrick at this time go through our 2003 work program. Over the next three months the hillside zoning study, we will be working closely with the task force you just appointed, also bringing in other departments and divisions from Engineering and Planning to participate on that. The City Council last week approved a scope of services for a Downtown Master Plan which includes part of the comprehensive look at rezoning of our downtown including design standards and guidelines. We are in the process of a Master Traffic and Transportation Plan for the City of Fayetteville. Booker, Willis, Ratcliff will be here Thursday night at 6:30 in the City Council room, this room we are in tonight to go over that plan. In the next six months we are going to be looking at Master Street Plan revisions based on our transportation consultant's recommendations. You may recall that we were very close to adopting an outdoor lighting ordinance. We put that on hold until we could get our Unified Development Code adopted. We are also looking at Planning Commission June 23, 2003 Page 8 a review of our landscaping requirements that are located in our parking lot ordinance and in our commercial design standards and other ordinances and looking at combining those into one set of ordinances. We have the ongoing issue of transient merchants and how to handle those. What we are talking about there are people who set up trailers selling retail goods on street corners and also automobile sales lots. There is a lot of concern with regard to design standards and landscaping for auto sales. Something that came up with one of our most recent expansions of our automobile dealership so we are researching that and that is what we will be looking for in the next six months. With regard to Storm Water Phase II requirements, I bring this up because what we have tried to do with the reorganization that the Mayor recently completed was to develop more of a team approach between Planning and Engineering. Planning has been working on Storm Water Phase II requirements. There are six minimum control requirements that the City of Fayetteville is going to have to comply with over the next five years and that includes public education outreach, public involvement, participation. It listed discharge detection elimination, construction site runoff control, post construction site runoff control and pollution prevention and good housekeeping. I bring this up because these are ordinances that most likely the Planning Commission and activities the Planning Commission may be associated with, maybe not everyone of them, but with regard to looking at our existing storm water and grading ordinances, there may be amendments to those that will be coming up over the next five years. Our Transportation Plan, this is very exciting. There are many things that the Planning Commission has been doing for many years. BWR has been looking at our current ordinances. This Thursday they will be talking about access management, coming up with actual standards for curb cut spacing, curb cut design, development assessment, how the city should assess developers with regard to off site improvements, Master Street Plan, a Smart Growth component within that, a traffic calming policy and procedure for neighborhoods to request that City of Fayetteville to install traffic calming elements onto the street to slow traffic down and calm traffic. It also includes a multi mobile plan and they do have proposals to amend our Master Street Plan. This will be a lot of work that will be coming forward and will impact how we review development and amend our Master Street Plan. We held a couple of workshops the last six months including a wetlands/floodplain workshop, an impact fee training session for builders and developers. We have tried to utilize the audio conferences when available including the Smart Code, Transect Based Planning. Recently the Physical Active Community and Public Works and Smart Growth, we are trying to understand and learn about the linkages between our capital improvements and how that supports smart growth. That was a very good audio conference. The Downtown Master Plan, which is one of the things in the work program for the Planning Commission that you have Planning Commission June 23, 2003 Page 9 identified, we have seven major strategies that are included in that scope, including an authentic city center, a specialty shopping destination, a regional and cultural entertainment district, this is something that the City Council is very interested in. The City Council this past spring met with Lyle Sumek and developed guiding principals for Fayetteville. I handed that out at agenda session to each of you the Executive Summary of the Mayor and City Council's Guiding Principals and Goals for 2008. One of them is to look at Dickson Street and downtown developed as a cultural and entertainment district so that will also go along with this Downtown Master Plan. A welcoming place for visitors, a mixed use neighborhood, a parking management strategy. For those on the Commission that have been here for a while, parking is a big issue in our downtown area. Do we require additional surface parking lots, do we try to consolidate parking into decks? How do we pay for this? The organizations that are in existence are looking at an overall parking management strategy for the downtown area and a partnership for the future. Reaching out to the existing organizations that are out there including DDEP and the parking districts, the University of Arkansas Walton Art's Center and understanding their needs and goals and working together to create an overall vision for the downtown Fayetteville area. One of the aspects, with regard to the Master Plan again, is to not only just come up with a Master Plan for the downtown area but to actually implement that through rezoning text amendments, redoing our zoning for the downtown area, developing design standards and guidelines that expand upon our commercial design standards. Downtown is a lot different that some of our other retail areas in Fayetteville. We assisted with DDEP looking at developing some cross sections and DDEP has presented their plans to the City Council and we have been working with DDEP closely to implement that overall plan for the downtown. That concludes my presentation. It kind of gives the Commission an outline of where we are at. Behind you are the goals for 2008 and the Fayetteville Vision 2020 Guiding Principals. Staff will be meeting with the consultant to determine how best to implement the principals and the goals for 2008 and the City Council is working closely with us to make sure we achieve what they have developed this past Spring. Thank you. Hoover: Thanks Tim. Do any of the Commissioners have any questions for Tim about this? Tim, if there is something that we desire that is not on this list should we submit it or should we wait until a particular retreat or something like that? Conklin: There are many items on the list. As you know, as we developed our work program it was somewhat of a brain storming session of things we wanted to try to achieve. This is why I have set out the next three months and six months of things that we will be focusing a lot of our time on. Yes, when Planning Commission June 23, 2003 Page 10 we do the next update if you want to submit something to me we definitely can discuss this. We are really focusing on our City Council's goals for 2008. Included in that are preserving our hillsides and protecting them. With regard to the Downtown Master Plan and Dickson Street and looking at hillsides and zoning those are two of the principals and goals that the City Council is directing us to look at at this time. Hoover: Thanks Are there any comments? Seeing none, that was our last item on the agenda. I wanted to make a comment about task forces that we have. These are all public meetings and the public is invited and also the other Commissioners are invited and we will let everybody know. I don't want you to think just because you're not on the task force that we don't want your input at these meetings. It would be the main three people's responsibility to make sure there is something accomplished at the meetings. I believe the Bylaws task force, Nancy, you have an announcement about that? Allen: Yes. Commissioner Shackelford and Estes and I will be meeting a week from today at 5:30 at Tim's Pizza on the square to discuss some possible changes to the bylaws for the Planning Commissioners and any of you that might want to join us are certainly welcome. Hoover: Thank you Nancy. Tim, would you tell us again when the traffic consultant is here and the time? Conklin: It will be Thursday, June 26`h in room 219, the City Council room, the room that we are in right now. It is at 6:30. I encourage everybody out there to attend. It will be a presentation of what they have learned from the first public meeting we had earlier this year. They will be presenting, as I mentioned, access management, smart growth, traffic calming policy procedure, multi mobile plan and master street plan proposed amendments. They will also be talking about short term capital improvements that are needed to handle our existing traffic in the community and our long term capital improvements that will be needed over the next 20 years. They have studied our intersections. They have some proposed intersection improvements and realignment designs that they have developed. They have also looked at level of service and capacity and which intersections or how the intersections are currently operating and how the intersections will be operating in 20 years. There is a lot of information out there and it will be very informative. Hoover: Will there be a handout with it? Conklin: We will be putting out on the website the drafts of each of those documents. BWR will be here to discuss each of those items after their Planning Commission June 23, 2003 Page 11 presentation and will be taking public comment at that time in more of like a listening session approach. Hoover: Will there be another opportunity for public comment? Conklin: There will be additional public meetings in August as it goes forward to the City Council. Also, the proposed new zoning map is on our website at faygis.org. That is our GIS website. If you go to city maps under Planning you will be able to view our proposed new official zoning map. Hoover: Thank you Tim. Is there any other business? The meeting is adjourned. Thank you. Meeting adjourned 5:55 p.m.