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March 25, 2008 Minutes CITY OF DENTON CITY COUNCIL MINUTES March 25, 2008 Joint Meeting of the City of Denton City Council and the Planning and Zoning Commission on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 8:00 a.m. in the Community Room of the Civic Center. Council Present: Mayor McNeill; Mayor Pro Tem Kamp; Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Mulroy; Council Members Heggins, Montgomery, Thomson, and Watts. Council Absent: None Commissioners Present: Commission Chair Watkins; Vice-Chair Eagleton; Commissioners, Lyke, King, Thomas and Schaake Commissioners Absent: Commissioner Anderson 1.Call to order; announce quorum, introductions. Mayor McNeill and Commission Chair Watkins announced that a quorum of their members were present and introductions were made. 2. The Council and Commission received a report and held a discussion regarding a variety of topics related to development regulations, procedures, and other matters within their mutual responsibilities. Mark Cunningham, Director of Planning and Development, presented the outline of the meeting’s topics which included an outline of the development review processes, development code amendments, direction on facilitating future discussions and direction on presentation of public hearing items. Cunningham stated that staff would like direction on the presentation of public hearing items. If the Planning and Zoning Commission made changes to the staff recommendation, would the Council like to have both the staff recommendation and the recommendation from the Commission or just the final comments from the Commission? The current practice was not to include the discussion from the Commission, just the recommendation. Council/Commission discussion - Mayor McNeill felt that he would like to see the staff recommendation and the discussion that caused that discussion to occur. Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Mulroy felt that if the issue was controversial with citizen involvement, he would like to read that in the minutes and have all the information to evaluate the issue and also see what changes the Commission made. With all that information, he would be able to answer citizen calls on the issue. He felt a complete audit trail on how the issue developed was needed. Mayor Pro Tem Kamp felt that detailed minutes produced good information. Cunningham asked if staff comments should be added to the staff report or just the Commission recommendations. City of Denton City Council Minutes March 25, 2008 Page 2 Mayor Pro Tem Kamp stated that she would like both. City Attorney Snyder asked about the situation of remanding issues back to the Commission. Council Member Watts stated that Council usually did not remand an issue back to the Commission unless there was true new information that the Council had received that the Commission did not. He felt that he would like to see as much information as possible in the case when the staff recommendation was different than the Commission recommendation. Mayor Pro Tem Kamp felt that it was rare for the Council to send something back to the Commission and when it was done, it was because the Council had received new information. City Manager Campbell stated that when the Council held a public hearing, there might be new information from citizens and not just new information from developers. Mayor McNeill also stated that he looked at the Commission as the place where the experts were which was an additional rationale for remanding back to the Commission if new information were received. Council Member Heggins stated that if the Council received pertinent information that the Commission had received, the Council could then reject or accept the information. Commissioner King felt that if the Council had a feeling on how to proceed with an issue, then he would like the Council to go in that direction, rather than send it back as that presented more meetings for the developer. Commissioner Lyke felt that if a developer knew the issue would be remanded back to the Commission, he might not do a poor presentation at the Commission and then present Council with new and better information. That was part of the checks and balances. Commissioner Schaake stated that sending an issue back to the Commission because of new information was good for the process and there might be a new decision by the Commission, trusting Council’s judgment that there was new information. Consensus was to bring as much information as possible for public hearings. Cunningham presented information on the Development Review process. Currently the pre- application process was optional. The pre-application process provided applicants with the ability to gather information to assess the feasibility of a proposed project, as well as to attain general information about the procedures required to complete the project. The proposal was to make pre-application mandatory for all projects which would allow staff to provide information to applicants up front and reduce time and money spent on projects that could not be completed. Another consideration was a pre-submittal conference which would be a broad brush overview of proposed projects. At the pre-submittal conference, a developer would present the basic project and staff would tell the developer what would be needed to do the project with the various departments such as Planning, Engineering, etc. The conference would inform the developer of what would be needed to make his project proceed smoothly. Cunningham asked if Council would like to proceed with making the pre-application meeting mandatory. City of Denton City Council Minutes March 25, 2008 Page 3 Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Mulroy stated that the original intent of this meeting was to go through the development process step by step and that he would like to review the process before starting to make choices. Cunningham presented a flow chart of the standard review development review process. The initial review process took approximately 19 days to process. The flow chart indicated how the process proceeded depending on various options. Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Mulroy asked about the role of Freese and Nichols in the development review process. Brian Lockley, Planning Manager, stated that Freese and Nichols did the actual engineering review of proposed water lines, streets, etc. and produced a report as to whether they were at city standards. PS Arora, Interim Development Review Administrator, stated that all of the comments that were compiled from Freese and Nichols was a process which an associate engineer did before that position was eliminated. Council and Commissioners discussed the role of Freese and Nichols in the development process. Commission Lyke left the meeting Commissioner Eagleton asked whether there was a cost difference for Freese and Nichols to perform the review as opposed to city staff and did that affect what an applicant had to pay. Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Mulroy stated that the primary role of Freese and Nichols was to do an engineering validation of a proposal to make sure it was in accordance with city standards. This function was given to an outside resource on the rationale that the work load in the development review process was inconsistent and then the outside firm would deal with the peaks and valleys in the development process. Commissioner Thomas noted that the time frames on the flow chart were not necessarily accurate. There were situations when more requirements might be needed up front from the developers such as a more detailed site plan or more information on the actual building and what it would house. Also, there was nothing on the application that told a developer that he could find information on the TrakIT system. Lockley stated that the Development Review Committee meeting was only for city staff and that comments from that meeting were entered into TrakIT which a developer could access. Another issue was the quality of the review. The current practice did not include a preliminary review of the plans; rather it just made sure that it had been submitted. City Attorney Snyder noted the vested rights statute which developers have used in the past against cities. He suggested not making the pre-application meeting mandatory as a developer might present a sketchy application and then claim vested right. He suggested making the pre- City of Denton City Council Minutes March 25, 2008 Page 4 application process more available as opposed to making it mandatory. If it were required in the development process, it could be considered a permit. Consensus of the Council was to draft an ordinance for consideration which would change the process to require a mandatory orientation to review how a project needed to be submitted, using a past project as an example of how to or how not to submit a project. This would be done prior to actual submittal of a project. Cunningham continued with the flow chart process for revisions and the secondary standard review process. Council and Commissioners discussed the possibility of a monetary incentive for developers to submit plans correct the first time rather than having to come back time after time with revisions. Cunningham stated that there were times when comments created needed revisions and felt that a better procedure might be to have the applicant attend the Development Review Committee meeting so all were on the same page. Staff could have a staff only pre-meeting to discuss the project so all were aware of proposed comments/changes to a development before meeting with the developer. Cunningham continued with Alternative Development plans. These were intended to provide opportunities for developments to deviate from certain Development Code requirements, while meeting and exceeding other requirements of the Code. Staff observations of this process noted that it allowed submittal of an ADP without a plat or SUP and that it could add additional time/cost to the review process. Staff questioned whether the ADP process should be used to achieve an alternative design or could it also be used to acquire trade-offs of minimum standards during the process? After discussion, Council and Commission felt that the ADP should be used for the site plan design only with no trade-offs. Cunningham next presented information on Building Permits. Currently building permits could be submitted while other applications were in process such as an SUP, ADP or plat. Staff observations were that changes made to a site plan for an ADP or SUP were not made to building permits in a timely manner; changes made to address Building Permit Review comments might be impacted by changes required for other associated applications and the timing of applications such as building permits and SUPs. Consensus of the Council and Commission was that the building permits could be parallel through the process with other applications. The Specific Use Permit process was presented by Cunningham. Staff observations questioned if an SUP authorized the use only, or did it tie an applicant to the site and also the timing of an application if an ADP were approved but a SUP was denied. City of Denton City Council Minutes March 25, 2008 Page 5 Consensus of the Council and Commission was that the two could be separated, a variance was not dependent on the site plan but the site plan review should be on hold until the ADP or SUP was approved. Commissioner Schaake left the meeting. Cunningham continued with Subdivision Variances. Staff observations questioned whether variances could be considered and approved without an accompanying plat and whether approved variances went with the land. Staff proposed creating an Administrative Waiver Process that would be project specific and would require plats before accepting variance (waiver) applications. If the project went away, the variance would go away. City Attorney Snyder indicated that such a process would have to be researched to determine if staff could administratively approve certain variances. Consensus of the Council and Commission was to research whether the proposed process could be done and return with options/suggestions. Part of the research would include whether a time limit could be placed on a variance such that the variance would expire if not built in within a certain period of time Staff review and applicant responsibility was the next category reviewed by Cunningham. This situation involved an item not specifically referenced in a review that must still meet Code requirements. Staff observation was that applicants relied on staff to direct them on all necessary changes rather than taking care of it. That put staff in the position of designing projects for developers rather than reviewing a completed plan for Code compliance. Council and Commission felt that the proposed procedure of the mandatory overview meeting would help with this situation. Lockley reviewed the Aldi project as it went through the development process as an example of how the procedures worked. Staff observation during the process was that changes made to preliminary plats were not always consistent with final plats and suggested making preliminary plats optional in certain situations. Lockley then reviewed the Kroger Center project. During that project, staff observed that the TxDOT permit application review added additional time to the overall review process. Staff was proposing to explore the possibility of the applicant applying for a TxDOT permit concurrent with an initial submittal. Council and Commission suggested that it could be recommended in the mandatory orientation session. Another agency to consider would be FEMA for early submittal Cunningham presented information on Code Amendments. He stated that staff from several departments had formed an internal committee to discuss future Code amendments. The committee consisted of individuals from Planning, Building Inspections, Code Enforcement, Legal, Engineering, Fire and DME. To date, over 70 potential amendments had been identified, ranging from minor clerical corrections to the rewriting of entire chapters. The most problematic Code amendments were currently being brought forward to the Planning and Zoning Commission for consideration. City of Denton City Council Minutes March 25, 2008 Page 6 Mayor McNeill stated that when the Code was passed, mandatory reviews were required every quarter with the public invited. He asked how that was being advertized. Lockley stated that the most interest came from the development community. Invitations were sent out and notices publicized. Mayor McNeill stated that there were many items in the code that dealt with enforcement and should be in an enforcement chapter. Lockley replied that a separate chapter was being developed for enforcement issues. Commissioner Thomas felt that there were still some big holes in the Development Code because of changing consumer taste and preference. He felt there was nothing in the Code dealing with redevelopment; that it currently only dealt with green field development. That issue needed to be addressed. Commissioner Eagleton felt that a topic for future discussion would be developments on a medium scale and incentives for smaller developments. Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Mulroy suggested additional future topics of discussion might include a small area planner and small area plans, land use planning, and future land use planning. With no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 11:25 a.m. ___________________________ PERRY R. MCNEILL MAYOR CITY OF DENTON, TEXAS ____________________________ JENNIFER WALTERS CITY SECRETARY CITY OF DENTON, TEXAS