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HomeMy WebLinkAboutPZ 2011-06-02 MinutesMINUTES OF THE MEETING OF THE PLANNING & ZONING COMMISSION OF THE CITY OF NORTH RICHLAND HILLS, TEXAS JUNE 2, 2011 1. CALL TO ORDER The meeting was called to order by Chairman Randall Shiflet at 6:30p.m. 2. ROLL CALL PRESENT Chairman Randall Shiflet Don Bowen Mark Haynes Mike Benton Steven Cooper Bill Schopper Dianna Madar Ex- Officio Kathy Luppy CITY STAFF Director of Planning & Dvpmt. John Pitstick Director of Economic Dev. Craig Hulse Asst Planner Chad VanSteenberg Recording Secretary Gina Pastre 3. General Discussion of Current Planning Issues and City Wide Goals John Pitstick said that we just want to meet with you and update you on the goals. The Council is getting pretty aggressive in terms of moving forward with some public improvements and potentially a bond issue. Traditionally the city council meets every year to go over the budget and we usually also meet every 1 -2 years to update city wide goals. We would like to take a few minutes to discuss city wide goals but initially we would like to discuss the home based businesses. The City Council wanted to clean up the customary home occupation ordinance. We have a draft tonight and you don't have to vote tonight. We are just trying to get some input on it and see if you might have any suggestions or changes you would recommend. We would like to bring this back at the next regular Planning and Zoning meeting. The redline is the text that was changed. The primary purpose was to restrict home occupations to primary residences. That was a loop hole that was in the previous ordinance. This has been through DRC several times to look at that. The changes that we have made is to require that the primary residence to be deemed which means it is a residence where a resident sleeps Page 1 06/02/11 P & Z Minutes a majority of the time. Customary home occupations really are clearly an incidental use. We also added that they cannot be offensive for reasons of odor or noise and added some classification on physical appearance and visible evidence. They are not allowed to have any changes to the outside appearance of the building or premises or any other visible evidence of the conduct of such home occupation. No equipment shall be used that creates visual or audible interferences on radio or television receivers or causes fluctuations in light voltage on all premises. No production of additional solid waste, no temporary assembly of employees. From time to time we have contractors that will have their employees all meet at their house with all of their trucks in the morning. Therefore we have no assembly of employees, equipment or parking at home residences for contractors and businesses. All storage of supplies and business materials for home based business shall not be allowed in an accessory building. We did not want someone to build an accessory building to store all of their equipment for their business. Traffic was an issue. The use may not increase the normal automobile vehicle traffic in the neighborhood and not require additional off street parking is what the ordinance reads now. We have added on or off street parking. We clarified that by stating parking of vehicles for customers of allowed home occupations shall be limited to the driveway of such premises or the along the curb immediately adjacent to such premises. We don't want people parking up and down the street. No more than 2 vehicles per hour or more than 10 total vehicles per day. That seems like a lot but we tried to look at a situation such as a piano teacher. Where they would have students coming and going. We talked about where customary home occupations may include and we added professional consultants who render services in a home office over telephone and online and has personal contacts with customers offsite. You could carry on your business onsite on computer but you wouldn't have any personal contacts onsite. We added private tutoring and we specified that home base businesses with on site customers would be limited to the hours of 8 am -8 pm. There are many occupations that allow people to work from home now and we wouldn't have a problem with that. We added the direct sales such as Tupperware parties and jewelry parties. We allow that by hosting home social gatherings. Those are certainly allowed and are a common part of society today. We also clarified what should not be allowed and we did add, contractors offices, electronics and computer repair, physicians, dentists, optometrists, social or psychological counseling, massage therapists or others in similar nature or character. We didn't want those to occur in the home. It may not be a catch all for everything and we wanted to clarify that. John Pitstick said no. Mike Benton said that he recalled with that particular case was that the house was not finished. Is that something that we eventually made them do. It was like an abandoned house that they only finished out part of it. John Pitstick said that the problem is that someone can take out a permit on a remodel on a house and they have 6 months before they do anything. Now we have changed our laws recently in the last couple years that if there is not any kind of substantial movement within 90 days we can pull that permit. We can state that the permit is no longer valid. It is not a money making thing for us it is just to clarify. What happens is that if we send someone a violation and all they have to do is come in and make application for a permit and they have to stop work and sometimes they would take up Page 2 06/02/11 P & Z Minutes to 6 months. Once they come in and get a building permit they have to make some type of substantial movement on that within 90 days. Bill Schopper said that it was amazing how much information the neighbors had. Mike Benton said that they must have been inside and I was just curious and the way that I visualized it is that they just completed the front part and had left the back. John Pitstick said that Penny our assistant building official stated that they only came in to pull a permit for a house remodel. They had never mentioned that they were going to occupy the space for a counseling business. So they came in to get a permit to remodel the whole property and then stated that they ran out of money and so they remodeled part of it and moved the business in. I think that the Council was concerned with this case and that is why we are addressing this ordinance. Steven Cooper asked if we should add a disclaimer that this list is not all inclusive for other things. John Pitstick said that we could have it say that customary home occupation may include but not limited to. Steven Cooper said yes. There is always going to be someone who comes up with something else and that way we could be covered. Steven Cooper said that he thinks that would be a good addition to the requirements. Dianna Madar said that in reference to the parking more than 2 vehicles per hour or more than 10 total vehicles. I think you listed in there the limited direct sales such as jewelery, cosmetics etc. When they are hosting those kinds of parties there are going to be more than 2 cars and when you think of the boot camps that people that run out of their homes. John Pitstick asked what the boot camps were? Dianna Madar said that the boot camps are like physical training and they do all these different things and have the tires out and all different kinds of stuff. They meet at their homes and at parks. You do see a lot more vehicles for those kinds of uses. There are a few of them in our neighborhood. John Pitstick said that this is the first time he has heard of people doing boot camps out of their homes. Would the commission be ok with that type of use? Mike Benton said like she mentioned. Some of these are pretty serious and have tires and stuff out there. Bill Schopper said that it might be dependant on how many times they are doing it? Dianna Madar said that this would put them over their 2 vehicles. Page 3 06/02/11 P & Z Minutes Bill Schopper asked if it is something that they do every week or every month or every day? Dianna Madar said that they have them 2 -3 times a week. Some of them have groups during the day. Craig Hulse said that the Tupperware parties were thought of as a house party where it may just happen once or twice or year at a particular residence. What you are saying this is something that is happening on a consistent schedule recurring. Bill Schopper said that it would bother me if 1 was one of their neighbors. John Pitstick said I think that we can enforce it on complaint driven cases. If no one complains but I think that we could say that there is a change in the outside physical appearance. Since they are putting tires down and such. Dianna Madar said that they put them down for that hour only and then they put them up. Sometimes they are using weights or have cones out. Steven Cooper asked how many people are participating? How many cars are out there for this? Dianna Madar said that it varies. Sometimes 4 or 5 cars. John Pitstick asked if they are walking there for exercise or are they driving. Dianna Madar said that some of the people aren't from the neighborhood. Mike Benton said that he thinks that a majority of people are driving to it. Steven Cooper asked how staff come up with the 2 vehicles per hour? John Pitstick said that if you read this the only home occupation that is allowed to have traffic is a musician, artist and private tutoring. The rest of them aren't allowed to have customers that come to their homes. Craig Hulse said that the thought process was 1 car coming in for the next appointment and one car there for the current. Two cars available on a driveway. That is where we came up with the rational for that. John Pitstick said that we felt that 10 in a day was reasonable amount between the hours of 8 am and 8 pm. But you are saying that there could be 10 cars in one hour. Dianna Madar said that she has never seen that many. The two that I know of on our side of Thornbridge aren't intrusive into our streets. Our streets are nice and wide there and it hasn't created a traffic problem. It doesn't seem to bother anyone that I am aware of. Bill Schopper said that is really the key is if it is causing a problem with the neighbors. Page 4 06/02/11 P & Z Minutes Randy Shiflet said I have a concern with that. I'm thinking about the next block Woodhaven between my house and Green Valley School. They have side or rear entry garages with single width driveways. We already have traffic and anytime someone has a party it is hard to just find a place to pull over to let someone through is a problem. In parts of town there is plenty of room and other parts of town it is a problem. Dianna Madar said think about how narrow the streets are in Hometown. Randy Shiflet said that he didn't know anything about these bootcamps but I don't think that it should be allowed. Mike Benton said that the people he knows that are doing it are meeting around 5 am. John Pitstick said in that case no one would really ever know. This is not a catch all and we wanted to write the ordinance strict enough where we could enforce any complaints that are received. We don't require a Certificate of Occupancy for something like this. There is a couple of cities in the metroplex that actually require home occupation certificates of operation. I don't think that we really want to go that route. Randy Shiflet asked if this is something that staff is looking at bringing back. I think that it is important that the Mayor and Council should know that some of us have concerns about this. John Pitstick said that under the physical appearance and visible evidence maybe we can write another sentence in there that would handle the outdoor activities. I'm not sure how we would describe those without saying boot camp. But maybe say some outdoor training facilities would be limited. Something that would give us enough teeth that if we got complaints that we could shut them down but we aren't calling them out to say they absolutely aren't allowed. Dianna Madar said we could say external business activities. Randy Shiflet said that if they are meeting at 5 am then its probably not going to be a problem. Dianna Madar said that in my neighborhood they meet sometime early in the evening. Mark Haynes said that the traffic restrictions would take care of that. Bill Schopper said that this is where you would go after the excessive. If there is 10 cars at one time than they have gone over their 2 an hour. John Pitstick said that we will see if we can reword that section on physical appearance and visible evidence and write enough in there if we should receive complaints that we would be able to act on it. Then we could leave the traffic and parking alone. It is not as if we have had a lot of issues with this however it was something that came to light as a result of that other case. Page 5 06/02/11 P & Z Minutes Bill Schopper asked if they ever did anything else with that, didn't we turn that down? John Pitstick said yes and Council turned it down. Craig Hulse said that rather than putting limited to be reversed to anything outside of what is listed here would be reviewed on a case by case basis in respect to noise, traffic, criteria. That way if something else comes up beyond boot camp that isn't going on now then staff can evaluate how many cars and noise, changes that it may cause and make a determination. John Pitstick said that if it is a situation where you don't like your neighbor and you are unhappy that they are out working out in the driveway and you can put in a complaint. However it may not be considered a violation. Bill Schopper said that maybe the problem is that we are trying to say that it is not limited to and may include. If we just say A through F is included and then everything else is on a case by case basis. Those are pretty wide ranging already. John Pitstick said that I think that the bottom line is that it is clearly incidental to single family residential living. Randy Shiflet asked if this is approved what would happen if someone is already operating? John Pitstick said that if we receive a complaint that we would have to follow up on it. Bill Schopper said that this is his concern with the contractors office. You can't believe how many builders had their own office building 2 years ago and now are working out of their homes. They aren't running a sales office but that is where they are working from. John Pitstick said that I can assure you that we are not out there actively enforcing something like that. It is mostly complaint driven. But if a contractor is working out of his house and he has 5 or 6 trucks there at 6:30 in the morning. If we get complaints then we are going to put a stop to it. What I always ask when they call to see if they are able to work for home. I just ask them if I were to drive past your home would I know that you were running a business. If they say no then you can do it. If we don't see it and it isn't a nuisance then it isn't a problem. Randy Shiflet said that the reason he was asking was that he had a neighbor that was running an electrical company at Red Oak and Woodhaven on the corner. He had his 1 -2 vans parked there at night and in the morning about 6 trucks would show up and they would send their crews off and those trucks would be parked there all day. John Pitstick said that we could shut something like that down. We have clarified that there is to be no assembly of employees, equipment or parking at home residences. They need to meet somewhere else. Kathy Luppy said that when you look it the fine is substantial. $2,000 for each offense. Page 6 06/02/11 P & Z Minutes John Pitstick said that is the zoning violation. That is pretty typical for a zoning violation. It is not a money issue just a threat. We aren't trying to make money off of this. We just want to have a clean quality of life community. We would like to have some flexibility to be able to address the issues. There has to either be a traffic problem or change in physical appearance or visible evidence. I will look into the boot camp and see about adding the not limited to section and we will try to add some verbage regarding complaint driven or nuisance that gives us some flexibility to enforce it. John Pitstick said that I have included a packet for you. The department heads and the City Council get together about every 2 years. We went to Granbury this past year and we are able to get off site and it is a way for everyone to relax and not have to worry about budget or numbers. We are able to sit down and determine what we really want for the community. It is a great way for the Council to reassess and determine what our major goals are. This last year they added the efficient, effective delivery of city services. Primarily because of the concerns over the widening of 820 and the loss of the potential concerns over the Library and Recreation Center, Animal Shelter. There is a lot of things going on about city facilities that we are up in the air with right now. The goal of local and regional leadership was added a couple years ago. The Council felt like the City of North Richland Hills should be a leader in Northeast Tarrant County. The major is a good example sitting on the COG board and sits on many of those types of boards. They wanted to encourage staff to that as well. Dave Pendley our Building Official is on the International Code Council. Targeting Economic Development was another one. Craig has worked with Calloway Creek and Loop 820. As they redevelop how do we target Economic Development. Sense of Community was also added 3 -4 years ago. Looking into how we can promote a sense of community. That goes through our parks systems and getting online with our city website. We want a positive city image. Through Iron Horse and NRH2O and the image that we have. Financial stability was very important, Safety and Security with Fire and Police. Efficient and Effective Transportation system. The number 1 goal is Quality Community Development Revitalization. That has been the number 1 goal for quite some time. That directly involves P & Z commission. We want to have a quality community development and revitalization. There are a few action items for 2011 that directly affect this board. There are 5 objectives, update the TOD code and rezone properties at Iron Horse, We have updated the TOD and we have rezoned Smithfield now. Now our next major goal is to move forward and rezone the Iron Horse area. We have a couple property owners. Dan Smalley has some property that would be where the future rail station would be and he has a few concerns. We may have an independent study that we have to do for the core area plan. This would allow him to see what he would get before he will support rezoning his property. We are working with him now about a potential joint study that would be paid a 1/3 by the city , 1/3 by Dan Smalley and 1/3 by Don Flowers in order to look at that core area plan. They want to make sure they don't just sit there and then the T comes in and just condemns them and buys them out to put a parking lot there. They want developable property in the end. The property owners have not been in favor or rezoning until they get a little more information from The T. Bill Schopper asked if The T do that without the city's support? Page 7 06/02/11 P & Z Minutes John Pitstick said yes but I don't think they will. They want the city's support and money. I think The T will work with us but that is one thing that we wanted to get started with in the next few months. There may be an outside consultant to look into that but right now we are looking into a joint shared study. That would allow us to come up with a core area and out of that study hopefully rezone a lot of those properties. The comprehensive plan and thoroughfare plans need to reflect the Town Center and TOD revisions. We have spent the last 10 months doing Hometown and we need to update the Comprehensive plan to reflect those changes that we just adopted. The thoroughfares need to be cleared up and shown on here. It shouldn't be bad it is just a matter of getting the maps updated. Adopt regulations for wind and solar systems. I know that we have discussed these for awhile. We are in the process of trying to set up interviews for a Senior Planner. That would be a major goal of theirs coming in. We hopefully will be hiring a Senior Planner very soon. Identifying individual neighborhoods as part of Comprehensive plan and development of new landscape standards. This is the Iron Horse and it looks right now that property on the back and west side of the railroad tracks will probably be removed from the Iron Horse. They are looking at a gas well site there. I don't know if that is going to pass but he originally said that he wanted to be removed from the TOD. We most likely will remove that from the TOD. The Bluffs at Iron Horse have some pieces of property and originally said they wanted to be involved in the TOD and now they are saying they don't want to be involved. They just want to develop as a traditional or conventional garden apartments back there. They have made application to move forward with that. We are reviewing that now and it was under a PD and the time ran out in 2002. They will have to come back and revise this plan under a revised PD. This sets almost 18 feet below the level and we are hoping that we can working with them to try to have some tie in between the two. Such as a trail in connection with the cotton belt. It is probably just going to be traditional apartments there. They were originally approved for it back in 1998 and time ran out in 2002. We have had a request on Clift Street and Clay Hibbins for streets to remain in a rural bar ditch setting. I have mixed emotions on this and we need to go through the process on this. There may be appropriate areas where we need to designate rural roads where we would leave them in a bar ditch road. We will have to look at that and as part of the update for the thoroughfare plan over the next several months and bringing those items to you as we update. With the changes we add for Hometown and the TOD's we will potentially consider the rural road sections. That comes with a couple different things, with rural road sections you will probably only see these big estate lots 1 acre or larger and we will probably not allow redevelopment. It is like permanently saying that these are going to be rural road sections and going to be that way for a long period of time. We wouldn't have to improve them so I have some mixed feelings about that. There may be a few isolated areas where they may have dead end streets or something that we may want to leave that way. Randy Shiflet asked what we did on North Forty or Meadow? Randy Shiflet said that they had to pay rough proportionality fees to ultimately expand North Forty and Buck. Page 8 06/02/11 P & Z Minutes Randy Shiflet said that Buck was on the other side of Meadow and Holiday. Which Road is it that is North of Richfield Park? Bill Schopper said Little Ranch Rd. Randy Shiflet said yes. I was just thinking that besides the areas over there off of Amundson. The other areas that this might be applicable to and that is Morgan Meadows. That has a very rural setting and I have mixed feelings about it as well. But if you go in there and improve all of the streets then it takes away the rural feel. John Pitstick said that the other thing that happens is that the retirees move out there and they want to live out in the country and we allow them to keep the bar ditch streets their sons and daughters take it over and then you have issues. If they want to redevelop then they will have to rebuild the roads. You are strapping the future potential redevelopment. If we designate rural streets they are pretty much saying it is going to rural from now on. There are good and bad parts to it. I think that there could be some isolated areas that we would could consider that and keep the rural setting. Steven Cooper asked how it works if we go in and it is rural now with bar ditches and you go in and change it. There is no changing or platting that goes on. There is no building. Does the city go in and improve it? John Pitstick said yes. As development occurs in most of them with rough proportionality we collect those fees. Steven Cooper said that if there are no changes going on then it would be the city. John Pitstick said ultimately all roads within the city are going to be curb and gutter. Right now our plan is for every street to be curb and gutter some day. We are not Colleyville but we are a full service community. We just need to look at it and examine this over time. Randy Shiflet said that our thoroughfares will be curb and gutters before they will. John Pitstick said yes. There may be some opportunities for us to look at that. Adopt regulations for wind and solar systems. Right now they can put the solar panels on now. They need a building permit. I think we need to address some aesthetic and safety standards. Dave was telling me the other day there was someone in another community and he was working on his solar panel. It was a cloudy day and then the sun came out from behind the clouds and shocked him and knocked him off the roof. Don Bowen asked if they have any regulations about not being able to see them from the street? John Pitstick said no. Page 9 06/02/11 P & Z Minutes Dianna Madar said that she thought we had set some regulations on how much of the roof top they could take and how visible they were. John Pitstick said that they were brought for discussion but no action has been taken yet. We just don't have that much wind for the wind turbines. You would have to be way up in order to get sustained wind so it really doesn't pay to have it. It isn't like being in West Texas. Some of those can look kind of ugly. Currently if you have 2 acres of land you can put it on a pole. There is a SUP involved. The government has tax relief for those who put them up. They really don't pay for themselves but with the help they are becoming more affordable. Craig Hulse said that the solar panels are susceptible to hail damage. What is the resale of a house with broken down solar panels. That is another issue to consider. Dianna Madar said that they have those solar attic fans now too. Craig Hulse said that you can buy those at Costco now. John Pitstick said that they had a presentation at DRC and he claimed that the Federal Government is giving more tax relief for these things in order to make them more affordable. Right now we haven't seen that the wind turbines that they really pay for themselves. You would have to get up 30 or 40 feet in the air before the wind is sustainable. Steven Cooper said that our average air speed is probably more than you think. John Pitstick said yes but in an urban setting where you have two story houses next to each other and trees you have to get above that or out in a field somewhere. Otherwise the urban setting blocks the wind. Randall Shiflet said that in addition to the aesthetics and safety of the solar panels. The fact that they are susceptible to hail then we would need some provisions in there if they get beat up that they have to repair them. Steven Cooper asked if we had any ordinances that covered anything for the metal roofs. If they get hit by hail they look horrible and they are starting to get popular. If we are going to look into those kinds of things we might want to consider including metal roofs in that. John Pitstick said that there is a new thing that we are looking into also. Which is designating neighborhoods. North Richland Hills kind of grew up as a whole city and we don't have a lot of active Homeowner associations. When we talk about revitalizing the city we started in target areas for the neighborhood revitalizations a couple years ago. We were spending public dollars down there to help in those areas. We are looking at a sign topper program also. It is a way to create pride in the neighborhood. One of the things we discussed was going in and designating neighborhoods to create pride in those areas. We do have Diamond Loch and Thornbridge and Hometown. In the original town of North Richland Hills we want to encourage crime watches and create a sense of community. We don't really want to be setting everything for them. Page 10 06102/11 P & Z Minutes We want to put this out there and let the neighborhoods to come up with their areas also. There are protected neighborhoods where there are some existing homes between Glenview, Rufe Snow and Boulevard 26. We see this as a transition area that could move over to other uses where as houses start to deteriorate code enforcement will be encouraging those houses to come down and allow for some other land uses or other uses to come in but the protected neighborhoods we would want them to remain residential. We are seeing houses that are getting 50 and 60 years old and if we are seeing that there are $40,000 worth of improvements that need to be made we are encouraging them to tear their house down and sell off for assemblage of other things in the transitional areas. We will be able to designate the protected areas and the transitional areas as well. Steven Cooper asked if the suggestion is that the entire city have these neighborhood designations? Is there an idea on how to do that? John Pitstick said that there are natural subdivisions. People come in and as developers subdivide that we would look at those. We would begin to offer that . We have some money in the budget to offer for the sign toppers to designate the neighborhood areas. We have neighborhood crime watch issues and neighborhood revitalization. We have a cleanup, fixup this weekend to go in and paint and fixing up some houses. There may be a church in that neighborhood that would want to take on some homes to help improve the neighborhood. We want to throw the ball out in their court for them to organize. Steven Cooper said that this could be a contest or fun thing that they could get together and do for them to name their communities. John Pitstick said yes and they could create their own logos and things like that. If there is a rezoning request in a particular neighborhood and if we have contacts for the president or secretary and we could send them notifications on anything that comes up. John Pitstick said that we are trying to develop new landscape standards for private properties along N.E. Loop 820. We are seeing that the new Loop 820 is going to be a lot of concrete or asphalt. It is going to be pretty drab and we are losing a lot of the landscape buffers. There is going to be a lot of non conforming buildings and we felt that we needed to look into a landscape overlay district once Loop 820 is complete to try to create an image. One of the things we had discussed is a city image study or using way finding signs to help direct you as you exit the freeway. One idea that was brought up is potentially looking at a low limestone planter wall. Traditionally we require a 15 foot landscape buffer from the right of the way line until you start the parking of a building. Maybe we would only need 10 feet instead of 15 but maybe it needs to be a little more decorative on the freeway frontage to N.E. Loop 820. Dianna Madar asked if it would be similar to the stone walls that they put on the northern side of Rufe Snow? John Pitstick said it could be something like that. We aren't trying to get the properties that front that to spend a whole lot more money but there needs to be a theme with the types of trees or types of planting areas. Maybe we would determine that we don't want Page 11 06/02/11 P & Z Minutes sidewalks out there since we probably don't want people walking on the frontage road or off of the freeway. This would just allow us to create some image as we go through our city. There is a polarization between the south and north right now. This is really going to create a larger gap. There will still be Rufe Snow and the bridge we still want to connect both sides aesthetically. The traffic will move however the original drawings had the elevated toll road and some landscaping and it has been brought down. They have lowered the freeway and it is going to carry the traffic but it is not going to be real attractive. Craig Hulse said that the budget was $1 million dollars for aesthetics beyond just the concrete and the asphalt. What that will cover will be one coat of paint in one color that all cities along the corridor would have to agree upon. It is not like what you see over by north of DFW where you see the grapes etched in stone or in Arlington where you have the Landry hat. None of that will be part of this package. Our former library property and Recreation center has a lot of frontage whereas Huggins is going to probably lose some of his buildings on the front and redevelop. The Rick Enlow property and the Church of Christ also. If we add all of that up and have some sort of guideline that they can abide to like we see on Rufe Snow, north of Mid Cities could help. Right now our setbacks are 15 feet from the building setback. If we are able to sacrifice a couple feet on that to compensate for that additional expense of the stone or landscaping. John Pitstick said that at least if we have a theme that driving by would give it a decent feel to it. It is going to be a massive roadway. They have a flier that have been passing around and I don't think that it is going to be that nice. Mike Benton asked if the Meadowlake going to look similar to the Rufe Snow bridge? Craig Hulse said that it will similar but more complex because of the managed lanes are going to rise up and exit there and then you will be able to go right or left. There will be 2 lanes both ways like Rufe Snow. It will be shut down for 6 months. They will be deconstructing and rebuilding. Mike Benton asked if it would have sidewalks going across? Craig Hulse said yes and it will have cross walks where the managed lanes come up. Don Bowen asked how you will be able to get from one side of the golf course to the other? Will that tunnel stay there? Craig Hulse said that they are required to maintain that access. Steven Cooper said that a good idea would be to try to transition back to residential or common theme to get away from the concrete and asphalt. John Pitstick said to try to soften it up. Steven Cooper said yes. Something that can be common through there. Page 12 06/02/11 P & Z Minutes John Pitstick said that he included a map in the packets to show that we can create wayfinding areas. The problem that you are going to get is that you are going to be so confused when you exit Rufe Snow. This way signs could direct them to Iron Horse or Hometown or whatever. Don't necessarily worry about the look of those because it may be different. We are probably going to have some prototypes on Mid Cities. Craig Hulse said that we were ready to execute a way finding program throughout the central sector of the city with the new recreation center coming online and the library being there, Nytex, TCC. Council had asked us to investigate the opportunity to partner with City of Hurst because of the common borders in the central sector and their new conference center and their city hall being close by. Hurst was interested in partnering with us so we now have to resubmit RFQ's since they are involved. Funding has been designated by council. What we will see is a very similar way finding strategy across both cities but at the top you will have the Hurst logo for their jurisdiction and NRH in ours but you may see a NRH sign saying Hurst conference center with an arrow and sign for us for the NRH2O signage in Hurst. John Pitstick said that our new Recreation Center will be called the NRH Center. I think that council was concerned that as the roadway is redone that they didn't want it to create a polarization between the north and the south and how do we get the traveling public through there. I think that initially it would be easier to just create an overlay district that would have a little bit different standards for landscaping and signage. Those are some of the things that we will be bringing to you in the next several months. We also included in your packets were the age of the housing. Building Inspections and neighborhood services has worked on revitalizing. When you look at the ownership patterns and rental versus the ownership. Out of that we will be bringing forward a requirement for inspections of rental housing. They wouldn't have to have annual permits but as rental properties turned over they would have to have a formal inspection of the house for the minimum housing codes. Randall Shiflet asked how this list was compiled? John Pitstick said that it was gotten from water bills. TAD information would list the homeowner information and then the water office has someone else that pays the water bill then they would most likely be renters. It is probably not 100% but it is 95% there. Anytime someone comes in for new service they are asked at water utilities if they rent or own. Interestingly enough the next target area is between Mid Cities and Chapman. You can see quite a few of those rental homes in there. Randall Shiflet asked if it was the Fox and Jacobs homes? John Pitstick said yes. That is some other things that we have talked about in order to revitalize that area. That is one of the areas that we want to get some pride in the neighborhood. Joann and her staff actually drove every bit of the city and they had ratings on everything. We have an aging housing stock and we have to look for ways to continue revitalize the area. It is a high priority for the city council to determine how we can maintain our quality of life and align ourselves with higher standards. We are trying to main that quality of life everything from the customary home occupations the update Page 13 06/02/11 P & Z Minutes to the comprehensive land use plan. Joann's group is inhemently involved and we are having a fix up clean up this weekend. The church's have been involved as well. Mike Benton said that he had spoke with Mark Hindman regarding partnering up with the city and go in and fix up some homes that were condemned. John Pitstick said that one of the things that was brought up with the Fox and Jacobs homes. There isn't many floor plans and we thought about getting with some UTA architecture students and give them some plans and see how we can create more curb appeal. Is there a way that you can go in and make changes such as add vaulted ceilings or knock a wall out to modernize some of those homes. That could possibly get those homes to turn over and sell and create some value there. There is a lot of objectives and goals and I have gone over just a few of the action items under the quality, community and development and revitalization. There is over a hundred action items that we are working on. Craig Hulse said John has brought up the ones that are for Planning that fall into for Planning & Zoning. If time permits and if you are interested I can walk you through the Economic Development centric actions associated with goal 1 or some of these other goals. Some of them do impact your decision making. You may have to make decisions on some of those actions in the future. John Pitstick said if we get an SUP for a carwash that might not be something that we want for a target Economic Development. That may be something that we need to explain to you. The cities direction for where we are looking at for the big picture. Such as Calloway Creek. Craig Hulse said that Calloway Creek is going to end up being PD. Right now it just has one type of use and we all know that just retail across 82 acres isn't going to fly anymore. It would have to be a mix of different uses and it probably would have to be a PD. It would have to filter through your organization. As time goes on through the year I can fill some of the gaps in the work session. John Pitstick said that he also has a Economic Development committee that meets at a luncheon maybe there could be a potential that we could have a joint work session with the ED Committee and the Planning & Zoning Commission. That is all we have for tonight and we would be happy to answer any questions. The only thing pressing is that we will probably be making some changes to this and bring the customary home occupations back next time and then move forward on these major items over the next several months. Randall Shiflet asked if the landscape standards were going to be coming before Planning & Zoning as an overlay recommendation? Right now unless it isn't a SUP or a PD we don't do landscaping. John Pitstick said that in order to make it easier we would have some guidelines for changes along the freeway frontage. If they wanted to vary that they could come before P & Z but I wouldn't see everyone of them needing to come to P & Z. The P & Z would set the standards for what that would be such as walls or landscape if they couldn't Page 14 06/02/11 P & Z Minutes meet that standard then there would be a variance procedure that they could come before P & Z. Randall Shiflet said that we can recommend and get it in place but once it is in place then it is not something that we are going to be overseeing. John Pitstick said no. It will just be a new overlay district and it is just a new standard where you front Loop 820 for landscaping regulations. Randall Shiflet asked if we would be able to discuss that when it comes back? John Pitstick said yes. 4. ADJOURNMENT There being no other business, the meeting adjourned at 7:43 pm. Chairman Secretary a y S fIet Dorf owen Page 15 06/02/11 P & Z Minutes