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HomeMy Public PortalAbout10-15-2009 Joint Public HearingMINUTES JOINT PUBLIC HEARING HILLSBOROUGH TOWN BOARD and PLANNING BOARD Thursday, October 15, 2009 7:00 PM, Hillsborough Town Barn October 15, 2009 Joint Public Hearing Approved: December 14, 2009 Page 1 of 8 BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS PRESENT: Mayor Tom Stevens and Commissioners Mike Gering, L. Eric Hallman, and Evelyn Lloyd. PLANNING BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: Chair Bryant Warren, Vice Chair Kathleen Faherty, Matthew Farrelly, Dan Barker, Neil Jones, Stephen Whitlow, and Elizabeth Woodman. STAFF PRESENT: Planning Director Margaret Hauth, and Assistant Town Manager Niclole Ard. ITEM #1: Call public hearing to Order and confirmation of a quorum. Mayor Stevens called the joint public hearing to order at 7:01 p.m. He did not read the Public Charge but noted it would be followed. Mayor Stevens then turned the meeting over to Planning Board Chair Bryant Warren. Mr. Warren confirmed that there was a quorum of the Town Board and the Planning Board present. ITEM #2: Rezoning Request from Brent Lockwood to rezone .99 acres at 1020 US 70A East from Office Institutional to Neighborhood Business to allow retail uses (TMBL 4.40.B.5). Ms. Hauth asked that the Boards hear Item #3 at this time to allow the applicant for Item #2 to arrive at the meeting. There was no objection from the Boards. ITEM #3: Zoning Ordinance text amendment to amend Section 21 to remove automatic approval provisions for Certificate of Appropriateness applications not acted upon within 60 days of application. Ms. Hauth said there were two provisions in the current Zoning Ordinance that somewhat contradicted the Rules of Procedure for the Historic District Commission, in that they indicated that a Certificate of Appropriateness from the HDC would be approved 60 days after it was filed if the HDC had not had time to act on it within that time period. She said the Rules of Procedures allowed the HDC and the applicant to jointly agree to additional review time if necessary. Ms. Hauth said that would imply that if there was an elaborate application that required additional review that it could be automatically approved as submitted while the HDC was still negotiating with the applicant, which would be somewhat contrary to the intent of the process. She said the Town Attorney had suggested that those two sections be deleted from the Ordinance at the earliest possible time. Upon a motion by Commissioner Gering, seconded by Ms. Woodman, the Boards moved to close the public hearing on the Zoning Ordinance text amendment to amend Section 21 to remove automatic approval provisions for Certificate of Appropriateness applications not acted upon within 60 days of application. The vote was unanimous, and the motion was declared passed. ITEM #2: Rezoning Request from Brent Lockwood to rezone .99 acres at 1020 US 70A East from Office Institutional to Neighborhood Business to allow retail uses (TMBL 4.40.B.5). October 15, 2009 Joint Public Hearing Approved: December 14, 2009 Page 2 of 8 Ms. Hauth said that Brent Lockwood was requesting to rezone .99 acres at 1020 US 70A East from Office Institutional to Neighborhood Business to allow retail uses. She said that was the renovated ESSO station with the stone across from the Sportsplex. Ms. Hauth said the building was of good size, and Mr. Lockwood's intent was to have multiple tenants. She said he had gotten some interest to use some of the space as retail, but that was not allowed under the Office Institutional zoning. Ms. Hauth said Mr. Lockwood had not given any indication that he planned to make any modifications to the site, but if that became necessary the application would go through the normal process. Ms. Hauth said the site in the Future Land Use Map was designated as Mixed Use Employment, and the packet included the Neighborhood Business Intent section. She said she had not received any contact from the public regarding the rezoning request, but there was one person in the audience who wanted to speak to the item. Commissioner Gering asked what rationale suggested that the Neighborhood Business was more appropriate than some other designation, such as Entranceway Special Use as an example. Ms. Hauth said it was what the applicant had requested and was the least intensive district that would serve his desired result of allowing retail uses, noting that Mr. Lockwood had just arrived and could answer further questions. She said the same purpose could be achieved under Entranceway Special Use, with General Commercial, or with High Intensity Commercial but of the four, the least intension option was the Neighborhood Business. Brent Lockwood, the applicant, stated he planned to have retail in that space such as a small boutique or a jewelry store, but certainly something that was not high traffic. He said with the Meadowlands Office Park and the hopefully soon to be development area behind his property, he wanted the opportunity to utilize the space in a retail oriented fashion. Commissioner Lloyd said when he said boutique was he talking about dresses. Mr. Lockwood said perhaps. He said he had spent a good bit of money restoring the building a few years ago, but had not replaced the canopy so had not been able to get on the National Register of Historic Places. Mr. Lockwood said the building was a little rough on the outside but the inside had undergone restoration. He said the next stage would be to improve the appearance of the site and perhaps pave the parking lot. Ms. Faherty asked how many tenants he foresaw. Mr. Lockwood said he could actually have several businesses as he had several bathrooms with one that was handicapped accessible, as well as three different entry points. He said that gave him the option to either expand with one specific business or have one large and several small, or just several small businesses that would enhance each other. Mayor Stevens asked about the parking capacity. Mr. Lockwood replied he believed he had 8 on the gravel side towards the rear, and 2 more on the right hand side for handicap parking. He said he had an acre of land and was not utilizing all of it, so he had a little room if he needed to create additional parking. Commissioner Lloyd asked was he noticing any runoff from the property at present. Mr. Lockwood replied not that he had noticed, adding there was a ditch to the left and it was flat in the front. He said that the lot sloped somewhat to the left and then sloped back from the road. Commissioner Lloyd asked if the lot was paved, would that create more runoff. Mr. Lockwood responded he did not believe so, that the runoff would be captured in the existing ditch to the left of the property. Commissioner Lloyd said if he was considering a jewelry store, he should consider installing a burglar alarm. Mr. Lockwood said the building already had an alarm system. Eddie Sain, a neighbor of this property, stated that he had no problem with the change in zoning but wanted the Boards to be aware of the traffic that retail would attract. He said the traffic in that area was already a problem, that Forest Ridge had already been approved, and one of the drives for Forest Ridge was just to the east side of this property. He said if they continued to allow the area to be built up, traffic would continue to increase. Mr. Sain said he already had a problem exiting and entering his driveway, because the turn lane for the Meadowlands was in front of his driveway. He said he did not know how much more the area could take, and it was already a problem, adding they had to draw the line somewhere. Commissioner Hallman asked was there an access management plan for US 70A. Ms. Hauth said there was not, that they relied on NCDOT and their review of traffic flows. Commissioner Hallman said he wondered if for the future it might be better to have access from the rear portion of Mr. Lockwood's property rather than directly onto US 70A. Ms. Hauth said she and Mr. Lockwood had thought of that as had the Forest Ridge people, and she would not be surprised that if there was further development that they would see an interest in doing that. Upon a motion by Ms. Faherty, seconded by Commissioner Gering, the Boards moved to close the public hearing on the Rezoning Request from Brent Lockwood to rezone .99 acres at 1020 US 70A East from Office Institutional to Neighborhood Business. The vote was unanimous and the motion was declared passed. ITEM #4: MOTION: SECOND: VOTE: Adjourn public hearing and convene regular Planning Board meeting. Ms. Woodman moved to close the public hearing and adjourn the Town Board. Mr. Barker. Unanimous. Convene Planning Board regular meeting. Mr. Warren called the Planning Board meeting to order at 7:16 p.m. October 15, 2009 Joint Public Hearing Approved: December 14, 2009 Page 3 of 8 ITEM #5: Discussion of public input sessions held during rewrite process. Ms. Hauth said they had posted the results from the Choosing Character event on the Town's Website. She said it was a rainy evening so the turnout was not as ambitious as she had hoped, but had still managed to attract about 60 participants. Ms. Hauth said they had had some very good roundtable discussion and some very interesting and useful feedback in terms of possible amendments to the ordinance. She said they had now completed all four focus groups, with one for existing business owners to share how the ordinance affected them, one for customers of the ordinance which were predominately developers and their consultants, one for advocates and one for neighborhoods. Ms Hauth said particularly the customers group was very interested and very animated, helpful, and detailed in their comments, noting that group was a little more familiar with the ordinance and a little more impacted by it. Ms. Hauth said they did want to do a detailed survey available to the general public to address a laundry list of items, and to see how many of the issues people really even thought about or questioned. She said she had a substantial email contact list and believed if she emailed people the link to the questionnaire that they would get a fairly strong response. Ms. Hauth said they would also distribute written surveys to all advisory board members, with the Planning Board, the Historic District Commission, and the Board of Adjustment receiving specialized questions to address some of their concerns about processes. October 15, 2009 Joint Public Hearing Approved: December 14, 2009 Page 4 of 8 Ms. Hauth said also planned was an open meeting with predominately existing business owners to talk about signs. She said she had conversations twice over the past ten years with businesses in the Daniel Boone complex who felt very strongly that the ordinance did not work for them and that basically the Town was not helping them in any way. Ms. Hauth said she wanted to explore what the Town could do or if there was anything they could do about any of their issues, noting some of those issues may not even be about signage. Ms. Hauth said that the Diagnosis and Annotated Outline would be released in November, so the Planning Board would see it at its November meeting and the Town Board would see it at its November workshop. She said that would be when they really started to dig in and begin the actual rewrite. Ms. Hauth said the survey consisted of only five questions, and it had been formatted to place the questions that were similar next to each other. She said if there were other issues the Board wanted to know about that should be placed on the survey, now was the time to voice that. Ms. Woodman asked could they finally address temporary signage. Ms. Hauth said they could be more specific about temporary signage both along the roadways and on sidewalks in the downtown. Mr. Barker said there was a great need across Town for small, plastic roadway signs to be controlled. Mr. Farrelly asked how Ms. Hauth had selected or advertised for the focus groups for residents. Ms. Hauth said she had made contact in various ways with efforts to include Fairview, West Hillsborough, and some of the neighborhoods that were not represented at the forum specifically. She said she still had not gotten anyone from Fairview, and thought she would attend one of their neighborhood watch meetings to ask the questions. Mr. Farrelly said that conducting and analyzing surveys was a part of his job, and they may need to work a little harder to make sure the different neighborhoods were represented. Mr. Farrelly said it seemed like the first section of the survey as well as the third section would garner more information if those questions were set up more as a scale rather than a yes /no. He said he believed providing a scale beginning with "strongly agree" and ending with "strongly disagree," or with a number scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being "very often" and so forth. Mr. Farrelly said that may give them more variability, and would provide Ms. Hauth with more specific feedback along those lines. Ms. Hauth said once she had a more finalized layout she would like to send it to him for a last proofing. Mr. Farrelly said agreed to do that. Mayor Stevens said he would appreciate anyone who had any technical expertise or feedback to provide that, noting it would be valuable. Ms. Faherty said she would like the survey to contain the opportunity to check a line or box that said "does not apply." She said otherwise someone may "strongly disagree" simply because it was not important to them. Ms. Hauth agreed. Mr. Farrelly suggested "not applicable." Ms. Faherty said she really appreciated receiving Information Officer Catherine Wright's Town announcements, noting they were valuable to her. She asked what the size was of her email list. Ms. Hauth said she did not know, but she could compare Ms. Wright's list with hers, but she had intended for Ms. Wright to send out a press release to announce to citizens the opportunity to comment via the survey and providing the link to the Website. October 15, 2009 Joint Public Hearing Approved: December 14, 2009 Page 5 of 8 Mr. Farrelly said perhaps there should be a place at the end of the survey for a more open -ended response of things not captured. He said he knew it would take time to wade through random comments that might be gained, but it was possible a theme could emerge from those types of comments which might be helpful. Mr. Farrelly said if they received a large amount of comments, there was qualitative software that could identify patterns, and he would be happy to do that for her. Ms. Woodman asked had she thought of having someone at the parade scheduled for Saturday with surveys to ask people if they lived in Town and if they were willing to take the survey home, fill it out, and mail it back in. She said large events like that might capture people who would not otherwise know about the survey or would not be on anyone's radar. Mr. Farrelly said that people who visited the Town was also an important audience, noting that the survey questions went beyond what would just inform the zoning. Ms. Hauth said the first question in particular was not really for the rewrite, but was to help her understand the population they had reached and to provide some background on why people had chosen to live in Hillsborough. She said you would not know who you audience was if you did not ask. Mr. Jones said he believed you would want to know whether or not someone was local, in that a lot of the questions would not apply to people who lived elsewhere. Ms. Hauth said with emailing it out they were fairly certain who their target audience was, but if the surveys were distributed at events they would need to include a question about where people lived and why they were in Hillsborough. Ms. Woodman said regarding question two, she wondered should they explain more about what they meant by "mix of houses/lot sizes" and "mix of houses/lot values and types." She asked if they were talking more about multi - condominium development, which was controversial. Ms. Woodman said the term "homogenous neighborhoods" was not necessarily a phrase they would want to use. Ms. Hauth said she had already decided to take that off the list. Ms. Woodman asked if by "diverse neighborhoods" that meant racial, income, age, or something else. Ms. Hauth said she had wanted the responders to determine that for themselves and decide whether they believed their neighborhood was diverse or not, which was why the question was not specific. Mr. Barker said he believed asking the question about homogeneous neighborhoods was fine, but not to use that particular word. He said should a neighborhood be consistent or should it be eclectic would be a better question. Ms. Woodman said it could also be interpreted as wanting to live somewhere else. Mayor Stevens said he believed the information gathered was to inform, so that they would have a sense of where the public stood. He said if the public said they wanted all homes to be the same size that would be good information even if that never happened. Mayor Stevens said the surveys were not "voting." Ms. Hauth said they could also turn the survey around and have it say that since Hillsborough was seen as a diverse place, what did that mean to the responders and then provide a range of options. She said it could be the diversity of ethnicity within neighborhoods, the diversity of ethnicity across town, and so on to see if there was some commonality. Ms. Hauth said it would give them some idea of what people believed the concept of diversity was. Mr. Farrelly said related to that, he believed that they should be thinking about what they were going to do with the information garnered. He said if there were things that there were actionable items that would come from the data collected, then they may not want to collect only certain items. Mr. Farrelly said he believed they should focus on questions that were asked because they wanted to learn something specific, October 15, 2009 Joint Public Hearing Approved: December 14, 2009 Page 6 of 8 and that something could be done with that information. He said another thing that was helpful with online surveys was that you could present on the one hand a diverse housing stock in a way that people understood versus a lot of uniformity, and then have the scale so that people could decide whether they were on one end of the other, or in between. Ms. Hauth said it was still useful information rather than having specific headings that people may interpret differently, in other words having it a little more freeform. Mr. Farrelly said they also wanted to keep surveys like that one to ten minutes or less, with 15 minutes the absolute maximum. He said for online surveys, 15 minutes was a good rule of thumb for reliability. Mr. Farrelly offered to sit down with Ms. Hauth and work through some of the issues highlighted, noting in any one quarter he fielded three to four surveys of various populations and did a lot of analysis and reporting from the data. Ms. Hauth said if she believed some of the questions were not getting to the data wanted, she may talk with him about that. Ms. Woodman said they might also want to test density, because that was certainly an issue for the Planning Board. She said they may want to get some information regarding density versus sprawl. Ms. Hauth said they had gotten feedback at the recent Choosing Character meeting that density was good, but when they had talked with the neighborhood groups the opinion was opposite. She said they might want to lay out the options of the different ways you could increase density in that there was a way to increase density without cutting up a lot or building in backyards. Mr. Whitlow said density was difficult to get people to talk and think about, because everyone had a completely different conception of density. He said no one knew what nine dwelling units an acre looked like unless they dealt with it every day, and photos of what such places as Charleston, Brooklyn, and Raleigh looked like would be helpful to allow people to pick what sort of density they actually did like. Mr. Whitlow said just asking if they liked density would not get meaningful information. Ms. Hauth said she was hesitant to ask the question about the number of units per acre, because that did not mean anything to the average person. She said asking if 12 dwellings added to someone's block would make a difference might be a better question. Ms. Hauth said if anyone had additional feedback, it would be helpful to receive those via email no later than Thursday or Friday of next week. Mr. Farrelly said he knew that Ms. Hauth understood when she wrote the questions what was meant by them, but in question four he had no idea what was meant by a "private walkway or plaza" because he did not know that there was anything like that in Hillsborough. Ms. Hauth said that question was asked because the ordinance did not really handle anything that happened outside of the four walls of an establishment. She said they had addressed sidewalk dining in the downtown in the Town Code, but she had received requests from restaurants such as Anna Maria's at North Hills who wanted to put tables under the covered walkway which was not allowed in the ordinance. Ms. Hauth said as well, that was a private sidewalk so it was different from the regulation that allowed sidewalk dining in the downtown. She added her belief that one reason restaurants wanted to provide outside dining was to bypass the no smoking laws. Mr. Barker said in talking about things people liked and understanding what they wanted, he had wondered if it was worth asking a question about was there some place they wanted Hillsborough to emulate. Ms. Hauth said that may be a good question to put after the last question, noting the last question was asking people to identify retail areas that they liked. She said it would be fair to ask if Ms. Hauth asked was that something the Board wanted her to add. October 15, 2009 Joint Public Hearing Approved: December 14, 2009 Page 7 of 8 people had been in a particular town, city, or neighborhood that they liked and ask them to list why they had liked it. Ms. Faherty said it seemed that when she talked with people that the main issue on their minds was traffic and parking. She said she knew that was not necessarily something in some of those areas that they would have domain over, but it would still be useful to allow comment on that. Ms. Faherty said it might be useful to have a question about the character of the Town in relationship to how people felt about traffic and parking. Ms. Faherty said there was also the issue of walkability, noting that pedestrians struggled to walk in "horrible" weed -ridden verges. She said if she were answering the survey that would be the one thing she would really want to talk about. Ms. Faherty said she believed they should provide people the opportunity to comment on driveability, walkability and parkability, and how pressured and stressed people might be feeling about what they see. Ms. Hauth said they had just done a citizens survey and gotten feedback in that way and they were in the middle of a parking study for the downtown, so she would want to ask the Board its opinion on including those issues on this survey. She said she was struggling to get information that was useful to the zoning ordinance, and she wanted to stay within Mr. Farrelly's suggested 15 minutes max to respond to the survey. Mr. Barker said that parking on -site was a component of zoning, and asked was there a way to ask a parking on -site question very thoroughly and then have a comment after it that would give people the opportunity to be expressive. Mr. Warren suggested adding it as an open ended question at the end which would allow citizens to comment on any issue. Mr. Barker said the quality of life survey where it had included an open ended question had gotten some interesting responses. He said that was where the prostitute and drug dealer responses had come from, so his question was how open ended did they want a question to be. Mr. Jones commented that the Board had provided Ms. Hauth was a lot of suggestions, and believed they did need to pare it down so that people would not be intimidated by the length of the survey but still allowed them to get as much information as possible. Ms. Woodman said the question that referred to retail centers she was assuming referred to outside the downtown. Ms. Hauth said she needed to be more specific, in that it could be a downtown but she did not want information about Hillsborough's downtown unless Hillsborough's downtown was their favorite place to shop. She said she was looking for examples from somewhere that was not in Hillsborough. Ms. Woodman said she believed the word "center" made it sound like they were talking about malls. Ms. Hauth said she was aiming at malls because that would allow her to go to that jurisdiction's ordinance and see where it was different with Hillsborough's. Mr. Whitlow said if someone's favorite shopping area was Georgetown, he would not read the question to think that he could answer Georgetown. He said they would likely end up getting Southpoint or other nearby malls, but there may be people who enjoyed shopping in non - traditional shopping malls and they may be missing that with the question. Ms. Hauth said she could clarify the question. October 15, 2009 Joint Public Hearing Approved: December 14, 2009 Page 8 of 8 ITEM #6: Next steps in the rewrite process. Ms. Hauth indicated that the previous discussion included this issue so there was not need for a separate discussion. Ms. Faherty thanked Ms. Hauth for going through this process, noting she was keeping people informed and was including the community. She said it almost sound like fun. Ms. Hauth said it was, and the process so far had been so much better that a standard one where you would have committee meeting after committee meeting where all your time was spent wrapping up from one and getting ready for another so you had no time to deal with the information you were gathering. She said by being allowed to have the Planning Board serve as her committee, the process was much better. Mr. Farrelly said for those who had limited or no access to computers, could people be allowed to fill out the survey using the library's computers. He said otherwise, you might under- represent lower- income people and perhaps the elderly. Ms. Hauth said she could do some targeted mailings to capture those categories. Responding to a question about timing, Ms. Hauth responded she would like to have the survey ready for distribution a week from this coming Monday, noting they would continue to gather feedback through January 1. But, she said, after November 15 there was likely no point in asking anyone their opinion about anything other than Christmas. Ms. Hauth said she would be conducting various methods of outreach, including door to door, and suggested they might even be able to have someone at the polling places to distribute the surveys. Mayor Stevens said they may be able to better direct people if they had surveys at the library, as well as online and on Channel 18, the government access channel. Mr. Whitlow said he would be interested in the findings from the focus groups, and asked if she had that. Ms. Hauth said it was still in draft form and had the respondent's names on it, but when it was finalized it would be published to the Website without the names. She said when she got the final version back from the consultants she would be happy to provide information about what people said, but for the Website the information would be anonymous. ITEM #7: Adjourn. Upon a motion by Ms. Woodman, seconded by Ms. Faherty, the Board moved to adjourn the meeting. The vote was unanimous. The meeting was adjourned at 7:57 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Margaret A. Hauth, Secretary