okay all right everybody thank you for coming to the regular meeting of the Reno City Planning Commission Wednesday April 3rd 6: PM item one Pledge of Allegiance I will kick it off let's do it I pledge allegiance United States of America and to the Republic for stands one nation jce all right item two roll call Heather please Harris Armstrong here Manny Basera here Arthur Munos here car rer is absent at this time Alex VTO absent at this time Sylvia Ville NOA here JD dulich here all right we have a quorum thank you all right item three public comment this item is for either public comment on any action item or for any general public comment Heather any request to speak forms zooms voicemails members of the public may call into members of the public may call into the meeting to provide public comment by using the zoom link provided on the agenda specifically https links. reno.gov planning 04- [Music] [Music] to 3 minutes if you are an attendee in the zoom meeting and would like to make public comment at this time please raise your hand lastly while in this room please be respectful warnings will be issued by the presiding officer if there is disruptive behavior and you will be asked to leave Chambers if the behavior continues um we did receive public comment that was General uh in nature and not specific to any items on the agenda these were forwarded to the Planning Commission and have been entered into the record I do not have any request to speak forms for this item great thank you anybody in the chambers wish to speak on General Public comment seeing none we will close item number three move to item number four approval of minutes item 4.1 Reno City Planning Commission regular meeting of March 6th commissioner Mo I move to approve minutes all right we have a motion moot uh second I was expecting a visual but I didn't see second okay got a motion a second all in favor hi any opposed hearing none minutes approved moving on to item number five zoning code cleanup item 5.11 staff report case number tx23 d005 Title 18 zoning code cleanup good afternoon for the record Angela fous assistant director with development services so this is meeting number two in a series of meetings we're having with the Planning Commission to go over the proposed zoning code cleanup just to make sure everyone understands what this zoning code cleanup is I wanted to highlight what this is and what this is not again this is intended to be a cleanup these are things that over the last three years of having an adopted new code we've been keeping a list of areas that maybe um are inconsistent with each other or are difficult to administer because we as staff don't understand it or can't figure out how to interpret it um we also looked at things that maybe don't match what some of the new legislative session requirements are so we're making sure that updating our code to match those requirements and then bigger picture we're looking at what can we do to protect residential neighborhoods this is something that our city council um has made a priority and so as part of this cleanup we are keeping that in the back of our mind of yes we want to continue allowing development and and infill um and higher density in these areas that match again what Regional planning says is where we want development to happen but we want to do it in a way that protects existing neighborhoods so just in terms of process and timeline this this zoning code cleanup has been going on for quite some time um we started with holding meetings with our technical advisory committee this was made up of people that actually use the zoning code so this was Architects Engineers planners Landscape Architects we had a group of about 30 individuals um basically if you've never read a zoning code you were not a technical adviser if you've read our zoning code and used our zoning code and understand kind of the intricacies of it we we put together a list of those individuals so we had about seven meetings with that group and we went Page by page with these red lines once we did that we held nine stakeholder meetings so we included anyone from the public that wanted to participate we held meetings in person we held meetings online we held meetings at 9:00 a.m. we held meetings at noon and we held meetings in the evening so if you were working and you wanted to participate we gave you a time if you wanted to do during the daytime we gave you more time so again we we tried to open it up to the public as much as we could um again those nine meetings were composed of both virtual and in person we held them in North alleys in downtown and in South alleys again trying to just be as open and Broad and transparent as we could so nine meetings with the general public very little turnout I think part of the reason for the little turnout this is a very technical update there's not a lot of substance that most people can relate to because it doesn't really impact them you know when we talked about accessory dwelling units we get a lot of interest we would talk about affordable housing that's something that people understand but when we say words like setbacks and Building height most people don't care most people say I it sounds technical that sounds great um so where we're at now we are holding meetings with the Planning Commission again the the incentive here is that this is open to the public there's not a lot of public here here today but the public has the ability to watch hopefully online um and if they fall asleep they can go back and watch again when they wake up this is something that we didn't do in one meeting we're doing over the course of three meetings now you guys are not making any formal recommendations during these three meetings this is just input so what you say today is just input this is not the letter of the law you're not adopting or recommending anything in these three meetings just getting feedback we're going to take your feedback and we're going to go to City Council and just let them know what your feedback was then they're going to provide feedback on your feedback and we're going to come back to Planning Commission and talk about that feedback and we're going to have another meeting just talking about that again you're not formally recommending anything we're just talking it's a lot of talking trying to be transparent after that you're going to give me more input on what you like or don't like about council's feedback and then I'm going to come back again and I'm going to have a formal actual document that you can review and make recommendations on so again many steps in this project this process that the public can be a part of and that you guys are also a part of no formal recommendations for many many meetings at which time then hopefully we'll get to get to a place where you're ready to make a recommendation your recommendation then goes to council they can agree or not agree we'll have multiple meetings with Council where they're going to review those edits those changes that feedback ultimately hopefully at some point in the next 6 months we'll have a document that they can support and recommend approval on any questions just generally on the process anyone uncomfortable with the process um I think I understand it and actually it's really thorough and I appreciate that um but just so I feel like I'm contributing in a meaningful way Angela what type of feedback would you feel is most helpful this evening if there's something that excuse me you don't agree with that feedback would be helpful for instance at the last discussion we had there was questions about um tattoo shops and why we don't allow tattoo shops in downtown so that was good feedback for us as staff to say good question if that's something you guys would like to see us do we'll take that feedback and present that to councel again if they want to see tattoo shops in downtown we can incorporate that into the code perfect and would you like to kind of volley along the way like just back and forth as as you're kind of going through the changes or I think yeah we have about 18 slides similar to our last meeting so it kind of helps while we're on that slide if there's something that you have questions on or want to discuss bring it up at that point perfect thank you great okay so this is a a basically one giant chapter with a lot of information so we're going to go article by article within just this one big chapter and it covers everything related to hillsides residential adjacency parking standards Hillside development standards so again a lot of this is is going to be very high level you guys do have the redline document so I do hope that you are looking at it the redline document is annotated so you can understand why we're proposing these changes we also have a staff report that highlights all of these changes if you don't want to read all 650 pages and you just want the short version summarized in a staff report all right so within our natural resource protection we really didn't have a whole lot of edits we had some updates more clarification um related to some FEMA requirements this is something we'd worked with our engineering team um it wasn't anything of substance it was more just clarifying how we measure um some of these these FEMA areas and how we measure flood plane areas again not not a whole lot of substance just more providing better clarification tree protection so this is something that as a city we've been looking at for a couple years now um at one point we had talked about a separate tree ordinance um that has kind of been stalled while we're working on implementing some other things so we went back and we looked at what was proposed in the tree protection ordinance and we took out things that weren't controversial these are things that better provide clarification anytime you have a construction site we have requirements that you have to protect trees so this outlines which trees you have to protect and where on your site so as an example let's say you have a big industrial site you're going to come in you're going to just Mass grade the whole site which trees do you protect from a city perspective we can only have so much control over a certain number of trees anything in the public right away are considered our trees city-owned trees which more of an asset for us so those are the trees you definitely have to protect anything within your front setback meaning the difference between um the front property line and your building setback is also in an area that we want to protect so we've basically just provide clarification that outlines that we've gotten a lot of questions from the public does this mean that I can't cut down a tree in my backyard no anything on a single family or a duplex property we don't have any control of this doesn't change that um any kind of property again trees on private property the city doesn't have control over but if it's within a front setback area we do want to see it and we want to show what you're doing to protect it you can still cut it down again it's your right to do that um we do have requirements that outline if there's penalties because again we'd like to see older trees preserved um you get credit for preserving certain number of trees again that the size of the tree goes into it the the type of tree goes into it so this just clarifies all that information not creating any new requirements but clarifying which trees have to be protected questions on tree protection this is kind of a a Hot Topic or has been for a couple years I just want to make sure I'm not talking over anything Angela yeah and just to that point I think you covered what I've heard before in a long past in the neighborhood I live in we see trees in the uh like you said the setback from the property line um you know being able to be cut down because they're dead or whatever and someone gets upset because they feel like it's their tree why the city cutting it down but thanks for the clarification there and I think people people knowing that this isn't changing anything on their private property correct glad you stated correct okay fair huh oh please commission so I'm I think for me I'm GNA wait till you get through all the slides and then probably the next meeting I will have because I'd rather you go through everything than me go in and review kind of what you discussed and see where that matches up and then the next meeting I'll probably have questions or feedback but is that appropriate I think that would be fine um next meeting we're going to go through the next section of of chapters so if if however you want to do it I will say at the next meeting um we can do kind of an overview of everything so if there's anything we've missed big picture I'll put all of the slides into one presentation over the these three meetings so that we can go back to any slides and and answer any questions overall okay that would be great just because it's hard for me to kind of see what you're position is and then compare it to actually what's in the red line versus how okay great thank you okay feral horse management so prior to our code adoption that was done three years ago we didn't have any regulations on wild horses and with our last code adoption we adopted a handful of new um standards related to feral horses this only applies if you're doing development in southeast Reno we have a kind of a the Virginia range as it's called we don't a whole lot of development over there that's more of in the like tman High School area where the the wild horses kind of live and range so in working with the Wild Horse Advocates they asked us to add a couple additional standards um from a staff perspective these seem to make sense we've had a couple projects in the past couple years where it it made sense um it didn't feel like this was negatively impacting development it did feel like it was something it was more of a um working with the horse Advocates rather than kind of you know being against each other so we felt that this was something that made sense bigger picture it was more of clarification so right now we don't really Define what the Virginia range is or where this applies so we just added some some Geographic boundaries of what's considered Virginia range um some of the challenges we've seen with new development is for the most part the the the wild horses are intended to you know stay in the in the wild range um when they do cross over they they make it either through Gates that have been cut down or cut open um some of the challenges we have is that the general public you know doesn't necessarily understand of the need to keep them on their side and not to feed them when we feed them it just encourages them to come into the areas where we have development and again that creates the conflict so again I'm working with the Wild Horse Advocates they proposed that we add some additional fencing standards and that we also add some requirement for signage on that fencing and basically just trying to let people know please don't feed the horses and keep the gates closed when you come in and out so again we didn't feel any of these were too major it was more just things that we're um asking de developments to do anyway when they have Construction in this area so it made sense questions on this one sure I have one Angela um we recently had this as a kind of a related topic I think a week two weeks ago or four weeks ago do you feel these changes help address or kind of um uh satisfy the concerns uh of the horse Advocates yeah and again and this this specifically came from the horse Advocate Group so this was the language that they gave us not my bulleted point but the stuff that's actually in the red line is the language they gave us we copied and pasted that into code so I feel that we have met that that's awesome that need yeah great thank you okay um again this is more of a a technical issue when we are dealing with grading plans um we had to kind of clarify that when you're dealing with um major site plan review for grading like cuts and fills you guys see these a lot come come before you you know grading over 20 cuts and feels over 20 ft and 10 ft so we had to add some clarifying language of when um cuts and fills is triggered and what the actual application is some of our codes that a conditional use permit is required other sections of our code said a major site plan review is required those were conflicting we wanted to make sure we had one set of regulations so we just clarified if you do trigger those things a major site plan review is required and then um we do require a a revegging basically if you're going to do a bunch of grading on a site we ask that you um Hydro seed so we have some regulations on those requirements again just added some more flexibility of what that looks like not not all um rev is kind of reviewed the same depending on where you're at in town sometimes you have different landscape or reveg needs um so we just added more flexibility so that we could address different parts of town and kind of just just different needs depending on what the soil looks like I a question yeah please good so can you describe M uh just quickly highlight for me some of the details of a major site plan review what's required yeah yep so major site plan review is an application we accept twice a month um typically depending on what you're submitting for sometimes you submit um a plan that includes a utility plan a grading plan if there's buildings involved you would submit architectural drawings staff reviews it writes a staff report two and a half months later that shows up at Planning Commission okay great thank you okay so we have a whole section of our code that deals with development dealing with hillsides and essentially if you are developing on a a a slope a hill side we have requirements that require so much open space so you basically do some math you show us how much is um within different slope percentages right the more steep the site um the more open space is required so we added some language here because there was um some confusion can you use the density bonus um if you're dealing with Hillside development density bonus is basically um allowed in our code you're allowed to do it in residential development you get additional um density or more units depending on the size of the unit so um we'd had a couple projects that had come through they said well can we use density bonus if we're on a hillside development and our code was really unclear so we just clarified that yes you can use that density bonus if you're on a hillside I think we've had maybe one project in three years um that that came forward that was a hillside development that requested to use that density bonus we did allow them to they went through a tentative map I believe um so again this is just more clarifying something that we're at least allowed one time um in practice all right streets utilities and services again this is more of a a technical section of our code we have a lot of requirements related to sidewalks and streets um meaning where are sidewalks required how wide do they have to be when do you have to put in Parkway strips a lot of our um requirements conflicted with other sections of the city requirements so zoning regulates just the zoning piece our Public Works design manual regulates anything on city property and so they had their own set of requirements of how wide sidewalks have to be and how wide streets have to be our zoning code conflicts with a lot of the sections of the Public Works design manual so the ones related to sidewalks where cleaning up now as part of this code update separately probably in the next year we're going to come back to you with a bunch of changes um specifically related to the public works design manual they are also going through an update so as they update their requirements again on how wide streets are um where bike lines are going to be required when sidewalks are required to be 4 feet versus 6 feet will'll come back and update our zoning code so that we match the Public Works design manual again but short term we just wanted to make sure that some of those those quick things that we see on a regular basis are being updated to match what they currently have in their code slidewalk waivers or something um you know we have regulations on where sidewalks are required we do get a lot of questions of well do I have to put in sidewalks you know what if I'm in an area that has a sidewalk that would lead to Nowhere do I still have to do it so we have a waiver program that's just done administratively um where we can allow you to do not have to put in sidewalks in certain situations so we cleaned up some of that language to make it a little bit more understandable about when you can get a waiver and when you cannot and then next related to undergrounding power lines we have regulations um sometimes you're required to underground the power line that's in front of your property sometimes you're not there's a lot of things that go into it you know how big is the power line if it's one of those giant power lines we don't underground those nobody undergrounds those um but these smaller ones like the 25 KV we typically require that you underground them we found that um we had some standards that weren't consistent with the regional plan the truck MD's Regional plan actually requires a 10-ft setbacks for certain really big power lines like the one in the picture there and so we wanted to make sure that our zoning code matched the regional utility Corridor which is referenced in the regional plan so more of a clarification making sure that our codes are matching the Public Works design manual and the trucky mow Regional plan questions on any of that uhuh sure um would the underground um power lines only be applicable for new development or existing if you were so we don't actively go out and tell people to underground the power line in front of their business or home but when you come in for development we look at if there's a power line literally on your property um again if you meet certain thresholds then we require that you underground it okay perfect and then what would be an example of when someone could get away if you will with no sidewalk so um I mean would say more res L we had a situation where as an example um a church that came through for a just a a 30-day review something staff reviewed um the church was there and didn't have sidewalks on one side and you think well why wouldn't they have sidewalks on one side the area was developed probably 10 15 years ago and it led to a development that was a county development at the time and the county generally doesn't have sidewalks so we have that in a lot of areas of town where R and the county kind of conflict or you know are next to each other so in certain areas where we'd say well you're basically building a sidewalk that leads to nothing um and there's not sidewalks on either side of the street we we would work with you if you asked for a waiver to say you could you could um move forward with not having to put in a sidewalk okay that that makes sense I guess I was coming at it from the lens of accessibility and all that and U I can think of like mik clearer in Montella where the city and county kind of meet there as an example yep and everything's Case by case I mean there's not like a one-size fits-all which is why we have that waiver program it gives us the ability to look at it um especially in these older neighborhoods we even have some over by Reno High School where they were built you know 50 years ago when they didn't have sidewalks on all the streets so as a new development comes in like a house because it's surrounded by houses um and they may say hey I don't have sidewalks on either side of my street or either side of of my house why am I required to put in a sidewalk where there's no sidewalks anywhere else on my street we look at that on a Case by case base and say you're right why would we have a sidewalk in front of one house and nowhere else on that street okay thank you Angela quick question chair please who's responsible for m so after the sidewalks are put in who maintains like the sidewalk if it's a city Street then the city city of Reno maintains the sidewalk okay so even those are obligated to be put in by the development you know whoever is developing the property it is ultimately maintained by the city unless it's on um again there's there's so many one-offs but generally speaking city streets are owned by the city and the sidewalk would also be in our RightWay we have private streets which the city does not maintain so a private Street we wouldn't maintain nor nor a private sidewalk okay great thank you okay so this was another area of our code um dealing with driveways and anytime we're looking at um traffic um traffic reports so when new development comes in we look at what the use is and we oftentimes trigger a traffic report like a traffic study one thing that we are now um requesting is information on what are you doing in terms of bike Lanes um sidewalks you know as part of your traffic study you think normally you're just dealing with cars but as a city we're really trying to look at more of the multimodal type of Transportation so we added some language to say when you come in with your traffic study not only we looking at how cars are getting in and out of your site but how you're addressing the bike lanes and again um sometimes it's a 4ft wide sidewalk sometimes it's a 10ft wide sidewalk so we want you to show that as part of your traffic study and then related to driveway requirements this is something you guys hardly ever see but when a development comes in we look at like a residential development we have requirements of how wide driveways have to be if if it's a um single family home we have a certain requirement if it's just a driveway to get into and out of like an apartment project it's a different requirement a lot of our driveway requirements conflicted with the public works design manual again just two documents that are you know were drafted at different times over the years and so we said ooh let's clean up our driveway spacing requirements to match the Public Works design manual not a lot of substance to that again more of just making sure that our regulations match um the Public Works design manual regulations off street parking so this is a whole section of our code anytime you have new development you have a use and let's just make one up let's just say you're it's a Target shopping center so you would look at the parking section and figure out well how many parking spaces am I required to have and how many Ada or handicap parking space do is May required to have and it's all math it's based on your use and the square footage of your building we found that our handicap parking requirements were different than the building code so when somebody came in with a development had a building permit stage our our our planners and Engineers were looking at the zoning code saying oh our code says you need 20 parking spaces and that means you need three handicapped parking spaces and then our building folks who review the building permit we're like oh well we review the building code and that requires not three handicapped parking spaces but maybe five so we had two conflicting sets of regulations Ada is more of a Federal Regulation so it's not something the zoning code should vary from you know national standards on so we said well that's an easy cleanup so we just changed our Ada parking to match building code which again matches federal regulations and then in terms of anytime we have a change of use one of the challenges we're finding is well we want to encourage um a change of use we want to encourage new development to come in especially in these areas like our downtown where maybe you had a business that came in 40 years ago and so over the C the the past 40 years you know the the the codes and the rules have changed and so maybe you can't meet the parking requirements because your site was not designed with a parking lot big enough to meet today's parking requirements that didn't seem to make sense I felt like we were pushing away development in these areas were really just kind of a reuse which we want toage merge these reuses so we added more flexibility to say hey we will allow you to come in with less parking if you do a parking study to show that this will work and so we have some rules that say um using kind of National Best Practices prove to us that whatever your use is and the number of parking spaces you're proposing still meets national standards and we'll work with you on that so again just adding more clarification trying to get some of these these older outdated sites to come in with some of these adaptive reuses questions on that okay and again still dealing with parking we have some pretty specific bike parking requirements and we found that we're just getting a lot of complaints on our kind of over-the-top bike parking regulations um we have regulations that you have to have a certain square footage for every every um bike parking space and they have to be covered and it just became kind of problematic um again with we got a lot of complaints over the years on our bike parking so we said the intent still is to have bike parking on on every site and so any new use that comes in is still required to have bike parking but we're just providing a lot more flexibility as an example um some of the things we looked at the Moana pool so the Moana pool came in recently and they came in through a building permit and I think they were supposed to have I don't know 60 parking spaces or some ridiculous amount I can't think of any situation where they would need 60 bike parking spaces so we said well that's just dumb so for every you know all that square footage that they were using on bike parking it took away from actual car parking so again it sometimes it just doesn't make sense I think if if it was an area where um like a school school needs more bike parking because the kids are are are biking to school but in an area where we know we generally don't have a need for 60 bike parking spaces we said let's provide a little bit more flexibility so we added a little bit more language that we can work with you whatever your use is whether it's again a community center um an apartment complex or just a shopping center you still have to provide bike parking we have minimum requirements but we have more flexibility on a Case by case if you can show that your use maybe needs more or less um we can work with you on that compact parking so this is just again regular parking we currently allow so a certain percentage of your site to use compact parking on average um you know your average parking stall is 9 ft wide by 19 ft long so compact parking you can go more narrow and um less deep so we currently allow you to have up to 15% of your overall site to be used as compact so if you have a big Target shopping center let's say you have to have a 100 just regular car parking spaces um 15% would be 15 of those out of a 100 could be Compact and we found that that that wasn't really doing a whole lot we got a lot of push back from the development community of hey can I have more Compact and so we upped that from 15% to 25% so again if you had a 100 spaces that were required now you could have to have 25% can be compact instead I'm sorry um so 25% or 25 in this example versus 15 so a little bit more flexibility that's also something we were hearing from the developers that do a lot of infill is hey the more you can do to help us do infill compact really helps um the better off we are so we did that um we have some some regulations that we actually penalize you if you provide more parking than code requires and that seems silly right why are we penalizing people if they want to put in more parking than is required we penalize them by saying you have to add more Landscaping than code requires if you have more parking than is required so as an example let's say you're required to have 100 spaces and you want to put in 130 spaces we penalize you by saying now you have to add even more Landscaping um if you have a use let's say you're doing a call center and you know you have a lot of employees that need to be there and maybe you need all 130 parking spaces great we want to encourage you to do development and do something that works for you so rather than penalizing you we're just saying great if you want to add more parking put in more parking we're fine with that and then we had another so with that I thought the the intent or policy reason for that was to avoid large black top spaces without any canopy so for example the parking lot across the street from the Atlantis where I I don't know what's there now I think it used to be a Goodwill or sky sky Pro or something like that or ski pro um there's just there's no Shrubbery there's no trees or anything it's just black top tons of parking but really not no um no Greenery so that's an example of why I thought there was a policy it's not really punitive it's more it's not necessarily there to act as a penalty for them having more parking I thought there was an actual policy reason for it so can you go into detail so um we still require trees and shrubs based on the number of parking spaces you have so that that hasn't changed I think it's for every 10 parking spaces you have to have a tree for every tree you have to have six shrubs that hasn't changed so you still have to provide all those trees based on the number of parking spaces you are providing so you still get that tropy that that tree canopy um just based on standard code requirements okay so if they had the extra 30 they'd have to accommodate that with the extra tree to go in there so we're still avoiding that whole correct okay correct when you were touching you touched briefly on it you said something like we were uh penalizing them penalizing them how specifically I mean not tied to the additional tree but how so just we required not just that Landscaping so that's standard code but we require above and beyond additional Landscaping so not only do you have to provide again that standard you know one tree for every 10 spaces it was an additional amount of landscaping so basically it's kind of like this this um catchall of like we want you to provide more Landscaping which means you have to take away parking which seems kind of In conflict with what you're trying to do if if you have a use and you want more parking because your customers maybe need it or your employees need it then put in more more parking what we don't want to do is discourage parking and I think policy-wise back in the day we were trying to encourage people to use more Transit and not use cars um so this was one way to encourage developers to not put in more parking than needed but again what we have found is that um if a use and a an an ten tenant needs more parking why are we telling them no right that means they have to put in less building because they now have to put in more Landscaping rather than saying put in more Landscaping above and beyond what code already requires put in enough parking to meet your needs whether it's your your client needs or your employee needs we want you to make it a a use that makes sense okay I mean I'd like to hear more feedback on that from others not necessarily here but just I mean did I guess you didn't really get a lot of public input huh no so okay um that's just some for notes maybe you can bring that to others and see what other say and I think from the the technical advisory committee comments he said great we we hate the fact that you know for some reason city code feels that they are the experts on how many parking spaces we need but again we have a very generic parking requirement that's based on you know commercial what if your commercial need is something specific it's not just a generic commercial um again call center is a great example like we can we can assume we know what you need for parking but if you're telling us you have more employees and so you need more parking why is zoning dictating how many parking spaces you need so I think from the technical advisory committee comments they thought that made more sense um and allowed for more flexibility with the developers to basically accommodate their parking needs based on what they think they need so the on the one end I know we the city wants to have minimum parking we want to have that floor set but when it comes to um additional I guess there's a rub a little bit with regards to some of our positions that we've talked about on the Planning Commission regarding you know less parking more Transit more walkability more alternate forms of uh Transportation so again I present that see what others say I don't again I'm not a developer I don't really know um it just seems like it's counter to what we've kind of been saying over the the last few years so okay thank you yeah and I mean I think the general public feels that we should have more parking everywhere right take Midtown the biggest complaint about mid time is you should put in more parking so this kind of aligns with a lot of complaints we're getting from the community about why don't we require more parking and I think it's funny because they say that but then it takes away from why people appreciate Midtown and what it is and the character of Midtown yeah so thank you no it's definitely a conflict um but again if if if the direction from Planning Commission is your preference is to not do that then we can definitely move that forward all right and then final thing on this one is we just had um some requirements when you have a parking lot we have construction material meaning you have to pave it that was in our old code but did not get added to the new code so basically we didn't have any specific requirements that required you to pave your parking lot of course we want you to pave your parking lot that was an oops so we just copied and pasted what was in the old code and put it back in the new code all right on Landscaping we have quite a lot to talk about in terms of landscaping and and and screening and fencing big picture um we had some conflicting regulations we have whole sections dealing with landscape requirements again depending on what your zoning district is we have a certain minimum percentage of site landscaping and then we also had screening requirements so if you have two different uses let's say you have a a shopping center next to a you know multi family development we have additional landscaping and screening requirements and so some of those were conflicting so it made it difficult to administer because you had two different sets of regulations so we tried to clean that up as best we could and have more of one set of Standards we had some weird standards I think this was a carryover from probably the last 20 years related to parking structures I will say this one's kind of funny to me because Reno really doesn't get a lot of new parking structures I mean in your time on Planning Commission how many new parking structures have you reviewed probably zero um Reno is not known for having a lot of parking structure so we took out anything specifically on Landscaping requirements specific to parking structures we said that's a building you should landscape it the same that you landscape all buildings again it was kind of was call like a hidden Easter egg like why would you even find that why would you look for a separate Landscaping standard specific to parking structures when we really hardly ever get new ones and then in dealing with tomwa one of the challenges we're having um in a lot of our parking or Parkway strips is you have these these beautiful Parkway strips South Meadows is a great example where you have trees and turf in these Parkway strips which means you have to have irrigation and so if there's Turf that means you have to have spray irrigation Reno tends to be very windy in the summer in the afternoons and we're finding that we're having a lot of that spray run off um into the streets and it's degrading our streets so it's costing the city um a lot in terms of pay maintenance so we work with Toman and we said how do you guys feel about this they said yeah we don't like Turf in the landscape strip either um a lot of that water is wasted that spray irrigation gets wasted it's such a narrow strip and so in working with them we came up with a new requirement that if you have um Turf within 18 in or a foot and a half of the rideway you can't have turf within that window so you have to again we're not going back and penalizing anyone that's done it but moving forward we we don't want to see Turf within 18 in of the right away because we don't want that spray irrigation any questions on any of that okay this is more specific to our screening so the way our code currently works is we have a table um related to landscape screening and it's currently based on your use and your zoning district and we found that a lot of times the zoning District didn't match what the use was so for instance if you're in a mixed use zoning District that could be anything from an apartment to Industrial to commercial so how do you screen based on such a broad um you know zoning District so we changed that and we said let's look at use next to use and have SC screening requirements this is everything from again best example is a target next to an apartment complex um we do require that you have certain types of fencing usually has to be 6 tall and we require trees spaced um every so many feet for every tree you have you're also required to have sck shrubs so we added this we went back we relooked at again the intent is to protect residential development from some of these non-residential uses so we went back and we said let's clean up that table and try and provide uh more more screening um improved screening I would say so again um we have different types of fencing you could have you know fencing that is like split rail so you can see through it it doesn't really do a lot to screen um so in that case we we have a wider setback where you have to have um setback between the building and setback between the the fence and then we also have tree requirements and shrub requirements we went back and we looked at all that this is one I say I will say we we worked quite heavily with our um technical advisory committee and the landscape architect community and we said what's an appropriate spacing for trees if you plant trees too close together it really um inhibits their ability to grow because they can't get the sunlight to them so he said help us is the the way that it's written in code now does it make sense should they be planted closer together or further apart so they gave us some really good recommendations we were pretty close based on our current code but we made some improvements that actually now requires more trees to be closer together when they're planted questions on that Manny I'm sorry n good thank thank you chair was there was there a public comment or anything received on this particular matter no okay okay I believe I believe we do have someone from the school district that might want to speak to this uh is that correct yeah C would you like to K up not on this specific on this entire agenda item more okay yeah oh okay sorry no problem okay I apologize okay any other questions on this one okay all right and then specific to fencing this is another area where our code's very confusing we have fencing standards if you're residential different standards if you're industrial obviously you have different needs industrial you're trying to like generally hide some outdoor storage so we allow you to go taller we also have uh allowances where you can do barbed wire on certain types of um fencing depending on where it's at so we cleaned it up put all the fencing standards in one section so you don't have to look through multiple sections of our zoning code we basically just condensed it and tried to make it so it made more sense one of the things that came out of the state legislature this year was that battery charged or electric fencing now has to be allowed seems like an odd thing to add but we literally copied and pasted um the language from state law and put it into our zoning code questions on any of that please go ahead uh just on the electric fencing uh was there like a rationale provided by the St I I assume there was like some prescriptive goal they wanted to achieve by doing that so I guess I just wanted maybe some more Contex on you know why that was added in the way it was I think there were probably some good fencing lobbyists that their clients wanted electric fencing and a lot of jurisdictions did not allow it we in the past couple years have seen probably I don't know probably less than six projects come forward that wanted to do electric fencing and we generally are able to work with them um the big issue is how do you do electric fencing in a matter that doesn't shock the general public as they're walking by so um we do have regulations again through state law they adopted regulations so if somebody's walking by they can touch the fence it's not electric the electric shock is actually on the inside of the fence so there's a distance um so that the average you know small kid couldn't walk through and like put his hand through and get shocked there's also regulations on the voltage so um you're not going to hurt anyone with the maximum voltage but again having those regulations that state laws now required gives us the ability to allow more electric fencing please go so just so I'm clear this is the electric fencing not like the dog collar electric fencing right no this is a fence that's electrified so that anyone that is trying to like to to break into a site and they would normally jump a fence so let's say you have um an auto repair shop so you have a lot of cars that are stored outside okay um maybe they want to have electric fencing you know in the evening and so um if somebody was going to break into their site of with normal fencing they would just jump the fence and you know break into the establishment oh okay I was thinking the Invisible Fences that they use for dogs but no this is like actually El okay got it yes thanks okay okay and then we have a lot of standards that are specific to different types of zoning districts So within the residential zoning districts again that's more of our um single family zoning districts we had some um inconsistencies we kind of talked about this before related to driveway so we have minimum um length and width of residential driveways that conflicted with the public works design manual we just updated our standards to match that and then we also had requirements for spacing between residential driveways um you know you you you might drive through an older neighborhood and see like oh wow they like expanded their driveway to be enough for like four cars and it's right next to their neighbors's driveway we have regulations that kind of limit how wide your driveway can be you're not supposed to have your whole front yard be a driveway uh we just made sure that we clarified those and made sure they match the Public Works design manual and then when it came to infill lot so we have some language in our code that if you are developing in an infill area and let's say you're like in the Newlands for instance so it's kind of an older area with a lot of character we have some requirements you have to meet your uh adjacent neighbors setbacks so if you're building a new house or maybe you're adding on to your house um your front setback has to be the same as your neighbor you can't basically encroach in front of that we've gotten a lot of complaints over the years on that section of code and so we added some flexibility to say like you can either match your neighbors's front setbacks or whatever the setback requirement is in that specific zoning District you can meet that so again allow allowing a little bit more flexibility for these infill projects that are trying to kind of you know use some of these existing neighborhoods or add more density gives them more flexibility questions on any of that okay and again just in that same residential district um we have some sections of our zoning code that talk about if you are new development coming in and you're in an infill area we have setbacks between your side property line and your new building and we wanted to make make sure that you aren't negatively impacting maybe that single family house that's next door so if you have a a house next door that's single family and you're coming in with a a three-story Apartment project for instance what can we do to better protect you know keep the character of that single family kind of neighborhood and so we've added some language that if you are within 24 ft in height that's your average two-story house um you just match whatever your side setback is so if your zoning code or your zoning District says your side setback needs to be 10 ft great then the first 24 ft of your building needs to be 10 ft from the property line if you go taller than that so anything taller than 24t for every foot of height you have to move a foot back we call that a step back and again the intent here is to still allow for infill development but protect The Neighbor Next Door we had a lot of discussion with the um technical advisory committee on this um and they all really really expressed a lot of con concerns with just our current code with infill development we have so many regulations that really kind of make infield difficult you know our parking makes it difficult parking requirements um Landscaping requirements make it difficult our setback require requirements make it difficult so they said are there things we can do that still protect the guy next door that's already there um but allow some of these smaller infield projects and so this was something that we kind of all met on the middle on that everybody was comfortable with question just on that topic good this is if it's near a um single family a multif family built adjacent to a single family yeah and so we specify that this is applicable if you are in certain zoning districts so any of our single family zoning districts this would apply also in our what we call our um mf14 multif Family 14 units breaker this would apply so it's not like Citywide it only applies if you're within certain zoning districts okay so so say for example I have a single family home and I am in you know mf14 um and someone is going to build this would what would this mean exactly for that development that's next to me yep so the new developer coming in um he could build up to two stories 24 ft in height and just match the normal side setback okay if he wanted to go taller than two stories to that third story he would have to push the third story back every foot taller over 24 ft so let's say um that third story was 10t tall he would need to push that third story back 10 ft okay and how does this change from what it is now that seems man that's a great question yeah we have I think four different requirements in our code now um for how to deal with step backs and setbacks um as staff we they conflict we've actually administratively said this doesn't even make sense I don't know what to do with this so This cleans it up and comes up with one set of Standards okay so in the example we just discussed with a single family that we have the development and they want to build more than two stories um what's current practice right now in in mf14 uh because there's so many what ifs I would even say that give me an example of what the zoning district is and how tall the building is um we have some sections of our code say the entire building has to be push backed not just that third floor has to be pushed back um we have like a slant like you have the building it's not the building's not push back but you can actually have like that slant I think I've seen a couple developments come through here where they have the slant and then they kind of build not okay well like kind of like right oh no never mind CU we have someone maybe the roof line maybe you're thinking of a roof line I think that's yeah but in any case um Okay so two floors you don't have to worry about moving it anything above you do yep near single family what if it's a multif family near multi family it doesn't matter what you're next door to so regardless of what's next door to you this is kind of a one-size fits-all so any new development coming into a single family zoning District would have to follow this okay all right thank you and again typically in your single family zoning districts you're limited to two stories or 30 feet in height anyway so you're not getting buildings that are five stories in height because we we limit that anyway but um in these infill areas in particular these are the kind of the the complaints we're getting from the community is again you know it's you want to make it continue to look like more like a single family neighborhood because historically it has been so what can we do to protect that third story um so it's not like looming into your neighbor's you know backyard well I know for example you said that varies and we had a couple cases maybe one or two where it was actually the single family was separated by a street or an Alleyway or something like that but it was still T I think I think if I'm remembering correctly it was they still had to take into account the setback yeah and so that I mean that's a good example if um depending on what the the what was across from the street and again from our perspective like why are we pushing the building back if there's a building across the street you're not protecting that building across the street so this only applies to your side setback it wouldn't apply to your front set back oh okay that's another okay so it only applies to the front and so typically your front set back excuse me an only place to the side not the front or the rear yep so the the front you're facing a street yeah and so it in our mind it didn't make sense to say if you're facing a street and you're building a new building do you have to push the third floor back from the street who who are we protecting by doing that and we're really discouraging infill by doing that and what about the rear because you may have a neighbor in your rear did we add it to the rear as well yep so we did add it to the rear as well okay thank you okay and then um also for infill some of the other things we added related to parking um a great example some of these infill smaller sites let say you have you know 10 units maybe a smaller Apartment project you have to have parking currently in code we allow you to have a certain percentage of those to be on the street so let's say you have to have 10 parking spaces on your site currently we allow you to have 15% on the street so not everything has to be on your on your you your your parcel um what we found is again 15% really doesn't do a whole lot I'm sorry 35% was allowed to be on the street 35% really doesn't add a whole lot our old code actually allowed you to have 50% of your parking spaces to be on the street so if you're required to have 10 again instead of having three now be on the street you can have five beond the street now the the one caveat to this is you can only use street parking for the street directly in front of you so if you can only fit you know two cars in front of you because your parcel's narrow that's all you get you don't get to basically use you know your neighbor street parking you're limited to just the the width of your lot to where you can have that street parking again this was something that was in our old code and for whatever reason I think as part of the the code update it just got missed that we took it out and so we're bringing it back in questions on that I have a question not on that I want to go back really quickly before we get too far ahead I forgot to ask with regard to this uh to the step back um what is the current step back in today's code and what is the proposed step back given the explanation you you gave us earlier so we had about five different four or five different standards for step backs in the current code which was the problem no nobody could figure out so what's the requirement and what I can do um for our next meeting I'm going to provide some more examples of current stepb backs and proposed stepback so we can kind of walk through all those okay and what is the proposed number is it consistent or do we also have so we're proposing one standard basically um instead of you know four or five different options you have one standard anything taller than 24t you have to step that third story back okay and what's the distance one foot back for every one foot of height okay one foot back go okay thank you nothing okay so that was again kind of specific to residential standards and next is up is our mixed use District so these are things like um all of our Midtown area is mixed use District all of our downtown is mixed use District we have some language that we have in certain mixed use districts we have a minimum density that you have to meet or floor area ratio you have to meet again um we trying to encourage density in these these uh downtown areas which in theory is great we have found that at a lot of development isn't able to make those minimum densities because they have to provide landscaping and they have to provide parking um so they're running out of space to actually have to meet these other density or floor area ratio requirements so we've provided an Avenue if they're not able to meet those minimum requirements they can go through a minor site plan review minor site plan review application does not go to planning commit is just a staff review that does get publicly noticed so anyone that wants to review it or um have concerns with it they do get public notice that can be appealed and that goes to City Council on appeal we also have an area of town we call it the downtown Riverwalk District we don't get um a lot of development before Planning Commission because everything pretty much goes straight to a building permit in this district for the most part we had a kind of some areas that hidden Easter eggs well what's the maximum height in downtown Riverwalk was really hard to actually interpret and find so we just clarified what the maximum height was in that downtown area again not adding any new standards just clarifying in case you can't find it hidden in the middle of you know 650 Pages here it is and that was specific to mixed use next is specific to non-residential so that's things like industrial industrial commercial um mixed juice airport so areas that are more of these kind of big uh commercial industrial areas so so we have had quite a bit of discussion on screening with um kind of coming out of Co we had a ton of new Industrial Development especially in the north Valley's area and we ran into a lot of conflicts when we have these industrial projects next to residential even if there's a big distance like spacing separation between Industrial Development and residential we still found that there was just conflicts right because it's noisy a lot of them are operating 24 hours a day so you have big semi- trucks backing up and the beeping we also had really bright lights in a lot of these Industrial Center so we said huh what can we do to kind of better protect residential um in dealing with these big industrial projects so we went back and we said the loading docks are generally the most um problematic area of these sites and again where we get the most complaints from the public so we put in some requirements that you have to move the loading docks on your site brand new site um so that you're not facing residential so the intent is you would redesign your site so you either you know face a the back of the property where there's no residential or create it so internally to your site you have loading docs or maybe you even face the front of the street again with screening requirements but the intent is to keep those loading docks so they are no longer facing residential so we added some specific language on that um we also added some language that if if you're not able to meet some of those requirements for how it's designed or how it's screened you can still go through what we call that minor site plan review process so you have an out for more flexibility if you can't make it work for whatever reason and I will say for the most part it's not a one sight spits all you know a lot of these sites you think oh it's great for industrial and residentials 400t away no problem and we're separated by a lot of terrain difference and elevation difference and you know what there's a railroad track separating us so why would the neighbors complain when they're next door to railroad track this is going to be far less impactful not true um again based on what we have learned in the past couple years there's things we could do could have done better um to protect those Neighbors with the lighting with the screening with the trees with the way that the site was designed so each each of these kind of needs to be looked out on a Case by case basis if they're not able to meet the minimum screening requirements and we're okay with that it gives us the flexibility to add conditions of approval um so we were fine with just again adding more requirements but also adding an Avenue for them to go through that minor site plan review which gets publicly notic and can be appealed to city council general questions on that yep yep just one um you you mention it like with noise and I I think in the uh batch of comments we received there was maybe a request or feedback around uh maximum noise decb or some noise standards and was that incorporated in in some form or another into into these changes so we currently have uh regulations on noise if you're adjacent to residential zoning the complaints or the comments you received are specific to downtown um we've had a quite a few discussions with the residents living in downtown um if you're in downtown we have zero noise regulations zero noise ordinances for downtown so Within These um like this type of area for for something like this if it's adjacent to residentially zoned property they have to follow our noise regulations okay great and I think the the ones this reminds me of the places up in the North Valleys correct okay great correct uh one other thing I'm just uh not necessarily here but I just want to bring it up to to is the 24-hour use we have now changed the or proposed to change the requirements if you're in some of these industrial zoning districts and you want to do a warehouse or distribution you do not trigger a conditional use permit if you want to operate 24 hours a day that has continued to be a concern and an area of contention so we propose to change that and what we're proposing now is it would trigger a conditional use permit if you're an industrial project wanting to operate 24 hours a day so that would go to a Planning Commission for a public hearing okay great thanks Angela okay lighting again probably something you guys um don't see very much because it's just part of the development process but not something we typically have a lot of discussion on so we currently regulate kind of three levels of lighting three different types of things um the first one is lumens and lumens is measuring kind of the brightness of the light we also regulate Kelvin which is the heat of the light um something that's really hot would be more of a yellow color something that is less hot would be more of a blue color and then we um also regulate foot candles basically how much light comes off the light bulb and spreads off your site so all of that is currently regulated um we only in our old code we only regulated foot candles so again within the last you know 3 years we now regulate lumens celvin and foot candles we have found that um we don't necessarily that's not typical most jurisdictions just regulate one of those things not not all three things and we have found that it's kind of been problematic just from an Administration point of view lumens is actually really hard for us to enforce um a lot of times you go through a building permit and they have to submit a plan that shows the Kelvin and the lumens and the foot candles and that's great and then they build the building and then we get complaints on lighting and people say God it's way too light we're like no it shows on the building permit the lights are supposed to be this level we're like there's no way looking at that site that those lights are actually meeting that level so over time people change out light bulbs and it just became problematic so we're finding that um we should probably remove lumens because we don't really have the ability or the the tools to enforce what the lumens are from a code enforcement perspective we don't have the tools you know they tell us what the lumens are but that that's not really an enforcement thing we need the ability to measure it so we're proposing to remove regulating lumens again that's not something we ever regulated most jurisdictions don't regulate lumens but we're still proposing to keep the Kelvin so the the the Heat and proposing to keep the foot candles which is the big one most jurisdictions just regulate foot candles um we also looked at from a residential perspective if you have a use that's next to residence or residential zoning um we have requirements that your your poles can't be taller than 18 ft a lot of these commercial or industrial sites they're you know 20 ft tall or 40t tall if they're on the building like that bottom picture so anytime we have a building or development now that comes in that is next residential zoning we cap you at 18 ft for your lights any questions on that sure I have one um H how how do we strike the balance between removing the regulation of lumens and the public feedback we received last meeting where folks were concerned about light pollution like um I understand lighting the parking lot but not necessarily ligh lighting the sky dark sky correct MH so we did not change our dark sky requirements that is still in code we didn't touch that and that was more of you have to Shield the lights so they that's still required they have to be shielded they have to be pointed downward we didn't touch that that's still in code again um from from a perspective of what we're regulating we still look at how um you know how bright those lights are going to be based on those pictures are a great example um the the bigger issue we see is how much light pollution is coming off those lights onto the neighboring properties so we still regulate that with the foot candles okay thanks Angela okay we're getting close everyone generally speaking again residential adjacency um we had two different sections of our code that says this is the threshold for what triggers additional standards for what we call a residential adjacency One requirement is if you're a um commercial use or non-residential use and you're within 150 ft of residential zoning we had another section of code that said it's triggered if you're within 300 ft of residential zoning so because we had two kind of conflicting regulations we said well that's that doesn't make sense let's just have one set of Standards so we went with the one that protects the residents more we said we um you would trigger residential adjacency which is more standards more protection for anyone within 300 ft of residential zoning so it's already en code we're not adding a new regulation it's already incode code um we're just getting rid of two conflicting regulations of is it 150 or is it 300 and then um we had some again more clarification clarification on what is exempt from residential joncy so you're exempt if you are um a certain distance maybe separated by a freeway or a railroad track and or if you're certain height or you're certain square footage became very confusing to administer so we cleaned that up we didn't add any new standards or remove any standards We just cleaned it up to make it make more sense to the average person and to us as planners and then specific to signs we have some language if you are a sign and you're dealing with um residential development within 300 ft so there's a certain uh requirement for how how much illumination those signs can have we cleaned it up again it didn't really make sense from an Administration point of you didn't want to add or take away any regulations just cleaned it up so it made more sense and then again we kind of talked about this before with the exterior lighting we limit you to um 18 ft if you are within so many feet uh the light pole is limited to 18 ft in height if you are within 300 ft of residential zoning okay and housing so this is a very small section of our code it has more to do with affordable housing we didn't make any changes with the code update we are doing a very separate text Amendment on housing um that's at Council and now going through some some additional stakeholder feedback so not changing much specific to housing within the code update but definitely proposing some changes within the affordable housing text amendment that you guys reviewed and finally skyways so we don't get skyways very often I think we've had one Skyway in 20 years and so when this section of code was written it was written 20 years ago we had very different uh technology back then now we have like digital cameras which is amazing the things you can do and you can Photoshop so our code required that you submit like 35 mm film which I don't think that's even a thing anymore it also code required that you submit like a giant 24 in by 36 in board can you imagine um it seems so funny now that we used to do that but you used to have to submit giant poster boards of what your Skywalk or your Skyway was going to look like so we said that's silly please don't submit 35 millimet we don't know what to do with it so we just removed that language and said you still have to submit renderings um but do it in a normal digital fashion so again no substance changes just clarifying that we don't need the old stuff anymore we need the new stuff questions on that is that the university it is turned out nice yeah okay and so that is everything is there any other feedback we wanted to go over but what we can do too is just quick disclosures and I do have one public comment then we can run it back on you uh commissioner V NOA any disclosures no disclosures commissioner Armstrong no disclosures uh commissioner berera reviewed public comment emails uh staff briefing that's it you know what I realized I did get a email from W County so yeah okay commissioner Munoz uh commissioner Munos read an email commissioner dracul read received emails and spoke to a stakeholder from was County School District all right with that said we will do public comment I do have one request to speak form from the kind gentleman waiting Kyle Chisum you have three minutes go ahead and state your name for the record think you know the drill thank you chair and Commissioners Kyle Chisum representing was County School District um and I just realized today that um what our comment is related to is a little off topic from what was focused on tonight I think Angela covered chapter 4 our comment is specific to chapter 3 I think we missed that on the in the March meeting I know that that was briefly discussed but um we did want to make our voice heard and get our comment in on related to that it is all one text Amendment so to speak just broken up um so first of all I just want to State for the record that um the school district is opposed to uh code section 180330 3 b3e and B4 A5 as proposed in the staff report as um many of you are aware the school district has recently adopted a facilities modernization plan which is a uh 15-year strategic plan upward of $2.2 billion um invested into the community um to re Revitalize our existing schools um many of these Investments um will be designed and budgeted years in advance of building permit and so our concern with the code language as written is that there is potential for last minute um type of requests or design changes that could come as a result of that now I know that uh the current staff's intent isn't for that and as a matter of fact in the last meeting it was stated that this was more intended to address Charter School issues but this definitely encompasses this language definitely encompasses the school district as well and um and we see the generally vague nature of the language to cause confusion especially with our design professionals that we spend hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars over in the next 15 years so we want to have language that is very clear and precise and I think you know relevant to tonight Angela just hit all the devel velopment standards in chapter 4 and we believe that those specific standards should that's where they should live and not have a somewhat discretionary or possibly opinionated um uh take on what the requirement could or should be um and so that that's really the concern with us um and respectfully we'd request that the Planning Commission consider um voicing concern on this as well to the council I know that you can't directly make changes to this uh text Amendment but um it is definitely going to negatively impact the school district in the long run and with our plans so appreciate your time uh and consideration here for any questions thank you heather do we have anybody on Zoom or any voicemails we do not receive any voicemails for this item for the record we did receive correspondence which was uh forwarded to the Planning Commission and and has been insured into the record and it does not look like we have any hand hands raised on Zoom thank you anybody in the Chambers wishing to speak on this item seeing none we'll close public comment go to the Commissioners for wrap up conversation questions commissioner Villa go ahead so I don't know that I can ask um the public commenter questions so I'll ask Angela questions if you can you probably understand where he's coming from can you touch on that um so I'm so I see the provisions but I he said it was ambiguous and vague and discretionary can you just explain what maybe the concern is yeah um so and Kyle tell me if I'm wrong but I think the concern was we proposed to add some language that basically said before we approve a building permit um we have flexibility to look at school sites in terms of where crosswalks are going to go where um queuing for drop off and Pickups going to go so um it's a catchall for all types of schools whether it's a charter school or was County School District um I the the challenge we have had in the last well really since wc1 past in Co since we've started seeing schools come in as often times schools are built and we haven't as a city done maybe the review and the diligence to really address some of the pedestrian safety concerns and so the schools get built and then after the fact we go in and ask the school district oh we need to put a crosswalk in here because we didn't look at it and maybe at the same degree now that we would look at so in my mind that section of code has been added so that we have the ability again before we approve a building permit because not everything goes through a a discretionary review um it clarifies that we can look at it and look at kid drop off and pickup and where buses are coming and going where crosswalks are going to be um where the school you know flashers have to go that language is Broad enough that it gives us the ability to look at all of those things before we approve a building permit and what are they wanting they're wanting specifics or I I will let um M answer I don't it's okay gu I think we're okay with that yeah and we we had a short conversation about at the last meeting and yeah I mean I guess we'll let Kyle clear it up a little bit because I think we're our conversation wasn't where it is right now is just all of a sudden we're going to be changing designs that took years and hundreds of th000 of dolls to make and you know slow down potential investment into the school district but look Kyle go yeah so thank you College sism uh was County School District for the record um so I guess to answer that question um the the nature of the language right now basically says that the administrator can control all as pretty much all aspects related to our site design with regards to driveways circulation patterns queuing crosswalk Traffic Safety flashers parking as we just saw there's already a a ton of development standards for all of these things um that's why we have development standards and so our concern is is that what what could possibly come up with this language it could be anything um and uh you know not to get into a bunch of back history but there has been times where you know this district has got all the way through a process and had to go back and make make significant site improvements um that really affected our budget and our process way after the fact and so that is what we foresee as possibly happening here and um really we want to put the design on our professionals and and our design teams and not have ambiguous stand standards that aren't so you're saying if you guys follow the development code AS written you don't want the potential to come in front of staff and they say well we need this you know this additional thing this additional thing and this other thing is that well I mean in addition to not wanting to do that we're already going to have to do that through additional discretionary reviews we every school that is a new school or a major redesign is going to have to come through some sort of approval process before either staff or this commission possibly even Council depending on what it is um and that's due to the nature of where our Parcels are located they're surrounded by residential you know you just saw the residential adjacency standards that we have to comply with but um so we are going to have to go through a discretionary approval but in in our view that would be the appropriate place to say okay you need a you need a flasher at on this street and here's why and it's justified in a staff report not you know not 10 seconds before a building permit that's that's our concern and for point of a clarification too um the process you go through because you are the school district which is obviously I guess very new to us cuz usually we're dealing with private developers is it how much different is that and you know timec consuming cost consuming because we really are talking about the school district's money which is taxpaying Citizens yes absolutely um all all taxpayer funded um and um I would say that the process is no different than a private development and which is why you know it's you know I question why this um very focused kind of somewhat targeted um Cod code section why what about drive-thru restaurants what about you know mega mega warehouses and the issues that they've brought you know and why why is this level of discretion being put on schools specifically and not every other type of development commissioner berser please sure thank thank you chair oh I I I do I do understand where staff is coming from with the safety of children and being dropped off and making sure everything's fine I also understand I think where this school district's coming from and not wanting undo burden I think the really neat thing about where we're at right now in the process according to Angela and the little uh diagram she showed us is that we're still in the early stages with collecting feedback and so perhaps Angela um would you and your team be amenable to talking with the school district and finding some common ground and clarifying language and I'm sure knowing the way you work and your team it's it's not you're not out to get anyone no and and I I think the reason for this is because not every school triggers discretionary review um we have a lot of zoning districts that you can build a school permitted by right all of our commercial all of our mixed use professional office all of those are schools are permitted by right so we consistently have challenges with new schools coming in and we put some language in the code that just puts them on alert I don't care if you're a charter school or private school or public school um we need to see a Qing plan we need to see how you're going to handle drop off and pickup if you have 1,500 kids coming to school being dropped off every day that that's not a drive-thru I mean that that is a major major impact we have to deal with you know kids biking and walking in conflicts with other um you know neighborhoods and so schools are a unique use and this was written into code because we time and time again have missed this and screwed it up and schools get built and we get complaints immediately that we didn't address these issues so knowing that pretty much every school that's built we need to look at these issues um we put it in code to say heads up these are the things we're going to look for we're not telling you what the requirement is we're just saying as a as a courtesy charter school or public school or private school these are the things we want to see before we approve a building permit so is oh sorry go please go ahead so is there any because I I think you make very valid points absolutely everything you said I also see their perspective is there anything any way we can give a little bit more detail as to what you guys are going to be looking for so that because I mean if if it's true that you know they're right just about to you know go online and then all of a sudden they have to make these changes um which could cost a lot of you know tons of money which is taxpayer dollars um is there anything additional I mean I I think you guys do just need to have a conversation but because you both make really strong points um yeah so and I will say this is something just as a heads up council is very very strong on this so they will likely add 10 times more strength than what I'm adding in the code right now um school district is probably aware of that but the the language we added was very broad it doesn't mandate anything it doesn't require anything it just says heads up these are the things we're concerned with that when you come in for a building permit we're going to want to see that's all that says I I I think just tightening the feedback loop I think it's more how we work right the language is the language and I think they're good like guiding principles um and again I think maybe a conversation where it's just how we work and the school district in this case as the stakeholder knows we're not going to tell you about these guiding principles at the end you're going to know up front so you know what to plan for right and and hopefully uh when it does happen it's the exception and not the the rule right and you know anything that triggers a discretionary review and we get these as well um whether it's a you know a minor conditional use permit doesn't go to planning commission something that staff reviews we look at all those things at the time of of that review so whenever that school comes in whether it's at a discretionary review or a building permit we are looking at the same things but because a lot of the schools are in zoning districts that have no discretionary review they only come in for a building permit we're just giving you a heads up as whatever School you are please know that we're going to want to see this as part of a traffic study and a queuing study and you know how are parents going to park when they're trying to get in and out to me this is more of a a common sense thing that we're just putting schools on alert um because we've had so many of the charter schools come in as well I mean postco we have a ton of charter schools coming in into existing shopping centers right where they're not designed for schools um and now we are kind of pushing back saying maybe this isn't the appropriate site for these reasons because we've had so many schools that have had challenges with the drop off and pickup and the conflicts um we as staff are like let's catch this before you spend the time and the money and build it and then we come back after the fact and and Kyle knows like I can't tell you how many times we've gone back after the school's built and said this isn't working we need crosswalks at a different location because we didn't you know analyze it to the degree that we should have um so in my mind I'm like we are actually saving the school districts or the private schools money by catching it UPF front and they are welcome to come talk to us at any time right if you at the 30% level and want to talk to us about traffic come in then there's no limitation on that but we're just saying hey every school that's coming in know that these are concerns that we're going to look at before we're going to give you a building permit commissioner AR sure good thanks uh so I guess what I'm hearing is that it's sort of a timing issue I mean correct me if I'm wrong Mr Chism but it sounds like because of like how long out the plans are being made the concern is like oh well you know we we designed this like 10 years ago for the sake of arguing and now we have this issue so in terms of feedback and understanding that city council you know has has a particular View and and may want to tighten this up anyway from where I said maybe it's just like can we get some guidance on timing or like I understand that it's a heads up but like at what point maybe some of these things have to be dialed in or like not subject to change because then that adds Clarity and it makes it more navigable so it's like not a surprise and it's less discretionary yeah and we could add something in the code that says anytime you're building a school come in and talk to us at any time in the review process so we can have that feedback again that that's not something we should have in the code that's common sense right that's we've been working with the school district we've have a good relationship with them um again as schools have been built the same challenges are popping up over and over again so we're learning it took us a few schools to figure it out but we are learning let's catch these things because every school we've had to you know pretty much go back and say whoops we did that one wrong let's catch that next time around one last question on this um when you say we built schools are we talking about like new schools or new like new new buildings or new schools that pop up in a shopping center any new school that is built or any new school that goes into a shopping center any new school that comes into an existing location sorry okay let me clarify when you talk about oops we messed up is that for new schools that were buildings from the school district or Charter Schools you know that were in a shopping center it's all schools I mean I name a school and I can tell you that's been that's opened in The Last 5 Years and I could probably tell you what we missed and we should have caught actually that would be perfect like do we would have have you seen the news lately I mean no no let me just Google it and I'm sure we'll find something on Facebook just since we try try to uh or we do aim to ask for supporting documentation from applicants and so forth would it make sense to provide supporting data uh to council to justify why we say hey in the last 12 months these are the oops that we we should have caught if we if we had these in place and and that would also provide context to uh Mr Chisum and others and find that common ground sure yep commissioner Muno did you want to chime in didn't want to forget about you buddy no you're all good uh the discussion is perfect so I appreciate it guys okay chair I have one more question but it's not about the school district so I'll let you guys finish that conversation and then something else I think we're kind of good and we'll wrap it up I will give Kyle one more chance if you want to put anything on public record you have your go now closing argument yeah just to follow up to commissioner Armstrong's um question about the timing um I think it's both a timing issue and that's definitely a major concern because um but also the fact that staff or the administrator can change at a moment's notice um the the decision so we could go in for example today and have a whole plan cleared by Angela and you know not saying it's going to happen but a month from now there's a new administrator or somebody else's you know and so that changes this happens this it it happens all the time where people's opinions change we get conflicting answers on on different things and so um so that would be the other major concern with this the other the other thing is that there there's standards for this stuff there uh you know the municipal uh uniform traffic control manual that talks about all the school flasher stuff there's the traffic study that we're going to provide pretty much on every large project we do um that's prepared by qualified traffic engineer so there I mean it's just there's no this it's it's really just the ambiguity of this this language is what it comes down to thanks you guys all right we'll move on from that the message will be sent to uh commission or Council I'm sure and thank you both you clarifying uh commissioner will way you have a question outside of that scope yes for Angela it's we touched on it early but I don't know that we got into the specifics of this particular item so for single family residential I see that there have been this is looks like it's section oh maybe it is multif family um multif Family residential um section 180228 but I see it in a couple other sections in any case it looks like going back to the setbacks um it's going from 10 ft on the side to 5T is that 18 section 18.02 Point looks like 208 and there's a couple different areas that's where it starts are you talking about in some of the multif family zoning districts yeah I know we talked about it briefly earlier um I just want some clarity so in the setbacks um the graphic with the setbacks it's line item C or excuse me line item D side and then it says 5 foot which I guess currently it's 10 foot so the so for instance I'm going to I'm just just going to reference a a multif family zoning District so I'm just looking at it here um so the side setback is currently 5T that's 5T for the main building and 5T if there's an accessory building like a shed the line that I think you're looking at is specific to um if you have projects with two or more units um and the sidey yard is adjacent to a single family zoning District what does that mean that that was our question too like that is a weird Easter egg I don't even know what that means so I mean we we like that doesn't even make sense to us um so we deleted that that kind of thing that just didn't make sense as to why that was even a code requirement um so basically you have to be in a certain zoning district and you have to have more than two buildings and you have to be adjacent to single family zoning then your setback is an additional 5T instead of 5T it's 10t so From staff's perspective it just became difficult to administer something that was so weird and unique and um we said well that doesn't make sense let's just take that out okay so you just took them out okay that that was my only question thank you oh you got one more commissioner was here go ahead sure I think we're at the end right yep more or less we're there okay um so so given that we're uh thank you so much it's you guys you and your team are doing a great job and I was just curious um how how can the general public continue to provide feedback and have that feedback incorporated into proposed changes as we move along this process so I mean there's there's a couple things we still have you know one more Planning Commission meeting where I'll be getting feedback and then I'm going to take that information so they can participate in that um they can participate in the city council hearing well all we're going to do is talk about feedback they're not making any decisions um and then I'll be coming back again to Planning Commission so we can provide more public input and then I'm going to go back to Planning Commission again with a Redline document for you guys to move forward with so from just even talking about feedback there's at least probably three more public meetings we also have a website on our um city website specific to the zoning code so if they want to look at the redline changes they can look at it there's a box where they can check where they can provide public comment through that Forum as well perfect thank you Angela and do we have a Target date are we aiming for July 1 or um 2026 would be my target date okay I'm kidding you kid you kid thank you Angela thank you CH no the target date is continuing to move I think depending on council's feedback on what changes they want I'm guessing we'll probably have a handful of Council meetings before we get to a Redline document that they're ready to move forward with just a guess good luck thank you commissioner Munos you get the last word friend um so I was just going through the notes I wrote down and one thing that I did have I just wanted to kind of bring up real quick just for a clarification for everybody uh one of the companies that I work for recently installed an electric fence um the fence mostly what the the purpose of it is if anybody touches it it sets off an alarm and lights it also has a very small amperage of shock I think it's 7,000 Watts or something not enough to kill not enough to uh knock you down or nothing like that but enough to say don't touch this ever again it's not a good feeling so other than that this is a great uh I really appreciate all the work you're putting into this angelin and and all the work South's doing um I know it's a lot and I can't imagine sitting down and going through all this stuff like you guys are so I really do appreciate it um and believe it or not actually looking forward to the next one great he must be drinking right [Laughter] now awesome thank you ladies all of you for the hard work we appreciate it we'll uh close item five CU we don't need to make any motion or anything we're just as as this as things come up um feel free to you know reach out we'll have another meeting where we're going to go through the final sections of code and then we will have more feedback hey did we miss anything um like I said I'll put all of our presentations into one presentation so we can go back and look at any slides from our last meeting or this meeting or the next meeting we will provide more clarification on the stepb back topic so we can show what's in code Now versus what we're proposing just in case there's additional feedback on changes to that thank you great thank you as well all right we'll close item five item six Mike you touched your GRE button go uh we are going to postpone item six tonight and I'll discuss that more under item eight we move for thank you thank you close item six item seven trucky Meadows Regional planning liaison report who's my guy um I'm the alternate but both are gone um the recent meeting was actually cancelled for end of March the next meeting is in April or this month later in the month perfect great closing item seven moving to item eight staff announcements I we'll kind of bundle items 8.1 8.2 and 8.3 into one um the commission has expressed some interest in having training sessions or having some presentations done by staff but there's been not much in the way of direction of what you would like to see um in fact the train that we had originally talked about tonight was essentially so generic in nature I think it it probably wasn't really beneficial so if you have ideas I would encourage you to share those with me and then as I can work with staff to bring something back um if you have ideas tonight feel free to share them if not you you can email them or or send them through um Michelle or or Heather however you prefer but we would like to put something together that we think is Meaningful for the staff or for for the commission of areas that they would like some some education on sure go ahead commissioner B thanks chair um thank you Mike I don't know just something that comes to mind for me is like how we work uh how our work impacts uh Regional having sat on those it's still sometimes a little unclear um um I can deduce how our work impacts but maybe having just a training or discussion on on the full life cycle of our work from local like know or Sparks if we were in Sparks then to Regional and so forth like a full big picture uh overview of our work do that yeah I think building off that so the title I guess for the the presentation was overview of Planning Commission roles and responsibilities so earlier this year you had put together I think it was just like a single slide that basically was like hey here's the majority of the types of projects this B looks at in a given year for example in 2023 and those include you know kind of a handful of things like conditional use permit site plan reviews things like that so I think for like a new commissioner's perspective it would be really helpful to maybe just have like an overview of hey these are the things you're most likely going to see and here's a little refresher on what this piece of it is like a major site plan review for example and what findings we want you to make and like what the rationale for that is so just kind of like high level but a little more precise so it's not super General absolutely others all right do you have any more on item 8 uh under item 8.4 just a a quick update on Council actions um council did not take action on the on the housing amendments that were presented uh previously so they've requested that staff go back and hold additional workshops gather more public input and then we'll keep posted as that comes forward um how how was our meeting received by them I I think that part of the reason that was I think maybe quite frankly caught a little bit off guard so maybe to essentially give them some time to digest that and gather some additional input regarding those changes I kind of expected that also that as I mentioned um previously at the at at the last meeting the Reno a project was appealed to the city council council did uphold the approval of the conditional use permit foreno act and then at their next meeting the two Plum Lane zone changes that were that you heard two meetings ago as well as the White Lake Commerce Center specific plan District that was at your last meeting those will be held the hearings will be held on April 10th at the council for those projects that's it thank you Mr reallyy appreciate it oh did you have something to add yeah I will say sta staff did advise us that it would cause more work for them and sure enough it did you're welcome ladies all right closing item eight moving to item nine commission or suggestions for future agenda items I I I think I mentioned one last time and uh um Nate was covering for for you Mike and he was going to follow up with me and I'm not sure if that got passed along but happy to work with you on that if need need be okay closing item n moving to item 10 public comment this item is for either public comment on any action item or for any general public comment Heather any Goods over there I have no request to speak forms voicemails or corresponden has been received for this item all right anybody in the chambers wish to speak on General Public comment all right seeing none we will close item number 10 public comment move to item 11 adjournment so all right sounds good yall have a good night thanks good night I just wanted to share something as well um on the school issue so the school district recently appealed a case of a new private school going in it's like these are the types of reasons why we just want to clarify on the record you need to show a queueing plan you need to show crosswalks the school school district is appealing the private school because they don't feel that we reviewed their project to the degree that they feel we should have reviewed it schools are little contentious in this community yeah and honestly I think it is you make such points some of the all over the place but at the same time