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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2005 08-09 SpecialMeridian City Council Special Meeting August 9, 2005 The Meridian City Council Special Meeting was called to order at 6:00 P.M. on Tuesday, August 9, 2005 by Council President Shaun Wardle. Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird, Shaun Wardle, Charlie Rountree and Christine Donnell. Staff Present: Bill Musser, Anna Canning, Joe Silva, Ted Baird and Will Berg. Item 1. Roll-call Attendance: Roll call. X Shaun Wardle X__Christine Donnell X__Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird _X_ Mayor Tammy de Weerd Item 2. Adoption of the Agenda: Bird: Mr. President I move we adopt the agenda as published and that would include -- if the Council would feel -- to move forward that would include Ordinance Nos. 05-1170 and 05-1171. Rountree: Second. Wardle: It’s been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda with the additions of the Ordinance numbers. All in favor? ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. Item 3. Public Hearing: Application for an Ordinance for a New Title 11 Unified Development Code replacing / repealing Title 11 Zoning Regulations and Title 12 Subdivision Development of the Meridian City Code: Wardle: We will begin with a brief staff presentation of the Ordinance and then the memos and then we will take some comment. After that comment we will move into a discussion of the fee structure. Canning: I am sorry, sir, I seemed to have misplaced one thing. Just half a second. Wardle: No problem. Just for the record this is a continued public hearing on our Unified Development Code from July 26th , I believe. Meridian City Council Special Meeting August 9, 2005 Page 2 of 17 Canning: Found it. Sorry about that. Madame Mayor, members of the Council, President Wardle the Code that we currently have was originally written right when the state pretty much adopted the requirement for zoning ordinance and it’s been amended over time, but has never been substantially redone. So, we are talking about – probably created in the 1970’s and although it’s been piece- meal added too, there has never been a full overhaul. So, one of the things that I recognized when I first got that there that the list of needed amendments to the Zoning Ordinance was large. There was several of them and they were in various places throughout the document, but what the document really lacked was the structure that we could work with to make those amendments. It was also noted in the Comprehensive Plan that there were a number of code issues that needed to be updated to reflect new development codes as well as new uses; things that in the 1970’s were never anticipated as a use that you needed to plan for. So, with all these things in mind we undertook the new Unified Development Code and we worked with a group of about eight individuals, who volunteered over 100 hours individually, collectively we are talking about probably 1000 hours and helped us to modernize our standards and come up with new tools for addressing the development needs as we saw them, while still meeting the needs of the citizens of the City of Meridian and Planning Staff and Counsel. So, that’s my brief history and what I will do now is I’ll move into, as you know, the Planning and Zoning Commission has forwarded a draft for you consideration. What I have done as we’ve noticed things that need to be corrected or just clarified over time, I have kept track of those and those have been brought to you in three documents now and I apologize for the two, but we will continue to find these and I figured it’s better to let you know about them now then after we get it adopted. The first item that I will go through is entitled “Staff Summary of Planning and Zoning Commission Recommendation to City Council”. It’s your standard cover sheet. They have recommended that you approve the document as they have amended it and that amended version was posted on the website and has been available for public comment since June 7, 2005. They held their hearings in April. There were only a few people that came to that hearing. Mark Russell spoke in favor of some of the Old Town Ordinances; James Fuhrman spoke in opposition – he was mostly opposed to the extent of the changes and the inability to go back and read underline and strike-out comparisons of what had changed. Now, that of course, would be impossible because this is completely restructured. We would basically just strike out the old one and underline the whole new one. Also, commenting was Paul Pusey and he is looking at the – he is a representative for manufactured homes; Gordon Marguiluex is a resident who had some questions about noise and lighting and then David Turnbull provided comment via email. I presented that application. What I would like to do now is go to the outstanding issues before Council that start on Page 2. As I said I have been kind of keeping a list of all the edits that need to be done. This was the first address of that and what I did is that I just pulled out the ones that had any significance. If it was just taking an extra “and” out or changing a period to a comma, I am not bothering you with those today. So, we are just trying to get to the substantive ones. Regarding Meridian City Council Special Meeting August 9, 2005 Page 3 of 17 code enforcement, the Police Department when we initially talked about it had decided that we would add some text to their section of Title 6, regarding code enforcement. After reconsidering it they decided that it would be better to go ahead and put it in the Unified Development Code. Apparently, some of the judges like it better if all the penalties are in the same place that the standards are. So, that is the reason to move that in there. Planning and Zoning Commission did have that material. They didn’t spend a lot of time on it because they thought it was going into a different section of the code and so they didn’t spend a lot of time fine tuning it. We did work with the Police Department and the Legal Department to clean that up a little bit and get that in a form that could be included in the UDC. That’s listed as Exhibit B. Residential street buffers – we moved the residential street buffers from one section, the Landscaping Section to the Use Section, so that all of the dimensional standards that impact the property the most would be in one case, but we forgot to put some of them in some of the tables. So, we are not really proposing anything new, we just forgot to put it in some of the tables so we are just clarifying that we need to get those in there. It was the residential district that we forgot them on. All the other district tables have them. Standards for a traditional neighborhood district – right now there is one table that has all the dimensional standards as far as street width, the travel way and parking in alleys and setbacks on it. Now, we want to leave that table there, but we want to make it blank for right now. The Fire Department and the Police Department wanted a chance to meet with the Process Improvement Group and maybe come to some consensus on what the appropriate standards would be. So, the Fire Department is waiting until we have that meeting so – they are opposed to the standards as they are currently written, but they are not going to do a presentation tonight because the anticipation is that we will work together on those and come back at a later date. Now, there is no existing T&R District, so these won’t be an issue. It’s not like somebody is going to come in the day after it’s adopted and say I’ve got this lot, it’s zoned T&R, I want to build something and not have a standard there. You will have an opportunity – you’d have to approve a zoning for that and you’d have the opportunity to set those standards at that time. But, we do hope to get it back to you quickly. We don’t want to leave this as out there hanging. Parkway planters – ACHD recently initiated a discussion with all the city regarding the width of the parkway planters, there we go – and that’s the area between the edge of the curb and the sidewalk where you put your streets trees, that’s the parkway planter. They are requesting larger parkway planters. We kind of all agreed on an 8-foot width for class two trees and then for class one, two or three trees you would have to go up to ten. The class one and the class three require more room. The class one require – because they are kind of messy and the class three because they are really big. That’s that. I think that we have addressed that issue. There are a lot of specifics there, but for the most part I think that that is addressed. Mr. Turnbull provided a letter to you all stating that he wasn’t opposed to that parkway. He did he a question about the preliminary plats that were approved with the 5-foot parkway. My understanding would be that those would be – that the preliminary plat approval would prevail. Meridian City Council Special Meeting August 9, 2005 Page 4 of 17 ACHD has indicated that they would be looking on the 8-feet on all of them. I asked them to check with their attorneys. We haven’t heard back on their attorneys, but the consensus from our attorneys was that the preliminary plat as approved would suffice. Okay – required parking spaces for residential uses – I had quite a few changes here and some of this was – most of this was to address some of the Fire Department concerns regarding kind of guest parking or off-street parking and we have been generally requiring these standards when we do Planned Developments. That’s basically that there be a parking pad behind the garage that is 20 by 20 so that if people aren’t parking in their garage, they have room between the edge of sidewalk and the face of the garage to park vehicles. So, that’s what those changes were there. Then for multi-family dwellings it had that they had to have off-street parking in an enclosed garage. I thought that that was meant to be covered parking or an enclosed garage, so I kind of suggested a covered carport there. Okay parking standards for non- residential uses – this was the discussion about the no more off-street parking required. What we were proposing and I believe Mr. Bowman testified briefly at the last hearing that he was supportive of these is that the following standard shall apply for off-street parking and it was one space for every 500 square feet of gross floor area in commercial districts and traditional neighborhood districts and then in the industrial districts it would be one space for every 2,000 square feet of gross floor area. So, we would propose those as the minimum parking ratios – it just goes by district rather than specific use and as I indicate when we had our workshop the problem with the specific use is like a Hallmark store has a very different parking need than a furniture store, but they are both retail stores. So, what we tend to find is that the individual owners of those establishments have a much better idea of how much parking they need and how much parking they can live with. But, this would give us a real basic standard to apply so that we could be sure we were getting some. Okay temporary off-remise signs – this is one that I don’t know how Council and Mayor will feel about this. What it would allow is small off-premise signs, about the same size as the real estate signs. We have some people that may be on the street just off of Main Street that want to advertise on Main Street because that’s where all the traffic is that if they got the permission of the property owner next to them they could advertise for the sale of holiday hams, perhaps or something like that. Our current code does not allow off-premise signs. The reason you generally want to be very careful with off-premise signs is because unless you want to see a lot of bill boards in your community you have to really limit the size of them and the location of where they can go in the duration. So, this would be a very limited opportunity for some off-premise signs for folks that needed it. Private street standards – I will just talk about them now because they are on my list, but that was quite a – they next are on the list – fairly substantial changes and I think that this is one that from what I heard before, Council hearing maybe you want to talk about – these would be the private streets associated with developments such as the Messina Meadows where they have the fronting on the open space, but had the – called an alley, but we would call it a private street behind – behind them 24-feet in width – did work with the Fire Department and the Police Meridian City Council Special Meeting August 9, 2005 Page 5 of 17 Department on that. They feel pretty comfortable with those, so I am not sure if that’s the one that Council was concerned about or the traditional neighborhood residential district. Basically, it also gives the Fire Marshall the authority to go back and convert a drive-aisle in like a commercial development to a private street so that they can get a street name and addressing. So, the initial impetus for the private streets was to get some addressing and then this idea of these residential where they face a common open space rather than a street came up so we tried to tweak it to accommodate that as well. Development along state and federal highways, I understand that we are not addressing that right now. We are going to do that – oh, it’s listed together now. Can I talk about that or do I need to move on? Mr. Rountree? Mr. Baird? Baird: Mr. President, members of the Commission – or wait sorry about that I just did the P&Z last week, so – you are not the P&Z you are the Council. Members of the Council, I wanted to point out that I have separated out as Item No. 5 a separate ordinance pertaining to development on state highways. It would be my recommendation that you hold your comments on that and address it directly and give Council member Rountree an opportunity to recuse himself from that discussion. Canning: Okay. I will move onto drive-thru establishments then. You asked for a separation standard for drive-thru establishments and Mr. Turnbull did point out that perhaps we need a little more clarification here that the idea was just to make sure that there was a 300-foot separation between the drive aisles and the window, not for the whole building because you could have a drive-thru on one side of a 300-foot building and one on the other. So, I will make those edits if that is what the Council desires. But, I did think that that was a good edit proposed by Mr. Turnbull in his memo. Okay, that would end that first document. The other two will go quickly. The first is a memo dated July 26th . The only substantive one on that is the fourth one and that would be to delete the requirement that a daycare conditional use approval ceases with the sale of the establishment. This issue came up recently and did get public comment of a woman who is going through this right now. Currently, we require that they come back to you and get the change of owner approved. It’s not really a public hearing, but they do need to come to you to get the name approved. With the new code it said that they had to go through the whole process completely over again. I know what the intent is, we are not sure if it’s met by the existing standard or the new one. The intent is that if they were to sell to somebody who shouldn’t have a daycare that you would have an opportunity to say no. Unfortunately, the stuff that we ask for in the process that they go through doesn’t really get us there anyway. What we really need to do is fingerprint the new owner and see if they have a record. So, I leave it up to you as to what you may want to do regarding that one. It does seem onerous to folks that have a good daycare, that are running it, that just want to retire or need to retire for a reason and have a willing buyer that they have to go through the whole process again. Okay I am going to move on to the memo that you just got tonight. The Meridian City Council Special Meeting August 9, 2005 Page 6 of 17 first three sounds rather complicated or the first two sounds rather complicated. They are not – what happened was we had multi-family dwellings and then we had multi-family developments. We meant to go and take out the dwellings and just call them multi-family developments, so I just need to go and make that edit to the use tables and then everything works with the definitions. However, I was looking at the standards for the multi-family development and you know recently you know we have had ones that have come up very large – over – we have had two now where someone is proposing multi-family developments that have more than 200 units and I don’t think that we anticipated that when we were originally doing the UDC. We had the sliding scale for amenities that stops at 75 units, so I would recommend to adding an additional one that basically says that if you have got more than 100 units you need to provide amenities commensurate with the development. They are all conditional uses anyway and you could do that if you don’t want to add the standard, but it just kind of puts the applicant on warning that four is not going to be enough if you are proposing 200 units – four amenities. Then Ms. Cheryl Brown asked me to add a standard for drive-thru establishments and basically no alcohol, including, but not limited to liquor, beer and wine may be purchased, sold, picked up or otherwise acquired at the drive- up service window. So, that one is pretty straightforward. Everybody is disappointed, though now that we know. So, those are all my edits. I will take direction from you as to what you would like me to talk about more or less as the case may be. I should point out that Mr. Dave Bailey is here, too. He was on the Process Improvement Group and glad to see his sport tonight. He was one of the very diligent members – he and David both spent -- I think they attended nearly every meeting. Wardle: Sorry about that. Anna, just to ask a question about No. 5 on our items that we received today and the item that you mentioned that Ms. Brown asked to place for consideration. One of the questions that just brought up was pharmacies may dispense certain medications, I assume, that contain alcohol and so I wonder really is there more background for Item No. 5 for us to consider? Canning: Sure. I just tell you why it came up. There is Baja Taco out at Hark’s Corner that has a drive-up window that was approved. Mr. Mike Eddie, who was originally going to put his liquor license in a closet at Muggsy’s has since contacted Baja Taco to move his liquor license there, so that the conditional use permit was already approved for the drive-up window and the liquor license is coming in after the fact. But, we can put excluding pharmaceutical note in the covenant. No alcoholic beverages. Mayor: Mr. President. Wardle: Madame Mayor. Meridian City Council Special Meeting August 9, 2005 Page 7 of 17 Mayor: I guess to clarify that. That would require a permit – a liquor license or a license probably. Wardle: So, the question is are we asking to prohibit that completely or are we asking for that to become part of the conditional use process for a drive-thru? Canning: It would be a standard for a drive-thru; they could not sell alcoholic beverages at their window. Donnell: Mr. President. Wardle: Ms. Donnell. Donnell: There certainly are pharmacies that do have wine and beer as well as alcoholic cough syrups. Canning: So, it’s not just food drive-up, it would be any drive-up if we said no alcoholic beverages. Wardle: Mr. City Attorney what does our current code read as far as enforceability of those? Baird: Mr. Council President and members of the Council, while you are having this discussion I am trying to access the state code. I have got an inkling that this is actually covered by state code, otherwise, we would have seen like we do in some of our neighboring states to the East where you can drive up and get one for the road. We just don’t see that here. So, if indeed this field is covered by the state law you might not see this on the next iteration. We talked about that this afternoon and it didn’t even occur to me that there is a possibility that there is a state law that this would cover. I don’t think you can drive-up to Rite- Aid and get cough syrup and a six-pack. Canning: Mr. President. Wardle: Ms. Canning. Canning: We do know that Mr. Eddie, that that is a specific condition of his license and that they did recognize that. So, I think it is and that the state does look at that. So, if you don’t want to put it in ours that is fine. Wardle: And that would be mine – not to muddy the waters, but if we are already covered, which I am sure we are, then don’t be redundant with it. Mayor: Mr. President. Wardle: Madame Mayor. Meridian City Council Special Meeting August 9, 2005 Page 8 of 17 Mayor: I guess, it was brought to ABC’s attention because of where they were placing it, I think it’s a case-by-case basis and ABC does not always know the landscape of where they are putting these things. It’s a safe guard and if Mr. Baird looks and finds it’s already there we can clarify it by just saying no alcoholic beverages, but I think it needs to be very clear. There are some states that you can get beverages by the glass or the drive-thru, so – Bird: Mr. President. Wardle: Mr. Bird. Bird: I think I agree with the Mayor on that aspect, only the point is there have been a lot of places you buy at walk-up windows that you get your alcohol through, so it has to definitely be a drive-thru that you would cover under this. I believe the state liquor license law probably covers that. (Inaudible----) a lot of drive-thru and I don’t know any drive-thru that you can go get a six-pack to go. Wardle: Anna, do you have any additional comments before I open up for some further public comments? Canning: No, sir, just to answer any questions you have. Wardle: Council, any questions specific to the ordinance? Let me just clarify, Anna, that we are in the ordinance not approving the T&R residential district. That is something that the standards for that will come back and are currently in discussion in regard to drive aisle and some of the other access issues. Canning: Yes, but let me be just a tad bit more specific. We are setting up the T&R district. We have the purpose statement. We have everything except the dimensional standards for it, is what we are proposing to leave off for now. So, everything else is there it is just the question of what the setbacks are and how wide the streets are. Wardle: Thank you. Canning: It’s really only those things related to the width of the street and the access and the setbacks from the alley. Baird: Mr. President. I might suggest at this time that it’s an appropriate time to have a discussion about the item regarding the development on state highways. The way that this was noticed, we only have one general hearing, so we can’t really separate out if audience members want to talk about that, they are going to have include it in their general comments, but it’s my understanding that Councilman Rountree, when it comes to considering the two ordinances, he will probably be recusing himself of that one. Because we are in the public hearing, Meridian City Council Special Meeting August 9, 2005 Page 9 of 17 we need to present that and hear feedback on it, we’d probably better do that at this time. Wardle: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Baird. Mr. Rountree. Rountree: Mr. President, because of the topic, I would request to recuse myself on Item 15 on the Pre-Council agenda. Donnell: Item 5? Rountree: Item 5, excuse me. Canning: Mr. President, shall I go through that now? Wardle: Yes, if you could address the item specific to state highways. Canning: Okay, let me give you a little backup history because it’s been a while since we went through it all. But, this was not something that the Process Improvement Group originally addressed. It came up kind of in between when they wrapped up their edits and before we got it to Planning and Zoning Commission. The Planning and Zoning Commission did include it in their recommendation. We then met with the Process Improvement Group to discuss the Planning and Zoning Commissions’ recommendation. So, what you have before you in Exhibit D are the Planning and Zoning Commissions’ recommendations and then the edits as proposed by the Process Improvement Group and then the edits as propose by staff to the Process Improvement Group edits. It’s a little confusing. There is no doubt about it. There is really only one issue that comes out. But, let me just go through page by page. The first one, it was clarified that McDermott Road or future Highway 16 extension that was from ITD requested those. The double underlined is new from staff and the strikeout is new from staff and the regular red text – doesn’t show red – I am sorry, I am talking to myself. Then as we get to the public street connections, the Process Improvement Group had wanted to open up the requirements for the quarter mile access. ITD is requesting that the quarter mile access not be included as allowed at all. Number three as you go down, the applicant shall construct a collector’s street – we thought sometimes that collector sometimes isn’t required, so we kind of backed off on that. It was just a street generally paralleling the state and that should be highway – be designed to accommodate future connectivity. So, it’s basically whatever kind of street needs to go there, should go there and it should generally parallel the state highway. As you get to the next page on see designing construction standards for state highways, the items that show deleted over to the side were at the request of the Process Improvement Group and staff and ITD staff and Planning staff are supportive of that. Then we just added some language along Highway 69 that inadvertently got left out, but it got deleted when it shouldn’t have. Then the definition of approach, there was a recommendation by Trish Nielson from COMPASS that Meridian City Council Special Meeting August 9, 2005 Page 10 of 17 we use the same one that the state uses and we were – that’s fine, we didn’t see any problem with changing that. So, really the hot topic of discussion is the quarter mile mark between section line roads and where there should be an access, so basically, what this says is that you get your access at the half mile, there needs to be some kind of general collector road that parallels the state highway that provides a frontage or back-age road to those properties that front it and those should bring that traffic to the half mile mark. That allows ITD to – if they need to do lights they will do it at every half-mile. The quarter mile was presented as an option for ride in ride out only. The Process Improvement Group wanted to do a left in also, so the only movement that would be prohibited is left out and ITD staff came back and said you know really we can’t support the quarter mile at all. So, I think that is the big issue along the state highway. With that I will answer any questions. Wardle: Council, any questions for Anna on this issue? Bird: I have none. Wardle: Mr. Baird, just a point of order here. At this point I need to open up for all discussions or can I open up for specific discussion on this item? Baird: Mr. Council President, since we do have Councilman Rountree out of the room, it might be appropriate to keep it separate. A little more cumbersome, but probably easier for the record. That would be my recommendation that if you take specific comment as to the item that we are currently discussing then you can continue with the hearing on all other topics and then we will bring the Council member back in. Wardle: At this time I would like to take additional public comment on the item specific to development along state highways. If you would come forward and please state your name and address, if you have any additional comment. David Turnbull: David Turnbull, 12601 Explorer Drive in Boise. I just wanted to get a clarification from Anna on the access restrictions. Is this for new development along state highways? Is this specific to a certain state highway? I am kind of getting confused here myself. Canning: President Wardle, members of the Council this is for access to State Highway 69, State Highway 55 and State Highway 20-26. If the applicant had invested preliminary plat that showed the access previously, my understanding again is that that vested preliminary plat would prevail so this would be new development along that state highway. David Turnbull: Okay, so our project that we have already constructed onto the road (inaudible) – Meridian City Council Special Meeting August 9, 2005 Page 11 of 17 Canning: Yes. David Turnbull: (Inaudible---------) Canning: Right, well you already got that one approved, yes. David Turnbull: Okay, I guess all I would do is point out that and I understand ITD’s reasoning and what they are trying to accomplish when you restrict those accesses, you are probably going to restrict what kind of development that comes along with them, so I hope that the Council understands that. Thank you. Wardle: Is there anyone else that would like to provide specific comment? At this time, Mr. Berg would you invite Mr. Rountree back please? I would like to welcome Mr. Rountree back to our Pre-Council agenda. Thank you. At this time, I will take further comment from the public on our full development code. If you would please step forward and state your name and address for the record. I would like to also acknowledge a written letter received, which is part of the written record by Mr. David Turnbull and Mr. Turnbull if you would again state your name and address. David Turnbull: 12601 W. Explorer Drive, Boise. Just I guess I wanted to make sure everybody received the letter, if they had any questions, I would stand for questions. It’s pretty self-explanatory and I think Anna has covered most of them. Wardle: Mr. Turnbull, just a question I see here in the fee schedule that through some of your research that the proposed fee schedule, which we will discuss in just a moment is higher than other municipalities and that you would recommend adoption of that without the overhead. Is that correct? David Turnbull: Right. I went through and took a look at – I went through with a highlighter and highlighted the ones in Meridian that would be higher than the majority of the other cities. I think Anna prepared a table that compared it with the other municipalities and it just seems that it was getting on the high end and I think I stated in my letter the rational for keeping it without the overhead added to that fee structure. I guess I would like to make a comment about one of the first items in the second paragraph in my letter. I am concerned that an 8-foot parkway planter requirement is going to cause most developers, many developers that are now doing detached sidewalks and decide it’s probably not worth it anymore and we will start to see more attached sidewalks because of the increased requirements. I will probably endeavor my best to keep doing them. I think that, you know, a 6-foot planter strip would have been more incentive for developers that continue to offer those. I think it’s important. I think it’s really what makes a neighborhood a nice neighborhood is those street trees with detached sidewalks, so you don’t have the typical problems that you see where you have attached sidewalks with people parking up on the sidewalk and the Meridian City Council Special Meeting August 9, 2005 Page 12 of 17 mailbox complex and all those things, but I think that this is something that you are just going to see what happens and see if you start seeing a lot more attached sidewalks projects, you might want to revisit it in the future and see if you can come to some kind of consensus between all of the cities and ACHD for the standard that would (inaudible) detached sidewalks. Wardle: Thank you David. Bird: Mr. President. Wardle: Mr. Bird. Bird: I have got a question for you there, David or Anna. Why have we gone to the 8-foot parkway planter area, Anna? Canning: Mr. President, Mr. Bird. I did not bring the ACHD background information with me tonight. I can do that if you want me to. Basically, they did a comparison of planter width to problems or items that need reconstructing at some point in the future. That future can be pretty far out there sometimes, fifty hundred years. But, they were claiming that the 5-foot sidewalks can create problems in as little, I think, as five years was their study information. They were only willing to take like a ten percent risk, I think it was and that was at the 12- foot mediums. We kind of (inaudible) back towards the 8-foot mediums, which is about a 20 percent likelihood of having to replace it within the next ten years or something like that. I don’t remember all the numbers off the top of my head, but that is basically how it worked is there was – they had picked a cutoff line and we basically bumped it up and said well we think we get them to live with this one, what do you feel? But, it could be a topic of further discussion with ACHD or with this document. I did want to expand a little bit on Mr. Turnbull’s letter. What he is asking is that to offset that additional parkway with what we said in the UDC is that you can count that area between the sidewalk and the curb as your open space for your five percent minimum open space requirement. Now, if you are an alley access property, then you get to count the whole thing. If you are not an alley access property, we said you needed to take out 30 feet for the driveway cuts for each lot. What Mr. Turnbull is proposing is that it be 26 feet instead of 30 feet. I think that is very reasonable. We could even go to 24 feet, which would be just about the width of a two-car garage. So, sometimes you will get a three- car garage that will increase that width, but for the most part will probably get that. Now if people all start putting in 40-foot driveway cuts, then they are not going to get much open space there, but that is the issue with reducing it. I think that that’s a reasonable request. Wardle: Thank you, Anna. Further questions of staff? At this time, Anna, I would like just a quick clarification within the UDC, we are not at this time considering these fees is that correct? Meridian City Council Special Meeting August 9, 2005 Page 13 of 17 Canning: No, it is not part of the Unified Development Code hearing. It just needs to come before you and be approved as a resolution as my understanding. You did ask for me to deliver it with the Unified Development Code. Wardle: So then a clarification from Mr. Baird. Mr. Baird would it be proper for us to take comment on these fees within this hearing or do we need to close it? Baird: President Wardle I would recommend that the Council probably have a separate hearing on that one when it does come forward as a proposal. That would be my recommendation since it is not – the hearing is intended to take comment and receive direction from Council on the two ordinances and basically to contain the UDC. Wardle: And I wasn’t suggesting that we have the full hearing for the fees at this time, I was – is it proper to discuss them or --? Baird: Mr. President, members of the Council it’s not inappropriate to discuss them if you got the memo in front of you, you have heard some discussion and if you want to give some feedback on what you would like to see, but I guess I would caution you to reserve full discussion for a properly noticed hearing. Wardle: Thank you and at the Chair’s prerogative then we will not be considering the full discussion on the fees, we will probably notice that and bring it forward after we have had some input on the memo. Canning: Okay. Mr. President, I also need to – I thought David might bring this up he has not, so Mr. Turnbull I need to bring up another issue on his letter. He has asked that the public alleys – wait, let me back up a little bit. In the traditional neighborhood residential district we had very specific standards for alleys that didn’t necessarily apply to the rest of the residential districts. The rest of the residential districts had a 20-foot alley requirement with 20-feet paved. He has asked that it be a 20-foot alley easement with 16-feet paved. Now this is one of the issues that the Fire Department want to still talk about, so I think Mr. Turnbull agreed that we could still discuss that as part of that other meeting and then go back and amend the text as it is now. So, we probably do need an alley statement in there in general, so we propose that it just be kept the way that it is for now because we do have alleys out there. (Turn over tape) Canning: -- residential district where it doesn’t exist yet. We do have alleys that exist so, we need to keep that one in there. Wardle: Thank you. Council, any additional comments on any of the amendments or the Code in general? Meridian City Council Special Meeting August 9, 2005 Page 14 of 17 Bird: I have none, Mr. President. Donnell: Have done an amazing job. Wardle: I would agree that my initial comments both for staff and all the members of the public and the business community that participated, this was a great process that certainly needed updating. It was a very labor intensive task and I have personally been very please with the outcome and think it sets in place a nice design standard for our community to live up to. With that, I would entertain a motion to close Public Hearing on Item No. 3. Bird: So moved. Rountree: Second. Wardle: It’s been moved and seconded to close the Public Hearing on Item No. 3. All in favor? ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. Item 4. Ordinance No. 05-1170 : Repealing Existing Zoning and Subdivision Regulations Codified at Title 11 and Title 12 of the Meridian City Code; Re-Enacting a New Title 11 To Be Known As the Unified Development Code (1st of 3 Readings): Item 5. Ordinance No. 05-1171 : Enacting a New Provision of the Unified Development Code Pertaining to Development Along the State Highways to Be Codified at Title 11, Chapter 3, Article H of the Meridian City Code; Adding a New Definition of the Term “Approach” to Title 11, Chapter 1, Article A, Section 1 of the Meridian City Code (1st of 3 Readings): Wardle: Moving to Item No. 4 is Ordinance No. 05-1170 repealing the existing zoning and subdivision regulations codified at Title 11 and Title 12 of the Meridian City Code and re-enacting a new Title 11 to be known as the Unified Development Code. This is the first of three readings, as I understand Mr. Baird? Baird: That is correct. Wardle: Mr. Berg if you will please read by title only. Berg: Thank you Mr. President, members of the Council, Mayor. Ordinance No. 05-1170 an ordinance repealing existing zoning and subdivision regulations Meridian City Council Special Meeting August 9, 2005 Page 15 of 17 codified at Title 11 and Title 12 of the Meridian City Code, re-enacting a new Title 11 to be known as the Unified Development Code and providing an effective date. Wardle: Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Mr. Baird will you please remind me of my process for the first of three readings? Baird: Council President and members of the Council. You just completed it. If I could just explain the draft that you have before you does not contain a waiver of the reading rules, so we are following the regular statutory procedure for three readings and again, the way that these are put together on the agenda, Item No. 5 assumes that you have already passed Item No. 4 because No. 5 contains that one provision that we pulled out. So, I will allow you to proceed with that one. Wardle: Thank you, very much. Item No. 5 is Ordinance No. 05-1171. Baird: Mr. President, members of the Council, Councilman Rountree has already made his statement for the reading. There is no reason for him to actually step down, you are not hearing any testimony, so – Wardle: Thank you. Mr. Berg will please read this Ordinance by title only. Berg: Thank you Mr. President, members of the Council and Mayor. Ordinance 05-1171 an Ordinance enacting a new provision of the Unified Development Code pertaining to development along state highways to codified at Title 11, Chapter 3, Article H of the Meridian City Code and adding a new definition of the term approach to Title 11, Chapter 1, Article A, Section 1 of the Meridian City Code and providing an effective date. Wardle: Thank you, Mr. Clerk. It is my understanding that these ordinances will now be moved to our next regularly scheduled meeting on August 16th for the second reading. That brings us to the end of our agenda Council. Canning: Mr. President, just for clarification because I have no idea of what I am doing. This is never – I have never had one of these before. Do we – should I make the edits for you? Do you have a target implementation date? What do I need to do? Wardle: Mr. Baird. Baird: Mr. Council President, members of the Council and staff, with the public hearing being closed it appears that we have received all the input for both the Council and the public. When I drafted this the ordinances contained the original version or the latest version of the UDC plus all of your exhibits, so the intent was that the next time that this was on the agenda, it would incorporate that if it’s going to take more than a week and it probably will, it would certainly need to be Meridian City Council Special Meeting August 9, 2005 Page 16 of 17 here before the third reading. All of it is in there in content, it’s just the form now that we are playing with. So, by the time that it reads through it’s third reading, it would be my desire that the only attachment to the Ordinance 05-1170 be the Unified Development Code and then with regard to Item No. 5, Ordinance 05- 1171, whatever final version that the state highway that you have – one way if you are seeking additional input from the Council, one way to do it would be to put it on the agenda for the second reading and allow them to not have a public hearing on it, but certainly get further direction from the version that is going to be on the published agenda, after seeking more direction. So, we can certainly handle it that way, under either a staff report or a separate discussion on a second reading of the ordinance. Is that helpful? Canning: Yes and as long as Council understood that I wanted to make sure that we all understood the same thing. Okay? So, I will try and get the edits done as soon as I can. Wardle: Thank you, Anna. Bird: Mr. President. Wardle: Mr. Bird. Bird: I move we adjourn. Rountree: Second. Wardle: It’s been moved and seconded to adjourn the Pre-Council Special Meeting. All in favor? ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. MEETING ADJOURNED AT 6:55 P.M. (TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) APPROVED: / / TAMMY DE WEERD, MAYOR DATE APPROVED ATTESTED: ___ Meridian City Council Special Meeting August 9, 2005 Page 17 of 17 WILLIAM G. BERG, JR., CITY CLERK