There. I try again. I try again. Try again. Try, try, try.
okay. Okay.
and you're standing. There is seating available
in the lobby with the tv. You'll be seeing it live
if that's your choice. Or you can stand. I'm okay with
either one. How
are we? We good? Yeah. All right. We're good.
all right. With that, I will call the planning and zoning commission for tuesday, april 7th, 2026.
two. Order. First
is roll call. Commissioner sherrod.
here. Vice chair wortz. Chair.
chair hudson is here. Commissioner
hall here. Commissioner de delay here. Commissioner
deleon here. And commissioner kenard? Yes sir. We have
a quorum. All next item is public
comment. Uh, I should
have a stack of public comment cards.
alright, here they come.
and there's in the thing
in the . All right.
so in a very minor departure, I am
going to call your name and ask if you want to speak in general
as public comment or if you want to speak on a specific agenda item.
if you want to speak on a specific agenda item, I'll put you in a stack.
okay. So first up I have david garza
in general, or, uh, agenda item. Agenda item. Alright. Uh,
6 5, 6, 4. Uh, which
item? It's, I'll put it. Six four data center.
uh, nick ock. Uh, in
general. In general. All right. Thank you. Brett
sutton, the data center agenda item.
all right. Uh, nick choi.
uh, dana. Thinner. Okay. Xavier
garza. Item on 6.1.
six one? Yeah. All right. Uh, sandra roth
center agenda item. All right. Catherine.
mike. Meek. Meek? Yes. Hi.
yes. Agenda item. All right. Six four.
uh, andrew walsh. Item.
alright, uh, hannah miller.
agenda item alexander sellers
6.4. David cabrillo.
caballero. Caballero. Sorry. David center.
nick clark. Adam, six four.
uh, charmaine hadley.
okay. Uh, dennis kaufman.
data center. Helen kaufman. Data center.
agenda items? Cameron harvey, the center.
alright. Oh. Can barely read
this one. Uh, s jenkins. S jenkins
data center. Alright. Riley pruitt.
in. Senator lisa
zacharias.
tiffany wilson.
shauna wills agenda item 6.1. Six one.
alright, mark leons 6.4.
sally leons, 6.4.
kristen markowitz. Hold on. Six
four . Christine benson.
six four. Christy yal data center.
sarah near six four and six five.
shannon bradley, 6.4.
joseph cortez, 6.4.
cassie ks 6.4.
colby taylor data center.
fernanda taylor center.
robert roseberg data center.
sorry. Uh,
gary oldham. 6 4 6 5.
richard booth data center.
um, monika kia. Um, adam, 6.1. Wr
farms. Matthew martin data center.
katie martin data center. Brent,
uh, mcir. Item six four.
jeremy carter?
yes, sir. Uh, brandon
data center. Okay. Brandon n .
lindsay run rumba data center. And
greg rumba data center. Okay. So we have
one for public comment. Easy.
all right, so these are six one. So these
you wanna put out with it. This is what this, this is,
oh, he said public comment, that's why I separated it out. Oh, okay.
he, he was just general. Okay. So just to confirm, uh, nick ock,
you wanted to speak in general not on the data center agenda,
right? Uh, it's my apologies. It's about the data center data. Okay.
all right. , well, you were, you were the first one asked, so
I understand the confusion. It's okay. Alright,
so seeing that no one has signed up for public comment in general,
we'll move on to agenda item number four, 4.1,
consideration possible action of the meeting minutes for the regular scheduled planning and zoning meeting
held on february 3rd, 2026.
I'll make a motion that we accept the minutes. I'll second.
alright,
so I have a motion by vice chair watz and
a second by commissioner
delay. All right, is there any discussion
or comment on the motion?
alright, hearing none then I will call for vote. All in favor say a.
aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed? Same sign.
motion passes. Seven zero.
next is item 5.1, consent agenda,
consideration impossible action on the amending plat of the maldonado
subdivision. 8.01 acres, more or less of land four
lots located on limmer loop.
hello commissioners, this is manny hernandez. Uh, for the record, um,
the applicant is here to answer any questions if, uh, need be.
but the, uh, proposed, the proposed amending
plat is, uh, for the maldonado subdivision, it's approximately
eight acres. It consists of four total lots, um, each of them
being two acres. Um, the applicant is seeking to,
uh, move the lot lines between lots three and four to
dedicate, uh, 0.503 acres to lot four. Uh, this lot
is located, uh, on the north side of limmer loop, uh, between
innovation boulevard and ed schmidt.
so currently this property is owned, uh, general commercial b two
and the surrounding uses are as follows. To the north, we have, uh, vacant
land, um, which is part of the etj, uh, the extra territorial
jurisdiction. It has a da on it where if the use changes, it'll
be, uh, annexed into city limits to the east. Uh, we have, um,
it's vacant on all sides right now, but to the east and the west we have, uh, b two zoning as
well. And to the south we have a vacant light industrial. Um, the image
here is of the, um, lot layout, how
it will look in the future if approved tonight. Um, and in your packet you should have,
uh, the original plat of how that looked before.
alright, and so staff has reviewed this, um, with the udc
in mind. Um, the applicant did, uh, waive the shock clock bill
and, uh, staff recommends approval of this plat with the condition that,
um, the signature sheet is updated, um, uh,
to, uh, howard as it, uh, still reads, uh, john, but
that's something staff can, uh, handle on our end. Mm-hmm .
alright, so with that, I will entertain a motion on
5.1. I will make a motion to prove, uh,
5.1 as read.
I will second it.
all right. And I would like to just clarify, are you
okay with the staff recommendation? Absolutely. Yes. Alright. Uh,
vice chair wortz, you, you're okay with the staff recommendation for
the signature sheet? Yes. Alright. Alright. So
I have a motion by commissioner sherrod and a second by vice chair tz.
uh, any discussion on the motion? None,
then I will call for vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All
opposed? Same sign. Motion passes seven zero.
next is item 6.1, old business consideration,
possible action on the durango farms phase one lot two, a block, a
repl, 1.226 acres, more or less of land
located at the southwest corner of me lane and 1660.
hi. So commissioners, uh, manny once again. Uh, let me just add
in, uh, how we proceed with this. Uh, typically we will
have presentation by staff that may answer some
questions and then we will have the public comment come up. You will have,
I'll, I'll address that during the public comment. Alright, thank you. So, um,
you guys may remember this from a few months ago when it came before, but, um,
so for those of you who might not remember, and for the general public, this is, uh, durango
farms phase one lot two a, uh, repl.
so it's located within city limits as stated earlier. It's on that corner of me, lane
and north fm 1660. And the purpose of this repl
is just to create a, a new lot for the monument sign and the
landscaping around it. Um, currently that responsibility falls
on the commercial lot, the daycare that's on there. So this'll, um, take
that responsibility off of that and, uh, put that maintenance onto
the hoa. Um, so the surrounding
uses are, um, mostly part of the same durango farms, pud,
but to the north you have a apartment complex, so you have some base zoning of multifamily
within that pud to the west. You have, um, single family.
um, so it's pud with that base owning as of sf
one to the, um, east you have, uh, residential,
some, uh, older, larger lot style, um, residential. And
to the south you have, uh, the historic district. You have ot three there on the south side. And
this is, um, this particular lot is done pud with a base
zoning of, uh, general commercial. So here we have
the plat for you guys. On the left hand side, I have the entire plat, and
then I zoomed in for you guys on the right hand side, um, to view, um, in more
detail. And, uh, the applicant is here as well for
this project. If you have any questions for them. Um,
I know there was some questions on that pue last time around and, um,
staff has reviewed this similarly as the other one with udc in mind.
they did waive the shock clock bill, and so staff recommends approval of this
pla as presented. So we did, excuse me. So we did find
out that, uh, the p are correct,
uh, not pe the, the easements. Yeah, no, pues.
yes. So they are, uh, part of the, uh, they were,
uh, added in as, uh, requested by staff, uh,
by the plate note requirements. Um,
but as if you'd like more specifics, if there's anything in
that pue or anything like that, the applicant is here to talk about that.
no, I just know the last, at the last meeting we had questions and we're concerned about,
about the way it went and everything. And I mean, staff was going to double check and make sure
that that was correct. So yes, that's fine. Thank you.
alright, so before, uh, we open it up to questions,
comments from the dais, we've got some public comment mm-hmm .
and first up will be,
uh, monika kia.
and when you come up, you will have three minutes
to, uh, to speak.
uh, unfortunately we do not have the, the fancy
red, yellow, green that we, uh, typically have at city council.
okay. So rick is going to use the good old fashioned three minute
timer . Okay. Uh, please, uh, state
your name and your address. Sure. Okay. My name's monique. Ready
now. My name's monika key. I live at 1 34 greens fire lane
in durango farm subdivision.
okay. Um, good evening everyone, and thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.
my name is monika key and I'm speaking on behalf of the homeowners of durango farms.
I come before you today with serious concerns regarding the developer's ongoing actions
and the direct impact that they're having on my community. The
developer ma partners is attempting to transfer the additional
maintenance responsibilities to our hoa, specifically, the easement that
we're talking about. This easement is already damaged
and needs serious repair that they are aware of. This is especially concerning
because there was a prior agreement with the developers, which they have
acknowledged that these issues, um, and are, are committing to make
the necessary repairs before turning over the maintenance to us that has
not been done. Instead, homeowners are now being asked to take on the cost of
maintaining damaged infrastructure for a community of approximately only
250 homes. This c creates a significant and unfair
financial burden. This is not an isolated issue during
development, critical responsibilities were not properly maintained. Our detention
ponds were not adequately cleaned or managed, and were now facing ongoing
drainage issues, issues that have already failed multiple times
that the city's aware of and impacting not only our neighborhood,
but the surrounding neighborhoods. In addition, we are
now being expected to maintain ponds that serve nearby commercial properties,
as the gentleman had discussed, which further increases the strain on all of
us as homeowners. The developers just gave this to us.
we didn't even know that we owned it. What is most concerning is
the lack of transparency and governance. The board that was elected
myself by the homeowners has been completely removed.
the developers have now inserted themselves back into control over our community
to do this very same thing. This undermines
the voice of our community and raises serious concerns about decision making that
directly affects us all. We're not here to be confrontational. We're
here to be heard. Our community deserves accountability, transparency,
and fair treatment. We are asking that no additional maintenance
responsibilities be placed on us as an hoa. We just cannot
afford any more damaged or unknown
property that we didn't know about. We deserve to have a seat at the table
with these developers to know what is going on. We didn't even know about
this tonight. We just did research and I found out,
wow, they're about to just give us over, uh, a monument
that they know is damaged. There's all kind of issues like you guys were where
with the pue and all this other stuff that us as you know, homeowners, we don't know all
of this. But, um, again,
our homeowners should not be left to carry a financial burden. We're all
in experiencing it right now with the economy, but as homeowners,
we do deserve. And we're simply asking what is fair, what is responsible,
and what we all agreed upon when we purchased our homes. This is our city.
we love our city, we love our neighbors. And I'm gonna
continue to see what can we do to hold these developers accountable for what
they are trying to do. I thank you guys for your consideration. Thank you.
one, one more addition I forgot to add, um, with
public comment, you can address us. We are not allowed
to respond back. So if you ask a question of us, you
will not get an answer on public comment. That's how it goes. Sorry,
I didn't make that rule. All right, next up is shauna wills.
hello and thank you for your consideration. I am shauna wills. I live at 3 3 2
durango downs drive in durango farms. I think monia kept
it pretty succinct what I'm concerned about or what I wanna voice his
support for having full transparency for what we are re financially responsible
for as a community and as the community of huddle. Also, what
would be the impact of these changes on our city? So that, I think she
captured the majority of it in specificity and I just wanna make sure that I'm on record for
standing with the, with the understanding that we want to be more, we wanna be aware
of what we are actually maintaining, how we do it, and that we improve
the city. Thank you for considering. Thank you.
and next up I have xavier garza.
hello, my name is xavier garza and I'm the engineer of record for this rela application.
the purpose of this application, like manny mentioned, is to subdivide lot two
a from one to two lots to create a standalone lot for the existing
monument sign and associated landscaping. The new lot will be conveyed
to the hoa since the monument sign and associated landscaping or community
benefits. The resulting two lots comply with all setback and easement
requirements is defined in the city of hu udc in the durango
farm, durango farms. Pud. Furthermore, it's my understanding that
the hoa already maintains this monument sign and landscaping. So there is no
change in the maintenance obligations with this repl. Thank you for your
time. Thank you.
okay, so that concludes the public comment on six one
and I will now open it up to discussion and questions from
the diets. Are there
there a, a deed showing that the hoa
is responsible for maintaining this?
um, I can check on that, but I'm not
aware of it at this moment. So I'd have to look at the deed. And
in the previous plats, does it note that the hoa is responsible
for maintaining the lot though the monument signs all
the easements,
the previous plat, yes. When this plat was originally recorded.
I can pull that up. Okay, please. I can pull that up.
so I am curious, what's your line of thinking on this?
if it's in the original plat that the hoa is responsible
for maintaining the easement, the landscaping lot, then they're responsible
for maintaining it. If not, it's not their responsibility and
the cost should not be on them. Great.
typically, when a final plot is plotted and recorded, there is
a note stating that the hoa is responsible for the easements
and for the monument signs.
and we do not have that answer tonight. Is that correct?
I'm pulling up the original pla I'm just sending it over to this other computer. Excellent,
excellent. And we can, um, ms. De
garza, are you able to answer any of these questions?
I, I do not know the answer to whether the maintenance was on the original repl.
I do know that the maintenance is currently performed by the hoa
on the monument sign. Well, they may be maintaining it for
aesthetic purposes, but if you don't have record or we don't
have record that they're supposed to maintain it, why are we trying to force them to maintain it?
we're not. Okay.
we're not forcing them. They're already doing it.
but you want, I'm sorry. If they take over this
lot for maintenance purposes, that means the hoa is gonna
have to raise their fees in order to maintain this
lot. That's an extra fee for them. You got,
am I correct? But didn't he just say that they're already doing that? They
are doing it now. I'm sorry.
I have the original plat pulled up. Okay.
um, I'm not sure how to get it on that screen
for you. Um, but so the plat notes, uh,
13 and 14 read as follows. 13 is all easements on private
property shall be maintained by the property owner or his or her
assigns. And 14 reads all amenity open space and drainage.
lots shall be owned and maintained by the homeowners association. So,
um, I'm not sure if that answers your question. I mean, this wasn't
previously a open space lot, but that's the purpose of this
repl to, uh, dedicate it as open space. Could you read that one more
time please? So, 14 reads all amenity open space and drainage.
lots shall be owned and maintained by the homeowners association.
okay. It was in the original, so it was originally recorded. When was that plaque
recorded? This original one,
let me read through it.
uh, 2021, uh, 29th of june.
okay. Uh, 2021. What is that document number?
the plaque number? Yeah, I'm looking on this page for it.
yeah, these are, so the
docket, if you wanna write it down, it is 20 21 11.
that's not open. Just a order. Go ahead. 2021.
1121. Mm-hmm . 11 27 61.
thank you. Okay.
lot two a. That's,
does it state on the plaid that this lot is an open space or landscape
lot on? So are you asking me or are you asking? I'm asking
you. So currently as it stands, it is not open
space, but the repl that is the, the purpose to,
to dedicate it as such. Okay. So, mr. Garza,
my question to you is, so this was
not originally an open space or landscape lot,
but right now you want to repl it so the hoa
can have, uh, access and maintain it and be
responsible for it. Is that correct? That is correct. Okay.
thank you. That's not fair.
alright, any further discussion
from the diocese? I have a question for manny. All right, go for it.
manny. When, uh, like when you're building a house, we have to go through inspections.
we have to pull permits, uh, before we say that house is safe.
sorry, before that, before we say that house is safe. So
with, with land acquisition, uh, permits moving
ground before we turn over, uh, land to hoa
association, does the city do due diligence to make sure the developer's
done everything they're supposed to do before we give that access? So this
repl is just moving over that lot line. If you wanted to add any conditions onto
an approval of this, um, item, that would be
totally up to you guys. Okay.
seems like we need to do some due diligence here to make sure the developer's done everything they're supposed to do
dot their I's and cross their t's. Mm-hmm . I have
a question. Is there any way that we can get legal to look at this
and to determine, since there is some question, uh,
and possibly, uh, table this item until our
next meeting, until we can get an answer from, uh,
legal on it? So I know that they are on the line, so if they have anything they'd like to
share, they can now, but if you prefer to table this to a later meeting
to have them look or postpone this to a later meeting to have them.
I, I'm just saying that because we don't know there's, there's,
you know, it's either, it's either owned gonna be owned by the hoa or it's gonna be
owned by the city. I mean, basically that's what it is. And I don't think the city's going
to own it. I would prefer that we get a legal
opinion on it. Also, I would like to see and
find out what is wrong with the monument. She said it
was deteriorating or something like that damaged. And
if that's the case, then possibly work into an agreement
or something that the developer goes in and fixes it at their
cost. Not the homeowner's cost. I mean, agreed.
that's, that's to me a, a more fair way to go.
so, so with that, with that said, uh, can legal
weigh in on this or, uh, would you need time
to, uh, research? Thank you. We,
we wouldn't need time to look at it. Okay. Not prepare days.
well, if it's okay, if it's okay, I'd like to make a motion that we table it. Uh,
I I would like to hear any further discussion. She, before we, uh, entertain
motions, she said she, she hear it or she has, she's not.
yeah, she is ready. Right? Yeah. No, no. She said, she said she would need time to
research it. Research it. Uh, I would like the city to
investigate before we transfer land over to an hoa make sure the developer's done everything they're supposed to
do before the hoa inherits costs should have been done by the developer.
right. I agree.
there's probably also property tax associated with it. If it's gonna be a new lot. I,
I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you. Would there be property tax associated with it? If it's a new lot, use
the mic please. Yes. . Would there also be property tax associated with it if it's moved
to a new lot? That would be on the hoa to pay? Yes,
it should. If you're gonna replant it,
it'll have a new, uh, id number. Mm-hmm . You should have a new id number. A lot
number, the county lot number. There is someone here that works with the county that could tell us that, but I won't
embarrass him or anything. So, yes.
uh, I would say that pending
legal's opinion,
we probably should not make a decision on this tonight. Right.
I agree. I agree. So with that said, uh,
vice chair works. You wanted to make a motion to table? Yes. And
when would you like to revisit this? At our next
meeting? Which is what? Uh, the regular meeting? Uh,
yes. Okay. I don't, I don't, uh, howard
could we, could we look at it for the 20th meeting?
would is that too soon?
shouldn't this be a regular meeting? Yeah, let's do regular meeting, I think. No,
I think it would be better if it were at the regular may meeting. Okay. That's fine. Yeah. What I
mean, what's ever easiest for the staff and everything and next regular meeting
is the fifth may
god, I don't know. The fifth. All right. So
you're making motion to table until until may 5th. May 5th second. Did we need
a motion for that language? I spoke about? Uh, not necessarily.
we need to wait on legal's decision. Okay.
I'll second that. Motion to table item six
one until may 5th, 2026. Regular meeting.
corey actually seconded it.
all right. I have a motion by vice chair wetz and commissioner
sherrod to table until may 5th. Item 6.1,
pending legal's opinion on this matter.
is there any discussion on the motion? Are we gonna look at our processes
on when we have these certain things or certain requests that developer,
we require the developer to do their due diligence? I,
depending on legal's opinion, I think that may be something that we need to
look at incorporating into our udc. Okay. And
then can we also include some type of notification to
residents when we have certain things like this? Hmm.
I don't think we need, yes.
I'm, I'm going to say yes on something like this. It makes sense.
but if you are repl repl, for example, the
previous item mm-hmm . Where they're changing it from two and two to
1.5 and 2.5 and they own, own both of the lots and
they're not developed right. Then it really doesn't make sense to have
staff spend time and money to send out notice
to those property owners who are the people asking for the replay.
so I think it's conditional. Okay. And I don't want to make a hard and fast
rule that applies to everyone and we're just wasting money and time.
okay. Does that make sense? Yeah. So yes, I think we need to
consider it. Yeah. But I think it needs more refinement than,
you know, 30 seconds of discussion here. That makes sense. Okay.
alright. Any other discussion on the motion? Uh, I just want to say thank you
for the people that came out, uh, for public comment. Appreciate it.
add one more thing. Can I add something else? Yes. I would like to
recommend that in the process of waiting for legal to come back to us on
the, uh, may meeting, that the, um, developer
takes the time to take care of these, some of these issues with that lot that
they, they have that opportunity and I would
encourage them to do so, but that's their choice.
that's a recommendation. .
thank you judge. Alright. Is there any further comment
on this motion? Then I'll call for vote.
all in favor of tabling until five, may, 2026 say
aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed? Same sign. Motion to
table pass. Seven zero. Thank
you for coming out and speaking. Next
up, item 6.2, conduct a public hearing and
consider possible action on the penske huro. Preliminary plat 35.800
acres, more or less of land for total. Lots to light industrial and to open
space drainage located on innovation boulevard lard.
welcome minister commissioners, manny once again. Uh, so
penske preliminary plat is a
proposed, uh, at tract land consisting of four total lots,
uh, two light industrial and two open space drainage
lots. It is located along innovation boulevard just
south of the, uh, texas state technical college. Uh,
so the penske, pud and annexation took place in august, 2024.
it'll be a two phase project with phase one resulting
in a car dealership. And phase two is still conceptual.
so as I mentioned earlier to the north, we have texas state technical
college, um, to the east across,
um, innovation or county road 1 0 8. We have some light industrial
land that's already been developed to the south. Uh, we have, uh, future
development. Uh, it'll be b two, general commercial and to the west
is, uh, highway one 30. Uh, the par, uh, as part of the
annexation and pud, it came in with a base zoning of
b two. So here is
the preliminary plat for you guys, and it is also in your packet. You'll
notice that, uh, north is to the right,
let yep. .
and so staff has reviewed this, uh, to the standards outlined
in the udc, uh, as well as those outlined in the, uh, pud
or planned unit development that was established along with the annexation. Um,
they did waive the shot clock bill and staff recommends approval. Okay.
all right. And, uh, is the applicant present?
yes. Excellent. Okay. So if we have any questions there we
go. With that, I will open it up to discussion from
the dais. Hey, manny, what's the phase two conceptual?
what's the, any probability of what's going in there? Possibility?
I just know that it's conceptual, but if they'd like to come up and speak or
I'm not sure if they are aware. They don't know.
okay. That's fine. Okay. . All right. We're
still thinking about it. Looks good.
no data center, right? ? I
said I know what she said.
okay. , any other comments, discussion from the diet
after that? No. Nope. I think I covered it.
I think they read my mind. Right.
all right. With that then I will entertain a motion for
6.2. I'll move. We accept 6.2.
alright, as written, uh, do
you, before we get onto a second, are you okay with the
condition that the license agreement is finalized prior to recordation? Yes. As,
as in the staff notes? Yes, absolutely. Okay. Those right aways have been established 'cause we
were talking about that during the sip. So we have all the right aways where
we were talking about putting our lines and everything in. I think legal might have a comment.
ah, legal. Yes. Yes. Uh, uh,
chairman, um, please open your public hearing and ask if anyone is wanting
to speak on the matter. You are correct. Thank you for catching that. Yes.
this is a public hearing,
so I'm going to withdraw your motion. Yes, please do. Uh, this is
a public hearing, so I will open the public hearing on this item
at 7:41 pm is
there anyone who wishes to speak to the
penske preliminary plat item?
please come up and, uh, state your name and address.
uh, my name is catherine meek. My address is 1 0 8 david drive.
and I realize that my questions cannot go
answered, but on the agenda, I noticed this item is a consideration of
a 35,000 acre piece of continuous
land. And that what's that, uh, act, actually this
is, uh, this is public hearing, so there is a little back and forth
allowed, and I'll correct you. It is 35.800
acres. Okay. Not 35, not okay. 35. Got
you. Uh, alright. Thank you so much. Um, and
as I understand it, the consideration is for light industrial and seeing
what the applicable uses are. Correct? Uh, actually this is
a, this is zoned a, uh, commercial. B two is
the commercial zoning. So sales, uh, retail, that sort
of, that sort of thing could also include some services,
uh, across the street is light industrial. Okay.
got you. Alright. That is what I wanted to know and I'm, I'm
glad that I was able to actually get those questions answered. Thank you so much. Not a problem. Thank
you. Mm-hmm . Alright. Is there anyone else to speak
on the public hearing for item 6.2?
all right. Seeing none, I will close the public hearing at
7:43 pm and gavel.
there we go. Now
I will take, take my motion now. Take your motion. Okay.
I move to accept it with the, with the stipulations that steady staff has placed on it.
alright. Uh, do I have a second? A second.
okay. So we have of,
sorry, making notes here. We have a motion by a commissioner de delay and
a second by commissioner kana kenard to
accept with the staff note.
any discussion on the motion?
hearing none, I'll call for vote. All in favor say aye.
aye. Aye. All opposed? Same sign. Motion passes.
seven zero. Next is item 6.3
consideration impossible action on the pensky huro final plat, 35.800
acres, more or less of land four total lots, two light industrial and
two open space drainage located on innovation boulevard.
and if this seems familiar, it should. Yeah.
uh, so before I begin
this, and to address your question about the zoning, and
I do apologize as that was a typo on my end. I have pulled
that, uh, ppud document back and
the base base zoning is uhi light. It
is, it is li so I do apologize about that. Um,
okay. Light industry. So with that said,
um, I would like to
reconsider 6.2. Yes. I agree.
I don't have to, since we were provided that it
was a commercial zoning, it is not, it is
actually light industrial. I would like to reconsider 6.2.
yeah, do that. Move, move. Second vote for the reconsideration. Yep.
if it's in favor, then you can open it and go ahead. Okay. So then I, I'll move that. We
reconsider 6.2 based on the okay. Well I, I was moving. You want to second?
I'll second it all. We're gonna fight. We'll, we'll fight. We'll
fight. No fighting. Oh, come on. . Just remember I
have a gavel. That's true. You do carry the hammer
nos on her head. Alright.
all right. Reconsideration. Making notes.
all right. So, uh, any discussion on the motion to reconsider?
no. All right. Hearing none, I will call for vote.
all in favor of reconsidering 6.2. Say aye. Aye. Aye.
all opposed? Same sign. Motion to reconsider passes.
seven zero. All right. Back to 6.2.
all right. So to correct the record,
the zoning on this particular item is light industrial,
which changes some of the uses available to it. Sales
can still be conducted there as part of the light industrial zoning.
uh, it's a more well unsurprisingly industrial
use than selling
anything else. So hopefully that answers the
questions. And with that, I
will open it up to discussion from the dais.
I have no comments. Alright. Hearing none.
I will, we don't have to reopen the public hearing,
correct? No. Okay. Yep. Could you
sit inky? Yeah, you do. Do do we have to,
we have to re reopen the public hearing? No. Is that a yes?
6.3 says consideration and possible action not public hearing. No.
six two. Six two. We're six two. We're back on six two because yeah.
business legal says yes. Legal says yes. Okay. Then
we will reopen the public hearing on item 6.2
at 7:47 pm
is there anyone who wishes to speak on this item?
yeah, that one in the back. Oh, one in the back. All
right.
yeah. Yeah. My name's jeremy carter. I live at 1 0 2
comb road. Um, I didn't come here to speak on this topic,
but I urge you to consider what they are going
to produce there as opposed to what kind of
sustainability impacts, right? Like, grow responsibly and sustainably
and what it's gonna do for, not necessarily
tax incentives to the city, but what it's also gonna do to the environment.
um, and that's all I have to say about that. Alright. Thank you.
alright. Is there anyone else who wishes to speak on this item?
all right. Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing at
7 48 gavel
and open it up for motion from
po.
I will, I'll make the motion again. Alright. As, as stated with the city's
staff comments. Okay. So
we have a motion by commissioner de delay and I'll second.
alright. Consider industrial and
a second by commissioner hall. I don't think it was either, but that's
all right. Is there any discussion on the motion?
are we sure that just the light industrial covers a car lot? Figured that'd
be commercial. Uh, the pud covers the automotive
dealership use the planned unit development. Okay. So somebody can't
come in sideways and say, oh, it's light industrial, so I wanna put, try
to pull heavy industry in there. Nope. Yeah, that'll,
the pud states that it, it'll be
the base ho uh, base zoning of light industrial. So what's allowed in
light industrial, but it would have to be an amendment to the pud in order to
try to pull in some sort of heavy industrial. Anything that's not covered in the pud
as stated currently, it would be an amendment. Just wanna make sure
future has a good citizen that comes in there that's gonna play ball.
um, if I'm correct, and I don't have the udc memorized,
that's kind of a large document. Mm-hmm . , uh, light, light industrial
does allow for things like automotive service,
large vehicle service. Yeah. Uh, repair.
and if I'm not mistaken, it does include
some sales.
I am looking at the chart right now. Um,
it sales associated with industrial whatever, it's,
it does permit some, some sales.
okay. That's what I thought, but I just wanted to
confirm. Okay. So yes, it is a
permitted use then. Yeah. All right.
so, uh, any further discussion on the motion,
then I will call for vote. All in favor of 6.2
with staff notes say aye. Aye. Aye.
aye. All opposed? Same sign. Motion passes.
seven zero. Okay.
all right. And I was just handed a note. Uh, this meeting
is currently being simulcast in the executive conference room
upstairs. If the standing room only
folks would like to have a seat, they can watch it on the screen up there.
so we have the lobby and the executive conference room upstairs.
thank you. All right. Next is 6.3
consideration and possible action on the penske huddle. Final plat
35.800 acres, more or less of land
four total lots, two light industrial, and two open space drainage located
on innovation boulevard.
so this is the same spiel as
last time, uh, for total. Lots to light industrial
to, uh, drainage. Uh, this is just procedural
to move the project along. We need the preliminary and the final plat approved. So that's
why they're both here in front of you guys tonight. As stated, uh, this is
a pud and annexation that, um, came in in august, 2024.
and it'll be a two phase project. Phase one being that car dealership phase
two conceptual. Um,
the plant is also dedicating, uh, 1.5 acres for the future
expansion of, uh, schneider boulevard in accordance with the master
mobility plan. And here is that final plat for
you guys.
who's gonna pay for that road developer?
we will. Uh, okay. They're dedicating the right way, but we'll
pay for it. Okay. Just wanna know. At least
I believe so. It might, there might be a condition in the pod or the development agreement that
says otherwise. Yeah. So the right of way's all clear then right of way is
going to be ours. Okay. And it looks like
their proposed road aligns with schneider boulevard. That's
a good thing. . Yes. Yes.
alright. Uh, any other discussion from the dais?
this does not have a public hearing. Yes. I see there is a lot.
one open space. Who's going to maintain that?
yeah. So let me pull up
those, uh, plat notes. But typically it'll fall under the
property owner. But we can confirm that for you.
yes. All right. We have an answer.
the text is too small. I can't see it. It's too small. Um, it will,
the, um, open space will stay with, I'm sorry, please. Oh, amy chavez
with p dawson engineers, uh, engineer of record. The open space
will stay with the developer. Uh, they will own the property and they will maintain the property
as well as the detention pond lot, which is off the screen. But number
17, thank you. The intent. Thank you. Okay. 17.
uh, did I hear that was t note 17? Mm-hmm . 17.
there we go. Yep. That's what it says.
okay. Alright. Any other discussion?
then? I will entertain a motion on 6.3. I'll make a motion that
we accept, uh, approve 6.3 as written second.
alright. I have a motion by vice chair wetz and a
second by commissioner da. On any discussion on the motion.
hearing none, I will call for vote. All in favor say aye.
aye. All opposed? Same sign. Motion passes.
seven zero. Next
is 6.40 what we've
been all waiting for, public hearing consideration and possible action on the
zydeco data center, formerly known as upper
schmitz creek, pud, future land use map amendment.
so the way this typically goes, uh, is we will have a presentation
by staff and or the, uh, applicant.
and then we will follow that up immediately with public hearing
comments. Uh, given that there are so many people here who
probably want to speak, I do have a stack of papers. Uh,
given that there are so many people, I would ask that if someone
has covered your points, that we
don't, uh, belabor the minutia .
if, if that, if you guys are understanding what I'm saying, I want
everybody in here who wants to speak to have an opportunity to speak
tonight. Not tomorrow morning, .
okay. So if we can just kind of agree on that,
I think we'll, we'll move along just fine. And we'll get through all of this. You
can burn your selection bag. , no sleeping bags required? Yes.
yes. All right. So with that, let's begin on 6.4.
okay. Thank you, mr. Chair. My name is howard konz. I am the director of development
services. For the record, uh, before I get started, I do wanna take care of a couple
of, uh, housekeeping notes. Um, it's been said before, but I'm
gonna hit it again. I don't want anybody to be lost on this. Tonight is april the seventh, and we are opening a public hearing
related to this item. This item is 6.4.
the next item on the agenda is 6.5, and they are related to one another. I
will try and stay on task as best I can. Sometimes I slip between the two
'cause they are related, but I'll try and try and stay on point. Uh, tonight the
public hearing will open. It will not be closed. We will, um,
keep the public hearing open until april the 20th.
on april the 20th, we will reconvene and pick up this item
again for the purpose of making the recommendation that pursuant
to state law needs to go forward to the mayor and council. The
city council will make the ultimate decision at their regular may meeting,
may the seventh, um, that where there will be a second public
hearing. So first public hearing will open this evening,
april 7th. That will remain open until april the 20th, where
you will make your motion and your decision between the seventh and the
20th, you are free to deliberate amongst yourselves on your own. Um,
we'll come back on the 20th. You'll make your motion, you'll make your recommendation. The public hearing will close,
and then we'll go to the seventh of where the mayor and council will make the final decision. So
if anybody's lost on that, feel free to email me or call me or ask me about it.
um, but without further ado, we're gonna talk a little bit about this. Um,
this first request is a request to amend
the city's future land use map. The amendment to the future land
use map is not the assignment of zoning. That's the next item.
this is an important step though,
because the guiding document that should form the foundation
of decision making for staff and for our boards and commissions and for
our city council is our comprehensive plan. Comprehensive plan
entitled soar 2040, uh, fi, uh, formerly adopted in
the end of 22, I believe, but we, it's been in place for a couple
of years now. Um, within that comprehensive plan is a map, the future
land use map. The future land use map calls out, um, designations
for certain classes and categories of land uses.
it does not assign zoning either. So being
that this guiding document is so integral to the decision making
process, if a request is incongruent
with the tenants of the comprehensive plan and specifically the future land use map,
then that request should not be considered favorably. So
tonight the applicant has come forward realizing that the future land use map needs
to be amended before that their intended final use could be
considered favorably for that same site. That's why there's two
separate applications that look the same, but function differently.
so first we're talking about the future land use map amendment.
the site itself is located on the southeast corner of edge schmidt boulevard
and lier loop. It is roughly 40 acres, somewhere in the neighborhood
of about 800 feet, east to west, and a little over 2000
feet north to south. I've included a couple of maps on the screen
there. There's a larger vicinity map on the left, and I've tried to call
out some landmarks that we might know. So we've got some, um, residential subdivisions
that are in the immediate vicinity. Cottonwood estates is north and west
hu of squares to the east and northeast. Uh, emory estates is to the west and southwest.
oh, correction. Oh, you're right. It is my bad. Sorry about that. Um,
um, I'm, some of these are from the actual subdivision plats, not the dba on the sign out
front. My, my apologies I pulled from the records I didn't pull from the street. But anyway,
we know where we're at for that point. Um, next is a, is
an insert of the current future land use map.
and, um, you'll notice that the site itself is in the center outlined in green,
um, and colored somewhat the lighter brown, the
lavender or purple that's on the far west side of this map is the employment
center designation within the comprehensive plan. Um, next down
on the left side is suburban subdivision, and that's in the bright yellow. And
those are typically the lower density single family detached type residential
uses, whether it's fee simple and owner occupied or rental. The ownership arrangement's
not important here. The land use is what we're talking about right, with this item.
and then, uh, lower left, I pointed out corridor commercial, that's the, the garnet
or the barn red and whatever it looks like on your screen. Um, corridor commercial
is a, um, I mean, really it's used for all sorts
of goods and services and, uh, point of service sales that are on site. Um, typically
those that are on, uh, arterial arterials and thoroughfare,
other auto oriented type businesses or the type of businesses that you need to reach by automobile.
if we move to the right side of this, map com, uh, community activity center is the bright
red sections. Um, if you go through the text of the future land use
map, you'll see that there's a host of uses, but it's really encourages
onsite live work play mix of uses, um, at
somewhat of a higher density than you would expect from an exurban community. Civic
uses are on here, that's the blue, and we all know that's the elementary and the middle school that are, that
are up there off of exchange. And then this site, um, is
currently designated in the future land use map as multifamily.
move to the next slide. Here's a aerial photo of today. You can see, uh,
the tighter squares are, uh, the existing
land use pattern, a stable single family detached residential that's been
established west, east, northeast, northwest. On
the southwest side of the development site, across edge schmidt boulevard
is the, uh, encore substation for electricity, uh, distribution
to, uh, this specific area. The parcel itself in question
is actually vacant and undeveloped. It's largely flat grassland. Um,
you can see from one side to the other, despite the fact that it's 800 feet wide and about 2000
feet long. Um, additionally, there's development sites to the south, that same
land use pattern. There's a photograph taken
from, uh, edgemont northbound the, the right side of the road as you're going north.
um, and this is looking back towards the southeast at the apartments that are at
the, what's currently the far western end of west live oak street.
um, from that same spot rotating, uh, to the left about,
uh, 90 degrees. This is looking northeast from that, uh, same vantage.
and you can see some of the residential rooftops that are, um,
adjacent to this site. Uh, so it gives you an idea of the scale because those,
those homes exist right at the property border of the subject site and the
existing, um, residential. So, uh, the current classification
in the future land use map is multifamily. And, uh, put some information on
this slide. This is lifted directly from soar 2040. The comprehensive
plan, it reads multifamily primarily supports a mix of housing options that
may consist of one or more of housing types. Should be, should be noted
that, uh, one of the things that's listed as multifamily areas noted
in the future land use map are intended to be used for existing apartment complexes and multifamily
areas only in the future. They would prefer those go to activity centers so
that you have a mix of uses where folks can live and have outside activities
on the same lots. But this particular parcel is already, um,
entitled with a pud. And the pud is, uh, largely residential
in nature with some associated community, uh, retail on the
west side of this existing parcel. Um, that's why the designation I think,
was assigned to it because it's, it's already, uh, it's already
entitled for that. So they made the future land use ma match up with that. The request, however,
from the applicant is for heavy industrial, heavy industrial is because that's
the land use category that best encompasses that type of, um,
non-residential, uh, use. That really goes beyond
commercial. It's, uh, heavy industrial allows for things that are
more than simply point of service sales or high turnover sales. It's,
uh, light assembly. It can be all sorts of warehousing
uses and all the things that you would expect to find in what we would term an industrial park. We
don't really need tutoring on what that is. Um, heavy industrial allows
for major manufacturing, major employers and some, and some supportive retail and office. But
by and large it's, uh, it's self-titled.
so as we reviewed this, um, like I said, the, the chief guide that we
had was that comprehensive plan. I cannot recommend enough that you leaf
through that. It's a very compelling document that was ultimately put together with
the input from the community. That's how those documents are built. There's a series
of public meetings where consultants or staff or both
solicit the input of the persons who want to contribute to the places where they live
and make their home. And so they're asked questions, what do you wanna see? What do you not
wanna see? And using those specific answers, they create things like future land use maps
and the expectations of what all those designations are. So as we
went through, we looked at it in the number one question, uh, that, that we, we have
put forward. And I would hope that you would consider these questions as well as you make your decision,
which is why I've put them here. But is the proposed use superior to the current entitlement
in short staff beliefs? That that is not true? Uh, the proposed use
is not superior to what's currently entitled. There are some, uh,
some pages in there, some language in the future land use, uh, or I'm sorry, in the comprehensive
plan that states, um, deficiencies that the community has things
that we need to do. Some of the things were a greater variety of housing types.
we're, we're pretty much, uh, you know, a single family detached community right now.
and the opportunities for what's entitled on the lot, uh, right now,
um, go towards remedying some of those deficiencies. However, the application
itself's not. So, um, the second one, is there sufficient
community benefit considering the perceived threats to the local development pattern?
would this be better placed elsewhere in the city? Um, we staff
believes that it would be, uh, better suited if it were elsewhere in the city
using the euclidean pattern of zoning that we know about. We put some things where
they belong and other things where they belong elsewhere. And it's the nexus
between the uses that creates whether or not they're dissimilar or similar.
we haven't found, uh, that the category of use is allowable in this future land
use designation are congruent with the, um, emergent and the existing
pattern of development along it schmidt and limmer. The third one
is the bulk standards allowable in employment categories, um,
as well as the effluent from those. So bulk standards would refer to
the basic, uh, dimensions of what can be built on the site. You're
talking about your setbacks, building height, impervious surface ratios, the
amount of parking. Um, we haven't found necessarily
that they're able to fit in congruently with the existing pattern.
and we can speak more about this on the next item because we have conceptual site
plans of what they would like to do within the pud that they seek on
the lot. Um, but, but by and large, the irrespective
of whatever use is placed here in the future, the parent category
of industrial on this lot would lend itself and
open itself up to uses that create noise, light,
smoke, smells, vibration, uh, traffic, uh,
especially deliveries, truck traffic deliveries, uh, at hours that are outside
of what you would consider to be daylight hours, 7:00 am to 6:00 pm
or something along those lines. Um, the, the idea of the, the, those
employment categories have a higher degree of, um,
uh, use, I'll call it, or just activity throughout the course of the day, which
would be incongruent with residential uses that, you know, really wind down in the evening. And then
lastly, um, future adaptation after the
proposed use is no longer in operation, meaning resiliency, what is the most
likely adaptive use for the next operator to come
in on a site that is heavy or even light industry
on a 40 acre lot in the middle of a number of subdivisions and
community commercial, uh, can't be said, but, um,
again, we'll talk a little bit about mitigation and the expectation of mitigating,
uh, the, the differences between those dissimilar uses. So,
um, for that, for that purpose, and I didn't touch on everything that's in the
staff report, I encourage you to read the staff report, but even if you ignore the staff report, you can
come up with your own decisions by reading intently that that comprehensive plan
section on multifamily and the comprehensive plan section on, uh, heavy
industry and decide if what's there today is, uh, superior to what's
proposed. But staff has found, um, no indication that you should,
uh, support this, uh, this application as presented.
I make myself available for any questions you may have or, you know, at
your discretion if you wanna call up the applicant.
all right. So this does call for a public hearing. Before we begin the public hearing, I
would like to read off that we did receive
responses to the notices that were mailed out. Uh,
and we received on this item, I believe it was
33 responses
as of perhaps last wednesday. Okay. Because we've, we've more
than doubled that. And I figured there were a few more. We'll, we'll have
some more for you on the 20th. Okay. Ev everything that's come in since the packet's been posted, we'll bring
you the new ones for the 20th. Okay. Excellent. Excellent. Uh, yes. So they,
the, the, uh, responses that were sent in were
received. They have been read as part of this packet and, uh,
acknowledged. Can I, can
I ask one question that's kind of unrelated? Okay. Uh,
si signage. Uh, I know that was, uh, that's
most of the reason why we're delaying or furthering this
hearing, public hearing, is that correct? Yeah, I mean, if you wanna get into
it. So, um, there been pretty snakebit with
this meeting in general, let alone this item specifically. But, um,
there we had a, there's a state law for how long signage needs
to be posted on the site. Mm-hmm . That is one of four notifications that
we are required by law or code. One of 'em is letters to the
adjoining property owners. One of 'em is advertisement in the newspaper of general circulation
within the community. Another one is, um, the advertisements
are posted on the website and the fourth one is that a sign is posted on the site.
okay. I was going through a series of checklists to make sure that we had dotted all of our I's
and crossed all of our t's about two weeks ago or so. Maybe three.
yeah. And realized on thursday of that week that we had not
posted signs on the site, which were due to be posted by the
previous monday. So we were four days late. The reason for that is because our code
per the letter of the code reads that the applicant is to place
signs on the site and then take photos of those signs and send them back to us
as an affidavit that they've been established. And then further they're required to
maintain those sites throughout the course of the notification period. We did not convey
that to the applicant. Okay. This is my first meeting, my first go around here. I've only worked here since
january, so I'm learning as I go. And most of the time I learn is because I screw something
up. So, um, we worked with legal, worked with the city manager's,
office and development services, and we decided a new plan that we would
be able to get new signs up. And that's when we decided to push
the deliberations of this to the 20th. The decision could
be made on april the 20th, as long as we had the signs posted,
you know, on site properly by april the fifth. Sounds great.
so that friday we had put up the signs after learning thursday night, they weren't up, they were up
the next friday. So we were ready to be a week in a, you know,
in advance of what we needed. Mm-hmm . Then come to find out that the state legislature
had arbitrarily changed the standard for what public
hearing signs need to look like. And they changed the dimension to four feet wide
and two feet tall. Our signs were
not that, uh, close 30 something
inches instead of 40 something inches, but at the end of the day, it wasn't what was prescribed
and there's no slack in their rope. So we learned this
on perhaps tuesday in the morning, I guess of the, after that weekend,
called up a sign company had signs made on an emergency basis,
and this guy right here went on good friday up to georgetown,
picked up the signs and posted them on the site, um,
on, you know, last friday. So we're still on board
with the schedule we had put forward for the 20th and the seventh. Mm-hmm
. Um, but we had to do it again to make sure that we were
compliant with public notification laws, both domestic, I'll
say, which is the city of hu requirements and the texas local government
code, which is forward by the, the legislature. So we, we
are on board, we are working out a plan in the future for what that's gonna
look like. The signs are gonna change, they're gonna get bigger. Uh, they're gonna get more yellower,
uh, so that you can see 'em, and we're gonna put bigger print on them so they're not so small when you're
driving by trying to figure out what it reads. So, okay. I'm, I'm
learning. I'm, I'm gonna get there. Yeah. I, I just wanted to ask, 'cause that was one
comment that I saw in public that we were hiding something, so I just wanted to make sure.
no, we're, we're not hiding. It's just drinking from the fire hose for the last three months has really
got me, really got me twisted. So sorry about that. And then we're still
gonna require the developer, the applicant to be able to
still put the signs out, right? Or is that gonna fall in this city? No,
I'm, I'm gonna work that out. We'll, we'll talk about it, you know, probably,
actually, there's an item tonight to talk about our udc and I'm gonna slide a couple of things to
you right there too. So, um, it's gonna, it's gonna be better and more
automatic. Good. I wanna ask a question. Awesome. Thank
you, howard. Sir, can you tell us how many, uh, letters
that you've received are for this project? To
my knowledge? Two. I'm sorry. Two. Thank you.
so follow on question then, out of how
many responses you've mailed out how many? I,
but the number I think was 2, 2 35, and I think it was 235 letters went
out to a, to a radius of 600 feet from the, the site. That's the buffer. And
how many were received? We believe it's like 54 or 56 right now.
okay. As, as of this evening. And, and two of them were four? That's
correct. The others were against. Against, yes, sir. Okay. That answer,
that, that put it in context? Nope, that's fine. Okay. I'm
gonna stop any further discussion because we have a public hearing to get to.
so with that, are you gonna have the applicant come up or the public hearing? Which, which order
do you wanna do it in? Um, does the applicant have a presentation? Yes.
yes. Let's do it then. Let's hear the applicant's presentation.
thank. Give us
one second. We'll get it up on the screen for you.
uh, before we begin, I would like to ask the gallery to
refrain from comments noises, exclamations,
clapping, booze, anything like that while the presentations are
being conducted. Thank you.
is a mic, is that a microphone? I have one
over here. Um, let me see which one.
it's that works.
our internet is so slow today.
uh, good evening, commissioners. My name is wes gilmer and I'm a principal with zico development.
I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you this evening. Um, I have two key points that I
would like you all to walk away with. The first being that this is an opportunity for the
city of hu to unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in taxable value by taking the
existing infrastructure on an otherwise very constrained and restricted site.
the second point is that not all data centers are created equal. And what we're proposing tonight is
designed to be a low impact, thoughtful neighbor with minimal burden on city utilities.
uh, so a little bit about zydeco. We've been around for 30 years. We're based here in austin.
uh, we're known for best in class engineering, best in class architecture and design.
I would encourage anyone who wants to see our projects to go drive met center, which is the project we're most well
known for in southeast austin. We've built five data centers
in the past. Um, all these are at met center, the most recent one being the 40 megawatt
a md facility. We've also notably built the, uh, ercot headquarters as well.
again, a little more on met center. It's a 550 acre project, three and a half million square feet
began in 96. Some of the tenants in the park include a-m-d-p-p-d,
the statesman headquarters. And then, um, the data centers that I mentioned being cyrus one
digital realty. So our goal is to
bring a significant tax value project to the city of hu while still being
a thoughtful neighbor on a very constrained site. Um,
I'm gonna walk through how we routed our concept plan today, but we've met with the adjacent neighborhood, hoa
two times their first time being in october, which has guided us towards the
plan plan that we're presenting to you today. Um, it will be an environmentally, environmentally
responsible project in that we're using modern cooling system technology that
minimize water use. Um, and then comparing this to the previously approved pud,
uh, the 173 multifamily units, this is significantly less than pervious cover. It's
separated by five acres of green space between the adjacent homes and the project.
um, and the building will be set back 300 feet opposed to 30 feet previously
approved. So the site, uh, I know the city staff just presented,
uh, an aerial, but we really view this as a transmission corridor. It's across the
street from the giant hud substation. It's one of the only sites in hudu,
actually one of the only sites in northeast austin with the existing transmission
and substation adjacency required for a project like this,
there are five large kv lines that run down the site. Obviously, when you drive
down edgemont boulevard, you really can't miss them. And when you map this out,
everything showing here in red is sitting in the encore transmission easement.
you cannot build any structure in that red area. So it creates a really
fragmented side geometry. There's essentially zero retail frontage. Um,
I can't really imagine another use working well here. It certainly doesn't seem like, um, it'd be friendly
for some multifamily development entrance either.
so, up top here is showing the, the concept plan of the previously approved p
below is showing our proposed concept plan. Um, so we're
proposing a 225,000 square foot building, whereas the previous project had 550,000
square feet. Um, just in general, data centers are
known for substantially lower traffic, uh, and daily activity. What I've,
what I've heard from residents is that this intersection here at et limber loop is
a high traffic intersection. It already gets super backed up. So adding all these units,
I think would be a, a problematic, um, issue. And then we're
adding significant buffer and setbacks. So the previous plan could build multifamily
units 30 feet away from the adjacent residential, whereas again, we're
setting our project back via a five acre, um,
greenscape buffer with two rows of trees, and then two eight foot masonry
walls separating the screen service yard from the adjacent residential.
from an infrastructure perspective, um, our project's gonna get in was going to use a
closed loop cooling system, which I'll get into, uh, how exactly that works. My
understanding is the previous plan required new water, sewer, storm water road extensions.
um, I'm not even sure that the water was in place to serve, is in place to serve
a project of that size, whereas we're not, um, really asking for any upgrades
from municipal, municipal utility standpoint. And our project, uh, creates essentially
no city service demand on schools, police parks, et cetera.
and then just to visualize the difference in estimated tax value, um,
you can see here we ran a conservative analysis. The previous project, um,
you can call it around $39 million of taxable value. Ours is around eight times that
amount, and that's assuming that this project would ever even get built. The, the developer
who took this through rezone was a group called aspen heights. They were not able to capitalize this project
because no one wants to live the, the, the kv line. The kv lines are super
problematic from a development perspective. So just
blowing up the concept plan a little bit more, I've already noticed that. I've already noted the three
16 foot building setback, the five acres of green space. Um, I'd like to
also note that the building will be single story. Um, so at max we expect that
to be around 42 feet is our best estimate. Um, and then again,
there's gonna be an eight foot cmu screening wall. We're willing for that to be 10 to 15 feet.
um, and then there's another eight foot screen wall for the screen service yard as
well. So what can the
nearby residents expect? Uh, a quiet low traffic facility. There's no regular
delivery traffic, no evening or weekend crowds. Sound levels designed to remain within
the city ordinance limits at all times, including nighttime, uh,
shielded, downward directed lighting to prevent any sort of spillover on homes. And
I've already noted on the setbacks, the landscaping and screening. And we're trying to just minimize the total impact
in general from the adjacent properties. We wanna include
a slide to talk about who needs a data center. So, uh, to be clear, we do not have a
customer yet for this project. Uh, we are in the preliminary design phase with encore.
we've asked for ing megawatts. Um, we have not heard an answer from them if that's even achievable
yet. They could come back and say it's 40 megawatts. Either way. The maximum amount that this pro, this project
would be is 70 megawatts. Um, that's a midscale data center. So it's
too small for a ai training facility. It certainly won't be a bitcoin mining
facility. Those are bad. Those are loud. You know, every time that you call 9 1 1 that you use
your email or use social media, it's being processed through a data center. So this, our
customers could be someone like adele, like instagram, visa payments processing. We're not really
sure, but it's just a good example of who a fa a facility of this size could potentially
work for. I wanted to speak a little on the closed loop
cooling system that will be, uh, written into the pod and certainly used for this project.
so, uh, this, it's sort of operates somewhere to a car radiator where there's an
initial charge, and from there there's only a 2% loss factor annually. So
when you look at in terms of, um, houses, uh,
the operations of the data center alone use around two homes worth of
water on an annual basis. If you include, uh, irrigation
for the whole site, that number could be closer to 15. But either way, that
is significantly less than what we expect the 173 multifamily unit
project to, to use. And on that front, we
wanted to point to two existing projects with real data that we got
from the city of round rock, the switch and sbe data centers that have been operational for one
year and two years respectively. Uh, looking at sb for an example, they only used
137,000 gallons for the actual operations of the data center
last year. And again, if you include the irrigation on the rest of the site, it's around 15
homes, but it's still de minimus compared to the alternative. And at the same time,
that project is providing the tax revenue equivalent to that of 600 single family homes.
from a noise standpoint, there's been no recorded noise complaints received by the city.
um, and that's for dba and dbc, low frequency vibration. They've been a friendly
neighbor to the adjacent residential areas, and there's been no harmful wastewater contaminants
identified. So, uh, we wanted to
address some common concerns versus facts. Um, so this is a mid-skill
data center. Um, and in order for this project to be approved, uh,
encore and ercot, who oversees the power grid, has to run an interconnection
analysis and ensure that this is not going to impact the existing residential customers. If there's
any sort of, uh, cost associated with grid enhancements to serve this project, they'll
be fully born by the developer and our eventual user. Um,
and from a, you can think about it like this as well. We're adding capacity to the grid in
that if the, uh, in the event that there is a grid shutdown, all of the power
from the grid serving this facility will be rerouted to the adjacent residential.
and that's the only case in which the backup generators would be running continuously. Um,
from a low frequency vibration standpoint, uh, there are specialized inertia pads and spring isolators
for this equipment to prevent vibration from entering the ground. And again, I think with the setbacks
that we're including here and the, uh, a hundred foot landscape buffer with trees
and the two eight foot masonry walls, I just think that that should not be a, an issue here. However,
we have initiated a, a sound in vibration study with kimley horn
that we're gonna bring to council and share what the results of that study as well.
um, sound similar story. We are, um, designing with best screening
practices, and we do believe that at the distance it's a setback that's going to be a, a non-issue.
um, there are some concerns that we've read online about the backup generators. The backup generators
will only be on for monthly testing for about 30 minutes at a time, all
during daytime hours from the hours of 10:00 am to 5:00 pm um,
the only time that they'd be on for an extended period of time is if there is a grid shutdown.
uh, air quality, our generators are used infrequently, as I mentioned, and they must comply with
tceq and federal air quality standards radiation. There's no
ionizing radiation that is produced by this project. Um, health impacts,
there's no harmful chemicals that are emit, uh, from this project.
emf fields, uh, data centers are fully enclosed, reinforce concrete structures
with building walls, concrete building walls that are over a foot thick, so that naturally
attenuates the emf fields. Um, and light pollution, as I mentioned, we're shielding the
lighting. We're directing it downward. It's not gonna be some beaming feature. Um, there's
really just gonna be security yard security lighting in the screening yard, um, at night.
and we're adhering to dark sky best practices. And we also wanted to address why is
a pud being used? The zoning code does not, uh, specifically address data centers. This
is our only route to do so. Um, however, uh, that's why we had to go with the heavy
industrial path. That's our only path via the city of hu code to entitle
a data center. That being said, you can, it's an opportunity for the city to maintain a
greater control over the design elements, such as, such as setbacks, building height,
sound, and site layout in addition to use. So if there's
concerns about the heavy industrial use, you can write in the code that one day. If this data center doesn't exist
here, you could write in all the things you'd be concerned about are also not allowed in
this project. From a timeline standpoint, um, we started meeting
with the neighborhood back in the fall of last year. We submitted our putt in february. We're obviously here
at pz tonight on april 7th. Council will be on may 7th. The earliest
possible date we think we'd start construction is 2028. But with what we're hearing with how
backed up the grid is at the moment, we think it's much more likely maybe 20, 29 and 2030 is
the actual energization date for this project.
and with that, really appreciate the time to present to you all tonight. We view this as the highest and best use for
this particular site. Um, and I'm here to answer any questions. Thank you.
thank you. Okay, so
we've got the presentations concluded. I believe now would be a good time
to open the public hearing.
so I am going to open the public hearing at 8:30 pm
and we have several people who have signed up to speak
the president. I'm gonna go straight down the line here. Uh, first
we have, uh, come on down. Nick kock.
is nick still here? He's there. Oh, there he is.
good evening. I'm nick crane. I'm at, uh, 10 13 vanderau road
here in hu. Um, obviously speaking, um, against
changing the zoning for the data center, um,
I just think that there's threats to long-term
sustainability and quality of life in the community. I know that the
presentation was just kind of addressing some of those issues, but with
the data centers in round rock, I think that one to two years of
data he was showing that's not enough. It's a short period of time. I know data centers are
new. They're trying to come all here at central texas, but I just don't think one to two years
of data, um, is enough to justify changing the zoning to
place the data center here. My biggest concerns are, uh, water
and then the, uh, electric grid, because there could be issues with,
uh, the facility consuming, um, a lot of water.
and then obviously the texas power grid, the grid here
isn't the best. Uh, we just moved over here from georgetown. Our neighborhood is, you know,
six was six years old over in georgetown. And, uh, you can pretty much put it on the
calendar power outages like once or twice a month, if not
more, which is a major issue. We have young kids, uh, we had family members staying
with us that needed, um, power for, you know, oxygen tanks and stuff. So,
um, having more draw on the electric grid is not good.
um, especially with central texas growing,
uh, as it is. So I would urge, uh,
to consider the water, the power, and then also, uh, the noise pollution because
you can, you can say that that data centers or this data center isn't gonna
have a ton of noise, um, data centers do, and that's gonna cause issues
for those neighborhoods around the proposed site. And
I mean, you could say that this data center is gonna be quiet, I'd say quiet compared
to what, like a 7 47 engine or, you know, I don't know.
uh, but so I would, I would consider the, the, the water impact that
could impact the local community, the power grid strain, that's the biggest problem.
and then how much it's going to, you know, drive up cost for the people to actually live
here and live around the proposed site. So I would,
uh, strongly advise against changing the zoning.
and, um, were you, I don't remember, sorry.
were you allowed to answer questions? We, we can do a little bit of back and forth.
okay. That is, that is permissible on a public hearing. Um, yeah,
so the biggest thing for me is,
um, where's the, the power coming from water
supply? And then also is there an alternative site
for the proposed, uh, data center. So
as far as alternative sites, I don't think that would be considered on this item.
this item is talking about changing this specific site
from residential multifamily to heavy industrial
for the data center. Okay. So it's specific to this particular site.
are there other places that might go, that's
open to discussion and speculation. Okay. But it's not part
of this item. Okay. With, with the five,
right. With the issues, uh, you know, with the water and the power, I would suggest
hopefully that no data centers come in to the city of hu so that
the people can have a high quality of life here. Thank you for your time. Alright. Thank you.
yep.
okay. I, I think that's acceptable. Alright, so
I've been asked, um, if you
come up to speak, if you could tell us what subdivision, what neighborhood
you're from, that would be helpful.
all right. Next up is, uh, david garza.
good evening. Uh, david garza. I live, uh,
just across the street from this proposed location at, uh, in emory farms. 4 22
emory farm creek road, farm creek drive, excuse me. Um,
so long, make it very quick and simple. I'm, I'm
against this, uh, proposed, uh, change. I think that there could
potentially be better uses, um,
for that land. Obviously I've lived there for, uh,
since 2017. It's the, the newer part of the subdivision. Um,
I grew up in hudu. Uh, I, I went
to the middle school when it was the middle school and the high school. Like, I remember there was
one light in this, in this town at one point. And that, that's, you know,
that was it. It was very simple, right? A lot of that hu do I miss? You
know, it was very, very easy to navigate through, um, not as much congestion,
but understanding that these are the times that we live in, you know, austin
grew, and with that, the surrounding areas grew. So
I'm all for that. And I'm not necessarily against data centers. Again, the,
these are changing times and it seems like data centers are here to stay with, uh,
the advancements in technology and, and just the direction and everything's going. Um,
but why there, you know, uh, ,
I mean, we're looking at images on the screen and you see neighborhood, neighborhood, neighborhood
data center, like schools, schools, you
know, there, there's, I'm not trying
to make this so complex and I'm not, I don't wanna get into the engineering side of things. I understand
it's closed loop system, you know, 200,000 gallons, and then that's essentially
a wall that they're gonna use. We're not really worried about that. They're gonna provide their own energy. Great.
my neighborhood's adjacent to it. I find it
difficult for someone, let's say I intend on selling my
home. A lot of young families in that neighborhood. If I sell my home
and I'm putting a listing on zillow, what I don't want is under amenities
to put a data center a
thousand feet away.
again, I, I understand in your, in your positions, it's difficult, right?
you're, you're trying to do what's best for the community, generate tax revenue. And believe me, I'm
all for reducing taxes and bringing in as much revenue as possible.
I'm to the other gentleman's point, we're not, it doesn't seem like
there's a shortage of land here in texas. We have land for
days. Um, you know, it, it could be a convenience putting it there
because of the infrastructure surrounding it. And yes, it is a landlocked spot.
it's, it, you know, the city made some decisions years back in place and
started sprinkling neighborhoods left and right. And, and so we just have this odd plot of
land with a bunch of utility of going across it
yourselves. You have an opportunity to really sit
down and think, what would be really cool to put there? You
know, aside from from, from family homes, what else could we do to bring
the, the community together? It's central to hu you know, um, we
have a lot of development in and around the, the surrounding areas. And I again, put a
data center outside the, uh, you know, outside
of, not in the middle of all of our residential mm-hmm . Um, again,
I don't, I, I, I, this is not to be combative. This is just me expressing, you know,
my thoughts and concerns as a homeowner. Uh,
I don't know if I'm in the minority, but . But again,
uh, I, I hope you all consider these things. Uh, again, it's not,
you know, it was a great presentation and there could be some, some benefits. But from
a simplicity standpoint, do I want to just be driving down the street and see
a data center across the street from my neighborhood? Nope. No, no. That's all I
have to say. Thank you for your time. Thank you.
all right. Next up we have brett sutton.
uh, hi, my name is brett sutton and I live at 1 0 2 golden
lane in carmel creek. Um, I've been thinking
about this issue for a while and researching it, uh, because I
saw the , uh, data center, and there's about five
different things on my mind. I mean, I'm an engineer.
um, I spent almost a decade engineering racks for
dell, uh, in data centers, you know, enough to fill up like,
I don't know, a million square feet, tons of tons of, uh, space,
you know, is what I've engineered. And I see, um,
different engineering concerns. I'm not concerned about the water. Um,
but four things really. It's, it's the electricity, it's
the heat, it's the noise, and then the attractiveness to the city.
um, so as far as electricity goes,
I think that they mentioned at the beginning of the presentation that,
well, this meets our adjacency needs. So there's a little bit
of a financial incentive to put it there, because if they don't
put the data center there, they have to go through what's called a large load interconnect,
uh, process, if I'm not mistaken, to actually, you
know, work through running the power lines out to, uh,
further out in the city, right? Which is where I would advocate for this to happen. I'm
against the data center in that particular location, but,
okay, so let's say that, you know,
they don't want to put it out there outside
the city and they're like, oh, we want this because it's cheaper.
okay, well, um, what about noise? And
what about heat? And if you're not gonna pay
for the large load interconnect process, then why don't
you pay for somebody in the city to choose
some consultants who can do a professional
engineering study, like a heat island simulation one
and a noise, uh, noise engineering study. Um,
I know they mentioned a noise study by kinley and horn, but it's like, well,
hey, they paid for this study. Like, is
it, isn't it gonna be biased towards them? Um, so
why not, you know, just find some engineers who are kind of third party
a could be university students who aren't really in it for
the politics or the finances, or b um, have some
people in the city find those consultants somewhere in the country. Um,
I'll volunteer to help with that. . Um, I live in carmel
creek, so I'm not really fully motivated
to get this outta my backyard, but I do think it should be in the outer regions
for, and I'll try to make this short. Okay, so attractiveness is kind of like a
no brainer to put it in the middle of a city. And then I, I googled
population projections for hudu and it was like 400,000. And I
was like, wow, that's a really weird number. I don't see it getting up there, but let's
just say that the city is a hundred or 200,000 people. Do you really want
the downtown to be like a data center? Like
I, I wouldn't. Um, so like round rock's
a hundred thousand. So what happens when hu's a hundred thousand? Like, are we gonna have a
downtown that looks like round rock, that's like actually cool, or like, you know,
like a data center . Um, so yeah, I guess
I addressed attractiveness, um, I addressed electricity
a little bit. I, yeah, I addressed noise and light,
but I do wanna just come back to one point, um, before I
end. And, and that is really that I think that
the electricity numbers should be public. The electricity consumption
should not be secretive, should not be under, uh, non-disclosure agreement
because we're afraid that we're gonna lose a competitive advantage. I racked
my brain trying to think of ways in which like having
that number private would give a business a competitive advantage. And
I'm not, I'm just not seeing it. Whether it's from a hardware producer, software
producer, hardware user, like purchaser of the
services or software user, I'm not seeing how
publishing a power consumption number would fail
to, to give a competitive advantage. And I, I'm saying this because
I think that power consumption numbers should be public. It, it
should be like a budget, you know, like we can see the city budget. Okay, so why can't
we see the power budget, right? So I would just really advocate that,
um, those numbers be made public, but I think that the equipment
that is being used inside of the data center should not necessarily be,
well, shouldn't really be public, but that, um,
you know, to verify that these power and these water numbers are
actually legitimate. That there, there be an engineer somewhere
in the city who is under nda, who can see an itemized list
of the equipment used, um, for, for
water and power consumption. Alright, thank you.
okay, next up I have nick choi.
good evening. Uh, my name is nick choi. I own a property on
hilton street, which is, uh, directly adjacent to the
proposed plan. I'm here to express concerns about the proposed zoning change
for the data center. Uh, first, this is a 70 megawatt
facility roughly equivalent to powering 20,000
homes. While I, I appreciate the focus on the power, reliability
and availability, the high power consumptions
from the dana center can pressure and
increase the ongoing, uh, electric bill for
the surrounding area. This will not be just one time
cost, but added reoccurring cost for the neighborhoods
and surroundings areas for the huddle. Second,
the proposed proposal describes low noise.
this is around 40 decibel as the document shows. However,
the constant 40 decibel is not silent. It
may not be noticeable in the daytime, however, at night it can be
noticeable comparison
to, to the existing data center. I don't think it's
directly applicable because those existing facilities are a lot smaller
and located further away from existing residential areas.
and I visited those sites today. They are right next to highways,
meaning there are a lot of background note already existing, which
makes it people who, um, around the area may not notice
that this project is different.
third, mainly data center rely on backup power generators during
the power outages. Potentially not one,
but potentially couple dozens. And these are not
small power generator you may see when you go on a campsite. These
are large industrial generator, not just one, but many
during the extended power scenarios such as winter storm
uri operating multiple generators, steam seriously
raises concerns about sustained noise and air quality concerns
for the community. So if, if
someone states that there's no noise or no air quality concerns,
that may be normal state, but during the emergency
situation, it may be difficult for the surrounding areas.
fourth, I'm concerned about property values at best, these types of development
is neutral for the area at best, but it introduce
risk for nearby homeowners and does not enhance neighborhood
value. Finally, there is more appropriate locations
for these types of facility, such as existing industrial
zones or sites nearby highway where already there
are background noises exist away from residential communities.
for these reasons, I do not support the proposed zoning change.
I give some thoughts about why developer selected this particular site.
I can relate that the developer see, sees the location attractive because
the substation is right there. So during the winter storm, they don't have
to worry about distribution line falling down by the trees.
I can also see the, uh, perspective from the city. This will, uh, allow
the, um, land utilizations also generate a lot of tax
revenues. I like to encourage
the huddle city leaders to do the right thing for the people and the
families in the huddle and not be misled by tax revenues. Thank
you.
next up is sandra roth.
my name is sandra roth and I live at 6 0 1 open range
drive in emory farm subdivision. I'm not gonna belabor the point.
each one of the gentlemen that proceeded me, I agree with
everything they said. Those are my concerns. My house faces
ed schmidt boulevard. The last thing I want to do is look out of my living room
window and see a data center. So I object
to the proposal and the erection of the data center. Thank you.
thank you.
uh, next is, I'm gonna butcher the name again, sorry. Catherine,
mike, meek, meek,
it gets people. Uh, yes. Catherine meek. I'm at
1 0 8 david drive in country estates. And
I am not tied to this project and probably represent
the unpopular opinion in the room. But as an energy
consultant with 20 years in the development space, I wanted to bring some context
as to what a project like this means in practice. Uh, the
developer showed two previous projects, one with a year in marketplace and the
other with two years in marketplace. And just for a little bit of perspective,
those projects probably started in concept about
five years ago when technology did not offer a lot of the things
that are available now. In fact, in the developer's project, they've cited that they
wanna use a closed loop cooling system and that the tenant has
not quite yet been defined yet. So if we put this in practice at the rate of technology
movement, their end use tenant in the building may not
need water at all. It may be air cooled, it may be a proprietary cooling system they
use for their chip. And as far as deciding what
the actual load will be at 70 megawatts, that
is a sizable amount of power. But I also wanna give some context as
to how that works. Data center projects have a ramp schedule.
so at best case scenario, they may start with maybe
25 megawatts of power. And every year for six
to 10 years, depending on the size of the project, they increase a little bit
more, a little bit, a little bit more. That's according to encore and ercot
study to maintain grid harmony. So it does not all come on
at the exact same time. And as the developer pointed out,
any infrastructure needs that are required are gonna be bore by
by them to get the project up. So here's another little perspective that
I wanna leave the city and the residents with for the state of texas. Best
case scenario, our energy infrastructure is 60 years old.
it's weak and crumbling and it isn't sufficient. Take away a large load
interconnection and data center demand. We need stable power, which
means we need new and higher volume transmission lines.
and the only way to get that is to pass that cost onto
somebody who has a project that they're willing to pay the increased cost of
infrastructure for when
the developer pays for it, it does not show up in rate base
when the developer does not pay for it. And the utility has to extend
because of natural growth. It does show up in distribution
and, and in rate base. And with encore, you have the two metrics, right?
you have the cost of supply, and then you have the cost of delivery. So
the residents immediately in the area, their relationship to that
substation is going to change once the volume of power increases.
and the way delivery works is the more you need, the less you pay for it
because the channels to get it there become more efficient. Now, what I wanna
pose to the city and to the residents today is not necessarily
how you feel about data centers. That is important. And
you have the advantage of having really the purse in
the room to let them know what you want to see in order to accept this
growth. It's not really do we want
them, it's if they come, what do we want them to do for us?
what do we want them to bring for us? Looking at the
site map, uh, when mr. Konz was laying out the
plot, I can tell you that if I were citing this project, I probably would not
have chosen something right in the middle of a residential community. And
it wasn't until, and I'll I'll also say this, I was not aware of this project
until tonight. I didn't prepare a speech. I'm giving you 20
years of my insights and my knowledge about how these
projects grow and what their constraints are.
now I can see why this site has been
slated for this project. And to put it into context, 40 acres is a very small
data center. We're normally seeing megawatts,
not rather not megawatts, but gigawatts, which go on hundreds
of acres, not tens of acres. So even in the developer's plan,
buffering a five acre, uh, really
window between the facility itself and the community around it means
the community has space to ask for what they do. Look at in that five acres,
does it look like a park? Does it look like a hedge wall? To not have
to look at that building, that is a very serious, I think, concern. We
all worry about, oh, this big huge open piece of land,
what's it gonna look like now when somebody builds something on it? So the residents have
an opportunity then to say, all right, if there's an upside, then this
is what we want. And that's why I came out tonight. No
data center
is my time over. Well, thank you so much. I I generally don't
hold people to the three minutes, but we do have a lot of other people who need. That's
what I had to say. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. She didn't get any claps.
all right, next up is andrew walsh.
good evening counsel. Uh, as the previous speaker,
and unlike everyone else here, you know, everyone else here
I stand with the, the proposed rezoning of the
itchy grass and trees into a data center. You guys,
elon musk is about to be a trillionaire. Isn't that cool? ,
who are we to stand between a man and his dreams? More locally.
our mayor is a gambler. We've seen him at the shady game rooms around town.
why not let 'em gamble with our future?
uh, I don't know about y'all. I'm tired of hearing my friends and neighbors
complain about their rising electric bill. Uh, instead of paying to heat
your home, we can just stick a giant heater right downtown.
uh, the proposed data center will add over three permanent jobs to
our city , that
enable us to create videos of sonic the hedgehog kissing donkey
kong. Um, in all honesty, it is pretty sickening how
our future's being sold to big tech billionaires. Um,
aaron king, you ran on no new revenue, so you should probably stick
to that. Peter gordon, your facebook posts are tone deaf.
we all saw him last night. It was, it's disgusting quote. Not as bad
as the other data center. I'm sorry. Rough quote. Not as bad as other data centers.
that's not good enough for us. It's not the flex you think it is. Uh,
every summer since I moved here, we've been put on water restrictions
to told us we can't do this. We can't do that. Why? We want to add to
that strain. And I know they call this closed loop, but still
they, the energy that they consume, the power plants consume tons of water.
so whether it's directly on site or indirect, it's going to put a strain on our grid.
I have a daughter, she turns six months old today. I can see
the average age up here is a lot higher than that. So she's gonna have to deal with this
decision much longer than you guys are. I implore
this council to stop the madness, put in a green space, a park, anything
but this data center. Thank
you.
real quick, uh, point of clarification. This is not city
council. This is p and t. I just wanna make sure you guys know .
thanks for the compliment. Thank you brandon. It's a rehearsing there. It's
public hearing. They can say what they want. I know. I just wanna make sure this is,
I I was looking around. Uh, yeah, they're not up here. Alright,
uh, next up is hannah miller.
hello, my name is hannah miller and I live at three 19 black bear drive in cottonwood
farms. Um, a lot of the people up here have already said a lot of the things I
was, uh, had in mind, but I will just mention a few things.
um, as previously stated, we do not have a lot of data on data centers
and we have no idea of their long-term impacts on the environment or the
health of the residents who live nearby. And even if
zydeco is able to make good on their word and not use a lot of water or electricity,
it will still affect property values. People are going to look at home listings,
see it's close to a data center, and just scroll on by without giving it a second thought.
um, there are plenty of options for what to do with that land other than
a data center, as you said, a trail, a nature park, a bike path, a dog park.
I don't think the residents of huro should have to put up with poten so many potential
negative factors because iica wants to save some money. Thank you.
next up is alexander sellers.
hi, I am alex sellers. I live off of 2 0 8 brookside street in hu town square north.
um, I am opposed to it obviously. Unlike the very, very few people
that are here at the fort. Um, there are some concerns with data centers.
I come from a background in cybersecurity engineering. I've worked at data centers myself.
um, they do come with busy construction. Now, as we all know, limmer loop and ed
schmidt are both two lane roads. They, um, the two
comparables they gave both sbe and switch are adjacent to toll
road 45 feeder roads. And if you look at the map, it's close to I 35
as well. So you have easy access. Now with this, it does
not bring many jobs. Once it's completed, it's gonna bring 20 to 40 maxs. That
includes a standard number of five to seven people of the size of the data center for
security onsite technicians and then it specialists. So
these are gonna be very specialized roles, um, which probably won't be coming from this,
uh, this community. Um, this also removes the pillar
for highest quality of life here for hu um, the bi. Now, during conversation
they had with rhoa, they brought up a, uh, a motion saying that
the buyers and use, uh, and users of the data center can help the
community. Do you want amazon meta? Who's facebook at instagram,
or even google to come in here and have a say on your community meetings?
no. Um, this land cannot be reclaimed once the zone has
been used for data center for up to eight to 10. Uh, after, you know, it becomes
redundant. Eight to 10 years. It takes a long time to have this all this ripped out, have
it destroyed, taken down. There's gonna be batteries. It has to be an environmental impact
analysis done. Um, the, uh,
there's not, they have not specified what kind of data center is gonna be built. Obviously it's
roughly after the ramp up period, probably about 70, uh, megawatts.
um, besides it not being used for ai farming or,
um, bitcoin mining, um, zydeco does not have a user for the data center yet.
but if it is a compute data center, the refresh is every five to 10 years. Now
that's overtime and it's not some dude driving up in a truck, you know, his little, uh, f-150
or, um, silverado and dropping off a couple of units, like
a couple of computers. It's semis coming in there, unloading, loading, leaving.
if it's data storage data center, the refresh is every three to six years.
um, that number is actually, I can't remember the website's name, but they, um, do
impact for hard drives. Um, so that number is a hundred percent accurate.
the risk, um, sies second building just had a fire at
their, um, battery storage facility. I'm sure someone else is gonna bring this up soon.
um, the negative impacts of just that, um, alone,
it, you know, requires cleanup environmental repairs for quite some time. This is
obviously a one off, but what happens if it happens here? Um, next to this
neighborhood now mentioned in their request and part of the
documentation they have under item six criteria, the proposed future land does,
uh, use, does not create a public nuisance or have adverse impact on surrounding properties
or, uh, the natural environment. Justification of the nearby residents are aware of the intended to use
the property and largely support the change, which, uh, recognizes the facts that
intended land use is not a nuisance nor will have an adverse impact.
I don't know who they talked to besides peter gordon. Um, as attached on the,
uh, the agenda packet, there are many individuals living within the direct impact,
um, impacted area that it provided feedback objecting to
the rezoning. Now I live 2,300 feet away. I've seen
quite a few of my neighbors that are on the exact same street as me. I'm sure they're all here to oppose it
as well. Um, now going back to the hu pillar for create the
highest quality of life next to the switch data center, which again, off of the,
um, toll road 45 next to I 35, it is
directly north to of the dell, um, campus.
looking at one of the houses there, 2302 stratford drive
in round rock. The house directly north. Um, or no, this
one was directly east of that data center. So this would directly impact
the houses along in hu town square south. That house was
built in 1985. Those houses along that strip were built in 2012.
by that logic, I'm no real estate agent, but I have worked in real estate appraisal
in the past. Um, that is not a comparable, I don't know what they're looking at,
but that is not a comparable. Um, now looking at the next
one, there was the, um, se the houses there
were built in 2002, 2004, 2005. Um,
all north of the se building two, which is still being developed.
um, along all of those, if we're gonna remove everything else, taking
the exact impact on the housing values since the se
campus one was built and launched in october of 2024, um,
we have a negative home valuation of eight and a half percent.
wow. Now, um, with all of that,
with hu town square being where it is, limmer and at schmidt, all those homes
were built well after 2020, uh, 20 14, 20 15.
they're not near busy road, uh, busy roads. And again, they're all newer. So
I'm gonna leave that there. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you.
alright, next up we have david, uh, caballero,
how are you? My name is, uh, david caballero. I'm on 7 1 7 gray fox
loop. Um, I'm a registered architect as well for the state of texas. Um, so I, I
do wanna compliment the developer, ms. Meeks as well. I've been in a lot of these forums and it's very
difficult sometimes, especially with community members, but I, I appreciate you come out and presenting.
um, even though I am ag against the, the data center as well, um, as well
as everybody else. So, you know, I, I did make the signs too and kind of passed 'em out. So sorry for that.
. Um, what can I say that hasn't been said?
um, I think a lot of my concerns is obviously the, the rising utility costs.
um, but mainly is just location. I mean, I, I think when you look at the
site and you're in between the, the two large community investments, right? Even with
cottonwood farms at, at the, at the top corner, um, you're asking
to bring this facility into our neighborhood, into our community, and then
repeatedly the developer repeats, hey, we're, we're here to be a good neighbor, right? But, but you're
asking us to accept this prison in our neighborhood, right? Something we
can't access that shielded has no community input. No community
resources that gives back to the community. It just benefits the taxes, right?
but it doesn't benefit us, right? So how do, how can we,
you know, justify it? Justify it? There we go. Thanks, thanks for
that. And so that, that's my main concern. 'cause the only thing that I'm seeing is like, now you're
reducing our home prices, right? I get, hey, you're, you're, you're trying to keep, no, we're
not raising tax rates. That's our, that's our big goal for, for this year, right? And you're trying to find any way
to do it, right? But what you're not seeing is that you're doing it by lowering
our home prices, increasing our utility rates, and you're not making it sustainable as for us to
be here, right? Or to even make it a livable place where we want to be here,
right? And so, I, I get, it's not a desirable area. Um,
you're looking at the small piece of land that, that has all those utilities and easements run through it,
but it's such a crown piece and it's such a crown jewel. Um,
that's nestled in between, in between neighborhoods that can be better than a david center, right?
and I think it's our responsibility to find a better piece, a better jewel
that you want to place in the community, right? And that's our responsibility
and that's what we're here for, right? And so that, that's my piece. That's all, that's
all I say. It's,
uh, next up is nick clark.
good evening everybody. Good evening.
so we're doing my best not to belabor all the wonderful points that have been made tonight. Uh, I'm
obviously in the camp of no data center, so shout out to all my friends here for that.
um, hey, whoop, um, sorry, a and m brad. Um,
hey, but so I just wanna add a little color to a couple of things that have been
discussed here and put 'em into some context that maybe more people can quantify
and understand. So when we're talking about power, what was proposed is about 70 megawatts,
right? So if we wanna talk about megawatts, 20 megawatts can power upwards of 15,000
residential homes, right? So in hu, and this is based
on quick google, this 15,000 homes represents most of the
residential homes in hudu. So we're talking 20 megawatts
versus 70. So we're talking almost triple, actually more than triple
what the actual residential energy cost of the entire neighborhoods
of hudu. Put that in context. That's more than every one of our homes
for one building. And then when you talk about the electrical
infrastructure was mentioned earlier, there's benefits to where they have moved this location. They're
trying to save themselves money and not have to pay for infrastructure. That is the ultimate
goal of the developer. I work in construction, so I understand the angle and I
actually appreciate it. But the problem is, as I was mentioned before,
the trends show across the entire country. When these data centers are built, the
end users subsidize the cost. And I'm not talking about direct infrastructure
that the developer may pay on site to handle the power that they're bringing
to their facility. But we're talking about what encore at their plants,
at the overall distribution, any cost that they have to increase to
generate power for this plant, that ends up going to every end user within this
area via their electrical providers. So you will see those incremental
up upticks and they won't tell you why. You'll just, most of the people here,
they're, they're here, they active, they probably look at their bills, but most of the other residents
in this town, they won't look, they won't understand. They'll just question why they're at bills or
harder to meet. So that's power. Then I
wanna get into water. Obviously they have a closed cooled system, which is very,
very, very efficient. I've worked on a couple of these buildings that have it, it is great. But
when we already have data centers in town, taking ca taking up our resources,
we want to add another thing that's gonna take up our resources. That's
just a simple question. I'm gonna leave, I'm not gonna get into the numbers when we already have these things taking
our, taking our resources. Do we want to exacerbate the problem? Something
else I was mentioned earlier is the, uh, the health, the, the
issues that this, the health impacts of this development could have. In a study done
by richard klein of the community and environmental defense services, they found that data
centers pose negative health risks to those living within even just a half mile radius
due to the emission of nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter. These
aren't just technical stats. Even the national institute of health links that these particles to
the thousand or lead two thousands of premature deaths annually. If
you guys are accused for a real life example in south memphis, the time magazine reported
on a large scale data center by, uh, xai,
that had reported that residents were experiencing severe respiratory
illnesses such as copd, as a direct result of nearby data
center pollution. And when what was mentioned earlier is whenever the power goes out,
it's great that the power grid will not take power from the homes and give
it to the data center and they will be forced to use generators. But as it was mentioned,
these generators are giant. These guys have a 70 megawatt facility. Some
of the largest generators I've worked with are three to four, um, megawatts,
and they're as big as a shipping container. So you gotta imagine they're gonna
have dozens of these things. And when, if the power goes out for multiple days, like
we had in the great freeze of 2021, all those powers or all
those generators are gonna run 24 7. And gus, who's gonna be breathing
all that smog, all the pollution, the kids at the schools,
the neighborhoods, and anyone going nearby that facility. So
think about that. So one more thing to add is,
furthermore that the cambridge university study of 6,000 projects across
the united states who did in fact create heat islands where the surface temperatures
were raised by an average of 3.6 degrees and in some cases raise the
temperature upwards of 15 degrees. So for anyone that is, has a green thumb in
plants, plants, I hope we don't plan on planting anything new. This data center just saying.
and finally, I gotta ask, what does hu really get in exchange for this
giant risk to our resources, our health, even our local temperatures
we're asking for uh, meager 10, 15 jobs. Not even
accounting, if any of them are remote.
the temporary construction surge will not be staffed by our
neighbors. It's not gonna be many people from huda. It's gonna be people from out of town.
it's gonna be people from the area, and you're even out of state. Those are gonna be the people that build those jobs.
and when the cranes are gone and the dust settles, all we're gonna be left
is with a giant eyesore. We're gonna have something that sucks
our resources and potentially puts the health of our children at risk.
guys, just so everyone know, understands, again, I'm a construction manager. I work on these projects
all the time. I'm very pro-development. I really am. Um, I'm
arguing against this project and for the fact that I am pro-development, should really speak
volumes about these types of projects and data centers in general. Excuse
me, in general. Um, and my parents live here.
I live here with my wife, my two kids who are under five years old. I plan to
be here a really long time, and I really care about the prosperity of this town and this community.
and I'm obviously, everyone here feels the same way. So I hope that you
guys make your voices heard, make some considerations on that this is really the
right thing for the city. As I've been sitting here listening to everyone speak, I keep looking at these tenants
and these pillars of our community that we claim to uphold, grow responsibly
and sustainably, and create the highest quality of life. Do we really believe that we're offering the
highest quality of life to these neighborhoods and these schools and these children by putting a data center
right next to 'em? I don't think so, guys. So
thank you. Thank you.
uh, next up is charmaine hadley.
and it's shannon bradley. Um, no, pretty
sure. It's pretty sure it's hadley .
hello, I'm, um, charmaine hadley. 10 10, hey, needle loop in, uh, caramel
creek. Um, a lot of people have said everything I wanted to
say as well. Um, but I do wanna throw some things out there for everyone who
does not know. Um,
as early as 2026, texas has over
79 to 200 plus operating data
facilities, okay? As of march, 2026,
we lead the us with 140 data centers under
construction. They're not even up yet. A lot of the times.
um, this gentleman right over here, I forgot your name, but
do you live here? Do you live in the community in which that data center
is gonna be built at, behind, around, or near it?
or are you just here temporarily to do what it is that you need to do? Because
if you don't live here and you're not living in those, uh, communities
behind and or around where that data center is going to be, I highly
doubt you should be here trying to tell us as residents
that we should allow you in. That is not right.
I, when I do not mean to interrupt mm-hmm . But if you
could address okay. Us no problem. Opposed audience. I, you know, I was
just, just saying, um,
water. Everyone has talked here about water for homes, businesses.
what about ag? What about our farms?
okay. One of the biggest things that we are concerned about as
residents, as anyone living here in the united states of america, is the fact that
the cost of our food three years ago is not what the cost of our food is
today. We need our local farmers to help keep this
city going the way that it's going. Okay? So think
about the water that they need to help those farms keep
going. And the water that quote unquote right now may not
be allocated towards those data centers right now. Well, this
particular data center right now, but it will,
it definitely will. Water adds up. It,
it's gonna evaporate faster at the data center than it is in the ground
where it needs to be on our fruits, our vegetables for our animals,
for our kids, for these schools. I don't have, I don't wanna have
to worry about our kids getting sick at school
because of the drinking water. I don't, I already hear people
or see people talking about on the ring app and everywhere else.
hey, my water stinks. Why is the
water shut off? Why is this happening? What, so why are we wanting to
bring another data center in? Doesn't make any sense. The
employment number for data centers, there are more people who are employed
than there are people who are actually going to run it. It's really fast
for someone to say, hey, we're gonna hire about 800 people to go ahead
and put this all together. But out of those 800 people, nine times outta 10,
10% of them 10%, and based upon the size,
it's going to be smaller. So there are no jobs
that are coming after this data center is built.
okay? Um, you
talking about the, the backup generators, gas is through the roof,
is gas is through the roof. I pay $4
and change for gas. And you're
telling me they're going to have backup generators available
just for their buildings when no one else
is going to be able to benefit from it. If the power goes out, no
one, but we're gonna benefit from the pollution. We're gonna benefit from
the sickness. We're gonna benefit from everything else in a, in a matter of, there's
none of us gonna be here. We're all gonna be gone. You wanna know why? 'cause
either people are going to move, because no one
wants to live by a data center. No one. I
guarantee you, if the data center was going up across the street from
your homes, you would be sitting right in this crowd with us.
so, I mean, that's,
yeah, that's really all I got for right now.
uh, next up we have dennis kaufman.
hello. Um, I am opposed of the data center, uh, live
in emory farms subdivision. Um, a lot of the points have been
made. Um, but I will say, um, you, this lady here is talking about,
you know, what kind of data center I'm gonna tell you right now, I sell high end servers and stuff
for my job. If you're talking about closed loops for data center, you're talking about
stuff that's not gonna be just running the mill server stuff. Um, so
if they're trying to tell you, oh, you know, it might be easy for something small, it's not gonna take a whole lot of energy.
they're, they're pulling the pool over your eyes. Um,
and on top of that, um, you know, I, I like to, obviously I'm invested because I like
to sell the stuff to 'em, right? But being in the middle of the city, that doesn't make any
damn sense. Um, and property value, someone's
actually mentioned, um, I actually talked to some of my customers that live in, up in ohio and pennsylvania that
has data centers. You can bet the bottom line, they can't sell their houses
next to the data center. So, um, heat, I
mean, to the gentleman over, there's, you know, probably try and say something
else. I I shouldn't have to tell him about laws of thermodynamics. Right? Energy
can't be lost and created. The heat's going to rise somehow, right? And
you gotta take care of it somehow, whether it's water, which, if it's a closed loop,
probably not. But they're gonna be running filters and pumps and everything else. And then
eventually you're gonna have to do maintenance on that closed loop.
so, you know, whether it's the first time they, they take however many gallons they need,
they're eventually gonna have to do something else with it, because they're gonna have to deal with leaks.
they're gonna have to deal with maintenance, um, and outcomes and other things. So,
um, that's it. Like I said, I think I wish the other guy was here. 'cause I would've tell 'em that three
permanent jobs. Yeah, they're probably gonna be remote, but yeah. . Thank you.
uh, next up is helen kaufman.
hi, helen kaufman, spouse of that man. We've
lived here in emory farms at 100 emory farms or emory fields
drive corner of emory farms and emory fields.
we were the original owners of that land when there was cows to the west of
us, cows to the north of us, and nothing but maybe 10 other
houses in that neighborhood. We have lived here that long.
that is the first time that man has spoken publicly, even though he is felt
passionately. And, and this is more of his field. I agree
with most everything that's already been said as far as concerns about the environment,
the electrical, um, the sound, et
cetera. I think what I can add,
uh, is in regards to aesthetics and history,
where the community has consistently come out and spoken in regards to
what do we want from the city, and why that was zoned
that way. And then also something for you to consider,
not just why that site, but why we as a city was attractive to them.
um, I'm gonna borrow upon knowledge that I'm not an engineer.
um, I've worked in many careers, uh, but I have friends
that are very knowledgeable. One of them worked for the us department of energy.
he has a doctorate in engineering, electrical engineering, a doctorate
also for fun in astrophysics. Uh, he used to set
the us agenda for, at the international energy summits in geneva. He
gave me, uh, a couple websites I paste on fa, facebook. And I'd like to
pass this around to each of you, uh, on the board that demonstrates,
uh, the lighter of the lines is how the general increases,
uh, with energy in communities have gone, and then those with
data centers, how that's increased, about double that. If
you could hand that to manny, he'll pass 'em around. Thank you.
um, so that, that friend of mine I spoke of, uh,
jonathan williams, uh, he provided me this website, um,
and, and links, um, that, uh, is
provided by the bureau of labor statistics
that have historically provided us
analysis and critiques of data that evaluates trends and,
um, and, uh, critiques on
things that affect inflation. Of course, electric use is part of that.
so this is putting data in front of your faces. I'm, I'm not gonna speak
for the data too much, except you can see that as our technology
and knowledge of this early adopters still
a proof in concept, uh, in many communities. As, as
they were talking about, technology's evolving. Well, that may be the case, but developers
are always going for the bottom line. And sometimes budgets cut and things change. They
don't always make the best choices for communities.
when we moved in, we liked hu to, it appealed to us because it was
a city that liked the aesthetics. It knew its location was maybe not
the big shaker mover. Maybe they won't, won't always have big, uh,
employers, but it would be a quality life where family could go from very early
all the way to retirement. The reason why, way back when holland
was a mayor, that time and time again, we've showed up to say, hey,
we want multi-family is because we want people to have options
whether they can't afford, which is becoming harder and harder, single family
homes, or they're at the point of downsizing into retirement to be near
grandkids, et cetera. We want that quality of life. We also wanted to
have neighborhoods that connect, sort of like a circuit, so that eventually
would have that walkable space. When we bought,
we thought neighborhoods would be built around us. I'm not gonna
speak ill of anybody on, on, on this committee
or on the board, but in the past time and time again,
my neighborhood has been told things that have not come out. True,
true developers have made promises and they failed. And then the city said,
well, they promised us it. And they said they'd be open to, but we really, our hands are tied
now. So forgive
me, but I cannot extend trust again on something that hits so
many ways to our community as a whole
that makes emory farms an isolated
island and abandoned as a neighborhood surrounded
by industrial when it comes to development. Yes,
that interchange is very busy and it's traffic. But here's the thing that
we're told about emory fields and why it had to be connected and why
that, um, uh, you know, road had
to continue is because it was a thoroughfare in case there was traffic jams. We need alternative
routes. When you have a neighborhood put in there, it could potentially connect to the
other neighborhoods. And if limmer loop or ed schmidt gets blocked out,
it gives some other alternatives for police, fire
families to get through, to get home to their kids, to pick them up, to make dinner,
to, to crow the crops, take their care. As far as the easement, my neighborhood
has that easement. It's not too hard. It's not
too much of a nuisance for that developer to use. And I'll tell you how it
is used. It is used as a walking space for hiking, for walking
dogs, for wildlife to transit, and still be a beautiful aspect
of our city. I saw the
plans of the buffer zone that was promised of the industrial space behind
us. That buffer zone was fought over very
tooth and nail. It's a big mound of dirt.
the trees are not so big that they will fill that up. And, and a third of them, I walked it just
yesterday with my dog, have been removed. For what reasons?
I don't know. Last time I saw 'em, they were very healthy on his indicator.
they're spaced so far apart. It's not gonna be a buffer.
you did a wonderful study and presentation on, on, on maybe
ways of, uh, you know, addressing
some of the economical concerns about electric. You did nothing for the heat.
uh, lot, you know, increase. 'cause my husband
said on thermodynamics. Those are the things on the aesthetics.
hudu is a proud city. We have a long history. There
are multi-generational families here. And, and, and
that's what I bought into. I grew up in the town of maytag. Maybe you've heard of them.
uh, they're well renowned. I used to be able to go anywhere in the world and wa look inside a washer
or dryer if I was homesick and, and see maiden newton, iowa,
hudu has that feel. But
let's face it, through several administrations,
developers have come in and they've swindled us.
they have learned that we don't have the oversight. If they say they'll
be open to consideration, well, those are empty promises
that have no guarantee of oversight or, or whatever. They can kind of run
shot over us. They've seen lawsuits. We've
gotten some attention. I think that the reason we as a
city is attractive is because
we're small enough that we can be manipulated. And I'm not saying you're
dumb and you don't know your expertise and then engineering and whatnot. I'm
saying it, we're disorganized. We don't have the power and the resources
behind us that, that they can easily throw things in
their favor, um, and then not fulfill promises
or change them. And that's where my concern is.
um, you know, best of intentions, just be
wise about that be wise, that when you get national
attention for lawsuits, sometimes,
uh, not, not the best of characters, we go, oh,
well, that might be a good small city to plant my seed and take advantage
of. Um, and that's where I, I'm most concerned
that hasn't been addressed. Um,
I'm just gonna real quick look over my things here. I,
um, well, that is
about time. I don't mean to cut you off. Thank you. No, that, that's okay. I had it. Thank you. Pretty
much everything.
uh, next up we have cameron harvey.
hi there. My name's cameron harvey. I, uh, live at 1 2 0 denton drive in
the riverwalk, uh, subdivision. Um, just so in case y'all
aren't aware, most of the houses in the riverwalk subdivision are,
uh, fully electric. So there is no gas, there is nothing
there any sort of power outage that happens. We cannot cook food. We cannot
preserve food. We, we can't do heat. We get nothing.
I had to live through that. My wife had to live through that, through the snowpocalypse
of 2021. I am very concerned
on a personal level that me and my family can be negatively
impacted by this, this data center
being put into the community. Um, I'm not gonna go through
all of the other minutiae. You've already been hit through it a lot.
um, water, electricity, noise, all
of that. I, I will just skip that. Um, what
I do want you to know is that
last week bloomberg released an article stating that
of all of the planned data center buildouts in the united states,
nearly half of them have been canceled or delayed.
how can we be sure that this developer is not going to be
one of those halves? How can we be sure that if we go through with this
proposal, that they are gonna be able to build that, that they have all
of the components in their supply line to actually build
that data center to even get it off the ground? He's already said that
he doesn't have a tenant. Do you really want to give up this land
for someone who says, I have no business. I cannot
promise you that there is anyone who is gonna
take up this. Yeah. So I
just, I I really hope
that you take a quick thought on this
and I really hope that you reject this proposal. Thank you for your time. Thank you.
all right. I'm not gonna try to butcher this one. S jenkins.
hi radda jenkins. I live on 7 0 5 east
street in old town. Hu I've called hu home for almost
10 years. I wanna say. I really appreciate the director for the work that you put in to
show exactly where the data center is for proposed to go
and all of the use cases that it will impact. So thank you for that.
so the pod or the pudi don't know if you get to mush it together like that or not,
doesn't address data centers like the presenter shared. And that is
a great example of how unregulated this technology and
this use case is, and what a significant gamble
it is to bet on something where the lines are so gray and can
be manipulated to the user's goals. Okay, everybody's
already talked about water and about power. So I'm not gonna belabor the point, but
I do wanna go back to the trust. When they talk about it being closed loop and
they talk about it being sustainable, they're asking for a lot of trust. I know that
the data center that's being built in abilene is much, much bigger. But
just for an understanding of the use, it's gonna use about 20%
of the electricity that new york city uses, and
it's gonna use water comparable to what the entire city of hutto uses.
so when you think about that and you put that into perspective, it's very, very hard to trust
this is gonna be sustainable or not have a big impact.
if you look up any of the cases and where communities have added these, and I
urge you to please do so, you will see that their utility bills have gone up
in some cases very, very significantly. We already have insanely expensive
water here. Let's not make it worse. He talked about
how little impact it would have on our traffic. That's because of how few jobs
it will bring .
so as much as I hate driving in auto traffic and as terrible
as it is, um, I do recognize that we need jobs and we need homes.
this doesn't solve either of those problems. We've heard about the health, we've heard about
the property values. Overall, this is not good for our community.
and while this location is especially terrible and is
a very clear no with the backing of everything that the director said, I would go
a step further and say, when you consider all of the negative implications,
we should not put a data center in heto. Yes, just like all the construction
people, I also have that construction background and I appreciate that there is
a, a need for growth, but we need to be thoughtful about that. So whether
we put it in a field somewhere, or whether we put it as an enormous
eyesore right next to our schools and our homes, it will still use our water.
it will still impact our environment. It will still use our power.
so I ask all of you to please vote no, not just on this data center, but on data centers for
hudu. Let's make it really clear that hudu cannot be bought.
thank you.
uh, next up is riley pruitt.
hi, I'm riley pruitt. I live at 2 0 2 3. Matt locke circle
in carmel creek. Uh, I just wanted to thank y'all for volunteering
and serving as you do hu planning and building the city. Uh, thanks
for taking the time tonight. Um, I agree with everything that
everyone said. I'm against the data center. Um, I wanted to bring up
three points that we didn't talk about. Um, one, there was
inconsistency in zydeco presentation.
they said that it's the data center's, a small
data center. It's not gonna be used for ai, it's not gonna be used for bitcoin
mining. But then they said they don't have a tenant.
how does that make sense? Well, what if a bitcoin miner comes around and what
if a, what if ai chips gets smaller and quieter and can be
done in a, in a, you know, a smaller data center? You can't be a
beggar and a chooser. So it doesn't make sense to be able to promise things that
we don't know. I wanted to point that out. They're gonna say whatever they want to
get, whatever they want. The second thing is, if we accept
this, if we bring this online, and if we repl
this rezone this, it sets a really horrible precedent in hudu.
it says, hey, any, any developer in the united states
come by in hudu. It doesn't matter what the zoning is.
we'll just stamp it. We'll make it a data center.
it makes us look like idiots. We don't wanna do that. This won't be the
last thing. And then the final thing is, I I want to make
an appeal to beauty, uh, beauty in the city. I live in carmel
creek, but I also have lived in hu since I was 12. And I actually lived on
hilton street in, uh, in hu town square. Uh,
and I would look out my window west at this exact
land, this exact zone. And there was nothing there.
and it was kind of beautiful. And I, I pictured myself as a 12-year-old
looking out and seeing this horrendous data center
and what that would do to my psyche, what that would do to my life. I I have no idea how
it would affect me. I have no idea how it would affect anybody in that neighborhood. And so
I wanna make an appeal to beauty. Hudu is in risk of becoming
a hideous industrial park. Yeah,
we, we are on our way there. We're so
enticed by money that we forgot about beauty. We forgot about the reason
people live places. We wanna live in huro because it's beautiful. The people are
beautiful, the buildings are beautiful. That's why we live here. So
we have an opportunity to do the last thing on the hu pillars to create a high quality
of life. We have the opportunity to uphold that. So I hope we make the right
decision on it. Thank you. Thank you.
next up is lisa zacharias.
hello, I'm lisa zacharia, uh, 2012 blue drive.
I live in the enclave of brushy creek and I am
objecting to rezoning. Um, like I said, everybody else,
um, had all my bullets, most of them, but I
wanted to touch on when he was speaking of,
um, the water and the direct use for cooling
and how many gallons of potable water that's gonna use per day.
and, you know, if, if it's affects the town of, what are
we at? Almost 50,000 people now, you know?
so 5 million gallons of potable water a day is equivalent to our
town. And so it, it is just too much strain
on what we already are doing. Because even summers
with the droughts and we're, you know, we're restricted water
use on our properties. We can't water. And, you know, odd number of
days, yada, yada, yada. We can't water. And it, it just, uh, it's
a severe strain on, on hu um, the
indirect, uh, use power consumption, uh, used
for generation. Uh, the, uh, power generation increased by 400%.
like, what are we doing? I I, I really don't
think this is necessary to be here and to be in, in a neighborhood,
you know? Um, what about,
um, innovation and mitigation? He, he just said it,
but didn't even touch on that. Uh, what are the solutions for
that? Um, there are supposed to be coming solutions.
I've read, uh, zero water cooling or reclaim waste water.
what are we gonna do about that when they have to test out the machines
and change out the water that's cooling? Um, what, what's
gonna happen to that, uh, blow down discharge discharge? Uh, is it
gonna be dumped back into our aqui aquifer? Uh, what's gonna happen
with that? So there's a lot of questions he didn't answer. He just
grazed over it. Uh, he didn't give us any numbers on decibels
of how much, how noisy it was gonna be. Of course, it's gonna start off
low when it ramps up, it's going to get louder. The noise, uh,
I'm reading that it carries over a mile away and it's
constant 24 7. 'cause those machines are not gonna be turned off.
so worried about that. What about, you know, close neighbors to that and then
you talking one to two miles away depending what they were ramping up. He
didn't talk about that. He wasn't specific on that. It is
just, what about water pressure?
we already have a problem with our water. Um, brown
water, low water pressure. You know, we don't know what they're
gonna bring to us. Uh, chemicals leaching into the ground that may cause cancer 10
to 15 years from now. Uh, what are we doing with our, um,
you know, the next generation that live here? I mean, I,
I moved here in 2006. I was in huro square, I was close
to it, but now I'm in, you know, enclave of brushy creek. So
I'm across on 79. But it's, you know, we're only two
miles away. But that, that sound is gonna affect us. The heat's gonna affect the
population there, and I just don't think it would be
productive for us. We, we can come up with something better, like a green,
you know, landscaping, greenscape, a dog park, something
that could be useful and beautify hu where we can use that, that
property better. Um, I'm just so
worried about that. And then of course, it's gonna decrease our property values.
um, it definitely is not gonna increase it.
uh, a
lot of my bullets were already taken. Um, what were,
were they, were they given any tax breaks to come here? What were the incentives,
uh, or subsidies? Zach mentioned, you know, what are they looking
at? Just to bring that here. You know, it, it's not worth it. It really
isn't worth it. Not for us. So with that
in mind, I hope that you vote no against the
rezoning. Thank you.
next up we have, uh, mark lyons.
this is just the future age map, two evening.
I'm mark lyons. I live at 3 0 4 westfield street in huddle town square.
I have two points. One, I commend the chair on his choice of shirt.
and this data center does not support any of the pillars.
so I recommend that you do not support this land use as a data center. Thank you.
thank you.
okay. You want the good news or the bad news? I have both. We're halfway through
. Next up we have sally
leon.
a long time. Those chairs are not great .
uh, my name is sally lyons and that is my husband over there. And
mine's not gonna be quite as short as his, but it will be short. And I'm gonna
tug on your heartstrings and I'm sorry about that, but that's how I am.
anyway, if I can get this, this is a picture of my son. I
live at 3 0 4 westfield in old, um, hu town
square. And, um, he has,
he had autism and he passed away two years ago. And
sorry, we had to move from the house that
we lived in for 33 years in hu
to another house in hu, which is right
across the street from where the data center's gonna be.
I'm 65 years old and that's probably gonna be
the last house that I live in. I'm very sensitive to sound.
I can't even, I have to put earplugs on because his cpap
machine makes too much noise. And also he
snores . So I can't,
I can't handle any kind of hum
or vibration that might be coming under the ground or
through the air. And I also have, um,
bad sinuses. So that's, that's
another problem. So what I ask you, please don't
let that be put right there. Put it on the landfill.
nobody lives there. , great spot for
it. And it's still in the huddle.
thank you. Thank you.
alright, next up is christian markowitz.
thanks for hanging in there, . It's been a long evening, but we
appreciate your time. My name is christian markowitz and I live at
700 north emory cove in emory
farms. We've lived there since 2017,
and I brought, I brought both my daughters home to the house we live in.
I'd like to express my reasons for the opposition. Many of them have already
been stated, but a big portion of that is that
there is a effect on homeowners equity.
if you look at reports, it is a negative equity loss of
five to 15% for anyone within
two miles of a data center. That
would be a huge loss to residents. Um, we're looking at about
300 homes just within the one mile radius
between the three neighborhoods. As far as environmental is
concerned. As somebody else stated, the sab e center that the developer
discussed did have a two alarm fire on march 22nd.
the firefighters that attended to that fire did inhale
toxins, um, and had to be treated and also took
five hours to put out other concerns,
of course, would be the location. It is not the location
that residents want because we would live right next to it. There
would be light pollution. There would be concerns about epa
and tceq requirements being followed. A closed
loop system does have toxin chemicals in it to keep the
water clear. It is not something that would not be affecting the community,
excuse me, where it to leak out. It does leak out at times during maintenance
and it would go straight into our wastewater. So that is something to
consider. Other items, of course, include
what others have discussed, which would be air pollution. But for me
it's the water pollution and all of those directly affected. It's not just the
homes, it is the middle school and the elementary school that
my kids attend.
it would affect the neighborhood within a hundred feet. The most.
their metal yard directs or is
directly up against the fence. Yeah, a hundred feet sounds like a lot,
but there would be floodlights out there, there would be activity in that metal yard.
that's where they would most likely have their generators. That's within
a hundred feet of some of these people's homes. That shouldn't be acceptable.
tceq is already having a difficult time
maintaining and measuring chemicals in the water because of all
the data centers within texas that are coming up and starting up.
it is something to consider who would be ensuring that our
water isn't poisoned? Who would be ensuring that when those
generators are up and running, whether it's during an emergency or just
during testing, that it is only just 30 minutes. A proposal
is just that. It's not a contract, it's an idea. And
what they've brought is a great idea in respect to
what income would bring to their company, but not
a great idea for what it would bring to us taxpayers.
so me being someone who is within 200 feet
of this potential development, I would like to vote no on it.
thank you. Thank you.
next up is christine benson.
hi, I am christine benson, and I live at 7 0 1 gray fox
loop, which is in cottonwood farms. So you asked, um,
I read both staff reports for items 6.4 and 6.5, and I have concerns.
I'm gonna try not to belabor the points, as you said, , but I'll do my best
to keep it short. Um, staff recommended denial of both items.
I'm asking you to follow that recommendation, but I wanna give you three specific reasons from the application
documents themselves. First, the numbers just don't add up.
the applicant's pud document says that the rear setback from the residential
properties is 400 feet in the presentation he just showed us, it said 316,
which lines up with the hoa presentation, but the concept plan showed
100 feet. Um, their hoa yeah, sorry. There, there are three different
documents here. Three different numbers. The single most important buffer between
a 24 hour industrial operation in people's homes. How are we supposed to trust
these people if there are already these types of discrepancies
in the plans? Second, the applicant's own, uh, future land
use man. Uh, what was them mandate? Future f-f-l-u-m. Yeah.
flum claims that nearby residents largely support this application.
it says largely support. Uh, there are at least 33
written objections just in the record so far along with every single person
who's come here tonight. Two comments in favor.
I will let you decide if that is what largely support means.
third, what's being replaced here is not just an empty field.
the existing entitlement for this land as zydeco covered,
did include 173 homes, retail, dining,
and a street connection between, uh, ed schmidt and albany way,
which would potentially alleviate traffic on limmer loop, I would hope.
and your staff said that that entitlement, the one that was in place,
the one that the developer wants to throw away, the one that's in
place better aligns with soar 2040. It better aligns
with what the city needs and what the community has said they want. We're not choosing between
a data center and nothing. We are choosing between a data center and
homes, restaurants and walkable retail for the families that already live here.
the two people who spoke in favor of the rezoning claim tonight
are talking down to us like we're bratty children who don't understand what's best for us.
that we don't understand that this data center's not as bad, but
we deserve better than that. We're not kids. We deserve to tell you what
we want. And I hope that you'll listen. The staff said no. All of the community
members here are saying no. I'm saying no. Please follow your staff recommendations
and community and deny both items. Thank you.
next up is christie yal.
good evening. My name is kristi yal. I live at 5 28 emory crossing boulevard
and emory crossing subdivision. I'm a newer resident here. My husband
and I moved here last summer to retire here to be closer
to our kids. And I, a few things I just wanna ask. When I look at those,
that pillar up there, create the highest quality of life. For
who? For us or for zydeco and
the millions that they're gonna make off of this data center. We're not gonna make the
millions off of it. They are. And I, I can tell you from
where I came from when I moved here from louisiana, look it up, this
place called cancer alley in louisiana long time
ago. They welcomed the chemical plants. They promised
lower taxes, better schools. We're gonna come in here and we're gonna
make your lives great. Look it up. Cancer
alley. And this has been over 50 years.
all of the people who make a difference moved.
got out. What's left are the people who can't move,
who have to stay there. One data center, you're
going down a very slippery slope. One turns
into four, turns into eight, turns into this entire
area, becoming a data center. And if you're more of a visual learner as
I am, everybody behind me, raise your hands if you're
against this data center so they can see.
I rest my case.
thank you.
next up is sarah near
good evening. Um, everything I'm about to say comes directly
from the ida report for this agenda. 6.4 and 6.5.
sorry, I'm gonna be reading from a speech I
am speaking tonight to urge this commission to formally adopt the development
services director's recommendation to deny item 6.4, the future land
user map or use map amendment. And item 6.5,
the ped revision for the zydeco data center.
I'm not here to discuss noise trafficked or property values.
I'm here to address the city's legal and procedural obligations.
your own professional planning staff has explicitly outlined why this heavy
and industrial designation is incongruent with the
surrounding stable single family subdivisions, they have documented
exactly how this proposal violates the performance metrics of the
hu soar 2024 comprehensive plan. It removes future housing
diversity, fails to create an efficient infrastructure system and isolates
a 40 acre per parcel solely to accommodate a
single developer's custom zoning request. Most critically
city staff has formally warned in tonight's agenda packet that approving this action
affords the opportunity for spot zoning in texas. It is an
illegal practice that renders a zoning ordinance void. The
legal test in texas courts for spot zoning is whether a municipality
acts arbitrarily, unreasonably and without substantial
relation to its comprehensive plan. Because your own planners have
already established on the public record that this pud violates the soar 2040
plan. The foundational evidence for arbitrary action is already
written in tonight's packet as an advisory board, this commission
serves as a city's procedural firewall. If the
city council approves a zoning change that their own development services department
has formally flagged as a spot zoning risk, the council is making
a demonstr demonstrably arbitrary legislative
decision. More telling the applicant
has admitted that they have no customer for this facility. They're asking this
commission to grant a custom industrial pod for a hypothetical user.
do not trade the documented future of hu do's neighbors for a speculative gamble.
we ask you to reject this epy shell protect
your comprehensive plan and demand that this land be used to benefit the people
of huro. And now, on a much more personal note,
I am a high school english teacher every single day
I see just the despair and the apathy in
my kids. You could do something so awesome for them by
using this land to benefit them. Give them some hope, give them
some joy. This is not it. Thank you.
next up we have joseph cortez.
good evening commission. Thank you for coming out and thank you to everybody here. I know this is how y'all wanted to
spend your evening. Um, I mean, we got families here. That's how important
it is. You know, you see that this is important to everybody. So
I do have ape. Oh, so I, my address is in hu highlands balsam
street. Um, but I own and operate. Um, I'm one of the owners of
the hu farmer's market, uh, which takes place two doors down from this
property at the hu discovery united methodist church every wednesday.
I did have a nice speech and I still read it, but mr. Uh, zydeco did a great job
kind of doing it for me. When he said, there will be no traffic. That
means no people coming from out of town to support our local businesses
to bring tax dollars in that right revenue for decades,
no impact. He said, there's no impact. Yeah, no impact to businesses on that front.
so we can expect nothing. And I appreciate him bringing those
points up. But, so anyways, every single week we see what community
actually looks like. Families are showing up together just like they are today. Kids running
around at the farmer's market, the farmers, the small businesses connecting with their
neighbors. And that's not theoretical. That's real life happening right here in
huro. And that's exactly why I'm here, here. 'cause this proposed data center,
especially in this location, is fundamentally at odds with what makes this city worth
living in. I wanna be very clear, this is not about being against technology.
it's about placement. It's about priorities. You'll hear about tax
revenue, you'll hear about economic development. But I want to challenge that
because revenue alone is not the measure of a healthy community.
this project does not bring people into huro to support our small businesses.
it does not create a space where families gather. It does not support
local vendors, restaurants, or shops. It brings infrastructure
but not life. And once that land is used for this purpose, it'll be gone
for decades. That means no park, no space for
local businesses, no place for future families. No opportunity to build something
that actually serves the people who live here. And that matters
because all of you on this commission are not just decision makers. You are members of
this community. Many of you have families here. Some of you have kids who play
sports here. You volunteer, you show up, you invest your time into building this city.
and that's what community looks like. So I would ask you to think about that, not just as
commissioners, but as a neighbors. What kind of huddle are we building?
one where land in the heart of our city is used to bring people together. Or
one where it's locked away for decades serving something that has no connection to daily life.
here, this decision's not just about a project, it's about whether we
prioritize people or we prioritize profits, which is also debatable.
and I'll leave you with this. There are other places where a data center could go,
but there's only one heart of hudu. Please protect it. Thank you.
cassie cans.
my name's cassie cans. I live at 2, 2 3 hilton street, directly behind where
the status center wants to go. I'm married to a first responder. I have two little children.
one of the points that I have not heard brought up is the strain that we're gonna put on our first responders.
he made a good point and said, seie hasn't had any issues. Seie did.
seie had a really big fire. They also had toxic waste leak into fresh
water systems. And whether we wanna acknowledge it or not, that's a real strain.
we don't have a whole lot of first responders in this town. We are growing, but
we don't have a whole lot. And you want us to send, you want me
to send my husband into things like this under-resourced,
understaffed, under supplied. Why?
why? So I can have no new customers. So I can
have my children watching a data center and no bunnies in my backyard so my garden can
die. So I can't resell my home when I wanna build my farmstead
and, and actually live on site with my horses. Why?
I'm urging you to listen because I'm not, I'm not sitting here saying,
let's not do the data center. I I don't want a data center. This is zoning.
I don't want heavy construction in my backyard. I don't want
institutionalized places that make loud noises and make it impossible for my
children who I'm worried about, who they're hiring and what they're doing around my family.
I want safety. I want security. I don't want more taxes
on my water system when I already have to call y'all every other week. 'cause the water's
brown. But I'm paying a couple hundred dollars
for a family of four with children that I have to fight to take a bath.
. I mean, come on . You have kids. So like,
I'm asking you to really think about this. Are do we have more spaces for first
responders? Do we, do we have the finances for it? Because
I don't see him picking up the bill. I see us picking up the bill. I see it coming
out of our tax dollars when we're already taxed out the wazoo to pay for
more first responders than I would love nothing more, honestly. Um, but I don't wanna
have to pay for all the equipment that's gonna take to put the batteries out when the batteries catch fire.
and then what about my home? Is my home in danger? So all
of my crap is no longer worth anything because it caught on fire and
it, it spread and we couldn't get it. We couldn't get a handle on it. Five hours
for round rock. And round rock has a significantly larger first responder district,
five hours. Not to mention the families
that are impacted by the toxins that were, they were exposed to on the
job. And they're already, they're already risking everything. It's already
a debate about whether or not he's coming home. And now I wanna expose him to
more. That doesn't seem fair and that's
not being talked about enough. But I'm not really gonna shy away from that when it's my family,
when it's my, my community that I'm so plugged into because
I'm a first responder spouse. Please consider that
you could put a park in, you could give us a space for our kids to grow and
flourish. I'm, I'm also an lpca, almost a . Um,
I sit with our youth. I sit with the mental health
of our youth. And you're telling me that a data
center is more important than the kids that wanna commit suicide
on a weekly basis. That I'm having to talk down,
that I'm having to hold the broken pieces of them because
they don't have anywhere where they can let loose and be kids for a minute. That's safe.
I have one park in my neighborhood and it's about as old as the
neighborhood. And it, it's not really safe. And we don't let the kids go. I
have to go to round rock, cedar park, leander. Why don't we have something like that?
do we not care about our kids that much? We're a young town.
we have families. A lot of our community is families.
can we start paying attention to them because we're here, we're
the future. And I'm already halfway out the door
because what the heck? And I'm not really advocating
come live in huddle. I'm not. I wanna
be. I love y'all. I wanna be, but quite
frankly, it's really hard when stuff like this gets pushed and a data center company comes in and says,
we don't mean any harm and we're not gonna do any harm. But my other next point then I'm gonna end
with this one. If he doesn't honor everything he says, we have two options
as a community. We get into a really pricey lawsuit that we may or may not be able
to afford. Or we turn a blind eye and they get to do whatever the hell they wanna do. Pardon
my french.
I urge you to think about that. It is unchecked, it
is unregulated across the country. Don't let it into our waters,
please. Thank you. Thank you.
next up is colby taylor.
colby taylor. I live at 1204 round cove in car meadows.
I'm not a cross the street permit or anything. I'm about a mile away.
the whole point here is, uh, the rezoning. I think it's pretty common sense. Uh,
you're within the two three mile radius. What do you have residential?
families. Families. Families. Families. Use the space for families, right?
I mean, make it a garden, make it something else. The data center doesn't make any sense.
I work in the industry. It would bring my company lots of money. It was actually kind of funny
'cause I worked with every company that he put up there. They don't, though, they
don't have anyone to go into the data center yet. But
again, do something for the families, not for another
greedy company. You have plenty of them. That's it. Thank you.
thank you.
all right. Congratulations. Three quarters of the way. Done. .
next up is robert roseberry.
all right. Sorry. Couldn't tell if it was a wire. K yeah,
I know. I'm sorry. My handwriting is not good. Are your doctor, my name is robert roseberry.
I live at 2 2 7 dale street, huddle square. I've been there about 12
years. Uh, we started to raise a family there. Um,
I'm a united states air force veteran. Uh, worked for the state for 10 years. I've
worked in construction. I'm a cancer patient. Um,
the gentleman here, uh, had a nice presentation. Um,
one lady pointed out there was some question about it, but,
um, it was a nice presentation and I, if, if I was getting paid to be here to sell this to
you, I probably would've said the same thing. Um, and he
actually, uh, proved some of our points in his presentation. There are health concerns.
um, uh, like I said, I'm a cancer patient. I have several other disabilities.
um, I don't need more. I don't want my kids to have more. Uh, our
house is about 2000 feet to the east of the proposed location, uh,
um, the school and about a hundred houses are
between, uh, me in there. Um, he, he
proved some of our points in his presentation, uh, when he addressed the health concerns, uh, when
he addressed the noise concerns, the water concerns, the power consumption, uh, concerns.
um, and one person brought up apparently the, the temperature concerns
that, uh, surround the data center as well. And, and he did mention that there are different
types of data centers. They're not, uh, all, uh, created equal.
um, but a quick google search on any of these, uh,
topics that a lot of people have brought up, um, will show you like, yes,
there are health concerns. Um, he cannot say
that this is a hundred percent safe. Um,
how many years after asbestos was used, uh, was in until they determined,
hey, this is actually bad for you. Mm-hmm . Um, madam cury
found out when it was too late, the radiation was bad for her. Um,
there was a movie that came out in the late nineties, early two thousands, um,
that was based on a true story, aaron brockovich, where, uh, the company is
saying it's safe. It's safe, it's safe. Meanwhile, all the people in the area are getting
poison from contaminated groundwater. Um,
so, uh, I wanna I wanna pause and just ask
a question real quick. Um, I I've been to a city council meeting or,
or or two before. Um, I haven't been to a planning and zoning meeting before.
is the turnout here today? Standing room, room only. Is that normal for
your meetings? ? We've had standing, standing room only
twice in the eight years that I've been on pnz. And
you have a meeting once a month. That's true. Once a month. Once a month, a month.
um, and there was the gentleman that represents,
re represents the company and then one of lady that we're in favor.
but everybody else I've heard so far has been a resounding, no, we don't want this.
and as the one gentleman pointed out, we're not anti-development. Um,
we're just, we don't want this possible health hazard and other concerns
in our neighborhood. Um, and, and, and the gentleman
representing the company did bring up, um, what else
are you gonna do with that property? Uh, and, and a couple people have addressed that, but
we don't have to do anything with it. Not doing anything with it to me
would be a better choice than a potential health hazard. And
he did.
and, and of course there are brother options that other people brought up, but, uh,
he brought up the, the, the water, the closed loop system. Um,
like I said, I, I've worked for the government. I've, I've been in construction
and, and they have all these plans and all these, uh, um, ways
to mitigate the noise and the water consumption. And
I didn't hear one to, they have the backup generators, which would create another problem as other people
have pointed out. Um, but this closed loop water system,
um, I've been around long enough to know, okay, the water they put in there
on day one, it's not gonna be the water that's in there 10 years from now. There there's gonna be issues.
they're gonna have to, I would assume, uh,
replace that water every now and then. Uh, what happens with that water? How
contaminated is it? What are they gonna do with it? Um,
they're, they're gonna have to flush it. Just like the fire hydrants. They're gonna have to keep
adding water to it. And, and in a city where for
months on end, every single year, for as long as I've lived here, we've been in
water restriction. Um, and yeah, he pointed out that an apartment complex
is probably used more water. That's, I I, I'd be okay
with that. Um, that's providing more places to live. Um,
and, uh, power concerns. The
one gentleman pointed out how much more power it would need. Our power system is strain.
like he pointed, one guy pointed out in, in 2021 snowpocalypse.
um, it proved to us that our grid couldn't handle what
we have. So I don't know what our infrastructure is supposed to do to
support this, but I don't think we want it anyway. Um,
apparently I did a quick google search 'cause somebody brought up to me, one of my neighbors over here brought up to me that
apparently, uh, in a data center area, it can raise the,
the temperature of the area. Mm-hmm . And a quick google
search. Uh, ironically ai told me
that, uh, within a six mile range, uh, it can raise the temperature.
um, and there's also radiation concerns. I looked that up too while I was sitting here waiting
and he said, yeah, it's not ionizing radiation, but obviously there
is radiation. Um, and some people may say,
well that's not harmful. It is harmful. It's questionable. This whole thing is questionable
at best. And you,
uh, the, the only good thing I've heard here about
having a data center would be revenue for the city. Um, I think
it's not worth it. Um, related to
the risks. And yeah, they, they,
I was reminded of the wizard or I was paying no attention to the man behind the curtain. Um,
when uh, they have all these concerns that he did bring up and he validated our
concerns there and he's got an answer for everything, which is concerning in itself. , they
got the right answer for everything. But one lady brought up, um,
once it's done, it's done. And this is our time to
stop it from happening. This is our time to,
you have an overwhelming option here to
listen to the community or to choose
money. And, and basically all the people that have come up
here and talked that that's the way I see it, that's your option.
um, and he mentioned like acceptable levels of pollution and noise
and radiation and everything. And there's been talk about selling
your houses and moving. 'cause you don't wanna live next to a data center. I'd be willing
to bet if you tried to put it on the market today,
good luck selling it because right now the buyer's gonna find
out, oh, they're thinking about putting a data center there and it's probably gonna go through because the
little guy most of the time doesn't turn out well for him.
good luck with that right now I'm talking about today.
I could be wrong, but that'd be my guess.
I think I got everything. I'm sorry if I went too long. Thank you. Thank you.
all right, next up is gary oldham.
so good evening. My name is gary oldham.
I live at 29 28 clinton place in, uh, far northeast round rock, texas.
I've lived there for 20 years and I frequently shop and dine in in hu.
I'm one of the co-founders of protect round rock. We're a grassroots community organization
formed last december to oppose what ultimately became the
ninth data center to be approved in round rock. Uh,
make no mistake, artificial intelligence and greed
are the reasons data centers are exploding, particularly across
texas. You've heard concerns, very, very valid concerns.
we've heard, I heard from the applicant and I, I was
somewhere between deja vu and ptsd hearing those claims because
they are almost verbatim the same false claims
made by the data center developers in round rock. They're saying from
the same hymnal, but that hymnals a work of fiction. Along with the other compelling
reasons there are to reject data centers like auditory
noise pollution, the visual blight, the insidious
low frequency sound, the infrasound that causes real health
impacts on human beings, on animals, on
wildlife and livestock. And the strain on the grid. Yes,
data center developers have to pay to connect to the grid, but guess what? That
grid, the electrical provider has to generate far more
electricity and distribute that electricity to support these data centers. And we rate payers.
everybody in this room and all of you pay for that. We are subsidizing involuntarily
the data center industry through, through our electric bills. But I wanna
talk about something else I was pleased to hear some people touch on already. I spent
half my lengthy career in the fire service. I'm
a member today of the international association of fire chiefs national fire protection association.
I'm a survivor of occupational cancer that I acquired through exposure
to carcinogens on the job in the fire service.
a couple people already mentioned one of the fires that sabe data center round rock
has had, they've been operational for about two years. In march, 2024,
there was a second alarm fire there. It required 14 pieces of fire apparatus.
it was a second alarm fire, including automatic aid from adjoining cities. It
took five hours to bring under control. And with all the automatic aid
and other resources provided to round rock, that drew down fire resources throughout
the region, putting everybody at greater risk during that time, 14
pieces of apparatus, 44 firefighters caused $2 million in damage.
it also caused about $400,000 in damage city property, personal
protective equipment of those firefighters that had to be destroyed and replaced.
40 plus firefighters were exposed to carcinogens and other toxins. They're
gonna have to worry about having a ticking time bomb inside their bodies for the rest of their lives. And
hopefully they'll live a full life, but they'll always have that worry.
in addition, this, the, the, the second alarm fire on the 24
or the 22nd of march in 2024 was in a roofless battery
building. And throughout the entire time that fire was occurring in that building,
toxic smoke was billing out of the area and
directly into the neighborhoods adjacent to the sb data center.
you have homes on either side of this proposed location. There's, uh, cottonwood creek
elementary is a quarter mile away. Hu middle schools just a little further than that,
directly in the path of any smoke, particularly with a, a dominant southwest wind that we have here.
when, when using the techniques of sb folks instructed ground rock
fire to use dry chemical extinguishers proved insufficient. They had to
apply copious amounts of water to extinguish that fire. The water runoff
containing carcinogens and other toxins went into the storm drain. It went into
brushy creek. And when we talk about environmental hazards, it's not just a day-to-day
operations, but it's things like this. They've had a second structure fire
this year in another battery compartment. Uh, building wasn't quite as
severe as the first one, but that's two major fires in just two years.
and that's the kind of risk you're accepting willingly if you allowed another data center
in your community. It is an absolute lie to say
the data centers do not place a demand on emergency services, and they don't place
a threat to the environment or the community or their wellbeing of the people. And that's in your
city. I would urge you to represent and look out for the best
interest of the human beings that make up the beautiful and vibrant community
of hudu. It's not the soulless concrete buildings churning data, supporting
ai, supporting mass surveillance that make your community a beautiful place to live. It's
the people, the people behind me, the people at the deus look out
for their best interest and deny this application.
I have a copy of the fire report that'll leave.
next up we have richard booth.
um, hi, my name is richard booth. I work at, I live at, uh, and
I work at, uh, 1 0 9 emory stable drive in, uh, emory farms.
um, I've doodled all over my notes, so I don't
wanna, uh, go over a bunch of things that have already been talked about.
um, I'm a retired environmental engineer, but I still work.
uh, in the last five years I've worked as the air quality consultant on 18
data centers, 16 in california, one in texas, and one in chicago.
um, I can honestly tell you that the site over on
ed schmidt is the worst data center site process
I've ever seen. Nothing even comes close to being as worse
as that. I wanna make one statement here. Um,
everybody's brought up some really good points, um,
but I think the main issue has been overlooked and minimized. And I'll tell you what I think
it is. I think what we should be asking is, is this appropriate
and necessary to locate, locate a data center that will be
sandwiched in between four large existing housing developments
in close proximity to an elementary and a middle school, several
churches, and a myriad of local businesses? I think the answer to that
question is no. In my opinion, the site represents
a poor choice as a location for a data center, and it certainly conveys
a complete lack of concern with respect to the lives and wellbeing
of the residents who live in the nearby subdivisions whose children will attend
the nearby schools. And for the people who work at all the nearby businesses,
based upon the concerns being addressed by the texas legislature
via uh, sb six, it may be beneficial for the city of hu
to step back and wait till all of these environmental inciting
concerns are dealt with in a responsible manner. Hu
already has a proposed 600 megawatt hyperscale data center
being built out on the east side. I think we've done our part with
respect to data centers. , uh, I've previously submitted
a whole list of questions to the planning commissioner. I've revised those.
I have a set here and I would like to request that I be allowed to put 'em into the public record.
can do. Thank you.
in closing, I I'd like to, uh, answer just a couple of concerns that I've heard and
I'll make this very quick. Uh, the gentleman before me was talking about
the best fires, bess battery energy storage
systems. I've worked on those projects in california at the moss landing
facility at the corbe best facility, and I'm currently working on another one.
uh, those fires are extremely hard to put out.
they emit huge amounts of toxic materials, hydrogen fluoride being
the, the most pr uh, prevalent. Um,
I was a little bit concerned when I got the notice in the mail that was only sent out to the residence
within 200 feet. Uh,
right now, when we do modeling for these facilities, we go out to a two and a
half mile radius around the plant, not 200 feet.
so you've got schools, churches, and hundreds and hundreds of families that could
possibly be impacted by any type of accident at one of these facilities.
not only the accident, but the, just the use of the emergency generators.
um, one gentleman brought up
the fact that, uh, uh, a small facility on, on
he, he stated a false small facility on 15 acres.
uh, well this is a small facility on 42 acres.
we regularly routine, routinely permit
much larger data centers above a hundred megawatts on acreage as low as 15
acres. So this acre, this acreage up here could hold a lot more
and we certainly don't want that. Um, I've
given, uh, the copy to the gentleman and I really appreciate the
opportunity to speak before the commission. Thank you.
next is matthew martin.
uh, good evening. I'm, uh, matthew martin. 2 2 8 hilton street, hu town square.
uh, you may have seen me in h uh, the ho 18 meeting call was I idaho last week.
and I'm speaking more to agenda item 6.5 here.
my primary concern is in regards to sound levels, particularly as current huda ordinances
do not speak to c weighted decibel limits, which cover the low drum vibrations
of data centers decided to go, brought up a good point during the hoa
meeting and that I did not have a proposal for what the limit should be. Thus,
I conducted some research on how other city ordinances handled this issue. I found
the language imbued as ordinance to be quite agreeable. As noted for any sound source
regulated by this article. The c weighted sound level dbc
shall not exceed the a weighted sound level dba when
measured at the real property line of the property from which the sound is generated
in terms of the quantitative limit. I did note that zydeco hoa
presentation slide 19 on tonight's presentation, had the
following language for reference, sound levels at the property boundary are
expected to be below approximately 40 dba, which is comparable
to a quiet residential environment. My suggestion would thus be that the
sound limit at the property boundary be both under 40 dba and
40 dbc. Uh, you were talked about,
uh, the predictive noise impact assessment. Someone, uh, uh, rightfully
said, hey, we need a third party acoustic engineer, not so, uh, self-selected.
I would also want to add that interns of the noise impact assessment, a couple stipulations.
one, the baseline measurement should be in the dead of night, say 3:00 am
and also an elevation of a second story home as sound would travel
directly to folk story home. Uh, second story rooms not being blocked by fences, for
example. Also, we should include a stipulation on how ongoing
testing would be performed to ensure this data center remains compliant,
along with what penalties and potential shutdown procedures would entail for continued
violation. In addition to my sound concern above, I am seeking
clarification on this, uh, on if this upcoming vote on the agenda,
item six, uh, 6.5 triggers the vested
in, uh, vested right statute of local government code chapter 2 45,
specifically section 2 45 0.002 a two, which
in summary provides grandfathering protections for a plan for develop
development of real property or plat application is filed with a regulatory agency.
my concern here is that the amendment request for the plan unit development fits
a two language of a plan for development. As I'm understanding
this, any stipulations that you wish to include in the pud would need
to be addressed via altering the present amendment requests being voted on may 7th
to emphasize, I have concerns that if we vote to approve on may 7th,
we would no longer be able to add stipulations to the pud instead being beholden
to our present insufficient ordinances. If this is the case, we should
deny this specific amendment request, adjusting to a more agreeable amendment request before
go forward. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you.
next is katie martin.
good evening. My name is katie martin. I live at 2 2 8 hilton street in hu town square.
I'm about 200 feet from the pro proposed site and I'm here to formally voice
my opposition to the zoning change. I wanna echo some of the concerns
of the other speakers, um, especially when it comes to noise level, the temperature and the
fires. Um, but in my comments, I wanna focus on the character of our neighborhood.
my husband and I chose to buy our very first home in hu specifically because of the
small town feel. If there had been a data center in that space when my husband and
I were looking at houses, we likely wouldn't have moved to this neighborhood. If
the building ends up producing industrial noise, even at a low volume, even if it's
well below city ordinance levels, who will want to buy our home if we
decide to move because we don't want to listen to it anymore. I personally
would prefer if this land remained an open space like a park, as some have suggested.
but if it must be developed, it should be in done in a way, um, in line with the
soar 2040 comprehensive plan and in a way that serves the people
living next to it. We need community fee facing retail.
we need a grocery store. We need services that add value to our daily lives,
not a data center. I urge this commission to ensure that development of this land serves
the people of hu hu. First, thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you.
is it brent mcgurk?
okay. Hello, my name is brent mcgirk. I live at 3 0 1 brookside
street, uh, north side of uh, hu town square. Um,
I'm not gonna open my notepad. Everybody's touched on literally everything I wrote down. So,
um, I have worked, um, at data centers for
a data center as a data center technician, checking all the systems to make sure that there are no leaks,
alarms, or anything like that. The low volume noise
is the biggest pain. That's
one concern that I had and it was finally touched on. Um,
I actually work at one of zy co's or our equipment is
at zydeco. One of zy co's uh, data center is cyrus one down
in the met center. If you go park your car and you get out, you can hear
it. It's constant and it's mind-numbing.
um, I did, I will open my notepad 'cause there is
a quote that I found in the intent section
of the hu development code, a quote by justice
george sutherland. It says, a nuisance may be, may be merely the right
thing in the wrong place, like a pig in the parlor instead of the barnyard.
this is certainly that wrong place.
and I would say that there is no right place in huro. I would agree with others
that we don't need a data center here. I hope you vote no.
thank you for your time. Thank you.
uh, looks like jeremy cortez, carter,
jeremy, carter, lawrence, jeremy c
okay. Probably left. You guys have been pretty
thorough. You probably didn't have anything to add. Uh, brandon
. Thank you. .
thank you for letting me talk for just a moment. I'll be quick. 'cause
almost everything I have to say has already been covered by other people than many of these fun
people. Um, I I do want to make two
points though. One is just like, how do we want hu to grow? You know, like,
I like growth in terms of we get more amenities, more
services, more population. My home property goes up, price
goes up, great. I don't really care about growth that just feeds hundreds of millions of
dollars to someone that doesn't live here, like at all. In fact, I find it very
counterproductive. Um, it's gonna stop us from real
growth. It, no one's gonna move here. So
beyond that, you know, we talk about the primary benefit being revenue, like
tax revenue, but the center is a tax on homeowners
here. Like, that's what it is. It's just a unevenly distributed
tax. Like it's gonna take tens of thousands of dollars off of all our property
value. How is that better than like,
rate a 1% increase in property taxes? I'm not sure I understand the
map there. Um,
and then, you know, everyone here understands quite well that
we have supply and demand economy, and that there's no way you can create
70 megawatts of demand on our power and it not increase prices
for everyone here. And that when they make those claims, it's just entirely ingenuous.
so given those things, I just hope that you guys will do what
the community very clearly wants and say no.
and I wanna stand with two people. I've said before, like,
a lot of people just don't want it here. I don't want it in huddle. Like please just say no
to all of them going forward. That's all I have to say. Thank you.
all right, next up is lindsey roach
going once, going twice. Ler ready,
guys? Ready? It's the last one. Greg roach. He
left too. Oh, all right. Now with that
said, um, is there anyone else who would like to speak
on this item? Name,
uh, address, and if you would, what community?
uh, my name is brian schaffner. I live at 7 0 1 gray fox
loop in cottonwood farms. Uh, my wife christina's already spoken.
and, um, I don't have a lot to add.
um, with everything everyone else has said,
um, I am opposed to this data center. Um,
and I, I, I have to say I'm, I'm really
inspired by all of the people who have come out to speak tonight.
um, it, it's just a wonderful expression of,
of the community because the community is, is just
the people who live here coming together for common purpose. And, um,
I I just want it on the record that I stand with them
and I want to ask you in the strongest possible
terms, please listen to our neighbors and
reject the data center. Thank you. Thank you.
is there anyone else who would like to speak on this item?
please come on up. How your please.
hello? Hi, my name is pam lawrence. I live at
400 farm creek drive in hu in emory farms,
which is directly across the street from this proposed location.
I'm not gonna cover any of the points that I have been discussing, partly on
facebook with people, um, because it's all been covered here tonight.
um, I'm, oh, first I wanna say thank you to all of you for staying
late and listening intently and paying attention to
what everybody's saying because for my, in my mind, that's what's
important to me is that our elected officials and our volunteers,
um, listen to the community and what the community has to say.
and, and they are overwhelmingly asking you all
to really pay attention here and to decide
that this property should be used for the benefit of the citizens who live around
it. And not just for tax revenue and not just to make money
for a data center. There's too many unknowns about
data centers, and you've heard it all tonight. And the other thing I
wanna say about the presentation from zydeco is, you know, that was a
very nice presentation, but extremely self-serving. You know, it's, it,
it doesn't ha it doesn't cover any of the, the negative impacts that
the people are concerned about. So thank you for your time
and I hope everybody has a great night, and I hope you make a very informed decision.
thank you. Thank you.
okay. So, uh, is there anyone else?
all right. I am not going to close the public hearing as was
discussed several hours ago. We're going to continue this public
hearing on may 20th, if they're teenth. April, april, april,
april, april 20. Thank you. It's getting late. I know. I've been up here for a few
hours. , um, let's past my bedtime. Um,
so yes, april 20th. There, the public hearing will
continue. If there are people who want to speak, um, after
viewing this or not viewing this or whatever want to speak, encourage
them to come. I want, I personally would like to hear
more voices. I, I like that. I
like public engagement. Um, that being said, we
as a body are not going to vote on this until april 20th.
so we will consider on our own, we will not meet
and debate this between ourselves. That would be a violation of texas
law. But yes, uh,
april 20th on this item,
we will have a decision. So
that's something you can look forward to. With that, we're not going to
vote, we're just going to continue public
hearing that start at eight 30. It will be continued. And
we are adjourning. No, we're not adjourning. No,
we we're not no adjourning the public hearing. Pause.
we're gonna pause it. Just move to the next item. We're moving to the next item. There
we go. No, late night. We need,
uh, don't we wait a minute. Hold on. Pretty picture. Don't
we need to table 6.4? No, we're
not taking any action on it, so, right. But we are taking
action.
we need because of the public hearing. No, that's custody.
okay. All right. I, I messed up. You may want to explain to them that, that
this, once we make the decision, city council, they make the final.
right. They may not know that. Okay. So the next
item is 6.5, which is a public hearing. Just
saying it's a public hearing consideration and possible action on the zydeco
data center, formerly known as upper schmidt creek pod
revision.
. All set. Did should we, I'll ask, should we take
a a, a break at all for any reason to come for break? About five minutes, right? No,
just keep going. Okay. I'm into it either way. I'm just, do we want, do we want to it? Alright.
you know what, let's do it. All right. I got stress. My we're gonna, I believe you. I
believe we're gonna take a seven minute recess. We will reconvene, uh, on my
clock at 10 50. Okay.
all right. I got the same. So it is, uh, thank you. 10 51. We're gonna reconvene.
yes, sir. And we're going to jump into 6.5
public hearing con consideration and possible action on the zydeco
data center, formerly known as upper schmitz creek hud
revision. One second.
I'm waiting for technology to catch up to us. Alright, .
thank you, mr. Chair. Uh, my name for the record again is howard kuhns. I'm the
director of development services. This item 6.5 is
a public hearing and consideration and possible action related to
the item that we just, uh, talked about. Um, the previous item was
the future land use map revision. This is effectively a rezoning,
it is a revision to the planned, uh, unit development,
uh, formerly known as upper schmidt's creek. But this is the one that would facilitate
the, uh, establishment of a data center. On the
subject parcel, uh, put up a map there. We're at the same
site, 40 acres southeast corner of limber loop and, um,
edge schmidt boulevard. Um, put up some, uh,
references there so you can orient yourself. Uh, the map that I put
together of, uh, the existing zoning shows b two commercial
in the vicinity. There is some single family directly adjacent
to the east single family that is adjacent to the west
across the edge schmidt boulevard. Um, there's additionally single family
residential to the northwest and the northeast. And those are both across,
uh, existing rights of way as well. We've got some, um, light
industrial that's in the vicinity, uh, to the west, uh, about 12
or 1500 feet to the west. Um, there is some existing b one,
uh, local business, which is the, uh, more restrictive, less
pervasive, uh, type of retail and local business zoning that
we have. There is a piece of unincorporated, so
nz no zoning, unincorporated williamson county directly to the north across
leer loop and, um, multi-family on
the southeast. Um, which is the currently
the western terminus of live oak street. The site itself is
zoned pud. And there are, uh, there's an, the existing entitlement
is pud, um, for the multifamily development that we spoke about earlier. So
an aerial photo, again, the, the site itself highlighted in red. You
can see the existing and emergent, uh, development pattern of
single family detached east and west civic uses of the elementary
and the middle school a little bit further east. And, um, this site,
uh, the adjoining site to the south and the site to the north across
edge schmidt are, uh, vacant, currently undeveloped. So
the current classification is pud, um, as stated in
the staff report. And I, and I don't wanna read to you from that, but
the important parts of the current classification is that seven parcels, 21
acres for commercial two parcels, which are 18 acres for residential. And
the rest of what's in there will be right of way. And that shouldn't be lost because
there is currently a plan for the connection of albany
way from the east will move to
the west and will connect to edge schmidt. So essentially
bifurcate this site that we're talking about today with an extension that will
connect that neighborhood to the arterial edge schmidt, um,
173 units in different housing types. Um,
the requested classification is pud with a base zoning of light
industrial, um, that would, uh, facilitate the establishment
of this data center project. Now, um, in a, in
an attempt to mitigate, you know, perceived or real negative effects on the adjacent neighborhoods
and the, and the rest of the adjacent pattern, they have proposed a host of,
um, I kind of call it restrictions, I guess, on the development
of the site setbacks, um, buffer yards, landscaping.
um, there's also a, a wall, um, that would
block both visual and, and the auditory intrusion from
the site onto the neighboring sites. Um, and you can
read through that. It's, it's in the applicant's material, it's in the a ir and, and it's also
in this report here. So as we went through and did our evaluation,
um, the, the staff concerns really were all of the,
all the site plan concessions proposed being those buffer yards,
the increase in the setbacks, things like that. Um, all of them are
proposed as mitigation to reduce the interference between two
dissimilar land use categories. If we were
talking about, uh, a land use that was being established on this site that
was more harmonious with the existing pattern, there,
there wouldn't be a need for higher and more intensive
buffering and uses such as what's proposed for this. So
that, um, makes you take a little bit of a, of, of a harder look
at the proposal for the, um, uh, the conceptual
site plan that was included. Um, when you do, does a single
use operation with this low development density
provide more benefit to the community than the current entitlement? I think the text of
the comprehensive plan indicates that no, it does not. The needs
as identified in the comprehensive plan and from the community at large, and we'll talk a little bit
about that in a second. Um, the, are are spelled out reasonably
succinctly that we need a greater diversity of housing. We need, um,
more opportunity for, uh, local, commercial and local employment.
keep people from having to make trips to work where we lose that retail
leakage, where we're going to round rock in pflugerville and austin to get goods and
services that we would prefer be, uh, sold here within the community.
um, so the, it goes back to the question of is what's proposed better than
what's existing? And staff has not been able to necessarily make that statement
establishing a project with no active nor passive benefit to the surrounding community.
in that we're talking about, um, the, the,
the expectation that this site will effectively wall off, um,
the communities on either side from themselves.
um, it would be, you know, a site that
would not lend itself to pass through traffic, whether
it be, uh, rights of way for automobiles or off
highway trails, uh, or or other type of use that you could, uh, pedestrian
bike bed facilities for that neighborhood that, especially to
the east, trying to get back down to the edge schmidt corridor, which is
emergent with corridor retail. So it would be nice if we could get some of those cars
off the road by facilitating, uh, travel between
the rooftops and the local retail. But,
um, putting up this site, we, we lose the opportunity to connect the roadway network
and lose the expectation that there would be, uh, pedestrian connectivity
for the folks that are around. 'cause these will likely be secure sites, and they don't want
intrusion from the folks from the outside that being able to pass through. So, um,
one, one of the thing, it, it would basically just be a hole of inactivity
in the, in a donut basically, of higher activity of all the, the rooftops.
does this fulfill those certain needs identified by hudu and its residents? So since,
since I've been here, I've, I've been educated to the idea that hudu is,
um, quite introspective. Um, we, we look at our processes,
we look at our procedures, we look at our forms, we look at everything and decide whether
or not it's the best bang for the buck, be it, you know, whether it's, uh, the
best idea for the number of persons assigned to it or how much money is budgeted to it.
and one of the things that we do is put out a survey, quite often, put out a, a, a survey
to the citizenry and say, what, what's going well? What's not going well? What are
your highest priorities? And what would you rather see stopped? And some of the things that come out of that
true are traffic traffic's probably the number one answer that I see when
I went through the results from this calendar year. So when you talk about traffic and you
say the number of trips onto and off of the site as currently entitled versus
the number of trips onto and off of the site as proposed. True.
I think the pro I think the proposal, uh, uh, would have fewer trips per day. I
agree. I think there would be less cars coming into. Um, but at what cost
is the expectation? The, the, the, the emergence of traffic
is the expectation that you are, uh, moving forward in
commerce and the, um, the idea that
development is gonna bring more roads, it's going to create more
connections in the transportation network. And that is the number one way
to alleviate traffic pinch points. Because what we have is, you know, traditional
development of cul-de-sacs generally forces traffic in the other direction, and
then eventually they all end up at the same intersections. And then eventually we get two and three
light cycles before you can get through. The only main intersections that are through
the expectation would be to create more of those roadway networks,
minor and local streets to take some of the, you know, initial
push of rush hour traffic off of the major corridors and connectors.
additionally, um, you know, some of the things in there that were identified were more
options for shopping and entertainment, which is something that huda is pretty low
on. Um, and more options for local employment. So people don't
necessarily have to leave and travel so far to go to work. The current entitlement creates opportunities
for all those things, you know, diversify the work, um, create more
entry and exits off of the, the site itself. And then, um,
shopping and entertainment and employment. So, um, if
you read through the staff report, there's a, there's a number of other, uh, uh, points that
were put in there. But at the end of the day, um, staff's analysis has
shown that this would not be an appropriate assignment of, uh, zoning
to this site in light of the existing and emergent, uh,
uh, development pattern and the dissimilar district being placed in
the, in the middle unto itself, staff can't support it.
alright. And do we have a, uh, presentation from the
applicant on this item?
um, it's extremely late and I appreciate y'all, y'all appreciate y'all bearing with us. There's, there's just too much
to address right now and I just wanna let y'all, um, get outta here on, I just do wanna
note, uh, mr. Kunz on the, on the albany road connection issued
to ed schmidt. Um, that's designed because we, specifically in our october
meeting with the neighborhood, hoa, we showed them an iteration of our site plan actually connecting a
ring road, uh, to ed schmidt boulevard. And not a single person on the call said they wanted that
there was 20, 30 people on the call and they said, we think that would bring
too much trafficking into the neighborhood. We prefer your plan. Um, not showing that road,
if the neighborhood's position has changed on that, it's certainly something that we can look back into. 'cause we did
have side plans that, that showed that. So thank you. Thank you.
alright. And as this calls for a public hearing, I will
open the public hearing at 11:02 pm
oh my god. And very similar to what
we just did on item 6.4, this will be continued
onto april 20th meeting, is that correct?
gosh, I'm sorry. Is is that going? Is this public hearing going to be continued
as well? That is correct, yep. All right. Two items will be heard again. Uh, so is
there anyone to speak on this item?
all right. Seeing no one, and with us not taking action on this,
I do have two questions. Okay. Um,
number one question is, it was mentioned in,
in the public comments, but it was something that I made
note of as soon as I saw this. What sort
of additional fire department resources are going
to be required to combat any sort of battery
fire at this facility? Uh, I understand that
fire departments currently have issues even with evs
in garages, and I want, I am
curious to know if we can get any sort of information about
what additional resources would be required.
I can ask. I I don't know. That outstrips my yeah, yeah. Subject matter
expertise. We probably ask the esd and they've got an answer for us,
but I don't know the answer. Okay. I can ask them. Uh, second,
second question is a kind of legal one.
um, I've seen it mentioned in the staff report and,
uh, seen mention of it elsewhere, spot zoning.
are we in danger of falling into
some sort of spot zoning with this? I don't know if I'd use the word danger per
se. Okay. Um, I, I did recognize that there could be an opportunity
just because of the, the nature of the block
and the surrounding area, that to place this assignment unto itself,
um, especially in light of the direction from the comp plan,
um, that it, it did open us up to the potential for a liability,
depending heavily, depending heavily on the argument that
could be made by the, by a person who was aggrieved. So
my answer is yes, and I felt strongly enough about it that I wanted to mitigate that risk to
the city, um, by opening up the conversation. I, I want,
I want to talk about it not in a legal way per se, we
don't have to go to exec or anything, but just talk about what the concept is.
I have been involved in cases in my professional history where,
um, spot zoning was called for and was completely appropriate.
um, the, the reason was there were certain
districts that were residential. The residential districts did not allow
for other certain uses that were usual and customary
ancillary for residential. So they had to put in little dots
of, for, it was for schools and for, uh, fire stations. Mm-hmm
. You couldn't put civic uses in a residential district in this city where I worked. So every
time you would do a subdivision, you had to put those little things in there to allow,
because the only reason for the civic uses was the rooftops. That's who they served, right?
so they started to put them closer to where the people lived rather than moving them to a different
district. Um, so I don't always,
I try and tell people that it's not always bad or wrong,
but we know of the instances where it's done, where it is bad and
it is wrong. And if you were to place this entitlement
where it's located, I, I feel that there's not the nexus
of the immediate adjacent neighborhood, that it's immediately adjacent
neighborhood is not a requirement or a need or even a, a,
a, um, a a patron or a client of this use.
it is unto itself. And I thought that it was just a little too remote
to make me comfortable to that I didn't wanna, didn't wanna mention it. So the
following question then for me is,
is there a way to include conditions,
requirements in the p to mitigate that
or eliminate it?
I mean, mathematically, yes. Right now, off the top of my head, I'm
not sure that I can think about how other than somehow incorporating
this, like folks have mentioned where there,
there is a use on there that would be useful to the rooftops
adjacent. So people have talked about passive recreation, dog parks, open
space trails, things like that per perhaps. Um,
if you combine the uses and you mix those uses together,
see the wild card here is that this is a pud zoning. It's not a straight
euclidean district that calls for what you can and what you cannot.
the language that's in our udc speaks to, you know, freedom of design
and, you know, being able to work outside the bounds of
specific metrics for the purpose of creating something that would necessarily
be a, a approved or approvable, um, by
the decision makers. So I can't possibly enumerate
all the possibility or all the combinations of ways that that could work. That's
why I say mathematically I think so. But as I sit here right now and the
entire 45 seconds of consideration, I've given your question, um, I don't have an
answer for you right now on that. Alright. All right. , sorry.
okay, well, um,
words that on
since we're taping. It's fine. We go to next month, right?
yeah. So this is going to be handled on the 20th. Okay. It'll be voted on that.
we'll close the public hearing on the 20th and we'll vote okay on
this item on the 20th. So we can just have discussion already next, next month about,
yes, we can certainly have discussion on it next month. Okay. Yeah, if you have any
questions that you want to, you know, talk, think about over the next month, you can ask 'em now,
I guess. Mm-hmm . Well, just the, the 6.5 agenda item.
I, I agree with the staff with your sentiments about this.
it takes you back to the early 1930s of the red line districts and the
fallout thereafter, and the social justice that came with that, and all the health effects
and side effects of those neighborhoods. Especially in austin. There's three or four of 'em in austin
who are still suffering generational poverty, health effects,
and all the things that happen with the heavy industry that was pushed into those neighborhoods
under the red lines. And this smells just like this and
I, I have a lot to say about it. Okay. That's fair.
anyone else before we move on?
okay. Then we'll move on to item 6.6
consideration and possible action on the 2026 planning and zoning commission's cip
recommendation. You'll notice in the packet that the staff
report was pretty thin. Um, staff really didn't value add to this at
all. This is a procedural matter where
the full recommendation being made at a regular meeting of all of you that goes
forward to the city council staff did not touch
the document or change any of the lines or any of the other information. So
I'm gonna go ahead and let the chair speak to this as it's, um, been your project
for a number of months now. Um, but really the only thing that we're
looking for is staff, is just a formal vote where we can count who said yay,
who said nay? That, uh, goes to the, uh, mayor and council.
alright, so, uh, regarding the cip,
uh, I know that everyone saw the worksheet that we were
using mm-hmm . That staff had developed. It was
loosely based off of the 2025 cip
that council approved. Um, had a lot
of bright colors, had a lot of numbers, had a lot of columns that
didn't add up, et cetera, et cetera. I took it upon myself to
clean that up and to make it a little more
reader friendly, let's say. And that is
what you have as the first asm gonna say
slide sheet in your packet.
it is far too small to read . Okay.
it's just you're not reading that normal pages to tell me
. Um, which is why I brought my computer,
which has the spreadsheet that I manipulated .
so I can tell you that
all of our comments that we made
as part of the cpac were captured
what was presented to us. And our comments
are unchanged. It's just clarified you,
you don't have to scroll through a spreadsheet to find fiscal year 30.
you don't have to say why are there all these, it, it's
just cleaned up. That's all. That's all I've done with this is clean it up
so that we don't have to get into what's the tax
rate impact and what's the funding sources and
how does the funding source shake out over the next 30 years. That doesn't
matter a whole lot to the cpac.
so what I have is
the comments, uh, we can go through them if you'd like,
but the, if there's been no changes to it, yeah.
we, we, we do have one with a stick. They're just separat separated out. That's all. Can
I ask some on park? Pp seven four,
sorry, my voice is going. Uh, we have for 88
compliance, it's not, there's no set, uh,
I guess number there. It's just two zero xx and it's at the bottom of parks.
yeah. Now, now one of the things that I would like to
accomplish mm-hmm . Um,
is we've been working on the, the cip process
as a city and getting it to council and getting the recommendations
and all of that stuff. There is room for improvement mm-hmm
. And the process currently
is, well that's why I took it upon myself
because I had to meet with the,
uh, cip engineer. I had to meet with the city manager, I had to meet with the finance
director and just collecting this information
so that it made sense mm-hmm . And I could compile it into something
presentable and digestible
shouldn't have to be done. But I understand we're going through
the process, we're building this mm-hmm . And
my intent is if this is approved,
then after it goes to counsel and
should counsel prove it, et cetera, I want to sit down with
the stakeholders and refine this process.
because if I'm not here, I don't want the
next chair to have to go, how do I, how do I manage
this? It should be a clear cut process. Sure. Do this, do this, do
this, take it to council. Mm-hmm . Good idea.
good idea. So that's what I've been working on. Okay. Independently,
hopefully that process, because it is a staff process,
will get tweaked by staff, but it shouldn't be anything we need to vote on.
alright. But I just wanted to explain, this is why I kind of
took it on because I looked at these processes and went, yeah, this needs
help . Yeah. You right. So
that's kind of where we're at. Um, that's the first page.
uh, that's also the second page. It's also the third page.
and it looks like that's the fourth page. So they're getting this or a cleaned
up version. They're going to get,
I would assume that they're going to get this if give
'em this so they can read this. Okay. Yeah. That, that sounds fair. No, do
tell 'em like this. That sounds fair. I'll give, I'll give them a big magnifying glass and, and
this, yeah. There we go. Sitting back there going, we're gonna kill you .
but, but my intent is, and
I've I've talked with howard about this, my intent is to be there and do
the presentation to council. If they have questions about why
did you guys do this? Here's the rationale. I can answer
that. Rather than having staff members go, well,
we thought this and I think cpac thought this. No, they're
hearing it directly from the straight, straight from the horse's mouth. There we go.
so my intent is to present that
microscopic first four pages. Yes. Have no
problem with you doing that. So, I mean,
make a motion. So you're saying everything's cleaned up and there's been no changes
to it or anything? No changes to, to what? We, why
don't we just vote on it now? Well, unless anybody has anything,
I don't, I don't know if, go ahead, tony, make a motion. I don't know if anybody
here has complete trust that I didn't change something.
I, well, so if you do have a question that rick would not
have changed anything, if you do have a question or, hey, did this get changed?
I can tell you I only, I only make a suggestion.
uh, some of the columns are kind of repeatable. Oh, yes. If there's a way we
can kind of clean that up before we hand it off. Right. The,
uh, the, the columns or the rows. Some
like, uh, sidewalk reconstruction, some of 'em,
they're still on there and we've moved that to a different, you know, the top
of the sidewalk construction. Um,
some of 'em still have double values. I just wanna make sure that
some of the finance numbers are confirmed and that we
don't have numbers in the right, wrong place. Um,
as far as the discrepancies and any of the conflicts go,
we as a body as cpac did not identify those
and we did not discuss those and we did not approve those.
well, there's, therefore they remain. Well, I know there's some,
I why I say that is there is some notes like include with
t one refy. Right. And, and that is a
cac note. It's not the presented title. Okay.
so like, uh, what, what was one you just said the parks,
uh, sidewalk p 74.
was that, was that the parks 80 a? Yes.
sorry. For some reason getting, we don't have p 74 here. Dumb.
yeah. P 74 2 dash two xx.
is that the bottom of parks? Yep. P okay. Got it. Uh, p 74,
uh, two xx. That was a da
compliance parks for the parks. Mm-hmm . As opposed to the
trails and the, uh, facilities. Mm-hmm . And that
was a ca recommendation to include in the cip.
yeah. Okay. That's the comment. So in the presented
as it's a da compliance parks. And then the comment
is c, a recommendation to include in the c-I-p-c-I-p. Okay.
you know, if we look at the very next one, t zero one
refi, it's presented as t zero one
refi sidewalk construction. We didn't make any comments on it. There
are no, that column is blank. Yeah. Okay.
okay. So I'd like to make a motion. Yeah. So that being said,
if you guys are good with going forward with the
comments notes that we made on cpac mm-hmm .
I will entertain a motion. Okay. I'd like to make a motion
to approve 6.6, the planning on zoning commission
cip recommendation items as presented.
I'll second. I'll second cory. All right.
so I have a motion by commissioner schad and a second
by commissioner hall. Any discussion on the motion?
just a question for staff. Um, what are,
what are the continued like improvements on this process
that we're working on currently as a staff?
can you restate that? What are the improvements, uh, for the cip process
planning process? Like, what are we doing as staff on improving this process?
are we doing anything now? Other than what rick just stated?
I can't speak to that. I, I haven't been involved in, I just started in january, so
I'm, I, I inherited this. Okay. In the beginning of february. I could,
I could ask around and okay. And find out and get some answers back to you, but I'm, I'm
not, I think this is usual and customary in local governments across
the nation where p and z makes a recommendation on cips,
specifically the, the x's and o's of the city of hu's process.
I'm not aware if there's any talk about changing or altering it at all. This is the
first I'm hearing about it. No changing or altering it. It is just more of improving,
obviously. Right. And so I was just curious. So as an
example, and I've, I've got, uh,
five mm-hmm . Proposed tweaks to the process. As an example,
only, uh, capital improvement projects approved
by city council are assigned a four digit
year after the project number. Okay. P zero two
is xx, x, x until council approves it. Then
whatever year they approve it in, that gets plugged into the xs.
okay. That year. That way everybody can look
and go, that's an x that's not approved yet. Right. That's a 2026
that's funded for this year. Council said. So, okay.
that's an improvement to the process. Yeah. Alteration
to the process. Yeah. I only ask 'cause it's probably a
good idea for a, a board that we
do lessons learned like what can we do better next time? Exactly. Exactly. And that,
that's kind of what I did, you know? Yeah. Call that the, the military
experience or whatever. It's like, okay, here's how we can make it better
next time. Yeah. Right. And once I kind of discuss
these with howard, my hope is
that I'm gonna bring it back as an agenda item
that I request you guys take a look at it and go, yeah,
that's something that, you know what? That sounds pretty good. Or, oh, you forgot this
and we can tweak it again mm-hmm . And then
help hopefully refine this process. Okay. Because right now, as
it stands, if, you know, we all die in a meteor strike.
yeah. The next people are gonna be starting from square one and not know what
to do. Right. And that's not a good way to do things.
and, and, sorry, one more question. I'm sorry. Okay. It, um,
, uh, the storage of this spreadsheet or,
uh, whatever the master spreadsheet for scip,
is that somewhere that we don't have like
floating works at cip worksheets everywhere or
I I, when I need it, I go to finance alberta is can okay, can can
give that to me. Okay. That's fine. Um, the, the document tonight I think is
actually the one, uh, that we got from, from rick. Okay. So
it, it hasn't actually been washed, quote unquote through the finance process yet.
this is literally the raw recommendation that will go,
uh, to the council. Okay. I was just making sure 'cause we worked on
the cip list and it was the wrong one, so that's why I asked that. Yeah.
okay. I'm good. And, and the intent is to
avoid that in the future. Exactly. . Okay. All right.
so we have, uh, I once again, we have a motion by commissioner
rad and a second by commissioner hall to approve the
cip list recommendation to city council.
all right. Any further discussion on the item?
okay. Then I will call for vote. All in favor say aye. Aye.
aye. All opposed. Same sign. Motion passes seven
zero. And now the moment some
of 'em have, some people have been waiting for
the presenta 6.7 presentation only by the huro city council's
ad hoc committee for the city of hu's unified development code and
engineering design manual amendment.
thank you mr. Chair. Howard konz for the record. Um,
put a couple of staff notes together real quick before the presentation. So this, this agenda item,
I'm sure you went through your packets and you saw that the udc itself is
many, many dozens of pages. Uh, the engineering design manual
as well. This is not the expectation of staff that you went
through it and you have a litany of questions and points and you wanna put it forward. Mm-hmm
. This is an opportunity for the committee to broadly and generally present
their changes to the document. Um, the reason is this process has been
going on for quite a while. I believe it started maybe in late 24 or spring
of 25 timeframe. We're already in april of 26. Um,
in that time we have new commission members. And the document that
this board, this commission saw the last time that went forward has been,
I'd say radically changed. Mm-hmm . Um, by the committee. So I think it's fair that
you get another bite at the apple to take a look at it, to see what it's turned into, um, before
you make a recommendation on it. So to that end, um, we have another calendar
for you. Another, another calendar of how this is gonna go. Tonight is april 7th,
and that is the ad hoc presentation. Um, feel free to ask them
any questions or get any clarification that you're looking for. Um,
between, uh, now and the next time that you vote,
legal has advised us that the city council will have to, um, propose
and pass a resolution that will create the opportunity for you
pnz commission. Have a joint meeting with the city council to
ultimately approve the document, whether it is a wholesale
revision to all the pages or repeal and replace. However it's done. That'll
be done at a joint meeting. So at the may 7th, which is the first regular
may meeting of the city council, there will be an agenda item on there to set the date for
that meeting. Tentatively the date is, um, uh, may the
21st. So the next time that you'll have to talk about
this as a group will be a special called meeting in may,
um, may the 12th planning and zoning special called
meeting for consideration. That will be the long meeting. That
will be the exhaustive exercise where we go through this chapter by chapter and page by page
and talk about what the changes are from the existing document, which you can find on
the city's development services website. It's, it's the one that we're operating under today. Mm-hmm .
versus the revised version that has been put in front of you,
uh, in your packet. Side note, if anybody wants one
printed out, let me know and I will. But I held
off on staff, um, printing those, uh, you know,
for you tonight. It was somewhere in the neighborhood of 1400 and change
pages of paper. So if I get the opportunity to save that, I would take it. But
if you want one, I am absolutely willing and able to create that for you. You can come by and
pick it up if you want to be able to make changes, you know, with a pen and, and the paper.
um, finally, may the 21st, which is the second regular meeting
of, uh, the mayor and council. May the 21st would be that joint meeting
for p and z and council. So may 12th special called meeting. You'll
get to talk with them and staff and anybody else and hash it out for what your recommendation
for approval will be. And that will move forward to, uh, the meeting later
that month. So if there's, um, anything I can help you with, there
are, uh, a couple of things that I, that I did wanna talk about and add. I
can do it whenever it's appropriate. Um, one of 'em would be an ordinance for, um,
the city's capital recovery ordinance. The idea that we would, uh, put
things in the ground and then as users come and tie into it, they would pay us back a prorated
portion of, you know, whatever went in the ground. But there's a lot more to it than that, but mm-hmm . There's
something we want to add to the udc, which is the capital recovery ordinance. And the other one is,
I talked about earlier this evening, was the public hearing signs. I think the process we have in place right
now for public hearing signs could be refined. I've done it in a couple of other, uh,
cities where I have gone out to bid, um, as the department,
as the city, to all the sign manufacturers that I can find and tell them exactly what
I want. Size, color, location. And these sign companies will often establish
the signs. They'll go out and put 'em in the ground for you. All you have to do is go out and tell them.
so I'll put that out as a bid, I'll get a series of quotes back.
hopefully I will go with the lowest qualified bidder likely, or something like
that, or make a recommendation. We will change the fee schedule so that
any application that a client makes that requires a public hearing sign,
they would give us what ends up being a pass through. They pay us, and I'm making
this up a hundred dollars. Mm-hmm . So let's say there's a hundred dollars signed fee. We would
eventually contract with a signed contractor who would invoice us for a hundred dollars for that
sign going up. We just pass it through. The sign company goes out, establishes
the sign, they take a picture of it and send it back to us. The thing about them is they'll
use nicer poles. , they usually use a c channel post
rather than, you know, we, we may do with some wooden stakes that we were able to pick up from
lowe's, which worked this time. Prior to that we were using these
steel h frame sort of thing. A wire h frame that
blow over as soon as the sun shines on it. Like it's just the wire h frames that
I gave to the city. Yeah, yeah. Well, we, we, we had them in, the signs we had were so
big and the frames were so small that that wasn't really getting it done for us. So
we can also make these two-sided and place them perpendicular to the right of way so they're
visible in both travel directions without necessarily having to stop in front of it to
see it. And because we're gonna make them a little bit bigger, four by four, we can put two inch lettering
on it, two inch lettering, it, you know, 35 miles an hour, at least you can get some of the big words,
. Um, so anyway, that's a, that's an expectation that I'm gonna put together and I'll probably have
a, some, some verbiage to that, to that end, uh, by the time we,
we sit down again and talk about this, so it's late, I've talked too much already. I'm gonna
let the folks that did the hard work get up in front of you and, and give you the, the high points
of what they've gone through. And you can go ahead and ask him any questions. Awesome.
well, if howard thinks he talked too much, he hadn't seen us talk . Um,
so we made up a subcommittee mm-hmm . After we, um, it, it came to council
to vote. Um, we, some of us read through it and, um,
I think the consensus was it might've been sized a little bit. Um,
and while there are radical changes for central texas, I would argue
that in other parts of the country, in the state of texas, the changes are maybe not
as radical. Central texas, if you go to other metro areas,
is kind of known for being, um, extremely complicated bureaucratic
and bogs a lot of stuff down. And what that ultimately does is costs
you more in tax money in, in terms of we need more employees to navigate the
process. A lot of times, how many times have you guys had a meeting where we
have two parts of code to conflict and we're trying to figure out what executives means, or how
many times. I know on the council side we have people, we're debating what the code
of we're reading actually means. Staff's got one interpretation, but it changed
because we have a different staff member and then people on council read it and we can't
even figure it out. And yet we're expecting developers to do this. So what we did is
we read through every single page down to, and when
I say ized, we had things like what was once an sf one neighborhood
is now called a neighborhood hamlet. And we're like, why would you make a change to handle
it? What was the point of that? We looked at it as it's just making a change. To make
a change. We spent $400,000, uh, councilman
morris went through, we found a lot of sections. Section two is now section
three, section four is now section two. And when y'all put it back
together, safe to say it was almost the same damn code, but for $400,000,
we renumbered it and moved the paragraphs around. So
we read through it all with a couple focuses. One, we wanted to take away as much staff
discretion as possible because what we find a lot of times is,
um, and here's an example that I'll start off. Um, there
was one for a detention pond. Could be up to 25% in a building setback,
um, depending on staff, uh, discretion. And you had to have the, and it
wasn't staff at that time, it was city engineer or director of planning. So one of your
two highest paid people are now in a room debating where
the detention pond goes. What we did is we said, look, we don't want you to have the
opportunity to put it in this building setback, either make it work or don't make it work. We don't really
care. But the problem with putting that stuff in a building setback is
a developer then comes up and says, hey, instead of 25, can I do 35?
and the staff's like, well, I I could let you do 35 if you do this over here.
and then we spend four months of debate on something that most of the public
doesn't care because detention pond's a detention pond. And so we're
spending all this staff time doing all these debates. And I can tell you my
personal job, what my boss always says is, well, they can't make you do that. Yeah.
but you want this over here to happen. So now we we're horse trading, so we took
a lot of that stuff away. The things that were left, a lot of them are staff,
any staff, anybody in planning can make the decision because we're trying to, again, make
it a little bit more black and white. A couple other things, big changes we win is
we want to really go through what really matters to what we hear about the
people in huda. What do they hear? And a lot of times what we've heard is we
like the small town feel. But if you look at a small town in texas, what
do you see? You see, uh, multiple different types of uses, building types. We
are talking like the prototypical, um, uh, whataburger
with the tall steeple. And then what do you see in the big cities? They're all just block
buildings. They're all the same color, they're all the same, everything. Because the code has gotten
so complicated that developers just go, look, what does it take to
get it done? And so we've thrown out what makes a lot of people say what we
want is small town, and we thrown in big city. So to that extent,
um, we really looked at things like we had parking,
we had exhibits to where they tell you you can't have the building up on a street
backed up to the street. But then the diagram for parking shows a building up on a street and
tells you how to do the parking. And so the depictions are not matching with the,
with the actual wording of the law. And then in some areas we have, we
want you to have the buildings up on the street, but then other areas, we're telling you why we don't want the
buildings up on the street. And we're sitting there going like, you've got the government telling everybody
how to run the business. And then when it fails, we blame the business people. But the
business people are going, hey, my business only works like a restaurant.
typically they want their parking up on the street because you drive by and you see an empty lot.
you think the restaurant's terrible. You see it's busy. You would think that
would make people go away, but for some reason people are attracted to full parking lots.
and so to that extent, we made changes there. We made changes to parking.
we're dictating how much parking you have and should have. And then when you have
too much and too little, and we said, it's really not up to us to determine that because
every time we get in and doing that, you have parking lots that are too big and people
are telling you, we don't need that much parking. And then other times you have people saying, we need more
parking. And you got the city telling you, you don't need that much parking. So again,
we're like, look, we keep us not being business owners
keep telling the business people how to run their business when again, in
our opinion, most of the people don't care about that. What we try to stick to
is what do people care about? They care about landscaping, they care about trees.
but the problem we have with our tree ordinance right now is that, um, for every
50 linear feet, you have to put two canopy trees in an ornamental tree.
the problem is the canopy trees, the minimum one was like 90 feet,
um, at maturity up to 130 feet. So we'd start telling developers.
we had the, um, I hate to say the word data center, but we had the data center
over by lowe's and you drive down 79,
but rules are rules. And so we made those people put so many trees,
they're not gonna make it. Most of 'em are gonna die because we're making them put in a
hundred foot tall or a hundred foot wide canopy trees and we're making 'em plant
'em 25 feet apart. And then we're throwing ornamental trees in. On top of that, we have
an irrigation in water issue. And so we're like, look, maybe we need
to do one tree per every 50 feet and an ornamental tree and try
to find a way to where it's something that's gonna be more long term. Because as we, some of us
see it in 20 years, we should have a very nice tree canopy. Yeah. But
we're gonna have to cut down most of the trees that we're making people plant. Mm-hmm . And so what's the
healthiest way to do that? Another one the council voted on. And, and
these next four, I think three or four items are items that the council physically
voted on. So I think at this point, um, barring some major change on council,
we we we're gonna expect to change, make it happen. Um, we don't want trees in
between the sidewalk and the street. Um, we appreciate the
idea for, um, shade, but we see a, an issue with long
term maintenance of the sidewalk and the trucks hitting them. And the
few times that we have seen that work, um, you have some pretty beat up
trees out there. Um, but that is city way right away. So we
made that vote. We took a vote on rear
entry homes. We're not real happy with rear entry homes, think brookside and
durango. And so the city manager is a big proponent of it. Don't understand
why executives, what we did is we took that out of the code based on a legal opinion
that by not being in a code, we would have the ability to then do a
pud if a certain thing came up. And for some reason we saw that. Um, so
we took a vote to where we would take it out and leave ourselves open to the
ability to negotiate that for some reason that would come.
there was one other thing we took a vote on. You remember what it was?
signage. Uh, we did bring up the staff. I haven't seen the changes that signed ordinance
is too complex and if they can't find a way to fix it,
our, our suggested fix was every sign would come before city council as a consent
agenda item. We can look at say a chick-fil-a pole sign and
say, we'll approve that exact thing maintained just like that. And then we use
an example of a discount tire. Usually those are pretty rowdy looking when they're new,
we would just say no, because the way the code is written, it's so complex.
I do this for a living, I don't even know what signs are allowed. And so that's
another debate. So really try to look at the code line by line and find
out, okay, where are we spending a lot of staff time? We're not gonna hire more staff
members to sift through code and debate with things for six or nine months.
then we look at things like academy was a major issue. Um, due
to glazing requirements, they almost couldn't build because we required
so much changes that we had to have emergency meetings. And a couple
times academy deal almost died over glass on the outside. So
they have fake glass. And 'cause our original code was, they just had to have
almost glass walls. And they were like, we can't have four sides of the building with glass everywhere.
wow. So little things like that. We went through and tried to really think, what, what
is it we're really trying to do with our code? How can we simplify it? And then how can
we go through and when we have developmental issues, is it a people person?
is it a process person or is it a code, uh, type issue?
and if it's a code, we can fix it. If it's a person, we can fix it. If it's a process,
we can fix all that. So I think in all that, I don't know, we cut out what maybe
we'd suggested like let's say a fourth or a fifth of a code. Um,
the last thing I'll tell you, uh, here's another example. Um, things like,
um, path of travel from your building to the parking lot. We have the complicated
way of figuring it out. Well, we're not in the tas and a da
business, but we're dictating to people how to put their pathway of travels, how to lay all
this stuff out. And so we've kind of said, this is, that's not a responsibility that's a
developer as long as they get it approved by the proper governmental authorities,
why are we going in on top of them and suggesting? 'cause a lot of times what happens,
a city will tell you to do one thing, but the fire department's telling you to do it different. And they're the ones
that say in charge of a fire lane. And so then you start moving things to make the city happy
and you negotiate with the fire department. And developers get very frustrated when they're like, look,
we just wanna do what's right, but we can't mirror the two things. And so we
try to get this negotiating done. And so we're trying to get outta that. Um,
when it comes to, um, say you open up a restaurant, what we kinda
looked at is, um, when you, when you go to permit right
now, we spend a lot of time telling you how it's all gonna look inside and different things. And we
kind of took the opinion of if you're building, say a restaurant and you're doing a building finish
out, um, that if you have an architect that say this
is oversimplifying it, but if you have an architect that say, signs the plans and says, these meet
your 20, 24 building codes that we have adopted, um, then
that's where we're done as a city. As long as we're suggesting changes.
like they get the fire marshal to sign off on their plans, they get the health
department to sign off 'cause that's gonna handle your plumbing, your grease trap, all those
sort of things. And then your, um, your uh, state rep for
the, uh, tas or a da, they're gonna sign off on that. If everything else meets
the building codes, then we're done from a planning and from a permitting side
where I think the city and where we thought the sea would then come in would be when it came to inspection
time, the inspectors would be more making sure that it followed the 2024
building code, which I think is what we have adopted now, but as may be adopted
with further revisions that way, instead of spending months and months trying to permit
something, it's like, look, if you wanna set up your check stand a certain way
and you wanna set it up, we think it's silly, but that's your business model.
go ahead and knock yourself out. If it works great. If it fails, then someone else
will move in as long as you've got the other three people signed off. So a
lot of times again, um, we have gotten into issues where the health departments
requiring one thing when it comes to plumbing, the city's requiring another. And
it's kinda like, why are we, why are we in the business of saying about plumbing? If it
meets the code and they can get it permitted by the proper authorities,
why are we involved in that? So as you guys go through, that's what we're really looking for.
does that kind of sum it up? Yeah. Really looking for how do we make our staff
to where they're not buried in the minutiae of things. And then how much of it is
really important, uh, to the public. And then, um, a lot of
us change state laws. We took some of that into account. You can't dictate
building materials anymore. Um, some cities
used to require a certain type of limestone, just couldn't even be limestone. We weren't
that bad. But we've made changes to where we're looking ahead. Um, lot
sizes. I think the original code had maybe 25 pages on lot sizes
depend on what you were gonna build, how wide lot had to be.
and we dictate all that stuff. And so we kind of said this is, we want, we
think five feet on the side of homes is too narrow.
you don't wanna be hearing, you don't wanna hear your neighbor yelling at the, at the husband.
'cause it's ever the husband yelling at the women. It's the the wife yelling at the husband for something.
but you can hear that or or the old pass me the sugar neighbor. Okay.
alright. Yeah. So the houses are so close. So we said, okay,
it should be seven and a half feet or should it be 10 feet? And then we don't dictate
right now. Um, I forget that I think it's a hundred thousand
people. You can't dictate lot sizes anymore with the state of texas. Mm-hmm
. Typically what we've seen in the past is they hit the big cities first. The
next session they hit the smaller cities. So we're trying to think ahead a little bit to where
instead of dictating lot size, we'll just dictate side setbacks. Now it's seven
and a half feet. And so the builders originally when we talked to them, that's
great. That's great. And then they said, wait a minute, seven and a half feet, that's
15. Yeah. I can't build a 40 foot house anymore. I said, well that's, that's
your problem. Maybe you go vertical. Maybe it looks like san francisco. We don't know,
but we're like, and you just need a wider lot. Right. Exactly. But
see they want the 45 foot and we can't, we feel like we can't dictate in the future. So we were trying
to think ahead of potential issues to where, um, we
really don't want people, um, building a second home in our backyard. We actually,
somewhere around here we have that. Mm-hmm. And I don't know if they torn it down yet, but we vote
on a council to remove that house. Oh, it, it came to p and z mm-hmm . Did
it. Yeah. So we have that. Um, now we went to, to
build the, um, engineering manual a little bit. And some of the things we looked there is,
um, you know, when we, when we permit
a neighborhood, we have a pervious ratio and impervious ratio calculations.
right. But if you drive through new neighborhoods, everybody's adding
like a foot onto their driveways. Well one guy does that. It's really not gonna
cause flooding downstream. When you have thousands of homes adding
two feet along every driveway, that could be a problem. Well why are they doing it?
well 'cause the driveways are too narrow. So we're suggesting we make the driveways
one foot wider, two feet on a double. And then also the driveway length
is, uh, a minimum to where an f-150 can park in the driveway without crossing over
the sidewalk. And then the garage, we told the builders we only got a couple things
and then the garage has to be able to fit an f-150 in it. Yeah. Because right now
I've had a ford explorer not fit in a garage in texas. Mm-hmm . And so the idea
there being, we don't care so much about the outside articulation. That's been
a lot of, um, variances over the years for how your
garage is set up. We're like, look, we don't wanna get into all that. We're just telling you the truck's
gotta be able to park in it. It's gotta be a park in the driveway. 'cause ultimately we want less cars on the
street. We also want the streets a minimum, a certain width so
that we can have parking on both sides. 'cause it's a nightmare. We're painting one
side that's an upkeep and we're trying to make it to where we don't have staff members
going out to every two years painting red stripes and ticketing people. 'cause no one likes that.
we'll just make the streets two feet wider. And if, because literally I think we're
building them 28 feet wide and need to be 30 to park on both sides mm-hmm . And so
by skipping two feet, what we've done is we've caused an issue now with
the homeowners are upset because of the police department's going through. And all we have
to do as a city is just tell the builder, when you build your neighborhood, look,
we don't care what type of house you build. That's the market. We're just telling you, you gotta
have seven and a half foot. You gotta park an f-150 inside, you gotta park it outside
and the street's gotta be 30 feet. You as a market people, you figure out what you wanna
build. And as long as the landscaping on the outside of the street
looks great, we even suggested the city manager about passed out. You'll
like this howard, we suggested kinda like, why do we require
trees in front yards? And the reason we said it was not that we don't
think a house can't sell, the problem we have is from my front door
to the street, it's 25 feet, but I have a live oak planted in the middle of
my yard. Yeah. So I've already, the house is nine years old. I've already had to trim the tree
off the house. So we've gone through and told everybody we love trees,
but you gotta put a hundred foot wide canopy tree in the yard. That just doesn't
make sense. And then we have people when their trees die, then the coats
people are going around and we're telling everybody what to do. And we're like, you know what? We don't know what
the market wants. And we're assuming things and we're like, you know what? We're not in
business selling homes. Let them do it. And so we gave in on that one and
said, okay, we'll just follow the, um, what texas a and m, um,
agricultural agriculture, something and said a name and trees, whatever
a and m says to do in our area. They're the forestry, uh, experts. Yeah.
leave it to them. Um, that's a lovely of things that we did
that won't live come on up a year or two. We got till three. We had this book till
three. So we got out to say jim morris city council. Actually,
before we continue, I do have a couple of questions before we get into the,
uh, uh, can we finish our presentation first? Okay,
sure. , because we are doing the presentation. Sure.
but, um, jim moore city council, um, yeah. Part of the things is about,
in in the references we it does talk about landscaping or anything else is make
sure there's appropriate re references there. And, and if there was something in
the engineering manual, a lot of things I looked at as making sure that we didn't have duplication
in the engineering manual and in the, uh, udc mm-hmm . So
that we don't have to conflicting things and then, or if even if it's supposed to be identical,
now you gotta maintain document, maintain maintenance is a, is an issue. So that's
some things that we looked at quite a bit. I I looked at the engineering manual and made sure those
references. I do wanna bring up some of the things that mayor brought up. There were probably 40 or 50 instances
where a specific person had to speak on this waiver. Those
have been eliminated. Uh, there were several of 'em. Wait, wait a minute. Wait, say that again.
well, to it, a waiver as as mayor said that either the
director of engineering or the planning director had to be the only
person to do that waiver. So like code didn't say
development staff, it said the director of engineering. Like there
was one that had to have the director of engineering sign off and the development director. Well,
not everybody's working here during the day. That's right. Some are working at home. Someone's over here.
you gotta get two of them lined up. One of 'em has one opinion, one of 'em has another. And the developer's
like, look, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. But if you guys don't
know , then how are we supposed to know what to do? No, I,
I understood that to be rick hudson needs to sign off on
this. And I'm like, whoa. No, no. Just step, step, step. No. The thing is though, okay, it's
no fault of the director or the, you know, the planning de planning director or the, in
the, the engineering, uh, the or city engineer. No, no, no.
uh, disparaging opinion about them. But when you, when you've got a
planning process, it may take six or nine months. And now in the, in the plat,
the preliminary plat review, we've gotta have all these waivers done by this individual.
you're talking a minimum of 48 hours just to get requests and response and
that there's no, there's no dwell time on that. Mm-hmm . So I think that that's one of the things is that we,
we've tried to streamline the process and I mean streamline
to to that we don't have as many checks and balances while maintaining still
the fundamental meaning of fundamental, uh, design of the udc that
we do have the checks and balance of putting a, a good product out on the, on the, on the neighborhoods
and the streets. So that, that was a lot of instances. And I, I do wanna bring up, and, and
mayor did this before, there were probably at least
30, maybe as much as 60 instances where
this part of the document disagreed with this. Whether it was a picture
and a text or a table and a text or a description. See
this, could I ask for our $400,000 back from, I think it was 160,000
because we did a lot of work on this. And so I'm like, I think it was a hundred, I think it was 160,000
was the actual consulting for the redesign. But I mean,
yeah, we spent three to four hours, probably eight, at least eight
sundays, the three of us, um, to meeting, to, to review
all this. But, um, so, and, and the la the the last thing we talked about the,
you did the driveways, the, well, let me mention pla two oh was on the pla
so plating right now, if you're a developer and, and I'm, I,
most people know I try to stick as much as I can on a developer. Okay. But the more we
cause them in cost, the less they're willing to do for us. Well, right now, if you're,
if there's a, let's take the 40 acres we talked about today. Let's say somebody wanted to build
a restaurant. We're all excited for the restaurant. He needs to buy three acres. He's looking
at a 12. He or she's looking at a 12 to 15 month process to get that
property plotted to where it's a legal lot. Okay. And in that
you have to do a tree study. You have to do a flood study, you have to do a tia,
um, there's over probably a hundred thousand dollars worth of costs
to do everything. And you're just trying to get the three acres okay. Or the two
acres. You push them through all that. And so what typically happens is people do
an ilic a lot and it's not like they're gonna go to jail or anything, but they're closing on land on meets
and bounds, which is very hard to index at the, uh, the, the,
uh, county. And so the whole reason is why are they, why are
they doing this? And they're doing it because our process is on, we don't wanna necessarily
do away with those processes. What matt rector was working on was a different,
a different way of doing it to where, and I forget what he called the, uh, lot, but you
were gonna be able to get a lot in 30 days because our opinion is
the state wants a lot platted in 30 days. And all cities
have done is figured out all the ways to drag it out to where what
we would say is, we get you an answer in 30 days. It just takes you
12 months to get everything ready in the application done to get it. Well, that's not the intent of the
state. So how do we get the intent of the state? The developer
doesn't mind doing all this work. They just don't wanna do it all when they just went
to three acres. Can they even get the three acres and they run? And what happens in commercial real
estate, they run out of time. They've maybe got six months to, for due diligence and
then they have to close. Well, six months, you can't get through the process.
there's not a city in central texas that can get it done. Other
parts of the state we looked at, they can get it done. They've moved their processes
to a different part of the development. So we still wanna protect everything. We just wanna
make sure that we just go quicker. We don't want to have this, I don't know how these people are
waving a shot clock other than they're probably being
told that, hey, this is a easier way, just waive it. Well,
the whole point is we need legal lots. And so we worked on that
and I, again, I don't remember what matt rector called it, but that was a big thing to where
staff was saying, you can't get it done sooner. And then we said, you're
gonna have to figure it out. And so rector came up with a way, it's like a provisional
plat or something effort. But anyway, you get the, you get the league lot and you stick out the process.
but, um, yeah. And uh, I guess the last thing, understanding
what, what mayor has said and what we've tried to accomplish is a, there, in the packet,
there are three documents. There's the red line that starts on
page two 17, which is the, basically the document that was given to
us by the consultant that we got rid of all the accuracy things
and the just typo type of stuff. So that that's your modified yes.
it was our modified of accuracy, just typos. This table didn't
agree. You know, we didn't, we didn't change the content of the, of,
of what it just said that this table said it needed a a a an sup
over here. It said you didn't. So find out what it's supposed to be and make it one. So after those
accuracy checks, so just to clarify, that's not what the, what
the consultant submitted? That's exactly what the
the committee what the, what what the co what the consultant gave us was
a lot a load of kaka. So I mean it really was our red line that
okay, so the, yeah, I'll, I'll give you an example. Um, so we would have like,
um, when, when you go through the code, this is another one. There's
a lot of stuff doing here. When you go through the code, a lot of times you've got your definitions over here
of what all the different uses are. I wanna open up a daycare, here's a definition. Mm-hmm
. Then you go to your zoning table. Okay. And that's sometimes that said
an su it would have an s for whatever zoning classification.
but when you go back to the definition, it didn't say that it would say zone by. Right.
and so we mirror, mirror those up. We also recommended
that instead of having all this information, two places just have it in one. Mm-hmm
. Because a lot of times you're flipping through, I don't know what the code was, five, six,
maybe a thousand pages. And so you go through a thousand pages and you're going back and
forth and we had definitions that didn't exist. We had definitions that
were there that not in the zoning table. And so they didn't match up. Even tonight
with the z code, there is no heavy industrial in the city of texas,
idaho of texas, out where they got heavy industrial. It's not in
the old code. It's not a new code. So yeah. Just so you guys know, they're
asking for a zoning that doesn't exist. Yeah, yeah. Earlier and now it's coming. So
it's industrial and light industrial. Right. That's it. You get it. That's
how you get to the code to where again, somewhere in there it probably says something about heavy industrial.
well, it says, you know, b is for business and, and light industrial and
I is for industrial. Those are the, that's our two codes. B and I and the new udc oh.
and in the old one didn't have a heaviness. So that's what I mean. Right. That's sometimes we see those and we
go, there's some, there's a conflict somewhere and we would try to find it. Mm-hmm .
no, all, all I was asking about is the,
the consultant provided a, okay, here's a mess,
here's what we're submitting and we're not going
to get that. So we shouldn't look for that. What we should look for is
what he submitted and you guys redlined with
the graphical errors and stuff. Right. Okay.
the first document is a red line, but the red line is the product
of, of direction from the subcommittee to city staff
to correct all the typo pointing to the wrong picture. Okay.
the picture saying, having the wrong example. I think guys just saying the same thing. He's saying
consultants, we're not getting the consultants final product. But the red
line document is after we've gotten the cleaned up consultant
is what, what is what the subcommittee has decided that this is what we want
to change the changes that mayor outlined about the, the
driveways and or the um, the planning process. Okay. Those have the red
lines in there. So that's what I'm trying to get you guys to focus on is what the
red line is, is what are the changes to the udc that the
subcommittee has directed to staff for us to
implement new. So that's what y'all should be, I feel like that's what y'all should be looking at. He saying, because
those are contextual changes. He's saying the red line is a consultant's clean copy
with our suggested changes. Okay. So everything from typographical
to yes sir. Misalignment to substantial changes when
it came to objection. Doesn't match that. Right. I I, I understand what's
included, but I have a question regarding that
because what of what you just said that
these are directed to staff by council or the
ad subcommittee committee as these are the changes.
so we're certainly not going to look at the red lines and go, well,
that's not right. We're not, I think you disagree. I disagree. I think
you should. I mean, you guys looked at it once, y'all should look at it. Howard howard's right? You guys looked at it once
as a different makeup, but you looked at it once senate to city council. We got a subcommittee,
made a bunch of changes. And I think what we're asking is go back and look at it,
read through it. See if you track with us. If you're like, hey, we, we see major
issues. I haven't signed a plat, I don't know, must it been three years since
the mayor signed a plat or four years? So I haven't looked he doesn't know he is january.
no, but it's a, it's a texas state thing. It is been a while. Yeah. And so, um,
so there's things like that to where we're looking at making changes to things that
I haven't seen from a city side. And so I think your guys' input is invaluable
to be able to go, hey, did you think about this? Or, I see where you're going. I
think there's a better way to do this. And we wanted to cut another yeah. You're just asking for
some more ice to look at. Yeah. And I'm sorry, I'm being unclear, but the, I I would like,
I would suggest that p and z look at the red
line copy mm-hmm. For actual contextual changes. You know, does this look
good? Right. Hey, have you, you know, whatever. Yeah. Uh, and then the, the,
the, the, um, the next thing is the engineering now, and that's
engineering manual starts on page 5 5 5 that has no red lines in it. That
is what we consider the subcommittee considers to being the final
engineering manual draft, which has very little changes from what matt
rector did that one. So we have very little if any, changes in that.
and then the last on page h 8 69 is the udc
in a final draft form with all the red lines incorporated.
so, okay. Just trying to get, give you a little map. Yeah. Of these three. That's
what I was trying to clarify is, wait, what are we getting? Okay, so
we're getting, we're getting the well in this packet, those are those three
documents. Okay. Okay. So we're getting the engineering manual, which has
very few red line corrections. We're getting the initial
red line pass and we're getting the final red
line, the product of those red lines. Okay. If all are included. So the, that's
what I was trying to clarify is, so the udc document and the engineering manual
have no red lines in them. Those are final versions based on
okay. What was in the red line. Okay. And on the engineering manual, there really were
no errors. It was more of using the engineering manual
as the, as the, the gospel mm-hmm . And then making sure the udc
agreed to it and we had proper references to the proper thing. Okay.
and that this reference may say, it didn't just say see engineering manual, it
said see engineering manual section, this. Right. Okay. So that's good. So, uh,
couple of couple of few questions. Um, you talked about
businesses and you know how we shouldn't be in the business of
dictating to businesses. I don't, some things I don't
disagree with that. But when we look at like tonight's
the 42 acres, originally we had
to,
or I, I believe that we should say, you've got
x number of shops, you need to have x number of
a da parking you need and mm-hmm .
because what I don't want to happen is a development come in 40 acres,
whatever, and they end up like the, the, uh,
the fitness place that's sharing space with the church where they're parking
all over the lawn. That that shouldn't be allowed. Well, that's
good code. So it's against code. It should be allowed. Yes. And I would say, I would say
yes, my opinion, yes. And no one, we, I don't know if they should be, they
should be parking on paved areas. We're not getting into that. What I say no is when it
comes to aada, a parking spots that's covered by the a da and the
tas after hug gonna, I tell you how many spots you gonna have. Yeah. Right. Exactly. And so
you can't get a site plan approved. Mm-hmm . Like, I think it's like after 48 spots you
have to go to 3 88 parking spots or something mm-hmm . And so like
we keep 'em at 47 spots at keep two, but that's not a city code.
that's 80 d eight. And that's what we try to get rid of is a lot of times our code was
one and the problem is, is right now they mirror up. Two years
from now the government makes some change and now all of a sudden they don't mirror up.
and so we're looking at just saying, look, that's an aada a issue. Now we don't want you parking on
grass. And we actually have an issue in downtown where, you know, some people wanna
park in gravel and we wanna do this, we wanna do that. Some of those we have problems with.
'cause we have uh, tceq and we have drainage. We have a drain, I think it's a drainage
permit. Right. With them or ms four. Yeah. Ms four. And so that dictates
things. And so we're like, look. Right, we can't, we're not gonna break that. And so things like
that, I think that's what I think the code handles we're just taking out. We're
just, we're providing a reference to that. We don't wanna tell heb it's that way if it changes. Yeah.
and, and we do, we do that kind of thing all the time where it's in compliance with state
law or in compliance with state. Yes. We, we don't wanna tell heb where to put their parking
at. Right. How much to have and what's, what's gonna be a handicap spot because
that's already, that's already, um, um, governed by other
state and federal laws. And I guess, I guess what I'm looking at from
a larger development, not an individual business standpoint, but a larger
development standpoint, if we don't dictate to them that they
must have parking, where else
is that dictated to them? The state? Like in terms of if, if we
don't, so heb for example, if we don't tell 'em, you
must have paved parking. Mm-hmm . Who else does
that? Does the state mandate that customer, if there's nowhere to park, they don't go,
well, what if it's gravel? Well, now that no, see no. That's different issue.
that that's, that's, we're not gonna tell you how much what we have, we're, we're, we're suggesting is
we're not gonna tell you how much parking to have. Right. We did say it's gotta be like nine by
18, or I forget, nine and a half by 18 that. But our current code right now,
every time the school district does a project that come to us for variances mm-hmm . Why
we dictate how many motorcycle parking spots you have to have in a development.
we don't wanna get into that. We cities dictate, I've seen cities not only dictate
you have to have a bike rack, they dictate a certain type of bike rack. Yes. Right. And
it's specific to that city. And we're like, look. Yes. We don't wanna get into, if you have
a bike rack or not, the public and your customers will determine it. The
problem is how many times you see a bike rack just stuck out over on the side somewhere?
'cause it checked a box. Yeah. When if you just let the people go, look, I got something else. The
reason we don't wanna get into the parking is we don't know. You know, when I was a kid,
the um, open air malls was a big thing. And then on they tore 'em all
down. They built enclosed malls. And I don't know what the hell happened. They started
tearing all 'em down, went back to enclo or, uh, outdoor malls. Mm-hmm . And
so the business community is gonna dictate whatever the customers want. Right. We
just wanna make sure we have what we find important protected
drainage, uh, landscaping on the outside, you know, home depot,
we said, look, do we care how much landscaping's in the center island?
some people say, yes, I'm a guy that says no, because if you drive through, all the trees
are broken down anyway. And so we're not out there patrolling it, antagonist it. Well
we wanna make sure it's from the street. When you drive down the road and you're new passing through huro,
does it look good or does it look like an eyesore? We want it to look good. If, if you're in a
passenger car and you pull out a chick-fil-a, do you need to get out of the sunroof
to see the traffic coming at you? Almost. Almost. So,
yeah. But when it comes to your point on gravel parking and grass right.
we're not making changes that that's, that's governed by. Okay. And, and that, that's
kind of where I was going is, you know, I understand, okay, we wanna make it
easier and so on, but if the state doesn't say
you will have paved parking for this kind of facility,
then isn't it our job to say that? Yeah. If that's what we want. I think that's
in our, that's our ms four permit change. We're just not, we're just not gonna be dictate. It
has to be pa or right. Mayor, mayor,
while ago, while ago, excuse me, while ago, you were talking about the
concrete foot on each side of the driveway mm-hmm . Is that something that, that
we are going to, uh, highly encourage the
builder to do, or well, that's a great thing about the engineering manual and
the udc mm-hmm . It's very easy to highly encourage it. If you all say,
you know, it's a good idea and we pass it, you're gonna have to build it that way. Yep.
and so that's, that's our building code that we have. No, you just kind of confusing me a little bit. 'cause
when you said if you have 50 or 60 homes, uh, and you have 'em all like that, it's
gonna increase flooding. Well it does now because when, when, when they're doing
their calculations on and approving things, they're doing it based on
so much impervious pavement. Well, every time one homeowner and you have a
thousand homeowners add on everywhere, now it's throwing off that detention
pond was only built to handle so much. Yeah. Right. And so a thousand homes
adding that on. So what we're saying is we'll just make it wider. They'll run
different calcs and people are gonna start building wider and longer driveways, which
is gonna affect, honestly, it's gonna affect lot sizes. 'cause you can't have a longer driveway. Right.
okay. And that's gonna push your house back and oh,
I understand. He lives in a neighborhood you couldn't even park at fort explorer in yeah.
in uh, durango. Unless you wanna, you know, you gotta have your garage door open to get the bumper in in
there. Good luck with getting well, it's public safety hazard. You go through some streets, two cars
can't get by. If trash cans are out or people are parked on the street, that causes
emm s problems as well. That's right. Right. And go, you know, we, we looked at, I told
the city manager, go drive down to brookside. He said, it can be done better. I'm like, I don't think it
can because I'm seeing issues down there because we, we gave like, every time
you give a developer a foot, they're gonna take 10 feet. Mm-hmm . And so we're like, look
on some of it, do we really care? And it was like, no, we probably don't.
but on the stuff, we do care. We just stopped making it gray and said, look, either
do it this way or go pick a different city. We don't really care, but this is what the new rule's
gonna be. And then that way staff doesn't spend week after week
arguing about things. 'cause then they call us and then we're like,
I mean I don't understand what, you know, why, why are you upset about this? But we also
added a lot more suvs into the process. Okay. Because a lot of
things we had, what the recommendations were from the consultant was a
lot more uses in, I think it was b one or b two, which
is all around residential. And some of the uses, we were like, no, no, no,
no, we, we don't want all that. We wanna have an sup process because sometimes we're okay
with that use. And then it depends on the use we're okay with. So
it's like, I'll just say not all drive throughs are built the same. Right.
and so some of them you'd say, that'd be freaking awesome and we'll do it. Right. And other ones
you're like, no, no, no. The traffic on that, you know, chick-fil-a would be great, but
I mean, tell me a chick-fil-a that doesn't have a double drive through wrapped around the building out into the street
mm-hmm . That's not gonna go well everywhere. So we wanna have a little bit more input. We
want staff to be able to say, hey, um, yeah, it's zoned. Right.
but the drive through's an sup and you have to get through council and council
does not like traffic backing up into the streets or p and z doesn't
like it back up in the streets. So you guys are gonna have to rework this. I'm
telling you now, if you don't, you're liable to get a denial. And then we come up and we go, we don't
want it backed in the street answer's. No. And that, that was
another question that I had is, um, with
the, I'm gonna say, uh, elimination of
a quarter of the udc, did you guys
go and take a look at the sup
uh, I'm gonna say allowances so that there
is some flexibility when they come up and they say, yeah, you know, we want to do this
uh, 30 foot drive through for a chick-fil-a single lane.
no, that ain't gonna work. . Have you ever been to a chick-fil-a it that
ain't gonna work. Right. Well, my understanding is by law you, you're able to do that anytime an sup process
comes up that you've got two important things you can do. And, and howard or the
attorney, um, can jump in, tell I'm wrong. But typically, um,
you know, I'm famous for making a comment to the isd one time when they came up and said,
you can't tell us what to do and we're here, we're here just as a courtesy. And
I was like, look, you're asking for an sup. If we ask you to paint your building pink,
we can do that in sup because when you come up for an sup and you want a variance of code,
we can require anything. And that's why I tell people all the time, listen
to the presentation and then decide maybe
there is no way to mitigate it. Maybe it's like, look, you're gonna have to do x, y, z. And they're like, well
that kills the site. Well that's not my problem. The other flip side is, is once you do do
that sup people say, you know, I heard tonight. Well how are you gonna enforce it? Well,
if you violate certain things, if you say you can't have
whatever, more than 20 people in a drive through, that's the legal limit we're gonna allow
you to have. Mm-hmm . Then you regularly see 25, you can end up
through a process, another public process you can take to sup back away
rescind it and that effectively closes 'em down. Yep. And so suvs
I find are very, very important in development process because you can
massage each thing completely different. What I really dislike personally
is when you just have code that's broad to where
staff, a council's not paying attention, whatever, all of a sudden
up zone by. Right. Well, you know, not every zoning thing for
some of us works out. It always depends on each situation. And
so what we've looked at is how do we do this to where you all can put input? You
know, one of the things council, uh, tasks at p and z with is be tough
on people. Don't be afraid to be tough. You're the first line of defense.
arguably we will end up being the nice guys. But that's, you know,
people that know me know I'm not trying to be the nice guy. But that's the point of it is,
is that you guys help move the line forward. I think the sup process,
as you guys go through it, you'll see opportunities to, to
push the, push the line some to where people come, you know,
squawking at council, man, these guys are tough. It's like, well as the city builds out, it
gets tougher. Go try to permit in cedar park. It's not an easy, uh, it's
not an easy trip going through cedar park. And and that's part of the reason why I asked the
question about the s is because, um,
that gives the city council p and z
whatever gives the city the ability to negotiate.
because in my opinion, 70%
of the people who come in here to p and z wanting something,
it's a custom. We've never seen this particular,
it's not cookie cutter. We have to look at each
individual one and decide, is this right? Is this wrong? Do we need
to tweak this somewhere? And if the sup has been expanded but the
code has been cut back, then we still have the ability
to negotiate that power of the su. Right. That's right. You
know, if, if I've never a yes on any project, but I can always get to a yes,
you may not like it. And I can't tell you how many times we had a guy six months ago,
he was up here banging, I'm gonna sue you if you guys don't vote this way. And I was like, don't,
don't, uh, chat me with a good time. That's fine. There's a certain thing that I'm looking
for and if you want me to vote you, you can get six other votes.
if you want my vote and me to not be, you know, talking about it, then you're
gonna have to go do certain things because I have concerns about things. And so a
lot of times people end up not wanting, um, I've voted against more
developments around here than I voted for. And it was simple things. I just
wanna take what you said in verbal. I want to have it in writing as part of the
sup. 'cause I know that by law, if you don't follow that, which you heard today, people
don't follow rules 'cause we're not attach 'em to the sup. Right. You
attach to that. You don't build the berm or we sit in your permit and I
don't know what that happens to your deal, but you can't operate anymore. And that's, I build a burn myth.
I was you. Yep. Or whatever the issue is. Exactly. And so that's what we're trying to task y'all with is a look,
you'll look at that and you'll go, there's a whole lot of s's got put in where
it was permitted by. Right. Because as we build all these neighborhoods up,
I don't know that a daycare goes next to every neighborhood because daycares cause
a little bit of traffic, especially some of the bigger ones. So let's make
sure that when we build a daycare, we have proper parking. 'cause again, we're
not dictating parking. But you want to have one that holds a hundred kids and you have
a q line of six cars and you have four parking spots. Well that
doesn't make sense. , so you guys are gonna go, doesn't work for me. I think you
need a minimum like 50 parking spots and you need a queue line. And so I think what'll
happen is the market always takes advantage and does the
bare minimum. Yes. The problem is when you write all in code, they do the bare minimum
and it's our fault. Everything is screwed up. Exactly. Because we codified it.
yeah. But if we make the market go, look, there are a bunch of grumpy people up
there. They vote no a lot. You're gonna have to present a really good item
to the, you know, to the planning and zoning. And you get through that, you go to city council
and they're just as bad. I think what you'll find is a lot
more people will present things in a manner where you'll sit back and you'll go, you
know, I'm okay with this. And then we'll start having a deal to where, hey, when you come to hu, don't
cut the corners. Don't screw around. You go through the process like that,
but you try to screw around. You try to skimp on something, people
just say no 'cause mm-hmm . I mean, the easiest thing to say is no.
and you don't really get hurt by saying no. Where you get hurt is by saying yes and going, well we
screwed that up. We shouldn't have done that. That's right. Which is why like your neighborhood,
we're just now going through, digging up all the ditches and redoing 'em. 'cause we said,
and I don't wanna talk to you about that, we said 20 years ago to stuff and
we were saying yes to all these neighborhoods, open ditches because, well, we wanted homes
20 years ago. And so we would do anything to get people moved to hu now
we don't have to do all that. Now we can say, look, we want roads. If we want roads
built in concrete, you put in the engineering manual. Oh, you wanna do asphalt? Well,
I dunno what to tell you. Go to another city. We're now, we're upping things up. Well it costs
us more. Well what costs you more? Costs us less. And so don't build it.
so there's a lot of things like that to where, you know, um, we're
trying to get to where, I guess yeah, more of a market based approach.
approach where y's input city staff gets input and it's
like, hey, you can do really good and, you know, do something great
and you just sell right through the system. And then again, you try to cut
corners or we think you're cutting corners or you're doing something that really is stupid, doesn't
make sense. We just, you know, cut it down and say no real quick and save staff
time and save everybody a whole lot of grief.
hey, mike. That's right. Go ahead. At the meeting that we had here
a couple of saturdays ago mm-hmm . We were kind of touched base on zero
escaping. Uh, my question exactly what I was gonna call out. Huh? I was gonna call
that. Go ahead. Is that what you were ask? Yeah, go ahead. You fine? No, I was just asking did y'all kind
of touch base or change anything? Uh, as far address that there was some landscape
changes? Go ahead. I was gonna say, I don't think we changed any of that. I
think we actually put I know, don't be afraid. Do say don't,
don't be afraid to step up for the record. Evan porterfield city council place. Fine. You're
you're too far away to bite. You're fine. Um, yeah, I don't think any of that we changed the language
on, I think, um, I think we actually added more language. Uh, I don't think it was much, but we
added more language to allow more of that. Uh, 'cause our mindset was,
hey, if you want to do that, I mean, that just saves on the irrigation costs. So mm-hmm . Um, you
know, we wanted to be that more of an option. I don't think we dictated that necessarily. Texas a
m I'd like to see that be a little more forceful for constraint of water
and save saved the city money. Uh, we, we can, we can go in
and and look at that and see if we need to uh, yeah. If
you guys want to yeah. If you want to enhance that at all. But like I said, I think, I think the only thing we did was made
it, uh, easier for people to do that. But it wasn't anything that we dictated that they had to
have. Yeah. Like, uh, but we, we were in favor of it. I don't live in an hoa
and if, if I did and an hoa came along and said,
you have to have grass, I'd tell 'em go get bent . Well, right
now, a lot of times the city's telling you you have to play. Exactly. Yeah. And that's one
thing, again, we want landscaping, but we go through, I mean those,
we, we know what it's, except for last year, it usually lasts.
rain is sometime in may and then rain again till september. Yeah. So
what I've seen around, around the metro area is when we actually had mighty
find open up, they opened up on a tco because they couldn't plant landscape
for four months because we were in the middle of a stage three mm-hmm . And it's like, okay,
how does that make sense? And then they plant all that stuff and you're going, but every
year we're putting ourselves in. Yeah. And you know, right now, this year it's gonna
be a whole lot better 'cause you have more water. But you're in a market that you have
to ask yourself. You know, I'm not advocating for the data center people.
most of their water used is in irrigation. Right? Yeah. They're irrigating
all this stuff because we're saying, hey, you gotta plant all these trees. Sometimes it makes sense.
the one by lowe's, when you drive down 79, it's in a hole. They're
walling off a whole thing of trees. You're gonna drive by and always see
a big building there. Yeah. But the trees are supposed to block the building, but they're never gonna grow 60
feet tall. No. So what would've maybe made more sense is to go, do we really
need all that right there? Maybe we needed the money. I don't know, spend it some other park.
so you, a lot of things like that. If you guys will look at it and kind of go, hey, you know what,
um, we do want planting. There's a lot of trees in phoenix, but it's a
desert. Mm-hmm . But they have different things. There's mexican sagebrush that goes really
nice. Right. It doesn't die when it gets to be zero. Yep. It doesn't die when
you don't water it for six months. Mm-hmm . But people aren't
planting it. I mean, it's more of a climate thing. Um, I know some, there's
a lady I know she hates, um, crate myrtles. I got crate myrtles in my backyard.
the things bloom year round. And they never look like they need water. I don't know
where they get their water from. I don't know how it works. Oh, they're plants. But I know you can, from your foundation,
you keep 'em 30, 30 feet from your foundation. I fence. Fence. But you can chop 'em
off. It seems like that. Like back, what, what can we do to where we get what
we want? We want shade. That stuff does reduce overall, um,
um, temperature in our city. Mm-hmm . Yeah. Um, but we wanna make sure it's also something
to where in 10 years people aren't cutting all the trees down because they died.
tree or house. You're gonna pick your house every time. But we want, we want
greenery. My, as an example for the trees, my front yard,
when I bought the house, they had two brand new trees planted.
and I looked at it and I'm like, well, I ain't gonna move that tree, but they're
eight feet apart. One of them's dead and the freeze killed one
off. I chopped it down. I'm like, yep, okay, we're good. I got one
big old tree and everyone loves it. Now, on the flip side, I think we did, uh,
I don't know what we ever did with, we were advocating to more tree surveys. There is a
little bit of a, if you have a property and you have a tree and you wanna cut it down,
we're like, I like the trees there, but who am I? Or who
are we as a government to say, rick can't cut a tree down. It's in the middle of his
property on two acres. And now, now he has to work his development around it. Well, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm
. That's not our responsibility. Well, we ought to try to find, like we did, um, have a certain
development that may come. And right now their pud says they have to have,
they had to keep the trees. It's at limmer. Um, no, it's at edge bit. And live oak
to southeast corner have to keep the trees, historic trees, the,
the pecan trees. They're really big. No, they're really big. Um, the han peon property. Yeah,
the pecan trees. The hanson. Yeah. That's, those are live trees. The put says you gotta keep
'em. Well, another person came through and said, hey, we might have a certain use. You guys, they've really
been wanting, we'd like to put there, but the trees are in the way. We said they can come
'em down. But we'd like the opportunity to move them. And so our ideas
at our cost, we wanna be able to move them to one of our parks to where they're very nice, mature
trees. Okay. But we are pro-development and they're gonna plant other trees.
and I do wish we had these, you know, big 24 inch trees.
but to say you have to work your whole development around a 24 inch tree mm-hmm . Or you have
to move at your own cost kind of kills development. And it's really not a
prop for some of us, it's a property rights issue. But again, we're trying to find ways
instead of saying no, how do we incentivize you to say, yes, I'll
move it. So whether it's tree credits or so. Right. Again,
little things like that, we, I don't know that we could think of everything. Um, we, um,
we did get rid of the, the on the, on the single family or the family units.
remember there was sf and mf, but they had hamlets. And
remember they were like five or six hamlets and hamlets had commercial in them. That's
right. And we got rid of that. Neighborhoods could have zoning for neighborhoods,
could have commercial in there within the hamlet, per the consultant. They split
yeah. Potentially families to hamlets. They went from two or three zoning to like six
or eight zonings in these different hamlets with different types of commercial.
and for a little, his history on that, I believe that was because
there was a push, a trend, whatever you want to call it,
to the village concept where there is a, there
is a corner store, which doesn't exist. It's a
convenience store gas station. Yeah. You know, there was corner stores,
there was walkability of this so that you don't have to get in your
car and drive. I think that was the intent. Well, we saw as a little bit of laziness to where a guy
come up and say, I'm gonna zone a hundred acres is residential, and I'm gonna put some
commercial on the outside. And we're like, look, you can do the commercial on the outside,
but we want to have a say in that. And so you're gonna have to zone it exactly one way.
you can't just come in. Because what you could also do is, as we get older
neighborhoods, you don't have an hoa next thing you know, I'm buying two lots, tearing
them down, and I'm building a liquor store right in the middle of your neighborhood and you're going,
I'm going, I'm zoned by. Right rick, you can't do nothing about it. Uh, this is a neighborhood,
blah, blah, blah. And we're like, we're not doing that. Right. And, you know, uh,
I'm gonna go way back to the old smart code, which they used in
brooklyn's. And they did exactly what you were talking about. Here's all the houses,
here's the commercial up front. We meet the requirements mm-hmm . And it's
like, okay, so yes, I get it. The neighborhood or a
hamlet thing. I think that was the but intent. But we mixed that and got back to,
but it wasn't implemented well. Well essentially we cut out 54 pages.
okay. Um, current document three, four. There's, you cut out 54 pages outta how many
cop, 3 78. 3 78 to 3 24. 3 24. That wasn't enough.
then you cut more. Well, hey, that's why I, hey, you guys can cut it more scissors. You're not
gonna hurt our feelings. But no city manager did think he, he told me once that
you guys kind of got a, uh, the council kind of has a little bit of a libertarian bent.
and I wouldn't say it's more of a libertarian bent. I'd say it's more of a, um, we're
trying to be efficient, efficient with, you know, our, some of our employees
make well over six figures. And so they're not able,
there's only 40 hours a week that they're able to work and get everything done. And so we're really trying to,
again, before we started this conversation, really dial into what do we really
need to be focusing on? What's really important? And then how do we take as much gray
out and just tell people like mm-hmm . Answer's no. Now ultimately they could bring
anything to council to get it overwritten. Right. But if staff can go back and say,
like, for instance, the sign, if it was all suvs, um, and it was on consent,
it's like, hey guys, counsel's very particular right now. And look,
look around at the signs. Um, they're saying no to everything unless you put stone
and you make it look pretty and you gotta put some lipstick on it. Otherwise they say no.
right now we can't even, we got development on one 30 trying to build in our
sign. I think the, the maximum's like six feet and so
mm-hmm . It's a, it's a, it's a psychological issue
with development in these big box people. They don't like six foot tall signs
for 40 acre developments. And so we usually end up doing a variance or
we do a pud mm-hmm . And I think one of the issues we have is everything's a pud now,
right? Mm-hmm . And a pud. Everybody's writing their own code. Yep. Well, what's
the point of having a code if you're gonna have every development's a p, so what's causing
the pud and what can we do? And some of it we're, it's gonna have to
be a put 'cause it's maybe some major mixed use and it's, you know, it's gonna be great. In other
parts. It's like, like, I don't know, the last time we had a neighborhood built that was built by code,
it seems like they're all built by some development agreement and some p
and so we're just getting out of, uh, what like slope. We
had one that was uh, I think called exchange. They got a variance for the
slope of the roof. Yeah. I don't even know why we cared. And we always say yes.
so it's like, why do we run through this system? Let's not use to have time for
that, but let's make sure we're not, you know, we're limiting the amount of multifamily they're having
to, uh, the amount of units they can have per acre. Things like that. Okay.
so, uh, I wanna bring something up regarding what we're looking at on the screen right
now. I'm a little concerned with 34
days for us to have a special called meeting for
consideration on this. I think that might be rushing this. I would not
be here on may 12th. I'm gonna be on vacation. Okay. Okay.
I won't be here. Well look, but that's,
that's a concern of mine. I think that might be a little too
much rush because I mean, I'm, I'm not casting,
I'm not throwing shade. But you guys took nine months to look at this
and we're doing it in 35 days. Well that's . We did a lot of work.
I pushed back, I pushed back this little bit. You guys already approved it as a board
and we didn't like it. And so then what we did is we didn't,
I I hear you, but I'm just saying. So we took it and we said, hey, and we gave it back to staff
in january and they were like, holy smokes, you guys are making
major. I passed that. Then, um, ashley left.
howard came in, wanted to give howard the opportunity to read this because he's getting ready.
he takes a job and the first thing he comes to is, is finding out like, hey, they just,
they just gutted a whole section of this. So, um, I don't think the, the
date, to me, the dates and the times to me don't mean I don't care if we
do it in june or july. Okay. We're using an old code. It's just some things
like, um, oh, like, oh, I know what the other one was. We changed, we
took a vote on right now as code is, if you wanna have a food truck and you wanna park
it at lowe's, you have to go get an affidavit signed by someone with
the public restroom saying that your people can use that
bathroom. And so we ran into an issue where an ice cream truck wanted to
park. Now, to be honest with you, most people just park the truck.
they conduct their business and they don't even pay tax in. I don't think they pay
tax in. How do they get in? They get out. And so we're like, okay, now you got a person who's
like, look, I wanna be here permanently and come in and I wanna follow
everything and pay taxes. But this public restroom thing, I'm selling ice
cream. Does it make any sense for me to have, you know, someone order a sundae
and then go, hey, I gotta go to the bathroom really bad. That's good. And we're like, okay.
so we took a vote and said, look, my wife, that's up to the person who's frequenting
the food truck yeah. To go figure out how to get the restroom. Exactly. And most people are
gonna say, yeah, you can use my restroom. 'cause potentially lowe's or whoever's gonna sell more
merchandise. Right? Yeah. So little things like that we were navigating through
and I would call this a living document. As you guys go through, you
can say you wanna move to june 12th, whatever howard and you guys come up with, I don't
think we care. Okay. We're using an old one. I think where they're caught into
is they see substantial changes coming in some areas potentially.
and they're telling people, I'm guessing you guys are doing this.
here's what it says today. If you wait like a month, this won't be an issue.
. And what you're asking for a variance on, I think they're gonna do it, but we don't know quite
yet. And so, yeah. I mean for example, tonight
the data center stuff that was in the
revisions that we looked at and approved over
a year ago. Yeah. Almost two years ago. It's like okay. And what was approved, by the way, took out
the sup for data centers. Right. What I
spearheaded put it in there. And so when I read that, the first thing I did is said, no, no, no,
no. Gotta be an sup for data centers. Gotta have input.
so things like that that were right. But I'm, I'm saying that was an
example of hey, you know, we voted on on these
sup changes and approve them, you know, two years ago,
whatever. And it's been a while. You know, tonight we have an
sup or we have, we have a data center that
should absolutely be going through an sup process
and we're operating off of old code. Well, old code still has
an sup process. Right. We, we 'cause we didn't adopt the change and then we put it back
in. But yeah, to, to your point, we do have some issues like that to where we've
made or we want some changes. I think everybody would agree to 'em. Mm-hmm . But old code.
but um, I think old code's gonna be more restrictive on things that maybe I think you guys are
gonna find doesn't matter as much. And then the stuff we are picking on,
I think think you guys have finally like, that's pretty good now I don't think we haven't
seen your changes. Right. Or your suggestions. Now howard brought in my opinion, brought
up the cost recovery, the capital, whatever that was called. That was great catch.
um, I'm a little concerned personally about the signage thing only
because when, when this data center we, we use tennet as example
when they came through and I found out, I uh, I think the city manager told me
that, um, hey we had to go put the sign out 'cause they missed it. I was like, well that's their problem.
right? Well you know, we're trying to be helpful and I'm like, that's not our job as a city
to me. We set the rules and that's it. And anything we do
to try to help somebody, yeah. I think we ought to spend the time helping
the, the single family guy that's just trying to build a shed in his backyard.
the big, big time developer. To me it's a rule. Send a picture. I didn't get your picture.
so you got bumped off the agenda or hey, you can come, but first thing we're
gonna say is you didn't have your sign, um, done and you didn't maintain it.
'cause one of them blew down. Yeah. And I've been in municipalities to where, where you get to drive by
every day and check the sign because if you got reported that your sign was stolen
or taken down, guess what? Greenville, south carolina, they pop you to
the next month. It's your problem, your jobs to put it in your jobs to
maintain it. To me, every time we put it on us, that's a thing where someone's
gonna say, you guys screwed up. And I'm like mm-hmm . No offense to these guys, they make too much
money to be worrying about signs. Again, in my opinion, the council may vote differently.
the developer, that dude needs to stay out there and if he has to, I almost had to
pitch a tent. I kid you not on this one site. 'cause the people kept pulling the sign down. So
I got permission to tape it inside the window of the building. That way they had to
bust out the glass to get to it. That was the city took the
position. That is not our problem. That's a you problem not an us figure
it out. Mm-hmm . But you don't want to see set a legal precedent that you're doing a favor. Then it turns around,
oh it looks like you should do be viewing this and you're held accountable. Yeah. The neighboring
communities, the developer has to go put the sign out there and take the photos. Yeah. Now
I'd be all in favor of us buying signs from the sign guy. We pay 10 bucks and charge
15 and we have a certain way they have to go. I mean like, uh, like
a detail in a construction document. Here's the certain poll. Yeah. That
sign's a hundred dollars sign. You better keep an eye. 'cause people sometimes steal those polls.
mm-hmm . It has to go up a certain way. Make sure you take a picture. 'cause if we don't have
a picture, the p and z, the first thing they're gonna do, make a motion to kick it to the next
month. I've seen it happen before. And then all of a sudden developers are now in our community
a lot more. They're paying a lot more attention. They're like, hey, these people aren't screwing around.
but again, I'm a little bit more hardcore because then they got everything signed. If they want it bad enough, they'll
do it. That's what I said. If they want it bad enough, they'll do it. I also make a suggestion,
uh, going back to the zeroscape that maybe we should go to texas a and m forestry
and we check with them, what do you need a plants are that we can plant
that will not die? And that go back to what our grandpas used to do.
here it is on side. So now what our suggested change is
not having all these trees and landscape and all that. It just refers back to the texas
a and m. That way is they update 'cause of the professionals. Our code automatically
updates that, that's what jim was alluding to. A lot of times we say,
hey, you have to do it this way. Which is what's in the engineering manual. Yep. Well then when
we adopt a new engineering, um, there's like, I don't know, six different
code books. They're all adopted as 20, 24 I believe. Mm-hmm . Um,
or you know, atlas 14. We just now reference
whatever the, whatever the terminology is that way, um, staff can
just go, nope, sorry, 2024 it says this or 2025.
'cause the fire chief gets on us for having old code. And so we bump that up real quick
and then people like the, like I'm not took on the isd but they're wanting to use like a
different, um, electrical code that's like six years old. And we're like,
no, it's 2024 and I don't have to tell you it is what it is. Um, so
yeah, that's what we kind of took into account. It's how do we do that to where um,
you know, people aren't out planting bradford pears, um, in our climate. Right. But
they're also not out trying to plant a tree. They're like, it's an exotic tree. It not gonna
live. Or it's invasive. I personally think we are banned.
banned, yes. But, uh, bradford pear trees, they're, they're an invasive
species. They need to be bamboo. No more bamboo. We got a, we got a city park that bamboo
all over it. So I don't know who planted that years ago they probably thought it was a good idea
and my god, but cost a million bucks. Bucks. They probably, they bloom in
the spring. They're pretty, that's all. They're good. But the texas a and m, the texas a and m
manual, like the a da regulations
like the atlas 14, all of these things we can
refer back to and yeah. Just say, hey, when,
when the fire code changes, we're going with the new fire
code. Mm-hmm . We don't have to spell it out. It saves us
money. Have updated it every time it changes. Yeah.
yeah. Less meetings. My hope is that, and what we're gonna see unintended consequences.
staff's gonna come up and say, hey, you guys thought this was a good idea? Here's why you don't wanna
do it that way. Mm-hmm . And I think two things I'd ask of everybody is one, don't
do a knee jerk reaction and wanna pass a bunch of code 'cause someone
skirted the deal. Because that's why code gets the way it is. Right. And then the second
one is when, when you do determine like, hey, this is actually a really big issue, we just need
to act quicker. Um, like our uh, parking issue. We've
been given, well we've been given tree variances and parking issues for eight years since I've
been on council. And I'm like, can we just fix the, you know, the dane code and
it's always yeah, we're gonna get on that. We don't always have to spend $400,000 to have a guy
go, here's how you fix your, um, your content variance issue when it comes to
parking. So yeah, as, as far as
the presentation and kind of q and a, that, that was my last one. I'm
good. Is kind of on the calendar and the, the pacing of this, it's,
that's kind of rough for four people who haven't looked at this
udc revision. I do it sooner than that, but I'd say we do a
quicker, that's my wife's due date, so I can't be here that day. Okay. Why then I say, you guys, you just
post an emergency meeting. Uh, do it. You got 72 hour notice, spend
a night, bring a cooler some sandwiches and just bang it out on a saturday and call
a day. I mean, what do you think? Let's do it. Which is good. Good
to me. I'm retired. I live here. I'm retired too. So I live
here. I mean, someone stole my cotton. There's gonna be problems. Not
forget about age. 'cause I did think someone said, said, hey, like, you guys are older than me.
I didn't think, I didn't think you guys, he was just as oldest. Probably the oldest oldest up here
in here. Okay. I'm probably the oldest one. I'm the youngest one about a lot.
so, but I do appreciate your guys' time going through this. I do appreciate
staff going through and um, doing all. And I think ultimately what we're gonna have
is, um, I think what we talked on council is we can have one o'clock
more developer friendly in some instances, but we won't be giving incentives. We'll be
hopefully charging more to do business in hu we'll be moving faster and we'll
get higher quality. Um, we're just going about it a little bit different than maybe
some other people do. Tony, it's bedtime, . Yeah, we
gotta go. I told you we can go until two or three. You guys done? Or you want some
more? We ain't done yet. . We, we still got off. We still
got stuff to do. Alright. Please don't, please don't run. But hopefully
it's fast. I'll get out here now. It won't run off. All right, tony. We're trained to go
to two or three o'clock in the morning. We're good. We're good. I know
you are, but I'm not. I'm old. All right. We're not military retired.
I'm 20 years older than you mike. Guys, calm down. So thank you for
the presentation. We're gonna move on to item seven. Development
services director report. You know what we should have done? Make a sign.
4.0. Keep it real, tony.
um, it's late. I'm not gonna drag this out. Um,
just the dates that we've mentioned today. Uh, everybody send me
an individual email and let me know what you think about. I know,
you know, if you want more time to look at the code, my directive since I
got here was move it and move it faster. It's been dragging on
like a nosebleed right. For months and months and months and months. And we need to get it done and done. And
I, you know, I worked with legal. We put a schedule together that would work. But if we're gonna
change it, let me know soon. 'cause that joint meeting resolution's may the seventh
and we're, they're gonna have to put a date on that, so we'll push it back. But
just let us know what you think. Um, otherwise the next time I see you in person
will be april the 20th. Drive fast and take chance. Let's
do it over it. All right. Um,
yeah. Uh, so I guess, yeah, we're done. It's fine. This, this calendar.
yeah, let's do it. You know, go ahead and email. Back it out the way. All right. Done. Uh,
let's see. Request for future agenda items. I don't think we have. I have a,
I have one. Oh, we do. All right. Yes. So I've spoken
to some of the city directors and had good conversations with about some information
I found out about it's, uh, part of the board that both howard
and I are part of the american planning association. And they sent me some information
about inclusion, about our neurodivergent, our
autistic community. Mm-hmm . Those all
we're not very inclusive of them in our community as far as some
things that we could do better. Okay. And
it doesn't cost a lot of money with what I have been given and done a
little research on. It's just some friendly reminders of things that we could do
and make it more safe for them. Make them feel safer in
the community. Okay. So you would like to have an
agenda item proposing, uh,
these inclusion mm-hmm . Where are we talking
about the udc or what are we talking about? Just, just a discussion and see what, you
know, p and c can talk about it. Okay. And then we can forward it up to council.
okay. Uh, would amenable
to inviting deib
chair and or members? Yes. I had a, had a long conversation with her. Okay,
good. About this. Good. And the lab, uh, library
director and talked to jeff. Okay. Uh, at parks.
so, uh, can we
add that for,
geez, that would be the may 7th, wouldn't it?
no, may 5th. May 5th. May 5th. Yeah. The, the next regularly scheduled meeting
would be may the fifth, but we could
still got some pretty heavy items, you know, on our immediate future.
so it don't have to be may 5th, we can push it back. It's just something I wanted to get on
the agenda that we could look at. Do you think june would be better?
yes. Right. Right now I say that not knowing how much
of what we have, we're gonna kick down the road and, and lengthen out. So,
but right, right now, plan for it. And it's the type of thing that it can roll
month to month if something comes up in june, but okay. And then gives us time to
reach out to some of those directors who have read over it and thought you saying, sir,
I just think it's very, very helpful. Yep. Uh, and you know, but
I don't know if you guys remember from that, uh, the, I call it the come
to jesus meeting we had on a saturday where all the boards are here. Oh yeah.
I'm very, very, very big on let's get input from
the other boards. Sure. Okay. So, uh, some of it
I support that it rings true with me. Uh, when I was healing from
my brain injury, I was, didn't feel safe going, leaving my house until
I got back home. So I couldn't find my way around. Wow. And
I, I know there's people out there, I see 'em and how they look and how they talk
and the way they walk. And let's do something about it.
city council thing. All right.
any other agenda items? Nope.
well then we'll move on to item nine, which is adjournment.
and we will adjourn this meeting on the 8th of april
at 12:46 am
thank y'all. Good night y'all. Stay tight night.