Durham Planning Commission · Regular Meeting · January 10, 2023

good evening welcome to the January 2023 meeting of the Durham Planning Commission the members of the Durham Planning Commission have been appointed by the city council and the County Board of Commissioners to make recommendations to the elected officials you should know that the elected officials have the final say on any issue before us tonight while this meeting is being conducted in person it is also accessible using the zoom virtual meeting platform in the virtual meeting platform public participants do not have the ability to talk or be seen on video by default and to maintain meeting decorum and a discernible record of the meeting the chat function has been disabled for those attending in person if you plan to speak on an agenda item tonight please go to the table to my left and sign up to speak when speaking please state your name and your address clearly when you come to the podium and please speak directly into the microphone

if you are attending the meeting virtually you will be given the ability to speak at the appropriate time if you have pre-registered your name will be called for you to make your comments just like an in-person public hearing you may also call in during the meeting tonight by dialing 1 301-715-8592 if you call in during the meeting you will need to wait until the public hearing you are interested in starts after all the pre-registered speakers have shared their comments I will ask if there is anyone else wishing to speak at that point you would need to digitally raise your hand by pressing star 9 on your phone and when recognized state your name and address before making your comments time may be limited for speakers depending on the length of the agenda finally all motions are stated in the affirmative so if emotion fails or ties the recommendation is for denial thank you and may we have roll call

I can't I don't it's not working mic is on oh there it is there we go oh it wasn't up all right chairman Delia here Vice chair Cameron here commissioner Baker I believe uh we'll be requesting excused absence commissioner cutwright here commissioner shagaris here commissioner Davis here commissioner Herod beer commissioner MacGyver here commissioner Morgan here commissioner cease here commissioner Trapp here commissioner Valentine I believe he hasn't excused absence request as well commissioner Carmen Williams commissioner Zuri Williams yeah yeah and we heard from Commissioners Baker and commissioner Carmen Williams about their absence for

tonight so I'd like to request an excused absence for both of them so moved second and moved by commissioner Morgan seconded by commissioner cutwright all in favor please State aye aye aye all opposed have the same right the motion passes unanimously up next on our agenda is the approval of the minutes and the consistency statements from our December 13th 2022 meeting does anybody have any comments or edits for the December minutes seeing none I would take a motion for approval at this time I moved to approve the December 13th minutes and consistency statements second moved by Vice chair Cameron seconded by commissioner Valentine all in favor please say aye aye all opposed have the same right motion passes unanimously

and next we have adjustments to the agenda I believe we're going to make one adjustment to the agenda for the second public hearing on our agenda case z21 triple zero 48 novel University Hill development agreement this case we have some extra staff in attendance tonight because of the nature of this case and we want to bump that case up to be the first case so that those staff members who aren't needed for the other rezoning cases may go enjoy their evening elsewhere once we finish that case so can I get a move a motion to move case z21 triple zero 48 to be our first public hearing so move second okay moved by commissioner Trapp seconded by Vice chair Cameron all in favor please say aye aye aye opposed have the same right

motion passes unanimously with that am I scrambling to get here I um I failed to make sure I was familiar with commissioner trap's last name and I had to double check um commissioner trap welcome it's your first meeting if you want to say any opening remarks or anything you have the chance now but just want to say welcome and we're glad to have you join us thank you Mr chair this is the most quiet I'll ever be but I look forward to serving and look so forward to serving with you all right thank you thank you okay with that I think we can move into our public hearings um Alexander is there anything else nope on your pipe Ram good great so we are going to start with case z21 triple zero 48 novel University Hill development agreement and we will begin with the staff report hey good evening chair mondolia Vice chair Cameron Alexander Cahill the planning department here to present kz2148 novel University Hill this is a

request for a development agreement this is a going to apply to Parcels at 3737 Durham Chapel Hill Boulevard and 3019 Auto Drive the site is within the South Square MLK compact neighborhood tier it's within the city limits already this is about a six and a half acre site the existing zoning is commercial neighborhood and Commercial General because this is a development agreement there is no change to the base zoning designation this is within a Design District for the future land use map as such there is no change to the Future land use map as there is no change to the zoning there are no zoning overlays that apply to this site and we'll get into the details of the development agreement here in just a minute you can look at the context map and you can see the zoning throughout around the site as commercial neighborhood commercial General and there's no change to the zoning map designation at this time the aerial map shows out the corridor the development that is adjacent to this

site the corridor shows that opportunities for development here on this site and some adjacent Parcels as well so the development agreement is a little bit of a comparison here we got some questions ahead of time we want to make sure we talk through this because development Agreements are a little unfamiliar um to our Planning Commission we've only ever seen one before and so we want to take a little bit of time to talk about this development agreement was something that's enabled by state statute for under Durham Charter Authority it allows for a developer to ask for something such as increased density in return for a benefit to the city we saw one other development agreement we've had since this became a possibility and that was the ferenting road project project you can see the comparison on the screen this development agreement is about six and a half acres the Farrington Road Project was about eight Acres the

allowed units that were allowed by Wright under the ferranting road project were 161 and they were proposing 332 uh Allowed by right on this site is 109 units with a proposed total number of 400 units you can also see that what that impress percent increase in number of units is significantly more in this development agreement request but you'll also see there's some additional commitments that they're proffering or making in this development agreement that they didn't make in the Farrington Road One 82 on-site affordable units were part of the Farrington Road project that project is still underway with slated development of those units by some this summer of 2023 um there are 66 off-site affordable units that are associated with this project which we'll talk about more here in a minute so just to recap uh under 160d of North Carolina General statutes I municipality excuse me municipality may enter into a development agreement with an entity for a development of property through

6 million but the Gap financing around that changes uh which we'll talk more about in a minute

1 Acres located between Carver Street assemblage and the Oxford Manor public housing community this land is valued at about 286 thousand dollars some additional benefits to the community in this development agreement is a donation to go Durham go triangle of one new bus shelter in the vicinity of Novel University Hill that's valued at around fifty thousand dollars which is the cost to improve or install a bus shelter and then the construction of new sidewalks and related infrastructure to connect novel University Hill to the new go Durham girl triangle bus shelter these connections these sidewalks and infrastructure valued around seventy five thousand dollars

um one of the questions we also received was what are the city's remedies around um you know how we hold a developer accountable within the development agreement there's a lot of legal jargon in there I didn't want to spend a lot of time on but I think one of the things that's important to pull out is that no certificates of compliance will be issued for any of the 400 market rate multifamily units to be built on this property unless and until the developer completes its obligations under Section 11 of the benefits which is the funding of the Carver Street assemblage project and the bus shelter so this is a development agreement is there's a lot to it staff do make recommendations and determinations around development agreements um this is consistent with many of the community goals and objectives of the comprehensive plan we're looking for creative and varied Housing Solutions as one of the adopted goals and objectives this meets the intent of that intentional and thoughtful design it

meets that there maybe is some inconsistency with uh the the environmental components to this in addition you know the benefit of affordable housing in this project is not located within the site itself the applicant will be able to speak a little bit more to that tonight this is for the funding of units that are off-site in a different part of Durham um so there's a that's something to consider as you deliberate on this uh with that staff are available to answer any questions and also the applicant team is here in addition we have some additional staff our City attorney assistant City attorney senior City attorneys is here to answer questions as well tonight great thank you with that we will open the public hearing and we'll begin with the applicant presentation you'll have 10 minutes to provide your presentation

Alexander could you bring up our PowerPoint please oh it's already up here thank you sorry and Grace can you run the timer it'll be well under 10 minutes Mr chairman thank you good evening chairman Amendola Vice chair Cameron members of the Planning Commission I'm Patrick biker with Morningstar Law Group I live at 2614 Stewart Drive I'm here tonight representing Crescent communities out of Charlotte Dan gualtieri with crescent communities as their director of development and he's working with us on this project I also would like to introduce the rest of our folks who are here tonight Ted heilbrunn is a principal with Kelly development he is one of the leading affordable housing developers in the state of North Carolina Nicole Tyra is with Habitat for Humanity and Matt Gross is one of our Engineers with Kim Lee horn uh it's been

my privilege to work with Crossing communities for about 15 years now in Durham and I remember working with them on the approvals for Two Fine multi-family projects between 9th Street and 15th Street back in 2007-2010. 6 million dollars the amount of funding that the city is contributing through this development agreement is zero I can assure the Planning Commission that we've had strong Community engagement regarding the Redevelopment the site we're considering and in that regard Dr Andrew Collins who is a long

time eye doctor in this neighborhood and he owns the building at the corner of Academy and University he attended our in-person neighborhood meeting and he told me to support to convey his support of this Redevelopment to the Planning Commission Dr Collins like me finally remembers purchasing a car at this location back when it was a thriving car dealership and some of the folks who've been here in Durham for may remember that it was our Cadillac dealership and then our Mazda dealership but now this is a state of it today based on our community engagement I wish to highlight that this proposal is intentional about boosting pedestrian and Transit infrastructure for this neighborhood since it is since it is located in the compact neighborhood tier to that end we appreciate the guidance of go triangle staff who along with Dr Collins and several others attended an in-person meeting we had for this project Mr biker yes are you intending to be displaying slides right now no this is it okay you like it

I just want oh you're not how come I can see it um there we go got it all right that's about my paper right next in regard to this development agreement the agenda item before you tonight will leverage the resources of Crescent communities and deploy them in the most efficient means possible this development agreement will provide the missing Gap financing for 66 income restricted units in the Carver Street assemblage that the Planning Commission and the city council both unanimously approved in the first quarter of 2022. we need to do this through this development agreement because these 66 income restricted units in bragtown are shovel ready and Mr heilbrunn needs to turn in his low-income housing tax credit application next Friday that is why we are on a tight timeline and we wish for the Planning Commission to

support this in order to support that tax credit application it is no secret that Durham has several strong deserving affordable housing developments that would move forward but for needing full funding of the financing Gap that now inevitably exists between the amount that's provided by a four percent low income housing tax credit and the high cost of construction in 2023 there's a four this aforementioned financing Gap becomes even more pernicious when a project is not located in a qualified census tract which is the case with this six and a half acre site located along Chapel Hill Boulevard if you have any questions in regards to that Mr heilbrun is happy to delve into the benefits of locating tax credit developments in qualified census tracts we have several people who are on the phone line all in support of this project they are a long time Durham residents some of them who live and work in this area and so I'll wrap up by saying Crescent communities wishes to

redevelop this site and put it back into productive beneficial use rather than have it remain a concrete slab again if you'll hear from a few neighbors in support of this project over the phone lines then we will respectfully ask for your approval and our team will be happy to answer any questions thank you for your time tonight thank you uh with that we'll turn to public comment um staff can I get the sign up sheet uh first of speakers and if you are attending online and would like to speak on this case please go ahead and raise your hand at this time so that when the proper time comes I can recognize you Patrick biker you want to come back out uh okay so we have no one who signed up in person so we'll move to uh folks that have signed up

or who raised their hand through the zoom meeting we'll begin with Mimi Kessler Mimi you'll have two minutes to provide your comments please start by stating your name and address hello can you hear me yes my name is Mimi Kessler I live at 1418 Woodland Drive in Durham I have a question I guess I don't really understand why some of the affordable units can't be located in this location it seems to me that that would be helpful for all the businesses around to have more people very close by who could be workers and so I'm just confused about why um that they're not having the affordable units on site thank you thank you next we have Gerald Benson Gerald do you have two minutes please state your name and address and state your comments

yeah I'm uh Gerald Benson I'm the CFO at Durham Academy and my address is 204 colvard Park Drive um Durham North Carolina 27713 um we have reviewed the plans and the proposal and um are very much in support of it for the idea that it would allow um more housing to be available for our faculty and staff that we are in desperate need of um I handle our properties for the Academy we own a few homes that we rent and I would say um every other week I get a call from a faculty member asking whether our one of our houses is available for rental um so uh in in summary we are very much in in favor of this being approved thank you next we have Seth Jernigan Seth you'll have two minutes please state your name

and address and state your comments good evening this is good evening this is Seth turn again I live at 4311 Swarthmore Road Durham 27707 and I'm pleased to express a strong level of support for this project um I uh come at this from somewhat of a unique perspective and that I'm a Durham native I was born and raised in Durham in South Durham in our business I'm in the commercial real estate business uh we own and operate SVN real estate Associates which is just we're located at 333 Durham Chapel Hill Boulevard just up the street from this site I was actually involved with the sale of the site in 2012 and it was vacant at the time in 2012 and so the site has been

vacant for over 10 years now and um I I believe multi-family is a great use for the site and my fear is that if this project does not get approved that we could go many more years with the site being a vacant concrete bad which is not good for Durham or anyone living or working near the site and so again I I'm pleased to just Express strong support and hope that there's an approval recommendation thank you thank you next we have Rick Adams Rick you'll have two minutes please state your name and address and make your comments let me start by asking if you can hear me yes okay my name is Rick Adams and my wife and I reside at 3740 Saint Marks Road I want to start by thanking you as a

7 miles from the proposed development in addition my business partner and I own our office located at the intersection of Shannon Road and University Drive which you might likely know as the former First Union branch bank which evolved into the Wells Fargo branch Bank so I am in very close proximity to the development which is the subject of this evening and in fact I use uh and my family uses uh University Hill in many ways and I've already used it once today and I will be uh Patron uh after this call uh I would like you to endorse the proposed development University Hill has proven to be very popular and successful

development that I believe has contributed greatly to the beauty and quality of Durham the subject property is not contributing to the town in its current form the multi-family project which is proposed is of high quality and I would and would be a continuation of the development that we see currently that we had in this area and thus I would like to ask the Planning Commission to approve this complex thank you thank you last we have Jim Anthony Jim you'll have two minutes please state your name and address and make your comments you okay thank you so much uh for uh allowing me to comment I want to express support for the project I think that this is one of the most uh comprehensive and and Innovative uh approaches to a Redevelopment that I've seen uh utilizing this new uh form of

development agreement uh so uh kudos to everybody who's been involved with this on the team uh and I had the same question that Mimi had earlier um just curious about why not on-site versus off-site thanks thank you is there anyone else who would like to speak on this case at this time okay I'm seeing no one raise their hand in the zoo meeting so we're going to move on to commissioner comments and questions yeah commissioner cut right thanks can we get the answers to the questions from yeah sure I think you'll have about five minutes left of your time um or members of the Planning Commission Patrick biker representing Crescent communities uh long story short I believe it was commissioner cut right

yeah the site is quite small six and a half acres and the low-income housing tax credit requires a standalone parcel for every tax credit deal so you'd have to subdivide six and a half acres and it's a fairly small site secondly what's even more important is that it is not in a qualified census tract and that means a low income housing tax credit issued by the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency will not generate sufficient Revenue to build any quality the housing of the sufficient quality that we expect to see for persons in income restricted dwellings in Durham so it's a lack of financing due to Federal Regulations that we have no control over and secondly the fact that it's a very small site and we would have to subdivide it in order to meet the requirements of the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency Ted did you have anything to add to that uh my name is Ted heilbron I'm a principal with Kelly development company address 912 Village Crossing Drive Chapel Hill North Carolina we are the affordable

developer it's a part of the team here what I would add is uh the the reality is that a qualified census track is everyone here might be aware of provides an extra 30 percent of the low-income housing tax credit financing and in today's environment one in which over the last 12 months interest rates have more than doubled and continue to increase and construction costs are up effectively 30 to 35 percent but on the affordable side our rents are effectively capped right so they're not keeping Pace with the cost of capital and cost of construction finding projects that pencil is difficult and so project doesn't pencil the only mechanism to make it work is to shrink it and so by utilizing an off-site Gap funding mechanism and pulling in a site that is in one of Durham's qualified census tracts we can build as much as I would say 50 percent more units so we'd be talking about a project that could be as in terms of its the affordable housing component as small as 35 to 40 units now we're

talking about 66 units we're also talking about likely up to 20 affordable for sale units as a part of this by pulling in real estate that goes to Habitat so by leveraging this sort of Quirk of the way that HUD designates census tracts and allocates funding to Affordable developments the Frank truth is that we can build more affordable substantially more affordable and so that is the direction that this project has taken I appreciate that a couple couple things I want to reconcile here the Carver Street that was approved last year I thought said it was 198 units so maybe help me understand that disconnect between the 66 that we're talking about here in the 198. the other piece of this is can you do affordable it doesn't have to be lie tech and and build those on site we don't have to do a Live tech deal to to put some affordable units on on this particular site yes I'll take those in order um

the Carver Street assemblance project has 198 income restricted rental units on it we were successful in securing a gap funding award uh this past summer in the summer of 22 from the city of Durham for the first 136 2 units and so these last 66 will complete the 198 units of income restricted four percent lie Tech funded housing and on that note our final tax credit application for the 113 is just this week been accepted by North Carolina Housing Finance Agency and so we're moving to pulling building permits and we'll have a shovel on the ground by the end of the summer so that's exciting and our hope is that in with the pace that this development agreement and the funding from it would come into play that we'd be able to break ground simultaneously on the full 198th um and I am all over the place so I forgot your second question oh why use the light type so the truth is uh you get two kinds of tax credits nine percent and four percent credits nine percent credits pay for a large portion of the

project they're super competitive Durham gets one a year tops by the way the state sets its rules four percent lie detect which is the funding mechanism that we're using to build here pays for about 40 percent of the cost of construction if you do not use litec it is substantially more difficult to build affordable housing because you're not getting what is otherwise free capital in the form of tax credits that we get from the federal government and then sell to investors and so the truth is housing the the affordable units either come in with less affordability right so people aren't making a commitment to 60 Ami they're committing to 80. they're committing to 100 Ami rents which are substantially more expensive than 60 am I runs so it's either less affordable or there are far fewer units built and so by extension the percentage of the total units of the project that you might see if affordable not funded via the Live tech program was included in the novel Hill project it could be 10 or less and the rents might be substantially greater than 60 percent simply because you're not getting the millions of dollars

worth of tax credit funding that helps make affordable developments pencil thanks I get that I appreciate that um I guess where I'm going is I wasn't thinking about replacing the 66 that you already or that you're that you're committing to on the Carver street but in addition to you know five percent or or some number of units on site it feels like that should be possible but you know I haven't seen your financials and whether they're pencils or not but just a thought so so let me take one more stab at this and I don't want to put words in cresson's mouth at the end of the day it is their project it is their money that's being committed to the affordable development that would be in bragtown but what I would say is that what's really unique here is that Crescent is willing to tie the co on 400 market rate units which is a very very expensive project with a bunch of capital they'll end up investing to our ability to pull CEOs for the Live tech development and again we talked for a second previously about how interest rates have Gone Bananas in the last 12 months construction prices run all over

the place the truth of the matter is that happens again the next nine months Crescent signing up to fund that Gap because if our project doesn't get built regardless of the size of the Gap then Crescent can't move forward with their development and so the Gap today is the neighborhood of that two six to three million dollar number it could bloom to five it could balloon to seven right and crescent's on the hook for that and so on top of that sort of open-ended Financial commitment uh I think that the ask to commit to more affordability on site is difficult to stomach and and to add as an affordable developer particularly in this context in which Durham has had to top off Gap funding Awards it's already made to Affordable deals because of this terrible environment that we're in for developing affordable uh Durham does not have money to top off affordable projects and so finding a private Gap funding partner who's willing to cut that open-ended check is very very rare and sets a precedent that we think is beneficial to building more affordable across the city

commissioner Morgan got a question for the applicant is there any kind of design considerations for the 400 units on how you uh are you including any of those type of commitments within the within the proposal um there were some gen there were some general language commissioner Morgan but um again Crescent has a track record that really does speak for itself so in terms of the quality of the units and being harmonious with the development that you see in the background of the slide we're 100 confident that will be the case okay I believe we committed to no vinyl siding if that makes you feel any better yeah and I'm familiar with the developments in Charlotte so yes sir thank you appreciate it the questions comments commissioner cease thank you I have a question or maybe more just a general request for staff to elaborate a bit on the three specific

staff concerns that were identified in the report I think it would be helpful for um everyone to kind of hear a bit about what staff could say on those three points absolutely thank you Alexander Cahill planning department so staff have had some concerns throughout this negotiation process some of them the concerns are in line with best practices or evidence-based research in terms of planning best practices some of our in line with Community goals and objectives um one of the community goals and objectives really speaks to mixed income development and initially there was a different site proposed and we were hoping to get the affordable units as part of the market rates that

was what staff was hoping for um you know we know that mixed income housing provides for safer environments offer a greater range of possibilities when it's cited in revitalized neighborhoods mixed income developments may be an effective tool for promoting Economic Development Across the Spectrum and continuum and then also the inclusion of market rate housing with affordable housing uh usually makes more acceptable to those who otherwise oppose such projects so it helps change that Paradigm or narrative in addition there are some concerns about the mechanism for the donation to Habitat for Humanity around well and septic so there's no mechanism in this development agreement that ensures that um that if these Parcels remain in the county they would be served by Wellness septic which can create an undue burden and add additional expenses and maintenance costs so staff would like or have encouraged through this negotiation process with the development agreement to include the annexation of said

properties as a condition of this agreement which is not currently part of it and the third point or last part is the precedent um we understand that a funding affordable housing is the most important part of this process and getting the Carver Street units built and funded is incredibly important to Brighton Community at the end of the day that's what's most important we're we've been a little concerned throughout the process not just planning but also Community Development that these units aren't on site or they're not tied to a project that wasn't approved yet one of the things concerns that we raised around that is that when a profer is made for Planning Commission or city council around affordable housing there's an expectation essentially that those units will get built within the project that didn't happen Ted did a great job of laying out the you know change and dynamic of the economy and why that's you know becoming

an issue for some of these commitments but we're also a little concerned about the precedent the set's going forward great thank you um for going through each of those and for adding the context about perhaps the initial conversations around this including another site I think that's important too and it's important and especially in my mind we've heard now from several different perspectives from commissioner cutwright from some of the community members who represent perhaps different perspectives some being developers some being more interested at the neighborhood scale from Miss Kessler and Mr Anthony and also from staff have all referenced this concern about having the affordable not being located with the 400 units on site that we're discussing and I think that that's one of the concerning precedents is what I heard correct it's certainly my concern the precedent that it sets up for potentially uh time projects that

already have approvals from a land use perspective to yet another project elsewhere in the city and and so I appreciate the discussion and the vastly uh uh it's a much different environment that we're in now than we were a year or so ago financing Wise Construction wise Etc and and housing needs but I I really do think that um if we look at this both from a land use perspective it's it's not a favorable case if we look at it from a housing perspective sure it can be perceived to be a favorable case I believe there are a lot of benefits but from a land use perspective from the community goals and objectives that have been adopted by the city placing um providing any mechanism that encourages the creation of market rate housing in one location that is

A representative and placing the affordable housing elsewhere in the city across the city I think that's just a bad precedent that's one concern I have the the other concern and and and these are just concerns is something that seems pretty straightforward from from what staff has expressed and that is in some way time the annexation of the parcels being donated to Habitat tying that to this development agreement why is that not something that the applicant is considering uh if the question is is a concern about whether or not we'd be happy to Annex the parcels in as a requirement before donation to Habitat that's fine we have no issues with that the reason the habitat Parcels are in this conversation is because when the financing conundrum precluded us from building a consequential amount of on-site affordable and forced us to

think more creatively about how we could leverage the same amount of dollars and stretch them farther into more units our first thought was in consultation with staff well our group has six acres or five and a half acres of real estate off-site why don't we build there well the issue is that those Parcels aren't zoned and so to go through a full zoning process that's 12 months we've got to pull a site plan that's another 10 to 12 months then we got to pull building permits and so these units the same amount of units would come 18 months later than the units associated with the Carver plan which we're talking about now and we spend a whole ton of time with folks in bragtown we've got other potential affordable developments they're working on with both habitat and the community and all we hear from folks is that they need affordable now not tomorrow not 18 months from now not you know longer obviously um we were encouraged by elected officials to consider the possibility of instead of funding the or having Crescent Fund affordable on the six acres why don't we give that six acres to Habitat they

could build affordable for sale there and then we could subsequently get affordable units into the community 18 months faster and so the original consideration was to not have habitat involved and then the opportunity emerged to link habitat in so that there was just this this kind of simultaneous benefit of more units more affordability coming to the community faster and affordable for sale as a part of the same development right and and Patrick biker again to answer to follow up on the annexation there's a we'd be happy to work with uh Mr Cahill and his team to Simply amend uh uh the paragraph of the top of page eight that's that right now it says developer shall cause a donation of the parcels to have Destiny Mandy just say developers shall cause the annexation and donation of the parcels to Habitat for Humanity that's a simple fix sir well I that would be helpful I think from the perspective of alleviating at least one of the three primary concerns and it's a concern I have from the perspective of

uh donating to an affordable housing developer here in the city but yet also burdening them with that process and and I think any burden associated with that annexation we're happy to alleviate that burden yeah well please do that thank you any other questions or comments so I have some comments um I've should start by saying I'm for this I want this to happen like we need the units uh that said I also have a lot of concerns about the precedent in this sense the sets and also to me it's just an odd way for a city to do business in general so this isn't really about um the applicant like I appreciate Ted The Innovation the work that you've done to

make this happen um so I don't want any of my comments to be reflective of the work that you and the applicant team have done I just like I imagine if this case instead of 400 multi-family units was 400 town homes or 400 single family units and we felt like our hands were tied and we needed to approve it so that we could get the Gap financing for the affordable development and that's not a situation I want to be put in um but to my point about it being a weird way to do business I know Patrick you made a comment of this is happening with the city contributing zero dollars and I do commend that however I think that it that's what the city should be doing that's what the role of the government is is to provide public benefits and provide public service and so I really hope that this gets addressed in our next budget cycle so that our Gap financing program is robust enough that it can fill the Gap so then when we get

an opportunity for an additional 400 units those units are available to be affordable and we're not having to take away units potential affordable units from this proposal to fulfill a gap that the city should be able to fill and in particular like I recognize we have a gap financing program and it it's targeted more at 30 and very low income units which is good and I'm glad we have that we also need something to be able to solve these gaps particularly in our current financing Market this is something Raleigh has done very well and I think that they should be commended on the work that they've done with their Gap financing program they passed a one-cent tax back in I think like 2017 to fund Gap financing and it has successfully delivered hundreds and thousands of units since then using the four percent light set Gap financing program so to me like this as many of the cases we see are we

see here it's just revealing some of the problems of the broken system that we have where we don't have the Gap financing ready that the city can say hey Ted go just fill the Gap get what you need and then we can work with this developer to figure out how do we make more units affordable on this case so that's my primary concern I think I also do have a concern of like we have rezonings come to us all the time and sometimes they don't ever turn into an actual development and so there is a part of me that is concerned like the contingency here is the financing has to be in place prior to certificates of occupancy happening well what if the market shifts and we decide you know there's no development happening here at all suddenly the con the thing that we have said this is what you get when you provide the financing isn't there and so I do actually want to ask that question to the applicant like what happens if this project doesn't move forward

well that chairman Amendola that's that's actually a risk with with any development um there's two there are two sort of Worlds that we have to work in one is the zoning world one is the financing world and they're two very different worlds um there's a saying that to win a horse race a thousand things have to go right to lose a horse race only one thing has to go wrong and the same thing's true in real estate development um we're confident this will move forward we've done um the best we can to answer all the contingencies and make sure that this site is ready to move forward to site plan approval and and the building permit process but for example the building that's in the background University Hill as many of you all know I've been doing this for a long time we got that project approved right before the Great Recession so guess what it sat there as a vacant lot anybody remember Service

Merchandise there's a Service Merchandise there back in the good old days that was a vacant lot for years so uh we don't live in a world where there's no risk but we're confident before you today that this Project's going to move forward and that this development agreement will make these 66 income restricted units happen in bragtown Far faster than any other vehicle it's that's available for for making those units a reality for a neighborhood that sorely needs them and that again was unanimously approved but I appreciate your point Mr chairman it's very well taken but the risks of financing are significant with every project you look at Mr chairman the industrial residential commercial they're all it's all uh a challenge let's just put it that way but we're confident before you tonight in this project we'll move forward and it will be um again as Mr Holborn stated

uh the most efficient and expeditious way to put affordable housing in the bragtown neighborhood pursuant to the unanimous approvals of this commission and the city council thank you just to augment for a second on Patrick's remarks the truth of the matter is and this is just an unfortunate reality the world we're in today every affordable housing development Finance the LIE Tech program and a four percent credit has a gap and so as we think first of all we're really confident which doesn't do Planning Commission that's good but we've seen Crescent take the kind of action that leads us to believe that they're going to fall through their project which allows ours to get financed right um but as we think about how we solve project gaps there are really three mechanisms the first is City Gap funding right and Durham has been a leader in this space across the state over a long period of time Raleigh is great but the truth is the gap fund resources from the bond from 2019 have been fully committed across a wealth of projects across the city so right now there's not that Gap funding resource at a city level the second path would be a

nine percent award and Durham only gets effectively due to the way the state writes its laws one of those a year there are other projects applying for nine percent Awards we could apply with this project but it would potentially take a nine percent award from someone else who then wouldn't be able to build their own affordable and so the last path is Gap funding from a private Capital Partner and that's why as much as this deal has been incredibly complex and has you know tried to navigate all the financing craziness of 2022 it's been a worthwhile effort for us because the precedent of having a private developer Gap fund lie Tech in the City opens up all sorts of doors for us to get more creative bringing projects forward as opposed to effectively either applying for not lines of which only one Project's going to win a year in Durham County or hope that more Gap funding emerges at a municipal level so I guess to Echo Patrick there's always a risk that a project doesn't get funded but out of those three paths this one we view is the most credible particularly because we've got a high degree of confidence that crescent's moving forward

thank you yeah and I think my main point is that this city needs more Gap financing and I hope that anyone watching this meeting any residents hear that and recognize that and think about that when the net when that request gets made and I hope it gets made I hope our city council members request an increase in funding for Gap financing and when that happens we need to back it because I don't I don't really love being in a space where developers are solving are doing the city's job like I appreciate that you're doing it but I don't think that's how it should be working I think the city needs to do the city's job and so we need more funding to make the financing program work um I think the last thing that came to mind as we're talking through this is because of the nature of this case like we don't get to think about this application by itself like we typically do like typically we look at a case and we're like oh we think about the proximity of the

units to other amenities and connectivity and sidewalks and we get to do all of this more detailed important work and because of the nature of this case it's kind of like it's the affordable units are bust and I'm going to choose the affordable units but it I don't like the situation to put this in because that's like that's become more of the focus so that's all I have to say on it any other comments or questions um commissioner sugaris yes a question about the um the well and septic for the the gift to the Habitat for Humanity if the city council you are committing to tying this agreement to annexation into the city if the city council does not approve annexation I would like to know are there Park permits on site for these Parcels because if there are no Park permits for each one of these parcels and the city does not Annex this this is

kind of like a white elephant type gift you know there are not currently Park permits in place for the site we're in the early stages of figuring out the process of making sure it gets developed in accordance with habitat's financial needs so they can deliver their product uh I think at a certain level we would find it unlikely that Council wouldn't take the step to Annex in property specifically intended for 80 Ami for sale housing um but no as of right now we do not have those in place okay thank you commissioner cease briefly chairman yolia amdoli I mentioned sidewalks that typically comes up in our conversations about cases and so I'm going to mention sidewalks just real briefly because one of the things that was highlighted as a contribution that you're making in specific specifically in reference to the University Hill site is the Improvement of a bus stop and an improvement of sidewalks but the route that you've identified crosses Shannon Road twice crosses

Shannon Road the five Lane section of Shannon Road twice which no one will ever do uh and you know does that presumably to avoid having to construct the 500 feet of sidewalk on the Eastern side of Shannon Road which is what path anyone who in whatever circumstance they would ever end up taking the bus from the length of The Pedestrian route that's identified um you know that's the path they would take and so I do think it's important for Transportation staff or planning staff for the commission for applicants to be um cognizant of providing Transit improvements where it's creating conditions that are conducive to people who may want to use Transit rather than just creating a line on a paper that satisfies the scenario for a person who may have to use Transit because I think

that's what's being created here if the actual sidewalk on the Eastern side of Shannon Road is not included and that'll that'll be one of my comments and I wish that the applicant would address that associated with it the project thank you commissioner sees my recollection it was a right-of-way constraint and I think we worked hand in glove with go triangle and uh go Durham and the city's transportation department on the infrastructure uh recommendations in the development agreement so those were all worked on and it was again looking at what was possible given given right-of-way constraints topography and other related facts on the ground so I appreciate that response and it's why I said very specifically that I hope that planning staff Transportation staff and everyone on our commission that we take those things more seriously because it's important

and our team walked the site very thoroughly our Engineers our development team the go triangle go Durham folks are very gracious with their time spending spending time with us so this process took a long time commissioner C so it wasn't like we just turned this in a few months ago it's been in staff review for a long time and your cycling bias comes up I appreciate that Patrick thank you yeah no no it's it's uh it's been a very uh and you saw the fruits of the community engagement from the people who called in and so we're we I I'd be remiss if I didn't call out the staff and appreciate Mr O'Toole's work assistant director Smith Ms Thomas Mr Cahill other folks who've worked really hard on this and on behalf of our team we very much appreciate it okay any other comments or questions if not I'd be ready for a motion at this time Mr chair I'd like to make a motion that we take case z21 triple zero 48 the

novel University Hill development agreement to be formed to the city council with I guess the one change for annexation is that what we were talking about the annexation of the Carver Street assemblage into the city is that the habitat units yeah the habitat units correct staff just wanted to clarify too on that proffer that we will work on the language in the development agreement to ensure that annexation is a mechanism for the city remedies okay that's my motion second moved by commissioner Morgan seconded by Vice chair Cameron is there any discussion on the motion I'm going to quickly close the public hearing because I don't think I did that and maybe we have the roll call vote chairman dolia yes Vice chair Cameron yes commissioner cutwright yes commissioner shagaris yes

commissioner Davis yes commissioner Herod yes commissioner Macgyver yes commissioner Morgan yes commissioner sees yes commissioner tratt yes commissioner Valentine yes commissioner Zuri Williams yes the motion passes 12-0 thank you very much appreciate all your time great thanks to staff thanks to the applicants okay we're going to move to our next public hearing which is case z21 triple zero 16 Shady Grove assemblage we'll begin with a staff report good evening Commissioners and those in attendance the Amir Powell planning department this case is z2116 Shady Grove

632 to facilitate the construction of a maximum 440 residential units the unit types include 8 to 120 single-family detached units and 260 to

320 townhouse units five percent of these units are proposed as income restricted units an additional five percent of single-family Lots will be donated to the Habitat for Humanity of Durham The Proposal also includes a dedication of land for a park to the city of Durham for ownership and maintenance the existing future land use map designation is low density residential if the proposal is approved staff recommend a change to the Future land use map designation to be low to medium density residential lastly this proposal is located in the Falls Jordan water falls Jordan District Watershed protection overlay and is partially within the a60 airport overlay our polish all Parcels on site except 2801 Olive Branch Road and 4031 Carpenter Pond Road or in the airport overlay the airport overlay includes additional Provisions to mitigate any potential impacts and noise exposure from the nearby airport and also allows the Raleigh Durham Airport Authority to

170 the aerial map shows the general location of the project and the surrounding development which is mostly residential a development plan is included in this proposal the proposed conditions show the proposed city park located to the southeast of the site which is surrounded by the proposed residential units five access points are proposed along with the construction of two internal streets on site one being an East-West Road from Olive Branch Road to Shady Grove Road and the other a north-south road from Carpenter

8 opacity to the east and west it also includes a decorative fence along certain portions of the site perimeter

this proposal includes a list of commitments that are summarized as follows The Proposal would limit usage to a single-family detached townhouses and accessory uses there are dimensional standards for buildings provided and it does designate five percent rental rental units as affordable housing The Proposal will donate five percent of for sale constructed single-family lots of Durham Habitat for Humanity or a similar non-profit entity bmps are size to the 100-year storm event and decorative perimeter fencing is provided proposal will also Orient residential units to be rear entry along internal Parkways there is a proposed Road winding alongside Access 5 an additional five feet for bicycle Lanes along Shady Grove Road Carpenter Pond Road and Olive Branch Road and 116 500 are supposed to be donated to Durham Public Schools uh East and east west and north south roads are proposed on site and the

proposal is uh noting to develop a city park with a picnic Pavilion shelter pickleball courts natural Turf play field and a playground there are also traffic improvements that include traffic signals and turn Lanes along Carpenter Pond Road Olive Branch Road Leesville Road Shady Grove Road and Andrews Chapel Road there is a proposed alignment of site Drive 4 with Virgil road to the north of the site and lastly they are proposing protected storage along site drives two and five design commitments include listing the building materials along the front elevation of the buildings providing at least one front Gable in each building and no single-family home or townhouse will be constructed with a front facade or color palette identical to houses on either side of it and townhouses will have a minimum two windows on the side elevation front cover Stoops and garage door entries with Windows the neighborhood meeting was held in accordance with Udo requirements on April 7 2021 two additional meetings

were held on August 24 2021 and February 1st 2022. as well as survey responses and one comment were provided on social pinpoint staff determines that this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and other adopted ordinances and policies The Proposal would achieve the following it would provide market rate and affordable housing provide transportation improvements and dedicate land for a public park the elementary and middle schools serving the site are over capacity and a large number of students will be generated by The Proposal applicant has dedicated 116 500 so Durham Public Schools to help mitigate these impacts the Raleigh Durham Airport Authority has concerns about the intensity of the development of the area due to potential noise impacts from the airport there are concerns from neighboring residents about the compatibility of the development and an increase in traffic and the applicant has exceeded Community engagement requirements with additional meetings to address some of these concerns and staff in the applicant are available to answer any questions thank you

thank you before we turn to the applicant presentation I wanted to recognize commissioner Morgan who wanted to make a disclosure ahead of this public hearing I want to just share with my fellow Commissioners that I am an active member of a board member on the Raleigh Durham Airport I represent Durham County one of the things that the that the airport is concerned about is the development close to the airport and that was the development of these airport overlay districts however I spoke to some of the operations people they're opposed to really any residential development in the a 60 overlay District however recognizing we've had similar issues with Morris Morrisville and other buildings encroaching upon the airport we have these different Provisions which are in our Udo so that kind of frees me to objectively look at this opportunity but they're looking for an aggregate aggregation easement to granted to the

authority which means these planes can fly over this area at any time day or night sound attenuation for lower interior noise I know some homes and developments where we actually have that require that the Builder actually provide those things to reduce the noise level and then fall so thoughtful and complete noise level disclosures given to all purchasers before they actually purchase the the houses or the the units themselves so given that those are all within our Udo and those are where I've checked out with staff that it is covered then I can pretty much objectively uh evaluate the thing but I wanted to disclose it to my fellow Commissioners that I want to definitely follow with whatever the uh the airport staff has requested and I I feel like I'm satisfied with those those requirements thank you uh with that we're going to open the public hearing it will begin with the applicant presentation uh I

6 to being especially dense neighborhood I want to give you a few highlights and give you some history originally it was going to be a lot

denser it was a and I still to this day think that it's a viable apartment site as far as a mixed use between Apartments singles and towns and we went into the project and with the first neighborhood meeting that we had which was pretty lengthy and a lot of conversation but there was a lot of conversation about the apartment's use and and really as it played out when we learned more about Olive Branch Road and and plans you know for small realignments that down the road and things like that the apartment started to make less and less sense and what the community being so against it you know we dropped we were like 600 to 650 units and we've cut down to about like that 440 number by removing the apartments it's only singles and towns a few notable commitments 100 Year storm which I'm glad to see is becoming pretty standard and we'll be doing that here I really like the parkway design so I saw this project as it's the first parcel outside of Raleigh I'm on the other side of Shady Grove Road is

Raleigh City Raleigh residents and when you come out Leesville Road it's one of the first Durham Parcels you're going to see when you're coming from Raleigh so I saw it as sort of a Gateway kind of project something that I think we should do a little bit higher than the norm for development there so our Parkway designed those two main internal roads which is an extension of Virgil Road and then that East-West collector kind of Road it has 10 foot multi-purpose pass on each side it's medium divided it's going to be landscaped you know Center landscaped with a 10 foot pass it'll probably be a right of way of something around 70 feet to to incorporate that but like I said I wanted a certain feel that's the reason we have the condition of you know any units along the internal Parkway have to be rear entry units because through the main Corridor of the development I was going for that kind of kind of feel that honestly we talked about a Planning Commission for years different things we've been trying to go for so that's just sort of a mix of some of those ideas we do have good

affordable components I think we're saying five percent of the first sale uh single-family Lots would go to habitat we're actually talking or our plans are to deal with Habitat for Humanity and Wounded Warriors that could be up to six single family lots it's a finished lot it's not a finished unit it's a finished law but those lots are you know it's a ballpark million dollar commitment when you when you take six Lots at market rate near Brier Creek so I thought that was um that was strong it's just some smaller commitments now we've got the perimeter buffers that we try to do the 50-foot buffers one thing I liked we did here is we added some some perimeter fencing along the buffers but we placed the fencing on our side of the 50-foot buffer so if you live along the development it's going to have the appearance that your property may be 50 feet deeper than it actually is because we put the fence on our side so our our owners and Property Owners they're never going to go beyond that fence likely so it's a solid buffer that I think won't

ever be encroached in um we made a widening Prof right I met with some of our neighbors about the road widening on Carpenter Pond Road we made a profit to you know shift that widening away from their property as much as possible you know this is done at construction drawings but there's just little things that that came about from meeting with neighbors I met with the all the adjacent Neighbors at their homes all the all the way around that's where the buffers and some of this stuff came from so we've done good work I think with the neighbors like staff mentioned three meetings we may have had four and I think the most notable commitment is the city park you know it's I've been saying this a while Durham Parks and Rec I mean you know it'd be nice if we could do some more because you you go 10 minutes east and going to Raleigh and there's a park give her five minutes in that part of town and you go to Durham on this side and there is nada so that's something I was glad we could do it's something we're going to build and pay for dedicate to the city it's

right at the main entrance to the development it's going to have these 10 foot multi-purpose paths leading to it from inside the development we spoke with Parks and Rec they actually told us what to put on that cover sheet you know this multi-purpose field this is what we want we said okay this is what you get the multipurpose field is like half the size of a football field you know it's like a 50 yard football field so it's fairly legitimate um I want to speak on traffic real quick so at its basic level if you were looking at this site for traffic you were looking through three adjacent roads Olive Branch Carpenter Pond and Shady Grove you would go to the traffic count and just on a surface level you would see per our staff report it's not our numbers prior staff report you would see counts of 1700 cars a day I think once 2 400 cars a day and you'll see capacities just at a surface level capacities of of 10 times that in some places 10 000 cars a day 12 000 cars a

T to even mention it so that the thresholds that are around here are pretty low compared to what the Statewide thresholds are they were established by General statute I'll point that out because when you when you go beyond the surface level and you look at the traffic study We performed that the list I'm not sure if an Alex did the updated cover sheet in the package okay so because we had to update the traffic commitments when you look on the cover there's three columns of tax commitments and the two columns on the right hand side are all traffic improvements and the vast

majority of them are stoked to this project you know a lot of times you've got a long list of improvements but they're required by 10 different developers and there's a couple of those that are on that list but seventy percent of those two columns is improvements from the traffic study and that's why I just wanted to point out the relatively low traffic in the area but with this study there's you know signals there are extensive improvements being put in that'll be tied to the CEOs of this development last thing I want to touch on is the airport I appreciate David's input and insight on that he and I talked about that before all I can say is there's a lot of developments in that overlay Andrews Chapel's got 600 homes in a very thriving neighborhood with planes flying over every five minutes and it seems to be working out well so I don't think this will stick out as far as the airport goes and we're making all the proper protections on the plan so that's all I got I like to reserve some time for answer questions or neighbor comments but I appreciate it great thank you

with that we'll turn to public comment and we have several folks that have signed up to speak in person if there's anyone on the zoom meeting who would like to speak please go ahead and start raising your hand at this time for those that sign up in person I'm just going to read down the names that we have and you all can come up to the podium and you'll have two minutes each so we have Bob Hatcher Pam Andrews Tom Freeman David Johnson Pam Williams and Donna Steinbeck you all may kind of come up to the Buddy and one by one I have two minutes each and please state your name and address before starting okay um pardon me I needed some water um I'm Bob Hatcher my wife and I Linda live on 4114 Carpenter Pond Road thank you for allowing me as a commission to speak tonight um uh we we would oppose this development

as it stands right now living directly across the street from it um we are concerned about the traffic but that is not our main concern um we're especially concerned about three other items first of all all of the drainage on the um south side of the property um uh probably in the neighborhood of 12 to 15 Acres it could be more I will drain actually onto our property I'm concerned that even a hundred year flood plan will not cover problems and if there's a problem it will it'll every bit of the silt and water will come onto our property it doesn't go anywhere else along Carpenter Pond Road um uh I've I took a few pictures here I'm not sure if I can do this very quickly um

we have to turn turn it this way yeah um this is directly at our driveway you can see the rise in the property across the street that's about the centerpiece of the carpenter Pond section um uh this is up Carpenter Pond Road to the east again you can see the rise there all of that washes down onto our property this is the um placed directly across on the property that's to be developed there's this is a low spot of about six or eight feet right adjacent to the road Bob your 10 minutes are over oh okay all right uh thank you for the opportunity to speak thank you good evening Pamela Andrews 6108 Wake

Forest Highway thank you for your time tonight there are many facets of this development that I could speak on tonight but the topic I'm going to speak on is personal engagement with elderly community members about the blasting in this area I've worked with the assistant fire chief Jody Morton this week Chief assistant chief Wilcox as well as in I was calling Chief I because I can't pronounce his name at Olive Branch site Donna and I met him there this week these neighbors are being slammed slammed the little log cabin in this home and this picture she's put up this is a lady has lived there for 60 years she's 80 years old she is from Chile when the pre-inspection notification came to her that she could qualify for a pre-inspection she had no idea what to do with this neither her daughter lives next door who oversees her she did not get a pre-inspection you can see a retention Palm was blasted right beside her home there is also right in front of her another major development that is massive it's been going on for two years blasting still daily not mentioned a

mile down the road another blasting sight on the same road these people are being slammed with constant blasting to get into the Bedrock to make these homes um imagine the dirt flying all around you the blast waking up multiple times a week she asked me when I went to introduce myself to her what are they doing today we've learned that another development is coming just 200 about 200 Acres right behind Miss Lily we are destroying Southeastern folks every blast unearched red Triassic Basin soil which flows into our Creeks with readings Before Christmas of over a thousand in turbidity this runs right into our creek beds later I'm going to show you a video tonight of what Lick Creek looks like today these text amendments that are going to come tonight are so crucial but let me just tell you very quickly not one home has been tested in the 24 to 48 hours required in a well permit on the blasting Department City fire

department's blasting permit not one time has been tested in 24 48 hours thank you so much for your time thank you up next is Tom Freeman good evening my name is Tom Freeman I reside I'm a lifelong resident of Durham I reside in 1818 South View Road Durham did I tell you I was a lifelong resident The Assault on Southeast Durham continues welcome to the home of constant Dynamite blasting I rise in opposition to the zoning change request it's a bad plan for a residential community that does not resemble anything in the community let me invite you to to Southeast Durham County so that you can see for yourself what's going on

the site is currently zoned RR in its correctly zoned our community consists of single family homes we have no town homes in our community build RR and you are welcome take this high density development somewhere else it is not wanted in our community it is destroying our community the high density development the mass grading has precipitated the blasting the erosion of waters uh uh into our streams which go in turn to Falls Lake directly down Lick Creek and it is as you will see later on for yourself what Lick Creek a primary tributary to the city of Raleigh's water supply looks like it's an embarrassing mess

I will leave uh my points there but our request I do honestly request that you come out and look at my community and look at what's going on get out of your cars at some of these sites and you feel the ground shake thank you very much thank you next we have David Johnson appreciate you letting me speak tonight uh David Johnson 4123 Carpenter Pine Road in Durham uh I live next door to where the Project's going uh you know you can't stop growth and you need growth uh but my biggest concern is doing too much at one time I think the traffic if you just said 440 units times two that's 880 cars that's not bad but if you take the whole scheme within a mile and a half two mile area it's a lot that you've already approved that's going on and when you compile that with

what's already being proposed today I got a notice across the street I'm sorry another 200 Acres that'd be that many cars on a two-lane road uh I don't I don't mind progress at all but if you can do it in the right way time it out and plan it and have your infrastructure there and everything you need I think it works a lot better I don't think the neighbors would have a problem with it um someone said earlier it's a Gateway from Raleigh coming into the area that's correct within a half mile Raleigh is going to build 50 million dollar tennis courts racket pickleball and all this well you've got that much more traffic that's going to be in that same area one once one project 440 cars no big deal when you've got all these projects and I'm I don't have a clue how many I would say three or four thousand cars a day and that's just times two per unit that's when it becomes concerned the only other thing you were talking earlier Mr

I'm going to tell you what if uh around the corner a few years back had a project going on 0809 bad times hit the land set there for a year or more and nothing going on um what is in place we know hard times may come with everybody talking what's in place if these projects get halfway done and everybody leaves who is protecting the runoff who is protecting the whole area with just Barren land sitting there am I out of time okay thank you very much appreciate it Thank you Pam Williams good evening planning Commissioners I'm Donna Steinbeck I live at 4825 Jimmy Rogers Road in Durham North Carolina I'm a lifelong resident of Durham um my I am an opponent to this development the key concerns are

124 Acres Carrie and um has like 25 acre maximum and Charlotte has a 20 acre maximum and there is work being done with the planning department to look at setting maximums for Durham County and Durham city the impacts of the blasting are not being handled by The Blasters in the area Pam presented a good bit of that there's two little tree preservation coverage and a minimum for the perimeter buffer and there's too much cumulative cumulative development in the area impacting all the infrastructure including the traffic and the you know there is a lack of detail in the plan as to what is going to be left as the native plant coverage

28 acres and the tree preservation is a minimum and that's one thing we really do need with all this Mass grading is the trees that protect the soil and the runoff without any of that well you know the rest of the story thank you send a copy to your emails this

afternoon oh what's up oh it's on my screen it's not on your screen okay my name is Pam Williams um I can't I don't know why it's on my screen and not on y'all oh it's up there okay my name is Pam Williams I live at 2130 Adventure trail Durham North Carolina I'm a lifelong resident I live in this area um there's a couple of things I would like to point out I appreciate the boundary buffers are 50 feet that they are proposing and the interior fencing around some of the boundaries but along the streets they're not they're using the minimum Street the minimum uh boundary buffer which is 20 feet and also the minimum opacity I would like to request a 30-foot minimum on the

8 we need this to preserve what is out there now it is not fencing and Hardscape there now on this property it is trees I also would like to request that the boundary buffers be natural boundary buffers and that they not grade to the property lines just as you saw in Pam's uh picture where they grade to the property line and then they come in and they put in some trees for that 20 foot buffer what you see on this on the screen that is all that's in blue and black is the developments that have been approved by the city council in the last year year and a half and they're just starting construction they're grading in southeast Durham uh Suburban Southeastern there's only 8 600 acres right now we have right at a thousand acres under um land disturbance permits and being graded blasting whatever out there a

nicholas and then of course Kemp road which again would add 54 5400 Vehicles out here that would be close to 70 000 additional trips per day in this area in southeast Durham on

nichols Carpenter Pond Shady Grove um within probably by 2026 the build out for most of these are 2026 although we didn't know what the build out for this one there wasn't a schedule in it so if you could tell us that but I want to bring to your attention yes this may not have but a couple thousand but we have a lot of chaos out here Cornell Thank you thank you we have a few people who have raised their hand to speak in the zoom meeting we'll turn to them at this time we'll start with Aaron Villeneuve Aaron you'll have two minutes to provide comments please state your name and address and make your comments hi my name is Aaron Villeneuve I live at 57 5710 Sovereign Grove Drive I'm in the Bennington neighborhood which is right across the street from the proposed development

um as I'm sure you can hear in the background I'm the mother of a young son a one-year-old who's getting ready for bed um the positive about this plan is I am appreciative of the park as um someone said earlier there aren't any parks out here it's desperately needed the negatives to this as has been said before the traffic these are rural roads they are not made for the increased traffic that all of this development is bringing if you look at the school map that is currently a Spring Valley Elementary is the current School currently overcrowded the number of developments being planned there would essentially double the number of students at that elementary school so we desperately need another Elementary School built planned ready to go before we start building I understand that you want to build first get the tax dollars all of that but we need this infrastructure in place the services as

well the concern about the fire emergency EMS response times already lagging adding more people to this community to this area adding that traffic is going to also cause those delays so these are a lot of the concerns that I'm trying to talk very quickly about all of them um but I would really like to hear more from the the council and the City Planning about the schools the traffic before we keep approving these these developments um I'm not anti-development I just want to planned out um in a responsible manner that is holding up the infrastructure for the current community members as well as the Aaron your two minutes are up thank you thank you next we have Mimi Kessler

hi there it's Mimi Kessler can you hear me hear me yes um I have a couple of things um first of all on page four um it talks about the water connection and capacity and the sewer connection and capacity and it says that um it's still in progress so I don't know what that means but I do have concerns on a general basis about our ability to supply Water and Sewer to all of these new um kitchen sinks and toilets that are being created in this area I also have concerns um related to how much development is going on um in this geographic area I agree with the residents there that um that they um there's like too much construction going on and I and I keep wanting to

know why we can't somehow um require the developers to spread out the um the you know like what I'm trying to say is one one developer has to be finished with blasting before the next developer can start blasting and I don't see any kind of sequential uh route here where where we can um work on the cumulative effect of all of this development in one area um so that's all I have to say I I I I I don't I just don't think that this is uh I don't think there should be any more development in this area for uh some period of time thank you thank you next we have Rebecca Freeman Rebecca you have two minutes please state your name and address and make your comments thank you good evening Commissioners I'm Rebecca Freeman I reside of 1818 fappy

632 this plan should be developed if at all consistent with the future land use map designated by the city at less than p r pdr4 not packaging and sandwiching housing together to get a higher density than most if not all the developments around in that area commuting to Warwick school and shopping requires many families to have two or more Vehicles this high density is about what Will significantly add to the already congested areas in southeast Durham that Pam Williams uh talked about before reference to traffic analysis with the knee developments in consideration as she mentioned and as well over is over 20 already that is going on that is going on now with so much construction the way many turn

lanes and traffic lanes are recommended but the roads in this area constructed many years ago for the rural setting and are narrow with minimal shoulders and they pose safety hazards with heavier traffic loads and congestion from all the new developments roads solely need upgrading more than just turn lanes and traffic lights the development plan I believe specifies a maximum of 35 foot high buildings if I'm correct but no detail about what that means I'm assuming there will be three-story Town Homes maybe the taller homes will be out of place in this area of Southeast Durham for the small and for the small footprint of this development site now finally I could not look at information about sidewalks and I've heard Mr Edens speak just a moment ago about have I'm not sure exactly what that means uh but um sidewalks are just as important and maybe more important than bike Lanes to the residents of the of any development and they should be on both sides of

every street in the development Rebecca Rebecca your two minutes are over okay thank you very much thank you next we have Michelle Bridgers Michelle you'll have two minutes to provide your comments um hello I'm actually um Jesse Bridgers Michelle's husband I'm using her phone can you hear me yes yes um I live at 3909 Carpenter Pond Road um just found out today that not only are we getting developed on two sides of us the back and the left side but now we're also getting another development uh directly in front of us um I'm not particularly opposed to development um I do miss the Privacy that you know the woods land has given us but my main concern is with drainage and erosion um as you saw in the picture from one of my neighbors the very first man to speak um all of the wash off from the road

goes into the ditch Banks and is literally coming to the edge of my property and turns back into my property and across my neighbor's yard as well I have a septic system and I well system so I get all of my family's drinking water from a well and all of my waste is pumped into a Drainage Field that we take very good care of My worry is that with all of the um all of the water pouring onto my property from this new development from the lack of trees absorbing it that my well water will become undrinkable um and I just haven't heard any considerations of how to fix that problem with the erosion and the water and he seems really nice I just haven't seen any plans about it so I'm not against um or you know or in agreement with what's going on but I just want to kind of have a plan of what we're going to do about the the water issue and the water

table because that's that's what I used to drink off of and my family does so I'd like to hear some some planning about that at some point uh thank you thank you is there anyone else wishing to speak on this case if you're in the zoom meeting please raise your hand at this time if you'd like to speak okay seeing none uh Mr Edens you had about three and a half minutes left of your time you can respond to any comments yeah I think I was taking notes um so Mr Hatcher mentioned uh stormwater obviously stormwater is a big concern for everybody it's it's why Durham stormwater code is probably one of the thicker parts of the code a lot of restrictions in Durham but you know we're committing to the 100 year ponds and what that means is the post-development flow rate has to be

less than the pre-development flow rate for the Hundred Year event post construction so by ordinance and with the multitude of City stormwater reviewers who look at the projects throughout we have to have less drainage by just by ordinance we're supposed to have less drainage than what we have currently so if there's flooding issues generally although development adds tons of drainage when the ponds are twice the size as what they used to be to detain then that offsets that issue um blasting you know blasting comes up a lot you know blasting is a function of topography lots of things but I don't think blasting is a function of use I don't think a land use decision is I don't think blasting is part of a land use decision if I develop a farm out there and I want to grade it to drain a certain way I'm going to blast just as much Rock developing a farm with cows on it as I will with a development if that's what I want to do if I want to do an offense Park industrial retail single family

2 units an Acres probably about 95 single family homes over 78 Acres so we can have 95 homes that look very well placed for other air you know I always say carry you know that's what we're heading towards we have 95 of those buy right you know people say well we welcome it welcome our our but I don't welcome the the price points of the RR product that's why we're here trying to change it and I don't think that when you're buying a home in the area with less choices you want to appreciate those comps that your broker runs for you when you try to go get your loan and things like that so I think the the alternate on this site near Brier Creek near the aforementioned tennis facility which we don't have that in Durham so we have Durham residents and now have access to a massive tennis

facility down the road you know with significant number of residents so density makes more sense here than less grading I you know I spoke to that before I mean that to me that's a flip phone versus an iPhone I mean when I was constructing 20 years ago it was flip phone we graded lot by lot and now we have iPhones and we masquerade and it brings construction costs way down and allows us to control this storm water that we're so eager to control if I don't masquerade the site how do I tell the water where to go and that gets pretty tough so when you when you got to have ponds and you're promising 100 Year detention I got to be able to Route the water to those ponds and mass grading I mean I'll go down Forever on mass grading argument that that's that's a killer so I address that the same way you know every time Fire EMS response I appreciate Aaron's comments I think she's in the Raleigh section across the street but I think when Durham does

their annexations they analyze fire and EMS they analyze their response time is where the local you know there's been a fire station issue come up near 98 so anyway I just want to answer some of those and be glad to answer your questions thank you great thank you Mr Edens would that will turn to commissioner question and comment thank you we would like to start commissioner Morgan yeah I have a few comments and then a few uh questions for the applicant one of the things that I'm noticing is I'm kind of a bug on street maps and trying to look at it but I mean we seem to have sort of a Vortex of Leesville Road Olive Branch Shady Grove all kind of coming to this four-way stop and I'll steal a comment from my fellow commissioner who's not here today commissioner Williams I drive that road every day and it is busy already before covid that

traffic would get backed up at that four-way stop and after during covet it kind of died down and then as it's picked up again there's a lot of traffic in a lot of the building that's going on is adding to it so my concern is the traffic or the new residents on Olive Branch certainly new residents on Leesville Road even coming from my community which I'm in in Carolina Arbors I go there almost every other day because my father lives in in Raleigh so I travel that every day and so I have some personal concerns about this is actually coming in as a Vortex the City of Raleigh has couple right-of-ways one is for new Leesville Road which is coming up out of Raleigh and Wake County and also even Leesville Road and so there's an opportunity in my opinion for the city to get involved and to do something to help solve some of these traffic issues it doesn't we can't

depend on the developers I'm kind of still in common from you Mr chair about we can't let the developers kind of completely solve all our problems I think there's places where the city should step up and we should actually do that and so my concern is uh because of the right-of-ways coming from Wake County and from the City of Raleigh as well as the current road structures I think it's about time we're looking at 400 homes here I got another neighborhood Development Across the carpenter Pond for another 600 and that's all in addition to what was actually presented today by some of the concerns there we've got a lot of new homes coming up a lot of new residents and that isn't even done yet so whatever is there now is only going to get worse so that's my concern about that the question I have for the applicant Jared um when I was looking at the airport overlay districts a60 and the provisions

that we have for the parcels that are within the a60 overlay district is could you would you consider a profit to be consistent with those extra two Parcels not make them a60 but at least do the same things that we're asking for such as the flyover rights the uh I can't remember how you do it but the the construction where you uh you know make sure that the sound isn't there as well as disclosing to potential buyers that they're in it's sort of a path I mean when we talk about these overlay districts we talk about a real area which is in that Corridor but that doesn't count for the number of planes approaching a particular Runway at a particular time and so a60 is an average decimal level it doesn't count for single flights Time After Time After Time who are

staging coming into the runway off of terminal too so would that be something that you all would consider I think it would be good for your Builder to be consistent across the board because you know you're going to have a neighbor buying a home that's in the district and then another one across the way and they're going to start saying well why didn't you disclose this why didn't you not disclose that would that be something to consider I think it's a really good suggestion to be honest for consistency building materials and and those homes are still going to hear the planes whether they're outside the inside overlay or not like you say so I think it's a good suggestion and something we can incorporate as far as I think what we're saying by incorporating is these standard notes that would go on a plat and the certain disclosures at title transfer or whatnot if that's what we're talking about yeah we could apply that to it's the two westernmost westernmost Parcels that are not in it

now yes staff's okay with that just we want to clarify it's the time of title transfer it's the time of sale and it isn't related to the the ordinance itself just to clarify right you know we could Zone it that way I guess if we wanted to but I don't see any change there when I did talk to our operations Folks at the airport they don't see it even with the new Runway that's going to be built in the next five years or so they're not changing the overlay District so they're not asking for that anyway but at least from consistency from a builder perspective is to have the same kind of disclosures you know and I have that in my neighborhood all the time where people you know we have a lot of planes flying over I get emails saying you know why weren't we told and it we're not in the overlay District so that's why okay is that something that can be done so to clarify the applicants committing it to at the

time of sale or whoever the the seller is to tend to visit into the building for whatever sound proofing correct that is at the time of sale that we definitely can have a note on the plat but that is not a commitment that's related to the ordinance for a development plan got it yeah okay thank you um that's kind of all I have I do think that we need a partnership that's really what I'm looking for is with the different municipalities we're kind of at a you know we have two cities two counties and all that kind of stuff kind of coming together so we need that kind of cooperation other questions comments I have a question I notice on the other side of Shady Grove Road there's a development I guess that would be according to the map page 15 of 42 from the City staff presentation um and it's

I drove out there and I looked around this area that is while it's still within Durham County had a City of Raleigh so that's I'm assuming City of Raleigh in Durham County you were talking about the City of Raleigh right away so could that could Raleigh extend technically into this proposed area does anybody know Smith gray Smith with the planning department there is a portion that's across shady I mean across the road that is already in the Raleigh City Limits was it Exeter I think that's over there or um I didn't look at the map but there is it's in the city limits we have an annexation agreement that we have with Raleigh where we agree who can Annex where so if Raleigh wants to come into Durham County we have that laid out in an annexation agreement and so um they've already annexed what's allowed on that side that's in Durham County I'm not 100 sure how much more is left I'd have to look at the agreement area but there's an agreement and it's

between the two jurisdictions the city and of Raleigh and city of Durham on who gets standings where if it's not in their County and how that works okay thank you thank you other questions or comments commissioner Herod thank you chair uh Jared uh does a liquid Greenway come through this property link Creek Greenway Greenway yeah I don't think so the proposed I don't think so okay in staff report he said something about that but I don't I could be wrong I I wasn't aware of the um and we didn't have to allocate any kind of corridor or anything and normally they run down sewer easements and stuff and we didn't have to deal with that in the suds or the extension agreement

I could be wrong the correct uh in the Durham trails and Greenway master plan there is a big area that's designated for the Lick Creek Greenway but there are no standards that need to be applied to them for them to upload okay well I think you I don't know you've added some features since the neighborhood meetings I mean you do have wider buffers and higher capacities opacities then required in some cases uh but the traffic I I can see is a big concern and you have down here something about uh Olive Branch Road improvements what does that refer to on the DVD it's on the cover page that has all the text commitments no

it's just a comment really uh a note on the dv2 plan Olive Branch Road improvements I just wonder oh I think that's that's actually a straight text that was supposed to be removed because the Olive Branch we thought was going to realign across the southern part part of the property early on in the project than like David alluded to we were notified of the different alignments that are already been acquired by the City of Raleigh so that took that Olive Branch off the table but I think that text hung around on the plan so that's should be gone is that a committed Thing by City of Raleigh well there's you can like David said there's been a right away that's been acquired for Leesville Road for a realignment of Leesville Road in Raleigh and then North Exeter way in Raleigh is eventually ties into Olive Branch but it'll be south of our parcel so that there's no real Olive Branch Corridor anything that we're doing other

than putting a driveway to it maybe our lane can help us out here yeah earlene Thomas transportation department I believe you're looking at the older version of the development plan so those Olive Branch realignment and Improvement should no longer be a part because the mpo removed that as a part of the long-range plan oh good in coordination with the city of Raleigh's NPO thank you okay that's that's an extent of my questions the commissioner cut right um I think I want to to take a moment here to point out that at least from my perspective I feel like this is a really good project there's a lot of good things about the project itself um there's some you know affordable housing I think the design caveat is I'm not a land planner but with the sort of collector roads and the design that's

that's happening there um you know the unit types I think this could make for a really good project itself um it's tough and we're in this position regularly when you have an individual development that um points out or that that causes us to see the issues that we have as a as a planning organization or as a city right wouldn't that broader traffic impacts broader environmental impacts and so it's tough to bifurcate an individual project from the broader issues I think that's what we're facing here is we have some broader issues that are maybe exacerbated or or brought to light by this individual project um I'm not I don't know the solution to that except to call it out and make note of it but I think the project itself is is doing a good job for the land and the

S Green Building council's lead for cities and communities rating system we achieved this designation for implementing practical and measurable strategies and solutions aimed at improving sustainability and quality of life for

gov 822 summer let's get started with you I know you leave the city sustainability efforts and overall what is your goal when it comes to building and maintaining the city's properties so we exist in the general services department for the city and the general services department is responsible for constructing operating and maintaining high quality City facilities that are visually appealing but also sustainable and we do that using all the divisions

within the department facilities project management we work with the Departments across the city in partnership with the combined goal of increasing our Energy Efficiency and improving the renewable energy use in our city facilities what are our clean energy goals now and you know and how was it impacted by this first plan oh yeah so the the carbon neutrality and renewable energy action plan really sets forth two bold and ambitious goals it makes us a leader in this space we're one of the first communities in North Carolina to commit to 100 carbon neutrality in City operations by 2040 and 100 renewable energy sourcing in City operations by 2050. yeah we don't always agree who to pull for on game day but we all can agree that litter is bad for North Carolina

[Applause] see a pothole there's a nap today missed pickup there's an app for that need to set up water service he has an app for that too introducing the one call app report your service requests online on your schedule just download for free from the app store or Google Play Store then sign up and start using it to report problems check the status of your service request or just find out more information try the Durham one call app today

thank you thank you an hour before me yes all right we're going to return from Recess um I have a couple of questions I'm going to ask quickly and then I'd like to move on uh the first I'll go ahead and ask it of staff um so there's the text Amendment we have tonight on soil erosion and then there's another text amendment that just came through jccpc on the phasing and mass grading and how

that's going to get kind of revamped those are presumably going to be approved after this case moves forward and I'm curious how that's going to align with this proposal being subject to those um to those new text amendments hey thank you chairman Delia Alexander Cahill planning department so you're correct the erosion sediment control text amendment is that Planning Commission tonight it's the last item tracking potentially in February or March for approval at the city or county if if they choose to approve it um those commitments that we've seen commitments on let me frame it this way we've seen commitments on other cases of things that will be in the text amendments and that they're proffering in other cases before the text Amendment just to ensure that they have to comply so we've seen that happen in other cases in terms of the phase grading and tree preservation amendment I think that

one's going to take a little more work and it's going to maybe be in a slightly longer time frame than the erosion sediment control one and so more likely those won't wouldn't apply to this case correct okay thank you um and then so I have some a couple of questions for Mr Edens um first I'm not sure how familiar you are with those two text amendments yet because they haven't been approved yet but um I'm curious just briefly if you have already thought about incorporating some of those requirements into this proposal and if not if you would between now and when this moves forward to council yes I'm more familiar with the masquerading one then the erosion one because I focus more I think the masquerading ones has a bigger impact I know the erosion has some things like double silt fence which we can add gladly we did that on our last zoning small things like that we'd be we'd be

glad to do that on the mass grading I I personally you know I've got some real issues with the draft of that code AS written and what its effect would be on density and cost down the road so I know what some of that stuff is proposed I wouldn't want to voluntarily commit myself to any of those things because I think that even what's drafted now is going to change before it's voted on so people might be committing to conditions that may not be part of the text when it's actually voted on so I could do the erosion though for sure yeah I think that would be good and understood on the other the other question I had for you was in regards to you mentioned that Olive Road Branch kind of went into the calculation to reduce density from your original plans and I just wanted to ask kind of like how did that factor in it's not often that we see density reduced because of roadway capacity and so I

kind of wanted to get a clarification on why Olive Branch Road was a factor in the density on-site yeah it's not often I'll reduce density at all so I've lost sleep over even suggestion to cut density but um it was really a function so our original plans um we had designed Olive Branch Road to realign through the southern part of the parcel and ultimately line up with um Angel Veil which you'll see on that sheet too of that plan said Angel Bell is the second drive to the north on the Eastern side of Shady Grove so our original plan was to do a much more extensive Olive Branch realignment tie in there and that sort of created a pod for the apartments I was going to put the apartments on the southern side of that part that Olive Branch created we got into the review and also neighborhood feedback I mean the apartments were not you know not well received at all and I understood some of the concerns and when you've got that combined with you know staff was

directing us on well this is actually dot he's got this plan and City's got this plan for how the intersection gets reconstructed all the Olive Branch realignment and all that control we had of Street Frontage of Olive Branch and how we would plan around it all that went away when when the realignment went away so it left us with the one big pod not as good as separators as I wanted so we just condensed a little on the density yeah okay thank you um so I yeah I wanted that point to be clarified that the capacity of Olive Branch Road is not the issue at hand in regards to the density it's about design of the streetscape and whatnot um Alexander I see you've come up did you have any other comments you want to add to that yeah I just want to clarify that uh I heard Mr Eden say that they'll commit to the elements of the erosion sediment control text Amanda I want to make sure that we're clearing what those three things are it's the oversizing of the sediment basins the use of the double silt fence and the introduction

of flocculents yeah all three that's good yeah thank you thank you great thank you um yeah so I wanted to really drill down on that point because when you said that it was going to be higher density and now it's not that was frankly really disappointing to me particularly because of the proximity of this site to Briar Creek Road and a lot of the things that we want to see in this part of Durham which is more access to Transit more walkability more opportunity for a mix of uses they depend on more density happening and so um I appreciate that the kind of geometry of the site changed and I appreciate that you are working with the neighbors to create something more palatable for them um that said I think that my guess is when city council hears this

they're also going to feel a little frustrated of like man we could have had so much more and I think that that is not a helpful message to get us where we really want to be which is not less development it's better development and I really hope that um I really hope this doesn't set like a precedent of cases getting less dense throughout the course of their life because of opposition because I think that that ultimately is not the direction we need to be going I think that's going to continue to exacerbate the problems we have and it's not really what we've a lot of us have been pushing for in this part of Durham we've been pushing for smarter development for doing more on less space like commissioner cease has said in the past and so I do feel like this is a like somewhat of a missed opportunity because I also imagine you're doing five percent affordable units if some of those were

Apartments then we get a mix of rental affordable a mix of for sale affordable like that is true mix use or mixed residential we're getting for sale and Rental and affordable and mixed income like those are all the elements I want to see and it's uh just it's just disappointing to see that that had to shift over time and I understand why it happened but um I just wanted to make that comment that I think you know that's something that we need to think about as we're talking about these cases is it's not we want to see better we don't I'm not at least me personally I'm not looking for less I'm looking for better development better design and I know you are always bringing cases that I feel like stretch beyond what you brought us brought before and I appreciate that and um yeah I hope that we don't kind of run into this issue too much in the future and if I catch me you still have the potential for the mix of rental affordable and for sale affordable

things because there's a lot of Builders out there doing 100 200 300 units single-family developments that are rental only most in National Market National Builders have divisions that just do rental only so I added that condition about the rental to ensure that whether it was a rental some rental town homes or for sale we would have it covered in both but I think there you know there's a decent chance you're going to get that mix you're looking for even if there's not apartments on the site yeah that's fair I appreciate that um yeah that said still like we could have had three different types of housing on site instead of just two and that's disappointing to me um any other questions or comments commissioner cease thank you Jared I appreciate the uh honesty in losing sleep over loss of density um I hope you continue to lose sleep over loss of density um because then I know seeing how you work with the commission and on projects to move your applications

in ways that perhaps are a little bit more closely aligned with some of the things that come out of the conversations in this forum than some other applications that come for us I think that that you could be a partner with us and and getting to that point and the point to to specify it is is as the chair said yeah I think there's a real opportunity here to do something more and this is not in any way to diminish the concerns that we've heard expressed by members of the public which are very understandable because there is at present I think a real incompatibility between between the proposal and just the PDR zoning which speaks about compatibility with the adjacent uses it speaks about opening up Innovative development we could argue about what aspects of The Proposal are Innovative or not but I think in the context of where Durham is that there there's a lot

more room and should be a higher bar of expectation of what could be conceived of as Innovative whether it's in the form of financing whether it's in the form of affordable housing whether it's in the form of energy but in this case I think what is is specific and and why I wanted just to make a a couple of quick comments is that many of the projects that we've heard or have come before us in the time that I've been on the commission which is not not a long time but it's a year plus or so I think in this part of the city and county come with challenges challenges in terms of access in addition to all the other challenges that we heard about with storm water utilities Etc and Mr Edens is right the city has made an investment in Utilities in this region and that's that's a factor uh the the improved Transportation Investments if you will um in in Raleigh are also a factor I mean in terms of regional locations this is an incredibly efficient place to

access a lot of a lot of different things both in Durham and Wake County the difficulty is that the surface infrastructure is still the largely the rural surface infrastructure that's been there for decades and hasn't caught up and um and what's different to kind of get to the point here what's different about this site from some of those we've heard I think is that it has really good connection in Frontage on three different roadways um a lot have you know more limited connection whether it was Olive Branch Road or some of these other uh some of these other projects that have come before us with limited connectivity this has really good frontages and it's fairly close to the proposed Leesville Road right-of-way extension it's it's close to Briar Creek it's it's close but not quite there the reason I think it's important to point out that this could be more is is because of where it is within the within the existing Street network but also because of the size 78 acres is really a that's a that's a large

parcel for development it's not as large as a lot of what we can't see before us and so I do think that 78 Acres could accommodate a lot more perhaps even with some public support for some of those infrastructure improvements so they're not all being carried on whatever residential component is being proposed 78 Acres you know I I've we've in some of the prior conversations I've talked in terms of blocks with this one I'll talk in terms of like Villages or towns I mean you could practically fit all of just I was quick quickly looking at two North Carolina towns you could practically fit all of downtown Elkin a cool little mountain town or Piedmont mountain town on that 78 Acres you could fit half of downtown Edenton kind of a classic you know first First Colonial capital of North Carolina on 78 Acres that's a lot of space to do something to do more than just two housing types to do more

6 whatever the number is that's just more of the same kind of suburban development that has produced the insufficient Transportation infrastructure in this part of the County so I I would encourage kind of just a pause not a pause from the standpoint of letting things catch up but a pause from the standpoint of making this something more and I think that that could be advantageous to the applicant and it could certainly be the advantageous to the community in the city as a whole so I don't support it as is but I think you have an opportunity to do something much more thank you yeah and a couple comments I know I mentioned you know the apartments and whatnot yeah I think that would be a good use but there's the fact of the matter is in the current environment we have to also follow the market

and the construction costs and finance costs and you know right now if you look around Durham any part of Durham and I've got some good apartment projects we're working on they're not really Finance right now the new construction existing apartments are getting bought and sold you know like hot cakes but new construction I start with the national Builder a couple a couple weeks ago it's really hard on the new construction so it's a factor of a lot of things it was a road realignment it was a neighborhood feedback it's not always want to be the first Apartment project in an area you know this is not on 98 or Highway 70 and some of that typical kind of Frontage we thought Olive Branch might create some of that Frontage and that through thoroughfare traffic to support it but that didn't play out but just made it clear It's a combination of things and to try to offset that you know we we've specified three different town home types you know we have some front entry some rear entry I don't think the city park is you know that that's significant that's a big cost and a big public benefit The Collector Rose is the way

that's designed you know there's a mention of trails where we're building 10-foot Trails on both sides of our collector roads throughout the community so it might not be an official Greenway but it's got tons of pedestrian space we're talking it'll be Miles when you do both sides of thousands of feet of Road of Greenway that's been built in the most accessible part of the neighborhood so I agree every site could be could always be a little bit more but I think we've hit the high points but I just want to make it clear the apartments was a function of a lot of things not just that one thing thank you commissioner Davis I just have a quick question for Pam Andrews so you said you spoke to the fire chiefs I kind of want to you know just briefly hear what they said um Donna and I and her husband met with him this week they call us impromptu because we've been sending out some emails to them and they asked us to come to the site the blasting site which was right beside the little Log Cabin that I showed you and the concern was that the

homes that were right beside that blasting site did not get pre-inspections and they came out there and they went door to door at that particular particular site and asked them you know did you get a letter two of the three homes that are right beside that got letters as I said the 80 year old elderly Chile immigrant did not understood what it meant so they're going to go back and do a pre-inspection but it's a little too late because obviously there's already been a lot of blasting there I mean I appreciate the fact that the fire chiefs are making sure that the pre-inspection is done but you look at all the blasting that's been done the lot is cleared there is a retention Pond right beside her home chief Morton also assistant chief Morton um taught with us and the issue has been the blasting permit says I can give you the permit you have to test the whales if there is well water within 500 feet within 24 to 48 hours not one of those whales out there have

been tested within that time zone matter of fact he told us that day that the the blasting company did not want to test the three homes that got tested because his project was done he didn't want to test them and chief Morton said you will test them and only then was it done but it was done three weeks after the final blast that's not what the permit says our residents are not being treated fairly folks I'm coming as humbly as I can before you tonight I really am the permit says 24 to 48 hours and so they are aware of this there was none and that that particular site has been blasted since 2020. an elderly residence well caved in and caused her 10 grand she's 90 years old check out our YouTube site there's an interview on site on site with her nothing was paid to help her restore that well

I don't that helps her not and that answers your question thank you thank you for allowing me to speak I'm seeing no other questions or comments I'd be ready for a motion at this time I have to get a microphone on uh Mr I um like to take case summer Z 2210016 the Shady Grove assemblage with the noted proffers and we've already listed those with the listed profers to be forwarded to the city council with a favorable recommendation second moved by commissioner Morgan seconded by commissioner Valentine is there any discussion on the motion okay maybe we have the roll call vote chairman dulia yes Vice chair Cameron yes

commissioner cutwright yes commissioner shagaris yes commissioner Davis yes commissioner Herod yes commissioner MacGyver yes commissioner Morgan no commissioner cease no commissioner Trapp yes commissioner Valentine no commissioner Zuri Williams yes the motion carries nine to three great thank you thanks to Africa thanks to staff we're going to move forward in our agenda um I'd like to move a little bit quicker on these next items if possible I don't want to limit commissioner comment time but I will resort to that if necessary um next case is cases Z 22 triple zero 26 kempsey Milstead we'll begin with the staff report ing Department

584 Acres it is within the Suburban development here and is within the county county limits no annexation petition has been requested at this time The Proposal is a straight rezoning with no text or graphic development plan to facilitate the construction of a single-family home the site is currently zoned residential world with a development plan and the applicant is requesting a rezone to a residential world this will remove the use restriction of a current development plan which limits the allowed uses on site to recreational uses however given that there are no commitments this proposal would also allow the full list of uses and development intensity of the residential rural zoning District the existing future land use map designation is low density residential and staff would not recommend a change

to this designation lastly the site is within the Falls Jordan District B Watershed protection overlay the zoning context map shows the surrounding zoning designations properties immediately adjacent to the site or Zone residential Suburban 20. as previously mentioned the site would retain the residential rural zoning designation but remove the development plan that is currently applicable to the site and the aerial map shows the general location of the project the neighborhood meeting was held in accordance with Udo requirements on March 18 2022 and no no social pinpoint comments were provided staff determines that this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and other adopted ordinances and policies The Proposal would allow the proposed single-family house but would also allow all uses permitted in the residential rural District the residential World designation is less intense than the surrounding residential Suburban 20 zoning of the

surrounding properties The Proposal is consistent with the current low density residential future land use map designation and staff and applicant are available to answer any questions great thank you with that we'll open the public hearing and we'll start with 10 minutes provided to the applicant to provide any opening remarks okay I live at 1620 Magnolia Oak Place in Durham North Carolina 27703 my husband and I own this property and we are just looking to remove the development plan so that we can build a home on it instead of the disc golf course that it is currently uh that is it thank you with that we will move to public comment um

is there anybody who would like to speak on this case uh nobody signed up if there's anybody in the public hearing or in the zoom meetings please raise your hand at this time okay seeing none uh move to commissioner comments and questions are there any commissioner comments or questions okay seeing none I would take a motion at this time Mr chair I make a motion that we take case number z22 triple zero 26 the Kemp ski uh Milson Milstead home to be forwarded to the County Commission with a favorable recommendation second moved by commissioner Morgan seconded by Vice chair Cameron maybe have the roll call vote chairman Delia yes Vice chair Cameron yes

073 Acres it is within the Suburban

development tier and within the county the existing zoning a split zoned residential Rural and Commercial General the applicant is proposing to rezone the entire property to commercial General to facilitate future commercial development this is a straight rezoning with no text or graphic development plan associated with The Proposal the existing future land use map designation is commercial and staff would not recommend a change to this designation lastly this property is located in the Falls Jordan District B Watershed protection overlay the zoning context map shows the current zoning of the property which is split zoned and you can see the residential rural to the north and Commercial General to the South The Proposal will rezone the entire property to commercial General the adjacent properties surrounding the site are also some commercial General and the aerial map shows the general location of the project a neighborhood meeting was held in accordance with Edo requirements on August 19 2022 and no social pinpoint

comments are provided staff determines that this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and other adopted ordinances and policies The Proposal would allow all uses permitted in the commercial General zoning District surrounding zoning designations of the adjacent properties are also commercial General and the proposal is consistent with the commercial future land use map designation and staff and the applicant are available to answer any questions thank you it will open the public hearing and we'll provide 10 minutes for the applicant to provide any opening remarks thank you chair amendolia members of the commission Randy Herman attorney from the law for law office of ba folk here representing the applicant the main thing that you need to know about this application is that a slide that staff showed showing the zoning context so the portion of this property that runs along 70 and all of the surrounding properties are his own commercial General it's also

shown as commercial on the future land use map for reasons that I have not been able to figure out the part of the property that sticks up away from 70 is zoned for residential it's an old kind of Legacy zoning that's been there for many years and all we're trying to do is kind of standardize the zoning across the property so that the entire thing is commercial General the same as all the surrounding Parcels so that hopefully at some point in the future there can be commercial development at that intersection the property is right at that intersection at Leesville in 70. and the fact that the sticking out part of the property is a residential district is one of the one of the reasons that that intersection has not yet been developed um all of the there's no social pinpoint comments specifically about this project but if you look generally at the comments generally at that intersection all the comments also say that what the residents want to see is commercial development eventually at that

intersection so that's all we're trying to do is facilitate that we're not currently proposing annexation into the city it's going to remain County zoning it would eventually be annexed when it's developed but because we at this point don't have specific development plans it's not appropriate for annexation yet happy to answer any questions thank you is there anyone else wishing to speak on this case tonight okay seeing none I'll turn over to any questions from commissioners okay saying none I'm going to close the public hearing and I would accept a motion at this time Mr chair I would uh make a motion that we take case z22 triple zero four six which is the Blanchard property to be forwarded to the county commission with a favorable

recommendation second moves by commissioner Morgan seconded by commissioner Valentine is there any discussion on the motion seeing none may we have the roll call vote yes Vice chair Cameron yes commissioner cut right yes commissioner shagaris yes commissioner Davis yes commissioner Herod yes commissioner McIver yes commissioner Morgan yes commissioner sees yes commissioner Trapp yes commissioner Valentine yes commissioner Zuri Williams yes yes the motion carries 12-0 thank you okay we'll move to our next set of public hearings which are for tax amendments to the Udo we have one this is case tc22 quadruple zero five erosion control Udo text Amendment

we'll begin with the staff report all right good evening I'm Ryan Eves I'm the division manager for stormwater and erosion control Division and County engineering my division oversees all land disturbance permits and all roading control activities for the county both inside and outside city limits um okay I guess I have that you have my presentation up I'm gonna go fairly quickly through this hopefully you've had a chance to review do you have control there's control over there oh all right let's go all right um as you've heard there are a number of concerns about um uh some of these larger sites particularly in Southeastern Durham uh and the types of soils that we're dealing with and so we are proposing some amendments to deal with those um next slide

so just a word about process uh with the county has been designated a um a local program for erosion and sediment control by the state sedimentation Control Commission and because of that any amendments we make to our erosion Control ordinances must go through the sedimentation Control Commission first they are reviewed by the DEQ and their division of energy mineral and land resources we have already taken these amendments for an informal review to the site commission at their November meeting and received a favorable review of our amendments then they are locally adopted so these are in the udos they'll have to be adopted by both the city council and the Board of Commissioners then we go back to the study commission for their final approval and then they become effective it appears that this this where we are in the process it'll likely be their May meeting because they only meet quarterly

when we'll be able to take these back for final approval assuming they are adopted locally so I'm going to go through fairly quickly what these amendments are the first is we're requiring two rows of silt fence space three feet apart along all buffer zones including all streams wetlands and sensitive areas of sites I will say this is something that we already recommend and we we see we don't get much pushback from designers on this and developers they're willing to go ahead and do this so we just want to codify it to make sure we can get it on all Sites and then you've heard a lot about the Triassic soils the Triassic soils are a very fine clay soils they do not settle very quickly out of the water column and so we have some very specific requirements that we are going to um add to the ordinance in order to

hopefully address some of the concerns with what I'm sure unlovingly has been called tomato soup in the water particularly in the creek but across the county so these are some things that you've actually already heard proffered by a number of developers and and we felt like those profits are are a good remedy to this and so we're going to go ahead and codify them for the Triassic areas of the county that's larger sediment basins longer dewatering time meaning that water is going to stay in that Basin a little longer give it time to set more time for that to settle stricter ground cover requirements particularly on slopes and then requirement of flocculents next uh so really quickly uh if you're not familiar with flocculents they are a chemical additive to um it's added to the ground it's picked up by typically uh in diversion ditches or things like that where it's collected by runoff headed to those sediment basins where it's then allowed it then

causes the smaller sediment particles the small clay particles to coagulate to get together which makes them heavier which makes them settle faster and so that is the reason we are recommending their use what we're including in the ordinance is are some details as to how they're to be used which ones can be used and what we want to see on a plan when um when developments are submitting their erosion control plans as to how they're going to be used I would like to point out we have one of the world's foremost experts and flocculents Dr Rich McLaughlin and at NC State University he has reviewed our ordinance amendments and he is sits on the sedimentation Control Commission and so he's he's reviewed and approved these and we would be the First Community in the state to actually have flocculents required in our ordinance

again this is more about what uh what we will require in the plan and what's required in the ordinance as far as what is allowed and what we want to see on plans for flocculents to be that are being used finally we're including another enforcement tool we currently have the ability to issue notices of violation civil penalties and those cut those are our main two enforcement tools but we're adding stop work orders meaning we can uh require activities to cease on a site except for those for erosion control meaning you know basically vertical building has to stop um if our site is out of order with its erosion control we know this to be a a very successful method used by other communities for getting sites into compliance and with that I'll I guess take questions or you can open the public

hearing and we can go from there great thank you um with that we'll open the public hearing we have several people who signed up to speak in person and I already see hands getting raised on the zoom meeting so we'll start with the in-person speakers we have Pam Andrews Tom Freeman Pam Williams and Donna Steinbeck you all have two minutes each please state your name and address and then make your comments all right I have a video hold on don't start my time okay let's see if this works okay this is lit Creek today crossing over going into Falls Lake right there that's what it looks like we sincerely thank Ryan rarely do I end up here for an amendment but this is I am four um Jonathan McNeil Ryan Sarah staff we

sincerely thank you we're thrilled that this is happening but there are a few things I want to say um flocculents I'm excited about this run um there have been some negative Health impacts in the environmental hazards associated with chemical flocculents so I'm glad to see that Dr McLaughlin is working with you also we use the right one so thank you um you even said on your slide the over application of a flocculent can create a storm water pollution itself so thank you Mass grading we've got to limit the masquerading I'm sorry our opponent's left but anyway this sensitive traffic Basin soil we need to limit up to 20 acres and that is in another uh Amendment coming up I also want to mention the riparian buffers we need strongly to have 150 foot riparian Corridor to protect these sensitive soils as we've seen the stormwater ponds a hundred year minimum I mean we just have to we have sites in southeast Durham where the the red water is Flowing off of even ones that are already built and some of those ponds have been redone two and three times

over there ground cover fabulous we need it down as fast as we can there are sites out there across from that little Log Cabin that there is still not sufficient ground cover and it's been going on for two years almost out there at least a year and a half cumulative impacts is fabulous we would like to see the impacts of the larger Waters you take into account when grading these soil and erosion permits impacts on human health is mentioned in the packet Wildlife aquatic ecosystems I'm a retired science teacher I taught Zuri I have to protect the environment I have to that's just what I do stop work orders is huge I cannot believe a county this big doesn't have one already but we don't only time's going to really tell how effective these will be but I thank you sincerely for your efforts and Alex for helping me get this video posted thank you Alex all right I'm out of the way good night thank you Tom Freeman Pam Williams

hello again Thomas Freeman lifelong Durham County resident 1818 Southview Road Durham NC I'll be very brief uh I'd like to to very clearly make a point in clearly State less development is better development that is an ideological difference between the County residents and those who would seek to make massive changes of it I'd like to comment on the stop work order it's imperative that the language should identify specifically who May issue a stop work order for the violation that has occurred as Pam has alluded to there's a great deal of confusion within agencies as to who has responsibility for what so it's absolutely imperative that this uh this Clause of the stop

work order identify who by title is responsible for that stock work order thank you very much good evening my name is Pam Williams I live at 2130 Adventure trail Durham North Carolina I am very much for this tax commitment this ordinance change I'm a little disappointed that it's not getting to the February meeting with DEQ I was hoping that it would so it would go into effect so all these the developers from here on out would follow this I'm looking forward to the uh tree preservation and the blasting change is uh number four that's coming up I know it's a little bit more difficult for the developers to accept all that the stop work order I'm very happy to see that I work for DOT for close to 40 years it's very effective with the

contractors and when they are out there clearing 200 Acres or more at a time we need something that we can stop and make them pay attention to the erosion control again I want to thank Ryan Alex all those in the planning department that has pushed us through I know it's a lot of hard work and we really appreciate it thank you Donna Steinberg I'm Donna stand back at 4825 Jimmy barges Road I am also a proponent of this amendment and um I'm very grateful that it's being done I'm hoping that we can make the February deadline and maybe help our other departments along the way make decisions so that we do not have to wait till May and have to ask for propers from the Developers you know between February and May so thank you

thank you we have a few people in the zoom meeting who have raised their hand to speak uh first up Mimi Kessler Mimi you'll have two minutes hi my name is Mimi Kessler I live at 1418 Woodland Drive I am very excited about this I feel like this particular thing is something that the residents of Durham are are getting a um a pat on the back and I'm very excited about this I have a friend who lives on um Olive Branch Road and there's a development going on um uh off her backyard and a and a bulldozer came and was um cutting down trees and there's a there's a little creek there now I don't honestly know what that Creek is um and they just ran right into the creek and there was no no buffer around

the creek at all and so I imagine that that was part of what's caused all of this um sediment issue and it it's my understanding that that nothing happens currently to that developer so the stock work order is the good step but um I hope that there are also some very severe monetary penalties because the monetary factor is the only thing that I think the developers really care about the other point I wanted to make is that if there's a delay you know in terms of it being applied in May I do think that we need to get profits between tonight and whenever it gets through the uh bureaucracy uh I I think we do need to ask for propers that every uh development um abide by these standards uh and and then and then we don't have to do

anything more I'd really rather go retroactively before now but of course we can't do that so thank you very much I really am excited about this text Amendment and you all know I don't like Texas amendments so thank you thank you Mimi uh next we have Laura Stroud Laura you'll have two minutes please state your name and address and make your comments thank you my name is Laura Stroud with um I'm the Water Management program coordinator at Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association we're located at 904 Broad Street um and I'm speaking tonight on behalf of equistaff and some of our volunteer committee members who are water quality experts that have been involved in various levels of government in the past um we're speaking in support of the proposed text changes and are really happy to see some of the um some of what's included in this ordinance through my work with equa I've

seen some um some Brazen and some opportunistic violations of sediment and erosion control permits including a site emptying a sump pump directly into a storm water great um so the inclusion of stop work orders are an essential part of this text change to ensure that staff can enforce these requirements um we there some developers in our community are going to do the right thing but there are others who view sediment and erosion control violation fees as the cost of doing business um and we can't let that happen at the cost to our natural streams and our stormwater infrastructure we're happy to see the requirement for of these sofoculants as others have mentioned flocculents when used correctly are not harmful to the Aquatic environment but can be when used improperly and so we also want to make sure that cities are that County staff are equipped to be

observing that and enforcing that as well um and finally we're happy to see the requirement to cover steep slopes with exposed soils but want to point out that Triassic Basin soils are highly erodible at slopes as low as 15 which is much less than than what's currently covered under the udo's definition of steep slopes at 25 grade or more um and yeah uh Laura your two minutes are over great thank you so much that was the end of my comments uh thank you to City staff and you all have a great night thank you next we have Rebecca Freeman Rebecca you'll have two minutes yes thank you I'm Rebecca Freeman at eight and I will fully support patient and aeration control text amendment that particularly speaks to triastic souls and the issues that are occurring with the traffic schools at present and I want to thank the Missouri Durham for uh fighting for this for a long time and especially I want to thank

Brian Eaves and others who worked on these uh to bring these into tighten them up a lot so that they would hopefully uh help the environment a lot they're however there are two places additional places that I think should be clarified and that is on page one uh of the section 15 5 number c uh and then at the top of page two and number three as well uh like the former speaker um spoke about the stock War order uh who make the County May issue a stock order and they should be clarified as to whom that would be what the job classification whatever it would be same thing with um notice the violation uh Midway and notice the violation should be served upon that person but who does that and then also enforcement actions should be initiated who is responsible to do this and so that would um take out the questions and the um uh misunderstanding about who's whose

responsibility it is to make sure that notice of violations are actually issued in a timely manner uh where they need to be thank you so very much thank you last we have Samantha cropp Samantha Optimus provider comments thank you Commissioners for the opportunity to speak today my name is Samantha Croft I am speaking as a representative of the nonprofit sound rivers and my role as a news River Keeper and my comments are in support of this text Amendment though I ask that the Planning Commission go even farther to strengthen regulations for the sake of protecting water quality as you know significant sediment pollution is already occurring from developments in Durham County since June and I have documented alarming levels of sediment in the rapidly development developing Lick Creek Watershed I've recorded water quality violations with turbidity levels orders of magnitude over state standards and I have personally observed sediment-filled water running directly off of active development sites and flowing into Waters of the state essentially ongoing developments are violating the Clean Water Act because

our current regulations are not strong enough to stop them in the Triassic Basin sound Rivers has offered detailed comments on the proposed tax amendment and has shared these with Durham sediment erosion team and the city planners office our comments outline several ways in which we think the Amendments can and should go further to protect our waterways we would like to see hasten timelines for replacing ground cover including on flat ground and Native ground cover required we'd also like to see stormwater basins required to accommodate water for the 100 Year storm and a settling efficiency aimed at reducing runoff from the smaller clay-sized particles that make up Triassic Basin soils our recommendations also include support for accumulative impacts analysis and other creative measures that can go far to protect water quality currently sound Rivers is the only organization meaningfully tracking water quality impacts from ongoing developments in the Lick Creek Watershed we'd like to see regulations require that water quality sampling be conducted before and after land disturbances take place to ensure future land use changes are meeting clean water requirements and most importantly we ask that the planning

board do what it can to ensure that future developments are subject to these new and important regulations towards that end please put a pause on approval of new land disturbance proposals in the Lick Creek Watershed which is already so heavily impacted until this amendment and the new masquerade Amendment are in full effect I so much appreciate the work that you all are doing towards this and appreciate all the effort going into making sure these amendments are going to be effective thank you for attention to this issue and I would really value the opportunity to discuss our water quality sampling efforts and our input on these moments with you thank you so much thank you I was like okay any commission or questions or comments commissioner Morgan I had really one question for staff I was looking through the text amendment I was just wondering from an enforcement perspective of who's the responsible party that does the checking and enforcement I was trying to see where that is in the text Amendment

so uh it's not included in the specifically in the stop worker order section I mean it says the county if you look elsewhere in that section and this uh this section 15 5 is in the enforcement section of the Udo it's under sedimentation and erosion control uh enforcement which basically means my division um I you'll see elsewhere in the ordinance it says the um the erosion control officer I hold that title as well or designee and so it's essentially me and my staff that uh that do the enforcement because we we're the ones that do the inspections uh and issue permits for land disturbing activity how often do we do we do inspections as I know you you know you may not have all the staff but I just wondered how often right our goal is to do a visit size monthly um we have uh currently have three and a half well four and a half staff assigned to um to erosion control that includes uh

plans review and other administrative tasks uh but we have about 280 active sites currently and so our goal is monthly uh we're hitting sites about every six weeks currently thank you I know we got a lot of ground to cover thank you other questions uh commissioner Herod just a quick question would it help if the public requested some additional staff for you we added a an Emergency control technician uh in this last year and that has certainly helped um he got on the didn't get on the ground until October so you know he's uh that we're we're definitely trending in the right direction as far as how we're hitting our sites um so that's helped um not opposed to asking for more staff we don't have uh quite have the vehicles or the room to house them currently uh in our in our offices but um that's not something we're looking for right now but again not something

we're honestly opposed to commissioner shagaris yes for Ryan Eaves um my question goes to uh what so in this text Amendment there's a comment that says if it rains a lot and there's more runoff then they add more flocculents and I know that the Raleigh NC divide Department of Natural Resources has rules and regulations on that so say that there's an a situation where there's a lot of rain and then they just add more flocculents and more flocculents and then they bioaccumulate and then that's when they can become toxic what measures are going to be in place for removal if they have to add too many during the process who's going to responsible for that are we going to pull a sample are we going to be able to hold the developer responsible if they have to use too many of them

something like that I also went through the list of flocculents approved and I see that there are some that are plant-based which are more environmentally friendly perhaps this would be an opportunity for Durham to you know do something really green here yeah so that's part of the reason we are requiring this application plan um so that we can review and and I believe one thing that was mentioned was uh I can't remember who it was but that will continue to um to learn more about you know uh flocculents and their use uh part of the the question about the application is you want you obviously want to make sure that um that when we do have rain events that they're following up to make sure that there are still you know still some flocculent available for the next rain event right and that they're not just adding it over and over again one thing that happens is that um one way that I think we will prevent

the kind of mass accumulation is that sediment basins are required to be cleaned out when they reach half of their capacity and so the The Hope and and those flocculents are part of that sediment they're incl you know they're that's what's making it fall out and is in the you know bed of the Basin so when when those basins are reaching half of their capacity they're then mucked out and that that soil is removed and and uh you know either play it can be placed Elsewhere on site it would then be covered by ground cover uh so that it would hopefully not you know continue to cause more sediment and and concern um there's still a lot to be learned about how you know how the flocculents will be applied again we're working on on making sure that our staff are are not as knowledgeable as possible we're also going to be working to educate developers because this will be new for a lot of them as well so that's another kind of piece that's not necessarily in the text amendments but is is a part of

our action plan towards moving as we move towards implementing this these text amendments as my comments will include making sure that if that Basin does have to be cleaned out number one that will have to be tested to make sure it's not over a certain toxic level and then if that soil is just placed somewhere else on the site you know then you're just going to be create you know one environmental problem for another you know makes it sure there's some sort of remediation um the remediation costs and placing that on the developers okay thank you thank you thank you the questions or comments yeah commissioner MacGyver I got a question about the sediment control and the um the watering time that you're proposing just what percent increase were you proposing just because I know plenty of times we designed these sediment basins to be converted to storm control measures later on in the process

right so currently you your minimum time is three days uh that's required by ordinance required as part of the the state erosion control manual we're increasing it to four days in the uh the Triassic soils of the area with Triassic soils um the as far as conversion to permanent stormwater basins we do not allow conversion to the permanent stormwater control measure until the site is fully stabilized and so uh at that point you know flocculents wouldn't be needed we would be not not be as concerned with uh the retention of sediment Laden Water by then we'd hopefully would have much cleaner water to worry about thanks any other questions or comments okay seeing none I would accept emotion at this time Mr chair I'd like to make a motion that we take text Amendment tc22 quadruple

zero uh five for the erosion control Udo text amendment to be formed to the city and county with a favorable recommendation second moved by commissioner Morgan seconded by commissioner Cameron any discussion on the motion seeing none may we have the roll call vote chairman dolia yes Vice chair Cameron yes commissioner cutwright yes commit uh commissioner shagaris yes commissioner Davis yes commissioner Herod yes commissioner Macgyver yes commissioner Morgan commissioner cease yes commissioner Trent yes commissioner Valentine yes commissioner Zuri Williams the motion carries 12-0 great thank you um so before we leave we just want to make one quick note that next month our meeting is not the second Tuesday of the month it was originally February 14th but we have

rescheduled it to be February 28th I can't remember why but we did um and staff is there any other announcements or anything else you need from us before we depart one last thing oh will you rescheduled the meeting because that was in line with getting the comp plan to you all that's why we did it you remember there was a little Tom crunch there um one last thing I had sent out a doodle poll um at the request of the city clerk's office to have a joint meeting with the Planning Commission and the city council I've gotten some responses um if you're not able to make it understood um if you could just reply though that I think I've gotten like seven responses to about half the commission so um and I understand um that some people will not be there they couldn't fill out the doodle poll so they actually emailed me back so there was something going off the doodle pop too so thank you that was it great um with that this meeting is adjourned at 8 42 PM Eastern Time