City Council - Planning Commission Joint Meeting 7-26-22

[0:00:00] first item on business is our joint meeting agenda and we will start by it says call to order the planning commission and you're here too so i think you're supposed to call your planning commission to order as i've called the city council to order travis if you would good morning uh before i call the meeting to order i i did have a question or two for teresa there's a there was a resolution that looks like that was signed by the planning commission on july 19th that calls for 10 days notice i guess to be put in the newspaper for the meeting and uh okay that'd be great yeah so in order to have this joint meeting and provide alternative notice then what the rules normally require which is publication and rent notice to individual property owners yes the city council had to have a meeting where they called this meeting and did a resolution and provided for alternative notice which was still publication and posting of the agenda like they normally would okay so my question is that this resolution was adopted on the 19th and it's the 26th so it hasn't been 10 days and you know normally a resolution would direct the staff to go do something like if it says to publish in the paper you'd publish it oh john may help us been sent in the paper i think we published it before that actually happened yes we had due to the timing we had already published those in the newspaper ahead of that meeting in anticipation because of the timing issue okay okay so based on that i have i have no reason to not call this meeting to order for the planning commission so we have a quorum thank you with that we will

[0:02:02] start with public comment issues or concerns not on the regular agenda may be raised by the public at this time citizens should speak from the podium address all comments to the dias begin by stating their name and address or single member district number and limit their remarks to less than three minutes i'm actually going to start with shane kelton if you would come forward and i think you want to share some information it's not part of this agenda but it's information for all those who are watching will want to know yes ma'am um as everybody knows and this is kind of not what this meeting's about but just so everybody knows i know everybody saw all the mowers out on the loop yesterday and uh they've been around town the last two or three days and last week a lot of shredding of trash out there along the loop so visited with txdot yesterday afternoon just so everybody knows they do have a plan in place to where they are gonna be out there with a maintenance group picking up all that letter and all that trash over the next two or three weeks so just want to let everybody know there is a plan i have it right here if anybody wants further details so well not only did we see a lot of trash we saw a lot of dirt blowing up yes now i think all of us with allergies had some impact right yes ma'am it it definitely needs to rain so yes ma'am thank you thank you any other public comment today raise this up i'm spencer matthews district 5. i have a little bit of an objection to the early posting because if it was only voted in to have this meeting and then we're only getting a few days notice we haven't had time to understand what's going on in this meeting and what those regulations or what these ordinance changes would be to even organize and get and conform consent any kind of anything and so i kind of object to or i clearly object to having this meeting right now for those terms we haven't had time to even review what's going on there's only

[0:04:04] two paragraphs on the agenda and that's a problem and the notice is only this big in the newspaper you'd have to have a microscope to see it and so i have an objection to having this meeting thank you further public comment i'd like to elaborate a little bit on that go ahead travis so excuse me uh i think the broader issue here is that this meeting is going in the wrong direction in terms of notice to the community i don't even feel like i was given proper notice and i'm a participant in the meeting so john sent an email out to all the planning commissioners on june 30th the email said there were going to be two issues on this agenda one was parking downtown the other one was short-term rentals downtown when i when i pulled a copy of the agenda that was sent out on friday one of the items on short-term rentals has been expanded to include the entire city limits but not single-family so it's not just downtown as we were told originally um we've been talking in the planning commission for months about the lack of notice to our to our residents and i feel like our citizens have a right to voice their opinions and especially when we make decisions that have a financial impact on people we have a responsibility as a as a board as the city council to to hear people's opinions as it relates to this meeting specifically there's a process that's normally in place there's three forms of notice uh that are sent out so any property that's impacted uh plus anyone within 200 feet of that property signs are put in place on those properties and the a notice is put in the newspaper the newspaper is now circulated what twice a week every day but saturday okay every day but saturday is that right i thought they pulled it back no it's every day

[0:06:06] but saturday for home delivery okay so i don't even take the newspaper um so and i don't think i'm the only one in the community that doesn't take the newspaper for notice so um so in the normal part of the process the planning commission hears cases and there's time that passes between our meeting and the city council meeting and in many circumstances you know our board is largely an advisory board as it as it stands anyway uh but when the issue is brought up in our meetings uh and a decision is made it it prompts uh folks to take action and show up to the city council meetings where the where the decisions being made and a meeting like this eliminates that time uh and and that's very concerning to me uh and then the other issue is as i was noting the only notice for this meeting was a little tiny paragraph in the classified ads of the newspaper um they're what nothing was sent out to anybody in the community that was impacted um you know that that owns a property that may have their rights changed as a result of this meeting uh no signs were put up um there was mention of it in our meeting and then the city council meeting and and that's about it so what i what i've talked about repeatedly is focus on expanding notice uh and not excluding the public in our discussions especially about zoning and property rights and then on that note um i personally am in favor of moving our planning commission meetings to the evenings uh there are many communities that have uh most of their meetings for boards and commissions in the city council in the evening hours uh in doing very limited research uh abilene lubbock fredericksburg fort worth waco kerrville bernie even denver colorado which has

[0:08:08] a regular general comment meeting once a month before their city council meetings uh in the evenings um we had a and i think my colleagues on the planning commission could speak to this we had a gentleman that came in at our last meeting on monday of last week the staff had proposed changing the zoning on his property without his consent and he was he was upset um he didn't he didn't feel like he was giving proper notice uh he came up in the middle of our meeting and said i'm here because someone's trying to change my zoning without my consent i don't want to do it i don't want to you don't have my permission to change my zoning uh but i have to go to work and i can't sit here until the case comes up because i've got a job that i've got to go to and i think there are a lot of people in in my time serving on the planning commission that have expressed those same thoughts and concerns and so that's to me the most important thing for us to focus on is expanding notice to our residents what can we do to better notify our community of the business that we're doing especially that impacts them thank you travis i want to make sure theresa that there are no issues as it relates to the legal aspects of this meeting and that all the issues and all the public notices and all the criteria that are required have actually been done because i don't want to get through this meeting then find out there are major problems with it so we need to start with is this legally a meeting yes ma'am there is a provision in the um the local government code that does allow council and this in the planning commission to meet jointly and have alternative notice provisions and that case that john referenced last council meeting um would have required us to send out ten thousand written notices for this meeting in excess of

[0:10:11] ten thousand and as we've known in the past when you send out notices there are often cases that something gets missed and that one you know notice getting missed out of those 10 000 could have invalidated the action so we hesitate to use this provision that we could have these joint meetings and have this alternative notice provision we've been able to use that for a long time and we never have because i don't think we disagree with travis that as much notice as possible to our community is proper but this is a proper meeting underneath the local government code and it has been noticed as was required now i would also like to say that both of the items that are on um the agenda will have a second reading at council so there will be another opportunity for the public to come and to offer their opinions on those things as well so this process does not end today i just hate waiting for second readings for people to address it i think the most important part is making sure during a first reading of first conversation that people have been notified that the public is first and foremost why we are all out up here so our citizens are key and we need to make sure that they feel like they have been allowed to be involved in the conversation and as travis said particularly because it is one of the properties usually someone's greatest biggest asset so what we don't want to be doing is negatively impacting anybody's biggest best asset so a lot of people are here today i hate to have them feel like they are here for no reason so i think we should proceed we do not have to take a vote we could postpone it for further conversation and further notice if we need it is that correct yes you could call we would have to bring both bodies together again but yes you could do that postpone it and bring it up so we will allow all those people here today to be able to voice their issues concerns and uh objections or support and then if we don't feel comfortable with the conversation today we can ask

[0:12:14] that no decision be made today and postpone it for a later meeting is that um okay with the planning commission in terms of the approach okay all right with that we will proceed with yes please come forward my name is nelden allen i'm in tommy hebert's district that's where my home is but i have property all over san angelo and i did not even know that this was happening until last night so i didn't have the time to look at everything and prepare it so i really appreciate miss gutters saying that it could be tabled to give people a little more time to do research thank you so we ask that everybody take time today to come forward and present the questions concerns and issues attached to these items so we can decide what to do with that we will go into item 4a discussion and possible action on an ordinance amending chapter 12. planning and development exhibit 8 zoning ordinance article 5 general development standards section 511 off-street parking standards regarding parking for assembly occupancies in the central business district zoning district and john euron thank you john james director of planning and development services i just wanted to make two comments about the the previous discussion one um if it wasn't for that court case this process is the same as the normal process for text amendments to the zoning ordinance um other than the fact that you're meeting together uh and so we haven't really backed off of any notice this is the way it's been done for for literally decades for or ordinance amendments we always notify folks if their property zoning is

[0:14:17] changing but when we make amendments to the ordinance that's never we've never sent out notices for that it's never been required the second point i would make just for your information when we get to the second item that actually went to the planning commission back in may so they've already heard the second item and made a recommendation on it so if that if that changes your opinion on how to proceed today um i don't i don't think that's correct the discussion that we had in the planning commission was as it related to downtown and this item on the agenda is for the entire city except for residential zoned lots well the question is the one we're talking about uh parking not short-term rentals so are you referring to talking about short-term rentals man right item b okay but i'm talking about a and that's the first item on the agenda okay so when we get to that we can have that discussion but the discussion we're going to have first and foremost is the parking downtown so item 4 a so this this item is about parking downtown as you probably know we do not currently have any parking requirements in downtown the idea is it's a it's a dense urban area and most cities downtowns don't provide or don't require businesses to provide individual parking for each business and that's exactly what our current ordinance does as well we've had some recent interest in large scale venue type locations downtown and so we we've brought this up based on a possible concern that a big event venue that might have hundreds of people would potentially create parking problems for other businesses downtown and so again the downtown has parking to accommodate most of the businesses that are there with on-street parking some off-street parking but the concern is if we have one of these large events that would draw over 400 people that might might create spillover impacts

[0:16:20] throughout the downtown and so that's the reason this is coming forward and so the proposal is to amend the ordinance to require parking for those uses that have a capacity of over 400 people but rather than requiring specific numbers of parking spaces it would require a parking plan to be submitted and that would be reviewed and approved by the city council so you all could take the unique characteristics of each individual proposal into account and i don't think our intent is for the normal parking standards to apply so if for example if you have a bar out by the mall it would require x number of parking spaces i don't think we would want to apply that same standard downtown but at the same time the idea is maybe we should require them to provide some parking but again it would be a case-by-case determination by the city council the way the ordinance is written it would apply to assembly occupancies and i've listed the most common assembly top occupancies but that includes event centers bars restaurants theaters churches things that that have the assembly of lots of people in in one place i won't go through this in depth but basically this would be the process an applicant would submit a building permit for a new use or a change of occupancy of an existing building we would determine if the occupancy of that building is over 400 or not if so they would we would ask them to submit a parking plan we would review it and then ultimately bring it to city council for a decision generally speaking monday through thursday there are not there are not parking issues in our downtown area however on fridays and saturdays when most events and large crowds assembly there are parking issues most people know if someone goes to walmart they don't mind parking half a mile away to get to walmart but when they're in the downtown area they very much want to park in front of a business

[0:18:21] so we know that parking becomes an issue and we want to make sure that all businesses feel like they are not being wiped out as it relates to customers get into their business on the other hand when we ask for alternative parking plans the question is what would that encompass and where would they find that parking and how do other cities address it many cities have parking garages we don't the one that we have downtown is for private use only for the spur building without that building then where else are alternative parking options and we need to talk through that so someone would know where to go what to do and how to start with a parking plan and then dale you're in the audience you want to come forward and talk about parking and the experiences you're having have had and perceive to be issues certainly excuse me recently we looked at parking availability based from cohenheim on the on the east-west corridor from the west court uh cohenheim all the way to magdalen and the north-south court geographic we looked at river drive all the way up to college which is where most of the activities and most of the complaints that i get in relationship to parking occur um so we looked at that area and we learned that there are 65 parking lots within that geographic area there are 13 public parking lots also we have 23 private parking lots and then we have a hybrid of 29 parking lots where you have both public and private parking so the assessment we looked at how many

[0:20:23] parking spaces each lot had and we had we found that there was 300 367 parking spaces within those that corridor but that's one issue the other issue is we in our community have a mindset that we are supposed to park in front of where we're going to be and typically that's not going to happen especially since we've been seeing a development of downtown and the businesses growth that we've had so people get frustrated business owners get frustrated property owners get frustrated because people are are not able to get to or they hear complaints from their customers about the parking situation but if you look at and if you will take a walk with me if we start at south chadron street bridge if you take about a 30-yard walk over to your left there's a parking lot if you walk another half of another 30 yards there's a parking lot at the corner of concho and bor chadburn let me ask you a question starting with that number one that first parking lot that you're talking about two things one is i believe that twisted route and freedom fellowship church have the rights to that parking lot right that is a private parking lot well we believe owned by att that's correct but so but uh it does people park there i mean irregardless uh whether and most people that are going to twisted route are going to park there uh but um they're what i'm trying to get at is that there are there is a lot of parking available and my belief is that we need either to develop an education way to figure out a way to educate people about where to park in downtown and and accept the idea that we've we're growing and that you're not going to be

[0:22:24] able to park in front of your store the store that you're going to all the time there's a obviously there are stores that and businesses that have their own parking spaces or parking lots as twisted route does and they accommodate their customers that way but it's a pretty complex situation and my my fear as far as taking it to another level in terms of putting an additional restrictions um is it'll it'll deflate maybe the possib deflate people's interest in developing downtown that's my fear yeah as far as you know 400 people i don't know how many businesses i i didn't have enough time to research this out but i know how many people have an occupancy of 400 in their space and i know we're talking about future right future development um but if that does occur wouldn't the property owner have to submit some plan or idea about what they're doing with their business to get an occupancy and at that point wouldn't we not just wouldn't that trigger possibly taking this type of action well yes and no i mean central business district doesn't require any parking plan when you outlook for occupancies correct but that would not do it and so that can't be the you know the element of how we control it but if if we have up in place a trigger that says and let everybody know that if you're going to develop a business that you're expecting to have an occupancy of 400 that that would trigger at that time when that person applies for a permit that at that point we the city would be required to let them notify them that they would need to have a parking plan right

[0:24:29] correct okay so i i think that would be a fair way of administering it but it's this this problem uh as you all or maybe don't know i do attend conferences yearly and uh at the main street for main street and one of the issues that we discuss all the time at every one of these conferences are parking issues in downtown and and so i go back to when i first started in 2007 there were issues back then and they continue to be and i i believe in 2007 we didn't have parking issues because in 2007 it was pretty dead well let me let me let me be a correct statement let me rephrase that let me rephrase that i was getting phone calls from businesses upset because employees from other businesses were parking in front of their stores and so to me that was a park parking problem the reason the three-hour limit was created so that our streets were not full of employee parking and no room left for customers right and we addressed it it was addressed and we addressed it and so in relationship to again the the problem i think it's an education thing as far as educating our community about what transpires when you develop a downtown area and what the needs are and of course uh additional parking spaces would be you know we've got a tremendous amount of parking space i just remember this down on the river that nobody uses um nobody parks down there uh and wood and walks to to get to their places so i think it's just the next question mark is if you're in that that concho avenue corridor then that becomes a parking alternative if you're on north chad further north on chapter no one's going to park on the river to walk four blocks north right and the other issue is when people want to park in front of a business that's generally your retail

[0:26:31] customer and from ten o'clock in the morning until five o'clock in the evening parking is not an issue it's nor is it monday through thursday it generally is after six o'clock friday sometimes thursday friday and saturday yeah i agree with that i agree the the major congestion that we have as far as parking is concerned is over the weekends um but a lot of those lots that are private lots people park in those parking areas as well and sometimes people who own those parking lots upset yeah it just upsets those people right and there's alternatives that they can take however they don't do them but anyway um that's uh on on them you know that's their an issue that they need to address but that's where i see issues i mean right now today or yesterday i had several complaints from business owners about other businesses and their parking uh issues that they have so uh it's an ongoing issue and um and yes we do we need to address it sure we sure we should and we should do some try to do is be proactive which is i believe what you're trying to do is be proactive in this particular case um so any questions for me well anybody have a question harry and then i'll have some questions i did think it's just a real quick comment and uh dale said it a little while ago my son lives in fredericksburg if you go downtown in fredericksburg on thursday friday and saturday you got massive amount of people coming through that community and what people do is they want to go to fredericksburg they find a place to park they're going to walk five or six blocks to whatever they need to do so i think education is is a big part portion of this as as the central businesses

[0:28:34] continues to grow we're just going to have to educate people that there's places to park in san angelo in that particular area but you may not be able to park in front of that business that you want to go to i think people have gotten comfortable doing that and now the the way is to complain about it if we're going to grow we're going to have many people come to this particular community and they're going to be willing to walk our citizens are going to have to do the same thing also bringing that up harry [Music] just throwing this out i know money is tight but way finding is always a good way to help give people direction about where to park questions for dale from anybody all right so the things i hear are the following so there are many people who run a business every day of the week or every evening of the week particularly big business on thursday fridays and saturdays and they get very concerned that they've been there they've run a business they've um and all of a sudden someone wants to open up a business that is a venue which basically means that maybe this saturday night it's rented out and but that's it and all of a sudden the parking becomes a key issue and their customers that have been supporting that business all of a sudden are upset with it so how do we address that because the venue thing is a large conversation about many of the buildings downtown well i'm going to buy it and turn it into a venue right and so that's becoming pretty big conversation we want downtown to continue to develop we want the empty buildings to continue to find someone to develop it so we don't want to discourage redevelopment on the other hand we really want to make sure that the businesses that are there and have invested over the past 15 years are not negatively impacted and continue to have a success story

[0:30:36] correct those those are certainly the objectives i think again going back to the education component the way finding possibly if we could do something in that area as far as where the parking is i know one thing that i thought about recently was to call the property owners that own those parking lots and have discussions with them about the use of their their spaces because i know there's some parking lots that absolutely are not going to allow people to park in their in those parking lots but um i would hope there would be some flexibility there if through discussion and and usually it all leads back to money so that's another component that we have to address somehow how we're going to do that and and i don't have the answer for that i was just going to ask you for your suggestion because you face the public and the business owners every day so i think we have to be proactive and have some sort of gain oh i agree i agree that game plan has to be defined and we have to have a strategy to ensure that parking does not become a turn off and we know that we want to develop downtown living with downtown living you're not going to be able to do it if you can't secure parking spots for the people who are living whether they buy a loft rent a loft or whatever the issue is so i want to be clear about about something there i i don't think that a lot of the larger buildings the high-rise buildings are going to be developed unless there's parking immediate and proximal to it so i i think that's a separate issue than what dell's talking about and what's been introduced here uh but i don't think anyone's gonna rent an apartment and have to walk a block to get to their their space they're going to want to be right next to it they do wish that although i will tell you in many urban cities they do not park right by their building they have to walk and not all buildings in urban areas have parking

[0:32:39] garages next to them so they've had to adapt as well but there are at least adjacencies that provide for that yes go ahead and as far as you know as development happens and people are buying condos it should be up to whoever's selling the condos to maybe designate and sell a parking spot that's done in a lot of major cities that they're again they're purchasing parking off site for the residents and the residents are uh recompensating the developer this all comes in traffic this all comes down to feasibility so what can you command if you're selling condos if you have to walk two blocks to get to and from it you're not going to get a a fair price you can't justify the feasibility of redeveloping that structure if you don't provide immediate and proximal parking because that's what you're competing against in the rest of the community so i i would i would say office and and and residential use specifically will require parking to be immediate and proximal and i'll take the spur building as an example when the parking garage was closed on the spur building it cleared out the office building it was done it went to vacant and it's because there was no parking everyone had to go to the street well there were other issues with the spur buildings reason they left it but parking is always an issue but the spur building had a lot of infrastructure issues within that building which turned a lot of people off all right other comments heidi brooks single member district five so i grew up in austin downtown parking has always been a problem they have continued to build parking lots but it still continues to be a problem there are ways when you have events of over 400 people to shuttle people to parking lots that are in another location education setting up maps google maps for parking lots there are

[0:34:43] numerous ways to go about setting up additional parking in those events i've lived here i think 37 maybe 38 years there aren't that many events over 400 people quite honestly i'd like to see our community having more things bringing people in that this became a problem but i also hate the idea of people having to apply for another city permit to get parking and be denied the opportunity that might bring more people to san angelo for event so education shuttling people to public parking lots is an option thank you for the public comment okay so the issue at hand is john you want to go through and talk through further talk through instead of just a general overview of what is presented here so we better understand what we want to take action or no action on well unless there are questions i mean it's a pretty simple change to the ordinance that basically says uh there's a there's a part of the ordinance where where it says parking is required per the charts and everything in the zoning ordinance but then under that there's an exception that says except in the central business district no parking is required so what what this proposal would do is add to that exception where it says except in the central business district where no parking is required it further would add except for an assembly occupancy with over 400 occupants that would require a parking plan be approved by city council that's really the totality of the change so there wouldn't be let's say a fee attached to it uh etc so it would be simply turning in a parking plan

[0:36:46] attached to i'm a little con little confused about the process here yeah and let me go back to that that chart but basically they would already be going through some type of development review process so and i got a question before the meeting that this would not apply retroactively any existing businesses are grandfathered it would only be somebody coming in with a brand new business or changing in the occupancy of an existing building uh in which case they would already be going through either a building permit process or a change of occupancy process that we already have that they would be doing anyway as part of that once we identified it as an occupancy over 400 as part of that review process we would say you also need this parking plan and it will have to go and be approved by city council that parking plan could be inclusive of what it would basically be them answering the question how do you intend to provide parking for this facility it could be an agreement with an adjacent property that there's a parking lot on to use that private parking they could count some of the on-street spaces in front of their building for example there's really no limit they would just have to provide something that would satisfy you all ultimately on that include could would that also include asking permission to use city property because normally it's just open so i mean if you said as dale said down by the river all of that is city property and all the parking is down there so anybody can use it so how how could that become a part of a parking plan because it's open for anybody again the parking plan isn't necessarily requiring them to provide private parking they could say hey i'm right next door to this city public lot i would intend my customers to park in that public lot that's right next door and then it would be up to you all to

[0:38:47] say yeah that's reasonable or well no that venue is too big they would take up too much of that public parking spot for other people so maybe they could count half of that parking or something but the idea is to provide the flexibility that you all could approve it on a case by case rather than saying you have to provide x number of parking spaces they have to be within 400 feet of your business which is kind of what applies outside the downtown okay questions larry yes ma'am mr james you suggest to do some kind of legal action in progress is that correct or did i misread your statement you were talking about yeah i think early on about maybe something with the state because i don't believe anyone here is i think that was short-term rentals that statement not parking maybe i think he might have just been offering comments about the discussion we'd already had regarding the lawsuit that happened in austin that affected the notice provisions i don't recall him saying anything about okay initial comments were not about this item they were about the general discussion of having the joint meeting thank you dale you want to come back up waddell's coming up john let me ask you this is this just going to apply to venues i'm having a hard time interpreting interpreting who this is going to affect and who it's not can somebody clarify that yeah again the the way the ordinance is written it would be an assembly occupancy um which is defined in the building code but basically means things like are listed there event centers bars restaurants churches sport venues basically anything where lots of people congregate those in the building code have different rules for fire sprinklers and all kinds of other things that meet that particular occupancy that's different from you know a shoe store or you know some of the other types of businesses so how is this fair and equitable if it's coming before the city council for

[0:40:50] review and you can maybe include some public parking or maybe some private parking and maybe some on street i don't i don't see how you could apply uh a fair and equitable means of approving any project that's brought before you guys on the basis that's been presented how do you do that dale you want to talk about what you think the right amount of education and how you would perceive moving forward so that you're not on a daily basis inundated with the calls and complaints from business owners well um and again this is uh it gets into finance uh there are ways to you can hire consultants i know we're very anti i'm very anti-consultant uh but in this particular case um one of the things i've learned through our main street program is that they hire consultants to help them uh create the the way finding for parking areas uh also uh studies as to how people uh interact or react to going into the downtown district and and that goes into even slowing the speeds down downtown and how street lights operate i mean it goes into a much more extensive process and so i'm i know that those have been have proven to work in some of the some of the cities um that have applied that uh or taken that step um the other part of it is again um just trying to treat each other in a friendly way when people get really upset they they get very upset when their neighbors or their neighbors employees park in front of their stores or vice versa you know it happens and um

[0:42:51] and we just need to try to sometimes most of the time i'm facilitating those arguments trying to get people to be rational with each other about where they park but outside of that mayor that's the only thing i can think of is is really just digging deep into the into the weeds to figure out what is the best way to utilize and educate our public about parking spaces thank you so much go ahead luke let me let me ask you i'm just thinking through how this would unfold and let's just say that there is an event that is going to draw more than 400 people and they need to put together a parking plan my mind that creates an opportunity for someone who owns additional parking to charge people to park there first of all is the city going to allow that um since we're putting the requirement now on the person putting that event in place who's responsible to pay for that parking and secondly uh if they can't afford to pay for that parking and no one around them is willing to to provide it is that not just gonna crush the event and basically make it to where they can't have it well and let me clarify that this is not intended for special events so like a one-time weekend event downtown that has its own process this is really for something like an event center that they host parties and weddings every weekend and every you know all of the time okay so what if what if someone comes in and says we're half of our parking is going to be private we're going to use this parking lot next door and then that building sells and the new owner says you can't park on my parking lot anymore what do we do then we would typically for an alternative parking plan which we already have an alternative parking plan process we would require an agreement of some sort between those

[0:44:54] two property owners now again agreements don't run forever and so that might you know it could run out in five years or whatever we typically wouldn't uh grant that if if it was like a one year agreement it would have to be a longer term uh type of agreement but again as we've written this it would be up to up to the city council to decide to answer your earlier question the idea here was to provide that flexibility because as soon as we start saying you have to have 200 parking spaces they have to be within 400 feet somebody's going to come in and say well i've got a whole parking lot that the guy's going to lease me or i own four blocks away and i think that's sufficient this gives that flexibility for city council to make that that judgment call is that sufficient so in your list of examples you have bars restaurants and churches so we've grandfathered all the bars restaurants and churches that are downtown but if someone wants to open a new restaurant downtown and the occupant load is 400 or greater they're going to be under a different set of rules than everyone else that's been downtown already that that doesn't seem fair and equitable and if i was a if i was you know a new business owner and i had to go before the city council and answer questions about parking that no one else before them had to answer that that would upset me i don't think that's fair and i think that it it uh maybe the most damaging part of this idea is the the discouragement of development downtown and we're all trying to make improvements downtown yes we have parking problems it's a very complicated and thorny issue i just don't think that the idea of introducing another review panel uh discussion in front of city council to arbitrarily award a venue some some permission to continue and then another guy comes in and well no we don't like your idea it just doesn't it doesn't work it's not

[0:46:56] consistent uh and i think when it comes to city ordinance and rules you have to be fair and equitable this doesn't feel fair and equitable to me i i understand that concern i'll make a couple of points one one anytime you change the rules the rules are different for the new people versus the old people so um the second thing i would say though is we looked at this the idea was to uh was based on a concern of very large event venues so right now based on information we got from the fire marshal's office there's only one bar in in downtown that this would even apply to and no restaurants so that occupancy was set at 400 to really get only the largest uses like i said only one bar and no restaurants would this apply to of all of the bars and restaurants in downtown now so you know it wasn't intended as a rule that would apply to every new bar and restaurant um and you all could tweak that number you could go even higher uh you could limit it you could exclude bars and restaurants what's the point yeah if if we're going to write an ordinance but we're going to make it a number that is just not going to apply to anybody why are we wasting our time i think the concern is we've had some folks approach us about large-scale event venues that would host things like weddings or parties that would be 400 500 600 people and so i think that's that's the concern so like a church like a building that is remodeled perhaps and for the specific purpose of doing it so they wouldn't run a business day in and day out but would be on a very specific issue and look to your comment about parking lots on many big events whether it's july 3rd events or whether it's big concerts in downtown if you've been down there during those events you will find that everyone who has a private parking lot around surrounding the river stage all has private parking signs up and they also

[0:48:59] have signs that say five dollars and they hire somebody to be there and monitor that parking lot and charge a fee for parking that and many many of the businesses surrounding that do do that currently that's part of it i don't necessarily think there's a problem with that i guess what my question was well that's what we're saying yeah if there's a parking plan that's required it cannot be considered part of your plan no it is i mean that's the point but you don't own the property no but the person who wanted to have the event would negotiate with that private property owner to use that facility and even say to them you if you want to put a sign up and say you know it's five dollars to come park here you would be allowed to do that but that would be a negotiation between the two parties yes karen travis go ahead i was just going to say what if that property owner that has the parking lot says you know i i thought five dollars was reasonable but i'm going to raise it to 25 dollars going private property right and now we've got and now now we have this issue with people upset and they don't want to pay that and they're not going to use that lot so the plan that's in place an agreement with the city council isn't actually being implemented and utilized because you have private property disruption and change that's affecting the execution of the idea that's brought before the city council for one time discussion when it's approved it things change too much downtown to have an arbitrary discussion on how a venue is going to park their facility uh and expect it to remain that way for 10 years or 15 years it changes too much uh there's i mean i think we all want to see the change and so i just don't see the benefit i i understand the concern about parking i don't see the benefit of of having to go through a process in front of city council

[0:51:01] to to to you know to approve a venue for moving forward the other the other very important point i'm going to make here is that if you're a venue and you're downtown and parking is a problem you better solve the parking problem yourself if you want to be successful no one's going to go and book that venue if they if everyone that goes to it has to park three or four blocks away or they have to park on the street with bars and restaurants that are lined and busy at the at the time that the events being held they they're it's their responsibility as a private business owner to find a way to accommodate the their customers so whether it's valet parking or shuttle service as as was mentioned before there are solutions to this problem that i think don't require the the review and approval of the city council i'm not so sure it should come to city council i would think that that would be something that could be done administratively and planning and not what john's proposing is to bring it to the city council no but we're talking about options okay that's what the discussion is what are the ideas and solutions that could be put out there he proposed something we don't have to accept the proposal it can be changed any way we want to if we choose to or or table it until there's a better plan there are many options here mayor i believe also that again when someone applies for a new construction or development of a business that it would trigger the occupancy would trigger the idea of having a parking plan and that could be discussed as to how they're going to come to a conclusion on that and i totally agree with the administrative process looking at it from that perspective because it speeds up and everybody knows at that point in time and the impact that it's going to have in their plans to develop their venue and so

[0:53:05] i would hope that we could come to that kind of a conclusion karen you wanted to say something i'm willing to let travis go ahead i think i have more of a summary i no i the only other question if it's administrative can the can our can the staff can the planning director say you can't build this venue because you don't have an adequate parking plan and what are the rules right then they would have rules for that yeah then that would appeal typically an admin process like that would have an appeal to either planning commission or council are there is there a framework of rules for establishing the parking requirements or is it arbitrary to you or to someone on the staff the issue is the same no matter who reviews and approves it whether it comes to the city council or it's done administratively it is the arbitrary nature of the idea that is the problem sure and we would typically develop a policy of of what things we would look for in a plan and what things would count and not count and how many spaces we would generally want to see but i think at this point what i hear is there's too many issues challenges and questions to take some sort of action on it i think the action that probably should be taken today is to table it and answer a lot of the questions and determine whether it is possible not possible challenges that have come up how do we address those challenges and make sure it is equitable and um leave it as a tabled item i'll need somebody to make a motion we table this okay with that any further public comment we will also know we actually need action by the planning commission as well well that's the city councils and then we have the planning commission planning commission typically essentially goes first so they can make a recommendation account yeah we just tabled that erase that from the cameras and heidi go ahead

[0:55:08] well i hope that if it is tabled and there is further discussion there is plenty of information out for the public those who own property in downtown to be there at those meetings to voice their opinions okay thank you i will make my comment if i could go ahead so per teresa recent remark i believe that legally we can't take action unless the planning commission has rendered what's termed a final report so you do have a quorum so regardless you do have a quorum but are you comfortable rendering any kind of final report without all your members present and i would argue it's maybe time to wait my issue with this is if we table it i i believe we have to specify when we're going to hear it again if it's tabled correct as part of the open meetings act so i you you either have to deny it we could deny it and have it brought back before us and then there is no time frame on it if that's well there's there's two options with tabling one you can table it to a date specific um if you don't do that and you just generally table it then whenever it comes back new notice would be required is the only difference because the sorry john because of the unique nature of this situation and the joint meeting it is our preference brandon and i we had a quick conversation that in order for it to be rescheduled more action is taken by council calling another joint meeting and and providing what kind of notice has to happen in that case so we're not gonna we wouldn't table it to a date specific we would table it until council takes action to recall a second meeting but i think going back to karen's point that the planning commission does need to take independent action prior to council voting right so i i'm so you're saying that on the open meetings act i can table it into the future without specifying when it's going to be heard again it's really

[0:57:12] not an open meetings act requirement i think it's more for the zoning cases so you don't have to send out additional notice because you've already noticed it and then at the meeting if you table it to a date certain then that notice might be good obviously i have a problem with notice as it stands so i would like for notice to go again no matter when this comes up so in that case you should inclined to deny it and just have it brought before us again but i'm gonna i'm gonna refer to my colleagues to make a motion so i i guess i'll i'll make some comments that just probably tag on to what was has already been said somewhat but i don't have so much of an issue with this case because it's basically a text amendment it's not retroactive however i mean whether it's allowable or legal i still don't think it's appropriate you know this is something that we deal with every month on the planning commission we have people come in they're frustrated they don't understand what's happening they have not they don't feel like they've been given adequate time to understand and ask the questions especially in zoning cases and it's something that we talked about at length last meeting last monday that we need to give a lot of consideration to the process of notification that we are currently using and i feel like this meeting is actually two steps backward from that giving less notification and eliminating the the time frame between the planning commission meeting and the city council meeting where many times maybe they missed the planning commission meeting or didn't understand quite what was going to happen we make a recommendation that goes to city council they still have two weeks in most cases to come and make their case in front of city council so i know i'm being a dead horse i think it's been talked about quite a bit

[0:59:14] i don't like the process as far as this case goes i i i'd make a motion uh to deny but i'd like to hear what you guys think too i mean i'm i would easily second your denial i think okay so we have a motion and a second to deny all in favor say aye aye opposed so that's 4-1 from the planning commission or 3-1 there's your fourth one fourth single so one to the nine we'd see you over there and just to note uh this may not be necessary but since this does come as a denial recommendation it would take a super majority of the council to approve anything if you choose to take action but in normal if a okay so if they've denied it it still comes to city council i want to make sure step one that everything that's been brought up from a legal notice perspective is legal i don't want to get down the road and then have somebody tell us it was illegal mishandled not done legally it's really more than that and i agree that it's important to know that it's legal but the only notice that was sent out for this meeting was a little blurb in the classified ad to the newspaper that's it there were no signs put in the yard as a normal zoning case would require uh what what's the other uh the other measure oh oh mailing the mailing of notices to property owners and everyone around them none of that was done for this for this meeting uh and this these items are are are minor uh relative to the business that we could hear in a meeting like this and it's very dangerous in my opinion to hold meetings like this and hear zoning matters that impact our entire community especially if the only notice is a little blurb in the newspaper that no

[1:01:16] one takes anymore harry i just want to remind people that the city has a website public information is out there this was published last thursday and so citizens have that opportunity even if they don't take the newspaper so maybe we need to look at not publishing it in the newspaper anymore because it's not that's not a great venue i think we're required this information this this information is out there for the public every week ryan just want to also throw out there that uh communications manager what district uh district 6. thank you and so because of city council meeting this went out to every media partner that we have contact with was published to the website was published to all of our social media accounts so it wasn't just the newspaper it was everything else that we we do with city council meetings okay and if i could just piggyback onto that if this had been done six months ago this exact same notices that that we did for this meeting would have been the notices that we did for an uh um ordinance amendment like this we've never put signs in yards we've never sent out mail notices because it's never been required so i i understand and travis and i have had those conversations about how we can do more and we're working on a plan to do more for notices for for folks um but i just don't want anybody to leave this room thinking we've done less than we would have done for this ordinance amendment because we're we've done the same as we would have done other than and i understand the point about you don't have two meetings in two weeks to come back that's a fair point well and that's i mean that's that's why i initially said i'm not so concerned about item zoning change that bothers me and we'll deal with that when we get there but this is 4a so the other issue is whether it is legally or what is required it's what is right and we want to make sure that what

[1:03:19] we do is right regardless of what is required and i think we need to be sure that what we do is right for the citizens and i also say the following if in fact few people take a home delivery on the newspaper many people do um the standard times online and many people switch from home delivery to that means of getting the local information if in fact we feel like because of a lack of home delivery which has happened in every community what have other communities done to ensure that the citizens have been adequately notified because this lack of home delivery is not unique to san angelo texas and yet other people have to make sure that all the legal notices and even if it's not legal that the adequate notice has been put out there and just to reiterate we're we're researching what other cities are doing and we plan to bring back both to the planning commission and council some ideas for how we do notice in the future i don't know what the subscription level is for ghost and angelo as well as san angelo live i'm not sure san angelo live prints anything as it relates to [Music] notices for zoning slash anything else so that we might not we might better understand what they can or cannot do or will or will not do all right with that go ahead spencer matthews district 5. i do want to i mean what you're saying is absolutely right it's about trying to notify in the best efforts that the city can bring the people together to make their decisions and provide their feedback i'd agree to that there's a couple of things that i think might open up the legal problems that have just been said so far and this is one of the reasons why we need to have two meetings so because i'm over here thinking about all this stuff and i only have 10

[1:05:21] minutes to prepare what i'm going to say but three minutes but there's a couple of things i mean there's two meetings so we need to have two different places where people are your comments specific to the motion because they need to be specific to the motion on the table sure okay i'm going to come back we'll have another item you can come talk to so there is a motion travis you go ahead and finish up what you need to do it's been passed and now it comes back to city council correct yes the planning commission has denied or recommended denial of the item so now it's to the city council again it would require super majority if you were to pass something so we the motion should be that we deny deny it it won't come back for what six months yes so what we've done in the past whenever planning commission wants to continue working on something and they deny it and it comes back to you then you just direct planning commission to continue their work and you don't take action on it and i think that's probably the best option here if you take any action you're stuck with it for six months so all right so we could take a motion we can make a motion that says we want the planning commission to continue to work on this item and figure out if there is a better more specific or non-specific or whatever attached to this concept and involve the del velasquez who's in charge of downtown and see if they can come up with through john james office a better more detailed uh plan of action so that motion would be what so i'll second what you just said do we have to even take a motion teresa let's just we just direct the planning commission we don't want to just well i think you at least need to come to some consensus that that's what everybody wants done because there is still the opportunity to take formal motion and

[1:07:22] and deny or approve it but at least consensus gathering i think is appropriate so is that a motion tom is there a second second whatever his motion was [Laughter] i'll keep working on it i'll finish it up mayor let me i want to zoom to a hundred thousand feet um and this i guess would be hopefully for the benefit of the planning commission i i'm sitting here listening to the discussion and i think it would depend on the individual making the comment but the question just keeps circling through my mind talking about the parking the this specific issue do we have a problem today or are we anticipating a problem in the future that we need to deal with the issue is trying to be proactive i believe okay and then okay if something is adopted i don't care whether it's 200 400 800 what will change today or what will change in the future i i i'm having a little i am thick headed i will be the first to admit that um i'm having a little trouble wrapping my brain around this whole thing do we really have a problem here i don't want to be snarky i really don't but the question's gonna sound snarky so forgive me before i ever ask the question but it's uh is this a solution looking for a problem it's trying to find a solution for a potential problem down the road and we might say there isn't one just let it go but we're going to leave it in the hands of del velasquez john james and the planning commission to try to figure it out we're not figuring it out today we're just supporting the fact that we're not doing anything on it today with that we'll take a vote all in favor of tom thompson's motion

[1:09:26] no he said i make that motion and tommy second did it [Music] all in favor of tom thompson's motion and tommy's second say aye is there anyone in denial there is not planning commission del velasquez you got a lot of work to do with john james and get something talked through you might not have an issue might not have a plan might say it's going to take a while but you got work to do thank you um do we need to take a break or you want to just keep on moving the second one what did you say tommy i said let's take a quick break but it doesn't matter we can keep going whatever we got a lot of people in the audience for this part so let's go ahead and continue because i think it's going to be a long one knowing that everybody's going to be a long one so do you want a break nope i just like a little bit more coffee if there's some in the bag take two seconds yo right back here come back here just go out that door back take a left right here i'll hold the door for you there's a little cup where you put a quarter in it they don't have them anymore they put buildings on them weren't they building that one i'll leave you terry even though i've asked is 9 55

[1:12:17] we are calling this i guess we never adjourned officially but we are back in session right now at 9 55 and we will move on to item b discussion and possible action on an ordinance amending chapter 12 planning and development exhibit a zoning ordinance article 4 specific use standards section 406 bed and breakfast establishments and short-term rentals regarding removal of the requirement that short-term rentals be separated by 500 feet except in rs zoning districts and john you're on thank you again john james director of planning and development services uh this item is well you may recall when we adopted the short-term rental ordinance there was a concern of having too many short-term rentals close together in the neighborhoods and so the ordinance we adopted required a separation of 500 feet between any two short-term rentals um what we didn't anticipate was how we should have written that is that that applies within the neighborhoods within single-family areas which was what the concern was but as we actually wrote the ordinance it applied everywhere throughout the city so even in districts like downtown or commercial district places that already allow hotels that could have 200 rooms we wouldn't allow two short-term rentals next door to each other and so we're trying to remedy that by rewording that provision in the ordinance it's really just a change to one or two sentences that makes that uh 500 foot separation requirement only apply to rs zoning districts which would be single family and duplex type districts so it's a very specific change to the existing ordinance it does not change today what happens in a residential area that's correct if you're in a single-family neighborhood this is no change to the ordinance it simply removes the restriction of a 500-foot separation in those other districts so in apartment districts downtown commercial industrial areas could all have short-term rentals

[1:14:20] within 500 feet of each other so if you're um let's say on knickerbocker your business is but within um one house you're in a residential area what happens let me confirm before i answer that but because what we don't want is the short-term rentals moving further and further into a residential area because we use the word commercial in commercial on whether you're talking knickerbocker brian bryant boulevard or um boa guard there's that half of a block that could be 500 feet from commercial to residential and i think that creates great concern yeah i think the idea is if if you're in a commercial area that would allow a whole wide range of uses like hotels apartments car washes all kinds of those kind of things you could also have a short-term rental so yes you might have a short-term rental next door to a house that has single-family zoning next to that commercial but the commercial area is already designated for higher intensity uses anyway that will create the biggest heartburn for people is when you start because there are commercial areas really adjacent to residential areas and i don't think people want their residential area impacted by short-term rentals because they're directly off of a already designated commercial and just to clarify john it is the underlying zoning that that dictates these changes so it would have to be commercially zoned to allow for a short to remove this 500-foot requirement that's correct residential zone lots are not affected by what the staff is proposing so it is the zoning if it's if there's a commercially zoned lot in the middle of a neighborhood that's that lot

[1:16:22] would not have this 500 foot provision within it and you could put a short-term rental on it that's the heartburn yes we also have different areas of town that have homes built on general heavy commercial lots and they are still homes but that that was zoned later on after the homes were built so if this passes then each one of those homes one lot input or one block in particular there are about six homes and they're building a quad plex soon every one of those could be a short-term rental is that correct well number one that is correct number two that could also be a hotel it could also be a mechanic shop an auto body shop um all kinds of things that that i think staff believes would be much more obnoxious than a short-term rental so that i guess our thinking was if you can have an auto body shop why not allow a short-term rental on that same property so rm zoned lots are affected by the this removal of the 500-foot area rs zone lots are not affected in your proposal is that correct that is correct but i'll point out that the way the ordinance is written you can't have a short-term rental on a lot that's within 500 feet of another lot with the short-term rental so even under our current ordinance two apartments in an apartment complex could be short-term rentals that same 500-foot separation it doesn't apply today but that wouldn't change into this ordinance either right and are hotels currently in violation of our ordinance no because hotels are defined differently than short-term rentals but again we're basically saying any place you can have a hotel you could have multiple short-term rentals is kind of the underlying justification i owned a lot behind the parking lot of a hotel

[1:18:25] i could put up eight townhouses and turn them into short-term rentals well no actually townhouse well assuming it's townhouse zoning townhouse zoning isn't one of the rs districts so single family duplex townhouses patio homes all of those are in one of the rs3 rs districts that we have however if you had them already built and it was zoned commercial you could do that okay so i think we have a lot of people here today to speak towards this item and before we have further discussion up here i'm going to have the public come up and comment and then planning commission city council can talk through some of the issues that were brought up to make sure everyone's clear about what's happening here so anyone in the audience today who would like to come forward and talk on this item please come forward i'm diane bay's 3544 black book trail i'm also the vice president of the destination marketing organization that is fully funded by hotel tax dollars so i would ask that if indeed you are going to allow short-term rentals to be in effect in our community in this way we have six what you would consider short-term rentals on our website currently who have visitors pay hotel tax dollars locally the other 40 plus that are also part of our community are ready according to a report i received from about airbnbs and short-term rentals do not so if you are going to zone these areas i would ask that we have city staff reach out to those organizations to ask them to have visitors pay that hot tax dollar because otherwise those those uh those buildings are those uh short-term rentals are getting that

[1:20:28] benefit of our marketing and are not paying towards it i think the city at one last two meetings or so ago we said we were doing a review of all of those right so tina you want to come talk to that because i think we created an assessment or an evaluation or a review of all of that so that everyone who does do short-term rentals or airbnb would have to be paying into the hotel motel tax that's correct mayor tina dierski director of finance we are currently in the middle of a hotel tax audit auditing a sample of hotels in san angelo we did include some str's with that audit we are further going out for an additional audit just of str's we'll be bringing that contract back to you soon to city council for approval i think we need to better define short-term rental versus airbnb because at the time this short-term rental ordinance became or became an ordinance we didn't have so much airbnb business and today a lot of people are doing airbnb and they're not short-term rentals so we need to clarify all of that our ordinance does have a definition of both b and b and we have very few bed and breakfasts they're all short-term rentals and basically it's any home that you rent for a period of less than 30 days is a short-term rental i i'm sorry we're talking and there's a lot of confusion here so airbnb and short-term rental in my mind are the same yes under ordinance breakfast a bed and breakfast is not the same that's correct okay just to be clear because there are a lot of people here listening and and uh here for a reason heidi brooks smd5 again and to be clear total transparency my husband and i have properties in downtown including downtown and we discuss them this morning had either one of us received any kind of notice regarding this was there a notice sent out

[1:22:32] there was not okay we often i mean in a case like this we're when we're expanding um what's allowed rather than restricting it there's generally less of a concern about about those again as i said in the previous item um had this been done six months ago a year ago we would have done the exact same notice as we did today we we have never sent notices out about ordinance amendments that apply to large if we're changing the rules in a whole zoning district we've never sent a letter to every person in that zoning district okay so my point is that what happened six months ago i'm hoping that and i go to a lot of these meetings i sat on planning and zoning i talked to my smd representative on a regular basis the point is and i think a lot of us feel this way we keep getting left out and by the time we are aware of this it's too late for us to do our legal work to hire attorneys or whatever it takes to know that we're in the right of this i sat at a planning and zoning meeting not long ago where the whole ratliff area neighborhood had no clue as to what was going on because of the direction that things happened there isn't enough time to know what's happening and to do anything about about it uh the idea of posting things in in the classified area should really be posted on the front page of the newspaper although that doesn't even get read anymore i don't know what the answer is but we have a lot of people that don't go on online go go access the computer and even know how to manage the computer when they get to that page to find what meeting is happening when it's happening and what

[1:24:34] is taking place i'm just asking for more transparency in these kind of things yeah and and john i do have um i want a clarification in the past i believe the planning commission has heard matters like this as it relates to changes in zoning and then that recommendation goes to the city council for two readings is that correct that's correct and now as i mentioned earlier in this case that is exactly what happened because you all as the planning commission heard this item on may 16th and made a recommendation for approval um now it was it was uh combined with another item which was the more controversial of the two which which you may recall um but this this did get a recommendation of approval you tabled one and approved this one okay so just to finish i'm sorry just to finish my thought uh so in the prior process planning commission meeting two weeks city council second reading city council now this is the first time in my life that i've heard of a joint meeting between the planning commission and city council i there may be folks in the room that have seen this done before but not not in my lifetime so now it is once in this meeting of of both boards and then a second reading at city council and it's done so we've as luke alluded to earlier we've reduced the the notice and time frame window that people have to object or express concerns about changes that we're making to the zoning this speaks to the problem that we've got guys we're going in the wrong direction with meetings like this if we don't give the public the opportunity to have input and involvement and this meeting does that by taking away two weeks of what would otherwise be time for people to to rally troops and show up to a city council meeting and i'll i'll address that briefly we've talked with and i'll hopefully legal will confirm this we've talked

[1:26:37] about uh even though the new this court case has has basically told us we have to have these joint meetings in certain circumstances um there's no case was that about um you're saying that but tell us what that city of austin uh made some significant changes to their zoning ordinance there was a citizen group that sued them basically saying you should have sent out notice because the state statute requires notice the city said no that's only required when you're rezoning property not when you're changing the text of an ordinance and basically the court said no if you're changing the text of an ordinance in a way that affects individual properties then you have to send those notices yet there's a separate provision in the statute and in our code that says in order to not have to send those notices in this case to 2000 or 10 000 homes you can have a joint meeting of the planning commission and city council and that way you don't have to send those individual notices but our our plan moving forward for these even if we have to have these joint meetings is to still take the item to planning commission first have you all discussed it at a planning commission we'll still have to come to a joint meeting of city council and planning commission but we we won't eliminate that first step of of the planning commission this will all go to the planning commission first this one did the first one didn't but in the future we'll take everything to the planning commission first and then only then would we take it to a joint meeting of city council and planning commission to avoid that concern that travis just raised talking to the microphone if you would please i feel like every planning meeting that we have we do we go back and we discuss notifications and even though this may seem like a small text amendment in the grand scheme of things on your side

[1:28:40] to the citizens the taxpayers to them this isn't a small deal and it's lack of transparency by the city which i just i don't agree with at all and i'm sure that i guess i want to i don't want to be argumentative but i want to push back on that concern a little bit and brian mentioned it i would be happy anybody in this room and the citizens included that have ideas please let us know because we put it in the newspaper as required by law it goes to all our media partners we can't put things on the front page of the paper but we can sure send it to them we can't put it on the nightly news but we send it to them we put it on our website it goes out on facebook and i don't even know what else instagram all the other things that we have we're doing everything we know of to do and if you all have thoughts and we're looking for ideas on how else we can get the word out i would say on the case that travis mentioned earlier the the gentleman who was concerned we were zoning his property without him getting noticed he was he was at the meeting he saw the sign we put in the yard so that's one type of notice we didn't mention but we put signs out on properties and so uh he he was aware of it he was at the meeting and was able to to put his words uh before the commission uh to help them make a decision so the problem with that specific person in that specific case we're kind of getting away from what the actual item is and i understand your comments are important and y'all could talk about that but we are kind of getting off agenda going too much into detail about notice on other cases um but this problem is going to get worse instead of better as long as that case is out there and still standing my office talked to us and they doesn't have to well we need unless we make different decisions whenever we send that resolution to council to call these meetings that's the point where notice needs to get addressed and the last meeting i think that we had joined

[1:30:41] between these two bodies was in march of 2020. so they're not familiar they're not common we don't want them to be common but they're not unheard of either these this has happened three or four times since i've been here since i don't know how long seven years so they're not uncommon meetings they do happen last time in 2020 but because of this case they're going to become more frequent so john's plea for input did you say march of 2020 yeah i think it was march 3rd i i don't think since i've been mayor which is 2017 that i have attended a joint meeting that's what my is right before i so in any case my memories i think that the conversation about what kind of notice is appropriate is a very important one it's something we talk about we put things on the agenda we have these grand plans to inform the public and nobody comes if anybody has ideas i think that's very valid and but what the law requires one is that publication in the paper that problem's going to get worse and not better because the timeline for us when we give something to the paper to publish it is no longer two days it's up to a week now so that's going to extend a lot of these cases when you know developers and people are pushing us this is a very important conversation but i i'd kind of like to get back to what is on the agenda regarding the str's as much as the only point i want to make teresa is that you're right we have to follow the minimum guidelines that the state outlines as a community that doesn't mean that that's all that we have to do and we need to do more is the argument that i think everyone on the planning commission would make based on the input and interaction that we're having with the citizens of our community over zoning cases i think everybody wants the most transparency possible and we want to make sure from a legal perspective we have done the correct thing and what's up dale just an annaldoll's story um i was

[1:32:45] talking to an individual not too long ago that's lived all their life in san angelo i think they've left san angelo one time to go to rowena and we were talking and i said yeah you got to go to ml eddie's and he went mlds where's that and i said downtown he said you're kidding and i said no it's been here for about 15 20 years and started a long time ago he goes i didn't know ml ladies was downtown so folks you know to the point that we're trying to make sure that a lot of people know what's going on the individual needs to find out what's going on we i think the city does a great job of notifying people about what's going on and um and there's just some people that are not going to pay attention sorry to that point i have miss hattie's has been in business since 19 late 1997 and i still have people walk in the door and say how long have you been here i've never been here and they live in the city so we all i mean i'm not sure what the plan would be to make sure everybody reads everything and is notified of everything but today we need to make sure that two things what we're doing is legal there are no issues from a legal perspective of this proceeding and if there isn't then we need to continue with the business at hand uh spencer matthews district five and to that point i think there are some troubling things that are being brought up which i would i'm going to state as a way to say that i think somebody should motion just to deny this or to cancel this meeting at this point and save us a lot of time because there's some things like the 10 000 notices going out you said that that does not need to happen because something comes back that might delay the process or offset the process well that's the point we need to delay the process if something comes back because people are trying to have their opinions hurt and so if that were to be brought up in a legal sense best efforts will be brought up in a court case and that's not best efforts

[1:34:48] if it's the president before and then all of a sudden different that's not best efforts and then there's several other things like the notice going on the paper before the city council voted on it that could be a violation of an open open meetings act because you're saying that you understood that the vote would happen and you published something before that vote actually happened that the meeting would happen and so meeting notice is to discuss what is going to be discussed it's not a meeting that says this is how it was voted on it is notification of the future meeting and the discussion of what that meeting will be right but the city council had to vote for this meeting to happen before after the fact the notice went out to notice everybody that the meeting was going to happen see what i mean that the meeting was actually making is that the resolution that the city council adopted to have this meeting was made after the notice was put in the paper that the meeting was going to occur are we legal i think technically we're legal but that doing it that way is not best practice it's not making me really comfortable and i think it is open to challenge to do that um so i think there's going to be other issues but you know and notice you're always open to challenge i mean that's the thing you'll ask me will we be sued over this you can be sued over notice issues all that all day long it's whether or not we can defend it is it defensible probably um is it going to be an issue in the future maybe depending on how this turns out the there seems to be a number of concerns about lots of things about this particular meeting from the fact that there's not a separation between planning commissional on this item there was discussion at planning commission two when you guys are hearing it for the first time again in the future that's going to be more common because when we have these big plan amendments that require 10 000 notices i just don't think there's any way we can do that because again as he said that if one of those people in that 10

[1:36:51] 000 did not get their notice they would have a valid complaint to invalidate the action you take and so it's just such a big risk that doing these joint meetings is the more legally defensible way to do that but i think they have a valid concern about the way notice was is it lawful a court will decide that um but i think there's a number of issues on this item i would recommend you continue discussing this item and again like the last one see how you feel at the end of the discussion but best efforts we brought up in those kind of cases you have to make best efforts and that's what will be discussed from an attorney's perspective if you didn't send out notice in a mailing because you're afraid of having a negative objection coming back best efforts weren't made the statute specifically allows us to not do that kind of notice that's the whole point of what we're going to do today is all the people in the audience who would like to speak to this subject are going to be allowed to speak to this subject it will give direction and a thought process to this amendment to the ordinance i don't want people to have come here and wasted their time i want to hear from them and we'll make a decision about what to do about it after we hear from everybody okay and speaking to this subject it is my understanding that there was communication about this in the downtown area but there was not communication about this in the entire city of san angelo is that correct that was my understanding and the email that we received all of us on the planning commission received from john on june 30th specified that the short-term rental was in downtown only john has since indicated that at a planning commission meeting at some point in the past we voted uh in favor of what's what's being proposed now uh it was not to my i don't recall that i don't

[1:38:54] we haven't have any memory of that i remember talking about having it downtown i don't remember it citywide we have minutes from that meeting that yesterday it was done i have verified and went back to the documents from that meeting what they voted on was exactly what's before you today it wasn't just limited to downtown i think part of the confusion may be that at the meeting downtown was the largest part of that discussion because there are currently short-term rentals proposed for downtown that this amendment was trying to address and so the discussion at the planning commission was largely about downtown uh but the ordinance amendment that they voted on was larger than just downtown so it included the entire city with the exception of rs zoning i'm just i guess i'm confused then if we've already if we've already discussed this and taking action on it why are we doing it again it's back to that issue of we had two choices under state law we could do a joint meeting or we could send out ten thousand notices and spend five to eight thousand dollars doing that of taxpayer money to send out letters to or was the action that we took previously invalid is that the problem no that action wasn't invalid but in order to in order to not have to send 10 000 letters out to all of those property owners the alternative under state law is to hold a joint meeting of planning commission and city council so because we're in the same situation i'm asking that this be tabled for further discussion because there are too many people here now and those who couldn't make it today that that are very confused about what was discussed being the entire city this affecting the entire city so my point would be to table this discussion so we can have further communication with planning zoning the information can get out i know karen has a new website for single member

[1:40:58] district 5. we can get it out in our area those of us who have businesses downtown can get it out in that area i think i'm probably speaking for a lot of people that would like to see this table rather than this conversation continue going nowhere and we can do that but there are a lot of people in the audience and i want to give them an opportunity to come forward and speak it can be denied it can be delayed it can be all those things but for people who showed up today and want to add commentary to this conversation i want them to have that opportunity jamal schomberg single minimum district 2. when i was researching it the gis mountain wasn't working so i couldn't see how big of an impact this legislation would have so i think we should table it just so we can actually see where the zone it where the zoning impacts will be the gis map did not work anyone else who would like to add comment today seen no one else coming forward then we will put it in the hands of the planning commission to deny to do whatever you choose to make the motion on harry yes if they've already approved this once on the on the june 16th meeting shouldn't it come to before the council now and let us go ahead and and vote on it i think generally the answer would be no but since we've noticed it as a public hearing of both bodies to hear this item i think it's essentially it's a do-over on on hearing it um so i think that them taking action on it or if council would prefer i mean it's kind of up to you but based on the amount of concerns we've heard about

[1:42:59] notice i think the prudent thing to do is to allow them to take action and see if they want to change their vote from last time or do something different from last time but from what i'm understanding both for brandon and from john is this is exactly the same item that they did approve at a prior meeting travis do you want to take a different action on it because it's in your hands first if you do what was the vote actually i would have to we normally include that in our presentation to the city council on this item we did not uh probably because you were re-voting um so we didn't include the priority can we go back to the june 16th meeting planning commission and pull up the notes from that meeting it's online right so we could do that i'm still going to be time i'm still confused while we're re-voting we've never voted right we have apparently the question is is you have the opportunity to change your vote if you choose to before it comes this way from what i understand if you don't have an opportunity to change your vote then it would just come to us for voting so that's what's on the table it really is because of that notice issue and an abundance of caution to make sure that we're complying with that new case law and all the notices that are required or the kind of notice that's required under it those minutes had not been completed and so we're we can call staff to ask they can look up what that vote was but those minutes have not been approved yet and so are not on the website as well this is june whatever to i mean july whatever today

[1:45:02] is the 25th 26th and the minutes from june 16th haven't been completed that doesn't sound right that's correct we i know if i take notes from a month and a half ago by the time i get ready to rewrite whatever i'm going to write i forget half the stuff that was said do we go back and listen to the video how do we ensure that minutes from a month and a half ago are what are put into those minutes they do take notes during the meeting but then they go back and and listen to the meeting again as they're typing up the actual minutes from the meeting all right so do you want to wait till staff comes up with what that vote is or yet it was not in our staff report um julie just pointed out i did include it on the powerpoint which is right in front of us so it was a 6-0 vote on may 16. there you go there you go everyone wanted to do this okay so with that then it comes to city council because right because it was a 6-0 vote or someone wants to make a motion to either adopt what we've already voted on or change it see no one do either what do we do there's there's no one on the planning commission who has said that they're willing to ask for a re-vote on that issue so then i'm assuming that means the planning commission says six to zero they approve i would still recommend that you do what you did on the last item have john go back to them represent it and come back with the different notification requirements since there's such a notice problem on this issue whether it's perceived or accurate there's an issue with notice and i think that that is the most prudent course of action

[1:47:04] ops travis representing the planning commission would that work yeah so do we need to make a motion to table it no i think that council can just direct it to go back to you okay do we need to make a motion as council do i have a motion to ask that this item be brought back to the planning commission for reconsideration and is there a motion for that so moved second there's been a motion in a second is there public comment on the motion to send it back to the planning commission for consideration seeing none we will take a vote all of those in favor of doing so say aye aye it's back in your hands with that that the last item on this agenda is follow-up and administrative issues announcements and consideration of future agenda items obviously this will come back at some point both items will come back at some point uh for consideration and further discussion i do want to add one thing we we had a woman come up and talk about short-term rentals so there is an approval process with with the planning commission for allowing short-term rentals anywhere within our community um and as was noted it appears that we have a number of people that are operating short-term rentals that have not applied and that are not paying the hotel occupancy tax i know that there are resources available online airbnb being one of them vrbo these websites that people are using to advertise these short-term rentals why why can't our code compliance folks come in and and ask those people to go through the formal process make sure that their documented and paying the taxes that they should be paying for the use of those facilities you want to come forward again and

[1:49:07] explain what we are doing while she's coming up i'll note that we have done that some in the past one of the problems is those websites don't typically give addresses they give a general location until you make a reservation that's when they give you the actual address so that makes the enforcement a little more difficult john to get just a minute i've asked tina to come forward and speak when she's finished speaking then we can ask questions yes ma'am tina dierski director of finance again we are currently undergoing a hotel tax audit where we have selected a sample of hotels and str's that we are reviewing to make sure that they're in compliance and also to educate them on what the rules are where they should be remitting hotel tax in addition we are bringing back a contract to council specifically related to str's so that we can review a broader sample right go ahead and just to clarify it's not a sample it's let's find all the short-term rentals that are out there and bring them into compliance um we don't need a test or a little bit we need all of it and i've got two points on that so when we bring that contract back first city council approval you can discuss that and give us some direction on how many you'd like to approve of course the cost goes up per unit that they look at and so what we've typically done in the past is there's a four-year statute of limitations on that hotel tax remittance so every four years we try to select a good maybe 50 percent of those that are in existence and review those and keep that rotation cycle going as the question as it relates to code compliance i don't know who's here to talk about code compliance but i'm assuming that if i lived next to someone who was conducting a short-term rental i would be pretty sure i knew that was a short-term rental or an a b and b property so those next door neighbors can also report that to code compliance is that happening a mayor yes tommy i can assure you that is happening [Laughter] i had had

[1:51:09] one situation that daniel and i had to work on quite extensively for quite a long period of time but the neighbors will let you know and that goes back to generally code enforcement is complaint based and so we do follow up as tommy mentioned on those that are complained about uh at least from our department we don't currently go out looking for those as travis is suggesting i know there are firms that do that i get an email once a week from a firm that will says they will do that for you that enforcement and they just take a part of the hotel tax that you end up collecting but it's probably something like tina's talking about but right now it's largely complaint based and neighbors do complain and we have a number of those cases so part of the approval process john thank you um is it not that they when they come back for their renewal and we make sure they're in good standing that there aren't any violations from the police department or anything like that is the hotel tax not part of that well it is but i think travis's concern is the ones that are coming forward and getting approval through our process they're doing everything right they're paying their taxes they're getting the conditional use approval it's the ones that don't even come to us that are the ones that are are the problem but then maybe i misunderstood that the lady that came up and spoke about it she said there were six airbnbs on the website is that on the chamber website okay that is correct and we do have we pay re pay for research through air dna that gives us all the addresses and all of the information on every one of those who are charging to have people stay would you be willing to share that with you absolutely you don't have those that are not on your list those are those the air dna research comes from vrbo and airbnb so that does include anybody who's on those advertising lists well tina and code enforcement you just got your information i know i have shared that list with tina okay okay so tina has it

[1:53:12] so it's not just a sampling it's everybody at this point who is listed on airbnb that we know of but not everybody's on airbnb and and just to clarify it's it's not just paying the hotel occupancy tax which obviously is income that the city deserves for the use that they're there they have it's also documenting where these are within our community we have a 500-foot requirement that you can't have another one within 500 feet so we there may be violations of that requirement within our code that we're not aware of because they haven't gone through the process well the other question mark just one second diane the other question mark is if i have a rental and i am renting it out for 30 days at a time and next month i release to somebody else what does that qualify as if it's a long-term rental if it's over 30 days they would not have to pay that tax according to the state law but i would have hotels yes but i would yes it includes hotels and i would also want to i want to express that just like hotels the dollars that are paid through to through the hot tax to the city are paid by visitors and not it's a designated tax yes so it's not their money it's a pass-through much like a sales tax it's added to the cost of that rental just like the cleaning fee that most people charge yeah and all right what else just adjournment the planning commission would adjourn first and then city council for this particular meeting okay take a moment we have a motion and a second to adjourn all in favor say aye aye opposed 5-0 with that may i have a motion to adjourn the city council meeting um on this joint agenda

[1:55:16] moved by tommy seconded by lucy any public comment concerning this item seeing none we will adjourn and we will take a 10-minute break

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=L6z2dySZjMU