San Angelo City Council 2-19-19

[0:00:00] we will formally call this meeting to order at 8 33 a.m we will start the meeting with a prayer from our chaplain mr hawkins if we all stand please good morning let us pray first and foremost father we thank you for this day you have declared that this is the day that the lord has made and we will rejoice and be glad in it today leaders of our city meet for the purpose of hearing the request of concerned citizens making decisions that will affect our families our finances and our future therefore i pray that those that are in authority in this city and i pray and i lift up the mayor her staff and assistants the city council the city manager and every person and department that is instrumental in leading and directing our city i pray that you would bless them to work together in unity may you keep division and political dissension from among them and i pray that you would give them godly wisdom to and directions and instructions on how to lead and manage and operate this city and its departments i pray lord that you would give these leaders knowledge insight and guidance on how to deal with drugs violence crime and other problems and issues facing our city and its people i pray for the police chief and the police force the fire department and all the first responders who serve in our city lastly i pray lord that you would bless our city with economic prosperity may you draw in and attract to our city industry businesses corporations that will produce jobs and revenue and help it succeed and progress and grow

[0:02:04] i commit all these things to you and regardless of how things may look on the natural i confess to you that your word and that you are able well able to do exceedingly and abundantly above all that we can ask or think bring these things to pass everything that i've prayed for this city council meeting today in jesus name amen and amen god bless you all this morning we will have our pledges led by central high school 2018 varsity football captains seniors gunner coach dalen green or dylan green maverick mciver and jackson tim welcome guys let's turn around and do it i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all texas flags thank you very much [Applause] you may be seated this is worthy of an announcement there are no proclamations or recognitions today so we will move into the regular and to the agenda

[0:04:26] at this time we will ask that everyone make sure that your cell phones are on silent and we will open the meeting up for public comment issues or items that are not on the regular agenda may be raised by the public at this time citizens should speak from the podium begin by stating their name and limit remarks to less than three minutes council members may request that a discussed item be placed on a future agenda the council takes public comment on all regular agenda items during the discussion of those items do we have anyone who would like to come forward and offer public comment today please come forward i'd like you to state your name please hi my name is sharon troy i work as the housing navigator for disability connections here in san angelo and after being a caseworker for a year there i am now the housing navigator as i said and my job is to help consumers who are exiting nursing homes and hospitals to find affordable and accessible housing in the community and we have consumers come in and call our office on a daily basis who struggle to find that type of housing i have a gentleman in a nursing home right down the street here right now that he can afford uh an apartment but he can't fit his power chair in almost all of the apartments in the bathroom specifically and so there's a a strong need for this and at disability connections we're about helping people live as independently as they want to and we have helped many many consumers remain in their homes with supports and devices we can help them receive who otherwise would be in the nursing homes my job is also to work with property developers and apartment managers on having increased units that are

[0:06:29] accessible and i have documentation with me that proves that if you build apartment complexes from the ground up as accessible it is literally pennies on the dollar to make them accessible from the ground up it is not you know as expensive as people believe and you know i actually have those statistics with me full standard construction rate and accessible so i do have the numbers that i can provide to you and also i personally live in an all bills paid apartment myself i have for the last four years and i just moved into rio concho manor this past weekend because i want to save money so downsized into a studio apartment because i wanted to and i previously managed the salvation army shelter for a year and a half and with the recent announcement about the shelter closing for renovations i know personally that that building was in dire need of that and so i'm passionate about helping the homeless i you know i helped a lot of people when i worked at the shelter move into permanent housing and it's not just providing a home it's case work it's helping that individual remain in that home and a lot of those people are still in their apartments as we speak so i'm all about working with the community on trying to end homelessness and trying to help people remain in the community in accessible housing that's what i have to say thank you for those thank you those words do i have further public comment with no further public comment we will close that section of the agenda and we will move on to the consent agenda i will start by asking billy do you have anything you're wanting to pull off of the consent agenda i would like to pull item g uh-huh lane but i have a quick announcement if i can um march 2nd the concho bass club along with texas parks and wildlife texas back

[0:08:32] country hunters and anglers and ducks unlimited will be hosting a twin buttes cleanup they will meet for at 10 am and it's till 1 pm meetings at the north and south pool parking lots and what this will be doing is getting volunteers to help clean up the reservoir of trash and debris and i believe good fellow air force kayak divas and dudes and asu will have some volunteers out there so just looking for some more volunteers if you'd like to help lucy would you like to pull anything from consent agenda yes ma'am am gary h tom tommy with that we will i'm and i'm going to pull item i so with that we are going to pull items g m h and i from the consent agenda so do i have a motion to approve the balance of the consent agenda second and by lane motion made by billy any public comment with no public comment we will take a vote all in favor of proving the consent agenda without items g m h or i say i with none opposed consent agenda approved seven zero we will start with item g item g is consider awarding f 01-19 vehicle exhaust removal system to clean air concept cincinnati ohio in the amount of 286 thousand seven hundred three dollars in authorizing the city manager to execute all related documents this system is funded eighty one thousand six hundred sixty five dollars by the city with remaining funds provided by a 2019 budgeted federal grant brian here to answer councilman dewitt's question well good morning chief dunn

[0:10:34] and thank you so much and i know we had uh quite a bit of discussion about this yesterday but would you just remind me as well as citizens of the city how this came about when it came about and you know what the plans are to do this and how important it is to our first responders okay uh early last year the fire department applied for an afg grant for these diesel exhaust [Music] systems and what these systems do is connect to our trucks and the diesel ambulances to get the diesel fumes out of the stations because what they have found out that these diesel fumes are causing several different types of cancers because of the exposure to the firefighters because they're staying in the engine bays and it's getting it's they're absorbing it through their skin because it's getting on their bunker gear and all the things that we use there so we applied for that grant they approved us for the grant we brought the grant for y'all's acceptance there in the fall and we've bid these things out now we're at the point to brought it to you all to accept the bid the grant paid is basically taking care of five of the stations we budgeted for the news station and that money was there there's two stations that will not be done with this at the current time because they were built after their time frame which i think anything built after 2008 by their deal they will not cover with the grant so station five and seven are the two stations that will not have these systems in a minute now we will try to find other grants or way to take care of that we know we'll have medicare supplemental money coming in the fall again that possibly if we can't find anything that we could maybe do those two stations with thank you chief that was all i had if no one else has anything i would uh make a motion that we approve this consent agenda item g okay motion is made and second any public comment on item g

[0:12:38] no public comment we'll take a vote all in favor of passing item g say aye aye any opposed motion passes seven zero item h consider approving a memorandum of understanding with aep texas north division for energy consulting services score city smart program at no cost to the city and authorizing the city manager to execute all related documents council had a question yes just what i wanted you to do ron is is just let the citizens know how this benefits both the city and the taxpayers sometimes people don't read the background information and i think this is important to let them know that we are out there looking after their tax dollars and this is just one way we do that so just a brief explanation thank you for the opportunity we participated in this program starting in 2007. aep and the clear result is a consulting firm that's hired by ap at no charge to the city or school districts as well to help in your planning process and either renovations or in new construction so our first project was back in 2007 and i'm trying to remember it's on the list of the background if it didn't get cut off in the process there were some small projects starting out and then we got into of course city hall and community development renovations and this last year two projects were done at the coliseum lighting to how you know about that and then also um the retrofit lighting of all the city hall annex the new newly purchased building those were about 17 000 you saw in your background between the two projects and those are incentives paid from ap to us directly so what we've done with those usually we pull those back into the city and we have managed to use those to incent other projects for other buildings several years ago we did the

[0:14:40] lighting and gyms at the rec centers the two rec centers at the time uh southside and carl ray so we had the money to put those projects in place and then again yield benefits of incentives and you see in the background that we had had over 57 000 received incentives over the last 12 years or so we didn't participate every year because we didn't have projects that were eligible for that or that we didn't have the money to do those projects and so it's been a good program for us it cost us nothing we only get to take money which is always a good thing for the city and usually we're the ones having to give it and we always keep looking we met with him just a few weeks ago the group came in and we talked about upcoming projects so as we do see new buildings coming online the new fire station will come online this year those will be projects that we'll look at to see if they were eligible for funding they help us initially with research and some better lighting roofing and air conditioning components more energy efficient and if our engineers usually are ahead of the game on that so there's not much conversation we're probably getting our designs are getting to the standard they need to be and we just get to benefit from having them confirm that and pay us how many dollars in savings do you think we've it's almost a million dollars over the last several years so that's a significant amount of money and it doesn't seem to be but when you paid electric bills like we do for just a couple of our buildings and we know that that does save us a lot of money over time and a lot of that is the energy efficient roofing more energy efficient air conditioning but more recently the led lighting everybody knows about and i know councilman carter brought that up several years ago and back when we did city hall and the community development buildings those were not the leading edge uh designed at the time they weren't real proven and they weren't really affordable now since then 2011-12 those have become the market standard you know so we are retrofitting in our buildings as we can like they did in those two projects this

[0:16:43] last year so it's nice for us it's just easy to do and usually relatively expensive great i think that's what i wanted to hear i want the citizens to understand that this partnership that we've got really benefits not only the citizens but what we're doing in city hall so move to approve as presented okay motion in a second any public comment or questions steve you seem to have one yes mayor thank you um he brought up that that this will save the city uh money and he said that he pays the bills the electric bills for the city uh my question is how much what is the the average cost of electric bill to the city we don't pay all electric bills each department pays their own so we're just responsible for city hall in the community development building and i can't tell you that number off top my hand ron would it be safe to say that the payout on this just on the coliseum alone is less than two years for the total switch i remember them doing the calculation but i can't recall okay so you know when i do about that because i know kyle was involved with that project with you so conversion alone pays for itself in less than two years why would we not do that so that gives us additional savings so and i can get those numbers on our utility bills that's it's actually that's paid a different way and then we just get billed that so we'd have to get that number if you like it thank you steve you don't have an approximation on an average uh some baltimore he probably won't because he wouldn't have added up every building in the system excuse me he's been paying him for years he has not paid them for years the the individual departments have and i'm sure we haven't told it up but should you like us to do that the next meeting we would be glad to total up all the electricals that we pay in the city and present that number thank you any further public comment

[0:18:52] no further public comment we will take a vote all in favor say aye aye any opposed motion passes 7-0 we will move on to item i consider approving tax increment reinvestment zone tiers incentive funding for one private project in the north tiers area for the property located at 2020 north bryant tolling 75 thousand dollars and six private projects in the south tears area for the properties located at six east concho eight east concho 101 south chadburn 123 north chadburn 200 south magdalen and 305 west two week totaling 254 thousand john to start with would you just explain to people what the tax increment refinance zone is and do you have in the backup documents pictures of those projects i'll answer the second question first we do have in your background information uh pictures of what's proposed i don't believe we provided them to anthony for showing on the screens but uh that was provided in your background the tax infra reinvestment zone is basically an area in which the taxes above the base year which i believe was 2008 any tax increase value those additional taxes go into a separate fund to fund projects within the zone and so basically each year a portion of the taxes on those properties it's not increased taxes for those properties it's the it's the taxes they would already pay a portion of those go into this fund that can go back into street projects like the chadburn street project and also private incentives and that's what we're talking about today is those private incentives we have a process where property owners within the tiers can apply for an incentive grant to improve the facade of a downtown historic building for example or many other things improving those properties

[0:20:54] the maximum grant is 75 000 they are required to put up a match so the property owner has to put in money for the project as well the tiers board goes through a process where they we open applications we get applications from property owners they review those and make a recommendation that's what's before you today is the recommendation from the tears board on those incentive grants okay thank you with that do i have any other questions for john from council may i have a motion for approval removed billy moves it who seconds it and lucy seconds it do we have any public comment with no public comment we'll take a vote all in favor of approving item i please say aye are there any opposed with none opposed motion passes seven zero we will move on to item m consider approving a memorandum of understanding between the city of san angelo and the san angelo police officers association for the completion of the police memorial statue project welcome nice good morning i'm david howard go ahead chief howard you have here that you wanted us to release the funds of four thousand sixty-five dollars that was donated by the citizens of san angelo to finish up the memorial can you tell me what you're gonna do to finish this up i mean i know we've seen it and everything but i just want to know what else y'all we can do the funds will allow us to complete a base for the statue a nice base it right now it doesn't have one that's correct okay i just wanted the citizens to be aware of what they were doing thank you with that do i have a motion for approval a second there's a motion in a second to approve item m is there any public comment on item m

[0:23:00] with no public comment we'll take a vote all those in favor say aye aye with none opposed motion passes seven zero reuben would you come back up here please i messed up my computer hit the wrong button oops meeting's over she messed up all right we will move into the regular agenda item 7a report from the convention and visitors bureau cvb and chamber of commerce economic development council presentations made by cvb director dianna bayes and chamber vice president for economic development michael looney diana you're up first good morning mayor and council i'm pardon my voice i'm getting over everything everybody else has had at the office so glad that's almost i don't over what i'm doing wrong there it is uh as as you all know we always like to remind you the mission of the convention and visitors bureau is to enhance the quality of life for the citizens of san angelo through tourism and marketing and promotion and then our five goals for 2018 were to grow hotel occupancy by 5 to communicate the need for wayfinding and connectivity to um for brand awareness to tell the story of san angelo and to expand the tourism base through a broader understanding appreciate appreciation of the economic impact of the tourism industry and to

[0:25:03] encourage and encourage tourism product development and strategies to address future growth so these are your results and i'm going to go ahead and preface this i sent this last week to anthony while i was on medication and i think there are some of these things that are incorrect so are they inflated numbers no they're pretty good they're pretty close but i do need to let you know that i at the very end i'll explain it so anyway uh these numbers are correct the hotel occupancy increased from 49.7 to 60.65 percent which our goal was 5 so we're very pleased with almost 11 increase uh hotel tax collections from january to december were 2.3 million i believe and at the end of 2017 that number was around 1.8 million so we saw a nice increase there i won't say that was all convention and visitors bureau by any means but we do like to think that we played a good role in that we we booked or provided services to 78 conventions meetings sporting events weddings or motor coach tours and we provided 4 500 welcome bags to 51 groups throughout the year just to give you an idea of what our marketing look like we try to focus on our niche markets from sports and you'll you'll see a lot of that the bus tour operators meeting planner guides even going to trade shows like southwest showcase which is a meeting planner show in austin we did sales blitzes we even attended oil conventions to to represent our community there also numerous calls in metro cities and then calls to midland in the oil and gas industry of course our leisure and consumer market is probably one of our biggest markets we always support the texas state travel guide with his which is a publication of the governor's office and texas department of transportation true west magazine authentic texas texas town and city

[0:27:05] parks and wildlife which was a new program for us this past year because we do believe that the state park is a gem for us in talking to jim cisneros at the state park who is their park director and who's done a fabulous job in partnering with people in the city and different organizations i believe he said he got a 16 percent increase in park visits last year so we like to think that some of that marketing helped with those efforts see texas first again print is not dead this is a an insert that goes into newspaper subscribers newspapers so they they get a piece that's done by the governor's office texas highways and of course where to retire and then just a few more that you see here travel host west texas woman's day good housekeeping redbook we did some sponsorships with a craft beer experience trying to help them with a little bit of seed money to get that that event started and of course we supported this year and last year the san angelo stock show and rodeo in the wine tent we had our little plastic wine cups all over and we'd like to think that everybody enjoyed them and we're on our discover san angelo.com site often shop across texas was yet another area that we decided to promote this year and seven local stores were awarded best of stores through shop across texas and in fact letty's was named best of the best so we're very proud of the partnerships we did with our local community tour texas and then of course living magazine as far as our social media we're doing a lot of things differently than we did 20 years ago when i started in this industry our website of course is very important 258 000 page views but we are now always on social media on a constant basis with facebook twitter instagram pinterest and youtube and you can see that the numbers are continuing to increase there we're very proud of what we're doing with that

[0:29:07] through those marketing efforts specifically the print publications and online publications we captured 30 740 leads from print online advertising those leads include emails so we are able to then follow up with e-newsletters to those those folks who are requesting more information about san angelo so we do that um on a monthly basis with them and we were in 48 print publications the these numbers are accurate too hotel occupancy comparison only thing missing is it should say december instead of november so my apologies uh the hotel occupancy uh in the end of our average for uh 2017 was 56.8 percent and uh the year of 2018 it was 66.4 so you see that 10 increase and this this number actually is incorrect the average daily rate in 2017 was 73 26 not 78 and the average daily rate in 2018 was 78 78.76 and that's based on 33 properties with 2 800 rooms from the smith travel report some of the things we did with community outreach this year i was a co-presenter at the texas historical commission real places 2018 conference um i was on the texas association commission and visitors bureau board for a year i will also add that i was just recently added to the texas travel industry association board there are only three communities in west texas that are represented el paso lubbock and san angelo and so everybody else is on 35 and east so we're we're thrilled to be a part of that of course we attend unity dinner every year and we will be going this year we have several people on the dice who will be joining us this year along with our representative and folks from the senator's office and so we're very proud of that we have around 800 people who will be in attendance those are the travel and tourism industry representatives it's a 70 billion dollar industry for the state of texas and then we will do the converge on the capital

[0:31:09] where we have our messaging that we will deliver on thursday at the capitol with 2 000 of our travel and tourism industry friends and family and so we want to make sure that the legislators understand that the million jobs that are affected and the thousands of small businesses that are affected in the travel and tourism industry are important to our state and to san angelo we do good fellow tours on a monthly and bi-monthly basis texas friendly hospitality training this past year we did that quarterly and we had 97 people participate in that program a number of those came from goodfellow and they continue to be very supportive of our efforts there we of course every may host the tech national travel and tourism week and we do our tourism luncheon last year was our did you know campaign and uh we may continue that campaign who knows what what that will look like but we think it'll be very exciting and hope people will join us then uh we did some presentations to local organizations as well and then of course we hosted uh with the chamber good fellow appreciation day i think hit the wrong button now this should say efforts not upcoming efforts so we're seeking the texas music friendly designation from the texas music office as you know we did a workshop in january and we are going to continue to do research on what is the best fit for our organ our city we participated in programs with the office of the governor and travel and tourism division we are continuing those efforts suzanna just returned from a great trip in mexico along with other travel industry experts and she did media and sales blitzes there she is getting ready on friday to head to canada so we're really hitting the north american market i was in new york city last or two weeks ago with uh the governor's office and their agency and we were speaking to numerous

[0:33:12] bloggers travel writers and publications about what there is to see and do in san angelo and i will tell you nobody knew anything about san angelo and so we were thrilled to be able to deliver that message and we will continue to work with folks from the food network to southern living to msn to nbc to abc cbs all of those folks we're going to be putting san angelo on the market on main map and we're excited about that you know last week we were on good morning america with the highest temperature in the united states at 80 degrees there you go we'll take it take it every day yeah exactly i think i probably did say that to somebody it's very cold there um uh when we were in in 2018 we did seek the top 10 western town designation from two west we announced that in january we did receive that so that was part of our efforts and then uh we were looking at a fam tour for independent filmmakers and next month i will announce a great thing that's going to be happening here in san angelo in 2020 so i'm just going to give you a teaser there not going to tell you what it is um sorry guys working with some folks out of austin so we've got some really great things that are going to be happening we did host bloggers and their families in july and i'm happy to report that we had over 5 million impressions from that blog visit those folks are continuing to put our message out and one of the bloggers who is a disney blogger came back in december with her kids and one of the things she did a the top 25 instagramable locations in san angelo and one of the places she went was to the state park and her boys were with her and they got to be up close and personal with the bison and the longhorns and she said hands down one of the best activities her family experienced last year in 2018 and they went to disney world and disneyland and all of those places so sometimes authenticity is the best way

[0:35:14] to the buffalo were a good hit they were a huge hit huge huge hit um and then of course we're going to further promote our niche markets to increase overnight stays um just to give you accountability to let you know how we are accountable because we are fully funded by hotel tax dollars you want to talk about hotel tax dollars um in the sense of why you say that oh oh okay because our goal is to put heads in beds and if if we are not filling our hotel rooms we don't get funded and so the more people spend and the more visitors spend in our community the better in 2017 the or 2016 the visitors spend if not for visitor spending would have been 379 per household in taxes every year in uh the end of 2017 that number went up 20 so if not for visitor spending every household in san angelo would spend another 399 dollars in taxes and so it's very important the more money they spend the more time they are here the better their experience is the longer they stay the more time they're spending at our attractions our restaurants our accommodations our retail locations that is important to us and that's so important to the citizens of san angelo so we hope that you understand that you should support this organization and support what our efforts are and make every experience with whoever the visitor is that you touch a texas friendly experience so they want to come back overnight so most of your efforts are a large part of your efforts is with the intent of getting heads in bed heads and beds that's that is correct mayor and i wanted to do one little shout out to one of our employees amy roberts has been very invested in the desk and derrick groups in midland and last year she was named rookie of the year by desk and derek so we're very proud of her i don't know that she's in the room she had to get some card work done this morning but she she has done a phenomenal job

[0:37:18] very fortunate to have such a great staff susanna aguirre does our leisure sales and she is a go-getter always after new ideas and developing tours and itineraries that will get that that market out there and then of course linda burdell manages the volunteers the visitor center is the number one attraction in san angelo according to tripadvisor with a 4.5 rating and it wasn't even intended for that but we have volunteers who have made the experience so special that visitors are taking the time to write reviews and talk about what a great place we have to not only work but for visitors to come and get information certainly that location on the river and how beautiful that location is draws a lot it doesn't hurt it doesn't hurt that is all i have for you um thank you for your time i'm happy to answer any questions would you go back to the list of all of the uh hits that you've had off of right you almost had it there compared to three years ago what would that look like wow i can tell you um our instagram followers in april 20 17 yeah when i started we had 200 and um the twitter account the twitter account has not increased as much uh the facebook group i know we were around 9000 when i started in 2017 in april uh pinterest was really nothing we're still continuing to increase that and have some new ways in talking to some media folks we didn't have a youtube channel so that is all new all of those and we are continuing to we're going to be adding some videos this year as well um but our discover san angelo.com page of course we didn't really have any tracking that was being taken place one was visit san angelo not not enough to to showcase where we are but we're really thrilled uh with what those stats look like and being able to get that

[0:39:19] message out good thank you thank you yes billy please good morning diane that's certainly an awesome report so thank you very much i know a couple of weeks ago we had a site visit from the state naacp and i don't know has a decision been made a decision has been made and they will be here in october for the annual conference it is their statewide conference they have never been in san angelo that is to the great efforts of susannah geary she did a great job in in showcasing them i was out of town i was in new york when they came and bruce partain our president ceo also helped with that i know there are a number of council people who attended that luncheon but shirley spears is the president of the local naacp chapter and garland freeze the past president helped get us that bid in the first place and so we're really excited to have them come i believe it's october i can't remember the exact date in october but they will be joining us for the first time texas state conference so that's a great thing for us that is great because we have tried to get that conference here before and nobody wants to come to west texas so you your staff everyone did everything just right because we were not the first site that they selected but something happened with the other side and they decided to come check san angelo out and i think we kind of pounced on it once we heard that yeah they were very suitably impressed so you know it's an exciting time because it will help us to get heads in bed absolutely absolutely thank you billy would you go back to the screen that shows how many hotel beds we have so if you take a look at that the total of 2815 rooms one of the key things today is if you look at the occupancy of that at 66 percent and you go back to four years

[0:41:23] ago when we didn't have the six new hotels correct we would have been 110 115 booked right well and something else so we've grown into the rooms correct and and what i would say to you the average on the in the state is 60 and so we are we are there with the numbers the other thing to think about 2 800 rooms if you're at um even at 50 that's 1400 rooms per night times 365. so if you think about how many people are coming that's on single and double occupancy usually we multiply use a 2.5 multiplier but you're going to have half a million people coming to our community every year staying in hotels at a minimum of half a million so it's a it's a lot of people coming no matter what they're coming whether they're from for business or they're coming for our leisure they're coming for business sports graduations whatever it may be their visitor first it starts with a visit and if that first experience is a great experience for them people like michael looney who's going to be joining us here in a moment have have businesses that want to come here but we have to make sure that first experience is a great one thank you and we want to blame tom thompson for the past two weeks where the hotel where the hotel rates went up to 289 dollars a night thank you sir it's a last-minute last-minute check-in thank you thank you thank you thank you very much diane [Applause] now let's see you follow up to that well we think economic development is just as fun as as all of the really neat fun events and things like that that diane bayes and her awesome crew work on every day so i'm going to lead right into it chamber of commerce proudly supports economic

[0:43:26] development we have a department that is me and one other person and we are the economic development department my name is michael looney i'm the vice president of economic development for the san angelo chamber of commerce and our job is to recruit new companies industry to san angelo texas and the immediate surrounding area uh we work with existing companies we work with brand new companies we work with companies that we've never even heard of before that we've been introduced to through all of our different efforts uh delayed into a couple of the new 2018 successes this is fourth quarter 2018 smc global corporation this is a chemical company based out of new york and they make a lot of different types of chemicals for many different types of industries they work in the oil field industry as well and that is why we recruited them last year and in 2018 they had their big splash and made a big uh impact on the market by leasing two properties one for manufacturing and one for uh distribution we estimated a total of a seven million dollar annual impact direct in the form of salaries and taxes and and um and the amount of real estate that they're capturing they're right now working on another two pieces of real estate 40 000 square feet plus for even more expansion and what diane said is so right on the money because there are so many different options in west texas you have all this land east of or west of i-35 and when we when we are introduced to a company and we source a company that we know would be a good fit for our market we go after them and we do it as a community effort and it's really awesome because there are several of you uh on this panel and this uh council that have worked directly with us at different times to help us recruit these companies because really at the end of the day the companies really want to want to know are you going to support us or do you have the workforce that we need and a lot of these companies don't have massive workforces a lot of these these these transactions that we read about in the

[0:45:27] paper of you know 500 jobs created there's so much automation with these companies that we're working with and so much of it is computerized and so automated 25 people can do the job that would have been done by 75 people maybe five years ago and so that's that really serves us well and we get great reports from companies like smc global corporation that it's the community effort that makes the difference i should add that to smc global there were no incentives or direct assistance that was provided there were no tax dollars used these are these are relationships that we've worked very diligently to build and these companies are coming here for the right reasons and that's the way we look at it is that incentives dollars half cent sales tax dollars are very important and it is very important to keep that that gunpowder dry in case you need it because sometimes you might but it's not just you know money in exchange for assistance in exchange for jobs i mean sometimes let's say for example a company needs a water line or special electricity hooked up certainly those half cent sales tax dollars can be used to good effect to do something that's really material that's going to affect the facility in this case though we were very fortunate in that this company told us many times that they're here for all the right reasons and they wanted access to the west texas market and they're very very pleased with san angelo uh but it's not just in industry and and um and manufacturing we also look for other opportunities within the different types of industries that are out there and one of them that we're really proud of that we worked on for over a year is eon energy this is a company that is uh developing a solar power plant out in the county not very far from the city limits in fact you can see the top of the cactus hotel from their property that is a 130 million dollar investment and this is one of three that we're currently working on uh this is a small it's a big company out of s in germany and uh the county uh did work with some with them on some incentives which we assisted with uh this would be with the school district grape creek and with the county uh in exchange for some assistance so that

[0:47:29] they could construct this massive plant that is going to provide electrons from from this area into eastern texas and it's only two jobs but you know what's really nice about this is that the tax yield to the county and to the school district is going to support them greatly so when you have an environment like in west texas where we're west of i-35 we're you know 13 percent of the population in texas is west of i-35 and so we don't have this massive surplus of employees but this is a great way to generate revenue and to expand a growing industry in our region so we have we have we have hydrocarbon we have wind and now we have solar and so really really happy with how that how that's come along um u.s wealth services this is a company that's based in houston but they have a have a major major presence in western pennsylvania punching what's called the marcellus shale play we started working with them in 2018 uh to to entice them to come to san angelo they were looking for a uh a regional facility and we were very successful and we were very pleased to have uh encouraged them to to move here uh again this was a transaction that they did not request nor require any kind of half cent sales tax incentives they wanted to know that we had uh the proper employee base that they needed and that they came in and hire and with 46 employees and that is increasing greatly uh over a hundred now which we learned in december another hundred um and um what was really neat about this is this was a transaction where i like to say that the school district made the deal and uh we had uh put so much effort into working with this company from a facility standpoint uh we looked at everything road weight limits because of the equipment they bring in this is massive pumping equipment and at the last minute we were told that there was a little bit of concern about the schools because the company was coming in from pennsylvania and they knew nothing about west texas at all and so i think we didn't have schools

[0:49:34] well just curious they were concerned because of the stories they heard from other cities in west texas where you have these really small rural communities or you have midland odessa where the schools are just jam-packed with people and they were really concerned about that and so dr detloff and i kind of made that final run of them of the of the transaction over the finish line because he made them feel very confident in our school system that we're so well we're so well versed in bringing in students from around the world because of good fellow air force base and because of our oil companies that come in from all around the the nation that this company was a little concerned that their would their students uh cultural academic and psychological needs be understood and he said absolutely they will we have kids coming in from all over the world through goodfellow and that made a big impression on this company so again that's about a 22 million dollar impact to our immediate economy eon is 130 a million smc is 7 million these are estimates because you remember these companies have not taken any half cent sales tax dollars and so we are going by their grace on what the estimates of their yields are and we run those yields with the software program uh shannon scott with co city siana and i work on those together so we have a pretty good estimation of what those impacts are to our community and these are annualized these are not a three-year horizon or a five-year horizon these are per year and so what we'll do is we'll come back at you probably the next council meeting and say here's where we are now presently and that would be really really awesome to see how they're growing um prospect update as you know we're always out there in the field uh using our relationship our our sarma the san angelo regional manufacturers alliance which a lot of you have heard me talk about i would like to add that we were a proud sponsor of the rodeo if you saw our ad in the brochure and we did sponsor uh the ag and mechanical competition that was conducted during the rodeo as well uh

[0:51:35] fourth quarter 2018 project c21219 this is a 60 000 square foot manufacturing facility very heavily automated that we are working on this is a company that's based out of state that we are working on trying to get them a little bit more property information some employee information and then a tour will happen sometime in this in this first quarter project reno this is a company uh that would be approximately a 15 employee company this is an engine company we can't say a whole lot about it but they have toured san angelo twice very successfully some of you were aware of that and were involved with that and that is something that again this is really the power of the san angelo regional manufacturers alliance program and that's why we're so excited about it we've as i said before created kind of this army of invested companies that love san angelo this is their home this is their region they want to see this economy grow and what we've done is we've essentially asked these hundred plus companies these manufacturers fabricators and energy service companies help us help us understand what are the suppliers you work with what are the raw materials suppliers that you work with what are the companies that would most complement and not cannibalize our existing industry because we don't want to recruit a company that's going to eat somebody else we want them to work together and so reno is a project that came out of another fabrication company they make engines and this is a very long-standing relationship that they had with this west coast-based company you can probably guess what state they're in i'll let you guess okay anyway um this is uh this is the success of that and we feel very i thought that was kind of clever uh project uh iceset it says iced tea but it's project ice it this is another engine manufacturing company that would be an offshoot of project reno and this is another it's a completely separate company it says determining corporate tour that corporate tour happened two weeks ago um but uh you can see we're we're ahead of the curve on that so again more companies on the way that were that we're talking to we feel

[0:53:37] really confident that that uh two of those companies that we just showed you that slide are going to land uh project pack is a company that we've been working with for well actually since 2016 so that goes to show you that when when we get our claws on a deal we really hang on to it this is a company that's a steel company we've been talking to them we've had tours the mayor and i uh went and visited them last may in houston they have a division there and uh we're still continuing that discussion they're right now going through uh a suspected merger um and so we've been told just hang tight we're working on it this would be a successful 100 000 square foot facility 100 to 140 employees recurrent energy this is one of the other solar power plants that we are working with they were a big sponsor of christmas at fort concho incidentally so it's nice to see these companies that put forth their effort into the community this is a 200 megawatt hundred and twenty million dollar development again it would provide a good strong tax yield to tom greene county and the independent school district that is in their area very low impact on on land and road structure and this is really the nice thing about these these these plants is that they're very low profile because they're near the ground they're throwing off a good tax yield they're helping the school system a school district once they're built they're built and they are run off site that you may have one person to make sure that the trees don't grow up underneath the panels and that's about it so when we encourage our students to get involved with robotics competitions which we do out in this area through our star pro star program and our stem research program that's what they're learning how to build are these things these are big robots that's what they are so the things that really help us add to our property tax base it really does because you think about it these these two 4 000 plus acre properties are just pasture land and there's really not a whole lot of yield that comes out of them i mean the real thing you want to look at is well what could be done i mean is is a neighborhood going to be built there and in these cases the answer was well no um not anywhere in the near future maybe in 50 years but in 50 years this this plant will probably have outlived its its

[0:55:40] useful life and there's no there's virtually no impact to the land it's it's a clean it's truly clean energy so yes so while this this land is sitting there it's going to be generating electrons that are going to be bought by companies and municipalities in the eastern part of the states where almost all of it's going and a lot of people have asked you know why is there this sudden resurgence of solar there's really two basic reasons one is that uh we have good good land area near the substations that run the electrons from western texas to eastern texas and that's a really big thing we have a big junction point here the second thing is we've been told well the sun is obvious yes mayor gunter we do have a lot of sun and what and ironically um the past couple times we've had these companies in town to tour the properties it was overcast which we sort of said it's it's really sunny but but the other thing is we've been told and this is what's great and i know mayor gunner has met with uh people from eon and from her current um and uh they like the fact that we're friendly and we're helpful and we put our we when uh councilwoman gonzalez came to one of our meetings with recurrent a couple of weeks ago uh we put our money where our mouth is and we go for it and we love these companies and they really appreciate the fact that we're so helpful and it makes a big difference and that's why everyone and that's why i tell people everyone in this community you're all economic developers every one of you and it makes a huge impact uh project 905 another another 30 000 square foot fabrication facility we're waiting to get them down this is a company based out of colorado had good conversations with them we'll tell more about that next time [Music] let's see for those who aren't aware most of you are but some of the folks watching on tv or in the audience don't know that we work really really closely with co-cdc that's the city of san angelo development corporation that's the economic development branch of the city we are of course chamber of commerce we work very very closely we're interlocked on almost all projects and we have a great partnership one of the things that that we really stand for is not just

[0:57:43] recruiting new companies but supporting those companies that we already have here we want to show them the that we care very deeply about them and we want to see them healthy and we want to understand what are the things that they need that heavy industry needs in our area to stay healthy and so we work with over 100 companies uh that make up our database of sarma companies these are manufacturers fabricators energy service companies we do weekly boots on the ground visits so we go out to every company as much as we can as many as we can during the week and pay personal visits to them we're also in the process of working on national uh legacy companies these are companies like blue cross ethicon cytel goodyear and these are companies that haven't been had visits from san angelo uh economic development and council members for many many many years and so you're going to hear more about that in the near future where we think it's really important to get up there go to akron ohio and go up to new jersey to see ethicon and just interface with them and talk to them and tell them how proud we are to have them here and understand what it is that we can do to make that experience better and grow those companies and we've been informed by those companies that have presences here those big national legacy companies that would be really really welcome uh there's no we've been told there's no fear that no there's no scuttle but hey we're thinking about doing something different somewhere else but it sure makes a big impression when you can sit down with the vice president of goodyear or seitel and say we really appreciate you being in our community we want you here and those go a long way this is some in some pictures of our industrial outreach missions that we go on each week so you can see we've got members of the chamber and costa dc wendland tank karen transport that's a company up on arden road that took the old globe energy facility west texas industrial engines dragon industries they got their signage up it looks really good and they're doing really well one of the things that these outreach missions really help us understand is getting a really good tour of the facilities putting eyes on their

[0:59:46] projects and understanding how they're really doing and how the the this you know dynamic economy that we're all trying to work within is affecting them the good news is is that it's affecting them well and one of the biggest issues that we hear is workforce and i know that's not a really big surprise but that is why with with the chamber and with coast cdc we work really really closely with the workforce board that's a big partner of ours and then also through our san angelo regional manufacturers alliance program we work with existing companies to understand what can be done to up train people that they already have or to attract new talent from other parts of the state and again here is our logo the summer program it of course supports industry and the energy sector in san angelo we work with co-cdc we work really closely with tom green uh county and with our city's planning and permitting office the development department is outstanding and i want to throw out kudos to them they have been awesome partners whenever there's a hiccup whenever there's an issue which is going to happen that's just the way business is they always jump on it for example with smc global when we did their first two facilities that was supposed to take four months that was how long it took kansas city for that company to do it deploy a new building in kansas city this was two in san angelo we did a four-month project in seven weeks and that was in large part because of our partners and our friends at tom at john james's crew out there at the at the permian planning department and we we worked on it together and we were so proud of that and that made a huge difference and that was the company that said we just want your help we just want to get these permits pushed through as quickly as possible and done right and both facilities are awesome to go look at they're amazing what they did with these two older facilities that really needed a lot of help so we're really really pretty pleased with how that's turned out we engage in business to business recruiting what we do with our sarma members is we deploy them we deputize them help understand uh how can we work with companies that they work with that

[1:01:50] we may never even know exist that we want to build relationships with and that's what they do and that's been really really helpful to do um sarma companies have helped recruit smc global u.s wealth services dragon industries eon energy and recurrent energy when we're on the final yard line of trying to get these companies to make a commitment we put them directly in front of sarma members usually well before that too so that industry can speak to industry and that makes a big difference and then tstc day in our efforts to recruit comp to help companies that are here people what tstc tstc is texas state technical college they have a their main college is in waco it's a really really large vocational college they have a brand new uh division up in abilene it's a 56 000 square foot facility that's very expandable it's brand new it's less than a year old and what we do is we take as many psarma companies as we can sign up usually on a quarterly basis and we'll go to tstc together at the invitation of rick denbo who's the provost and his mission is to help get his students employed in the san angelo area or wherever they may be needed and so what we do is we'll go up with sarma members to tstc we'll spend the day with them and we will meet with students that are towards the end part of their education and and basically set up impromptu interviews and start handing out brochures on what job availabilities there are in san angelo so we're actually just grabbing our sarma members going up to tstc and telling these youngsters we've got the jobs that you want and we're ready to talk right now and they're and they're cutting deals in the hallway and it is so awesome to see it's a grassroots way to do it but it works and that's gonna we're gonna be doing a lot more of those um hold on wait oh yeah uh tmac texas manufacturers assistance center we're really excited to announce that the chamber a couple of weeks ago the chamber signed documentation with the

[1:03:53] texas manufacturers assistance center this is a partially federally funded program that it that helps industry heavy industry excel to the next level through education and through sourcing of resources that they might need to grow tmac has a presence in san antonio that's where their headquarters is at the southwest research institute which is a massive 1200 hundred acre institution where they test equipment a lot of military testing goes on down there and industrial testing tmac is a small division of that operation they have spent time in san angelo we've had three meetings with them and we signed documentation to begin projects where we will do actual courses that are taught to companies around the world on lean manufacturing practices and different kinds of manufacturing enhancement practices and there's in your packet you'll see the actual i put the course curriculum in there as well so you can take a look at that and we're going to be doing more courses in 2019 and these are funded by tmac these are completely this does not cost our companies anything to host all we have to do is set up the meeting and promote it and get the students ready and get them in um this is our website we have done a sarma website that highlights who we are what we do and we put all of our different events and our newsletter on here we also have a series of videos as well uh which i've shown in the past and if you go to that's www.sarma.us you can tour the website and take a look at it and learn more about what we're doing but that's a pretty good summary i think of what we're doing for the fourth quarter if there's any other questions we'd love to talk to you about it i've never lost words so if you want to go out in the hallway and talk after the meeting we sure can do that pharma start pharma is the agricultural version of sarma and what we did is we we're actually in the process of working with our board on trying to figure out exactly when we're going to kick that off the situation is that the sarma the san angelo regional manufacturers

[1:05:55] alliance has been so popular and has become such a major platform of economic development for the chamber that it's it's pushed back our deadline on the pharma which is the agricultural version of the sarma we're wanting to do that sometime in the middle part of this year we think that that's achievable to get it kicked off but in order to just at least reach into the ag sector that's why we got involved with the rodeo so sarma did sponsor uh part of the rodeo and then also the part of the ag mechanical competition and so we're reaching into that it's a billion dollar industry in our region and yes we do know that agricultural sector of our region is kind of taken for granted and we found we really found that out by doing our research and by getting to know these companies but the same thing with our industrial companies you think our industrial companies here make up the very backbone of our economy and uh oftentimes we drive by them and we see yup there's scitel but we really don't know much about what they do or what their needs are um they're growing by the way uh so if there's any other questions i did make a comment real quickly uh the partnership that that we have with the chamber is stronger than it's ever been and i want to say thanks to bruce and his staff uh to michael and and what he's doing with with sarma and attracting these companies in there and the partnerships that he's got with coastal dc and the other partnerships and and with diane and what she's doing right now attracting visitors in here and promoting san angelo thank you you're welcome it's it's making an awesome impact and we're really pleased to be partners with all of you so exciting [Applause] all right we will now move into item um hold on let me get myself together here we are going to go into item b of regular agenda which is a public hearing and second reading of an

[1:07:58] ordinance ordaining the city's participation in the texas enterprise zone program pursuant to the texas enterprise zone act chapter 2 303 texas government code providing tax incentives designating a liaison for communication with interested parties and nominating ethicon inc to the office of the governor economic development and tourism edt through the economic development bank as an enterprise project presentation will be made by bob schneeman and you're on bob thank you good morning mayor uh members of council mr valenzuela michael's a tough act to follow [Laughter] uh but in keeping with one of the things that he said in uh about taking care of our existing companies that's what this item is about and supporting one of our major local companies uh this is a public hearing and uh the council may remember that they they heard this uh item on the fifth of february we brought it back for another public hearing to satisfy some of the requirements of the um state law uh it's actually an administrative requirement of the governor's office this was originally designated as an enterprise zone in august of 2012 and by state law that expired after five years if it's approved by the governor's office the company becomes eligible for certain sales and use tax rebates from the state portion of the sales tax uh the rebates are on a sliding scale based on an amount of uh of capital investment by the company and the number of jobs created by the company it's the governor governor's office's decision whether or not the company is chosen for the program we are simply nominating them for participation in this program i'll answer any questions do i have any questions from council members then do i have a motion for approval before we in a second now we'll open up for public comment on

[1:10:02] this item as required by law it's our second reading and our second meeting to allow for comments from the public do we have any today ray gonzalez plant manager at ethicon uh mayor city council mr valenzuela just wanted to take a minute to say thank you appreciate past support for ethicon as you guys know most people know ethicon has been part of san angelo for 55 years this year and i've been with ethicon for 23 so i know what san angelo means to ethicon and what ethicon means to san angelo and 55 years the world has changed quite a bit as we all know and we are competing in a global environment j j 125 year plus company works every day to stay competitive make sure we're providing the best products for our customers and part of that is doing things that can help stay competitive and this is just one of the things that we've done over the many years and in partnership with the the city back in 2012 to to do that i can report to you that ethicon is is going very strong over the last couple of years we've added jobs invested heavily in in capital one business from other parts of of the network within j um so again i just wanted to express my thanks on behalf of of ethicon and appreciate the partnership with the city thank you very much hey before you leave just one good comment uh because i know this is your second go around in san angelo so you kind of like it here i do and i i want to say that really appreciate the partnership that that you guys have with the city uh i know a number of your retired uh ethicon people because my wife is one of them she goes to the retirees but so thank you for what you guys do for the city thanks

[1:12:05] harry yeah i know there's a couple of reps from from ethicon up here so hi ray hi hillary thank you very much thank you any further public comment if there's no further public comment we will take a vote all in favor of approving say aye are in the opposed non-opposed motion passes 7-0 we will now go into item c of the regular agenda public hearing and first reading of an amendment to the city of san angelo's code of ordinances chapter 5 section 5.02.033 prohibited licenses established an exception of variance procedure for on-premise cell of alcoholic beverages at a restaurant less than 300 feet from a school facility in the central business district and john euron thank you john james director of planning and development services as you said this is this would be an amendment to the city code of ordinances and the question before you is whether or not to allow a variance process for sales of alcohol within 300 feet of a school under today's ordinance if you're within 300 feet of a school you simply cannot get an alcohol beverage permit from the state this would allow variance process it's established in state law it authorizes cities to establish a variance process but it doesn't require it so to date we have not included that in our ordinance this variance process but this proposal would add that variance process when we originally looked at this there was a property or a potential restaurant owner looking at a property on north chadburn that fell too close to the central freshman campus so that's what brought this discussion up in the first place we originally looked at an outright exemption so basically exempting anything within the central business district from that 300-foot separation requirement but as we researched it we found this state provision that allows for the variance

[1:14:07] and we thought that was a good compromise between not allowing an alcohol permit at all on the other hand completely exempting the cbd and allowing alcohol permits anywhere this would allow a variance process and you all would make a case-by-case determination for each request so this is not a request for a specific alcohol permit a specific restaurant this is just adding to the ordinance the option for a variance procedure i should let you know that the san angelo independent school district did let us know that they're opposed to this they would prefer to keep the ordinance the way it is with no opportunity for an alcohol permit within 300 feet of a school this is the section of our ordinance that would be amended basically adding the language that you see on the screen again basically allowing a variance process again this we've narrowly written this variance to only apply to the central business district it's a little bit hard to see here but you can see in blue the central business district and then the red box identifies the central freshman campus so the only areas we're really talking about are in this area within 300 feet of the central freshman campus again those would be eligible to come to you for a variance to get an alcohol permit staff does recommend approval of this amendment this went to the planning commission back in january they also recommended approval by a 6-1 vote with that i'd be happy to answer any questions let me um make sure i understand so at this point we are not approving it with the intent of giving someone so no one's no business right now is asking for this that's correct so um that number one and then number two as it relates to

[1:16:09] state law does the state law have any reaction to whether it's a school or a church the school the state law allows us to regulate alcohol permits within a certain distance of a school or a distance within a church are they the same because this only talks about school this only relates to schools you may recall it's in the within the last couple of years we brought to you a request from a church in fact that had asked us to implement the separation distance for alcohol permits from churches we don't currently have that in our ordinance today that was brought to the city council the council at the time decided that was not the way we wanted to go at that time and so currently in san angelo we do not limit or prohibit alcohol permits within a distance of a church we don't limit it we do not limit it that's correct only from schools right now so a bar could open up next to a church that's correct and so if we pass this a bar could open up next to a school no no this is worded and and actually i'm glad you asked that because this is worded to only allow for a food and beverage permit that would be for a restaurant so it's a different type of permit for a bar that would not allow a bar in this circumstance it would also not allow a liquor store it would only allow the type of permit that is for a restaurant that's predominantly food but that also wants to serve alcohol when you say predominantly food is that 51 or is that 80 20 is that when you say predominant what's your ratio i believe the state law says it's 60 percent but i'm not 100 confident in that answer yeah that's what the background says do i have um questions for john from council members

[1:18:11] billy i do mayor thank you and i would just like to state first that i guess i grew up in an era where schools and churches were respected above all so this is contrary to you know my perspective on whether we should allow alcohol near schools our churches uh for that matter but my question john is what are the other areas in this because as i understand this only applies to the central business district right that's correct so what other areas within the central business district have schools that may fall within 300 feet of a restaurant or bar i'm not aware of any other schools that this would apply to in the central business district now how would you monitor when you talk about a restaurant that is at least 60 restaurant 40 alcohol how would you monitor that that's actually a monitor by the tabc uh texas alcohol and beverage commission so they issue different types of permits um for you know a restaurant that serves alcohol or a business like a bar that is predominantly alcohol sales and so that would be something that they would uh if a restaurant sold too much alcohol in relationship to food then the tabc would reclassify them as a bar and they would be not in compliance with their restaurant permit and then i think my final question depending on your answer where the central freshman campus is relative to the 300 foot requirement is it only that block is it that entire block there that uh where the red rectangle is yeah and in fact the main central freshman campus is actually over here uh we didn't show that because the 300 foot

[1:20:15] there doesn't affect the cbd this is the part that is uh impacted and that's actually the gem and a practice ball field but that's considered part of the campus so it's it's what we would measure from so i mean technically this red line should should come out like this to include the campus as well but it doesn't affect the central business district okay but the gym is where a lot of after our activities go on at the time where people would be dining and you know having drinks supposedly so out of all of this central business district where restaurant or alcohol could be served that block would be the only block affected yes i believe so as as i mean because it i think it's odd to billy's point you're going to have one little small area only of the central business district that this quote applies to is that correct that's right i i think the other way you could look at that is you can open a restaurant and serve alcohol anywhere within the central business district except this small area right there and so this basically would allow someone who may want to operate a restaurant in that small area it would allow them to come to you and and ask for basically a special permission to get that alcohol permit so in essence we would really be opening it up for all of the city i know we right now are confining it to the central business district but you know somebody else came along and wanted to do something near one of the elementary schools i know it would come to the council you know our planning commission for consideration but once we set that precedence once we open that gate it is going to be awfully hard to close it again i think my answer to that would be we would be very hesitant to support opening this up citywide i think our

[1:22:18] thinking was the central business district is so unique and it's an area where we actually encourage a mixture of uses whereas most of the city we say okay this area is for commercial this area is residential over here is apartments the central business district is an area where we actually encourage the mixture of churches apartments schools businesses all of those things to happen in close proximity to each other and so that's that's the reason i think staff felt comfortable that applying this but only in the central business district well i drove by several schools yesterday just looking at the commercial properties near the school where i could see someone wanting to say oh well that corner right there is on the houston heart freeway you know it's yes it's within 300 feet of the school but you need to make an exception for me too so anyway that's all i have mayor on that okay do i have harry you have a question or comment because this is in my district i've been encouraging uh john and the planning group to to look at what alternatives may be out there because i've been approached by several people that would like to try to see if there's something we can do and my only comment was if this is allowed by state law i i want to support this but i want to also make sure as billy said that we know that this is a restaurant serving alcohol and not a bar serving food so if we can meet that 60 percent if that's the figure then i want to support this and we make sure that we're encouraging people to look at that downtown area there's several buildings down there that could use some help so i'm a big supporter of downtown obviously and i would love to see empty buildings utilized i think my great concern with this one is the freshman campus because that's at an age

[1:24:22] group where perhaps the children are a lot more susceptible in an age where drinking is a little more enticing or they're looking at it so i have a little bit of caution relative to that being the freshman campus versus a high school campus but on the other hand it obviously can be controlled by city council and but then we're picking and choosing which businesses we like or don't like and and i don't like that council get into the business of picking and choosing businesses that we think have the right to be there not the right to be there so we so i'm i have a mixed feeling about this john can you tell us talk us through a little bit more i know you talked about tabc was the one that was the the monitor of this can you talk a little bit more about that what happens when it starts exceeding uh the the 40 percent um do you know i actually don't know i know that they can monitor that i don't know if they regularly monitor that or if it's a complaint based and i know that they have the ability to ask for receipts and and ledgers and records of of how much is sold for for beer and alcohol and you some of you all may know better than i do but they may even have to report that to the tabc we have to report obviously sales tax on food separately from sales tax on liquors but having said that the idea that there would be somebody in austin looking at everybody's food and liquor sales to determine if they fit under that percentage is unrealistic to believe that that happens that's public information is it not mayor i mean they they publish alcohol sales tax every every month in but not food tax well i understand that and but it it is it is still public information so

[1:26:25] there's got to be a way that that we know what those particular ones are i mean we we do it out of the elks organization i sign the checks every month so i know that you got food text you got alcohol attacks so and there's got to be some way that the public can can see that and i think if if somebody got a restaurant permit and then began operating like a bar um at at the very least in that circumstance either the city or a citizen could file a complaint with the tabc to investigate it and if if they find that they are in violation of that permit they could revoke their alcohol permit the insurance companies also check on that because they ensure based off of your relationship between food sales and liquor tax but again whether they would call somebody on it i don't know but you would certainly pay a much higher percent a much higher insurance bill if you were larger than the 60 percent that being said do i elaine i want to say i'm with billy on the traditional protecting the schools and churches but i think with our efforts of what we want to do with downtown and the the chadburn street project this is going to be one of those odd exceptions with it coming too close to the central um freshman campus john what kind of barriers do we have alley-wise between chadburn and oaks there's really not anything there go north yeah there's and actually ironically we we just had an issue here we there appears to be an alley right here behind this row of on chadburn it's technically not an alley it's actually owned by the school district which has created some issues for some of these businesses here but there really is no separation those those properties on chadburn right in this room they literally back up to the school property what i'm getting at is since there's no real barriers there there's

[1:28:29] not going to be any barriers if they wanted to walk down the street to any other on chadburn since it's so prolific down there where we're trying to develop restaurants and and life there but they're not within the 300 feet i know that um but the efforts if they wanted to go further if a school-aged child wanted to go to one of the other restaurants it's not too much more out of their way but what i'm getting at is the chadron street efforts that we're going through to make that rebuilt and revitalized i think this is one of those exceptions that would help that out i agree um i feel like please and then you know the exception would probably help out the development but when you think about the safety security of our students and i think the mayor's point was very well stated that we're looking at students who are in transitional age and no matter how the sixty percent versus the forty percent and believe me i'm not a tea totaler so i'm not a i do not object to having um beer and wine and liquor in in restaurants and served in restaurants but my concern are students this age and you can't always control what an individual's consumption is going to be and if you're talking about and elaine brought this up that supposedly alley that's owned by the school these businesses will have to have a re uh rear exit they have to have to exit so that rear exit would probably be right onto school property what would stop you know a bad situation from happening and i just would rather see us not open up this variance and run that

[1:30:32] risk versus um you know make the exception here thank you mayor welcome lucy you had him yes i just made it had a statement i agree with the mayor and with billy and with everybody that has been said um but to me like we said we want to develop downtown i mean i don't have a problem with that my thing is that i don't think we need to do it in this area at the expense of the children i mean of the freshman campus of those kids going to school around there i don't think we should try to accommodate a person that wants to open a business there when we realize that it's right there next to that freshman campus so certainly the business is obligated to check id so if the business does their job no child should be served the alcohol so the last you put the burden back on the property owner which is correct when you have a liquor license it's your burden to carry and check the id and then the next question would be of course the illusion of how great it is to sit and drink and have fun we all do and we all love it not to say we don't but the outdoor patio issue attached to it because there's another issue if it's contained within the walls of a business another is if there's a patio outside the front of the business or in the back of the business then again that opens up a door of do you want that to be next to the freshman campus just a thought i would agree with you mayor but in this particular case if the school district owns the alley then i don't think any businesses that open there would have the opportunity regardless of who they are but have that opportunity to have a outdoor patio or anything in that area to lanes point you'd still have to have

[1:32:35] or lose this point you've got to have two entrances but in the same token they can't have anything out there if it belongs to to another property order so i'm not sure that that i share that exactly uh in that instance so we'll go from there tom did you have a comment yeah and i'll just take this from a parent i'm fixing to place a kid at cfc i've had one at cfc i i don't think i could sneak either one of them into a bar without somebody card them or i really don't we're trying to develop that whole corridor i'm a parent that's going to have children it does not scare me at all the fact that you know we've got a little faith in our governing body with council we aren't going to let anything and i think the whole part of that ordinance was maybe the marketing of what people do not the fact that what they serve is what we're trying to prevent our kids from seeing and it's the back side of all these establishments but then again i don't want to limit anybody that's trying to develop burn i think it's important part of the corridor we're going so i'm in favor of rolling with what we got i certainly see y'all's point and i get that but i think if we're going to try to develop tavern we don't need to limit the people on what they have and if you know if i go in there and have a sandwich shop or steak and when i have a beer with it i'd like to do that not for the fear that if you actually look on google maps it's really a football field that's actually hidden within 300 feet i just don't see the fear in it and i'll just throw that out in my two cents thank you from a parental comment thank you billy tom i certainly hear what you're saying and it's not the kids that i'm concerned about it's the adults and the influence that potentially you know is there and i don't want to come across at all as sounding as though i am opposed to development on chadron because i think that is an important corridor for our downtown area but i don't see that this would necessarily stop or limit there are already businesses in that block that are not alcohol and there could be other businesses that

[1:34:37] would go in there that would not be places that serve alcohol really i hope you like this guys thank you i hope you can help me fill some of those empty buildings down there well i would sure like to try and i think it could be done without alcohol do i have further comments or questions from council with no further comments or questions from council do i have a motion move to approve is presented hey last second and we are now open for public comment do we have anyone in the audience who would like to make comment steve hampton uh we have through the years complete completely backed away with a high from a high standard uh with such reasoning as i've heard this morning and and i think that this is bad we we need to keep a high standard we need to play to the high side of a personality uh we uh i think uh 300 feet is more than reasonable and maybe should be larger than that i think uh churches should be included uh we've already backed completely away from the churches so i would recommend that we maintain the standard and hold the line what happens if in the future uh marijuana comes into the state what's going to happen then these are intoxicants just uh similar of similar nature and so uh we if we start backing away now what are we going to do then uh there's there's more in the future to to address thank you i'm terry jackson i do serve on the

[1:36:40] planning commission i was the opposing vote on that um one of the reasons being i think we need to listen to our school district and what they have going on their concerns for the children and also just as someone stated earlier you know it's part of the the people that actually go and maybe they're waiting for their kids to get out of school whatever consume too much there could be all kinds of accidents that involve these but the the gymnasium is used all day and a lot of nights and weekends and i do think i want to develop all that area i hate to see the empty buildings but i think there's a lot of different um businesses that could go in there still pay the tax dollars san angelo's notorious for having restaurants start and they always they don't always stay there they're there for a short period of time they think it's like easy money i guess and don't realize all the work that goes into it thank you for that you're welcome and um they they don't last so i would still um oppose this thank you thank you do i have further public comment with no further public comment we will take a vote all in favor say aye any opposed nay or three you want to do it by hand all in favor say aye all opposed motion passes four three four three fails one two three who else was a no sorry it failed failed four three item d first reading and public hearing of an ordinance approving case pd19-01 a rezoning from the neighborhood commercial cn zoning district to a

[1:38:42] planned development pd zoning district to allow neighborhood commercial cn uses as well as self-service storage and a single family detached dwelling located at 909 west beaugard avenue john thank you again john james director of planning and development services this is a case you saw a couple months ago they asked to rezone it as kind of a first step they asked to rezone it to neighborhood commercial a portion of the property you may recall was zoned single single-family so that got the whole property zone to commercial now they're requesting a planned development to allow for the development proposal that we'll discuss in just a second the future land use plan for the area does show this as neighborhood center which is intended for neighborhood oriented commercial development uh and like like i said the zoning currently is neighborhood commercial in neighborhood commercial i should add that self-storage uses are not allowed by right but do have to come before you either with a conditional use which could be approved by the planning commission or planned development which is what they've chosen to do in this case just a few pictures in case we need to come back to these but the subject property is here to the right it's a it used to be a used car dealership has been vacant for some time this is looking back west down beauregard across the street you can see the park across beauregard and this is the subject site as it looks today and single family residential is just to the other side and that we can talk about that more later again a few couple more pictures of the site there's an existing fence as well as some heavy vegetation screening this site from the adjacent residential property and in fact the proponent in this case actually is the occupant and owner of that next door residential property this is the site plan that's been

[1:40:44] proposed you can see the building largely this part of the building would be the internal self storage this is not a self storage that you might think of with big orange garage doors it's all internal to the building so from the exterior the intent is that it appear to be like an office building you would go in through normal glass doors and then inside would be the storage units themselves and then this smaller part of the building up here would be for the uh for office uses uh associated with a local business uh i should point out while i'm on this slide the plan development as it's written would accommodate a single residence uh there are no current plans for that but it would allow down in this lower area down closer to the river it would allow for a future single-family home if the property owner decides to do that at some point in the future if you've been out to this area you know that this area is very steep so the subject side up here is up on basically the top and then it slopes down towards the river in this direction and so one of the concerns that's come up is the visual of this site from the river but given the slope and all the vegetation that's within this this area that will remain there's very little if any visibility from the river to this site these are the pro the latest proposals and i understand that perhaps the property owner and neighbors have gotten together and may have some updates to this uh but the latest that staff has been provided is this drawing again you can see as i mentioned that from the exterior the intent is it is for it to appear like a any other office building uh it's higher quality materials with this limestone veneer that you can see a sample of here would be all along this base you can see in the drawing and then above that would be

[1:42:47] this sort of stucco-like material and so there would be no exposed metal siding anything like that i'll also mention here the landscaping in the front and on the sides to help soften the appearance of the facility again just a slightly different view of that same front view of the property so this is beauregard right in the foreground and this is to the side on park street you'll see additional landscaping along that side as you go towards the neighborhood on park street as well as providing a sidewalk for safe pedestrian activity as you get closer to high speed traffic on beauregard let me go back a second you'll notice that there are gates so these will be accessible to customers but they will be gated at least during certain parts of the day and i'm sure the applicant can answer more questions about that i'm not going to read through all these it's in your background one second john yes billy john could you go back to the picture and show where the entrance would be where you would you know say a u-haul would roll up and and put stuff in their storage facility where would that entrance show the side picture yeah this right here you can see is the driveway uh entrance it may show better on this one but yeah so this would be the curb cut which i believe is existing uh but that would be the primary access onto the site from beauregard there into the storage building where you would actually unload where would you get those two doors to the loom yeah i think these three doors and again the applicant maybe can address that better but i believe those three doors would lead into hallways with storage units inside go to the side picture of the building that one so on if you if we're looking into it to your far right i believe there would be a gate to enter from the backside

[1:44:50] is that not right i'm going to defer to the okay i know the fire department required that they have emergency exits out the back of the building that's what i mean so that people could get out but i'd my understanding was those would not be generally accessible to the to the so that's for emergency only that's my understanding and all right um we believe that this with the design and the extra steps that they've taken to make it appear to be more like an office building we believe this is compatible with the neighborhood center and the neighborhood commercial zoning again i don't think we would have supported this had it been traditional self-storage but given the steps that they've gone through to make this more compatible with the surrounding neighborhood that is what led staff to support this project we did send out our notices to the surrounding property owners we received 25 in favor including five within the 200 feet notification area we received six in opposition including one within the notification area i should add here that there's been quite a bit of discussion these are the formal written responses that we've received per the state law in terms of opposition and and that sort of thing we only count those that we've received formal written opposition as i mentioned staff is recommending approval as proposed the planning commission did consider this and recommended approval by a four to one vote a couple of commissioners had to recuse themselves on this particular case here's a summary of the listed conditions for the plan development it would be have to be compliance with with all other neighborhood commercial standards other than those modified by the plan development has to be in accordance with the concept plan that you all would be approving they would have to submit a final site plan just as part of the normal development process

[1:46:53] no outdoor individual outdoor storage units they all have to be inside that one building remote control gate access for the fire department all lighting would be shielded so as not to negatively impact surrounding properties or residences and then there's a non-conforming billboard on the side uh and the recommendation was that that be removed at the end of its current lease and when is that lisa up you know that's unclear at this point i think it was talked about in the meeting um and i want to say it's somewhere 10 to 15 year range so it's not it's not real soon i think the idea was as part of this conditional approval you have the ability to make non-conforming things go away over time i think you would have some ability to make it go away prior to the end of the lease we thought that was the most appropriate thing to do was allow the current lease to expire but then have the sign go away at that point that's an overview of the summary again as a planned development you would be approving this with all these conditions including the concept plan which includes the drawings of the how the building looks i should add one more note this will have to go to the design and historic review commission and so they would have the ability to possibly place additional conditions however if there's any conflict between what you approve and what they approve if it's minor staff has the ability to adjust those things but if it's any substantive change or disagreement it would have to come back to you all for a final decision okay lucy has a question but also rob would you come forward because i think there's some um items that we are looking at that you have worked out with some of the property owners that were in opposition

[1:48:57] and i think are things that will make them more supportive have made them supportive of the design elements that you're going to suggest we make and then while you're doing that lucy do you have a comment john i just wanted to know how many storage units are we talking about i'm going to refer that to these guys good morning good morning my name is rob watkins i also wanted to introduce my youngest daughter amberley watkins she helped tremendously on the design she's an interior designer so she's going to stand up here with me as we try to answer questions for you so we'll take questions at this time it was how many storage units are you talking about at this point and let me make clear too um i own the two chick-fil-a's in town the freestanding units on knickerbocker and sherwood way and can we go back to the uh the front picture the one with the elevations that shows the proposed project please right there yeah so on the left side would be our chick-fil-a headquartered offices hr marketing be very low impact to the neighborhood and uh to the right the the self storage would be amberley's so amberly's wanting to uh make permanent residence here in san angelo and expand her business opportunity so to answer your question lucy i'm helping emily with the design on this uh her her step-grandfather has five of these in middle georgia and we have a best friend also building some in north austin so we we've got a lot of consulting that would be available to her but 116 units and are primarily going to be smaller in size the whole purpose is to minimize u-hauls and large trailers

[1:51:00] coming in and out of the property we've been told uh by tom ward is his name and he owns five of these and typically you see the self storage on four five six acres that one of this size once it's full you might get zero to two cars per day coming and going you know how i mean we have three storage units and we probably don't check on those two times per year and so we we live next door my wife and i am really lives a block over on washington street so we have uh been able to get this property under contract a few months ago and when you have a myriad of different uh you know ideas or proposals that you could seek for this you know very historic location we felt it very important to pick something that has incredibly low impact to the neighborhood we were there when it was a used car lot and on saturday mornings you know they're cranking out their rock and roll music and vacuuming out the cars and the dogs are barking so we know what it's like to have the other side of a business that that's not tranquil and and does have a lot of commotion so what other questions might we answer could you talk about for example instead of the rock wall the idea proposed by several residents that they would like to see that rock wall become a green hedge for example absolutely and uh i want to back up a minute and thank the the city of san angelo you know john james and and and hillary bucher and jeff fisher and many others that amber and i have worked with we start on this a long time ago trying to work with the city to get this right and incorporate a lot of these ideas are from the city and so also we have some opposition in the neighborhood it's it's very clear and and one thing we're willing to do is just work together so instead of the rock wall that you see in the front some of the residents would rather have

[1:53:02] a hedge wall they think it'll look more inviting you know as you drive into santa rita and those kinds of of suggestions we're wide open to [Music] another suggestion might be instead of so amberly's been doing all the renditions it was all rock on the columns because we thought that was what more people would favor then we heard no softening soften this up and make it look more like a neighborhood so it went to the wrapped cedar and now it may be going back to the rock but you know this still hard when you have 25 people designing it yeah this still has to go through dhrc so we feel like we can work all of those details out as we get to that point do i have questions for rob from council you want to thank y'all's efforts rob um y'all have gone through a lot and a lot of discussions with the citizens around and your willingness to incorporate the design changes that they are asking for with that it looks it looks great with these designs i will move to approve wait i won't need to see if anybody else on council has questions before we have a motion do we have any other questions for council then the next question i have is so if um you're obviously going to work with um citizens to address some of their issues before final approval um and i think there's an agreement that you will also work with richard round to sort of get his perspective on the design of it small changes warming it up so what i want to do is just make sure everyone's aware that what you see today is not what would this this project would look like in the final stages but the 90 of what you see today is as it is so we would be looking at landscape

[1:55:07] changing some of the landscape changes etc the one last question i have before i finished my dialogue here is where's the parking for the office building so we worked with the city of san angelo with the entire footprint to understand how many parking spots would be required which are nine so the nine parking spots are sufficient for for both both sides of the project the self storage as well as this is uh we won't even have chick-fil-a listed on this building our parent company is act as one uh it's a it's a corporation and so we don't want to put chick-fil-a up there because people might think you know i'd come in here and place a catering order i want a chicken strip yeah and so it's let's see number four please it's plastic number four it's going to be for some of our meetings and hr and marketing and things like this so we will not be taking up a lot of parking in fact i'll be walking to work so from next door so the parking that we see is for both your staff in that office as well as the users of the self storage that's correct and so just to ask again and verify so the only entrance for people to come in and deliver their things is through that entrance there they park there use those three doors which will be keypad to go inside is that correct or do they go through it most likely will be remote yeah because we're working with the dot to make sure that we're as safe as we possibly can be and that's probably the safer option as a remote the gates will be open monday through friday approximately 8 30 to 5. so the gates will be deactivated okay so john was saying that when you pull in that driveway which this sketch does not reflect that you would drive between those two buildings the office building and the storage building to go around back is that true oh you want that's right you can't you park in front that's it yeah we worked with a fire marshal

[1:57:08] there's just enough space in the back for the emergency exit doors as well as we we negotiated to leave the the tree line as you see it we gave up some space to do that create the green wall effect we have pictures i don't think it's necessary you know from the river that that depicts that you can't see this building you barely can see the top of the billboard and one further thing to state about the billboard we'd be willing to work with you the council to try to negotiate with lamar to take the sign down right away they've indicated that they might do that there's a minimal amount of revenue on that which amberley would be more than happy to give up as part of this deal so if any of you feel like you can assist in that process we can get that billboard down just as soon as lamar agrees to it that would be great all right so just to emphasize there's you cannot drive between those two buildings that you you drive in you park you walk in that's right okay and we're going to agree to work with continue to work with the citizens on a landscape plan and some minor architectural changes we will okay with that i will entertain any other questions from council before daniel i just want to say uh if you're going to work with those individuals you need to work with i know we have another reading or the next time out next city council meeting so it had to be within the next couple of weeks to make sure we have it on the agenda again for that second reading as well so it was the second reading we would approve of course the second vote but the changes so we have a two-week window to accomplish that is that possible so more changes emily not a lot enough to make everybody 90 percent happy absolutely okay with that lane you want to go ahead and state your motion uh mood to approve do we need to say move to approve with the changes

[1:59:10] i don't think they've really been clarified just um moved to approve the concept of making the changes that will be presented at the next meeting okay with that would be in the motion and there's a second in a second from tommy any public comment one last question rob could you bring back the chicken salad in a combo with the spicy deluxe good morning mayor council i'm steve eustis and i represent first financial trust department in the dots in the state in marketing as property that's under contract to rob uh when i first was analyzing this property as it's been pointed out and actually it's about 55 of this property is on that steep hill down to the river and my thought was who am i going to find that has a use for the upper area that's going to have an incentive to maintain that area sloping down because it's been a problem transients homeless people drug activity have been a constant problem there well no one better than the person right next door to take care of it so we're happy about who we're dealing with on the zoning it's now cn and just allowed by right is vehicle repair retail smart animal vet clinic restaurants food trucks so this opportunity due to a planned development for something that you can put a lot of control over i think is is really good um and i'm going to skip some of my comments they've already been made but i did want to say that i think this is a real appropriate place for a high quality climate indoor storage facility and i want to paraphrase something that was in the november december issue of the self

[2:01:13] storage news which is a trade publication of the texas salesforce association the trend in self-storage is to core urban areas where dwellers are turning to self-storage to manage the lifestyle of fewer belongings they are building in high-end residential areas are high-end commercial areas but are being required to build a better facility with better facades extra money is being required to be spent to make them attractive then i also want to say that some of the comments were about that these belong in industrial warehouse areas i want to point out that the code allows for these by ride in general commercial and by option conditional options in cn and co you'll also find these type of well you'll find many self storage facilities in the southland park area there's two facilities on meadow creek between college hills and southwest there's a new one southwest in twin mountain drive right across from lamar school all of these back up to residential areas but they're all the old traditional style outside door this is just a really new concept and storage in san angelo and there's not anything like it i think it'll be a real enhancement to the neighborhood and my time is up thanks steve any other further pup any further public comment good morning good morning my name is tommy roberts i'm with lamar outdoor advertising the billboard's been brought up a couple times and so i figured it'd be good for me to speak on it um the billboard is there currently to answer your question the lease on is currently 13 years but however we are

[2:03:16] open to removing that structure um i know we've had some con some conversations with john and it's close it's in close proximity to river corridor and so it is valuable to us i mean we do have advertisers that utilize it to direct people to the downtown area so it's not like we're giving up nothing uh it is a valuable structure for us and there's very it is a grandfather non-conforming structure so you would not be able to build new there however because of his grandfather's status that's why it's still there um it was built prior to the current sign ordinance going in uh but just wanted to say like i said um you know we're definitely open to working with the city on its removal and um and so i just wanna join to hear from us on that thank you very much i think that's an important statement thank you any further public comment with no further public comment we will take a vote all in favor say aye any opposed motion passes 7-0 we are now going to take a much-needed break i've been told so let's give ourselves 10 minutes and that means that we would be back here at 10 50. meeting back to order and that means we will be um discussing item e it is the first reading and public hearing of an ordinance approving case pd pd19-02 a request for approval of a rezoning from the general commercial heavy commercial zoning district to the planned development zoney district to allow for uses permitted within the general commercial heavy commercial cgch zoning district and an off-site sign with digital billboard face located at 34-10 knickerbocker road john thank you again john james director of planning and development services this is proposed for a planned development it's a little over an acre the sonic site is right there you can see car wash is adjacent and then a vacant property adjacent to the other side the

[2:05:18] plan the future language plan for this area is neighborhood center and you can see that it does back up to a neighborhood area and that's the primary reason it's neighborhood center it's currently zoned cgch general commercial heavy commercial based on the neighborhood center designation the cgch zoning is not considered appropriate for that area and so going to either cg or even more appropriate would be a neighborhood commercial zoning in that area and so that would be if you're inclined to approve this plan development staff would be supportive of going away from the cgch and going to either cg or cn uh partly to protect that surrounding uh neighborhood to the back there this is a little bit hard to read but there is an existing billboard at this location on the vacant property next to sonic that billboard is going to be removed and what as part of this plan development lamar is asking to move that billboard to this location on the sonic property the existing sonic stein would stay where it is this billboard sign would be located a little bit behind that existing sign this was the original plan for a digital billboard at that location in conversations with the surrounding property owners that were in opposition i think they've revised their request to go to a static billboard basically a non-digital billboard like the typical billboard you think of that's not doesn't have a display screen but it's just paper vinyl whatever they put on the face of it you can see here they'll also be angled slightly so that the signs will face traffic and that benefits the neighborhood back here in that any lotting or if it were digital those lights would be facing outward and would not be shining towards

[2:07:20] the rear of the property and towards the neighborhood you can see the existing sonic sign and the existing billboard sign again the new billboard sign would come up in somewhere in this area and as you could see on that i think the previous picture go the other direction it would be sort of a flag shaped instead of being centered on the post it would go off to the side a little bit a few pictures of the area probably pretty familiar with the uh corridor staff is recommending denial the primary reason we're recommending denial of this is the sign ordinance currently prohibits new billboards along that stretch of knickerbocker unless you're in industrial zoning we don't believe plan development is the appropriate tool to allow billboard if you all think billboards should be allowed on knickerbocker we believe that you should amend the sign ordinance to say that past councils have adopted an ordinance that says no new billboards on knickerbocker we want this to be a cleaner clutter-free corridor without new billboards and as existing billboards go away they aren't replaced so that's the existing sound ordnance we have in place we think using a planned development to get a billboard in a corridor where the council has previously said no new billboards is basically going around the intent of the sign ordinance and again the more appropriate remedy if that's your desire is to actually amend the sign ordinance to allow new billboards along knickerbocker as number two says we've consistently recommended against these you may recall a similar request just within the last year or so on south bryant a property owner had asked for a similar plan development that was almost exclusively to allow billboard there were really no other items within the plan development and you all denied that one as well and i've already addressed number three

[2:09:24] if you think that's appropriate an appropriate location for billboards we need to change the sign ordinance to say we did send out our notifications to the surrounding 200 properties within 200 feet we received one in favor and four in opposition as i understand it the applicant has spoken with some of those opponents and they've addressed some of their concerns particularly the going from a digital billboard to a static billboard in that location again staff is recommending denial we would be supportive of a planned development or even a straight rezoning to either general commercial or neighborhood commercial but the plan development that would additionally allow billboard is something that we've consistently recommended against the planning commission did take this up they did recommend approval it was a 4-3 vote a close vote on that one but they did recommend approval to the council as a quick overview i'd be happy to answer any questions my first question is so the first request was to move it from one location to another location that's right in any case this this billboard here will be going away the request is basically to allow them to move it or construct a new one in this new location so there would there would not be two billboards in any case they would again the proposal is to move the billboard from the current location to a new location literally just you know 50 feet away but our signed ordinance doesn't allow for another sign to go there that's correct this they're basically asking through a plan development to get around the requirements of the sign ordinance questions from council lane john are the heights of the old and the new the same at 35 feet i would defer to the applicant it appears that they're proposing a thirty 35 foot sign i don't know what that existing sign is

[2:11:26] that i'm sure they can answer that no go ahead sorry i know our existing ordinances says no new signs i know there's been some compromising that has been happening i would be okay with this being taking one down and moving it 50 feet is that what you said 50 feet away i'm just guessing it's just literally from from one property to the next property i don't know the exact distance away and keeping it a static billboard i know that was in high discussion but along with this whenever we get to it i would like to look at the neighborhood commercial zoning in the back to help protect that back area i strongly believe we shouldn't make any decisions that in effect require re-looking at our sign ordinance that sign ordinance has been is a consistent issue negative it creates so much drama and trauma every time the signed ordinance comes up so i believe any decision that we make must maintain honoring the sign ordinance that has already been approved and in place how long is that sign ordinance been in place john i'd have to look i don't know off the top of my head was back in the mid 80s the sign ordinance was back in the mid 80s they brought it back up in the night during sean lewis's and elizabeth greinstein's era here so it was renewed reviewed and redone in the 90s if not in i mean no i should say the 2000s not the 90s mayor if i could um i remember that because there was so much passion around that sign ordinance that um that came up and i was glad when they finally resolved it and got agreement and um the council voted on it

[2:13:32] i guess you know as we looked at one of those pictures that you had john it looks like there are an awful lot of signs on knickerbocker road why we would want to add another one that's going away i'm not real clear on and sonic has a sign and as i understand it this is either going to go on sonic's property or close to it they already have a sign so to me it just seems like overkill to have another sign even though i recognize it would be advertising other businesses and other opportunities i just um i don't know i i guess i'm i support what the mayor say that we need to stick with the sign ordinance because every time you make an additional exception you're gonna have to keep considering those exceptions and i think lane mentioned that we've done some compromises over i don't know what those are i obviously wasn't here but i just again hate to open up that can of worms with making an exception to an ordinance that has been on place and i think we've tried to uphold it as much as we could the first application was for a dynamic led billboard that would be scrolling advertising like just like the ones across from uh outback in o'reilly's so it would be like that they have changed it to just a static billboard where it would be just a number of businesses that have their own individual signs if you drive down sherwood way and even knickerbocker the eye catches so many signs it can be quite distractive for drivers and you can only read so much in three seconds or whatever whatever that second is that it takes you to drive by something

[2:15:33] i think we need to honor the sign ordinance it's there for a reason it was debated thoroughly when it was approved and i don't believe we make exceptions we stick to a sign ordinance as approved where i stand the um to answer that previous question that the sonors was adopted in 1996 the last major revision looks like it was 2003 a couple minor revisions since then but the last big discussion of it was appears to be 2003. and we made a decision as you mentioned before about not allowing one a planned development to be created to put up a sign on bryant boulevard some time ago about a year ago we were all on council then and so i'm stick with a game plan stick with a sign ordinance it's in place yes yes harry please well if it's 2003 since the last time that we that we revisit the sign ordinance that's 16 years ago i really think outside of this particular thing we really need to take another look today the business of signs and advertising is much much different than it was 16 years ago so whatever decision we make today i think we really need to go back and it'll take another look and i understand what billy said there's a lot of passion around signs people think that you know it clutters up but in the same token businesses that have businesses in in san angelo want to make sure that people know where they are so they're interested in marketing their own business and so i'd like to see us go back and at least take another look at that like again regardless of whatever decision we make today any further comment or questions for john all right um i will make a motion then that says now you're going to have to help me with the motion because this language gets pretty confusing let me

[2:17:36] ask this one question here if i can if denial of the sign proceeds how is that going to impact the overall zoning well you have a couple of options one you could just deny the request altogether and it would go back to the just the normal cgch zoning that's there today you could approve a plan development uh with cn or cg based zoning and strike the billboard provision or allow the billboard provision if that's your desire you could approve it as requested i believe you could re-zone the property to cg or cn straight zoning i think the only reason they're asking for the pd is for the billboard so if if you're inclined not to approve the billboard you have those other options if your goal is to rezone and deny billboard yes i'd like to hear from my two constituents on their preferences do i have anyone who would like to speak to this please come forward and state your name good morning good morning my name is linda wilson i'm a member of the parkview lakes homeowners association i'm in lane's district he has been very supportive of us in trying to figure out what to do with this we came before the planning commission and we were voted down i did not realize at that time that your sign ordinance prohibited any new signage so i'm very confused as to why the planning commission would approve putting another sign up when you had an ordinance that said don't put any new signs up it could have saved ms mertz and i a whole lot of sleepless nights if we had known this so we came to a position where mr roberts came to us from lamar sign after we were voted down and he made a compromise to

[2:19:39] us and i'd like to commend him and his company for trying to come to the homeowners association and at least try to work with us to get rid of the static uh get rid of the digital sign that we certainly did not want in our area the car wash that was put up at the corner of parkview in knickerbocker has been a really sore spot for all of us to the discussion at hand thank you so that is the reason we're asking for the zoning to be considered as well that's why i'm going to tie that in because we already have a problem in our homeowners uh property values and and really the the the neighborhood has suffered so that's the reason we objected to the digital sign being put up had we known that the sign ordinance was as strict as it was in san angelo we could have probably just said okay planning commission you have a sign ordinance you can't do this and we wouldn't be standing here today i'm reiterating but i would like to say that anything that you can do to keep our quality of life in our neighborhood i was someone said at the the meeting everybody wants to know what you have for a sign on knickerbocker and it's very valuable to lamar well everybody knows that if you're a real estate agent in san angelo you want to know are there any of those homes on those lakes for sale so we're trying to protect property values we appreciate all of the input that's come from lamar they've tried very hard to work with us again had we known that no new signs were supposed to be put up it would have been a different argument but they did try and they came back to us and said we'll make it a static sign we'll make it 35 feet high and that will be nice and the and the owner of the land mr moore who owns the sonic property was willing to work with us he told lamar that it was okay with him to put up a static sign but we also asked would you be willing to re-zone your property behind sonic to a neighborhood

[2:21:44] commercial neighborhood so that we would have a buffer zone and i think that's what mr jones and the planning commission staff wanted to do is sort of put a buffer between commercial and residential there are a lot of people who live in those apartments who work every day who can't come before you and speak they're at work so it came to us to say well we i think i want to go and speak for them as well the digital sign would have shined right down into their windows the uh traffic the the noise from the car wash it it affects them but they don't have the time to get off from work and come down here and talk to you so we're talking to you for the people who also live in the apartment complexes there as well not just the nice homes on the lakes but the people that are next door to also storage units and restaurants and car washes and their lives are impacted every day as well so what we would like to have is just our neighborhood back if you don't mind i don't think you'd want to sign or car wash in your backyard so please keep that in mind when you're voting and we appreciate your time thank you thank you any further public comment although we're doing this public comment prior to emotion on the floor so um but come forward good morning again good morning i'm tommy roberts uh 4282 trainer drive in abilene texas i represent lamar outdoor advertising um so i appreciate mrs wilson and her comments and so initially we went to uh planning and zoning as she mentioned we applied for this as a digital billboard to be relocated to mr moore's property as cgch um it did pass four to three after but with a lot of the comments public feedback i did meet with the wilson's that day after the meeting and said you know listen to their feedback on what they're most concerned about and they're concerned about the intensive use of the property and so we did meet with staff the next day and did change our application to digital

[2:23:46] um i mean i'm sorry we changed it from digital to static so basically what we're doing is just requesting that the existing structure that's 65 feet away that we're able to relocate it it does not result in a new net addition to billboards in the city it keeps everything the same i know that there has been some talk about one that was denied however on december 19 2016 planning staff recommended the use of changes to the future land use this is going to be vp 16-03 and pd 16-08 where the future land use would change from neighborhood to neighborhood center to allow for a billboard and development of a piece of property on loop 306 also with the pdp plan development was used to develop a lot to allow for billboard uh where under office commercial where billboard signage was not allowed so here's a case of a net addition to the billboards in san angelo that was outside of the sign ordinance where it was approved unanimously six to zero by the city council and so i know that attached to that was a plan for development of an office all that well that's property is owned by synad now where the structure sits and no development ever took place so it was only for the use of the billboard in that area and in that situation staff recommended neighborhood commercial for that was okay for a billboard to be in neighborhood commercial they moved it from neighborhood to neighborhood commercial and so in this instance i feel like there's two examples i understand that this is legislative and you guys are trying not to set precedence however we do have a case where one was denied that resulted in a net addition would have and one was approved that resulted in a net addition and that billboard was digital and so uh there is a great need to the community i know that we're on timeline but as an applicant i'm going to ask for a little bit of leniency on this um if you look at that structure we've had 29 different advertisers on that structure over the last three years all of them are local and so the way we use that billboard is in a group a pool of our billboards we have approximately 60 of these in the community i give you an example in abilene we have about 140. so in san angelo we have less than half

[2:25:50] of that our occupancy remains very high typically over 90 percent um and so that area of knickerbocker only has three billboards uh west of what would be the red arroya and so uh it's high demand like mr wilson said i mean real estate's all about location and that area is high demand for us where people are trying to reach consumers making consumer decisions and so if we lose this it weakens our entire pool or the way we sell it it's not just one advertiser that stays up there for a long time is a group or pool of advertisers you'll need to wrap up your comments please and so in closing uh what i would just ask is that you keep in mind that the billboard is not changing we're just moving over 65 feet per year permission uh and that we would keep it static and that it's it's really a high demand location for our business community a lot of what y'all talked about here today we're intertwined with a lot of those things you know and and the other thing i'll say is when the sign wars was was written 25 years ago 16 years ago a lot has changed and so we're the only media or traditional media left that has a growing audience everything else is under attack by digital and so our audience continues to grow you need to wrap it up please thank you so much for your comments i asked you for approval thank you do i have further comments from the audience my name is susan mertz i'm a resident sorry there she goes okay it's a scare tactic anyway ah i would uh i am in support of what the city planning department has recommended uh i understand the need for business my family is in business here so i am absolutely pro-business but i am also a quality of life person uh i have worked in planning myself for

[2:27:54] 10 years i hold a master's degree in urban and regional planning from the university of southern california and i've also worked as a volunteer in san angelo helping to establish tax increment financing districts the historic preservation commission overly and also i wrote the rudat plan so for me what happens in the future is what is important and i think that the signed ordinance is great the way that it stands and i understand that advertising has changed but i also understand that with these changes in technology you also have issues that come with it for example as mrs wilson pointed out the residents that live in the apartments who cannot be here are already listening to the noises from a car wash now do we need to subject them to digital light noise i will be able to see that sign and i understand that we're now doing it static but i would ask that we uphold what is written in the sign ordinance and that you also keep the zoning intact as it now stands thank you so very much for my comments and once again i am looking for the future and the quality of life issues that are often left by the side when business decisions are made thank you one question john the zoning as it stands it's right now heavy commercial yes it's cgch so general commercial heavy commercial um and so get given the comments and i think our recommendation would still be to go to at least cg general commercial um and as you recommended earlier based on some of the discussions with the neighbors you could go cg at the front where the sonic is and the vacant piece behind

[2:29:56] could go neighborhood commercial is that what you were referring to as stance not keep it how is it how it is with heavy but change it to neighborhood commercial okay just to clarify all right so uh we do not have emotion on the floor so with that i'll make them does anyone want to make a motion or i'll make a motion terry you want to come forward sorry did not realize we still have public comment just as an advertiser i do advertise on the boards the way it works with my advertising is it floats around everywhere different places i know billy said she'd been seeing mine on arden road recently and anyway what we want to do knickerbocker is one of the has more traffic going down there more eyes that see those signs this would be taken away a lot of advertising for different companies i think first financial the last time i was over there was one of the advertisers right across the street so it does have a lot of um eyes on it if it is going to be static and not the digital then would just be moving it over to another spot same sign same everything so i would appreciate you voting for it thank you john when we make a decision to when when we say in the sign ordinance there will be no new signs is moving assigned from point a to point b no new signs yeah the the way the ordinances works is uh in order to put up a new sign whether it's moving it or it's a you know brand new uh you have to get a signed permit and then we cannot issue a signed permit that isn't in a location authorized by the sign ordinance or through something like a planned development so as far as the sign ordinance is concerned the the moving of the sign is a new sign mary about me

[2:31:57] uh john correct me if i'm wrong here but i know from studies uh when we start to look at the aesthetic of appeal of a quarter such as this one a billboard really takes away from from a view it it becomes detrimental to an area i do understand as far as advertising there's different means of advertisement let's not forget that but when we look at that when the ordinance was looked at and changed back in back in the 90s even now though uh you know as far as urban uh design and you start looking at uh how areas should develop uh the the constant there is that billboards do need to go away so that hasn't changed from all the studies that i've read that hasn't changed we do want investment in those areas in in this quarter specifically we do have an ordinance in place and i do agree with you mayor i think that we have ordinances in place we shouldn't find for ways to get around those ordinances and it's something that we i highly recommend that we uphold the way it's written at this point so again the way that i look at it is from the overall aesthetic appeal of it and future investment in this area any further public comment before mo terry so on planning commission we have uh variances that come forward nearly well not monthly but several times a year that are variances on the sign ordinance we listen to those we make we make recommendations we do all that i do not think they come to city council after that we had one yesterday so we're there are new signs going in there are new signs in different places just for that clarification thank you linda you get three minutes i get three

[2:33:59] they're gonna buzz me like you did yeah susan but buzzed um i i'm going to say this and i hope i don't offend but if i do uh should not anyone who is advertising on these signs be voting on whether or not we have them or not i'm just going to ask that question i think it's a conflict teresa is there any conflict of interest well this lady just said she advertised on them and she sits on the planning commission my question is should someone who has a vested interest in this not recused when we were at the planning commission and we were discussing this to begin with several members of the planning commission recused themselves uh on the um proposed storage units i believe it was and i thought that was very nice and and very above board that people would do that that speaks very highly of their integrity so that's my question thank you thank you linda theresa did you want to make a comment yes conflict of interest generally deals with somebody having a financial interest in a project not necessarily just a use interest so just the fact that somebody uses a facility does not necessarily disqualify them from having a discussion about it hold on one second teresa finish your comment and then then i'll listen to terry and then linda you can come back up with that comment go ahead teresa i think my comment was done that i mean unless she had a direct interest in that particular sign not that that sign might bring future you know financial benefit to her that it would not be a conflict under the law she really wouldn't be affected any differently than if i had used that sign or any other citizen so that's really what we look for different interests from what anybody else might have okay thank you terry so starters i believe that is a billboard mine are smaller signs so i do not i've never advertised there i have no conflict of interest there the two people that she's referring to on the other side for the one that we previously heard one of those was works at the bank that first financial

[2:36:01] is the trustee of and the other one had an interest in purchasing the property so they really need to recuse themselves on mine i do not feel that i was in any way shape or form going against what the rules are thank you thank you linda did you want to make another comment you wouldn't advertise if you didn't expect you were going to get a financial benefit out of it that's the whole purpose of advertising so if you are advertising you are expecting to benefit financially so yes that is a conflict of interest under the law that i studied at the university of alabama thank you thank you for the public comment see this is the same debate every time the sign ordinance comes up it never ends so what we need to do is figure out how to live within the current signage ordinance i'm duke wilson i live in the area i was driving this way and on southwestern's sign that's a it's a digital sign there's spaces that aren't filled they got advertisements asking for advertisements so you got spaces left thank you duke i'm going to take a deep breath and see if there's any further comment yes please good morning my name is david bryant i'm representing the sonic drive-in that's in question here um y'all certainly have a a challenging decision to make on this i would just like to state to you on behalf of keith moore who's the local franchisee and has operated sonics here in town for

[2:38:04] about 40 years that san angelo has been an absolutely great city for us to live and work in and we anticipate remaining here for a long time yet to come that particular sonic is a very successful and very highly decorated sonic within the sonic chain too so i'm very proud to report that to you as well some of you may be uh familiar with the layout of the property where the sonic is actually uh close to knickerbocker road and then extends quite a ways back to sweetwire back behind roughly half of the property is developed and half of it is not the back half close to sweet briar we've had 24 years now to develop that property you can see we've done nothing with it and i can also tell you that we have no plans uh to do with that movement so changing the zoning for the property behind you would not bother you you know the the owner's preference is to be a general commercial and nothing lower than that because he wants to retain his property's value as well so i'm sure everybody understands that so i just wanted to put that out there for you to factor into your consideration i just uh thank you for your time this morning thank you i would just like to stay please please restate your name again no problem uh tommy roberts with lamar um i mean we saw in the previous case where staff has compelled a landowner to remove a billboard that lamar outdoor operates and that to me is a significant departure from typical protocol we don't normally see that in our business for cities to get in the business of what we do with our leaseholders and in an effort to work with the city i'm open to removing that structure and what i ask of you and this is not a quick pro quo but i am seeking help on this case and it's a structure that is

[2:40:09] only 60 of the liable size by that zoning for a general commercial we can build up to 300 square feet it's only a 200 square foot structure um it's a one that's existing so it doesn't it's not going to impact the overall corridor because it's already existing we're just going to like i said we're trying to move it over this opportunity for the city to lower the zoning from heavy commercial to just general commercial which in the future land use it's been stated that all cgch the city wants to see go away so without this change agent how would that we ever arrive at that it would always stay heavy commercial so the neighborhood gets a win because we go to a lower intense use where higher intense uses heavy commercial cannot be allowed there so the landowner's compromising lamar's compromising the neighborhood is compromised and so it's a win-win-win i i feel like all the way around so i'm asking for your help on this one little sign we've definitely lost other signs where they've been blown down and have not come to you for help and even the staff is trying to recommend we remove billboards and so i just ask in this instance that you give me a hand maintain my help me to maintain my business continue to help san angelo grow i appreciate your vote thank you thank you tommy i'm waiting for more public comment have we all expressed ourselves today no one else is going to speak then we need to make a mo yes lane did you have a question or comment both no question i think the comment that i have though is i think we need to interpret what the law is meaning on new signage whether it be new as in a new location just because it has the word new in it or net change is what i'm hearing whatever the outcome is here i want to protect the backside so no matter if i need to make the motion to make sure that is neighborhood commercial and keep the front cg then i'm fine with that if the compromise is to to make sure that

[2:42:11] happens is to keep the sign static on sonic's property then that's the route that i will go but that's why i wanted to hear from my constituents first is if it came down to the vote whatever to protect protect the backside of the neighborhood is how i was going to go so i'll make the motion since there has been some compromising going to allow for the sign static in the new location since there is no net change and to keep the zoning sorry not to keep the zoning but to change the zoning in the back portion to neighborhood commercial with the front general commercial does that satisfy linda susan let's just wait a minute that is the motion let's see if there's a second and then we'll open it back up for public comment we have a motion on the floor do i have a second how do we draw the line of what's allowable between the front and the back john you want to come forward because it several things we have to do here one is the interpretation of the signed ordinance which i asked about earlier whether it sounds like moving a sign that's up to a new location is truly a new sign and then so that's one issue is the signage issue the other is the zoning issue so we have in essence although this reads as one motion i'm not so sure that we don't want to split it into two separate motions and make sure that we better understand what it is we're doing here i'll take the second question first i think the as i would view it the line would be uh basically at the back edge of the developed part of the sonic property so

[2:44:13] that all of the existing developed sonic would remain cg and then the undeveloped part in the back would become the cn if i understand your intent um and what happens to the property to the west of that that big open area that would as is that spot zoning then it is it is not i think the future land use plan for this entire area would suggest that cn zoning is the most appropriate but these things happen one case at a time often and so even though especially based on the discussion it would most likely be more appropriate for that to be cn that's really not before you today but zoning one piece today doesn't wouldn't result in an illegal spot zoning as far as the other question and maybe that was just my use of terminology as of a new sign the signed ordinance is clear on um on this issue that installing a sign whether it's new or moving is a sign that requires a permit and that has to be authorized in the location that it's going in so i i don't think there's any lack of clarity in the sign ordinance itself perhaps just in the way i explained it was where the confusion was and billy you wanted some comment or question john if you have two different zoning designations on one property does it have to be replated it does not we we often don't like to see a property with what we call split zoning part of the property one zoning part of it another but there's no there's no reason that can't be the case we've got tons of it around the city and in cases like this is where we sometimes see it as being appropriate where you want the development that's right on knickerbocker to have a wider range of possible uses but then as you get to this you know this back side where

[2:46:15] you've got homes back here you might want to transition it back to a lesser zoning district so that i wouldn't consider that inappropriate in this area so um what mr bryant said if we do that would that not impact his um the owners lowering his value for the property because as i understood him to say the owner of the property does not want to lose their value well neighborhood commercial by design doesn't allow the wider range of uses that general commercial does part of the reason for that is neighborhood commercial is intended to protect nearby residential so some of the more obnoxious uses i don't mean that in such a negative way but uses that are more negative near neighborhoods are not allowed some auto repair kinds of uses and that sort of thing wouldn't be allowed in cn so in that respect it would limit the range of possible uses on the property but again changing the zoning tell me what could be built there pretty much any retail i mean the sonic would be allowed in in neighborhood commercial any retail the things that are added in general commercial would include things that like certain auto repair type uses things that include more activity outdoors rather than all being indoors that's kind of the primary differences between cg and cn like a car wash couldn't go in you know i would have to i would have to look at that if if that's the direction you want to go something like councilman carter is suggesting on second reading we can bring back to you more information on the difference between cg and cn we could go back and look exactly where that boundary would be so that when you vote on it on second reading you would know a little more about it and obviously on second reading

[2:48:17] you could you could change your mind if if the new information made you uh rethink it so is it possible can we split these between a vote on the um zoning and a vote on the sign or since you've presented them both together do we have to do it all as one i think you could vote on each individual issue separately and then once you've got that consensus on each of those two issues you would then take an overall vote on the entire case as those previous two votes had indicated if that makes sense and i would suggest if you're going to go that direction vote on the billboard first because whether or not you want to approve the billboard would make a difference in whether or not you go with a plan development or just straight zoning when it comes to the actual zoning of the property yes yes harry i gotta ask this question lane's proposing that we split this particular property uh as a transition but the property east of that is is cg is that correct i'd have to look it's either cg or cgch it's it's on this next slide uh yeah everything all of this color is cgch so so i don't know that we can it's going to make a difference in transition to the residential neighborhood to do that back portion of that particular property unless we take it in that whole section the reason i ask about that property next to it because that's why i asked if it was spot zoning because you got one little property in the mix of that that would be different i i i don't i don't want to i don't want to make that particular change today unless we're going to change all of those properties along there and make it a transition uh you know i think that's what we do we typically try to do in a lot of neighborhoods is make that transition from commercial to residential and and i won't have a problem doing that but i

[2:50:20] don't know that voting today on that one small piece of property does what we wanted to do uh so i'm not willing to do that today yes i have a question john um the intent is not to get into some whole different subject matter but i don't know how else to ask the question do we have an issue with consistency just listening to what mr roberts said we had a case when some of us were not here back in 16 that sounded as if the planning department recommended approval is can are we are we is something clouding my my mind here with the issue of consistency on part of the recommendations that are i think that's the issue tommy whether we we live by the ordinance that we don't or well but it sounded like they made a recommendation to appreciate we did and i i can explain the difference in that situation in the sign ordinance loop 306 is one of those areas where signs new signs are allowed in cg zoning the difference there was there was a property surrounded by cg zoning on loop 306 so had it been rezoned to cg a billboard would have been allowed however there were some homes immediately behind it so in order to not open it up to all the cg uses rather than rezone it to cg we recommended a plan development that would keep it as an office zone but then allow the billboard and so i think again the difference there is it was on one of the listed corridors where new billboards are generally allowed but it was a way to protect the uses from that adjacent apartment complex the difference in this case is that they're not allowed in the knickerbocker corridor correct okay thank you thank you i know i'm thoroughly confused cjch neighborhood pd whatever yeah come still comes down to the signed

[2:52:22] ordinance as said so with that we are going to split the motion we will have one motion for the zoning or or possible postponement of zoning and we're going to have one ordinance relative to the sign i mean one motion relative to the sign ordinance is that correct relative to the sign not the sign ordinance but the sign yes the sign and again i would take the sign just uh vote first because that may play into which options are then available uh on the zoning yeah yes billy um you know i think harry made a very good point about and you did too around those the other properties around there so i just wonder you mentioned the word postponement could we postpone making a decision on the zoning and just vote on the sign this morning can we do that correct if we decide to change the zoning on the other the west portion of that are we running into the same situation that we did when we started rezoning around the mall without the without other applicants consent if they didn't come to us and ask for it but well he's making that decision well that's the reason we don't want to make it that's why we're asking to postpone the decision on zoning today incorporate the other and they don't if the property owner does not come to us and request that then we're encroaching on their zoning if this one's already in the works and we have the opportunity to do it now that's correct if if you wanted to look at rezoning a larger area we would have to start a brand new zoning case going back to the beginning notifying all the property owners going to planning commission and then coming back to you um

[2:54:23] either way it would have the more of an opportunity there to fail if my constituents are asking for this portion to at least to be it's just a very small part of it and the only thing up right now for your constituents would be the very small piece of property behind the sonic not the entire property correct and so the question mark is to go ahead and postpone that decision to change the zoning so that we could open up the larger conversation on changing the zoning on the properties to the east i guess that's east of that of the sonic is that correct the east of the sonic is the uh the west west piece of property is and so the issue is again whether we just vote on a very small part of it or open up the conversation for a larger conversation about changing the back half of that property another option you could consider is going if if you know what you want to do you could you could vote on this particular property today since it's before you and then ask staff to come back with some of the surrounding properties as a separate case or as you mentioned you could um i suppose table this i think the applicant would like and answer on the the bigger question the design because that's really the impetus for this i think um that then you have the opportunity to put the sign in and then opportunity to come back later and deny moving down to a cn and keep it a cgch you have that risk of that failing and you still have heavy commercial and a sign right i mean i think if it sounds like the concern is is the ch

[2:56:26] portion of this at the very least today you could vote to rezone it cg and then come and have a discussion later about cn on the back side that's my main concern from ch to just cg i know that the compromise really entailed okay changing the sign to a static sign but can we get a c in in the back so if we get a sign and we come back later and it fails and it stays cgch then it's a lose-lose for them all right what do we have as a motion on the floor because we don't have a second on whatever motion was made and so someone repeat the motion on the floor which did not get a second and it was one motion that incorporated both i believe i made the motion to accept the signs static on the property of the sonic and changing the back portion of the sonic to a neighborhood center with no second that motion will not go forward you want to go ahead that would allow the sign i would allow the sun and change it to the neighborhood center in the back that is the compromise that the citizens came up with with the lamar to get rid of heavy commercial all second lanes motion there's a motion in a second is there public comment if you citizens if that's not what you wanted now's your chance to come forward and and speak we do have still have a second reading so let's try to get a compromise done today that's what we would like to have happen our main concern when we found out about the sign was further encroachment we would prefer

[2:58:29] that somebody that tries to work with the city and tries to work with the neighborhood at least get something and lamar has tried and i understand the sign ordinance i come from an area where we had to revamp an entire roadway to smaller signs so i understand that but these people have tried to work in good accord with us and i think as in a good faith measure as a homeowner in that area i appreciate that but i also fear for that piece of property coming back and becoming another car wash type situation that hit us square between the eyes without us knowing that it was going to happen so what we're trying to do is look to the future let's protect those apartment dwellers that are right there that if something else is built it's going to be right in their backyard it's a little bit further from me but it still impacts me because of noise and traffic and and anything that you put in there is going to have some traffic and some noise but let's try to keep it to something that everybody can live with we can live with a neighborhood commercial that would be good and let them have their sign same size a little bit different place but static that's a compromise it's not the best thing for us we'd prefer not to have a sign that would be great there's enough signs on knickerbocker you can't swing a cat not hit one so let's try to give everybody something and make everybody happy and then we can all go home today and say government worked thank you mayor can i answer that teresa i guess my preference would be that if you do want to allow the sign that you do go and modify this provision because it does clearly say that off-site signs in cg and cgch districts are allowed in designated areas adjacent to the following thoroughfares and then it lists a through h north bryant boulevard north chadburn pulliam south chadburn loop 306 from sherwood east of the city limit south bryant boulevard sherwood way from claire and then arden road from sherwood way so

[3:00:31] you will in essence be modifying this provision of this ordinance just through this particular action and it leaves staff and myself and dan who works with planning often unclear on how we're supposed to interpret this at that point so there is ability to get compromise here i just would not want to see you shortchange the process by doing that in a way that leaves uncertainty in what this provision actually means anymore so what are you saying that if we approve the sign ordin the sign change that in essence we're opening up knickerbocker road to further variances from the signing sign ordinance is that what you're saying i would say so at least using this mechanism that's attempting to be used today to do so i agree i was asking about the terminology of new or net change it says allowed and as john said to be allowed you have to get a permit if this is a change that requires a permit then they have to deny the permit under this provision if it's not in any of these areas that's the portion that needs to be looked at in the sign ordinances is it new or is it net change that change of one is new zero could be interpreted it doesn't say the words new or net change or any of that in here it says are allowed signs are allowed or not allowed so it doesn't address it's silent completely on whether or not you're taking down one signing putting up a new one all of those things the trigger here as john explained is whether there's a permit required to do what they want to do there is a permit that will be required just one second um i just want to ask teresa a question about that so all of those corridors that you read off those are where billboard signs can be placed is that what you're saying yes off-site signs which is so we have plenty of areas in san angelo where billboards can be placed yes ma'am they don't have to be on knickerbocker they do not thank you please again tommy roberts with amar i just want to make one comment i mean when i understand uh teresa's comment

[3:02:34] but whenever a planned development was used in 2016 to approve for a billboard inside of office commercial the sign awareness does not allow for billboards to be placed inside of office commercial i don't think we've had any confusion or other sign operators trying to come in and place billboards inside office commercial and so that potentially could have opened up the side ordinance to allow for billboards throughout the city but but that hasn't happened and that's not the spirit of it i mean that's why we're asking for a variance here we're not asking for a change to sign awareness this is one case it's a case-by-case basis and i don't feel like i mean i'm not an attorney and i'm you know but i do feel like based on past cases it didn't open anything up in the past and i don't feel like by approving this it will open it up for billboards to just proliferate uh on knickerbocker and so um again i would just ask for approval on that and to your question i mean there is there are corridors for billboards to be allowed in san angelo um there are there are other places however i mean again that's just why i'm here today uh because i want you know it's a valuable asset to lamar it's a valuable asset valuable asset to the business community it's one of three on knickerbocker in this area and we would just like to maintain it if we can thank you thank you okay candy were you going to come forward and speak uh oh [Laughter] vice president san angelo association of realtors marin council my concern is not about the sign my concern is about the zoning my concern is and i don't know if sonic has he did say they would like to retain the zoning that they have even though for 24 years they've done nothing with the back portion it is my understanding that if we change the back portion of what they have today in their zoning what they've had what

[3:04:38] they've always had it's called down zoning and i don't know if sonic cares if they don't care maybe that's not an issue but i do think that we need to be careful when we think about putting something commercial lower than it is it will cause a difference in the value and it could cause difference in how sonic can use that piece of property i understand very much about the residential protecting it there's apartments there but i do think that we need to be careful about making a change that would down zone that one piece i'm only talking about the sonic piece i'm not talking about anything else that was all i had mayor thank you we are still open for conversation comments now what we have on the floor and someone's going to have to repeat it again what is the motion on the floor allow the sign change to see in there's a second there's public comment uh we'll take a vote um i'll all in favor of the motion say i'm ah and vote on that one two three opposed four motion denied now can we go back and make a motion that is singularly about the sign versus the zoning are we taking the zoning today too yeah i think you could make a motion to either allow or disallow the sign on this property then you could follow that up with addressing the zoning separately why would we do that when we've already

[3:06:42] voted john i'm i guess i'm getting more confused by the minute why would we have that c-h-h-c-o-p-o-d four ways we can vote on the motion was to approve something that did that failed so another motion to do something different would still be on the table there's four ways that i see we can vote on it deny the sign keep it cgch accept the sign keep it cgch deny the sign move it to this neighborhood commercial deny the sign keep its cgch that's a problem right now i think that's trying to marry too many things one item yeah right and that's why i think it would be appropriate to vote yay or nay on the sign and after that's decided then disc then take a vote on the zoning or we could take a vote on the signing and postpone the zoning we could uphold the vote we just took yeah right all of those things are out there you still have the threat and i'm i'm looking out for the constituents of that support that point your you have the threat of the cgch to be maintained which i guess that can come down to another vote what i think we need to vote on whether we need to vote we already voted if you don't vote everything stays the way it is currently so right now with the vote taken it is as is it would if there's no other motions it would effectively be a denial of the request okay no i'm not i think we already voted i'm done with it but you know for that neighborhood the constituents and i certainly appreciate what they're saying but if we just protect the back of sonic

[3:08:46] aren't there homes and residences all down that's along that way so we would just be protecting that billy that was my point you're only doing this and you got this so that's why i'm saying seems like we just kind of need to go back to the drawing board for that and leave the motion what we've already voted on as is and um then we'd have a second reading or not oh i understand okay if it fails then what would come back to us would be the zoning deliberation right if that's your direction to direct staff to initiate a brand new zoning case for a larger area we could do that but it nothing would come back to you unless you give us that direction and that's the same thing we ran into with the mall isn't that right candy well we didn't have a sign ordinance attached to it when we talked about sunset mall it was simply a zoning issue and here we have two very specifically different issues one is a signage issue that's attached to a zoning issue sunset maul was simply a zoning issue but if we same instance on this if we come back later it would be one of those yes sonic has already requested it but this neighboring property has not we went and looked at rezoning the mall in the surrounding areas without the consent of property owners yes that's what we would be doing there we'll absolutely be doing that yeah but can we touch base with the property owner i mean yes i and all the surrounding properties would get notifications and you have the authority under our ordinance and state law to initiate zoning on a property not at the request of an applicant so you clearly have the ability to do that the question is if do you is that i think what lane is suggesting is do you really want to bite off that and take that up well i think we can

[3:10:49] open the door to it and the public can tell us yes or no and we can listen to people but to to the issue of trying to diminish the issue on sunset mall as it is here as a separate zoning issue is do you reduce property value of the commercial property by changing the zoning or downgrading the zoning so that's one issue the second issue is by changing the zoning do you protect the neighborhood and by protecting the neighborhood you ensure that further heavy commercial cannot exist on that street and and and we're separating that conversation from the conversation of the sign ordinance which is not part of what we had any conversation on as it related to sunset mall it was it was lowering the zoning downgrading the zoning on sunset mall so um i are there further questions or comments i've spoken enough well we've denied it of some sort we actually as john mentioned while ago we don't need it in motion we can leave it the way it is at this point and if council directs us to move forward and take a look at maybe changing the zoning in the future of the future land use uh then staff can do that but if we don't take another vote it stays the way it is at this point it can come back and it can come back one as an as a request for a signage variance as one issue and it can come back as a request for rezoning as well but let me ask you a question at this point the existing sign and this if lamar could answer this one for me because one of the issues for lamar and tommy was the request to move the existing billboard to a new location but with this vote you could still maintain the existing billboard that's there correct

[3:12:52] we're scheduled to disband on that structure tomorrow and why is that i mean why did you come to that decision if you knew that this was part of the sign ordinance because i would think as a business owner you would protect yourself before you did this well it's it's a gamble um but i'll tell you our landowner there is usaa out of san antonio so it's very corporate and it's a year to year lease uh i think they have some intent to uh place something on their property that's not a billboard and so uh we're vacating that property and so um i don't know exactly what that is i think some indication might be a cell tower uh so um i'm not 100 sure about that but uh that's that's that's we've been asked to re vacate and so that that's what we're doing okay did everybody here but and like i said i don't know that for sure and i'm sorry i don't know what that is but i do want to make one comment to answer lane's question from earlier the way the permit way the application stands now is that we revised it from cgch down to cg and so if there is a vote taken on the sign you are effectively lowering the intensity of the use for that property because that's attached to it so i know there is some discussion about neighborhood commercial on the back however if you do take a vote on just moving the sign i mean automatically and john can maybe expect to speak to this teresa because the perm because the application is for general commercial to lower the intensity i know that would probably go along with the use of the approval and so at least we would get the usage of the property down from we would move heavy commercial with the approval of the sign being moved regardless i think linda please come forward you have another comment what about the property values of the people that live on parkview lakes we're talking about the value of the property of mr moore who owns sonic which is a

[3:14:54] viable question when he bought that he knew that he had to look at the market is it going to be a good property is it going to be a bad property nobody knows maybe nobody will ever want to put anything on that property that's a big if i live in my property so does ms mertz there's no if about our property value my property value was devalued almost twenty thousand dollars when that car wash was put up because of the noise that comes down the street you have to weigh the property value for the commercial and the property value of the homeowner none of the other is more important probably in your view than the other but it's personal to us it's our homes and when i heard cell tower just then i wanted to vomit it's bad enough i've got a car wash and now i'm trying to to keep something else like a dog hospital from being put across the street from the apartment complex and i do have a list of the things that can be put there and i'm sure you can pull it up on your computer none of them would be something you'd want in your neighborhood we rode around the other day and found a veterinary hospital next door to a house i thought how did that get done oh gee let's don't let that happen to us we're not saying we're opposed to commercialism we're not saying we're opposed to people who own property owned knickerbocker getting the best out of it of course we all want that that keeps that san angelo valid and viable and it's growing and that's great but people got to live somewhere people have got to live somewhere and we have chosen to live there and we were there before sonic we were there before julio's we were there before god forbid the cell tower and we're going to be there for a long time and we pay a lot for property taxes thank you i think our our point on that vote is to not if you will call spot zoning that if we're going to change the zoning on one little piece wouldn't it be in the best interest of the

[3:16:57] neighborhood to look at that whole area and that's really what we're talking about is is the fact that you do one small part of what is you know one large street that's zoned all the same so our intent is to re-look at the larger scale of that versus the smaller scale and come to a conclusion on that and that's really the conversation instead of a small percentage of the total property on sweet briar circle okay steve come on up steve hampton sorry to add to your the pile but it seems to me that you you've got a uh an orton the government's in the way uh the ordinance is flawed and uh and and then uh your spot zoning uh a situation and everybody other people are in agreement on what might be a solution and and yet the government is in the way so we're trying to get out of the way i know you're trying to get out of the way with uh but procrasti but planning or postponing it uh might be the solution uh and then changing your ordinance well i would like to point out mayor if i may that on this um cgch district this is one of those districts you can't request a property to be zoned to the whole intent of that was to kind i always think of it as a wait and see ordinance see what happens around these areas and then the city council is given the authority within the ordinance through a comp plan change to decide what those properties are going to be so your thought that looking at directing staff to look at what that should actually be and doing a whole rezoning of that area seems like it's appropriate and would be a good step to move forward on at this point and is what the ordinance actually intended well that's what i think i want to make sure we do is instead of taking this piece we look

[3:18:59] at this piece and approach it from a larger scale perspective and not singularly putting a piece of property i think that's what's happening the whole of what exists there so that's really what i think this vote was somewhat about i think that's what staff did right that's what snapped it on a very small parcel my part it says it's intended that areas within cgch zoning districts will be changed to other zoning districts based on comprehensive land use plans adopted by city council so to me that doesn't speak to individual parcel by parcel property by property changes but that as a general rule it will be looked at as a whole and that's what i think we wanted to do today you'd have to look at the future land use and amend it if necessary to make it what we feel it should be in that area specifically to protect all those homeowners or people that live in that area that's the the actually the broader way actually of doing it though but but we've talked about it i'll just say this very quickly because it's brought up about the south cell tower that area and i just want to be mindful that if a cell tower would go up and i'd have to look at it even if it's allowed there if a cell tower did go up then you'd have a cell tower and a billboard right next to each other so uh that's a concern for me as well okay so my teresa julia help me with this so we've voted against the item e can i make two motions is that what we're looking for two different ones maybe i love that laura your answer um okay

[3:21:01] i will move first motion i will move to accept the sign second motion i will move one can we make two at once or do one at a time go ahead and take a vote on that motion right after wait a second to accept the sign is it to accept the sign and direct staff to amend the ordinance i'm gonna make one right after i'm just gonna make it second one is going to be to change to neighborhood commercial first one accept the sign i move to accept the sign that's the same thing as what the other motion is we you just split it apart that's what but that's what i would move to approve is the same compromise but that allows people to split out their votes from those four different areas if they don't like accept the sign change to cn but they liked it where it was accept the sign or keep it general commercial or deny the sign keep it general commercial you just try to split out and vote on the sign steve did you want to make a comment you ought to be on this side so instead of two different ways you can do it it's four you know i don't have an opinion i don't have a dog in this fight at all but i will say that if if we do try to rezone a large area without the property owner's desire to do that we're getting on a slippery slope that's what we don't want to do and that was our point was that okay i'm just saying if you try to force a zoning on people that are not here that are not wanting to rezone their property i brought up the mall you're is a small part of a bigger part and so

[3:23:08] you're not helping the neighborhood by only attacking a very small part of what is a very large zoning issue and so the issue is it might make the homeowners feel better that we change the small sonic land to a different zoning but there's still a lot of zoning that remains the same that would allow for heavy commercials and so the approach was to not change the zoning on a small part that won't change what's done next to it and i don't have any problem if the property owner wants to do that small pcn i'm just saying it's it's it's dangerous to start including other properties that are not in this battle at all that's a small part that doesn't eliminate the development right next to it because what could happen next to that sonic property even though we changed the zoning somebody big can come in and do heavy commercial next to the sonic land and so you don't solve the neighborhood concern you just solve a small part of the neighborhood concern and i think the approach of council is let's solve the larger problem to help the neighborhood out instead of a small strip of property which still allows for the problem to develop next to it that's all i'm just going with the call he said i'm just going with the compromise that was speaking was that on me or delaney i think that's on the whole county yeah it's worn out yeah does that mean i can go home so what was your motion lane first one was to accept the sign second one is to change to neighborhood commercial so i can support the first one i can second moving the sign now second wait a minute we have one motion at a time we can't have multiple motions on the floor at the time

[3:25:10] so we can have one motion and that motion right now based off of what i think harry said is that we're going to take a vote on allowing the sign to be moved from its current location which is planned for demolishing tomorrow to the sonic location static sign and it would be a static sign not a electric sign or digital sign so this motion on the floor is for a change of location of an existing sign correct correct and is there a second also they made the motion nice second i mean a voice i just want to follow up with talking about the removal of the structure tomorrow so part of that is with the state uh also we have to get a state permit from txdot for the structure and so what they do is they've already come out and inspected the location once they inspect it you can't have two conflicting permits within 300 feet of each other so they give us 30 days to resolve that and so part of our taking it down is to get our state permit as well and so that kind of goes the timing of it also so just so there's a little bit more clarification on why we're taking it down right now thank you it was going to come down anyway is that correct that is correct okay yeah regardless if it was 30 days or how many days it was still going to come down okay clear okay yes please i have another question so with us violating the conditions of our sign ordinance what does that mean for us john well the the short answer is the plan developments are often used to allow things that aren't typically allowed under the zoning subdivision or sign ordinances i think our caution and our recommendation for denial on this is we think that should be very rarely used and in this case we don't think it's appropriate to circumvent the sign

[3:27:12] ordinance through this mechanism that's not to say and i guess defer to teresa on the legality of what the limits of of your authority are but you have some authority to modify other ordinances through a planned development district we're not voting on making it a planned development today well yes if if you approve the sign what you're doing is in effect you're approving a plan that makes sense that allows the sign because you're not addressing the sign ordinance today what's before you today is a rezoning the only way to allow a sign at this location through a rezoning is through a plan development we're not that's not on the motion well as i took the motion it's too it's to approve a sign through the plan development as requested in a technical see every time we ask a question it's hard to get it all clear but i don't think we were wanting to vote on the planned development so that means no sign correct so i'm back to my first point we took a vote on this whole thing and i don't know why we can't stick with that and then give staff some direction on looking at a larger property and maybe the the look at will be what um was said earlier that the landowners on the commercial ch cg whatever that is would not want to do that but um i don't know i see i think we are compromising our current sign ordinance to vote to move the sign and i don't think we should do that and um to mr hampton's point government's getting in the way but government has already decided this in a previous sign ordinance that's on

[3:29:17] the books and i think we should um uphold that and if i may add to that the sign was coming down that's what it came down to and they're looking for a way to take it somewhere else and this is really the crux of the the situation at this point is that sign was coming down and they don't want to lose that that that sign in that area so that's why they're proposing a new sign it's not an exchange but a new sign a little bit further down so again it is circumventing teresa read off about six or seven corridors where billboard signs are acceptable and you know i just think that's something that should be considered so if we need to keep this billboard then let's look at who has some property that perhaps this billboard could be placed on we agree with that all right we have a motion on the floor that in essence would be allowing for a zoning change to pd to allow for a sign change in location moving a sign not allowed in the sign ordinance is that correct i'm going to pd allow the sign and allow i think as i understood it you're two different motions we can only do one at a time right talk about the first now we're talking your first motion would not actually be to approve the pd it's simply a question for the council do you approve of including the sign in the pd or not then your second motion would be what is the zoning in the pd okay okay first one is to allow the sign in the pd seconded by harry well wouldn't it have to be ch it's not pd now wouldn't it have to be changed to pd and then we would change it to my next motion which would or vote on

[3:31:21] changing it to the next motion of a neighborhood commercial but we can't bring back the same motion that we've already had and that's what that would do life gets complicated and so do ordinances and governments so but this is where we're at so at this point what let me make sure we're all clear on what we can or cannot do here what we cannot do is re-vote on what we already voted no on correct and we already voted no on the pd it wasn't stated that way but in essence that's what it was because we denied we voted pd was in the we voted no on the planning development that would make it neighborhood commercial we voted no on that yes so we've already said no on that so we can't bring it back for another vote because we've already said no correct you said no to the sign and the neighborhood commercial yes to what was on you could approve a sign but with cg or you could prove no sign with neighborhood commercial or no sign with cg as lane's four options he mentioned what's not up is pd well but if they're all yeah they're all they're all they're all planning developments they are no matter what it would be planned development regardless if that's what it's going to take to get the sign moved but then you would have a choice of cg or cn cg but not on that motion or to keep it ch but not on the motion that we already took because the motion had pd and moving the sign didn't the first motion also indicate that we were going to change this back here to commercial neighborhood commercial no it did not it's as it read my first one that was that's what i'm saying that's what he said first my first one is accepted sign accept the sign and change to neighborhood center where the confusion no on where the confusion comes in is that pda was not mentioned but however in order to make the change it would be through

[3:33:23] through pd though that's what you're saying but we voted no on the neighborhood center which we probably should have rewarded it differently yeah you voted no on the whole package as lane presented it that was the whole package we can still change it that was a package deal but if you your motion that you just put on the floor if you say move the sign then it goes back to pd right pd is like it's like the box what we're trying to figure out is what the two pieces are i'm sorry go ahead no no he was a mike the pd is like the whole package okay and what you're trying to figure out is what pieces go within that package whether it's the sign or no sign goes in that package and whether it's a cg or ch goes in that package or whether it's a neighborhood commercial goes in that package you've already said we're not going to say sign neighborhood commercial now you can decide whether it's sign or no sign and then those other two things instead of going through all the different combinations i think it would be best to have like your original motion vote yes or no on the sign then once that's decided then you know what options are available for the zoning h no sign cg no sign ch i think a vote on the consensus of the council on the sign simplifies the decision if if the council you know there's so many options to go through we do sign if we do sign that's why i made the motion first to go cn but if we do sign you still have the option that's why i was making two motions of sine for the first one

[3:35:25] and accepting the neighborhood center as the second one and then people could vote yay or nay on that can we go ahead can we do the fine can we accept the fact that we voted no on item um e and can we bring back at the next council meeting item e broken down into two portions so we would table it so we would table it to the next well we've already voted no one i can't bring it back till six months yes and we already have a motion in a second so we would need both of those withdrawn well i guess i i don't know why i can't get this through my head but if we vote yes on the sign to be moved are we not violating our current sign ordinance you will be allowing a sign in a location where our sign ordinance does not allow it the only way is john said to do that is through a pd but consistently it's been decided that we're not going to use a pd to put one of those billboards in a location it otherwise wouldn't have been allowed so i don't i'm not familiar exactly with the one that john described earlier but in the earlier case where it was allowed through a pd that was in a corridor where a billboard would have been allowed anyway it was not a corridor where they're not allowed right and this isn't i guess my whole issue is why have ordinances is we are going to constantly be making exceptions to the ordinance so we have corridors within our sign ordinance where billboard could go so why in the world would we want to move this one in an area where it's not supposed to go according to our ordinance that makes no sense to me i'm sorry and i'm done okay with that

[3:37:29] the motion on the floor is to allow this static sign to to be moved via the plan development if that passes we have the chance to designate cg but if it doesn't pass you still have the opportunity to designate chcn just don't allow the sign to move all right we're going to take a vote if there is there any public comment on trying to approve a pd which allows for the sign to be moved and put up theresa if you don't if you don't approve the sign you still have the opportunity to do a pd that changes the zoning correct only the sign's not a component of it cn i can do that or can't you cannot you've already done that but that was in one motion not two but you're you can't you're not voting you're voting on one pd you're taking two votes right now to figure out what goes in your pd box it allows me to take the stance that i'm taking for my constituents i understand so now but your constituents said she'd be happy having no sign but they still want now we're flip-flopping the compromise whether it be keeping c g c h and no sign but i'm pretty sure they would rather have a sign and cn is that right miss wilson he could make a motion to have seen right if the sign fails if the sign fails fails if the sign fails you could have cn all right there's a motion on the floor and a second that would allow the pd to be approved allowing the sign to be moved which would be against the sign

[3:39:32] ordinance is that correct the motion the second we've had a lot of public comment we're going to take a vote all in favor of that motion say aye opposed i could we get hands it's three against yeah all in favor raise your hand one two three four against one two three motion passes to go against the sign ordinance and create a pd allowing the sign to be moved is that correct so now we can do zoning general commercial good thing we have two readings to this oh i i think your options are even at the same or going to cg and i would definitely say i will make a motion to make downgrade from ch cgch to just cg i'll second is your public comment no public comment will take a vote all in favor raise your right hand opposed motion passes 4-3 first reading and public hearing of an

[3:41:45] ordinance approving the abandonment and vacation of a 15 foot wide by 400 foot long 6 000 square feet public alley located east of bowie street and south of east 44th street within block 338 of the lake view edition thank you john james director of planning development services i'll go quick on this one this is an existing alley right of way there's really no constructed alley in there and adjacent property owners want to abandon the alley to incorporate that into those adjacent properties so there's the abandonment the original lots i'm not going to read through all of these staff recommends approval this is reviewed by all the utility companies and various city departments there are no city utilities let me go back to this frontier and aap do have utilities in there and so we would require a utility easement to be maintained where the alley sits today if you abandon it we sent out our notifications two in favor one in opposition i think we think that that person misunderstood what was being requested so we recommend approval and the planning commission unanimously recommended approval be happy to answer any questions are there questions for john on this item what was the opposition comments i think that was someone who misunderstood what the request was um but they really weren't opposed and they weren't even they're not affected by the alley closure they're a block over okay do i have a motion for approval second public comment good afternoon my name is ann joseph i have been a resident of san angelo since 1987. i am in support of this ordinance and wanted to just be a

[3:43:49] supporting voice appearing here uh in support of the abandonment and vacation of the alleyway within block 38 of the lakeview edition just as a little addendum or background the real estate office for cosa sent out a letter dated for february identifying an assessment formula for block 38 property owners apprising us of the cost for each of us to purchase the alleyway square footage if the alleyway were to be abandoned and vacated by the city so on 13 february i went out and spoke with every property owner or family member within block 38 who had not as yet contacted the real estate office to either state yes i want to buy the property or i want to assign my interest everyone's sole question was not whether or not it should be abandoned but rather whether or not they wanted to buy the adjoining footage or if they would assign it based on those interactions with as i said everyone on block 38 that's either a property owner or a family owner it appears that no one on block 38 is against the abandonment therefore i request your support of this ordinance to abandon and vacate the alleyway within block 38 of the lakeview edition thank you thank you for being patient and hanging around all morning long we appreciate it i had to change my greeting of good morning to good afternoon thank you for that i thought she was going to learn something about zombies okay with that um we will take a vote all in favor say aye aye any opposed motion passes 7-0 item g consider awarding contracts for services related to the hickory ground water expansion project and potential funding from texas water development board and authorizing the city manager to execute any related documents

[3:45:54] one rfpw-02-19 bond counsel to mccall parkhurst and horton to rfp wu0319 financial advisor to specialized public finance and three rfqw-04-19 engineering services for water system improvements to and protect hibs and todd and allison my dear you're on i also too was going to say good morning but good afternoon as you all are aware we're steadfast with expanding the hickory groundwater system we those expansions include sorry let me get my slide going okay uh those expansion upgrades include expansion of the well-filled pump station and treatment facilities to be able to pump and treat our full allocation from our permits as with the previous 120 million dollars that was invested in this system we are looking to utilize texas water development board funding text water development board provides low interest loans with longer repayment periods uh for water projects that are in the state water plan and hickory uh groundwater expansion is one of those projects that's in the state water plan one of the first steps in starting this application process is to put out requests for proposals and qualifications for bond council financial advisors and engineering services um but in the i want to preface kind of my short uh presentation is that for the next council meeting we'll be bringing back the preliminary engineering study findings that'll go really into depth about the number of wells we'll be drilling uh the cost associated with that the treatment it'll go really into the meat of the application whereas this is basically getting that team together for that application process so for today we're simply asking you to

[3:47:58] approve uh the qualifications and proposals that were submitted for these three entities and like i said at the next council meeting we'll be bringing back the expansion in more detail associated upgrades and costs so with that i'll be happy to answer any questions do i have questions from counsel for allison any public comment on the proposed contracts with none we'll take a vote all in favor say aye any opposed motion passes 7-0 we'll now have item h update on sales tax revenue and performance good afternoon mayor council mr valenzuela i have your february sales tax results for you today and oh you'll see here that we were down six point eight percent in february compared with the same month in the prior year uh however we are still above our revenue budget by about 556 thousand dollars year-to-date and i also have for you your industry stats for the month of january um and that's that's all i have for you today you know what i was is this a dollar volume or is it a percent it's a dollar volume right these are percentages well how does that chart on the left read as a percentage then oh i'm sorry you're right it's dollar values dollar value so the question mark is we were down 6.9 percent but retail was up general services look like about flat food was up professional services now this was for the month of january i'm sorry we have we don't get this information and time to report it on your monthly basis so this was the month of january where we were up on sales tax revenue okay so just to make sure when you say we were down these numbers are not reflective of the down because these

[3:50:00] numbers don't reflect we would be down so we were down 6.8 percent for the month of february the numbers that you're seeing on the next slide are actually for the month of june january because we lag behind on the industry information yes ma'am thank you very much you're welcome thank you any further questions for tina thank you very much tina can you really really quickly just put this slide back i wanted to see what the budget was over here 556 thousand four hundred ninety seven dollars okay with that we are going to adjourn for closed session the executive session on the provision of government code title v open government ethics subtitle a open government chapter 551 open meeting sub chapter d exceptions to requirement that meetings be open under the following sections section 551.072 to deliberate the purchase exchange lease or value of real property if deliberation in an open meeting would have a detrimental effect on the position of the governmental body in negotiations with the third person on one the gillis edition two city farm three 122 west first street for spring creek moreno and item b section 551.074 a one to deliberate the appointment employment evaluation reassignment duties discipline or dismissal the public officer employee regarding one board commissions and appointments and two appointing judge jay daniels as presiding judge of the city of san angelo municipal court effective january 28 2019 city charter section 50 and c section 551.0712 to consult with an attorney when the governmental body seeks the advice of its attorney on a matter in which the duty of the attorney to the governmental body under the texas disciplinary rules of professional conduct of the state bar of texas clearly conflicts with this chapter regarding contract negotiations with court consultant we are officially adjourned for closed session at 12 40 a.m we will be gone for

[3:52:04] one hour 15 minutes so we will be back at two o'clock p.m we will be adjourned at 2 11 2 12 actually p.m

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=XqPDWsHf1aU