Planning and Development Services update - City Council Strategic Planning Workshop 5-31-22

[0:00:00] good evening aaron venoy planning and development services i'm your pinch hitter tonight for john james who strategically decided to go on vacation so i'll go over our development services and building permits planning and gis group so here's some of our established goals over the last few years talking about re reviews timelines review timelines in particular provide good information to citizens and applicants effective and friendly customer service ensure ordinances and processes mesh with our comprehensive plan and consistency in the development review process and consistency is probably one of the biggest keys is that each customer that comes in hears the same message from any one of our development groups that we kind of work with so one thing that the city council invested in about five to six years ago was some plan review software to help us with the efficiency and to help us with what's going on in our development review and so we have been running any kind of project we can through our review software because it gets it out to our review teams all at the same time so you can see you know lots of commercial plans our plats our site plans and our design reviews are all going through there our residential plans are all going through there now and even our engineering services has started taking advantage of of this and doing all their infrastructure reviews in there as you know new streets new water lines new sewer lines and stuff and things that are going in there and they're able to see and say hey engineer a we need to change this because of elevation or something and so it's really working well the local engineers and even our our groups statewide like this software they're getting used to it uh it's easy communication with the reviewers and it gets directly to whoever made that comment not just somebody in the department it gets back to that reviewer specifically so some of our stuff over the last few years

[0:02:02] commercial plan review one of the things that we track is how fast are we doing those reviews our standard is a 21 calendar day review time line in 2021 we were down to six days so within six days those applicants either got a permit or comments back saying we need changes on sheet two or sheet three and then the second review the average review for after submissions is five days and so usually within 11 calendar days a person that's doing a commercial structure which sometimes can be big some kinds can be just minor things within 11 days they should be getting that permit and so on the development services side we track the timelines and we try to encourage our reviewers to let's keep up with the timelines and keep going and so we think we've done really well on commercial review the next slide is our residential residential really just started in 2020 as far as going into project docs and then we started getting more and more projects in there of course 2020 was a very high year for residential single-family projects and you can see how high that number was 726 that was because one project called creek 27 had about 250 units that were reviewed as single-family residential but really kind of in reality they're detached apartments this year we're probably going to be between that 283 and that 333 number for single family units we've through we've done about 99 so far our average review time is 2.35 days and that is very very quick if you look at some of the other cities around abilene is at 10 days for residential midland odessa is at 15. and i'm sure some of you all have heard other places that are even higher than that so our staff is is really doing well you can see our planning timelines are staying strong our engineering services even with the software has helped them get it into a format that they can see and understand

[0:04:05] and make comments quickly and so they're they're able to see that as a benefit to them so we're excited that they're able to use that software as well we have increased in our consultations in drc's and i think this is really critical because this is where we try to talk with the applicants before they even submit something and try to get them through not only the process but what's really required and how what the real timelines are going to be and i think that has really improved our review timeline because we're talking to them ahead of time instead of just getting some sheets of paper or some plans and they really don't know what they turned in and then it's taken review after review after review and that's even helped with our our engineering services who speak for water utilities and operations so if they see hey there's a lift station that's got full capacity they get to talk to them here before somebody submits something and say hey we've got to find a way to solve that lift station or hey that road's undersized or whatever it may be and so that's really critical that we get all those departments together and talk to those folks about what the not only the challenges are but what are solutions to help people to get through those processes um some of our plan and ordinances updates uh there was this last year a expansion particularly to the west and northwest of the central business district uh over towards abe and coenheim kind of a little bit to the west of the central city district we did do an update to our street wits and sidewalk ordinance that we worked with the home builders association on a lot of developers on that they actually have some options of some narrower street widths which actually helps the city in the long run because you have wide streets you got to maintain those for a very long time if you have a little bit narrower street you don't have to maintain as much each at least the developer now has some options where before they were kind of tied into certain things

[0:06:07] in progress here soon y'all are going to see the interstate highway thoroughfare plan amendment particularly for the north part of our town uh that we've been working with txdot that they have a kind of an approved plan and so we're going to bring that forward as well as a downtown historic district overlay we stop right there why is there such a delay that was supposed to have been brought to council for approval in may which one mim the downtown historic district overlay i'm not 100 sure i know the answer to that i know that we were making sure that we did proper noticing uh but i'm not sure if i know the 100 answer of why it was delayed okay yeah but i mean you already passed the deadline that we're supposed to you sent out earlier so why weren't you aware of those things earlier that those guidelines are covered if we approve something without following those then it could bite us later so we agree we would like it happening sooner than not but that's the only way we could get it done and make sure it was all done properly we needed it i do know it is on the dhrc agenda for for june they also moved that timeline on a mayor i think i forgot on that so the the timeline got moved up because they could do the i don't know the hrc or planning commission and then the council meeting was the day after that and they're going to put it directly on that next meeting date so that there's no delay in there because whatever their recommendation is we can verbally give to you all we don't need to wait for that to come in a report we can tell you at the meeting we need to get it done

[0:08:11] whatever it takes it needs to get done okay um and then another option that they're looking at for particularly affordable housing and we're really in the research phase uh of assessor drill accessory dwellings in rs one and two we do have currently some rules in our zoning ordinance it based based on ownership and how how large an accessory apartment can be we like those types of things but there's there's lots of if we pull our report on how many accessory dwellings are being built um that don't have a kitchen that's basically how they kind of do it now is they don't have a kitchen well if you look in some of our newer neighborhoods most of those have what they call a mother-in-law suite they just don't have a kitchen because our zoning ordinance doesn't allow two two living spaces on one piece of property does that need to change maybe maybe not but that's something what happens if i convert my garage into an apartment it depends on what your zone if you're rs1 right now you would not be allowed and we don't know if that's good or bad i mean that's really something we need to research i've already done that what now because there's a lot already done i i mean a lot of them already done there are a lot of them that are already done and so they would be either legal non-conforming or maybe they're in a status that they shouldn't be renting that out we are just a complaint basis of if we go and investigate but that's what we're trying to decide well do we have a lot of them out there and do we go ahead and make them legal does that make sense grandfather men and women do we grandfather them in do we do we find a way to make it work and so we are bringing that research forward what does the state say about that since we're always like the state says what does the state say well the state really doesn't have an opinion on it and since it's a zone the state doesn't have an opinion on it well that's got to be a first well it's me it's a zoning item and it's really each city gets to choose their zoning ordinance on how they'll be the next legislative session yeah they may they make you change at that point

[0:10:16] but this is a a lot of cities i mean abilene has gone to where you can have two an accessory apartment that you can rent out as well as your own living dwelling on one lot they did that about five years ago they thought they'd have a lot of problems and they really haven't they actually solved a lot of problems because they were a community that grew in world war ii and they have a lot of those existing things and i think about our santa rita area that have those existing things and well how can we make those those work for today it's already happened and it's already happened they're there so we need to just move forward and make it because they're there we're not talking about something that might happen it's happened yeah so we will be bringing forward some research and proposals to planning commission and ultimately city council to decide what what is best for our community in that respect some other things i don't remember for i know that i saw this it said new building codes i think we're on the 2015 building codes right now we would have communication with our development task force if there's things that they would like to see implemented or not implemented i know sign ordinance is coming if with some updates as well as cleaning up some of our things that might be a little more restrictive and trying to make them a little cleaner so that citizens understand how they can do things flag lots is a challenging configuration of how lots are laid out some of our areas have you know five or six little bitty five foot slivers that touch the road and then the big lots at the back and so we're trying to figure out how how to work through that because that crams a lot of infrastructure in a small piece of space at the very front of a lot and there becomes property arguments and issues later down the road and we're trying to solve those before they become a big thing a simplified planning process planning process is our infrastructure trigger and infrastructure is our biggest challenge when it comes to development water lines sewer lines and streets it just costs a lot to do those as shane

[0:12:19] and allison have talked about it cost a lot and so for developers it costs a lot is there a simplified planning process for some situation that makes this easier for developers to create new things as well as our vested rights process make sure that we're all up to date on vested rights if somebody's got a preliminary plat from the 20s is it still good and those types of things so we do have some housing development numbers because that's kind of been important over the last few years you know you can see kind of the multi-family has been a little bit mixed but we have had some apartment creation over the last three years we do know that there's about three different apartment complexes that are are speculating right now that are either going through a planning process or are considering a planning process one of them had an annexation off of appaloosa trail they're looking at about i think 87 units out there and so we have some more multi-family that'll be coming in where's wolf creek on there wolf creek that 2022 that they're they got their occupancy well they're getting their occupancy now um but they i believe they permeated in 2018 or 2019. i think it was 2019 is when they secured their permit to build yeah but they have started getting occupancy now the first i think 15 buildings uh have certificate of occupancies is the last count i had and so those when do we include them when they okay so if they got their permit still it doesn't reflect it in here because you have creek 27 and you have wolf creek which the combination of those two would be over 400 units right and this is when the permit is actually issued so we issued the permit not when they received their certificate of occupancy wolf creek wouldn't show up in these because they were they were reviewed as single-family home because they were detached they aren't attached apartments and so under the building i mean creek 27 creek 27 yes ma'am sorry about that but wolf creek i believe they

[0:14:24] permitted in 2019 because it was right at the beginning of covid and they were trying to decide if they were going to move forward or not and so they permitted each structure as one permit and then they have approximately 20 units per structure so that's that's some of the numbers in there let me ask you a question um do we have an um let me see what it's called an electric um an electric board electrical board electrical board to approve for example there are people in town that are going in and installing generators in people's homes without a permit to do that and they don't have an electrical license here in the city of san angelo so when they do the work it is inadequate and it's running the entire electrical system within a home and when it's been brought forward they have we have said back to them unless we see them doing that work we can't do anything about it and yet people have paid to have these generators installed so you would think just by the nature they got an invoice and a company name we could track down who these people are yes ma'am that does sound like something that we should be enforcing and so if you if you have some information i'll be happy to stick around well i just got this weekend i'll get yeah normally they would all be required to get a permit to do the work to begin with but if there's a company in town that's doing the work without a permit then you know we can look into that as far as yeah that would be our standard enforcement that we would go and one we would try to help the homeowner or whoever try to find a reputable company to hey let's get into compliance find a way to get that fixed but as far as going after the business or the contractor if you will we would we would certainly flag them as an issue in our system in this case

[0:16:27] it doesn't sound like they're coming in to get a permit so we wouldn't be able to you know jump on them i mean i can read this to you but it's kind of lengthy but it basically says this person went to this customer's house and the man introduced her to the individual that was going to install this generator she went inside her house pulled them up and went back outside and told them that they could leave because they were not licensed she called the city and told them and asked them if they were okay with what was going on before she called these other people and they said no but nothing's happening to stop this company from going around and doing these generators city does not have a process where we have contractors licensed for doing business in the city yes i know right so in this case they wouldn't have to be licensed with the city to operate here i think this might be our last slide talking about new single family housing again looking at that number about 291 which is still a very strong number for san angelo um there are a number of lots under development um particularly the south part of town and yet we've done really really well with infill development even on the north side of town we are working with our gis even on the north side of town do what i just heard that phrase even on the north side of town well yes sorry about that tom it's okay performance review we need to do we need to re-look at the infield dollars again i mean there's two things that i hear number one the enfield's done really well and we we're out of money and then number two i hear from the other side of the coin there's no more infill lots to do so we need to re-look at the areas of town that might need an infill program to better develop those areas so i think it's just something we ought to look at as we move forward and see if

[0:18:30] those two issues are applicable we need more to put more money back into it if we spent the 200 000 a year and then number two is there another area of town that would be infill that we would like to see development happen that's not currently being done because they're not in the current infill i think we can work with bob solis on that and get a report to you guys coming up soon and make some recommendations okay that'd be great i think that's it any other questions for development services or just throw one kudos in and you're already aware of this the other people in the room are not the company which i worked for contacted me and said oh by the way we hear you're on city council but our contractor is waiting on these permits and all of these things to go and i threw an email 10 seconds later to aaron and it came back in three minutes no we're waiting on them to do this this this and that and i think sometimes a lot of people throw the city under the bus parks i mean planting and just use it as an excuse for we're not doing this and i just want to say thank you for your group because you changed that whole thing around in a matter of hours and the whole perception on what was the holdup was nothing to do with the city at all but we were waiting on them to get their stuff in and you had it documented to a t and it was a nice job thank you we certainly want to be very transparent but even when we're in the wrong we want to be transparent for for sure and so that's how we improve and i think we do have a really good team that's that's focused on trying to help the customer i just think we need to make sure that we're consistent because the biggest complaint i get is he said that she said this what am i supposed to do because she won't let me move forward because he said whatever and those are the biggest issues that i hear about now is someone holding it up with them because she said he didn't know what he was talking about and i'm the boss so no i mean we got to clear up that within the department permits and planning that we're all on the same page and we're not under a power struggle for the ability to give the authority to move

[0:20:32] forward and it feels like there's a lot of power struggle going on there and people are looking for their opportunity to yeah and please counsel as a whole if you all hear those kind of things tell us we lost oh i do i know i'm quick and as with toms you know sometimes we find that we have that has happened where there's but a lot of times we find where there's some misinformation that was not given out and so we want to correct that whether it's fixing the problem for them to move forward or if we've done something wrong then we'll correct it but yeah we want it all to move forward and we know that hiring staff is a difficult thing so we need to try to make the system work thank you okay any other questions or comments from city council members thank you aaron very much we're glad you filled in

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