Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

Paul Nabtistaffwork session it was with your last work session before we have the public hearing on January 26 and then planning Commission makes a presentation of the recommendations to City Council on February 3rd there are two things I wanted to talk about quickly before we turn it over to the Planning Commission for your own discussion. One is a discussion on public facilities review because a conversation about the Fire Station 3 project came up at the last meeting about whether we should conduct such a review at this time or wait until a future year. And then we have just some general information on projects in the CIP that relate to the requests that were made of the commissioners on how to prepare for this meeting so first just a quick reminder of what the commission's role is

This is, per the state code, a separate process from the CIP, but we try to relate them because the CIP is a good way to identify those projects that need to go through the public facilities review process. So, again, the first thing I want to go through is discussion of the Fire Station 3 project and whether or not that is suitable for public facilities review at this time. If the Planning Commission determines that it is, then we will have some additional material at your work session on January 12. and we will schedule a separate public hearing for the public facilities review on this project on January 26th. Quick reminder on what the public facilities review is per state code. This is the exact language from the state code

and it highlighted the key terms that we need to think about as we're looking at projects and how we consider them for review. First, it lists several different types of projects. which includes, as highlighted here, public buildings or public structures, which the fire station as an example is such a facility, a proposed new public building. And it states that before any such facilities are constructed, established, or authorized, they should be reviewed by the Planning Commission. And the things that the Planning Commission should be considered are the general location, the character, and the extent of such facilities. And the Planning Commission must determine facilities are substantially in accord with the adopted comprehensive plan so

breaking those items down the the list of items on the left the types of facilities that we consider again the public building or public structure is is what the fire station is so that is certainly something that will be required to go to have such a review because it's not particularly specifically identified in the comprehensive plan and then determining looking at the general location, the character, and the extent of such facilities. This is important because for the proposed new fire station, we do have a location, and so the Planning Commission can certainly weigh on that. But staff still has concerns about the amount of information we have at this time to determine the character and the extent because the facility has not been designed

or fully programmed yet. What we do know about the fire station building proposal, to be replaced with a facility on a site immediately to the south I will show you where that is in a moment the site adjacent to the existing fire station has already been acquired by the city design for the new project is underway thirty million dollars has been allocated for the project over the past couple of years through the CIP an estimated 21 million remains to be allocated to the CIP in FY 27 through FY 29 so the two maps on the right show the existing land use of the existing facility in the proposed facility as well as the future land use from the comprehensive plan future land use map the site in blue on

the existing land use map is the existing fire station it's defend defined as institutional on the existing land use map and the site to the south highlighted in red where it says commercial office this is the site that has been acquired for the proposed facility they could be developed with both sites combined but the thought is at this point that the new facility would be developed on the adjacent site so that the existing fire station could remain in operation while that is developed and then we would later to term determine a a

A little more information about the proposed facility is estimated to be approximately 40,000 square feet. This information is provided in the draft CIP. As I mentioned, the idea is to keep the current station open while the new facility is constructed on the south adjacent, and then we could later determine a different use for the current site. However, the city is open to public-private partnership opportunities and has put out advertisements as such. This is not something that the city is committed to yet, but the thought is that that would likely focus on the existing site. So once the fire station relocates, we could have a public-private partnership for some other type of use, whether it be housing or commercial or

on the adjacent site that being said there's always a possibility that we receive a proposal that uses both sites that makes sense for the city then we could go with that as well and for the project itself depending on specifics of design as I mentioned the use is supported in the future land use map and the fire station use is also supported supported use in the commercial corridor zoning district which is what the other site is zoned as and so it may not be required to go through a land use review of course this is dependent on specifics of design there are special exception requests and those types of things it would likely go to city council but probably not to the planning commission so the public facilities review is likely your primary opportunity to provide commentary on

Kirsten LockhartWhen you say design is underway, what exactly does that mean? Because my understanding was that there are some kind of cross-functional considerations with the property yard functions that might be considered as part of the fire station design, but I don't think we're in a position to talk about the property yard yet either.

Paul CunninghamIn the past, and I don't know where it may sit currently, there was discussion that if you look at Alexandria, they're putting affordable housing above a fire station. And so that being a major issue was tossed around here. That may be one of the reasons to delay discussing until it's clear what they're actually going to do budget-wise with putting the fire station in both time-wise and then what other functions may or may not be included with that type of public building in order to make it functional. Our decision on reviewing it in light of the comp plan would mean that we have enough of that kind of information to make a reasonable recommendation. So I would think delaying it would, from my perspective, meet with your recommendation to delay it until next year at least.

James FeatherOthers on fire station three?

First thing, on this specific topic, I think the discussion with the fire station is probably a little bit broader over the fire chief and that there's time to avoid rushing into a public hearing by the end of January. So is there general agreement on that? Okay. Thank you for

Paul Cunninghamvehicle replacement projects and ongoing continuing things when we go down a little bit so we can see the funding that's coming out of the general fund and part of my question on that is that stuff that we can play out of cash flow or is this the kind of funding that we put a little bit down in cash and then we're going to finance the bulk of it as it's ongoing since this is and and many vehicles across a long period of time that is ongoing. And this is where we get into figuring out affordability on what kind of projects do we need to pay cash for going forward in the CIP, what do we need to finance, and how do we balance this with the majors, the high school, the elementary schools, the property yard, the fire station, Van Dyke Park,

Tassos McCarthymoney needs to be spent it just needs to be spent well additionally the fire station that we've talked about quite a bit there may or may not be a need for that and I don't think we have the information to determine that but in any event that we don't have top-notch you know emergency response okay oh my kids don't go to school I don't want to pay for that oh I'm not a senior I don't want to pay for that you have a heart attack everybody wants them to show up as quick as possible right so if in any event that is needed I would I would strongly promote doing that and then lastly anything that you know this is a cop-out but is externally funded the South South Street extension you know it's 100% externally funded and then like delaying delaying might risk you

Matthew Ricemistakes frankly if we u-turn on willard sherwood if we don't make a plan for fire station three even if we do delay some consideration if we don't replace the property or that's my number one we need to fund and figure out as quickly as we can how to deal with that when i started on the Planning Commission we had FEMA flood maps from 2016 the 2023 revision of those flood maps are pretty dramatic that property art is not a place that we should depend on or can depend on at all for deploying a third of our city staff and equipment it just um that's a crisis and we need to sort that out but I think that you know along with the property yard you know fire station number three it this is a station that is completely out

of date with regard to update cycles and because of logistics we do sort of have an opportunity with the neighboring property now in our possession to build a new station and then have a parcel on the north side the old fire station that would be available so i mean there are great opportunities and obviously it's not a we're not in a position where we can fund everything but i think at least keeping in mind uh when we do trim this what it will do to that resident moving in 2035 that you know if we don't have willard sherwood or if our school roofs are leaking you know where if uh our emergency services aren't as well maintained as our neighboring jurisdictions the decision will be you know let's let's go to false church let's

James Featherreplacing something that may not be there in five years. That's the kind of project to me that needs some real scrutiny as to how do we get through this on a maintenance until we understand the full scope of what we're going to do with the property yard. We've already talked about fire station three. We have a functioning fire station. There's some facilities that we're lacking. This is the context and the discussions that have been going on at city council. They had a tour of the stations, so that's already on their radar. We understand that some more study is required, and I think we should support the nature of the study, but to suspect that they're not going to be able to respond to ambulance calls or fire calls,

because they don't have a new fire station in three years. Probably not a realistic base case or design case. There may be other reasons to do it, but let's proceed cautiously on that one, as I think a number of council members are suggesting as well. So those are the kind of things that have hit my list, anyway, and the basis for some of those. Again, I don't think we're making any decisions or recommendations tonight. We'll have the holidays to consider it. or not but any other thoughts from what you've heard so far tonight I really appreciate the thought we've put into this has