After stumbling over a consent agenda on which they approved items they didn’t mean to approve (and will undoubtedly appear on the final record as not being approved), the five commissioners who attended tonight’s Planning & Zoning Commission granted a conditional use permit for a strip center adjacent to downtown and recommended the City Council adopt a lighting ordinance modified to reduce restrictions on non-existent parks and residential street lights.
For the third meeting in a row, the commissioners also decided not enough members were present to elect a vice-chair so that decision was put off until its Aug. 9 meeting when, presumably, it is hoped that at least one more commissioner will attend. Commissioners Lori Huey and Irene Melendez missed tonight’s meeting.
The consent agenda contained five items, one of which was pulled so that a response could be made to a citizen who had commented on it and P&Z operates under the same mistaken interpretation of meeting rules as the city council believing, incorrectly, commissioners can’t legally respond to comments made by citizens during Citizens Comments period.
Of the remaining items on the consent agenda, the city’s staff recommended the disapproval of two of them and the approval of the remaining two. Instead of making the motion to follow staff’s recommendations in regards to the items on the consent agenda, commissioner Timothy Kay moved to approve all four of the items. That motion, mysteriously enough, was seconded and approved unanimously. So, legally speaking, the commissioners approved the final plat for the Brookside Subdivision Phase 3 and the Dacy Village Subdivision Lot 5, Block B, although something tells me when the final script is writ, it will be recorded those two items were statutorily disapproved, because that’s what staff really wanted to the commissioners to do. Funny how those things work out.
The strip center that received the conditional use permit is the same 17,300-square-foot structure located between the southbound I-35 service road and old Highway 81, a block north of Center Street, that the commissioners ordered sent back to the drawing boards back on June 14 because the rear of the building looked too much like the rear of a building.
This time around Jaime Hernandez, the building’s architect and its project manager, offered an alternative that looked like a more decorative and additionally landscaped rear of a building. The commissioners thanked Hernandez for adhering to their whimsy and granted the permit.
"In an effort to provide more of an aesthetic feel on the rear of the building, we added some awnings to the rear," Hernandez told the commissioners. "We added sidewalk as well, all the way around to make that pedestrian connection, to make it friendlier. We also made the adjustment to have landscaping on all four sides of the building."
"I think that looks a whole lot better than it did the first time," chairman Michael Rubsam told Hernandez
The rest of the commissioners agreed, voting 5-0 to approve the permit.
Rubsam was the only commissioner ro raise concerns about the lighting ordinance, although the rest of the commissioners easily deferred to those concerns. The ordinance recognized five distinct lighting "zones," ranging from what was tabbed an LZ-0 zone that permitted no ambient lighting whatsoever to LZ-4, in which "high ambient lighting" was permitted.
It was that first zone that bugged Rubsam. It said this zone applied to "wilderness and protected wildlife areas, parks and preserves and undeveloped rural areas." Rubsam did not like in the inclusion of parks inside the cit limits because he felt completely darkened parks pose a risk to law enforcement types who must investigate all those shenanigans everyone knows takes place in these parks after the sun goes down. The problem is, however, Kyle doesn’t have any of these parks. As Planning Director Howard J. Koontz tried to explain, there will not be a single spot in Kyle that will be designated as an LZ-0 zone so the rule doesn’t apply. He said the only reason the LZ-0 zone is even mentioned is because "some day we might have a development agreement with someone where the city and the developer choose together to utilize that standard for a portion of or all of their site."
The other part of the ordinance Rubsam had a problem with was a section that read "Street lighting, other than at the intersection of roadways, shall utilize half-night photo cells or timers to turn off lights halfway between dusk and dawn." Rubsam didn’t like the notion of turning these lights off completely. He was OK with them being reduced by 70 percent, but not completely off.
Rubsam maintained that bad guys "love the dark. Anytime you start turning off streetlights, you invite crime. Another thing is some of our more elderly residents don’t see all that well at night, When they pull into a residential neighborhood, the streetlights are very helpful for navigation for these people."
Rubsam said 50 percent lighting would be perfectly acceptable for him. "When you’re talking about crime deterrent, any light is helpful in deterring crime." That’s why he could go as low as 30 percent, but "I’m not crazy about turning them off."
As a result, the commissioners voted unanimously to go along with Rubsam’s motion to recommend the city council pass a lighting ordinance as presented with the exception of "Page 9 where we would remove the word ‘parks’ from the LZ-0 no ambient lighting section and also on the street lighting section on Page 18 where we change the sentence to read ‘street lighting other than at the intersection of roadways, shall utilize half-night photo cells or timers to reduce light output by up to 70 percent halfway between dusk and dawn’."
Koontz seemed to have some specific "targets" in mind when he presented the proposed ordinance.
"This makes an expectation of lowering the required light when you have spaces that are not being used after dark," Koontz told the commissioners. "So you’ll notice there’s recommendations in there for light to be cut by 50 percent output after a certain time in the evening. There’s really no reason that the Target sign needs to be putting out 1,500 lumens at 2:38 on a Tuesday morning. There’s nobody shopping at Target at 2:38 on a Tuesday morning. You can dim that down a little bit until such time as you get more traffic which is right around daybreak."
Later he said he was really OK with the lighting at the Target center. In fact, he appeared to cite it as an example of the right way to handle municipal lighting.
"In centers like that where they already have a package consisting of plans, site work, materials suppliers and vendors, that’s probably to make sure that’s compliant with wherever they go," Koontz said. "They replicate the same sites everywhere. If you’re interested in seeing what it looks like, set your alarm for about 3 or 3:20 and then drive up to Target and see what it looks like up there."
At one point Koontz also maintained that "single family residential is exempted from this ordinance entirely so you can do just about what you choose as long as it doesn’t become an issue for neighbors." That statement, however, seems at odds with the fact that the ordinance says the default zone for the LZ-1 zone requiring "low ambient lighting" is "rural and low density residential areas, including residential single or two family." And later in that same description is says the areas for low ambient lighting "typically include single and two family residential communities." The one caveat is that it applies to those areas "that desire low ambient lighting areas," but it does not describe how to ascertain whether an area really does have such a desire. In addition, Koontz interpreted this section to apply to churches and such that might be found in areas zoned R-1, but not the individual residences themselves. Of course, the way it is worded, a successor to Koontz could have a completely different interpretation.
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