The Planning and Zoning Commission, which earlier this year ignored the instructions from the City Council on how to deal with the midterm update of the Comprehensive Plan, has on its Tuesday meeting agenda a proposed food truck ordinance that is, in effect, another direct slap in the face of council members.
It not only totally ignores the expressed wishes of the Council, when it originally voted to send P&Z’s original proposed ordnance on this subject back to the commission, it compounds the problem by adding material that will, most likely, further inflame those on the Council who voted against this deal the first time around.
It only exacerbates my concern that there is a complete and total lack of communication between the City Council and the Planning & Zoning Commission.
A municipal Comprehensive Plan requires, by statute, a complete overhaul once every 10 years. An "update" is mandated midway through each 10-year overhaul interval. For this update, city leaders made the policy decision not to spend taxpayers money to hire consultants to handle what they essentially felt was a minor editing job. For example, Council members wanted to designate the city’s employment area in a part of town where potential employers would actually want to locate. P&Z commissioners balked at these instructions, however, claiming the update could not be done without the city spending taxpayer money to hire consultants, when, in reality, all the commissioners really needed to get the job done was a ball point pen, some clear heads and a few hours of their time.
This time around the commissioners have on this Tuesday’s agenda a more complex food truck ordinance proposal than the one already rejected by the Council because it was too complex.
When this ordinance first came to Council, members very specifically said they were sending it back to Planning & Zoning with the specific instructions that it be divided into at least two separate ordinances: one regulating what is referred to as a "Mobile Food Vendor," but can more easily be described as "food truck," and a second ordinance designed to regulate what is being referred to as a "Temporary Food Vendor," but can more accurately be described as a "food trailer." Some Council members even suggested it might be worth it to separate these two subjects out of the overall peddlers’ ordinance completely and making it a stand-alone item.
But what is on the agenda is still one complex ordinance containing everything the Council wanted separated the first time around.
Not only that, P&Z is compounding the problem by adding yet another subject that wasn’t even addressed the first time and that’s provisions for a "Food Court," a single nesting place for all kinds of mobile and temporary food vendors. Hey, I see nothing wrong with food truck parks; in many communities they are quite popular. But, although I must admit my crystal ball is in the shop for repairs right at the moment, I’m pretty sure these same Council members who wanted the mobile and temporary sections of the current ordinance separated would want a separate set of regulations for food courts as well.
Personally, I don’t want to engage in a debate over whether this ordinance should be one item or a zillion. But I do know this: The members of the Kyle City Council were elected by registered voters of this city and the members of the Planning & Zoning Commission were appointed and approved by those elected Council members. That translates into the fact that the P&Z is, at least, one notch below the City Council on the legislative chain of command. So when the City Council specifically instructs the P&Z to do something a certain way, the commissioners should really make some kind of effort to do it that way.
The other major item on Tuesday’s P&Z agenda is a proposal to change some of Kyle’s residential zoning ordinances that, if I understand it correctly (and I will readily admit, there’s a very good chance I’m not understanding it correctly) appears to be creating one new zoning category and redefining other one to allow for the construction of much smaller homes than are currently located in Kyle. It appears to me, at least, the new zoning category will be called R-1-3 and will allow homes to be constructed with a 20-foot front setback (the current minimum is 25 feet), a five-foot side setback (the current minimum is 7.5 feet), and a 10-foot rear setback (the current minimum is 15 feet).This newly designated zoning category also "allows detached single family residences with a minimum of 1,000 square feet living area (down from 1,600 in R-1-1) and accessory structures on a minimum lot size of 5,540 square feet (down from 8,190). There shall be no more than 5.5 houses per buildable acre" (denser than the 3.9 per acre in R-1-1-)."
The new ordinance also drastically reduces the minimum square footage of a residence in townhouse zoning from 2,844 to 880 and removes the word "detached" from the R-1-A zoning for garden homes. Detached garden homes in this zoning will now only be permitted as a conditional use.
Interestingly, two other items on Tuesday’s agenda involved requests to rezone near-downtown property to R-1-A, but both applications have been withdrawn pending P&Z’s actions on these new zoning requirements.
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