5-24-2022 Agenda with backup
Subcommittee on PDD Standards, New Zoning District and Tree
Mitigation Program
A COMMITTEE OF THE CITY COUNCIL AND PLANNING AND
ZONING COMMISSION
HAL BALDWIN MUNICIPAL COMPLEX CITY COUNCIL
CHAMBERS
1400 SCHERTZ PARKWAY, BUILDING #4 SCHERTZ, TEXAS 78154
May 24, 2022
4:00 P.M.
Call to order (Councilmember Whittaker)
Citizens to be Heard
Discussion and/or Action Items
1. Approval of the minutes of the meeting of October 12, 2021.
2. Discussion regarding design standards for Straight Zoning and PDD’s.
3. Summarize Consensus.
Adjournment
CERTIFICATION
I, BRENDA DENNIS, CITY SECRETARY OF THE CITY OF SCHERTZ, TEXAS, DO HEREBY CERTIFY THAT THE
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OF MAY AT 11:00 A.M. WHICH IS A PLACE READILY ACCESSIBLE TO THE PUBLIC AT ALL TIMES AND THAT
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Brenda Dennis
I CERTIFY THAT THE ATTACHED NOTICE AND AGENDA OF ITEMS TO BE CONSIDERED BY THE
CITY COUNCIL WAS REMOVED BY ME FROM THE OFFICIAL
BULLETIN BOARD ON DAY OF , 2022. TITLE:
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10-12-21 Minutes Page - 1 -
MINUTES
REGULAR MEETING
October 12, 2021
A Regular Meeting was held by the City Council and Planning & Zoning Subcommittee of the City
of Schertz, Texas, on October 12, 2021, at 4:00 p.m. at the Hal Baldwin Municipal Complex
Council Chambers Conference Room located at 1400 Schertz Parkway, Schertz, Texas. The
following members present to-wit:
Members Present:
Councilmember Jill Whittaker – Chair P&Z Commissioner Jimmy Odom
Mayor Pro-Tem Michael Dahle P&Z Commissioner Earl Platt
Councilmember David Scagliola P&Z Commissioner Richard Braud
Staff Present:
Assistant City Manager Brian James City Secretary Brenda Dennis
Deputy City Secretary Sheila Edmondson
Senior Planner Emily Delgado
Planner Megan Harrison
Call to order (Councilmember Whittaker)
Chair Whittaker called the meeting to order at 4:00 p.m.
Citizens to be Heard
No one signed up to speak.
Discussion and/or Action Items
1. Approval of the minutes of the meeting of October 5, 2021.
Chair Whittaker recognized P&Z Commissioner Odom, seconded by Mayor Pro-Tem
Dahle to approve the minutes from the October 5, 2021, meeting.
The vote was 6 ayes, 0 nays, motion passed.
2. Review Consensus of the October 5, 2021, meeting.
Assistant City Manager Brian James provided a quick overview of the last meeting.
3. Discussion regarding design standards for Straight Zoning and PDD’s.
Chair Whittaker recognized Assistant City Manager Brian James who summarized that the
Sub-Committee agreed that if a developer has a small piece of property, the city will allow an
option for straight zoning cap, with the understanding that the design standards would be
approved.
R6 40 acres (7200 sq. ft. lot)
R7 30 acres (6600 sq. ft. lot)
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Mr. James stated if the property had additional land, the developer could come in with R2’s
or do a PDD.
Councilmember Scagliola mentioned that at the last meeting, the consensus was to approve
the R6 and R7 changes, but what was not mentioned was the change in not adding the
criteria of the of every 10th lot being wider. Mr. James stated that in the original guidelines
for R6 and R7, there was language that every 10th lot to be wider. During these sub-
committee meetings, the consensus subsequently was it was not needed, because it creates
to many problems for the developer and complicates it for staff review. This change was a
key factor in Mr. James’ review of the R6 and R7’s changes. The question now is, how
much does it affect everyone’s view on the subject.
Chair Whittaker stated she did remember having those discussion during the sub-committee
meetings that they were going to drop it out of the criteria. She stated it was a side
discussion about the 10th lot be wider and the topic was addressed.
Councilmember Scagliola’s concern was that if it might have changed the vote. Chair
Whittaker asked the sub-committee if anyone else had a concern with removing this
variable lot. As she remembered, the discussion on that particular item was the developer
explained that it would be difficult to make this happen considering the topography and not
able to guarantee that every 10th lot had a variable width. Chair Whittaker asked again if
this topic would change their vote.
Mayor Pro-Tem Dahle added that he agreed that it wouldn’t make much of a difference and
not add value to the project. Planning and Zoning Commissioner Odom agreed as well that
having the 10th lot wider would not make much of a difference. Chair Whittaker added that
there would be variability with corner lots, topography, and curved streets.
Mr. James continued with the summary and wanted to review the discussion of developers
coming with PDD’s; larger parcels of land, areas of planned pods, what is the
average/overall lot size the sub-committee would like to see. Mr. James reviewed that using
the ‘median and mean’ was a way to get what we are after for lot sizes and not play with the
numbers too much.
With this, Mr. James stated hypothetically if we had a 100-acre development come in,
50 acres R2(8400 sq.ft.) = 181 lots
30 acres R6(7200 sq. ft.) = 127 lots
20 acres R7(6600 sq. ft) = 92 lots
A typical lot yield would be approx. 7/10’s of an acre for lots, the other 3/10’s is streets,
drainage, utilities, and unusable space. Inherently some hit their average lot size, but in
reality, approx. 2/3 are larger than that. What you get is an average lot size, which would be
7,605 sq. ft. The median lot size will be approx. 7200 sq. ft., the mid-point when you stack
the largest to the smallest. With the per acre basis:
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50 acres R2(8400 sq.ft.) =3.63 lots per acre
30 acres R6(7200 sq. ft.) = 4.23 lots per acre
20 acres R7(6600 sq. ft) = 4.62 lots per acre
Mr. James continued and explained that if this scenario gives the sub-committee a ‘frame-
work’, are we comfortable with it? He stated he could show the sub-committee what had
been done in the past with PDD’s and explained that we have been all over the place.
For example, with Saddlebrook (did not include garden homes in the calculations) with the
larger lots=approx. 8260 sq. ft, 7080 sq. ft., and 8307 sq. ft average. It’s not an apple-to-
apple comparison since the garden homes were taken out of the equation. Mr. James is
stating we need to standardize the numbers because of the skew, and the avg. being larger
than the mean, which happens depending on what lots are include in the factoring. What
staff would do is only use single family detached lots as a median and mean. If there is
somewhat of a unique project included, staff can run the numbers with and without so you
can get a feel of what they come out at. Townhomes, we would not add because they would
skew the numbers greatly.
Mayor Pro-Tem Dahle agreed this is a fair way to go about this and calculate the lots and not
include the townhomes, because they are a different type of product.
Councilmember Scagliola asked about what exactly stops a developer to come in and do 50
acres of garden homes out of a 100-acre lot? Mr. James replied nothing per say, but most of
the focus that we have been discussing is single family detached, a traditional centered
product. This is kind of where the problem seems to lie. It’s too many small starter homes on
a too small of a lot.
Mr. James reiterated that the sub-committee briefly discussed the issue of multi-family and
unique products: garden homes, townhomes and four-plexes. Staff says this is something
they need take up with the Comp Plan update in terms of how much do we want. To address
Councilmember Scagliola’s early question about 50 acres of garden homes, Mr. James stated
that it would surprise him that we would want to do more garden homes, a greater acreage of
garden homes than R6 and R7’s. Unless there is something unique about it, it would be too
much land just for garden homes in a development plan.
Mayor Pro-Tem Dahle added that this request of 50 acres of garden home would be
controlled through the zoning change. At that time, we would use our discretion to approve
or disapprove.
Chair Whittaker stated that all PDD’s would have to go through the PDD process. What we
are providing is a checklist that includes items that we have already agreed to. Developers,
can get started and follow this, making the approval process for those items on the list go
faster. The rest of the items would be on a case-by-case basis. Mr. James added that process
would go quicker since we would only be focusing on those case-by-case items. As to
address Councilmember Scagliola’s question of a developer comes in and wants 50-acres of
garden homes, Mr. James would respond that it would be twice as big as it needs to be for a
garden home project.
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Councilmember Scagliola stated that there is no definitive rule against it. We end up where
we started from with the density. He added that we have established acreage for R6 and R7’s
in a PDD, and maybe there needs to be an acreage limitation in a PDD for garden homes.
Chair Whittaker believes we are talking about percentage of the PDD, not acreage per say, with
garden homes, it is an additional product that the developers are offering as a variety of
housing, that is a much smaller area. They would not necessarily dominate a development
where the single family residential would be the majority and garden homes a bonus to that
development.
Councilmember Scagliola stated we are here to solidify some ideas because some of the
developers were taking advantage of the PDD process. Chair Whittaker asked what are your
concerns that you feel we need to address. We would need a suggestion on how we could frame
that as a minimum requirement that would be approved.
Mr. James explained as he understands Councilmember Scagliola’s concern. Staff has heard
from both Planning and Zoning and Council that we need more diversity in housing types. To
achieve this, perhaps it doesn’t need to be as restrictive with this, but if Staff sees more of that
coming in, we can address it.
Commissioner Platt stated that he believes that we are already have these issues with the
developments coming in. The PDD and SUP’s process is long but there are guidelines for the
developers to follow. The reason they get held up is that the developers are asking for
something different outside of those guidelines. Smaller lots and density are the problems they
are seeing, and that is why we have been denying a lot of these coming in to Planning and
Zoning Commission.
Mr. James explained that the problem hasn’t really been garden homes, but more of the
standards centered around single-family units. He also explained that we can only regulate
zoning, we cannot regulate how developers price their homes and how the property is marketed.
Chair Whittaker stated that with what is selling and how the market is, single family homes are
what is wanted. Garden homes or townhomes are not what the market is focusing on, they are
sporadic and can be handled on a case-by-case basis. If garden homes were coming in with
developers on a regular basis, she would be in favor of adding it into the equation. She believes
our primary concern is what the market is dictating, it is single family homes, garden homes
and townhomes are something we could not come to an agreement at this time. To come to an
agreement with standards with developments with single family homes would help speed up the
process.
Mayor Pro-Tem Dahle stated looking at what they have here, we are looking for a consensus on
the straight R6 and R7 zoning with enhanced design standards. If a developer wanted to come
in and do straight zoning, it could be processed quickly. He stated we are also coming up with
some general guidelines for the PDD that would help speed up the process. That still does not
prevent someone from coming in and doing something totally unique and bringing it forward. It
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may not appeal to everyone and that is where we have the debate and the discussions. It is
possible that we could agree to disagree, but the majority will vote, and it may or may not be
approved.
Commissioner Braud asked if Homestead had apartments. Mr. James explained that Homestead
wants to do is one big lot, with multiple family with a condo regime. He believes that is what
the trend is. The multi-family developments would be covered in a PDD.
Mr. James added that he believes the goal is to get more folks through more quickly, easier with
a little more certainty, but still meeting the design standards we want. We will not be able to do
this with everyone, especially if they come in with a unique design. He stated that even if
developers came in with a PDD, we could possible knock out 80% based on these standards,
and then we are spending time tweaking the unique products, and therefore be able to get them
through more quickly. If you felt the need to put something in, you could probably put in 25
acres as a cap of the size.
Commissioner Odom stated if we wanted to put numbers to garden homes, it was equated to be
similar to R7 because it has the smallest lot size we are talking about. If a development came in
with 40 acres for the R6-straight zoning and 30 acres for the R7’s maybe changes the number to
20-25 acres for garden homes. If they come in with a PDD percentage wise, if you wanted less
than 20% you could lower the number of garden homes allowed. We could follow R7 and just
add garden homes to it. He believes this could work if you wanted to put numbers to them.
Chair Whittaker stated we just discussed two different items. 1. Straight zoning on garden
homes and 2. With the discussion of PDD’s being 50/30/20, adding garden homes could be
approx. 10% as shown in Homestead and Crossvine currently. To get to the 100% total, you
could have garden homes taken out of the R6 and R7 numbers. She added to get that stamp of
approval for the development would be to have the garden homes percentage from R6 and R7.
Mr. James stated that if they go the PDD route, we will define the module size or R6 or R7. If a
developer came in with 300 acres, they could not do a 60-acre pod or just R6 or R7, they would
have to break it up, opposed to clustering. Again, we do not want to cluster all the small stuff
together and we want to intersperse them. The idea is we do it different than Crossvine, more
like Homestead, Parklands and Saddlebrook.
Chair Whittaker asked if anyone was opposed to adding the 10% availability for garden homes
from the R6 or R7 in a PDD, all agreed so they will add it to the standards.
Mr. James stated in our earlier discussion about median and mean with Homestead, Parklands,
one of the questions was using minimum 7600 sq. ft. for the median and mean, is the
subcommittee good with that? The mean is your average lot sizes. What skews that is when
they have 2 really large lots, the median is the middle lot size when you do smallest to largest
sq. ft lot. Both the mean and median need to be over 7600 sq. ft. If the median falls under 7600
sq. ft, the developers can tweak a few of their lots. Chair Whittaker asked the sub-committee if
they were good with the 7600 sq. ft for mean and median minimum requirement, and the sub-
committee agreed they were.
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Mr. James stated they will present the agreements to the City Council and Planning and Zoning.
4. Discussion regarding the Tree Mitigation Program.
Mr. James explained the general intent of the Tree Mitigation program is to get the developer to
be thoughtful about which trees they take out when they develop property. The challenge is in
the design and construction on that site that is heavily wooded can be problematic. For instance,
if the property needs to be significantly graded to drain properly, the developer has a difficult
time meeting the tree requirements on their property.
Mr. James stated that what the city requires for Tree mitigation is that when a developer comes
in and take out a protected or heritage tree and it is good health, over 8 inches in size, if you
take it out, have to mitigate. He explained you can mitigate by either planting a new tree or pay
into a tree mitigation fund. As much as they want to comply, the developers might have
challenges by the size of the lot and the number of trees on it. Most do a combination of
mitigation and paying. Heritage trees that are 24 inches and greater, they have to mitigate that
to a 3 to 1 ratio. The problem is some of the lots are never farmed and heavily wooded as much
as the developer wants to keep the trees, they end up taking trees out.
Staff suggestion on this for mitigation is that we cap the tree mitigation at $10,000 per acre.
Many times, the developers are surprised by the cost of tree mitigation, and it is a cost they are
unaware of. Most developers are going to do the best they can to save trees and money, but in
the end, some will have to pay.
Chair Whittaker stated that disincentive to developers to take down all the trees, and the money
goes towards Tree Mitigation fund which can be used for planting on public owned property or
maintain the health of trees. Again, Mr. James stated it isn’t about the money in the mitigation
fund, it is how do we keep developers from being thoughtless about trees.
Councilmember Scagliola stated that when the tree mitigation program was implemented it was
to make difficult to developers to cut down some of the heritage trees. Some of the trees could
be 300 yrs. old. It was never to punish the developers with heavily wooded property or get
people to not develop their property because of being heavily wooded. He would like to make
sure the developers are incentivized to keep the trees vs. being punished to clear them to
develop.
Chair Whittaker said this made sense to have the cap at $10,000 an acre. It does not stop
development, but it still encourages developers to be more thoughtful about the trees on their
property.
Commissioner Braud stated the tree mitigation was “gut-punch” concerning the Walgreens
development. Walgreens clear-cut their lot overnight and because of that Planning and Zoning
and City Council put up this tree mitigation plan. It is time it is revisited, because lately its more
of a punishment and a determent.
Commissioner Odom believes this is the way to go with the smaller lots that are heavily
wooded and likes the $10,000 cap. Mayor Pro-Tem Dahle agreed a cap of $10,000 per acre is a
good idea.
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Mr. James stated that staff will use $10,000 per acre and amend the UDC. The sub-committee
was all in agreement.
5. Summarize Consensus.
Chair Whittaker thanked the subcommittee and appreciated the great discussions on each
concern brought up. She also thanked Staff for all their effort.
Adjournment
Chair Whittaker adjourned the meeting at 5:07 p.m.
_____________________________________
Councilmember Jill Whittaker, Chair
ATTEST:
________________________________
Sheila Edmondson, Deputy City Secretary