SUMMARY MINUTES OF A WORK SESSION

OF THE CHAPEL HILL TOWN COUNCIL

ON THE DEVELOPMENT ORDINANCE

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2000 AT 5:30 P.M.

Mayor Rosemary Waldorf called the meeting to order at 5:30 p.m.

Council members present were Flicka Bateman, Joyce Brown, Pat Evans, Kevin Foy, Lee Pavão, Bill Strom, Jim Ward, and Edith Wiggins.

Staff members present were Town Manager Cal Horton, Assistant Town Managers Sonna Loewenthal and Florentine Miller, Town Attorney Ralph Karpinos, Assistant to the Manager Bill Stockard, Planning Director Roger Waldon, Senior Development Coordinator J.B. Culpepper, Principal Planner Gene Poveromo, Planner Phil Hervey, Senior Long Range Planner Chris Berndt, and Town Clerk Joyce Smith.

Mr. Horton introduced Mr. Lane Kendig of the consulting firm of Lane Kendig, inc.

Mr. Kendig presented a series of slides on the topic of Performance zoning.  He discussed this regulatory technique, gave examples of its successful use elsewhere, and suggested why it might be a good approach for Chapel Hill.  In the information supplied to the Council, Mr. Kendig defined Performance zoning in two parts:

(1)   Performance zoning uses standards to solve land use problems; and

(2)   it requires uses to respect environment, neighbors, and community character.

He stated that the heart of Performance zoning was that problems associated with a land use or its impact can be identified, zoning standards can be developed to address the problem, and good land use planning leads to Performance standards. The second part, Mr. Kendig said, would depend on the designer, getting away from the ideas of conventional zoning and the use of prohibition as the primary means by which a land use can be made to respect its neighbors.  He stated that Performance zoning seeks to provide rules that specify the community’s objectives and permit the developer the flexibility to meet those requirements in several ways.  Mr. Kendig said Performance zoning in the legal perspective requires a nexus between the problem and the zoning regulation, and forces the regulations to have a rational nexus.

Mr. Kendig noted three basic controls in conventional zoning:

·        Uses are permitted or prohibited in districts.

·        Density is controlled by lot size, floor area, or building coverage for non-residential uses.

·        Conditional or special uses are used to provide control.   

Mr. Kendig stated that in Performance zoning, a multi-layer standard which regulations are designed to achieve specific general or planning objectives exists.

·        Uses are permitted or prohibited.

·        A combination of density/open space for residential uses and floor area ratios/landscaped surface ratios for non-residential uses is used to control intensity.

·        Limited uses, which are permitted uses with special Performance criteria to include:

·        Additional buffering

·        Selected additional buffering

·        Location

·        Separation from specific uses

·        Spacing between another use

·        Lower height

·        Larger minimum lot area

·        Traffic movement or stacking on site

·        Scale limitations

·        Range of permitted sizes

·        Design requirements.

·        Special uses are used very sparingly.

·        General community-wide Performance standards address specific issues: environmental protection, affordable housing, specific types of nuisances, and adequacy of infrastructure.

·        Bufferyards are intended to separate zoning districts to mitigate potential nuisances.

·        Design standards for buildings and landscaping are intended to promote higher quality design or eliminate monotony in new developments or to create pedestrian-oriented developments.

Mr. Kendig stated that the variety of Performance standards is designed to ensure that new development achieves the goals and objectives of the community.  He referred the Council to the memorandum which contained a section from another community’s ordinance to provide ideas of how others have implemented the standards.

Mr. Kendig was interrupted several times during his presentation by Mayor Waldorf, Council members and Mr. Horton to say that the Council, although interested in the generalities of how other communities handled specific issues, wished to have specifics regarding Performance zoning as it applied to the Town of Chapel Hill. 

Mayor Waldorf said some of the ways the Council hoped to use Performance zoning was with problems regarding parking ratios, traffic generation, stormwater management, other urban environmental concerns, fiscal impacts and others issues, and she asked Mr. Kendig if he planned to discuss those issues.

Council Member Foy asked how much thought had gone into what pedestrians were supposed to do in the parking lots shown on the slides.  He said most of what had been shown was cosmetic.  Mr. Kendig said these standards had to be written into the Ordinance, and the Council would have to think about what it wanted.  He said he was trying to show the Council what could be done in a general way.

Council Member Brown asked where the rezoning was applicable in the Town, since the Town had few places for buildout.  She asked what were they talking about and where was it.  Mr. Kendig said it was a question of what the Council meant by mixed use, and these could be used as standards to write into the Ordinance as performance standards.

Council Member Foy asked if the question of “mansionization” with regard to single-family housing was one of the things that Mr. Kendig was planning to address.  Mr. Kendig said he would try to get to all of the things, and how the different pieces would fit together.

Mr. Horton suggested that Mr. Kendig move into the ideas of Performance zoning.  He said the Council had much experience on the issues under discussion.

Mr. Kendig reviewed on the slides some of the issues which could be written into the Development Ordinance:

·        Borrowed space

·        Landscaping

·        Relative scale

·        Buffer yards

·        Resource protection

·        Land use

·        Road design

·        Lighting plan control

·        Sign control

·        Character

Council Member Ward asked how Performance zoning relative to the environment could be written into the Ordinance.  Mr. Kendig said he would be discussing this at a later point in the session.

Mr. Horton said, again, that the Council needed to move on to the question of how Performance zoning really worked.

Council Member Bateman asked Mr. Kendig how the issue of affordable housing would be written into Performance zoning, and asked that Mr. Kendig answer this question before the end of the meeting.  Mr. Kendig suggested a few strategies which could be done within North Carolina law.

Council Member Brown said there was not much land left in the Town of Chapel Hill for development, and she asked Mr. Kendig what the relevance was to what he had been discussing.  Mr. Kendig said the building scale issue would be very important.

Mayor Waldorf asked Mr. Kendig when the Council would get into the particulars of what it could do in the undeveloped or under-developed areas in the Town with Performance zoning, to allow it to achieve the goals of the Comprehensive Plan.  She said the Town was beyond global and the Council was ready to zero in on the particular problems in the community.   Mr. Kendig said it would be a web of standards.

Council Member Foy asked Mr. Kendig how his approach to affordable housing, by downsizing, differed from what the Town was presently doing.  Mr. Kendig said that only at the time of a rezoning application did the Town have the leverage to force the issue of affordable housing.  He said some standards to mandate affordable housing were needed, but they might be questionable under North Carolina law.  Mr. Kendig said that incentives were legal under North Carolina law, but a developer, under the current zoning, might raise the density in order to make a profit.

Council Member Foy said that was what was being done at present, and the Council is aware that inclusionary zoning is not legal under North Carolina law, and was not willing to take that direction.  He said the current process has been successful in obtaining the affordable housing the Council wanted, and Mr. Kendig’s suggestions would actually weaken the tools the Town already had to reach this goal.  Mr. Kendig explained the strategies he was suggesting in order to be in compliance with the Comprehensive Plan and the Development Ordinance.

Council Member Brown stated that the mixture of housing ordinance was in the Development Ordinance.  She asked Mr. Kendig what he saw as his job in relation to zoning.  Mr. Kendig said his job was to assume that the Comprehensive Plan just adopted was what the Council wanted, and to rewrite the zoning code to achieve what was in the Plan.

Mr. Horton said the thing that was not being addressed was how Mr. Kendig planned to do what was spelled out in the Comprehensive Plan, by using Performance zoning.

Council Member Brown pointed out that there were very few changes in the zoning within the Comprehensive Plan, and she was not sure that changes were the major issue that the Council wished to deal with.  Mr. Kendig said the Council would have to attack the issue of affordable housing from every conceivable angle, which would be accomplished by as many zoning categories as possible. 

Mr. Kendig continued with his slide presentation.  He concluded that there was a broad range of things that Performance zoning could do, which was design- and community-character related.

Council Member Bateman stated that the Town could have clearly written ordinances with clear standards within the process the Town already had, without going to total Performance zoning. She said that the land remaining to be developed in the Town was getting less and less and that any process that the Town attempted, without giving the citizens the opportunity to express their opinions, would sell the public short.

Council Member Evans expressed her disappointment on Mr. Kendig’s presentation, saying that she had hoped, instead of a generic presentation, the Council would have received a presentation on Chapel Hill, and what had been done right and what could be improved upon.  She pointed out the issues that had been discussed, but were not relevant to the issues that were particular to Chapel Hill.

Council Member Brown said the consultant had been given clear direction from the Council about keeping the public involved in a very vigorous public process.  She added that the Council was also being cut out of the long review process.  Council Member Brown said there were a number of parts in the Ordinance that needed to be strengthened and built upon to achieve the purposes which the Council wanted.

Council Member Strom agreed with the other Council members who had expressed their concerns.  He felt that by having the Performance zoning standards there would be much less uncertainty at the Special Use Permit phase of the development process.  Council Member Strom said the goals for Performance standards were clear and well defined in the Comprehensive Plan.  He said he remained uncomfortable at eliminating public input at the beginning of the process.

Mayor Waldorf suggested that the scheduled Tuesday evening meeting be cancelled in order for the Council to regroup and get together with the staff to decide how to proceed. She said they were very interested in Performance zoning, or Performance standards, but she did not feel that the information presented this evening had given the Council a good basic knowledge of whether it wanted to switch from Special Use Permits to Performance zoning standards.  Mayor Waldorf said the Planners and the Manager would then present the Council with their information on Performance zoning and Performance standards.

COUNCIL MEMBER WARD MOVED, SECONDED BY COUNCIL MEMBER STROM, TO CANCEL THE SCHEDULED TUESDAY NIGHT MEETING WITH THE CONSULTANT.  THE MOTION WAS ADOPTED UNANIMOUSLY (9-0).

Mr. Horton said the other advisory boards that were scheduled to attend the Tuesday meeting would be notified of the cancellation through e-mail and the help of the media. 

The meeting adjourned at 7:11 p.m.