The Arlington City Council held a special meeting on December 10, 2024, starting at 12:45 PM. The meeting began with an executive session for legal and real estate matters, then reconvened at 2:38 PM for presentations and discussions on tree preservation, FIFA World Cup 2026, energy efficiency, and various policy items. The council reached consensus on the Tarrant Appraisal District Board of Directors appointment for 2025.
John Chapman, Long Range Planning Manager, presented proposed changes to the Unified Development Code (UDC) to enhance tree preservation. The changes were developed after a year of meetings with the Municipal Policy Committee and external stakeholders (Landmark Preservation Commission, Impact-Arbor, Developers Round Table). Key proposals included:
Jennifer Wichmann, Deputy City Manager, and Monica Paul, Executive Director of the Dallas Sports Commission, presented an update. Key points:
Nora Coronado, Director of Asset Management, presented an overview of the city's energy efficiency initiatives. Highlights:
Councilmember Odom-Wesley reported that the Municipal Policy Committee met and discussed a proposed ordinance to regulate boarding home facilities. The ordinance would require annual operating licenses, criminal background checks, property owner consent, initial and annual inspections, and enforcement tools (citations, license suspension/revocation). The impetus came from a case in Arlington where a group home owner was indicted for murder due to substandard care. The committee agreed to move forward with drafting a comprehensive ordinance expeditiously, as surrounding cities already have such ordinances. Councilmember Gonzalez suggested adding a requirement for proof of property tax payment as part of the licensing process. City Attorney Shortall noted that could be explored. The ordinance will be brought to the full council.
City Attorney Molly Shortall provided an update. The council is working toward five charter amendments to be placed on the January election ballot. No new items were added.
Treasurer Ethan Klos presented the current vote totals from taxing entities across Tarrant County. As of the meeting, the top contenders were Blaylock (who already has enough votes to be appointed), Burgess, Campos, Pena, and Puente. After extensive discussion, the council agreed on a voting allocation to maximize Arlington's influence and ensure representation. The final consensus (with Councilmember Pham dissenting on some allocations) was:
Okay, we'll go ahead and call the afternoon session back to order. We're gonna move on down to 3.1. John. How are you? Good afternoon. Let's see here. There we go. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. John Chapman, long range planning manager for the record. I will be talking to y'all about the tree preservation and mitigation item as part of the today's work session. As many of you are familiar with, we have gone uh to extensive amounts over this past year, meeting with the municipal policy committee, and then also meeting with many of our external stakeholder groups that have also talked about trees over this past year and some previous years before. Um some of those additional stakeholders' groups include the landmark preservation commission as well as uh uh impact, uh Arbor, which is a realtor association, and then uh DRT, the developers round table. Uh all of these groups uh gave us the green light, uh which is why we are here today. Um so to go over today's agenda, we'll be reviewing the 2019 amendment and kind of what spurred the conversation that led into this UDC amendment, changes to the point system based on the results of that um uh question about the 2019 UDC amendment, some significant stand updates, heritage tree, which would be a new addition to our UDC, uh development incentives for tree preservation, um, some other miscellaneous revisions brought up by staff as well as some suggestions from our external stakeholders. So back in 2019 we had a UDC amendment that went forward that amended a lot of our tree preservation and mitigation requirements. Um it was then brought up to uh a question was brought into staff regarding that amendment and its implementation uh success. Uh after some analysis, it was determined that even though we uh the objective was to protect more trees as part of that 2019 UDC amendment, uh we found that uh we were in fact allowing developers to remove a greater number of trees or the tree canopy from Arlington as part of that UDC amendment back in 2019. So that then spurred the uh review of a lot of our point systems as well as including new criteria for the heritage tree. So uh just a broad overview of how the point structure for our bonus points have changed. You see the buckets of trees uh that are related to bonus points, our cross timbers, the bonus trees, as well as significant stand. In the middle there is how the point systems are currently calculated when developers propose new development, and then on the right hand side is the proposed changes. Cross timbers and bonus trees are looking at a reduced uh value in the point system. Significant tree stand, however, is looking at an increase, and that is also due to an increase in the definition and requirements to uh meet a significant tree stand. So moving into that, what we're looking at is our existing conditions for a significant tree stand would be two and a half caliper inches uh minimum for each of those trees with three trees uh and then no more than 10 feet apart from each other. Um and that would be a 1.5 bonus point. What we're looking at doing is really beefing up the standard for uh trees to be meeting the significant tree stand requirement. Um, because what we've heard during this conversation is that we really want to make sure that as uh people are visiting Arlington or residents are walking down their sidewalks, visiting businesses that we're can uh keeping and incentivizing the much much more mature trees that are in stands uh to keep those as part of new developments. So we've increased the number of trees uh that would need to be uh part of a tree stand from three to five, increased the maximum caliper size for each tree to be identified within the tree stand from two and a half up to eight inches, um eight inches being a a much more mature size for many of our tree species that would be protected or cross timbers uh to really show uh characteristics of mature trees, and then uh also increasing the maximum spacing. So the objective here is to really refocus what a significant stand is by increasing those standards. And then we will also ensure that it will be explicitly stated that there is no double dipping of our bonus point structures. So if a significant tree stand included cross timbers, the developer would need to determine based on their development and what they're proposing which point system would behoove them the best, whether that be significant stands or through the cross timbers. So no double dipping. Heritage tree would be a new addition to our point system. These would be defined as cross timbers trees that are more than 40 or at least 40 inches or greater. They would receive a times two bonus point as part of the preservation calculation. And this goal, the goal here is to deincentivize any proposed removal of these truly significant and mature cross timbers trees in Arlington that honestly you can't replace. So by making it more bonus points, we're really incentivizing these types of cross timbers trees. And then this would be the only type of tree that you would actually have a penalty for removing. So it really becomes a part of the conversation when developers are laying out their site and likely you know trying to figure out how to maneuver around these types of trees. So moving into some development incentives as part of tree preservation. Each category is receiving a proposed incentive for single family, multifamily, and then mixed use and non-residential. For single family, the current requirement that is not being amended at all is that there needs to be 35% preservation on total caliper of inches on the site. The incentive that would be related to single family would be that if a developer was to exceed that 35% preservation requirement up to 50%, they would get an equal decrease or reduction in the lot area and lot size requirements. And then after some feedback from council, we've also added in here and underlined it the dwelling size requirement. So that would be that's part of y'all's consideration is to also include a reduction in dwelling size. So that would be a reduction limited to no more than 50%. So that's where I got that 50 overall was 35 plus 50. So for each additional percentage over that 35% up to a total of 15%, you would receive that reduction. For multifamily, the first bullet point of 10 preservation as a requirement would be new to our multifamily category. So the incentive that we're looking for or proposing on that is a reduction in the garage parking requirement, which is something frequently cited as part of many of the multifamily plan development applications seeking relief from that standard.