All right.

We're live, so I will call to order this October 30th, 2025 meeting of the Harrisburg Planning Commission.

Commissioners Alcindi and Kitler are unable to join us tonight.

The other five are present.

So we have a quorum.

I will quickly welcome Commissioner Jesse Order or for his first meeting.

And perhaps we'll go into that maybe more linked at the next regular meeting.

But glad to have you with us.

It's a special meeting that's called.

We have one item of business is to consider initiating a zoning ordinance amendments related to inpatient substance use disorder treatment facilities, hospitals, and other related terms.

And with that, I'll turn it over to staff.

Oh, great.

Thank you very much.

So Ton Dang, Deputy Director in Community Development.

So thank you for getting together this evening for this special meeting.

What I'm gonna present to you all this is uh staff's request for planning commission to initiate consideration of zoning ordinance amendments related to inpatient substance use disorder treatment facilities and other related terms.

Um this had been presented to uh this body, the planning commission for public hearing in October uh on October 8th, uh so earlier this month, where this body had given unanimous unanimous approval for zoning ordinance uh amendments that staff had presented to you all.

Um within that report, staff had uh shared with you that there had been a building permit application filed for uh an inpatient substance use disorder facility on property in the city that is zoned R3.

And then following that public hearing uh around October 13th, the attorney for that property owner uh had sent us a letter and informed us of information that we had not been previously aware of, uh, which was a procedural requirement in state code, specifically section 15.2-2286 subsection A7 that describes that to initiate a zoning ordinance amendment, it either has to be initiated by resolution of the city council or by a motion of the planning commission, neither of which we had done for that uh zoning ordinance amendment.

So with this new information, uh we are correcting uh you know what we had uh done uh to get the procedures correct, and we are asking you all this evening to uh consider a motion then to uh allow staff to re re-advertise and bring this back to you all.

Um and we plan to bring it back to you all next month in November at the November 13th meeting.

Um if you have questions, if you're thinking, you know, maybe folks who are listening in might be wondering what about all of the other old past zoning ordinance amendments that we have passed where we didn't follow the procedures as outlined in state code.

Um in consultation with our city attorney's office.

Um it was determined that those appeal periods for those zoning ordinance amendments, the 30-day appeal period has passed, so those zoning ordinance amendments are okay, but we didn't want this one to get challenged as we move forward with it.

Uh, should city council you know uh agree to uh approve the amendments that we'll pro bring to them.

So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions you have, and I ask if uh you all would consider a motion.

What is the what is the likelihood that when this comes back formally when when the actual amendment comes back before the planning commission that there will be public opposition to it?

I don't know.

I mean, I guess yeah, we'll we'll find out.

Yeah, we will advertise it for the public.

Now it's had two times at Planning Commission.

Maybe more people will have heard about it.

Um perhaps that that property owner that I described may come to the public hearing so we may hear from them.

Thank you.

Please.

I'm just wondering about what this means procedurally going forward, because it seems like we get stuck in a loop.

Like staff brings us a recommendation to ask staff to do an ordinance.

Now it takes two months to get through planning commission.

And that's what we're looking at right now.

So we are evaluating we have a non-staff or an ordinance amendment from somebody else that we've been working with applicants on.

Um what I anticipate will happen is we will be presenting to you all their zoning ordinance amendment for you all to make a motion next in November, and then in December you'll hear it at public hearing, and then it will go to council in January.

And that would have been for um the item that we thought was going to come to you all in November, which was the R8 setbacks.

Um so there was an item that I presented at the end of the last meeting of upcoming items on the agenda.

We've had to bump that.

We've already discussed that with that applicant and told them look, this is what we found out, this is procedurally what we're gonna do.

Uh and so we're working through that process.

But I on November 13th, I anticipate I will be presenting to you all that and possibly other staff generated or initiated uh amendments that we would eventually like to bring forward to you all.

So, yeah, it really does sound like it'll take two months.

Us requesting staff on staff's recommendation, then staff comes back the next time.

What?

I mean you can recommend that we request something.

This is what you're doing now.

Correct.

And in this case, we've already prepared the amendments in the future.

It might be like really early and you know, discussion.

We haven't done the research yet, but we might come to you all and say we want to do an amendment on X topic.

Um we haven't worked out the details yet, but we've recognized we need to clarify things in the zoning ordinance or this other issue had come up.

Um let us initiate, then we'll do the research, and you may not hear from us for many several months after that.

Okay, so that's possible.

So in response to this, you'll back chain a bit in in some cases to bring our request to you before you do the work.