Like you're looking at her from like your next yeah potential for a point.

Okay, Rice.

Thank you.

All right, welcome everyone to the Thursday, December 4th meeting of the business and community affairs committee.

Uh today we have one item on the agenda, and that is a discussion involving minimum lot sizes for development.

I believe planning director Ms.

Hudson has a presentation.

Correct.

So I'll go ahead and turn it over to you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So uh just a little background for uh the discussion on the minimum lot sizes.

We were at the October 2nd Bacca meeting and uh looking at you know whether or not we would uh have no minimum lot sizes in the following districts.

So the R1, so all basically all of our residential districts.

R1, R1A, which is our single family attached uh district, R2, which is our uh multifamily you see mainly duplexes in that uh district.

RM2, basically the same thing.

RM6 is our apartment district, and then R3 is also a multifamily district.

I think it at that meeting, one of the things that we talked about was you know what what precedents have we seen.

So we went back and we looked at a few places and spoke hand, Houston, Austin, and Fayetteville have greatly reduced the minimum lot sizes in their residential districts.

And apparently uh Texas now prohibits 19 of their largest cities from requiring lot sizes above 3,000 square feet or lots with widths uh greater than 30 and depths uh greater than 75 feet.

So as we talked about before, the considerations for the minimum lot sizes, there's uh this will touch not only the zoning ordinance, but it'll also touch the subdivision regulations that Scott and his group uh review.

But uh we would be looking at uh the building setbacks, minimum lot frontages, minimum lot widths, the lot coverages.

That's something I want to touch on today as well.

And then also in the subdivision regulations, uh currently it is um they have to abut the street no less than 35 feet, but at the build line.

So right now at your 25 foot front yard setback, we require a width of 50 feet.

So is that for like cul-de-sac?

For cul-de-sacs, yeah, typically um other factors that might be impacted by reducing uh or you know, having no requirements or minimum lot sizes, and this is one of the things I really want to hone in and I want to talk about, and I actually asked other staff to be here today so we could get some discussion going on it.

But the utilities and sanitation, one of the things that I didn't put on here and I should have is mailboxes, uh people getting their mail.

Um but you know, we're talking about the trucks coming in and picking up the polycarts.

I just want to make sure when we start looking at this that we've got we're able to serve these developments, you know, for the citizens.

Uh another thing, the off-street parking requirements, uh current regulations require two off-street uh parking spaces, and then it you know, we've talked about this before, but the emergency vehicle access as well.

So we met about this several times, and our recommendations, and again, I'm open for for discussion on this, but our recommendations moving forward, we would uh like to start with the 35 feet at the street frontage.

We would not have the 50-foot width requirement, so that would be gone.

Um looking at minimum dot uh lot depth of 75 feet, so going from 100 to 75, and then one of the things we talked about last time, and again bringing it back around, is the front yard uh setback.

So 15 feet for the uh the main building, but bumping the uh garage setback to 25.

Currently the minimum is 20, but I know that Scott had mentioned in the last meeting that when you put it at 20, you know, you can get one car, but if they try to squeeze two cars in there, you're hanging over the sidewalk.

Or or a pickup, the the modern size pickup.

The only way it can be off the sidewalk is to literally have your bumper on the garage door.

So to leave a little bit of space to make sure that we're maintaining our ADA compliance and make sure that you know, I know that one of the goals here is to be able to create neighborhoods that are very inviting and friendly and a really interesting front scape and inviting people front yard.

Well, if all the driveways are blocked and you can't get up and down the sidewalks, you kind of start losing that feel.

And I know I spoke with uh yourself uh and and the mayor about that after the last meeting, and we kind of I discussed that.

So that's where that comes from for us.

Yeah, but I think yeah, it's important that we you know allow the garage to be set back much further than the entrance.

We want entrances and porches to front street, not garages.

So we're totally okay with that.

Agreed.

Uh so for the side yards, still keeping that at the five feet for access, getting your lawnmower back and forth, you know, from the yard and everything.

And then the majority, so right now it's a 20-foot rear setback, but the majority of the uh PUS that you guys have seen, for as long as I can remember, one of the requests is they ask for a 10-foot rear yard setback.

And so that was what we fell back on for the rear yard on that one.

Um existing off street parking standards, and then also uh maintain the existing 65% lot coverage.

I think if they're gonna go below the 65%, then they have to go in for rezoning and give council the opportunity to review it.

That's my suggestion at this point.

Um before I go to the images, I just want to circle back on uh the discussion about the widths and getting services into the subdivisions and for the residents and everything.

And the other thing I I thought about, and I wanted to make sure I said this today, was if we don't have anything at all, and someone engages with an engineer and an architect to design their neighborhood, they come in, they they apply, we go to DRT, and we say, I'm sorry, this isn't gonna work.

So we send them back, they have to redesign, so then they're upset.

You guys are getting the phone calls.

So I think if we have that minimum, that base that we can uh you know give to the individuals when they come in and talk to us, I really think we would be ahead of the game as opposed to just saying nothing.

Yeah, and I mean I think the idea is we want to we want to open it up to see what the market will build, but at the same time not overwhelm you as a staff that where you're having to make judgment calls here and there and have nothing to really back it up with.

Exactly.

So I think having some set of standards is fair, um, as long as the the goal being the lot size itself, like no minimum there, but there's certain metrics you've got to hit set setbacks, you've got to get certain things.