The Sandy City Planning Commission met on Thursday, February 5, 2026, at 6:15 PM in the Council Chambers and online via Zoom. Commissioners considered four public hearing items, including a sensitive area restoration special exception, a subdivision with special exceptions for a flag lot and sidewalk width, preliminary subdivision approval, and an office condominium plat. Eight commissioners were present; Commissioner LaNiece Davenport was absent. Commissioner Cameron Duncan recused himself from the first item and was replaced by alternate Craig Kitterman.
Recording stopped. Good evening, and welcome to uh the February fifth uh planning commission for C D City. We'll do a quick round of introductions of Planning Commission members and then uh I'll have James Sorrenson introduce staff. Cameron Duncan. Jennifer George, Dave Bromley, Danny Schoenfeld, Ron Mortimer, David Hart, Steve Rigley. James. Thank you. I'm James Sorrens, the community development directory of Darren Alcorn, the senior attorney for the city. Mike Wilcox Planning Director. See, we have Thomas Irvin with us, senior planner. Melissa Anderson zoning administrator, and we have Craig Kitterman who's an alternate to the planning commission in the crowd with us tonight as well. And then Aisha over here is planning secretary. Thanks. Thank you. We'll do a quick pledge of allegiance and then we'll get into our agenda. Under God with liberty and justice for all our first public item tonight is the special exception for restoration on the sensitive overlay with 30% at 9677 South Quail Hill Lane. Chair, can I recuse myself on this one? Yep, please. And then Craig Ketterman, one of our alternates will be sitting in his place for this particular item. Wants to take it away. All right. Thank you very much. Chair and Planning Commission. Yeah, so this is just a proposal to restore a sensitive area. It's a restoration plan with grading and landscape plan. And it's at uh 9677 South Quail Hill Lane. And so the city had been notified of potential disturbance in areas that were meant to be protected. This slide shows on the subdivision plat where areas were designated as non-disturbance areas. And we have an area that was identified, and you can see the corresponding pictures show that there had been like a retaining wall and grading done in that area. So a citation was issued for this, and so the property owner has been working with staff and prepared grading plan as well as landscape plans. So this was the plan that was submitted a portion of that area to illustrate uh how they proposed to remove the retaining wall, regrade it, uh similar to the extent possible as the original conditions, and then to uh re-landscape uh with uh they're going to put down some matting and seeding with uh native um grass seed, and then also uh putting in some uh some trees and so we only had a couple um recommended modifications to the landscape plan. One is to add tree protection to preserve the the new scrub oak from any wildlife from consuming them, which they like to do when they're small little trees, and also to arrange the new trees and place them in an area in a way that kind of mimics the natural pattern versus a formal linear uh equidistance pattern. So that uh the rest of the conditions are standard, so those two uh recommendations to the planning commission were added as conditions of approval, uh, and staff recommends that the commission approve the restoration plan with the grading and landscaping. And so if you have any questions, I'll be happy to um answer them. The applicant uh is here and they can answer any questions too. So I I just have one question. Um I noticed that if you go back a click, it says uh temporary irrigation system. I'm wondering how long that will be there. Because once the trees are planted, they obviously are gonna need water. And how long do we anticipate that they will need water before they are able to live on their own without being watered? Right now we don't have a specific date identified. The plan doesn't have a specific date, it's uh cited as um, you know, to uh get the vegetation established. Um not sure if it's wise to add a specific date. Well, uh the code only requires temporary irrigation if it's planted during certain times of the year. Um these are native plant materials that they're placing, which don't necessarily need to have irrigation if it's planted in the spring or in the fall when we tend to have a little bit more um wet uh season. Well, this uh winter excluded, obviously. Um I I would say uh there's normally enough moisture content in the soil that there's enough to get those established in the spring. So having a temporary irrigation system uh plan for now will help get those roots established, but it's really um it if they're not planted during um or if they're planted past I think it's April in our code or before October, they do require a temporary irrigation system. Yeah, no, I think it's great, and I I want them to get established. I just don't want them to get partway established and then have a hundred and eight degree day and have everything die.