HomeMy WebLinkAboutMIN 04.25.2023 CC-SMinutes of the City Council
City of Georgetown, Texas
Tuesday, April 25, 2023
The Georgetown City Council met on Tuesday, April 25, 2023, at 1:00 PM at Inner Loop Annex, 295
SE Inner Loop Georgetown, TX 78626.
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Agenda Notice
This is a joint workshop between the Council, the Planning & Zoning Commission, and the
Unified Development Code Update Steering Committee.
NO OFFICIAL ACTION WILL BE TAKEN AT THIS MEETING.
1. Regular Session
The following P&Z Commission members were in attendance: Travis Perthuis; Chere
Heintzmann; Tim Haynie; Doug Noble; Chris Stanley; Colin McGahey; and Steve Dickey.
The following City Council members were in attendance: Josh Schroeder; Mike Triggs; Ron
Garland; Kevin Pitts; Jake French; Ben Stewart; Shawn Hood; and Amanda Parr
The following UDC Steering Committee members were in attendance: PJ Stevens; Wendy
Cash; Michael Walton; Josh Schroeder; Brad Smith; Shawn Hood; and Steve Dickey.
The following staff members were in attendance: Sofia Nelson; David Morgan; Nick Woolery;
Travis Baird; Jessica Lemanski; Maddison O'Kelley; Zane Brown; Grant White; Ryan Clark;
Cesar Acosta; Diane Johnson; Haley Webre; and Olivia Beams.
1.a Workshop Session
Purpose of Joint Session:
There are two main purposes of this workshop:
1. To provide the City Council, Planning and Zoning Commission, and UDC Steering
Committee the opportunity to receive an update on progress made on the UDC
Diagnostic and Rewrite process.
2. To allow for group discussion and to build consensus on the following question: How
would you describe the ideal balance of predictability (development standards) and
discretion in project review (public hearing with concept plan)?
Morgan called the meeting to order at 1:00 p.m.
Nelson explained the purpose of this meeting and the guiding principles, as well as the
meeting outline. Nelson also introduced the Planning Department staff present at the
meeting.
The P&Z, UDC, and Council members were broken into small groups. Nelson gave the
small groups 5 minutes to brainstorm ideas about the predictability and purpose of the
UDC. The small groups discussed their answers for 15 minutes to identify their top 5
responses. Each table presented their top 5 responses.
For this exercise the following topics were discussed: allowing a developer/applicant to
always know where they are in the development process; subjectivity within the code
applied to City Council and P&Z rather than just City Council; clarification on approval
criteria and creating clearer/less subjective criteria; enforcement of comprehensive plan
when it's aged; how often to update the Comp Plan needs to be updated as often as any
other plan; updating the Future Land Use Plan; mapping the process and providing points
of contact for each point in the process would be helpful; and the larger group identified
common themes in their responses and assigned those themes to a table to discuss.
Nelson asked the small groups to identify their answers under a single theme. The groups
discussed for 10 minutes and the following topics were discussed: how the process should
move from a more subjective process in the beginning (zoning) to a more predictable
phase (site plan, etc.); consideration for a quick, cheap, fast way to find out if a proposal
has a likelihood of being approved; updates to other standards regularly and appeals
process for the decisions made; unintended consequences; zoning categories with clear
design categories and standards will help eliminate the need for PUDs; fairness and
consistency without favoritism through the whole process; consistent process regardless
of the interest group; implications; need to streamline the process; County, City, and
Council need to be on the same page; opportunity for tracking, easy to understand for
stakeholders; staff needs clearer guidelines to easily interpret criteria; flexible options with
predictable outcome; how staff and developers want predictability; how Council may not
have a good handle on what P&Z is dealing with; moving some things out that get caught
up in engineering or other processes; roadmap for applicants and Council for the process
would be helpful; "predictability" should not be average/low quality; and identifying markers
of quality.
Nelson thanked the participants for their thoughts.
Mayor Schroeder opened the public hearing.
Ken Aaronson addressed the group and provided comments on the following: predictability
can be about where things go; flexibility is when things go there; need to look at what is
there now; minor PUDs are handy and turn a large process into a small zoning case; and
when to use base industrial zoning but exclude certain uses.
Glenn Mongold addressed the group and provided comments on the following: how to
handle predictability; how predictability can be in conflict with creativity; how to define
predictability; and how nobody should have to be restricted in the way they can be
creative.
Mayor Schroeder closed the public hearing.
Adjournment
Nelson adjourned the megting at 2:57 p.m.
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