Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutPacket - PC - 04-24-2007 City of Milton Deerfield Professional Centre 13000 Deerfield Parkway Building 100, Suite 107 E Milton, GA 30004 **Meeting Codes: CZIM-Community Zoning Information Meeting; DRB-Design Review Board; CDRM-Community/Developer Resolution Meeting; PC-Planning Commission; MCC-Mayor and City Council X:\City Planning Commission\PCAGENDA APRIL 24.doc PLANNING COMMISSION AGENDA Tuesday, April 24, 2007, 7:00 pm Agenda Item Description Meeting Dates** Staff Recommendation PC Recommendation I. Invocation II. Pledge of Allegiance III. Call to Order IV. Amendment of By-Laws V. Approval of Minutes Minutes from the March 19, 2007 Special Called Planning Commission Meeting Approval VI. Approval of Minutes Minutes from the March 22, 2007 Planning Commission Meeting Approval VII. Citizen Input for the Crabapple Crossroads Overlay District and State Route 9 Overlay District MINUTES City of Milton Planning Commission Special Called Work Session March 19, 2007, 6:00 PM Commission Members Present: Bob Moheb, Paul Hackman, Paul Moore, Curtis Mills, Fred Edwards, Cary Schlenke, George Ragsdale Commission Member Absent: None Meeting Leader/City Staff: Tom Wilson Community Development Director Other City Staff: Robyn MacDonald, Planner Angela Rambeau, Planner Mike Tuller, Assistant Manager-Planning & Zoning WELCOME • Tom Wilson welcomed the members of Planning Commission and introduced staff. • Meeting commenced with the Pledge of Allegiance. • Meeting opened with Community Development Director Tom Wilson making the announcement that the meeting was a work session and there would be no voting. REVIEW OF ANALYSIS REPORT FORMAT • Commission was provided with any supporting documentation they did not have prior to meeting commencing. • Commission Member George Ragsdale moved that the By-laws be approved provided that they addressed the proposed changes at the next meeting in April. • Motion made by George Ragsdale and Seconded by Paul Moore that By-laws be approved as written. • Cary Schlenke • Vote was unanimous. NOMINATIONS FOR CHAIRMAN AND VICE CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMISSION • Tom Wilson called for nominations for Chair of Commission. • Commission Member Bob Moheb nominated George Ragsdale for Chairman. • Commission Member Curtis Mills nominated Paul Moore for Chairman. • No other nominations for Chairman. Tom as if there was any other discussion or if they would like to hear from the candidates before voting. • Commission Member Paul Moore gave reasons he believed he is qualified to be Chairman of the Commission, including the past committees and commissions he has been involved in. • Commission Member George Ragsdale gave reasons he believed he is qualified to be Chairman, including the past committees and commissions he has been involved with as well and added that he did not believe the comprehensive plan is the correct plan for the City of Milton. Page 1 of 10 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Monday, March 19, 2007 Page 2 of 10 • Commission Member Curtis Mills stated that regardless of the election outcome, he hoped all Members will continue to work together in a positive environment. • Tom Wilson then called for a vote for all in favor of Commission Member Paul Moore. • Four votes were counted • Tom then called for a vote for all in favor of Commission Member George Ragsdale. • Three votes were counted • Tom Wilson then announced that it was unanimous that Paul Moore was duly elected as Chairman. • Tom Wilson then turned the meeting over to the newly elected Chair, Paul Moore. • Commission Member Paul Moore moved to elect George Ragsdale as Vice Chair • It was unanimously voted that George Ragsdale be elected as the Vice Chair of the Commission. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES • Commission Member Paul Moore asked Commission if everyone had had received and reviewed the minutes of the last meeting on 2-28-07. • Commission Member Paul Moore stated he believed the minutes captured their first meeting very accurately and asked if the electronic recorded was kept and, if needed, could the tape be available to them. • Tom Wilson advised the Commission could be provided a copy of the recording, as well as any citizen that may want a copy of it and could get in a day or so or in a few hours if really needed. • Motion was made by Curtis Mills to approve the minutes and Seconded by Cary Schlenke. It was unanimously voted that the minutes be approved. PUBLIC COMMENT • None. BRIEFING • Tom Wilson advised the Commission that this was a briefing about the Text Amendment to the Zoning Ordinance RZ07-002. He advised that any decision-making would not be done this evening, because the regular public hearing would be on Thursday, March 22nd. He explained he would answer any of their questions as he went through the document. • Commission Member Paul Moore called for the first action of business, which was to review and approved Text Amendment RZ07-002, the Text Amendment to the City of Milton Zoning Ordinance, Chapter 33 Signs; Chapter 12G, State Route 9 Overlay District; Chapter 12H(1).2, Crabapple Crossroads of the NW Fulton Overlay District; Chapter 12H, NW Fulton Overlay District. • Tom Wilson again advised the Commission that nothing this evening would be approved and there would be no votes. The meeting is strictly for information purposes and to ask staff if they had any questions about any of the presented documentation. • Commission agreed to talk about overlays first and sign ordinance last. • Tom Wilson stated that the largest part of the document before them was Chapter 33, the Signs. The other parts do 2 things. One is to put the Highway 9 Overlay District under the Design Review Board. Changes needed to be made in order to accomplish this. Recommendation was made that as the NW Fulton Overlay District was changed, it would be called the City of Milton Overlay District, as everything is under the NW Fulton Design Review Board. Page 2 of 10 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Monday, March 19, 2007 Page 3 of 10 • Tom called for questions about changes in Chapter 12 or Article 12 • Tom explained that they expanded the limits of the NW Fulton Overlay District to include the newly annexed property. They are now part of that district and not part of the Highway 9 Overlay District, just the NW Fulton Overlay District. • Vice Chairman George Ragsdale lead discussion about how changes or proposed changes should be made to the text of the ordinances. • Tom Wilson indicated the Commission needed to study the changes before the public hearing. Suggested that the members individually share their proposed changes with one another. It was agreed that they needed Staff to provide members an electronic copy of the WORD document to them instead of PDF and perhaps different members use a specific color for their respective changes. • Tom Wilson agreed to facilitate this for the Commission and said it would be important to have the correct final version to be advertised to the public. • Discussion among the Commission Members about various ways to get the changes implemented and have a master document. • Robyn Macdonald talked about ways to get long documents to them due to the length of the documents and talked about possibility of providing cds and/or splitting up the emails. All wanted hardcopies of documents. • Commission Member Cary Schlenke stated she believed the Commission should try to stay neutral until the fact- finding is completed. • Commission Member Paul Moore stated that they should not be drawing any conclusion and that will be done • Tom Wilson discussed with staff that any of the documents sent to the Commission will follow to the public hearing and if there are comments that the Commission want to make about that document and ways in which they may want to change it, that it would be in text amendment, not on the rezoning cases. That is the arena for the editing string back and forth. • Robyn MacDonald said there will probably be other amendments as the zoning ordinance is cleaned up. • Continued discussion with Tom Wilson and Commission about ways to make their suggested edits and changes. TEXT AMENDMENT RZ07-002 • Vice Chairman George Ragsdale stated that as they go along reading through the documents they should note recommendations for clean-up. For example, the City has adopted what was the Fulton County Zoning Resolution. Believes that where it says “Resolution,” it should be changed to “Ordinance.” • Discussion about the overlay map not being correct because it did not take out the areas that were annexed by the City of Alpharetta. Commission Member George Ragsdale stated they are still showing as part of the Highway 9 Overlay District. • Commission Member Bob Moheb asked if they could get better maps. • Robyn MacDonald stated that they create new maps. • Lengthy Discussion with Commission Members and Staff about the Overlay Districts. • Tom Wilson told the Commission that the purpose of the Amendment was to simply roll Highway 9 under the DRB. • Discussion of possible changes or to rewrite of Highway 9 Overlay District to discuss at the regular meeting on March 22nd. • Vice Chairman George Ragsdale stated that in last paragraph of 12-G.3, it states that the “Design Review Board shall review all plans” but he felt this is incorrect. It should be changed to say that it excludes “detached”single family homes. Page 3 of 10 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Monday, March 19, 2007 Page 4 of 10 • Discussion with Commission and Tom Wilson about builders and their own design review boards and the subdivision HOAs. Tom explained that detached single family homes were omitted from this review because it was a layer of government that extended too far. • Lengthy discussion with Chair Paul Moore, Tom Wilson and Commission Members about single family homes coming under the Design Review Board and small and large builders and their own design review boards and the pros and cons of both positions. • Tom Wilson told Commission that Staff would clean up all the errors in the document automatically, but their job would be recommending approval or denial of the document with additions and modifications. Stated that they did not need to concern themselves with errors. Reiterated that this meeting there are no votes, so it is just about discussion at the briefing and at the regular meeting they could make motion to amend, etc. • Vice Chairman George Ragsdale asked if sign ordinance is no longer under the purview of the DRB. Tom Wilson stated that this was correct and that it was removed from all the overlays. • Chairman Paul Moore had a question about 12-G.4 (b) (3) where it referenced retaining walls, talking about “facing” and whether construction was to be faced on both sides. Tom Wilson said if it is an exposed wall, then it probably should be faced. You could say, “all exposed portions of a retaining wall shall be faced.” Commission agreed. Chairman Paul Moore also stated that in (4) when talking about “non-combustible materials” it did not make any reference to what the materials are. Asked if Commission can define materials. • Tom Wilson responded they could define materials, as well as other changes, but he did not anticipate that the Commission would be discussed these types of changes at this meeting. Tom told Commission he would be more than happy to provide an editable format of the document to them so they could at their leisure go through and make any recommendations they wanted to, then give to Staff and they will prepare the text amendment. • Tom Wilson said he really wanted the Commission to comment about the differences in the document (changes in blue) they are looking at and the one that is currently adopted. • Tom told Commission that any part of the document could come up for public comment at the regular meeting. Public may have other things they want changed that are not reflected in the blue-lined copy. • Commission Members expressed his concern about whether they are about to get really busy on a lot of bigger things. Wants to do this right, but afraid maybe burning limited retention span. • Chairman Paul Moore stated he believed they are going to get really busy, but felt with electronic copies, they can be better prepared for another special called meeting. • Tom Wilson said just handle one thing at a time that you can handle and not everything at once. That is what the Staff does. • Chairman Paul Moore and Fred Edwards said they went through the collection of documents and it took about 6 or 7 hours to review just looking at inconsistencies or cleanup. • Vice Chairman George Ragsdale discussed in Attachment B “monument and wall signs” – last page before the map, last paragraph. • Robyn MacDonald said that the entire last paragraph needed to be removed. Right before the NW Overlay Map. • Lengthy discussion among Commission Members about the sign ordinance. • Discussion among Commission Members under 12-H about NW Fulton references and whether those should be changed to City of Milton. • Robyn MacDonald stated that those changes could be made. • Discussion among Commission Members under 12-H-3.6, changing to say “Milton” • Commission Member Cary Schlenke asked about the Fulton County Tree Protection Ordinance and whether it should now says City of Milton. • Tom Wilson said it was adopted as Fulton County Tree Ordinance, but it is still Milton’s. It was suggested that for those types of changes, a global search could be done and changed • Tom Wilson told Commission that the Birmingham Master Plan and the Crabapple Master Plan are policy documents and not ordinances and have never been passed as ordinances. He stated that when the Commission takes the document to do a complete rewrite if they want to in order to restrict it further, you could do that, but stated they would not find policy statements in this ordinance. He told Commission it is different than policies. Page 4 of 10 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Monday, March 19, 2007 Page 5 of 10 • Tom Wilson told Board they can make the recommendation to the City Council, but they would have to adopt it. • Vice Chair George Ragsdale stated that now that the NW Fulton or City of Milton Overlay District equals the city boundaries, there is an opportunity to create an umbrella and put all the other overlays under that instead of separate stand-alone ordinances. Commission Members agreed with the idea of having in one place for consistency purposes. • Robyn MacDonald told Commission that the Crabapple Overlay (Crossroads) it does address single family design standards. Tom Wilson said they are taking single family out for detached houses. • Tom Wilson told Commission that the Highway 9 District as it stands today will go under the purview of the Milton Design Review Board, but will not change any of the standards, nor add the extra layer, the lower layer to it. That is not how it currently operates and not the intent of City Council when Staff was asked to do that. • Commission Member Bob Moheb asked if main purpose of the regular Thursday night meeting was to get the sign ordinance through and put Highway 9 under the Design Review Board. • Tom Wilson told Commission Members that this was correct and also to remove single family homes from the Crabapple Overlay District. That is what these documents with the blue marking were for, and also to change the name of the Design Review Board to be the City of Milton Design Review Board and then to discuss Article 33, the Sign Ordinance. He stated that the reflected changes were suggestions made by the City Council in their work session. • Robyn MacDonald further clarified intent of removing the detached single family homes from Design Review Board. • Lengthy discussion among Staff and Commission Members about builders and homeowners with respect to rights to design their homes and role of Staff and the Design Review Board. • Robyn MacDonald told Commission that Planning does review single family home permits, so before it would go on to the building official for review, that they look to see if it is part of overlay district. Advised that they look at the renderings and the elevation to make sure they are meeting the minimum requirements of the overlay district. • Lengthy discussion about the problems with the Crabapple district was developed. • Tom Advised Commission that the ordinance is just discussing the architecture of single family homes, not the clear-cutting or the density that is seen there. He said that if the Commission feels that the architecture and design of single family homes is not consistent with the decision of the people of Crabapple or Milton, then maybe they need to be left in there. The Design Review Board can only review the same standards that Staff can review and Staff can review without the two month process of going to the Design Review Board. • Robyn MacDonald advised Commission that the Design Review Board has concerns with the overlay districts as well and want to make changes in conjunction with the Planning Commission. • Tom Wilson pointed out to Commission that he did not believe that Staff, nor the Design Review Board, nor the Board of Zoning Appeal, nor the City Council agree that these entire set of documents they are discussing are the right set of documents, and stated that every single one of them need tweaking from beginning to end. Said that we are a new city and understands that they want to make changes, as he does as well, but it is a very long process to do so, it has to play out in a public arena, but feels it will have to be done a little at a time. He suggested that they make changes as quickly as they can, but one area at a time and right now, just not looking quite as deeply. Advised they should make the decision among themselves what areas they want to change and work on one area at a time. • Discussion about need to prioritize. Tom Wilson told Commission that City Council did prioritize and ranged them in order of importance. The Comprehensive Plan being number one and that was unanimous with all of them. Said if there is an interest by the Commission to be involved with the Comprehensive Plan, City Council needs to be made aware of this and make the decision. The Plan will kick off on April 30th, so there is a lot to do before now and then. • Further discussion about what is under the Comprehensive Plan and the importance of this Plan. Page 5 of 10 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Monday, March 19, 2007 Page 6 of 10 SIGN ORDINANCE • Discussion with Commission and Staff about the billboard lawsuits. Tom Wilson said he preferred the City Attorney should be the one discussing this, but he would say he felt the city was in a good position to win via summary judgment. • Vice Chairman George Ragsdale asked if the City Attorney had written an opinion about any constitutional concerns about the Planning Ordinance as written. If he has written opinion that would avoid the Commission proposing changes that are going to render it unconstitutional, then there is no point in going forward with it. • Tom Wilson advised that he had and stated that this ordinance is a content neutral sign ordinance and the only type of ordinance that is sustained in the courts. He explained that the challenge is if there is not a content neutral sign ordinance, it can be contested by a sign company and the entire ordinance can be thrown out and then we would be left for a period of time with no sign ordinance at all, and this ordinance has gone as far as the Eleventh Circuit Court, and has been upheld. • Discussion about the sign size and height. • Tom Wilson advised that this issue is not content based. Told Commission that they can change size and height, but can not change what the sign says. • Chairman Paul Moore asked what the Commission should be expecting at their first regular Meeting on March 22nd. • Tom Wilson said he believed there would be a lot of conversation about the height, and the size of the signs on the Highway 9 Overlay District. Told Commission that in that district the size of the signs are 64 square feet and this amendment would drop it down to 32 square feet and no higher than 4 feet. This is requirement for monument signs. He continued to tell Commission that the size and height of the signs would be a big issue. • Tom Wilson also said he believed they would be hearing about billboard issues. Tom told Commission that they wanted to totally eliminate billboards and took them out from the sign ordinance but that their sign attorney advised they needed to be put them back in and at a reasonable size. Told Commission that the Planning Commission will have to decide and ultimately for the court to decide, what “reasonable” size would be. • Tom Wilson believes that the business owners will come in and talk about the different parts of the ordinance that do not work for them and the Commission will have to decide whether they are going to pass along to City Council with or without their recommended changes. • Discussion about reasons for sign size changes. Tom said that sizes have been steadily coming down in size. He thought that going from 64 to 32 was a drastic drop and that it might make more sense to go from 64 to 50 and then eventually to 48 or 32 and drop them down slowly so that they are not competing with larger signs. Eventually all the signs are not competing with each other and will be in compliance. He said the change in size is both a matter of fairness and safety. You do not want people trying to read signs that are so small they are stopping in the right-of-way rapidly trying to read and potentially causing an accident. He said signs must be readable and because of the safety issue can be both a curse and a benefit. • Question was asked about the size of our billboards. Tom Wilson said that they are usually 660 or 680 square feet on big highways going to various cities. He said that nobody wants anything that size along Highway 9 – nothing close to that. Tom talked to the Commission about the different sizes of billboards ranging from 64 square feet to 600 square feet. He said that it is the matter of the context in which the billboard is seen, what is around it, how big are the buildings around it, and how big are the other signs around it. You have to consider what is around the billboard for what size is necessary. • Recognition by Commission of the hard work that has been done to date on this ordinance by Staff. • Tom Wilson told Commission that at the City Council Work Session, not everyone was in consensus on this matter. Blue-line comments are what Tom thought he could get consensus on. He said opinions were all over the place, but nobody wanted to go any bigger. • Commission Member Bob Moheb talked about his concerns over the monument signs like in strip malls and that sometimes 10 businesses are trying to get on one sign. He said we want businesses to want to be in our city for revenue and need to consider this when deciding on sign sizes. Page 6 of 10 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Monday, March 19, 2007 Page 7 of 10 • Tom Wilson told Commission that any sign that has been permitted within the last year is probably 64 square foot unless they appealed to the Board of Zoning Appeals and got a variance for a larger sign. • Discussion about some other local businesses in the city and the sizes of their signs, and that the needs of a particular commercial business should be considered in the size. • Tom Wilson asked Commission if he could start going through the Ordinance and the highlights of it. Tom said that the purposes are set out in the sign ordinance. Provisions of the ordinance goes back to the purposes. • Tom Wilson said that on page 3, No. 5, a statement was added by the City Attorney. Supreme Court said that free speech cannot be prevented, but that we can regulate its size, place and manner. • Chairman Paul Moore asked a question on top of page 4 as to why no mention of banners made of plastic or vinyl. It references cloth, paper and fabric. • Tom Wilson said that on page 6 a change was made regarding what a temporary sign was – Said that a temporary sign is a non-permanent sign, and it shall be removed within 10 days after the purpose for which the sign was intended to advertise had been accomplished. • Tom Wilson told the Commission that if you want a content neutral sign ordinance, that means that a person can have a “for sale” sign on their property, they can have it no matter what it says. Content of the signs are of no concern to us any longer. • Discussion about neighborhood covenants addressing these issues. A 2 x 2 foot informational sign can be put on property. • Commission Member Fred Edwards said he though 10 days to remove signs was too long of a period. • Tom Wilson said the Commission had the power to change to 3 or 4 days if they desired. • Continued lengthy discussion about temporary and permanent signs and the sizes allowed for new developments that builders can place. • Tom Wilson and Robyn MacDonald directed Commission Members to page 19 and discussion about what it said about the sizes. He said that page 18 it addressed the informational signs. Concluded that a monument sign for a subdivision, a flag, a 2 ft. x 2 ft. general information sign, or a banner. • Tom Wilson said banners can be different sizes, but can only be up for 40 days per year, and election signs are exempted. He also told Commission that if existing signs, i.e., real estate signs that had been properly permitted, they would have been grandfathered in and could remain. Otherwise, if not in compliance, code enforcement would have to make sure they come down when they can get to it. • He told Commission that he felt certain real estate people would be at meeting Thursday saying this change is not going to work for them. • Tom Wilson told Commission that if you are going to allow any sign on residential property, then you are going to have to allow it on every residential property regardless of what it says. Said that this is the entire point of what this pivots on. • Tom Wilson told Commission that he felt the commercial businesses are going to be more upset about these changes than the citizens, and that the Commission is going to hear this at the meeting and have to decide what to do. • Tom Wilson told Commission that at the regular Thursday meeting, they would be Staff presentation, then public comment, then public hearing will be closed, and then talking among themselves, there would be a motion to recommend approval of this ordinance, then probably there will be an amended motion that would include the amendments that they may want to make, there would be a vote on the amended motion, and then it would go to City Council based on whatever the motion was. • Vice Chairman George Ragsdale asked again about the time limit for public comment. Page 7 of 10 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Monday, March 19, 2007 Page 8 of 10 • Tom Wilson said that the business community knows there are time limits, so they have more than likely rehearsed what they are saying, but there will probably be a lot of others that may want to speak so you will have to decide what you feel is a reasonable amount of time to talk, as long as long are saying something different that what has already been said. • Commission Member Fred Edwards asked Tom Wilson a procedure question. If they what to consider a decision could they call for a motion to table it. • Tom Wilson said they could table it, but told Mr. Edwards that we have been advised by counsel that something needs to be done quickly before more billboard applications come in, so this really needs to be wrapped up rather quickly. • Commission Member Cary Schlenke asked Tom Wilson what if they let the realtors leave their signs up as they are and just did not enforce it. • Tom Wilson said it is totally against the regulations and could not do that. He said eventually the billboard companies would catch on and ask why this was not being enforced, so the answer is no, this could not be done. • Tom Wilson told Commission that there are different signs allowed in different districts and different combination of signs allowed in different districts. The biggest district in Milton being the agricultural district. He said that the standard informational sign does not have to be permitted. Referenced pages 18 through 21 that covers this. • Tom Wilson told Commission to keep a list of motions that they want to address, as they will probably be fairly long. • Chairman Paul Moore said he didn’t see anything that addressed “inflatable signs.” • Tom Wilson told Commission that there were in the section called “Prohibited Signs.” • Tom Wilson continued reading through the ordinance page by page. • Vice Chairman George Ragsdale pointed out that everywhere in the document where it says “manager” it should be changed to “director.” • Tom Wilson stated that on page 9 when it speaks of the Board of Zoning Appeals granting a variance, originally it was restricted to 1 1/2 times the maximum size of the sign. This variance now has gone up to two times the size of the sign. City Council made this change fearing that the BZA may approve something too large. You would have to go to the BZA with a hardship, so City Council set this limit and now may be considering up to 2 times the size. • Tom Wilson said that in this document the size of wall signs have been reduced. The maximum size used to be 180 square feet. The current size is now 100 square feet. • Tom Wilson stated on page 10 of the document, they changed the time from 60 days to hear a case to 80 days, because of advertising and scheduling. • Commission Member Fred Edwards asked about “balloons.” Tom Wilson said that balloons are no longer allowed. • Vice Chairman George Ragsdale asked about “for sale” signs placed in vehicles and parked for advertising. • Tom Wilson stated that there is another section in the document that prohibits vehicle signs from being within 100 feet of the right-of-way. As for as “for sale” signs being placed in vehicles in cars for advertising that are being driven around, Tom Wilson said it was not addressed in this document. He said this needs language needs clarification so the intent is clear. • Tom Wilson stated that on page 16, there was an interesting change. He said that wall signs used to be measured by a 4-sided rectangle or square. This now allows you to have an 8-sided polygon and draw it as close as you need to around your sign and you will get a little break for irregular shaped signs. Page 8 of 10 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Monday, March 19, 2007 Page 9 of 10 • Chairman Paul Moore asked about signs like the Chick-Fil-A signs that protrude out, like 3-dimentional types. • Tom Wilson said that there is no restriction in the 3rd dimensional portion, as long as the size of the sign is in compliance. • Chairman Paul Moore stated that this is something the PC may want to consider having restrictions on 3rd dimensional signs for depth of the portions that protrude, i.e., shall not protrude more than a depth of 12 inches from the sign base. • Tom Wilson said it they did this, it should be added to portion where it talks about 8-sided polygon on page 17. • Tom Wilson told Commission on page 18, No. 4, that they did allow a sign 2 square feet open and close sign that would be neon tubing, as most of those are these types of signs. • Vice Chairman George Ragsdale asked about an item on page 16, Section 21(c) Setbacks, and whether it should say “the greater of 10 feet from the right-of-way, or 20 feet from the edge of the payment?” Tom Wilson said yes, and made the change. • Discussion about lighting on signs and can they specify types of lighting, particularly brightness. • Tom Wilson told Commission that we do not allow internal illumination. • Discussion with Commission Members and Tom Wilson about flags allowed, from page 19. Tom read the definition of flags allowed to Commission Members from document. • Tom Wilson instructed Robyn MacDonald to add to the flag definition, “legal entity.” • Long Discussion about small size (smaller than 24 square feet) banners, i.e., garden flags, home-type flags (Christmas, Halloween, springtime, etc.) being allowed without a permit. • Robyn MacDonald suggested defining the definition of flags so it is content neutral. • Tom Wilson continued to read through sign ordinance, talking about important specific parts of same. • Tom Wilson said an amendment change in paragraph 23 (h) to differentiate mix-use that are other than family, shall have one for development, and the single family development shall have one per lot will have to be made by Commission to get changed. Agreed to also remove (g) by motion. • Chairman Paul Moore stated that the meeting is going to be very complex due to the number of items to cover, and asked Tom Wilson for guidance and suggestions on how to conduct meeting. • Tom Wilson suggested that he would probably take the documents they had marked up, make a list of the changes that the Commission wants to make, and have it ready, reminding them that it will take consistency among them to make the changes. Motion will be to approve the document with the following changes, and then vote on the changes one at a time. If there is a majority vote, then the change will be accepted. If not, then you will have to go through change, by change, like City Council does. • Robyn MacDonald spoke to Commission on having public comment after each article (33, 12-H, 12H-1, etc.) and then make motion after each article. • Tom Wilson continued to read through sign ordinance, talking about specific important parts of same. • Tom Wilson then started talking to Commission about the Highway 9 District. Pointed out that at the bottom of page 28, under (b), it was changed from 64 square feet to 32 square feet for multi-tenant sign and the height to 6 feet that used to be 20 feet. Told Commission that this will be generating a lot of public comment at the regular meeting. • Lengthy discussion about height of signs in various places on Highway 9. • Tom Wilson continued reading through sign ordinance and said the setback line was changed from 5 feet from the right-of-way to 10 feet. • Tom Wilson told Commission that under paragraph 21 (f), they reduced 2 or more businesses that share a single sign from 32 square feet to 24 square feet. These are what you will be hearing the most about at the regular meeting. • Tom Wilson told Commission that in (j) they decided that a sign should not be more than 6 times as long as it is high. Page 9 of 10 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Monday, March 19, 2007 Page 10 of 10 • Tom Wilson told Commission that the wall signs are not to exceed 100 square feet and that it used to be 180 square feet, so this was a significant reduction that they will be hearing about. • Lengthy discussion about windows, sizes, and allowances, and signs that require and do not require permits. • Discussion about prohibited signs. • Discussion began about Crabapple District. • Tom Wilson told Commission on page 35, removed 2 per developed to 1 per development for subdivision entrances. • Tom Wilson told Commission on page 36 under prohibited signs, added a list of types of signs to be prohibited. • Discussion about Birmingham District on page 38. • Tom Wilson answered various questions about changes in Birmingham Overlay and continued to read from document. • Discussion about lighting concerns. • Discussion about window signs. • Tom Wilson and Commission discussed the process of making their changes with a WORD document being sent to them, process of getting changes to one another, procedure for getting through their motions and the public hearing. • Open discussion about the fact that they are going to have to make tough decisions and changes and that there will probably be a lot of the public that will not be happy, but their focus is for the betterment of the city and not trying to make decisions that will cause undue hardship for anyone. • Commission stated that staff did an excellent job in guiding them through the process, and that they will take advantage of the WORD document for making their suggested changes, sticking to the Chair recognizing people for comment, and sticking to procedure instead of free-for-all method of speaking. • Tom Wilson told Commission that this would be probably one of the most difficult meetings for their first meeting, dealing with the sign ordinance. • Commission decided after their decision was made, they would tell public that if the issue was important enough to the community, they could certainly address it with City Council. • Last 10 minutes of meeting was just open general discussion. ADJOURNMENT After no further business, the Special Called Work Session adjourned at 10:20 PM. Dated Approved:______________________ ____________________________________ __________________________________________ Francesca Ivie Tom Wilson City Clerk’s Office Community Development Director Page 10 of 10 MINUTES City of Milton Planning Commission Regular Meeting March 22, 2007, 5:30 PM Commission Members Present: Curtis Mills, Bob Moheb, Paul Moore, Cary Schlenke, George Ragsdale, Fred Edwards Commission Member Absent: Paul Hackman Meeting Leader/City Staff: Tom Wilson Community Development Director Other City Staff: Robyn MacDonald, Planner Angela Rambeau, Planner Mike Tuller, Assistant Manager-Planning & Zoning PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE Meeting commenced with the pledge of allegiance. INVOCATION Lead by Chairman Paul Moore’s son, P.J. Moore. Chairman Paul Moore told everyone that P.J. was a senior at Milton High School and is actively involved in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Student Venture and was also a student leader at North Point Community Church. Chairman Moore then asked everyone to stand for the Invocation. After invocation, Chairman Moore said that if anyone knew of a student of family member that would like to lead the invocation or the pledge of allegiance in the future, it is encouraged in the community. MEETING CALLED TO ORDER Chairman Paul Moore called the meeting to order and began reading the conditions of the meeting. He stated that this was a regular meeting of the City of Milton Planning Commission, introduced himself, advised that the meeting is a 7 member appointed by the Mayor of the City of Milton and City Council, appointed for the purpose of holding public hearings and making recommendations on zoning, use permits, current variance applications, comprehensive land use plans, plan maps, and other related plans and amendments to the zoning ordinance. He stated he wanted to acquaint attendees with some of rules and procedures in conducting the meeting. He said the applicants and all those speaking in support of an application would be allowed a total of ten minutes to present a petition, and that the applicant may choose to save some of that time for rebuttal following presentation by the opposition. The opposition will be allowed a total of ten minutes to present its position. He said if time remained, the opposition would be allowed to rebut. He explained that the burden of proof is on the applicant would be allowed to make closing remarks by the time remaining in the allotted time. He said that the staff of the Community Development Department would be keeping track of the time and would remind speakers of the time remaining for their presentation, and each speaker will have to fill out a public comment card and leave it with Staff. All speakers have to identify themselves by name, address and organization applicable before beginning their presentation. He further explained that each application has been properly filed with the Department of Community Development. Signs have been posted on each site, the matter has been advertised, and the notices have been mailed to property owners affected by the zoning, as required by the Milton zoning ordinance. The Planning Page 1 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 2 of 66 Commission’s recommendations will be forwarded to the City of Milton Mayor and City Council for final disposition. The Mayor and City Council hearing will take place in approximately three and a half weeks from this hearing in these council chambers. He continued to state that the Community Development Department had reviewed the applications in conjunction with the various agencies and departments, both internal and external to the city and the facts, findings and conclusions are before the Commission in written form which has been made available to all petitioners and the public. He went on to say that any demonstration of any sort within the chamber is prohibited, so to refrain from any applause, dialog with the person speaking or outbursts. He instructed everyone to turn off cell phones or place them on silent, advised that all remarks will be addressed by the Planning Commission, and show same respect to the person speaking that you would respect to receive yourself. He said that in addition, the applicant is not to submit material to the Planning Commission during the meeting unless requested to do so by the Commission. All material you wish to submit in consideration of an application should be submitted to the staff of the Community Development Department, to be included in the normal distribution of the packets to the Commission. Finally, he advised if the applicant’s petition is deferred in accordance with the Milton Zoning Ordinance, they would be required to update and obtain a new sign for reposting. Failure to update or repost would result in further delay, and stated there are no exceptions. Chairman Paul Moore then introduced other members of the Commission: Mr. Fred Edwards, Mr. George Ragsdale, Cary Schlenke, Bob Moheb, and Commissioner Curtis Mills. Chairman Paul Moore then opened the floor for public comment. Advised that there was a maximum of ten minutes for this, and asked that the comments be contained to the maximum of ten minutes. Tom Wilson made a comment that this is public comment unrelated to anything on the present agenda. Chairman Paul Moore called for any public comment, and there was none, so public comment was closed. Chairman Paul Moore then introduced Tom Wilson, Community Development Director. Tom Wilson stated that the first agenda item was RZ07-0002, the Text Amendment that modifies 4 Articles of the currently adopted Zoning Ordinance Resolution. For simplicity sake, he stated he wanted to take these items one at a time and at the end of the discussion to have a motion to approve or deny each one of the items individually. He asked if they wanted him to start with Article 12-H-1, Crabapple Crossroads Overlay District. The modifications to this document are to affect the change to remove single family detached housing from the purview of the Design Review Board that was the only change in the document. Chairman Paul Moore suggested that they start with Article 33, recognizing that there were people in attendance and that this document would probably more attention than the others. Tom Wilson started that this document is a content-neutral sign ordinance, adopted by the Mayor and City Council on December 21, 2006. At that time, they made some modifications before they adopted it, and most recently, about 3 weeks ago, the City Council met in a work session to review this document and make some additional comments. He stated that the comments seen in the document are unlined. He also advised that in the document before them they would see items highlighted in yellow. Those were some corrections and additions furnished to staff by Commissioner Ragsdale. He advised further that there are a couple of places in dark blue that he would like to discuss with Commission when they got to that point. These are things that he believed need to be set up a conflict or content base. He believed this only occurred twice, so with that he recommended that they approve the Article once they had an opportunity to review those sections. He stated he would be more than happy to discuss them now if they liked. Chairman Paul Moore said okay, let us go ahead and do that. Page 2 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 3 of 66 Tom Wilson said okay, on page 18 at the bottom of the page you will see that the word “continuous” has been highlighted for 10 days --- a banner shall be allowed for a period not exceeding 10 continuous days, with no more for such 10 continuous day periods being permitted for a calendar year. He stated that this meant that 4 10-day periods must be 10 consecutive days, and he said he did not have a problem with that. If we are trying to say that we must have all 10 day periods back to back, then he wanted to have more discussion about that matter. He did not have an opportunity to call and ask them about this. Vice Chair George Ragsdale said that this was his language and stated he felt “consecutive” would have been a better work and it was not the intent that it be 4 10-day periods back to back. Tom Wilson asked if he would consider changing the word “continuous” to “consecutive” and Mr. Ragsdale said yes. Chairman Paul Moore asked if this was in all 3 instances, and Mr. Ragsdale said yes, but there were only 2 instances that he saw. Mr. Ragsdale said that the “continuously” at the end is appropriate. Tom Wilson said granted. Tom Wilson said that he believed there was one other place in the document that talked about signs and automobiles. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he thought it was under “portable signs” on page 13. Tom Wilson said that got into content-based. The mention here is that only advertising that specific vehicle for sale is content-based and he stated he felt they needed to avoid that. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked what the reasons for avoiding were. Tom Wilson advised that the entire sign ordinance is content-neutral, and that this was what their goal was, to have a content-neutral sign ordinance so that it would not be easily challenged by others. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he accepted that change and felt it was the right thing to do, but he would change it to say that except that signs posted inside the rear window of a vehicle shall be permitted. Chairman Paul Moore asked Mr. Ragsdale if he said in the rear window only and he replied, yes. Tom Wilson asked if they want to put a limit on the size and Mr. Ragsdale said yes, just suggested taking out the only advertised as a specific vehicle for sale. Tom Wilson said that those were his only concerns with the document and stated that the Commission makes approval to the City Council for approval of the document. Chairman Paul Moore asked if there was a motion to----Tom Wilson said, call for public hearing first. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he was sorry, but in looking through the document he saw there were some additional changes before they made the motion. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said that on page 5, regarding the definition of “Manager” the global replacement took out Manager, but Manager needed to be changed to “Director.” Page 3 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 4 of 66 Tom Wilson said that regarding other amendments to the document, there will need to be a motion to approve at the public hearing, and then each of the items in the documents will need to be brought up one at a time as a friendly amendment and voted upon. Chairman Paul Moore said so that suggestion should have been held until a friendly amendment. Vice-Chairman George Ragsdale said he really should have held it, so it was his fault. Chairman Paul Moore said, okay, so at this point, we need move to public comment. He said that each person making public comment must have a speaker card submitted to the staff and again stated that they must restrict their comments to the limit of 2 minutes per individual. PUBLIC SPEAKERS First Speaker: Kim Horne, 415 Wade Glen Court, Milton, GA 30004. Thanked Commission and staff for taking the time to update and get the ordinance content-neutral, the way it should be. She said that a couple of things she noticed was that the draft ordinance looked like it has things in it that are prohibited in certain overlays, but are allowed in all areas, which means there are some conflicts. One of these was the neon signs in Section 25, page 18. She stated they are permitted in all zoning district, but neon signs are not prohibited in the Birmingham Master Plan or the Crabapple master plan, so she was a little concerned about this. She said that also, regarding window signs stated, they were allowed in all districts, but are prohibited in the Birmingham Master Plan and the Crabapple Master Plan. Also, regarding billboards, she stated she knew that had to be mentioned for legal reasons, but she felt what is out there is still a little too large. Her research showed that most of Alpharetta’s billboards do not exceed 8 feet, so if the size of the billboard can be limited to 8 feet, she thought that was a good idea. She said she would like to have that no billboards would be allowed at all in the Crabapple Master Plan and the Birmingham Master Plan. Second Speaker: Brian Snelling, 1450 S. Johnson Ferry Road, Atlanta, GA 30319. He said he appreciated the time spent on this and that he had been to all the City Council meetings discussing the sign issues. He works for developer representing tenants that want to move into the area and he actually will be involved in getting building permits. His concerns are that the document appears to be changed frequently and he wants to attend the meetings to keep up on things. First he noticed that in the December meeting the variances were limited that could be applied for in size. He knows that it is being proposed to just allow two. He asked that they limit that and trust the BZA members to make the right decision based on what specific variances are being applied. A few other things were that several of the changes in the State Route 9 Overlay District which affect a project he has been working on for a few years – the multi-tenant monument signs that are being reduced to half the allowed size from 64 ft. down to 32 ft. and limit the height to 6 feet. Said that with multi- tenant signs, you need obviously more than one tenant sign up there and if you have 3, 4 or 5 tenants all up there, there are going to have 2, 3 or 4 square foot monument sign, then someone driving down Highway 9, especially as far back as these signs have to sit, he believed this would cause them to slow down even more to see which sign goes where and where each tenant is. Regarding the wall sign changes, on page 29 (j), it looked like a new line was added – the length of the sign shall not exceed 6 times the height of the sign. He said he asked that this not be the limit. He did not know if there is a right limit, but for example, he said that one of the major signs he has been working on for a while happens to be 6 x 6 times longer than it is tall, so this means that because of this restriction, I will have to go argue my point on this. Regarding setbacks, it has been increased to 10 feet. It is already set back pretty far off the right-of-way, especially on Highway 9, they are pretty deep. 5 ft. to 10 ft. he did not feel was too big of an issue, but the sign ordinance is already pretty restrictive, and the more it is restricted, then the businesses that want to move into the community and be part of it, pay taxes and be here, buying property or signing 30, 40, 60 year leases, they want to feel welcomed in the community and there are already some very restrictive ordinances in place and he knew were heavily negotiated with businesses and Page 4 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 5 of 66 residences over the past 15-20 years, but now they are getting even more restrictive. He said he believed this sends the message that you do not want these businesses in the community and some will decide to move 5, 6, 10 miles down the street where it may not be so restrictive. He stated he did not believe this would be a good thing for Milton because he believed there is a place in the city for a rural community and also a business community. His main concern was the 6 times the height of the sign. He asked that this not be approved. He likes that they were increasing the limit on the variance, but did not want a limit on the variance and let the BZA make a decision based on the location, topography or the specific variance being brought. Third Speaker: John McMillan, 14255 Thompson Road, Milton, GA 30004. Said he knew much of you. He said he would like to agree with Brian Snelling and to read to the Commission a note that he got today from Rick Mohrig, which he believed gave a very clear idea as to what is going on. If he has a couple of seconds, he said he knew that when the infamous concrete block building that Montana’s is in went up, he saw Bob *** [0:21:17] at church and I told him that we do not want anything like this again, so what can we do. He said to me that he was trying to do an overlay district in Johns Creek and asked me if I would like to do the same thing in Highway 9 and I said yes. He stated that he bought some property over there and wanted to protect its value, and Bob said great, then why don’t you be on the committee. He said that he, Rick Mohrig, Sidney Hollingsworth, I think it was Joel Cochran? Back then, I think maybe Heidi and some others, but anyway, a very good representation of the Bethany area of the residents association, myself, Howard Carson? And some other business owners were there, so they labored for years and revised and updated it, but always with Bob’s look and overview, so he said he knows that everybody spent a lot of time and effort and a tremendous amount of thought to come up with the overlay district. Terry Robinson called 2 minute— John McMillan said, you are not going to do that to me are you? John McMillan continued: So anyway, this is my part of what I wanted to see. So we have tremendous buying in from the community, it was well thought out and anticipated far in advance of these other overlay districts. The other thing is we bought property here with the anticipation that we can put up the kind of signs that we legally had the right to and that is one of the reasons for making investments in Milton. The small tenants have a very difficult time making money, paying the taxes, the rent and the sales taxes. Said they did not need to make it any more restrictive. He stated that basically, the ordinance as is is fine and they did not need to be decreasing the anchor tenant signage down. Did not believe this was a good idea for business. He stated that this area is a 45 mile per hour highway and the place where these little signs are – you come to a stop and you have time to look at them. The other signs are pretty and are appropriate for those areas, but he believed it would be a very bad idea to try to impose this at this late date on the Highway 9 Overlay. He said he talked with Cindy and she agreed with that, he talked with all the Milton business committees as well and this is really the group that he represented. Then I will read Rick’s letter at the end. He felt Commission should leave well enough alone. The sign on Frye’s is 200 square feet and is appropriate for that sized building, and the same thing for Wal- Mart. He then said, so here is Rick’s letter to you – I know my 2 minutes are up, but I will read it: John, Per our discussion, I’ll recap how the current Hwy 9 Sign Ordinance came about. Around spring 1999 (or 98), I was approached by Betsy Stark of Fulton County ECD concerning forming an overlay district along Hwy. 9. I was one of the original members of the committee, representing the homeowners, as you were to represent the development/business community. We worked for over a year to come up with standards which included signs, building setbacks, and acceptable building materials, among other details. This was a pretty intensive work effort; with time spent to try and come up with a sign ordinance that was new (one did not exist specifically for our area). What we arrived at we all thought was a fairly comprehensive ordinance with guidelines that would work along Hwy 9 that both the business community and residential Page 5 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 6 of 66 community thought was fair and would help tighten up signs and building materials along the Overlay District. My view was that the residential community was fairly represented by a number of major neighborhoods along the Hwy 9 area, including Belleterre, Crooked Creek, Hermitage, lake Laurel and Sun Valley (those are the ones I remember). We still needed improvements in areas of the Overlay document as we were not allowed to put a design Review Board in place and there are other areas that still need clarification today (e.g. building materials, etc.). What I have heard regarding the sign portion of the Overlay is that there are no major concerns today. Most pressing is the Design Review Board and building elevations of proposed buildings. I suggest you also speak to other members of BARA to get their input, but no one has been “screaming” about signs at this point. I’ve asked several folks for their direct input on signs as we were told there were grave concern among many constituents about the signs along Hwy 9. I have not received this input, but will continue to solicit from those I know and have worked with prior to our Council Meetings on April 12th and 19th. Please let me know if you have any questions on the above. Thanks, Rick Mohrig John McMillan thanked Commission for their time. Commission Members asked for a copy of Rick Mohrig’s letter. Robyn MacDonald left to make copies of the letter. Vice Chair George Ragsdale stated to the Chair, Paul Moore that unless they voted to extend the public speaking time, the allotted time was up. Commission Chairwoman Cary Schlenke moved to extend the time for public speaking period. Motion was seconded and it was unanimously passed to extend the public speaking time for another 2 minutes. Public Speaker: Carol Lane, 14890 East Bluff Road, Milton, Georgia. She said she never had to come up with these plans, but she was sure a lot of thought and work had to go into coming up with them. She said, however, that we are the City of Milton and believed that we are trying to be unique in the way the city looks. She said we are not turning down businesses, and this is the flavor of what it looks like and it is a challenge to do that. She stated she did believe that businesses will want to come here and appreciate what it looks like, because the residents will appreciate what it looks like. Chairman Paul Moore asked if there was additional public comment. There being none, public comment was closed. Chairman Paul Moore called for motion on the first Article. Tom Wilson said this is where you get a motion; call for a second, there is discussion and then through the discussion would be the friendly amendment portion. Commission Member Cary Schlenke asked if there would be questions from the people that spoke before we did that. Tom Wilson advised that this could be done before or after the motion. Page 6 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 7 of 66 Commission Member Cary Schlenke said she had a question from John McMillan. She said she was just curious about what year the work that he spoke about on the overlay took place for Highway 9. John McMillan said it took place around 1998 and then an update in the early 2000-2001 timeframe. He said he was not exactly sure, but when the original Highway 9 overlay was done is when it was, which he thought was around 1998. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked John McMillan that with his professional experience, would he believe that decreasing the sign size would hurt businesses. John McMillan said absolutely and, in fact, he got another email that he forgot to bring with him, but he believed every business would say that. He said this is their primary method of advertising, so if this is taken away – the ability to have a sign, a banner, or anything like making it too small or putting it too far off of the road, all those types of things—then this will very much adversely affect the small businesses. Chair Paul Moore asked John McMillan that since was representing the concerns of the business owners, was he primarily speaking about Highway 9 corridor or Milton in general. John McMillan said primarily the Highway 9 corridor, but many of the business owners that are on the Milton business committee live on different parts of Milton itself, and Highway 9 is a distinct area. He said it is a 45 MPH highway with a tremendous amount of traffic and that is why it is a little bit different from the other two areas. Commission Member Curtis Mills said that some of the changes to the plan or recommended changes do not restrict visibility or size. He asked John McMillan if he was suggested that any change was unacceptable or did he have a specific – or were some more important than others for any specific reasons. John McMillan stated that he felt that the stakeholders in the community put a tremendous about of time through the years in trying to come up with this. They passed it through all the homeowners, subdivisions, bars, everybody that was concerned with this area, and as he felt it was fine as it is. There were so many changes that were ill thought out or not thought out. Maybe not ill-intended, but the effects were so difficult to tell, that he would just say we need to leave it as it is. Said you could always tweak it slightly, but it needed to be done the right way – pass it back to the same group that did it before and have them to come up with the changes if something is going to be changed. Commission Member, Curtis Mills said he knew most the folks John McMillan mentioned. He asked John McMillan if those people were aware of the meeting and why they did not come. John said he talked to Joel himself, he talked to Cindy, Heidi, and they all said the same thing. He said if they would like, and they were probably going to do so anything, but would take it to the Commission. He said they would definitely sign in on this, as well as would the business owners. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale had questions to public speaker, Kim Horne, about some inconsistencies in the document she sent to them in an email. She indicated that she saw them on page 18, Section 5, near the bottom in blue. George Ragsdale said he understood that, but his question was where is the discrepancy with, let’s say—the Birmingham Kim Horne said because in the Birmingham plans, it says neon signs are not allowed. George Ragsdale said that this is what he was asking. Where is the site in the Birmingham plan that says that, that is what he was not finding? Kim Horne said, it should be where it was before, unless it was taken out. She said it was always prohibited in the past. George Ragsdale stated that if she was talking about the Plan, it was not relevant. If she were talking about the Birmingham Overlay, though—she said she was talking about the Birmingham Overlay. Page 7 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 8 of 66 Tom Wilson said it was on page 41 under Prohibited Sign Types, it says neon is prohibited. Kim Horne said correct. Tom Wilson told Commission that she was pointing out a conflict in the document that needed to be straightened out. Part of the conflict was on page 41 at the very bottom of the page of the large document. Kim Horne said where it says, lollipop signs, etc., etc. ----changeable copy signs---and neon signs are prohibited, but in Section 25 it says they are allowed. George Ragsdale said, Kim also said window signs. Kim said yes, it was the same thing. In the Birmingham master plan it says they are prohibited. George Ragsdale said okay, he saw it. Tom Wilson said that that there was another place in the body of the document that says neon, open and close signs no greater than 2 square feet is permitted. He acknowledged that there is a conflict there, so the open and close sign will also need to be eliminated or change on page 41 where it will say that neon is prohibited with the exception of open and close signs. [Open discussion among Commission members about neon]. Tom Wilson said that any neon sign that they were to allow regardless of its size could not only be open and close, but it could be any other neon sign as well. Chairman Paul Moore asked if it could be restricted in size and also make it only allowable in the Highway 9 corridor. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he would allow that they take the prohibition out on page 19, which says it is permitted in all zoning districts and add the same language without the opened and closed into the permitted signs on Highway 9 which is Section 26.1. He said he believed the easiest way to handle this would be to go down to Section (m) and say --- window signs with neon or florescent or tube lights of are prohibited, but allowed up to a maximum of up to 2 square feet. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked if the location would be limited, like it has to be above an entry door. Tom Wilson said it could. Commission Members had open discussion among themselves about neon sign size, purpose, distance and location. Tom Wilson said it was really-street oriented so that you can see it from the street, regardless of where the entrance is. Commission Members told Tom that was a good point. Commission Member Curtis Mills asked Commission Member Fred Edwards why he felt this is important. Commissioner Member Fred Edwards said he just felt that on some of these areas where the setbacks are in major shopping centers with neon lights does attract when they are opened and closed. He said an example that he knew of on Highway 9, even though it is in Alpharetta was the antique mall. He stated that everything now is closed in that center, so the opened and closed light lets people know that they are there – they are still in business. Commission Member Curtis Mills asked if he thought it would attract consumers or the convenience of them not having to get out of their cars. Commissioner Member George Ragsdale said it did definitely not have to get off of Highway 9. If they are driving and can see a neon sign that says opened and closed, so I think you could say it is for both. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale asked Commission Member Fred Edwards – The neon sign has opened and closed up there, maybe not at the same time, but they are both up there. He said he feels two square feet are too restrictive to the overall sign. He said what we really want to do is restrict the portion of the sign that is illuminated in the two square feet – that would be his recommendation. Page 8 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 9 of 66 Commission Member Fred Edwards said it is tough to get opened and closed in two square feet and have it visible from the road. Commission Member Bob Moheb said from what he saw as a previous business owner, he had never seen a “closed” neon sign, just an “opened” sign, and when you are closed, you just turn it off. That was his understanding. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said the way to fix that would be to say that the illuminated portion of the sign cannot be greater than two square feet. Tom Wilson asked if that could then be a Budweiser sign. Commission Member Fred Edwards said because of content, it would have to be. Commission Member Bob Moheb said it would help if they restricted one per business and right by the entrance or at window space. Chairman Paul Moore asked Wilson that primary street-oriented. What today would a business owner in that – if their primary entrance is not oriented to the street, what are they doing today to suggest that they are opened or closed – would they probably still post it on their door – are we offered them an opportunity to post it elsewhere by saying it has to be placed oriented to the street, and not restricting it to a certain distance of the primary entrance? Tom Wilson said that Commission Member Fred Edwards’ point was to be seen from the street and as you are approaching the store so that you know you do not have to go all the way to the store, so that is how I read that to mean, or leave it that say so that the person approaching the store would have access to that sign if you want to go that far. Commission Member Curtis Mills said that you all have retail experience and he does not. He said he shows up at stores one minute after they closed many times only to find the door locked, but given the 45 MPH speed limit that John McMillan discussed with the Commission, it seemed to him that you would already be in the parking lot and if you are already committed to being there and looking for a two foot sign – if you are going 45 MPH in traffic, you can not spot it unless it is right there on the road – I would not think you could spot a sign in time to decide not to pull in there, so I am not sure if this is really an issue, but you all have more retail experience. He said he really never paid that much attention. Commission Member Bob Moheb said that from his personal experience, he had forgotten to turn the neon open sign before and people have pulled in the parking lot, looked at the store, and pulled off and left. Commission Member Curtis Mills said, but they were already in the parking lot and were at the store – I guess that is what I was saying in terms to the reference point of the sign relative to the main road. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked if it would be appropriate to ask for an agreement as to whether neon signs should be allowed in the Highway 9 overlay. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said that that her comment and concern is that allowing it on Highway 9 and as they move forward to kind of make of these things kind of work together, that they would be setting a precedence if they allowed it on Highway 9 – and then the retailers that are in the Birmingham or Crabapple area might be opposed to it being allowed on Highway 9 and not in their district. She said that recognizing all of the points the retail representation here – it is a tough one. Chairman Paul Moore said that the point he made earlier in the discussion is that he does not as a consumer necessarily shop or not shop based on whether there is a neon sign stating whether a store is opened or closed. If I am committed – Page 9 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 10 of 66 like on Highway 9, if he was going to pull into the establishment or the group of business, assuming he was there during standard business hours and expect them to be open, if for some reason they are not, he said he did not think he would be looking for a neon sign to say whether they are open or not. Commission Member Bob Moheb said that it is to your convenience if you are driving by to be able to see – Chairman Paul Moore said he would not avoid shopping at a business because they did not show they were opened or closed that day. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said she was thinking of the convenience of it – like elderly people if they do not have to get out of the car and they can see it from the parking lot. Commission Member Bob Moheb said also handicapped people. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said that they are trying to establish a new tone for our city. Vice Chair George Ragsdale said he felt what he has been hearing that they are focused on is an “opened” and “closed” sign. Remember that they have to remove that aspect of it no matter what they do. Neon signs are going to be whatever they are going to be. He ventured to say that he believed if you drive down Highway 9, the vast majority of s neon signs you would see would not be the “opened” and “closed” signs. Commission Member Cary Schlenke that there are probably a lot of Bud Light neon signs that the people probably would not like to see anymore. Commission Member Bob Moheb said that those businesses, bars and whatever probably have about 10-15 neon signs, Bud Light, Michelob, Corona, and we would be restricting them to one neon sign. Commission Member Fred Edwards said we have no way of saying it will be an open and closed sign, so it is about what people can see or not see from the road may or not be relevant to what the sign is. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he agreed, but in all fairness, they need to allow that and see what happens. They would be able to put up one Bud Light sign, but all these hundreds, if not thousands of businesses do not have to go out and change their neon signs that they currently have hanging. Chairman Paul Moore said okay, in an effort to move the discussion along, asked Tom Wilson that based on the discovery or realization of what they had written today with the content-based portion of what was allowable by neon, would that have to strike that. I think on page 19. So we have to strike that, and right now, the balance of the article suggests that neon is prohibited everywhere else, except this one article on page 19, correct? Tom Wilson said he believed so. Chairman Paul Moore said that he was then going to suggest that this discussion be closed and move toward making more progress on this article in total by striking that, recognizing that he believed for the discussion your contemplation will be necessary to deal with discovery this evening and it is discussion he believed is worth further consideration beyond what time would practically allow them this evening or other information available to them this evening, so he suggested that they move on and move to strike this on page 19. It is then consistent throughout the article that neon is prohibited. He suggested that they contemplate either for their own discussion later or for the benefit of the City Council suggestions that they may consider alternatives if as a city they believe there is an opportunity to deliver an opened and closed conclusion without necessarily opening it wide up to all neon. Page 10 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 11 of 66 Commission Member Bob Moheb said he also thinks there is no way to ever put in something that says you can put an opened or closed neon sign – the all whole thing needs to be content-neutral throughout the whole thing, so there would never be an opportunity –we would either have to allow that some sort of neon sign – or we have to disallow it. Chairman Paul Moore said what he was suggested is that since they do not have any bright new idea on how to address the issue at this moment, I think there would be a greater benefit right now to close the discussion on this particular point and move forward with that struck and still make sure that the City Council is given the heads-up that this is an issue and that there may be more between now and their goal on this to have discovery that may provide that accommodation without opening it wide up to neon signs – Commission Member Cary Schlenke said she just wanted to get on the record with this and state that whatever happens with this, they should define that it should not be illuminated when the business is closed and asked if this would be possible? Tom Wilson said he thought they could say you could have a neon sign that would be permissible as long as the business is open. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said so long as it is not lit 24 hours a day. It may be eliminated all together. Tom Wilson said I think you can say that any neon sign permitted by this ordinance must be extinguished at the close of business hours. That is content-neutral. Commission Member Bob Moheb said, then how would we strike this and recommend to council that this is something they need to look at. Isn’t it the Planning Commission’s job to go ahead and look at this, decide on it and give a recommendation? Tom Wilson said that yes it is. Commission Member Bob Moheb said that it would not be the council’s job to research and recommend, it would be the Planning Commission’s. Tom Wilson said that the council can do it as well. Tom Wilson said to the Chairman for simplicity sake and from staff’s perspective, asked if he could try moving this forward by backing them up to page 1 of the document. He said as he recalled there was a motion on the floor and a second to adopt the ordinance. This would be the time to entertain a friendly amendment. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said no, we do not have a motion. Chairman Paul Moore said, no we went to public comment. This is just a discussion following public comment, so we need to move for a motion at this point. Commission Member Bob Moheb said so for clarification, you are saying, we will go ahead and make the friendly amendment and call for a vote – for example, if we want neon signs allowable or not allowable. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said that he would like to make a motion that they approve the ordinance that they have in front of them with the amendments as reflected in the document we have in front of us. Commission Member Fred Edwards seconded the motion. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked for clarification on that Page 11 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 12 of 66 Chairman Paul Moore said there is dissention that comes after -- so right now there is a motion on the floor— Commission member Bob Moheb said so you are not recommending that we make any friendly amendments? Commission Member Cary Schlenke said we will do that next. Chairman Paul Moore said, okay, there was a motion and a second – we are now asking for a vote Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said that he did not believe they could make a friendly amendment after it is voted on. Tom Wilson said, right. If we have a motion and there is a second – the motion was to approve this document with all the changes that are in it as of this moment – which means the only friendly amendment that would be appropriate would be the changes to the changes of this document. Vice Chair George Ragsdale said, correct. Tom Wilson said, if he may be so forward as to suggest that the format of a friendly amendment could be maybe to chain together as many of those amendments you could get into one and still get that passed. Chairman Paul Moore said, okay, and when we reach one, --- Tom Wilson said he was not expecting the motion to read the way it did, but it was great. He said as we go through this document, if you want to change anything about this document, you would just say so. Otherwise whatever you see there in either blue or highlighted yellow would prevail. Chairman Paul Moore said that at this point, it is still short of some of the discussion points that they had made. They had recognized a change in the word to “director” versus “manager” – Tom Wilson said that this is part of the motion at this point. All of those changes have already been made into your motion, so if you want to change any part of the document before you, you would do so through a friendly amendment now. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said that she would like to make a friendly amendment to amend Article 33, Section 24, Item A, on page 17. She said she wanted to delete what is written in Item A and replace it with “All signs permitted under this Code shall be constructed and maintained in accordance with the applicable city building codes, and for any sign that is greater than four fee in height as measured from the grade, the permitee must submit with its application detailed structural design drawings of the sign and its foundation. Such drawings must include the foundations, supporting structure and sign phase and must be certified by a licensed professional structural engineer. The certifying engineer must also be able to provide an insurance certificate indicating that it carries a minimum of $1,000,000.000 dollars of professional liability insurance and naming the City of Milton as a named insured. The city may remove after reasonable notice, any sign which shows structural fault, neglect, or becomes dilapidated.” Chairman Paul Moore asked if there was a motion to accept this amendment. Tom Wilson said okay, she has made a motion for a friendly amendment and it must be seconded. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale seconded motion. Chairman Paul Moore asked if there was any discussion. Page 12 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 13 of 66 Commission Member Curtis Mills asked what was behind the million dollars – Commission Member Bob Moheb asked if everyone out there has this insurance. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said she thought that most professional engineers were required to carry professional liability. She said she thought they would want to be sure— Commission Member Curtis Mills that was not clear— Commission Member Cary Schlenke said that would just protect the city say if a billboard fell on a mini-van or a business and did structural damage like in a windstorm. That was kind of the intent. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked if any public could speak, he said John McMillan had his hand up. Chairman Paul Moore asked if they are allowed to call for personal comment from the floor and if there is a value to that? Tom Wilson said yes. Chairman Paul Moore said he would love to hear from John McMillan. Public Speaker John McMillan said that the provision that the City of Alpharetta had – it was called a Hurricane sign or a hurricane proof sign. What that does it causes a temporary real estate sign, because that what mine is, the real estate business, to go from a $750 dollar sign to a $2500 dollar sign plus the engineer’s fee. So, it that is applied to everything, which is what they did, it is super expensive and absolutely not worthwhile. When you have to have a professional engineer stamp a plan, you are not going to get out of there for less than $750 just for that little thing, so it is very unnecessary. He said Fulton County has no sign permit at all. It is a very onerous provision. If you have a gigantic sign that, for instance, the one at Wal-Mart that is illuminated, they are going to have a stamped thing like that anyway, so it is no big deal for them and certainly appropriate there. But if you do this for everything, then it is very onerous. Commission Member Cary Schlenke asked if especially with the new sign ordinance and the example that you just gave, would you even have a sign that is greater than four feet. John McMillan said he believes 16 square feet is what the real estate sign should be. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked Tom Wilson if this was correct. He said he thought each property was 2 square feet now. Tom Wilson said that there is no real estate sign as such. He said that would be content-based. Each property is allowed a combination of signs as detailed in this ordinance, commercial properties are 32 square feet plus one two foot by two foot temporary informational sign which either of those two signs could be used for commercial real estate, but those would be the signs that would be the most available for commercial property. The document now allows them to be 6 feet in height. There is a provision in here that says six feet in the Highway 9 District and 8 feet in the other overlay districts. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale asked Cary Schlenke if he could make a recommendation that the word “permanent” be added and say all permanent signs be permitted, because as he said as he read it, that is what we were talking about – signs that have a structural foundation, not signs that are stuck in the ground. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said she thought that would be good. Page 13 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 14 of 66 Chairman Paul Moore asked John McMillan if this would satisfy his concerns by changing the wording to “permanent.” John McMillan asked what size the temporary signs are allowed to be. Tom Wilson said two foot by two foot. John McMillan said, you have got to be kidding me. Well, that is another issue then, but anyway – that is interesting – two feet – real interesting. John McMillan asked what constitutes permanent. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said that “permanent” is defined in the ordinance. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale told Cary Schlenke that since it was her motion, she needed to decide whether she was willing to accept an amendment to your friendly amendment. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said she was. Cary made a motion and Fred Edwards seconded the motion. Tom Wilson said okay, now there can be discussion on it and vote to amend the motion. Chairman Paul Moore asked if any further discussion, there was none. Called for vote and there was no opposition. Tom Wilson then said for simplicity sake, he wanted to capture what they want in this document so they do not have to go back and do it again at the end. He asked if they wished to eliminate completely 24 A and substitute in its entirety--- Discussion with all members and Tom about how to go about changes. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said she would read the change: “All permanent signs permitted under this Code.” Tom Wilson asked Vice Chair George Ragsdale if his motion meant that in the blue sections that were being discussed in the very beginning, that you accepted those changes as part of your motion. Vice Chair George Ragsdale said that “continuous” be changed to “consecutive” and the change that was made with respect to the portable signs. Tom Wilson thanked him. [Short break while everyone reviewed the document and had brief discussions among themselves about changes]. Tom Wilson said, okay, so now we are done with that motion, if you want to bring up any friendly amendments, this would be the time. Commission Member Bob Moheb said that he would like to bring up a friendly amendment to Section 25 A. 1, on page 18, currently stating that during construction, shall be allowed ----- basically saying it is allowing an informational sign on construction until a permanent sign is in place. He wanted to recommend that they allow some sort of informational sign to still stand giving it permission for a construction site. Page 14 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 15 of 66 Tom Wilson said that in all zoning districts, signs during construction, one sign shall be allowed during construction, twelve square feet in area; five feet in height shall be allowed, with the commencement of construction or the issuance – and ending with a certificate of occupancy. Commission Member Bob Moheb said that he would like to strike the part that says, --- and ending with the installation of a permanent sign. Tom Wilson said, so you would for it to remain longer? Commission Member Bob Moheb said that he would like for it to be able to stand during construction as long as there is construction giving information about a site, especially since this is a permitted sign. Tom Wilson said it would remain there until the issuance of a certificate of occupancy which would signify the end of construction. Commission Member Bob Moheb said so for example, if you had a development and they have a sign that says like new homes starting at $300,000, so the second they put up their subdivision sign, they would have to remove that sign, correct? Tom Wilson said yes. Commission Member Bob Moheb said therefore people driving by have no information about what is going on. He said he did not see any problem, especially since this is a permitted sign. He said he was not asking that it not be permitted. Tom Wilson said, okay, that would pertain only to a residential district. Chairman Paul Moore said he believed where Commission Member Bob Moheb is trying to go is that there is a value to showing the grand presentation of what the permanent entrance might look like in that neighborhood marquee. [position 1:18-not clear]. Chairman Bob Moheb said so the first thing a developer would do would be to put in his permanent sign so people could find them and know what is there. You wouldn’t know if there were town homes there or million dollar homes. Commission Member Curtis Mills said that made sense to him. So are you saying remove the reference to permanent signs and still leave the certificate of occupancy there or be able to keep it up forever. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he thought it should stay there until the completion of the development. Tom Wilson asked until the last home is built and occupied? Commission Member Bob Moheb said, correct. That is how he would like it, and that would make sense to him. He said for example, if you have a subdivision like White Columns or something like that that has several phases and can go way back into the subdivision, there would be no way for you to know there are new phases to the development. Tom Wilson said he thought the right location for your amendment would be on page 19, under Single Family Residential CUP and NUP districts, somewhere under number 1, add one -- He asked how big do you think his sign should be? Do you think it should be 32 square feet? Page 15 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 16 of 66 Vice Chair George Ragsdale said it seemed to him that we are confusing two things here. He said he believed what Mr. Moheb is talking about does fit better in B 1 and C 1, because it is now applied in ****[1:21] too. He said he guessed his reading back in 25 A 1 might be improved if they said until the time of installation of a permanent sign whose intent is to replace the temporary sign. He said because the permanent that goes in at the front of a development has no relationship to the temporary sign that Commission Member Moheb wants to keep up there. Putting that sign in – I think the intent of 25 A 1 is that a permanent sign serves the purpose that the temporary sign was intended to serve. Tom Wilson said that actually he believed that it is intended to be a construction sign put up by the contractors to advertise that they are building the site. That is what that sign is. Vice Chair George Ragsdale asked then what would the permanent sign in such a situation be? Tom Wilson said it would never be that. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he was not sure if they should really restrict those. I think there is a value to giving information to people. For example, you have commercial development and you want to be able to tell people that you are building this strip center here, and give out your numbers for leasing information – Commission Member Cary Schlenke said as much as she appreciates the value of advertising and leasing space, she would want to watch what the end state would be on that. When you drive around and see buildings that are almost 95% full and they are still advertising – you know the same sign they have had up— Tom Wilson said no. Those signs never come down. Commission Member Cary Schlenke no, but they could in this scenario, correct? Tom Wilson said, well if we could determine when they were 100% leased and in a commercial building, it may be 100% leased rarely. And even if it were, it would not last very long, and so that sign would almost always be up. Commission Member Cary Schlenke asked and where would this fall under our ordinance? Tom Wilson said you want to put up something like for real estate information-- Commission Member Bob Moheb said that some sort of informational sign, whether it be informational, like space available, homes starting from $1 million, --- Tom Wilson said, I think you could say under B 1 and C 1, D 1, E 1, F 1, G1, H 1. In all of those mentioned, could have one additional sign not to exceed 16 square feet for informational purposes as long as the property was less than 80% occupied, or until such time as it becomes 80% occupied. Commission Member Curtis Mills that he would like to suggest that a time limit be put on that – from the first posting of the sign, the approval of construction. Chairman Paul Moore said something like not to exceed one year without re-permitting. Commission Member Curtis Mills said they need to define the developments to the area. Just a permanent sign is not going to do that. Page 16 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 17 of 66 Commission Member Bob Moheb said that even if they put a time limit on it --- like in White Columns or something like that where you open up a new section miles back into your subdivision and you cannot have a sign up that says, Phase III. I mean, it would kill new development. That sign is what brings in the business. Tom Wilson said just a note here. In a single-family subdivision, you may have two 16 square foot signs, one on each side of the subdivision entrance. He said you might use one for your subdivision’s name and the other one to display your information on. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he thought the intent was you could have one permanent sign that was 32 square feet or you could split it up on both sides still stating both times “White Columns” or whatever. Tom Wilson said it is content-neutral, so if you split your 32 square foot, and split it into 16 and 16 on each side, you could use one side for the name of your subdivision and the other side for your availability or your real estate information. Chairman Paul Moore said then upon completion if your intention was to have it mirrored, one side of the entrance to the other, you would then complete the other half of – Tom Wilson said you could. Commission Member Bob Moheb said so what if your intent was to have a 32 square foot sign? Tom Wilson said then we would have to add an additional sign in here. This is the time and place to do it. If you want to do that. Do you want to add an additional 32 square foot sign, or would you like to change one 32 maximum square foot sign to two 32 maximum square foot signs? Chairman Paul Moore said, I do not think we want to go that way. Commission Member Bob Moheb we might want to say that one of them can be the permanent sign and one would be temporary. I guess the problem would be how to limit the time or placement or usage of that sign. Chairman Paul Moore said that right now, it does not imply temporary or permanent. It only addresses what is allowable in terms of the size. Commission Member Curtis Mills said there are plenty of upscale areas that do not allow temporary signs past the permanent or time limit, and he did not know if that is a level playing field. He said we should not be responsible for steering people to places they want to be. They may be damaging to be honest. Commission Member Bob Moheb said that just from being in the business, a lot of the people to do want to use realtors and pay a percentage of an $8 million dollar home, so they would rather drive around. He said his company was responsible for 60 homes in Crooked Creek. A majority of those homes did not have real estate agents. Chairman Paul Moore asked if they were drawn in by the information signs or by the quality of the construction they saw. Commission Member Curtis Mills said, or by the Internet. Commission Member Bob Moheb said that the only way you would even know the new construction or new phase of development was there was by a sign. Page 17 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 18 of 66 Commission Member Curtis Mills asked if someone could apply for a new temporary sign if they were going to start a new phase and if that new phase was approved and then certified for occupancy, then I suppose they could keep applying if there was a start and stopping time. He said he was trying to come up with a compromise, but would it be unlimited? Commission Member Bob Moheb said he did not think it would be unlimited. When the last unit – for example in an AG zone or in a single family residential, it would end when the last unit is sold. Commission Member Curtis Mills said he moved where he lives eight years ago and the Six Hills sign has been there since the first time he drove by. He said it is a nice sign and he is not personally offended by it, but he said he was not sure if that what you have in mind. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he drove into Six Hills and it took a while to get back into where their new phase was. It looks like a completed subdivision, but it is almost a two mile drive back. Chairman Paul Moore asked Tom Wilson, that in that instance, if they are talking about a completed subdivision, prior to the addition of a new phase, they would have built out their entrance and it has the appearance of being completed. Now regardless of the time, another phase opens; does that development then have the opportunity to apply for another construction sign that could then be constructed in front of what would be the permanently – prior completed grand entrance for the new phase? Tom Wilson said he did not believe it would work that way. He did not think every phase gets its own. Chairman Paul Moore asked Tom Wilson where they would add words that would allow for that. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said what about if you add in Section 25, Item A, permitting in all zoning districts – what if you just change the wording in that last sentence to say, in an effort to give an end date – have it read the way it reads now, and then at the end say, ending with the issuance of a final certificate of occupancy. That would address the ending date or installation of a permanent sign, and then delete the part, whichever occurs first. No, actually that would not work, because you still have or installation. Vice Chair George Ragsdale said he still contends that what they are reading into this is not what this was intended for. He said he reads 25 A 1 as being more for commercial development, where the permanent sign is going up. He said for me, it does not seem to apply to residential. He said the way it is currently written, it can be interpreted to apply to both. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said she has bought new homes before and she can appreciate the value of people just driving around an area that they want to live in, like they know they want to live in Milton. They may not be at the phase of working with a realtor. Commission Member Bob Moheb said especially someone that currently lives in the city. Like if one of us wants to buy a new house and want to stay in the City of Milton. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said she is also not a fan of the signs that stay up indefinitely like she was describing, so she would like to see an end date. Commission Member Fred Edwards that they could do that with that 80%. At least if it is AG 1, or some percent, he is not saying 80% is the right number, but at least allow it to be up until the majority of the homes have been sold. He said he thought this was fair. Page 18 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 19 of 66 Commission Member Curtis Mills said it was not a matter of the sold homes, but a matter of the undeveloped land and developing in phases. Chairman Paul Moore said if he could go back based on all of the conversation they had just had and you read the first sentence that says “Signs During Construction” one sign shall be allowed during construction. It does not say during the initial phase of construction, it does not say upon completion of construction and you have to apply for another. It just says during construction. So if a neighborhood were to, or even maybe a shopping center were to go into a significant addition to what was the core establishment, are we precluding them under the more restrictive dialog we are having, where maybe they should be allowed to have a new temporary sign that goes up during the new phase of construction, whether it be a new phase of a neighborhood or a new phase of a commercial development, that allows for a temporary posting of what it is going to be. Tom Wilson said he truly believed the purpose of this paragraph was to allow for a construction sign advertising the contractors of that project. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said this means it would be on an individual residential lot, not at the entrance. Tom Wilson said, or a commercial lot, being constructed by – this is the paragraph that replaced the similar paragraph in the other ordinance. He agreed that the installation of a permanent sign is a little confusing at the end of that. This is a construction sign. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said the other problem – and I agree with you, I think this is directly in conflict with the AG 1 and residential, in that they both allow two signs and this says one sign. I think it is for a different purpose. Commission Member Cary Schlenke asked Tom Wilson that like when you have the grading companies putting up their signs, or the bank puts up their signs, financing it, --- Tom Wilson said, they only get just one and they can share it. That is what this paragraph is about. If you want to add an additional sign in a residential district or a commercial district to advertisement, you will just have to allow an additional informational sign of whatever size. You can terminate it at some point, with 80% sold or 80% occupied – Commission Member Bob Moheb asked Tom Wilson how this would be done. Like for a commercial property, would you go with 80% leased? How is that commercial developer supposed to sell the last 25% of his property if he cannot have a sign up? Tom Wilson said that this is the struggle of a content-neutral ordinance. Vice Chair George Ragsdale said that he again thought they were mixing two different purposes. If they are thinking about 25 A 1 as being there for the purpose of advertising the contractor, be it a plumbing contractor, grader, whatever, all the districts allow for free-standing signs and you can put up a sign that advertise. This 25 A 1 would not cover this. He continued to say that if 25 A 1 was fixed to make it clear what it is taking about is the contractor signs that are going up for the purposes of the person who is building or working on the site, he believes that the other zoning districts – take any of them – if we look at AG 1 and you look at B 1 B, it allows up to 32 square feet, two signs at each entrance to a subdivision. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he still believed that was meant for permanent signs and not temporary signs. He is developing a subdivision right now. He said he has two signs. One for one side and one for the other side. They are all Page 19 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 20 of 66 $1 million plus homes. I want to have a grand entrance and put signs on both sides. I would be left with nothing to tell the customer what I am doing there. Tom Wilson said he believed he would just have to manage his square footage and take advantage of whatever your needs are. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said that in the instance that Bob just gave, would his only option there be to have one side either – you know, he could build all the stonework and do the entrance and then just nail the sign to the post – or that stonewall – is that what we want? Tom Wilson said, I assume you could take a 16 square foot sign, one on each side and use 8 feet of it for King Estates and the other to say for homes from the $ 2 millions and eventually, take down the signs from the $2 millions because they will all be sold and you will be left with a really nice entrance sign. He said his point is what they are doing with the sign ordinance is limiting the amount of signage and requiring people to manage that limit to their advantage. Commission Member Bob Mob said he also believed that you are messing up a lot of people’s businesses. Tom Wilson said another way to do what you are suggesting is to just increase 32 to 48 and then use the 32 square foot sign the way you have and then allow the other square footage to be your information sign. Again, it is limiting the square footage and requiring you to manage how it is used to fill your needs. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said so you can slice and dice it however you want? Tom Wilson said that is what he is saying. It is a 32 square foot sign. You can use it how you want to. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said, can they read this in the way that says those signs that are permitted in all zoning districts in Section A are in addition to those that are permitted in B? Tom Wilson said yes, a combination of signs. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said this may fix the problem for you, Bob. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said if they say that the signs in 25 A are in addition to those in the rest of the subsections. Tom Wilson said he did not see how that fixes the problem or how that addresses their needs. Chairman Paul Moore said that if he understood what George was saying, you take like the family residential as an example, they are allowed two 16 square foot signs, or a maximum of 32 square feet. In the course of the construction in the neighborhood, they could go ahead and create two 16 feet signs that finish the entrance to the neighborhood. I think what Commission Member George Ragsdale is suggesting is that during the construction phase of that, they would be allowed under 25 A 1; the ability to have one additional sign during that construction phase and it goes away when you reach the -- not to exceed a certain period of time. [Open discussion among Commission members on whether this would take care of problem –Commission and staff looking at their documents] Page 20 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 21 of 66 Commission Member Curtis Mills said he may be exaggerating a bit to make a point, but if there were 50 of those signs up for five reads along a stretch of road, he would suggest this would not be consistent with the pastoral setting or an equestrian motif mindset, or whatever we would want to say – so they has to be some kind of control that we can feel good about. Commission Bob Moheb said he believed that control would be --- so if there were 50 subdivisions being developed along Bethany Bend, you would be anticipating these signs being up. Chairman Paul Moore said to give credence to what Commission Member Curtis Mills was saying that they could use White Columns as an example. He said he has lived in his phase of White Columns for over 10 years. The second phase of White Columns starting within a year of the occupancy of his own. He said there is still a sign out front that says 2 or 3 homes left in excess of a year and there are probably 300 homes in that section. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he thought Commission Member Curtis Mills had a good point about the difficulty of being able to determine the percentage of what has been sold or what have you. What if they put a time limit on it? The permit could maybe be no more than one year and at the end of one year a new permit could be applied for, but in that reapplication, one of the things that would have to be stated is what portion of that development was sold or what have you. Then base it on 90%. Chairman Paul Moore said then if it is sub 90% they don’t get— Vice Chair George Ragsdale said, then they do not get a new sign. If they are entitled to a new sign, they get one and if they are not, they do not get one. Chairman Paul Moore said he definitely thought it should be the obligation of the developer and/or company that is building the development to close it out and that the community should not have to be subjected to a great big sign when they can revert to other methods to move that last house, whether it is marketing it, reducing the price of it, or whatever. There are other methods to move that property other than keep that sign at the entrance. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he thought they had to realize that if the size was limited to like a 12 square foot sign, this is a lot smaller than what you see on subdivisions that have signs up right now. They are a lot bigger than that right now. 12 square foot is a 4 x 3 sign which is pretty small for an informational sign. Chairman Paul Moore said using White Columns for an example, theirs is probably a 12 foot sign and he finds it offensive at this point, and it has been there forever. They have bright colors, like orange, green, and inconsistent with— Commission Member Fred Edwards said that to be honest, when you get to the point where you have one house left out of 124, the sign does not help you find it at all. Tom Wilson said and why would I not reserve and not sell a lot just so I could have another sign up on the street. Vice Chair George Ragsdale said that in this particular instance, every lot has been sold and every house has been built, but every house has just not been sold. Tom Wilson said remember that every lot gets a 2 foot by 2 foot informational sign. If you drive around, you will certainly find some lots that have not yet been sold and can be identified. Commission Member Curtis Mills said they had not heard from the public and asked if they could call for comments. Page 21 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 22 of 66 Public Speaker Carol Lane said that they have a development across from her and they sat for two years and then somebody else came in and it sat for some more years, and then they are finally finishing it up. Also, there is Graystone which has been built sometime ago and there are just so many, that to say until they are sold is really a long time for a sign. Public Speaker John McMillan said that you talk about the intent of the construction sign for the contractor. He asked how are you going to know that unless you read the content. Wouldn’t that be content-based? Tom Wilson said he was just saying that this is what it is generally used for, but it does not have to be used for this. Public Speaker John McMillan said you know contractors are going to want to put their signs up because they want to know who is doing the job, but Article II allows for a temporary standard informational signs, and that is what you have been talking about – a temporary informational sign. But then, you are trying to say that a free-standing sign by your own definition is a permanent sign, so I think there is some contradiction in what you are talking about in these definitions going around here. These are my personal thoughts, but there is language in there for temporary signs, you have language in there for permanent signs, construction signs, and free-standing signs, and there are definitions for all of these. He said lastly, what defines a window sign. There is a definition about inside and outside. What does it apply to, is it inside the glass, is it outside the glass, 10 feet, 20 feet, 30 feet? Chairman Paul Moore said they would come back to that? Pubic Speaker Richard Wernick. Mr. Wernick first apologized for not getting there earlier. He said that a he is a developer and has some developments in our city, and that they had always marked it like they had been talking about. They have a nice entrance sign and have phases and a marking sign up front that have always been 4 x 8 and make it as attractive as possible. He said that the biggest source of buyers of subdivisions is drive-by traffic. It is at least 50% or more of all buyers come in a subdivision because they see a sign and when they go for a drive on Sunday or Saturday, or whatever, or even in the evening. He said they find people coming into the subdivision at 7:00 at night. He said they would not do that if there was no sign out there. He said he did not know the answer, but he said when they are finished, they took their sign down. It said it is very important. It is critical to sales to have that information out front. He said he would encourage them to find some way to have the sign stay up; even if it had to be renewed. He said maybe one year might be too little, maybe two years. He thinks this is very sensible, because people can leave signs up. He said he usually has to take the signs down after sold, but believes there has to be a check. He said builders could get hurt really bad if on the last 10% of houses there could not be a sign. It is usually away from the entrance. You do not have anything under construction at the entrance and that is a good thing. He said he knows it is difficult. He said he has not reviewed the ordinance that much specifically to that detail, but it has just never been a problem. We got a permit for the informational sign separate from the entrance sign, but they were always able to get it in Fulton County, whatever that ordinance was, compared to what you have now. This is just from a developer’s viewpoint. Chairman Paul Moore asked Mr. Wernick that on this topic, was it his opinion in his vast experience as a developer, when you get down to that last 10% and historically you have had the opportunity to have a sign there, if the talk today is to restrict this, are there other things you would find as successful tools to help you market those last few homes. Pubic Speaker Richard Wernick said that the last few homes are the most difficult to sell. The first 10% and the last 10%. The middle 80% are the easiest, so if you restrict that, the only other means comes from drive-by, so you are restricting the last 10% that is hard to sell anyway to the other means of advertising, multi-list, websites, that sort of thing, and he said he did not know what they had in mind for like – people put up at the entrance for new homes and an arrow – that type of thing. He said he knows there are a lot of signs that are not necessary around, but at the entrance, a sign is Page 22 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 23 of 66 necessary. Maybe not as much as off-site, because he has been on both sides of that, but entrance sign is pretty critical, and it could kill the builders. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked Richard Wernick if he was saying that the last entrance sign is also the most difficult, and as a developer do you usually wait to put in that final haul of paving until all your homes are completed and sold? Pubic Speaker Richard Wernick said, no, we always like to put in that haul of paving up front because it is a better surface. The binder is good, but the topping is really what makes the whole street structurally sound, so I have never been a fan of just putting the binder down and doing the topping later, because you get the heaviest truck traffic during construction, so you want the best structural streets you can have to avoid problems with the sub-base later on. There are concrete trucks and sheetrock trucks and they just pound the street, so he said he didn’t do that. Commission Member Curtis Mills said that based on experience, and I do not know if this is your personal experience or not, but he was thinking that one year, although it is a long time and so on and so forth, may not be a long time in the life cycle of starting a new development, getting past the first 10%, getting substantially into the 80%, etcetera, he wondered if two is a more reasonable time or a comfortable period of time before reapplying. Pubic Speaker Richard Wernick said that reapplying in a legitimate situation is not a big burden for them to do. But one year would be two small for most anything. Even if you did just a 15 lot subdivision, by the time you crank up and get some houses built – because you put the signs up before the houses are directly finished and it could take 6-9 months to build a house. Chairman Paul Moore said, then upon completion. Upon completion, would a year be enough time. Pubic Speaker Richard Wernick said a minimum of two years or even three, but there are going to be a lot of smaller developments in the City of Milton, like 10 lots, 15 lots, and that kind of thing, because the land mass is not there anymore for a larger development, so he believed that from that viewpoint, two years is probably workable. He said if we have to come in and pay another $200 or so to renew that should not be a big deal if it is a larger development. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale asked Richard Wernick what he would say is a reasonable criteria for basing a decision on renewal or not. He said he believes that a sign should stay there until the house is sold. You would have to verify or have an affidavit, but for new homes, not re-sales. Commission Member Bob Moheb said the reason he was asking about that final coat of paving is because he also does that final coat right away, but he knows a lot of developers that do not and that is also a burden to the people that live there and as that last 10% is there, it really does make it harder to sell than the middle portion. It sort of puts a burden on the homeowners with all the potholes and all. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale asked if he could try some suggestion for language. In Section 25 A. 1, he said he would just read the end of it instead of the whole thing. Beginning with the commencement of construction and ending with the issuance of the last certificate of occupancy or two years whichever shall first occur – and then after that a subsequent permit may be issued if the permitee reapplies. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he just thought it is important to have it in there for new construction; the builder or developer should have the protection of being able to guarantee that they will have a sign up. Page 23 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 24 of 66 Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said it does not go quite as far as Mr. Wernick suggested, but it addresses it to the point of at least every home having a sign, but it does not necessarily mean its sold, but he carries the personal bias of having it hanging around for years and years, waiting for the last house to sell is not fair to the people that live there and particularly if you have one house out of 125 that has not sold and it has been that way for over a year. Commission Member Cary Schlenke asked if he could read the last part again after the two years whichever occurs first – can you read after that. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said that after that time, the permitee or applicant, whatever we are going to call them, may apply for a renewal permit. Commission Member Curtis Mills asked what he missed and why this is this different than what Mr. Wernick was talking about? Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said because he is differentiating. He said he believed what Mr. Wernick was suggested was that the sign should be able to stay up until the last house is sold, and he stated what he was saying is just leave it up until the last CO. The homes that are not sold are still going to have the same ability to have for sale signs on them; it would just eliminate the sign – Chairman Paul Moore said that in 12 A 1, we are not just talking about residential; we are talking about commercial as well. He said that by suggesting it the way you are bringing language forward, George, is it does allow for that and it also allows for the addressing of another phase. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said that personally he believes that another phase is an issue, because that means they are going to have to change the sign anyway and get a new permit, because you cannot just change the language on the sign and use the same permit. Chairman Paul Moore said they would have the ability to petition the city for a new sign and it should be allowed. [Open discussion among Commission members about this issue] Commission Member Curtis Mills said that the two year window to talk about the points raised earlier may not be appropriate on commercial, maybe if our intention is to address residential, we drop it into Section 1, the later sections like we discussed. He said in the build-out, they are leasing, not selling. He said he thought the two year window superseded the CO. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale stated it does. It is whichever occurs first. Commission Member Bob Moheb said that okay, the problem with commercial property would be the second you built it out and get the CO and could start leasing, that is the second the sign goes away. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said, but you can reapply. Tom Wilson said that we are going to have to right this out from beginning to end. [Discussion started about changes in various sections] Page 24 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 25 of 66 Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said in Section 25 A 1, over two years, whichever shall first occur. He said he didn’t know if we are calling them permitees or applicants. Agreed on permitees. Thereafter, permitee may reapply for the same permit. Said he wanted to rephrase it. Thereafter, a permitee shall reapply for a permit under the same conditions. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said Mr. Wilson is already writing this down and we do not even have a motion yet. Tom Wilson said he was just trying to figure out what the motion would be if you were to have a motion. He asked George Ragsdale if he was complete and he said yes. Tom continued----thereafter a permitee may reapply for a permit under the same conditions. Asked if they would pick up with Certificate of Occupancy, or would the last line be stricken? Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said no, the same thing would be the case. A new permit would be subject to – I mean, it would be moot, but it would still be subject to CO’s or two years, whichever occurs first, so you are going to get a renewed permit for two years. If you do not have all your CO’s, you are still going to have to get a new permit and it would still be whatever first occurs. Tom Wilson asked what occurs after the last period after the word condition. I still do not understand the last line that is written in that paragraph right now – Commencing with the issuance of construction and ending with the last CO or two years, or whichever shall first occur, thereafter permitee may reapply for a permit under the same condition. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said I see what you are saying, it should say, permitte may reapply for a renewal permit subject to the same termination conditions as set forth herein. Tom Wilson said then we can strike the last line in that paragraph. Now we now what the motion should be. Chairman Paul Moore said that before we do that, he said to John McMillan that this has been primarily directed at residential, do you have a comment you would like to make as regarding commercial? Public Speaker John McMillan said that as a practical matter, we might already go ahead and gets a CO on a vacant space, and that would be his only concern. You have two years to get it leased and then if it goes beyond that time, but you know some of them do take at least a year, then if we have any vacancy to occur again, we would have to put up another sign to advertise that and is that when we would have to reapply, is that when we would have to do that? He asked if they have the right to put up a sign. Tom Wilson asked if he could advertise on his freestanding sign out front. Public Speaker John McMillan said no, most of the time you would have tenants. If it is, it is a dinky one. Chairman Paul Moore asked Tom Wilson that permanent sign, like the monument sign, his only opportunity to advertise that space once everything is completed would be one 4 square feet sign and/or his monument sign? Tom Wilson said that as it is written now, yes. Commission Member Bob Moheb said that what they also want to look out for is – he said he was reading through the Birmingham Crossroads Plan, and one of the main concerns there was vacancy. When a strip center sits vacant, it doe not look good and it is not a good thing, so he stated that it should be a main concern for the Commission and everyone else that there is a majority of occupancy in these commercial areas to sort of make everything look better. Commission Member Curtis Mills said if they are not successful, everyone loses. Page 25 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 26 of 66 Chairman Paul Moore said that in the case of Birmingham right now, they are currently doing their leasing efforts with no advertising on signs on the streets. Once you are inside the property, there are window signs. Chairman Paul Moore said that what he was saying is that there is no public advertising, just simply the site. The article on the front page of the Milton Herald this week suggests that their leasing efforts are well on their way and occupancy is going to be higher in the very near future. He said, so I think this answers some of the questions and he stated that he believed Commission Member George Ragsdale put forth some good language. Asked if anyone else had any more questions. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked if it could be read again since there was a good deal of discussion about it. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale read it: One sign shall be allowed during construction. A permit shall be required. The sign may be externally illuminated, shall not exceed 12 square feet in area and 5 feet in height, and shall be allowed beginning with the commencement of construction and ending with the issuance of the last certificate of occupancy or two years, whichever one shall first occur. Thereafter, the permitee may reapply for a nenewal permit subject to the same termination conditions as set forth in this paragraph. Commission Member Bob Moheb moved for a friendly amendment to Section 25 A 1. Fred Edwards seconded the motion. Chairman Paul Moore called for vote, unanimous, motion carried. Robyn MacDonald read back the change. [Some discussion, then it was corrected]: One sign shall be allowed during construction. A permit shall be required. The sign may be externally illuminated, shall not exceed 12 square feet in area and 5 feet in height, and shall be allowed beginning with the commencement of construction and ending with the issuance of the last certificate of occupancy or two years, whichever one shall first occur. Thereafter, the permitee may reapply for a renewal permit subject to the same termination conditions as set forth in this paragraph. Tom Wilson said that the last line of the original paragraph would be stricken. [Chairman Paul Moore requested a five minute recess]. Chairman Paul Moore started the meeting back up and moved for a friendly amendment on page 4. He said if everyone remembered from their discussion the other night that they talked about adding the word, “vinyl” to the description at the very top of the page in the description of “banners.” Asked if that could be added back in and said he thought this was just an oversight. Vice Chair George Ragsdale asked what his amendment was. Chairman Paul Moore said his motion is that under Section 3, Definitions, under the definition of banner, that the word “vinyl” be inserted in the description of what constitutes a banner. It is actually on page 4, but the definition of banner starts on page 3. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he seconded the motion. Page 26 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 27 of 66 Chairman Paul Moore called for any discussion. No discussion, so called for a vote. No opposition, passed unanimously. Chairman Paul Moore called for a friendly amendment on page 14. It looks like, per our discussion the other night that there were some changes made to that that differ from what I had expected. Under Section 18 E under notice, he said he thought they had concluded they were going to change it to read that – the director shall give the permitee 2-14 calendar days’ written notice. I would like to make a motion now to move that they change the timing back to what was discussed the other evening to 2-14 days. Commission Member Curtis Mills said he seconded the motion. Discussion was called for. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked what he felt the purpose for this was. Chairman Paul Moore said that this is under Violations and Penalties. His suggestion was that it creates a greater sense of urgency. Originally it was 10-30. He said he believed you need to give somebody at least a couple of days to get to the activity. I do not think that longer than two weeks is really necessary to take whatever action is required to rectify this. I think 30 days is excessive if you cite it as an issue. Vice Chair George Ragsdale said let’s talk about each independently. I agree with your concern about sense of urgency and that is why he said he felt personally one day is more appropriate than two. It is possible that a temporary sign could go up that could have something on it that is obscene as an example, and we would want it taken down immediately. Chairman Paul Moore said he had suggested one the other night. He said that the reason it was amended to two was because if someone had to make arrangements to get machinery, like a cherry picker, due to height. [Open discussion among Commission members about amount of days] Commission Member Curtis Mills asked what the right to appeal the notice would be on this. Tom Wilson said we would issue a notice, give you 30 days, or 2-14 days, or whatever that period is, and if you did not remove it from the time we gave you, you would be issued a citation and you would explain it to the judge. Commission Member Bob Moheb said, so your appeal would be not taking it down. Tom Wilson said, if we find a sign out there that did not come down under this paragraph, we would give a notice to somebody to take it down in 1 day, 2 days, 3 days, whatever we thought was a reasonable amount of time. If they did not do this, a citation would be issued and then to would go to court and explain to a judge why you did not take it down in the time period you were given. Commission Member Curtis Mills asked Chair Paul Moore if he wanted to recognize the questions or comments. Chairman Paul Moore said that after this conversation, he did not have a problem with this being open. Chairman Paul Moore said when they are dealing with more sensitive issues or conflict in the community, and then we will ask for recognition. Commission Member Curtis Mills asked Tom Wilson whether it was 1-14, 2-14, 1-30, what judgments you would apply on what time frame to pick. I know you consider the public impact if it was obscene, the difficulty to remedy. Page 27 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 28 of 66 Tom Wilson said first of all, if it was obscene sign, it never got a permit to begin with. He said zoning would not have approved the sign. If it is a permitted sign that needs to be taken down for some reason because it is damaged, or forever reason it might trigger the removal of the sign. It could be because it is deemed dangerous, it could be in bad repair, it could have been struck by lightening, or for whatever reason. Commission Member Curtis Mills said that what he was getting at is what judgment would you use to decide what time frame to put on the notice for whatever is banned? Tom Wilson said the first choice would be to get it down immediately. If it needs to come down, it needs to come down immediately or as soon as possible, so I would have to use some judgment as to whether it has to come down with a cherry picker, how long would it take to get one of those, and so I would have to make some sort of determination of time based on this. If it did not occur in the period of time I determined would be reasonable, or they could not convince me that my amount of time was unreasonable, then I would issue a citation and then there would be a court appearance. Commission Member Curtis Mills said if they came back on the notice and said it was just impossible to get this down, could the notice be modified? Tom Wilson said absolutely, that he does it all the time. Commission Member Curtis Mills asked if he thought 30 days is valuable or do you think 14 would cover it. Tom Wilson said if you cannot get it down in 14 days you probably could not get it down in 14 years. Commission Member Bob Moheb said it wanted to talk about retailers. The corporate companies used to require that any signs that were put up or taken down, were done so by their own people. Tom Wilson said you could take that to court and explain that to the judge. Chairman Paul Moore said the intention is to take care of it in 14 days, but what Mr. Wilson is suggesting is that there is opportunity for exception to that. Tom Wilson said that the way it is written, he could have exceptions until the maximum time and then he could not have any more exceptions to that if there is going to be a maximum of 30 days, then he would have latitude to go from 3 days and if they did not get it done and 3, then I would have to rethink that, but I could not according to this extend it more than 30 days. So on the 30th day, I would actually issue citations if this is the way it is. He said he is perfectly comfortable making these decisions without any kind of time period on it quite honestly. Chairman Paul Moore said to restrict it to create a sense of urgency to one, as Vice Chair George Ragsdale said to 14 does not restrict you and offer any other unreasonableness, but what it really allows for is where a situation needs to be rectify it would be done sooner, rather than later. Tom Wilson said that what this paragraph does which is not done in other cases is, if your sign is not down in the 30-day period or whatever that maximum period is, it sort of alludes to the fact that the city will take it down for you and then charge you for it. He said they do not really do that, we do not want to do that, and we would much rather give the citation and have the judge tell you to take it down. Chairman Paul Moore asked if there was any discussion. He then said there was a motion on the floor for 2-14 days. He said he agreed to modify his motion to read from 1 to 14. Page 28 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 29 of 66 Vice Chair George Ragsdale seconded the motion. Chairman Paul Moore then called for a vote. Bob Moheb voted in opposition. [Discussion about speaking into microphones] Chairman Paul Moore said he would like to make another friendly amendment on page 17, under Section 22, under Multi- faced signs, it was proposed the other evening to include E. that would read: Three dimensional signs shall not exceed two inches from the surface. Chairman Paul Moore made the motion. Commission Member Cary Schlenke seconded the motion. Chairman Paul Moore called any additional discussion. He then called for a vote for those in favor of adding E. to read Three dimensional signs shall not exceed two inches from the surface. Vote was unanimous and motion carried. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked for clarification and whether this would apply to A, Building Signs, would it? He said he just wanted to make sure that the motion they just passed could not be confused for building signs. Chairman Paul Moore said what we are talking about are the 3-dimensional signs, like the Chick-Fil-A signs that you see in the City of Atlanta, where there is an element that is outside of the parameters of a normal sign. We are trying to keep signs to a standard. Tom Wilson said externally illuminated wall signs that are deeper than 2 inches. A sculpted sign that has 3-dimensional sculpted from the face that is what I understood it to mean. If that is what it is, then that would not conflict with the depth of an externally illuminated wall sign. Chairman Paul Moore said a monument sign may be thinner. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he is not sure he agrees with that. I do agree that it would not apply to internally illuminated wall sign, but if you are trying to restrict it all signs, you need to do that. If they chose to do a deep carving of some kind, wood or even stone, the carving could not be more than two inches deep. It would not apply to internally illuminated wall signs because it is from the surface, and internally-illuminated signs would have some kind of cover over it. [Open discussion among Commission members about 3 dimensional signs] Tom Wilson asked what this was intended to prevent. Chairman Paul Moore said three dimensional protrusions from signs. Tom Wilson said so we are not talking about like the cow extending outside of the rectangle, we are talking about the depth of the cow. Page 29 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 30 of 66 Chairman Paul Moore said his intention was really to address both. He said he thought they had concluded the intent by wording it this way, but apparently we did not. Tom Wilson said, no, what was said tonight is that they consider the cow square footage outside of the rectangle as sign area. He said they currently have no mechanism built in at this time to prevent this. Chairman Paul Moore said if we are suggesting no extension or relief can be greater than two inches from the surface of the sign, would that not address front to back and top to bottom? Tom Wilson said if the surface is the horizontal plain on which the sign is written, it cannot be more than 3 inches depth, but it does not say it cannot go outside of the rectangle. He said it doesn’t say that. It does not mean that to me. If you want it in that plain, then you will have to say something else. Chairman Paul Moore said that he would have to amend my friendly amendment. Vice Chair George Ragsdale said you cannot amend an amendment that has already passed. Commission Member Bob Moheb said they had completed one thing, so we will just add another item to E. Tom Wilson said he did not know how to say what the Commission was trying to do. Vice Chair George Ragsdale said before we worry about how to word it, maybe we should talk about whether this is something we all want to do. He said he personally is not in favor of doing this. He said he cannot envision the extension outside of the rectangle on a size that is being particularly onerous in the horizontal plain. Chairman Paul Moore said that he is envisioning that as they are challenged like, for example, the Chick-Fil-A sign they are talking about, this may be the last of those types of signs that may want to present themselves in Milton. Tom Wilson said there are a lot of examples out near the airport that extend outside of the rectangle portion of the signs. As long as it is in the square footage. Vice Chair George Ragsdale said the square footage protects and limits that. [Open discussion among Commission members about signs] Chairman Paul Moore said it protects them in the measurement of the total square footage, but what he is looking to create is that there is an expectation of a standard sign in the area and it precludes somebody from being creative beyond what we consider a standard sign and affixing something to it. It could be considered in the square footage, and they would have to be respective of the ordinance as it defines the square footage. Vice Chair George Ragsdale said they can always get a variance. His concern is that there is going to be a lot of corporations that are going to come in with their own logos and their own logo may not fit the rectangle and they are not going to be willing to balk on that. Chairman Paul Moore said maybe it is sufficient the way it is and if at some point in the future we recognize there is an issue, we bring it forward. Chairman Paul Moore then asked Tom Wilson if he was able to ascertain the standard wattage for lighting on signs since they last met. Page 30 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 31 of 66 Tom Wilson said he had not. He said that his experience in trying to eliminate the intensity of the signs was several years ago he talked to some people at sign companies and they were talking about 10 letters with neon inside and trying to figure out how bright this would be and they limited 6 inch wide letters to 2 strokes of neon, 8 inch wide letters to 3 strokes of neon, but they are not all neon gas, they are different types of gases, different brightness, and then the type of lens that is over it, so we really did not get anywhere with it. He said it was his experience and he did not know a different way of doing it. He said he would be glad to try to get somebody from a sign business to visit us and talk to us about this. Chairman Paul Moore said he would just like to go on the record to say that this Article does need consideration of either a maximum wattage or a standardized wattage, because part of their discussion was about the use of halogen vs. whatever other standards might be. Tom Wilson said he thought what they were really looking for was say a maximum limit; say 12 inches from the sign face or something like that. Vice Chair George Ragsdale said he is not an expert by any means, but the wattage is probably not the right measure. Commission Member Fred Edwards said he thought they were speaking of the power lit outside of the wall, not a wall sign, but extremely lit. Chairman Paul Moore said his idea is to address them all throughout. To try to create a standard for maximum illumination. Tom Wilson said he will try to find something out before this goes to the Mayor and City Council so they would have an opportunity to ask them to consider this. Commission Member Bob Moheb said you will have to be really careful about who you are asking those questions to, because it could be really tricky with bigger signs and smaller signs and the amount of electricity. Tom Wilson said it is not about the electric or the power to the signs, but more about the reflectivity and how much is coming back at you. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked what we would consider a good amount or poor amount. Tom Wilson said he thought the only people to ask are in the sign industry. That is all he knows to do. Chairman Paul Moore said since this got preempted, he said he had one more question. He said thank you to Tom Wilson and said he looked forward to having the illumination information before recommendation to the City Council. He said that his question is that in the single family residential – the importance of or the need for window signs in a residential area, he said he is not quite sure if he understands the need for a window sign. He said if he is reading it correctly, it will be on page 19 under C. Single Family Residential and then referenced under Freestanding Signs, Section 2. Tom Wilson said he thought they are for non-residential uses in residential districts, but what that really means is that instead of per lot, we could say, per non-residential development. Commission Member Bob Moheb said what about the stickers that say, “Protected by ADT.” Tom Wilson said that they did give an exemption for security information in windows, but this is meant to be about non- residential uses in residential districts, like churches, or schools. Page 31 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 32 of 66 Chairman Paul Moore said he can appreciate the value of those, but is there a way to word this. Tom Wilson said yes. He said they can say 3 window signs for a non-residential development. It is supposed to say that everywhere. That line appears in many places, for non-residential development. Chairman Paul Moore asked if this would require a friendly amendment. Tom Wilson said it does. Chairman Paul Moore said okay, I put up a friendly amendment that says in Section C. 2, Window Signs, not more than 3 signs per non-residential development shall be allowed and shall not be larger than 4 square feet or cover more than 25%, etcetera, etcetera. Commission Member Curtis Mills said should that wording that is consistent with B. 2 on page 19. Tom Wilson said that it probably should. He believes the same situation occurs, so he thought you should say non- residential development or non-residentially-used lot. He said he likes non-residential development quite honestly. He said so we can do all of these modifications in one friendly amendment. Chairman Paul Moore asked if he need to say it again. Tom Wilson said; let’s have Robyn say it again: Robyn MacDonald said okay, in B. 2, Window Signs, we want to fix that to say, in the agriculture district which is B. 2, Window Signs, Not more than 3 window signs for non-residential developments shall be allowed and shall not be larger than ----. Commission Member Curtis Mills said what about D. Tom Wilson said in D., you do not need to have that in there. Commission Member Curtis Mills said in D. 3. Tom Wilson said, per development. He said he thinks that is fine. Chairman Paul Moore said it looks like some are corrected and some are not. Tom Wilson said it should say, per non-residential unit. He said in the commercial district, he thinks a change needs to be made there. Robyn MacDonald said, she needed to go back after they did C. 2, and then asked what will be the next one. Tom Wilson said D. is okay. We are on page 19. E. is okay, F. is okay. Chairman Paul Moore asked what F. showed for him. Tom Wilson said non-residential unit. Page 32 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 33 of 66 Tom Wilson said G. should not say lot, it should say per development. That means if there are multiple businesses in a commercial development, there are only 3 window signs. Maybe it could say, per unit. Chairman Paul Moore said no we do not want to limit it that much. Tom Wilson said for a commercial and industrial district – you could say one window sign per unit. Chairman Paul Moore said a unit is then being defined as a tenant space? Tom Wilson asked if they wanted to say tenant space. Chairman Paul Moore said if it is not currently defined, then it is just opened and there would not necessarily be a defined tenant space yet, and said that they are now on page 27. Vice Chair George Ragsdale said that his problem with using tenant space is it presumes [Position 2:59:45 – not audible]. Chairman Paul Moore said that maybe they will just leave it development for now. Suggested that word may be “demised” space. Chairman Paul Moore said what that really means is that it is a space that is intended to be theoretically multiple tenants and may be subdivided at a later date. [Position 3:00:59 – Commission Members speaking -not audible]. Public Speaker: Brian Snelling said that for example, they build small shop buildings that have 3, 4, 5 multi-shop spaces. If each of those is empty or there is somebody in there and only one guy can get a window sign in that whole development. Sometimes I might have 18 small buildings scattered across 50 acres, how would he do 3 window signs. It goes back to his previous point, what is the definition of a window sign. He said he read the definition, but it is kind of unclear. The main thing is he believes if you eliminate – you have provisions in there for open hours for businesses, and if someone wants to put up a sign in their window, just because one guy is doing it, does that mean the rest of them cannot do it. He said that is what he was saying about demise spaces it is intended for one year within that development. Chairman Paul Moore said going on what you are saying, a building that is intended to be subdivided into 4 separate units, until such time as you do so, it is considered one demised space. He said when it is subdivided, it may have 3 demised spaces and then each of those demised spaces would have the opportunity to have what is allowed here. If it is only the owner with one building, not demised anymore than just a shell of a building, it is appropriate to have 3 window signs. Commission Member Bob Moheb said so you are saying that the second he puts a divided wall into there, that that separates it into two demised spaces. Chairman Paul Moore said yes, and there are 6 demised spaces available. Public Speaker: Brian Snelling said that through some of these sign ordinance changes, he believed currently the definition of a window sign is any sign that is placed inside of a window or upon the window pane or glass either inside or outside of the building and is visible from the exterior of the structure. He asked how far into that customer’s space do you want to regulate. If he applies it to the glass that is one thing, but if I hang it 5 feet in, 10 feet in, 20 feet in, you might Page 33 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 34 of 66 still be able to see it inside if I am standing on the sidewalk looking through, but are you telling me I cannot hang a sign a certain distance inside my store? Chairman Paul Moore said yes we are. He said that because depending how you hang it or how you light it, like some of the bright flashing or neon within a certain number of feet inside a large plate glass window, it would have the same effect of having the sign on the glass. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale asked if it was defined that clearly anywhere besides Birmingham? Tom Wilson said it is defined in Birmingham he thought as 5 feet, but somewhere else in here it is defined as 1 foot. But there was another place in here where it is defined as 12 inches. Any sign within 12 inches shall be considered a wall sign. Public Speaker: Brian Snelling said he wanted to ask about State Road 9. He said it says window signs with neon, fluorescent or tube lights are prohibited, but inside State Road 9, he said he didn’t see where it is further defined as a limit on window signs. He said he thought they would get some arguments on this since it appears you are regulating everything they can do inside of their space. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he did not think they should regulate everything they could do inside their space. In his opinion, that would be improper to regulate what the tenant is doing inside of his leased space. Chairman Paul Moore said that is this the space where it says 1 foot? Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said Birmingham states 5 feet. Tom Wilson said he did not see it in Highway 9. He said he thought it may be in the NW Overlay District. Chairman Paul Moore said if it is silent in Highway 9, then it is not an issue. So they are allowed to have window signs up to 3. Tom Wilson said so long as you can move them back from the glass. [Open discussion with Commission and reviewing documents] Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said that personally he would change the definition to say that any sign that is placed and affixed to the inside of a window – you know unless there is something more restrictive – the Birmingham thing would be more restrictive, but that is the only exception. He said he would say any sign that is affixed to the inside of a window or upon the window panes or glass either inside or outside of the building. He said Birmingham has the 5 foot restriction of that. Chairman Paul Moore said that if you look at the definition on page 7, I think we are in agreement – Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he is suggesting changing “placed” with “affixed”. Public Speaker: Brian Snelling said unless you look at the definition of sign or window sign. I think if you read the definition of sign, it talks about being affixed to or supported by---This is his concern because he is speaking on behalf of the multiple tenants. If they want to hang a sign inside their business 10 feet away from the glass – at that point you could Page 34 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 35 of 66 almost start regulating all signs. He said at this point everybody is going to be arguing about why they cannot have anything in their space that has anything on it because you are going to count it as a sign, and you will run into some big problems there. Commission Member Bob Moheb said his concern is what the tenant is putting inside, so the inspector cannot come in and say, no – get rid of that, get rid of that, get rid of that. This is my interpretation of this. Chairman Paul Moore said he can appreciate that in other areas where, again, we are addressing the total sign ordinance here, but in Birmingham and maybe Crabapple, there is a specific reason for that and that is it is intended to create a unique and different standard in the area. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he agreed on that in Birmingham and thinks we should even be stricter on Crabapple, but Highway 9, in his opinion, is the main commercial corridor that is the purpose of Highway 9 Corridor, and we need to be careful not to restrict too much. Chairman Paul Moore said that in this particular instance, what we are talking about now is the industrial district. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he did not think you want to change it in the zoning district; you want to change it in the overlay. Public Speaker: Brian Snelling said what he is specifically asking for is in regards to the State Route 9 Overlay, defining window signs in that section which is Section 26, or what Commission Member Ragsdale said in page 7, you have to change it there to define what a window sign actually is. He said I think most of your business could comprehend that better – whether it is an exterior wall, whether it is inside or outside the glass, they could put their finger on it and say, okay, I know what that is. He said if it is open-ended like that, they will not know what you are trying to accomplish by a window sign. Tom Wilson said he thought that to prohibit it within 12 inches of the glass is also important. That is not an interior display. Nobody from the interior of the store can see it 12 inches from the glass, and so it is just another way of adding more window signs and they do that, so I think we should restrict it to be at least 12 inches from the glass or within 12 inches from the glass. This is equally as important as attaching it to the glass. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he agreed that would be fair. Tom Wilson said that he would suggest putting the definition of window signs on page 7. Commission Member Curtis Mills said to carry it a step further, nobody is going to be shopping within 24 inches of the glass or the sign or the sign. I think we should pick a practical distance from the glass. Chairman Paul Moore asked how they would do this, would they have to go back and amend this separately from what we were doing right now. Tom Wilson said asked if there was a motion currently on the floor. Chairman Paul Moore said yes. Vice Chair George Ragsdale said he disagreed, and said there was not a friendly amendment on the floor. He said they were running through what needed to be put in the motion. Page 35 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 36 of 66 Commission Bob Moheb said we did have a motion on certain things and now we are addressing other ones to go on. Chairman Paul Moore said he agreed with Mr. Ragsdale, that right now he is addressing how to – as we are assessing window signs, there is not a friendly amendment on the floor right now. We are trying to figure out how to word it. We are working our way through. [Open discussion among Commission members about whether or not friendly amendment was made or not] Chairman Paul Moore said let’s address the window signs first. He said he would move that we amend the window sign definition on page 7 to read, any sign that is affixed inside a window or upon the window panes or glass inside or outside of the building and--- Vice Chairman George Ragsdale asked if he could try it. Any sign that is affixed to the exterior of the window or window panes or within 24 inches from the interior of the window or window panes and is visible from the exterior of the structure. Robyn MacDonald reread what was being proposed and said, what I have so far is: Any sign that is affixed to the exterior of the window or window panes or within 24 inches from the interior of the window or window panes---- and is visible from the exterior of the structure. Asked if that was the end and everything would be deleted. Chairman Paul Moore and Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said yes. Commission Member Bob Moheb said so that is saying it has to be within 24 inches and visible from the exterior and not saying 24 inches or also visible to the exterior. Tom Wilson said it has to be both. If you have a sign that faces the inside of a store, within 24 inches. Chairman Paul Moore said so this is the motion, and asked for a second. Commission Member Bob Moheb seconded motion. Chairman Paul Moore asked if any additional discussion and then called for vote. Motion passed unanimously. Chairman Paul Moore said, okay, now with this being done, we still need to go back and finish what we were doing with the other corrections. We were on page 27. Bob Moheb said, does this bring in Birmingham and Crabapple also, or – Tom Wilson said a further restriction of 24. Commission Member Bob Moheb said then it would be his opinion to go into Crabapple and make that 5 feet also. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he would make a motion to make the distance on the window signs 5 feet in the Crabapple Overlay also. [Discussion among group looking through documents to see where it was in Crabapple] Page 36 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 37 of 66 Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he would like to make a recommendation to maybe make it easier and that is to take the language that is in Birmingham which is on page 40 and put it in as Section F on page 36. Commission Member Bob Moheb said can Vice Chairman George Ragsdale put that into a motion. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he would take item 8 on page 40 and copy it onto page 36. [Open discussion among members looking through documents and saying they had different pages in their documents] Commission Member Bob Moheb read from his that says any sign within 5 feet of a window is considered a window sign, for the purposes of application of this ordinance. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale asked if there was a motion on the floor. Commission Member Bob Moheb said there was a motion and then they sort of got— Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said, let me just read it to you Robyn. It will be easier. Robyn MacDonald said she had a copy of Birmingham, she is deciding where to put it. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said it should be 26.2 C., I mean F. – We are still modifying the motion. Robyn MacDonald said that that item she picked up from Birmingham says any sign with 5 feet of a window is considered a window sign for the purpose of this ordinance. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said it should say this section of the ordinance. He said that Birmingham is going to have to be changed as well, otherwise it applies to the whole ordinance and that is not the intent. Robyn MacDonald said you want it put under prohibited signs under E. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said no; make it a new section, F. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said so it should say, any sign within 5 feet of a window is considered a window sign, for the purposes of the application of this section of the ordinance. Commission Member Bob Moheb said, so are we just going to consider that as an addition to my motion and so we will just call for a second? Chairman George Ragsdale said it is Bob’s motion, and that he was just helping him word it. Chairman Paul Moore seconded the motion. Chairman Paul Moore called for any discussion. There being none, called for a vote. Vote was unanimous and motion carried. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said that while we are still there, he would like to make a friendly amendment that we add the word section, this section of this ordinance to Section 26.3 B. 8. Commission Member Fred Edwards seconded motion. Page 37 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 38 of 66 Robyn MacDonald asked if she could confirm this. Any sign within 5 feet of a window is considered a window sign for the purposes of the application within this section of the ordinance. Tom Wilson said that we have to go back and clean up window signs in Section 25. Chairman Paul Moore asked what page are we on? Tom Wilson said page 25. Chairman Paul Moore said he thought they were on page 27 under— [Open discussion among Commission and staff about where they were] Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said can we go back to 19 and just delineate the laundry list. Tom Wilson said, okay, but we need to start a new amendment at page 19 and go all the way through 28. Chairman Paul Moore said he moved for a friendly amendment to change the language in 25 B. 2 to read, in that instance, substituting from the word “lot” - non-residential development, 25 C. 2, per non-residential, strike the word “lot”. Okay, so that was 25 C. 2, now we move to D. 3 and we— Tom Wilson said it was okay. Chairman Paul Moore said we now move to E. 3 – Tom Wilson said that was okay, F. 3 was okay, Chairman Paul Moore said G. 3 was okay – Tom Wilson said no, it should be “demised space.” Chairman Paul Moore said, okay, yes – demised space. Robyn MacDonald asked if they wanted 1 window space for demised space or 3. Tom Wilson said 3 window spaces for demised space. Chairman Paul Moore said, okay, on H. 4 – Tom Wilson said H. 4 would be okay, and under I. 3 - Chairman Paul Moore said we said per development last time. Tom Wilson said that this one does not have any of that in it. Chairman Paul Moore said the last time we talked about it we said window signs – not more than 3 window signs shall be allowed per development. Page 38 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 39 of 66 Tom Wilson said let’s just scratch that all together and take the whole number 3 out - no harm done. He said okay, this completes that. Motion was made by Chairman Paul Moore and seconded by Vice Chairman George Ragsdale. There was no discussion, vote was called, and was unanimous, so motion carried. Chairman Paul Moore asked Tom Wilson, per our earlier discussion in talking about billboards in Crabapple and Birmingham, would it be appropriate now to amend this to suggest – Tom Wilson said it was not in this document he did not think. Tom Wilson said it was not in this document, but in the City of Milton Zoning Overlay District that they were going to do that in, and said we have not gotten there yet. Chairman Paul Moore asked if was appropriate to consider that in this document. [Brief discussion with George Ragsdale and Tom Wilson about some of the zones in Birmingham and NW Overlay District] Tom Wilson told Chairman Paul Moore to just leave it in the NW Overlay. Tom Wilson said that Robyn MacDonald reminded him of a very good point, and that was that they want to put all of the sign regulations in Article 33 and leave none of the sign regulations in the overlay districts, which means that their plan to limit them in this document is not working, so they must limit it in Article 33, so lets figure out a way to limit it. Tom Wilson said we want to prohibit it in areas other than the overlay districts. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said the NW Overlay District covers the whole city. Tom Wilson said except for State Route 9 Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said it does cover part of the Highway 9 overlay as it is currently written. It does not cover Route 9 itself, but it covers part of the Highway 9 overlay – look at the maps. Said do not forget that the Highway 9 Overlay extends inland from Highway 9. Tom Wilson asked if NW went all the way to Highway 9. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said no, but there is overlap. Tom Wilson said then we have to clean that up. Robyn MacDonald said that they could address the map issue when they deal with GIS and fix all the problems with Alpharetta and the other items. We could fix the Highway 9 portion then. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said if you look at the NW overlay, it goes right up to Highway 9. Robyn MacDonald said it goes all the way up to Cogburn. Page 39 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 40 of 66 Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said it goes past Cogburn to Highway 9. [Open discussion about overlap area and how to correct it] Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said they are going to have to deal with it when they get to the NW overlay because the written description of the overlay says that it matches the charter map. He said it says the boundary of the City of Milton as describe in the Charter plus annexations. Robyn MacDonald said then we could say but eliminate Route 9. Tom Wilson said if we are going to eliminate billboards in everything other than Highway 9, then we need to find a better way of saying that. He said he did not know where to do that in this without being so obvious about what we are doing. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said that in representing Highway 9, she said she is offended. She asked if there are commercial in that area. Tom Wilson said yes, there are a few commercial establishments, like Sheila’s Bar-B-Que. It is a little tiny little commercial thing at Providence and Freemanville and there are probably a couple of little tiny pieces out there that would be ideal spots for billboards. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale asked if it is zoned C-1? Tom Wilson said, yes, it is zoned C-1. Robyn MacDonald asked Tom Wilson if he thought that all the restrictions of one at least 500 feet from all residential or AG-1 zoning districts would eliminate it out there. Tom Wilson said he would have to look at the map, but Sheila’s is the one that comes to his mind. [Open discussion with several Commission members and staff and Commission members asking to look at the zoning map] Vice Chairman George Ragsdale asked what they were trying to do. He said he lost track. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said just to make sure if they are going to define certain areas that they are not leaving anything else. Chairman Paul Moore said that his objective was to restrict billboards originally within Birmingham and Crabapple, but recognizing that there are some other areas in the NW Fulton Overlay that they should probably contemplate because of places like Sheila’s. Commission Member Cary Schlenke asked about Chatham’s County Store. Tom Wilson said it is not zoned commercial, it is zoned agricultural. Commission Member Curtis Mills asked where the Sheila area was and did it fall into an area or is it just NW? Tom Wilson said NW. Page 40 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 41 of 66 Robyn MacDonald got a map for Commission members to look at. [Short break for members to get up and review map and have open discussion about the areas with Tom and Robyn pointing out various areas to Commission members]. Meeting resumed with Chairman Paul Moore saying, so there was a motion. Tom Wilson asked if there were any more amendments in Article 33. Told Commission there were three more documents to go through. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked if Tom Wilson was talking about all of Article 33. Tom Wilson said yes. Commission Member Bob Moheb said that all his friendly amendments lie within Highway 9. Tom Wilson said let’s just make them all at one time and let’s see if we can get behind this. Commission member Bob Moheb said basically 26.1 B on page 29, multi-tenant developments are allowed one primary monument for the whole development which shall not exceed the minimum surface area of – it has been changed to 32 square feet and a height of 6 feet. He said he really believes this is really too restrictive, especially on some larger tenants that will move into this area. He said he really thinks it is important to keep this at 64. I would not be opposed to lowering the height, but he would definitely like to keep the sign at 64 and the height at 10 or 15 feet, but we just need to be fair because, for example, when we bring in a development of that size (like Brian Snelling) in comes down to the tenants beating each other to try to get space on a monument sign. He said correct me if I’m wrong, but in my own previous business, I was at a larger shopping center and I did not have space on the monument sign because there was not room. Tom Wilson asked if they ever decided on the height. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he would like to say 64 square feet and 15 feet of height. Commission Member Curtis Mills said so you want to roll it back to 64. Commission Member Bob Moheb said especially on the Highway 9 Overlay. He said if we are going to consider making these drastic changes, this should be taken out to a sort of committee and let some of the businessmen and have them review this. This is a main tax base even for the city, to make sure the companies at least in this area are successful, because these are in a higher traffic area than Birmingham and Crabapple or somewhere like that. Commission Member Bob Moheb went on to the next C., 26.1 C. down at the bottom where it talks about tenant panels are prohibited. So, where we are trying to restrict signs, so if they have two sides, I think we should strike tenant panels are prohibited and allow the tenant panels. Said he didn’t think it would really make a difference. He said his only condition in there is the height part. He said that it is wrong. It is 4/6, but nothing is crossed out. Robyn MacDonald said it is 4, and that it is just the way it reads. 4 was struck and 6 was put in during the council workshop. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he recommended they strike tenant panels. A tenant panel is basically you have a multi-tenant site and you have say Verizon Wireless, Kroger and UPS. A sign that is subdivided and usually illuminated with some sort of light behind it. He said the way it is stated right now it would say like, Windward Plaza, or whatever the name of your development is and let the tenants advertise. Page 41 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 42 of 66 Tom Wilson said something to advertise the tenant, not the shopping center. Vice Chair George Ragsdale said he did not know how they were trying to process this, but if this is taken out and you do not do something with the prior sentence; it does not accomplish what you want. Tom Wilson said so you are good with the size and height on that number C. Tom asked before they get too convoluted in this, vote on this before we go forward? Chairman Paul Moore asked if Tom was suggested they start over and do amendments. Tom Wilson said we have an amendment going right now, so Commission Member Bob Moheb said he would like to make a motion for 26 B., keeping the square foot area to 64 square feet and the height to 15 feet. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said she wanted to make a comment. She asked what the current height is. Tom Wilson said 20 feet. He said 20 is the current standard adopted on December 21st. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said that when they talked the other night, the one in front of John McMillan’s would that be like a 10 foot height? Vice Chairman, George Ragsdale said that was lower, 4 by 4. Chairman Paul Moore asked Tom Wilson if under B., today, the strike is 64 to 32 and the strike of 20 to 6 was the result of City Council workshop. Tom Wilson said it was. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said that this means they really did not know what the underlying ordinance was before they started to change it. Robyn MacDonald said it was 64 and 20 before they changed it. Tom Wilson said but they did not know what it was in Fulton before this ordinance was adopted. He said he could find out. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said the comment that John McMillan made tonight is bothersome to him because he was not involved in and does not remember what the original Highway 9 sign standard was. If Mr. McMillan is representative of the people that live in that overlay area and the people in that overlay area want the current sign ordinance to stay in place, he would not personally be interested in reducing what they want to have there. He said he did not know what that is. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said that she lives in this area and have been a member of BARRAS, so she had an idea of what the residents in this area would like to see, and the sentiment is that Highway 9 becomes the dumping ground for everything else, and she said he thinks the point the other night what they were talking about is the diminishing value. Right now it sounds small and looks small, but once everyone gets on that same page, it will have the nicer look we are trying to have in our city. She said so she is not really a fan of bumping it up. Her thoughts are that from the feedback she has gotten from the community that she has spoken to is they would like it cleaned up and continue on at that same pace. She said she respects what is being said, that a tenant needs to advertise, and she said she was also thinking about Page 42 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 43 of 66 what was said about John McMillan’s sign. She said she shopped in that store all the time and the only reason she never went to Verizon is because she switched to Cingular. She said she did shop at all the other stores in there and she said she was never drawn in there because of the monument sign, but it was more the store front. Vice Chairman Paul Moore said there are two considerations he would add here. He said first, they need to be careful in making these large enough that they would defeat the purpose by having all of the tenants on the monument sign. He said he understands the industry because he was part of it for a while. He said often preferential treatment is given to the largest space-holder in any given development and there is not an expectation that everyone is represented on the monument sign in the development. He said he believed this is pretty understood throughout the industry. He said he thought if they make it large enough so every tenant can appear on the monument sign, then you have cheated yourself, because they get lost when you get 20 or so because you cannot read them all, so it is intended to be just a representative of what is there. He said that when city council pounds through this and they are attempting to move through a move for greater restrictions, he did not believe they should go backwards on that. He said he would add lastly that you can go back and appeal if you are a particular site and request something larger and it could be amended I believe by the Design Review Board. Tom Wilson said, up to two times. Commission Member Bob Moheb said that it was his understanding that the Board was on board with keeping everything like how it was before. He said that he will tell them from his personal experience and that of John McMillan, the commercial strip there towards 9 and Windward, with space on the monument and space on the wall sign, he actually put up a wind feather at one point and the amount of customers he had come is was ridiculous. Customers told me that they did not even know you guys were here before they say that and that was with the monument sign and the wall sign. Commission Member Curtis Mills said he didn’t think there was a second and we are discussing it. He said that just to understand it, 64 square feet and 20 feet high, that is a 3 foot wide, 20 ft. sign. Commission Bob Moheb said that the main thing to understand is that no matter how tall it is, the square footage does not change. Whether you have a 2 foot tall or a 15 foot tall sign, you still have 64 square feet of sign. Commission Member Curtis Mills said that it seemed to him and he said he was not an expert on this, that the height is an issue just from the obstruction and the look and feel of driving down the road. He said this is a bigger issue to him than the square footage. He said he was curious if it could be recounted as to what the sentiment was. Was it one person that really had a strong feeling about it and that is what really affected the numbers or do you recall if there was more of a consensus on it? Commission Member Bob Moheb said that it was his understanding that there was one council member that agrees with this and that the rest disagree. Tom Wilson said he wanted to say something about the edits that were provided in the document. There was great discussion, just like there is right here. About this time in the discussion, he said he tried to discern if there was consensus. He said he has no idea if he was right or wrong or how many people backed that number. It was just what he ascertained from the conversation. He said they did not raise their hands and say who was for or against and that is all. Commission Member Curtis Mills asked Tom Wilson if there was any science applied to this. He asked what the thinking behind those numbers was. Tom Wilson said he did know the person that suggested the 32 was trying to bring the Highway 9 district into concert with the other districts, like in Birmingham and Crabapple, where 32 is the maximum size. This was stated as the purpose in doing this. To bring this more in line with the other districts. Page 43 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 44 of 66 Commission Member Bob Moheb said that just like with the window signs gave Highway 9 24 inches and Crabapple and Birmingham 5 feet, this is a different monster. This is a different ballgame and we have to take this into consideration or we will seriously affect incoming businesses into this area and he felt they will not want to come in if they cannot get their signs done. This is their main advertising. Tom Wilson said you have to do what you think is the right thing to do. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he believed the right thing to do is to keep the 64 square feet. There is already a motion on the floor, and he said he would like to restate it to go ahead and keep the 64 square feet and change the maximum height to 15 feet. There was no second. Motion died. Chairman Paul Moore said okay, you can now amend your motion or move forward. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he would like to understand. He asked if it is more like what Curtis Mills said, a height problem or just the overall signage. Chairman Paul Moore said that personally he felt they had an opportunity to set a new standard and that although he recognized the importance of Bob’s experience and what he is trying to do to protect the new businesses, he said he feels that the change is to take Milton to a higher standard than they have done before and that it also possibly would allow a smaller business owner to come in a course of time and compete if they are not able to afford great big signs, with the mega monsters that are out there and lastly, there is an opportunity for an applicant to appeal that and have a variance granted. We are trying to set a blanket higher standard than what is out there. Commission Member Bob Moheb said the main thing to realize is that 26.1 B does not apply to single tenants; it would not apply to the Frye sign. This does apply to multi-tenant signage, so this is multiple tenants and from what I see on Highway 9, usually the minimum number is 5 tenants placed on the monument sign if not more. Commission Member Curtis Mills asked if it would make sense to consider how many tenants are in there – not make it fully variable, but make it variable to a point. He said if there are 2 tenants, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, it goes to your argument more. If it is just a commercial PR value, than that is a different matter, but if it really is better representative, maybe there is a better way to deal with that. Commission Member Bob Moheb said like maybe a square footage per tenant. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said like multi-tenants greater than a certain number. She said one thing before they consider that that she would like to remind everybody that they will not be without signs. You are still going to have wall signs and window signs. The businesses will be able to be identified and my earlier point is actually how she finds stores when she is looking. She said she does not really zone in on the monument signs. [Open discussion among Commission members about the difference in 64 ft. to 32 ft. signs, visuals and examples] Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said they needed to keep in mind it is not about the whole sign monument; it is only the sign surface. He said you can build a monument bigger than this, but it is the sign surface that is restricted to 32 square feet or whatever that number is. Page 44 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 45 of 66 Commission Member Bob Moheb said that even then 26.1 A. requires that all freestanding signs shall be monuments with the width of the base equal to the width of the sign face. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he was going to ask about this because this contradicts the definition of what a monument sign is. The definition of a monument sign says that the width has to be at least as wide as the sign face, not equal to. Commission Member Curtis Mills asked if it would be out of line to decide on something and plan on having this and any other sticky item addressed again at some future called meeting after they have had a chance to get smart on what these numbers mean. He said he hates shooting from the hip. They need to agree to something and then agree to maybe discuss it again. Commission Member Bob Moheb said then why go ahead and change everything. If we are going to discuss it later, then why not just leave it as is. He said his recommendation to begin with was to leave everything in the overlay on Highway 9 the way it is and then let’s create committees and whatever we need to do and let those people decide and then let them bring something to us. He said the most important thing on 26.1.B. is the 64 square feet. He said he would even be fine with keeping it up to 6 feet if they think height is the major thing, but keeping that 64 square feet. Chairman Paul Moore said okay, then we need a motion. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he would like to make a motion for 64 square feet and a maximum height of 6 feet. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale seconded the motion. Chairman Paul Moore called for a motion and then a vote. Curtis Mills and Cary Schlenke were against. Motion failed. Chairman Paul Moore said okay, then we have two choices – we can make another motion. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked if the reason Curtis Mills voted against is because he felt uneducated in the matter and felt unsafe changing anything. Commission Member Curtis Mills said sort of, but he said he would put a different spin on it than that. [laughter among attendees]. Commission Member Curtis Mills said his opinion frankly would be to go with Staff’s recommendation where he does not have a conflicting intelligent opinion and that his gut reaction, but he said he is opened to opening it up and making another informed decision. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said just for clarification, the changes in the document are not Staff’s recommendations. He said he would not construe it that way. It is Staff’s attempt to guess at what council wanted. Tom Wilson said that is right. He heard more people saying 32 than not. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked Tom Wilson what his recommendation was. Chairman Paul Moore said that it appears they are at an impasse at the moment, so we can leave it as it reads and we have an opportunity for further discussion at a later date, and it also comes before the city council and they have an opinion to express as well, so he suggested they move to the next friendly amendment. Page 45 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 46 of 66 Commission Member Bob Moheb said that was fine, but asked Tom Wilson to just correct him if he was wrong, but said he stated at their briefing that they do not even know if they have the ability to come back to these things, is that correct? Tom Wilson said they can always instruct Staff to revisit the zoning board – it belongs to you. Commission Member Bob Moheb said okay, then I guess we will leave this up to the council. Okay, so regarding 26.1 C. I do make a motion to strike everything after the content of the secondary identification. Especially if they are restricting the size to 32 square feet. If something is cornered on two rows, then go ahead and let them have two signs. Whether to let them put up something that says “Windward Plaza” or “Highway 9 Plaza”, it would not hurt to let them put up tenant panels in his opinion. Tom Wilson asked if that was a motion and he said yes it was a motion to strike everything after content of the secondary identification monument. Chairman Paul Moore asked if they could call for discussion before a second is called. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said no. Chairman Paul Moore said okay, then I will second it. Chairman Paul Moore then said okay, for discussion. I would just like you to consider one thing. If we are going to strike everything, that we put back in the words at the project entrance so that they do not have the discretion to put that at another place on the property. Robyn MacDonald said it is already in there. It is above that. Chairman Paul Moore said okay, I am sorry – you are right. Commission Member Curtis Mills said let’s change the purpose of intent from location **? [4:14:13] to retail advertising. If it is the development name and the street number let’s say versus potentially each individual – Commission Member Bob Moheb said that what he has seen – and again an example of what they are all familiar with is John McMillan’s “Windward Plaza” is that on his sign he does have his complex name at the top in small writing and then he has his tenant panels. So he has went ahead and included both within his square footage restriction. Chairman Paul Moore said this is addressed corner lot. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he is allowing the sign anyway of 24 square feet, but it is restricting it to the complex name is my understanding. Chairman Paul Moore said so what it is suggesting is that the secondary road that is not on a main artery is then becoming an advertising location. So this is saying that it is restricting it only to the primary artery. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he is pointing out again that this is for multi-tenant developments. Chairman Paul Moore said, right, but you are giving that advantage to a corner lot, where that corner lot has two exposures compared to just if there was no street there they would not get this benefit. They are suggesting that they get this benefit because there is an extra exposure and the primary intent was to advertise on the artery rather than on the secondary. Page 46 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 47 of 66 Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he would like to give a different example. As written, he said he believed what this would cause would be for Birmingham, would be that you could advertise Publix and the other tenants on Birmingham Road, but you would only be able to put the address on Birmingham Highway. He said personally he thought this would be a mistake not to be able to advertise at least the primary tenant if not the other tenants on both corners. Commission Member Bob Moheb said that taking that example people going down Birmingham Highway may not be traveling down Birmingham Road, so you are giving them another opportunity to come into the complex and make our tenants of our cities successful business which is important to keep the complex occupied Chairman Paul Moore said okay. Commission Members Curtis Mills and Cary Schlenke said to please reread the motion. Commission Member Bob Moheb said the motion is for 26.1 C. to strike everything after content of the secondary identification monument. So basically what we are doing is taking the sign that is intended to have the name of the shopping complex and address only and giving them the ability at their discretion to also and go ahead and put tenant panels up if they wanted to. Tom Wilson said let us make this easier. It appears that it is a lack of content based ordinance. I think you can strike this based on the fact that it is content-based. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked if he still had to have a motion to strike tenant panels are prohibited, or would tenant panels also be content based? Robyn MacDonald said I think if you are going to involve the identification monument is content based actually, just looking at the beginning of the paragraph – are allowed an additional identification monument versus an additional monument sign on the secondary street. The point is if it is going to be purely non-content based, we should not have the word identification on it. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he thought this was safer. Chairman Paul Moore said he agreed. Commission Member Bob Moheb said then is it also agreed that tenant panels are also prohibited if we are making it content-based. Tom Wilson said just like you said, strike everything after the word content. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said just strike the last two sentences. Chairman Paul Moore said yes, but we still need to strike the word identification up in the first sentence. Tom Wilson asked if this was the motion. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he thought it would just be required since it is content based. Chairman Paul Moore said how we address that. The motion is not inclusive of those things at the moment. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he would like to amend the motion to strike the word identification on 26.1 C. Page 47 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 48 of 66 Commission Member Bob Moheb seconded the motion. Commission Member Curtis Mills said but this is your motion. Commission Member Bob Moheb said I would like to amend my motion in 26.1 C. striking the word identification. Commission Member George Ragsdale seconded the motion. Chairman Paul Moore asked if there was any discussion. No discussion, so called for vote. Vote was unanimous, so motion carried. Commission Member Bob Moheb said that in 26.1 D. single tenant sites and all parcels are limited to one monument. He said he is requesting that they keep it at 32 square feet and a maximum height of 6 feet. Again, keeping it with what is already out there. You do not want to give say a Target that comes in a disadvantage compared to a Wal-Mart. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he wanted to ask how this applies, because he was not sure he understood. He said if I think about the Wal-Mart on Highway 9 and Windward, is that a multi-tenant development or is it a single tenant site without parcels. Tom Wilson said it is a multi-tenant site without parcels. [Open discussion about type of site] Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said, okay so that is D., but what about Bethany Village? Robyn MacDonald said where the Publix is? It is a multi-tenant without parcels. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said, so if that is the example, what applies to that? Would that be C. or would it be D? Because it says single tenant sites and out parcels. Should it be single tenant sites without parcels? Tom Wilson said a single tenant site is the same is a single tenant out parcel. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said so Publix is a multi-tenant development, then he asked if he was correct then that Publix and everything that is in that strip would fall under C. and then the other parcels would fall under D? Tom Wilson said yes. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he just wanted to make sure how to interrupt it. Vice Chairman Paul Moore said let’s say it one more time George. In a single tenant site and in out parcels-- Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said if I apply that to Bethany Village, the Public and all the establishments that are in the Publix building, that one single strip, would be covered by C. and D. But then the out parcels, Starbucks and Fosters and all those would get their own monument sign under D, correct? Robyn MacDonald said no, they would not get their own. Starbucks would not get their own monument or Foster’s would not get their own monument, I think they have a shared – Vice Chairman George Ragsdale, one out parcel, but the bank would get one, Wendy’s would get one – Page 48 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 49 of 66 Commission Member Cary Schlenke said do we have that wording in here? Let me see, because that would be a multi- tenant site with out parcel? Vice Chairman Paul Moore said a multi-tenant site without parcels would describe Bethany Village to me. Commission Member Cary Schlenke asked where that would be in the document. Tom Wilson said it would be B., C. and D. for the out parcels. Commission Member Curtis Mills asked what a good example of D. would be, extreme and standard. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said Wal-Mart and Lowe’s. Commission Member Curtis Mills said so Home Depot – they are way off of the road but they get the monument on the road. Robyn MacDonald said they are just a stand-alone site because they were there before everybody else was. [Open discussion about other examples]. Commission Member Curtis Mills said they so why would the square footage be reduced here to 24 instead of 32. The implication is that there is more sign density and that is why is ought to be reduced, but he said he is not getting that. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said for example Wal-Mart would not be advertising Chick-Fil-A and K-F-C and all of that. They would just be advertising Wal-Mart. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said actually, the way it is written, it does not restrict Wal-Mart from advertising anything they want. It is not content based. It just says they are allowed to have 32 square feet and they can put anything they want. Commission Member Fred Edwards said that usually that is the developer that is putting that in, not Wal-Mart, so they would make that decision. [Open discussion about Wal-Mart and like signs] Commission Member Bob Moheb said so basically his motion is to keep it at 32 square feet. Chairman Paul Moore called for a second. No second, so motion failed. Commission Member Bob Moheb said then there is nothing to amend here and we will just leave this up to council. Commission Member Bob Moheb said 26.1 F., two or more businesses that share a single tenant space are limited to one monument sign which shall not exceed a maximum surface area of 24 square feet and a maximum height of 6 feet. He said if we are going to keep a tenant at 24 feet and now you are having two or more businesses, it really seems unfair to him to keep them at the same, so with this, he requested that the motion keep it at 32 square feet and maximum height of 6 feet. Chairman Paul Moore called for a second. Page 49 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 50 of 66 No second, so motion failed. Commission Member Curtis Mills said he was not so sure that 32 makes better sense than 32, but it does not seem to him that if two tenants share a single-tenant space what ought to be a single business that they should have more advertising opportunity than the intended use of the property. Chairman Paul Moore said he thought the intent should be, just looking at the numbers here, they are trying to address a standardized sign, regardless of how many tenants there are per location. Robyn MacDonald said they both had 32. The single tenant D. had 32 originally and then F. originally had 32. Commission Member Curtis Mills asked if Staff knew why this was reduced to 34. Commission Member Bob Moheb said because Council Member Bailey said she wanted to change it. Commission Member Curtis Mills said he could not believe that one person dominated that whole discussion. Robyn MacDonald said that Brian Snelling was there at the council meeting. If you want to ask him about it. Commission Member Curtis Mills said okay, what was the magic on 24 square feet? Public Speaker Brian Snelling that he thought her logic was to reduce them all because Crabapple and Birmingham are small, but she was primarily the only one speaking about this and she went through every one of these. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said she had not spoken with Councilman O’Brien, but she said she knew that before the election, he was talking about trying to get Milton to have a new and better look. She said that she believed he would not necessarily be opposed to change the look of Highway 9. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he was uncomfortable with the way the discussion was going. He said their job is not to try to guess what the council members want and put it into the ordinance. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he also thought it is not appropriate for someone to lower numbers just to lower numbers, what is the purpose. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he agreed with him 100%. He believes it is equally inappropriate for them to increase them without some basis. He said he was with Curtis on this. He does not have enough information to feel comfortable one way or the other. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he feels confident enough that if he does not get the motion passed here that council will make an appropriate decision later, so the motion that is still open is 26.1 F., 32 square feet. Chair Paul Moore asked if there was a second. No second, motion failed. Commission Member Bob Moheb said then 26.1.G, again you are lowering it and giving them less square footage, making the sign smaller and taking them further back. Page 50 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 51 of 66 Chair Paul Moore said there is an attempt to standardize setbacks. He knows that other areas of the overlay are currently at 10. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale asked Bob Moheb asked what his motion on G. was. Commission Member Bob Moheb said his motion is to leave it alone again. Chair Paul Moore called for discussion. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said in this case it is not just changing one dimension. He said if you are reading the way it was written the first time, it is intended that the monument sign be within the zone of 5-10 feet from the right-of- way. Now is has to be no less than 10 feet, which means it can be anything out side of that. He said he liked it much better the way it was written the first time because it is very clear that it restricts where it is to be placed. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he felt the whole purpose of a monument sign is again so people driving by will see it. The sign does not have a point if it is 50 feet back off of the road and when you are driving by you do not see it -- you might as well not see it. Chairman Paul Moore said he believed there is some safety issue. If you do get as close to 5 feet, where you may be restricting line of sight to the highway. 10 ft. allows you to be closer to the road before you pull out. Commission Member Bob Moheb said you would have thought that Fulton County would have thought of all of this before they passed it. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said that the way it was written before, it would put you 15 to 20 feet from the end of the road, which is almost two car lengths. Chairman Paul Moore said that so now it is being standardized this way by 20. Commission Member said so now you are taking what looks like a 24 square foot sign and moving it back 10 more feet and that 24 square foot sign looks like a 12 square foot sign divided among 10 tenants. He said that in his opinion you have to give them either a big enough sign, enough square footage when they can see it, or they bring it close enough where they can see. Commission Member Cary Schlenke asked if they have a second. Commission Member George Ragsdale seconded it. Commission Member Curtis Mills said he was interested in if they had an opinion about what is practical giving the commercial interests in safety and esthetics. Tom Wilson said he believed 10 feet is better than 5 feet from the right-of-way. Commission Member Curtis Mills said that Fulton County had 10 feet from the right-of-way and this is 10 feet from the right-of-way. Tom Wilson said this is not a Fulton County ordinance, it is a basic ordinance. It should read in most cases, 10 feet from the right-of-way. [Open discussion about distance] Page 51 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 52 of 66 Commission Member George Ragsdale said there is no similar limitation either in Birmingham or Crabapple. There is no specific sign placement language in either Birmingham or Crabapple. Chairman Paul Moore asked that the motion be restated. Commission Member Bob Moheb stated that the motion is for 26.1 G. to keep it as previously stated. Tom Wilson said with minimum of 5 and maximum of 10. Chairman Paul Moore called for vote. Motion failed 3 to 3. Commission Member Bob Moheb said that he wanted to restate the motion. He said he did not know if they would be more comfortable with something like monument signs shall be set back a minimum of 5 feet from the public right-of- way and went ahead and deleted the maximum of 10 feet. They could be as close as 5 feet, but could go as far back as they want. Chairman Paul Moore called for a second. No second, so motion failed. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said that before they left that page, he wanted to back up. He said he believed 26.1 E. needs to be modified in the interest of being content neutral. Said they need to take out the two advertised gasoline prices that are there. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he would move that 26.1 E. that they delete the words two advertised gasoline prices. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked Tom Wilson if he agreed with that. Tom Wilson said he is okay with that. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked if he thought it had to be that way to be content neutral. Tom Wilson said yes, he thought it did. Commission Member Cary Schlenke asked if that would be like a public service or information street sign. Chairman Paul Moore said that is what they used that language for. Tom Wilson said so strike two advertised gasoline prices. Tom Wilson said so that was the motion. Commission Member Fred Edwards seconded the motion. Chairman Paul Moore asked if there was additional discussion and called for a vote. Page 52 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 53 of 66 Motion passed unanimously. Commission Member Bob Moheb said this was his last friendly amendment to keep everyone happy. 26.1. J., all signs shall not exceed 100 feet or 5% of the applicable wall area, whichever is less. He said his motion is to strike the underlined area, the length of the size shall not exceed 6 times the height of the sign. He said his reasoning is to just let the retailer decide this. Again, we are restricting them in square feet based on their logos or trademarks or whatever it may be and this may mess something up. He said so his motion is to strike the underlined area in 26.1 J. Chairman Paul Moore asked for a second. Commission Member Curtis Mills said he would second for discussion and asked what the logic is in this. He addressed a public speaker in the chambers and said he was sorry he could not remember his name. [Brian Snelling]. He asked Brian Snelling what his logic was in the 6.6 on the one he was doing now. What was it about this logic? Chairman Paul Moore said that the discussion they had last time was not necessarily the 6 in particular, but it was to insure that there was not a one foot high, 100 foot long sign. Somehow the 6 came into a factor. Commission Member Curtis Mills asked if there was some number that would satisfy this without unfairly limiting. Public Speaker Brian Snelling said that that the 6.6 is just for this particular logo that he was talking about. It was already restricted down to 100 square feet. If it were allowed to be something else, it may be a different ratio. He said he did not know if this carried – if you make the sign bigger. He said you are not going to find many retailers out there who are going to put up 100 by 100 foot sign. He said 6 is a very small number and he did not know if the number should be 20, 30 or what. He said personally, he did not remember from the other night because he sat there at least this long if not longer listening to the counsel members, but I do not remember this being brought up there. It may have been brought up after the fact and I missed it, but I just did not have it in my notes. For example with regard to the logo that I have and I can give you an example of it, if I get it approved at 150, it measures 6.6 longer than it is tall, so right there if you pass this on the 19th or council passes it on the 19th, I am going to have to come back on May 6th and file and so on. Commission Member Bob Moheb said the whole purpose of his motion is that you can really screw things up. You are restricting to 100 square feet and that is fine, but the second you start messing with these people’s logos. For example, Verizon Wireless was forced to cut the “Wireless” out of the sign which was a huge, huge issue for them and something they tried to fight big time. Again, if we start messing with some of these trademark logos and the fonts and things like that, I think it can get ugly. Commission Member Fred Edwards said that he thought Kroger had to have something special in Alpharetta because the “K” came up above and went over their amount so they had to go for a variance on that and it was approved. He said he did agree with Bob on this in that if we are going to restrict this as far as the 100 square feet, then he also agrees with what the gentlemen said. He does not know of anyone who is going to run one out the length of their 200 foot building, so he said he would not be concerned with that, so he agreed with dropping that. Public Speaker Carol Lane said she was at that same meeting and it was discussed and it was about the Target and the size and again, she said something you have to keep in mind is you are setting a new standard and they can change and they will change. It is not convenient for them right now because it is not in their model, but they are willing to do it because they want the business. You are setting a new standard, going out on the limb and she still believes that the people want things to look better and that is what the City of Milton is striving for. They are not going to not go to these businesses, they will. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he completely agrees, but he personally feels that what makes the difference is the building itself, not the sign. He said like in the Birmingham Crossroads. What made it nice were the buildings, not how Page 53 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 54 of 66 big the signs were or anything like that. With the 100 square feet they still have the ability to go to the BZA and go up to 200 square feet, so all we are doing is still giving them the 100 square feet but we are just being it in whatever shape they desire. Public Speaker Carol Lane said the comment about the look is about the building, she thought the signs also affect the look. She said when you drive down the road and you see these signs, she does not even necessarily see the building, because some of the signs are so big that you do not see the buildings. If you go to the other communities, like something in Florida where the whole area is redesigned, like beach communities and things, they can do this and they will do this. It is just at some point we have to say this is what we want. If you want to do business in the City of Milton, here is what we require and if you do not, then do not stay here. Chairman Paul Moore said okay, so help me with the visual. The .6, what would that do if you had to comply with the new size, does it shorten it, fatten it up? He said he was just trying to get an example of it from someone who deals with this every day. Public Speaker Brian Snelling said yes, it would shorten it up. They have certain ratios. Commission Member Curtis Mills said 6 times is 17 feet at 100 square, 5 times is 20, etcetera, then 4 is 25 and 3 is 33, so clearly 33 gets extreme and 25 is probably extreme, and 20. That does not seem offensive to me. He said I am no expert, but that is what he was looking for. Where does the curve kick up and it becomes offensive. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale asked if there was any particular reason this restriction is in the Highway 9 overlay and not in the other two overlays. Tom Wilson said he does not know of any restriction. Commission Member Bob Moheb said like he was saying earlier, Highway 9 is a different monster. Tom Wilson said it came up in the discussion of Highway 9; it did not come up before that. Again, this was a very long meeting and at the end of the meeting, things were not like they were at the beginning of the meeting. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said that the only restriction in the Birmingham is 3% of the wall area. There is actually not a maximum sign, just 3% of the wall area. Commission Member Bob Moheb said so okay, so back to the example that was brought up by Brian – you take something like “Books a Million” and what do you do, turn it into “Books a Mill” or “Books Million.” Commission Member Curtis Mills said well you have to change the font. Commission Member Bob Moheb said if you make it a smaller font size and you are taking what they are allowed as 100 square foot sign and you are shrinking it down. When you edit that smaller font size, it is not just the length you are taking down, but you are also taking down the height. He said he has not known a corporate company to change their ratios or anything like that. So what you have taken from 100 square ft. and because of this 6 ft. restriction, you have taken what they can have as 100 square feet and shrunk it down. [Open discussion about ratios] Chairman Paul Moore said he just wanted to echo what Ms. Lane said. Said they have an opportunity here to set a new standard and to her point, he said he does not know whether 6 versus 6.6 is going to be targeted as an example when Page 54 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 55 of 66 trying to come to that particular location. He said he believed that if they set a standard that corporations will find a way to adhere to it. He said they need to set a standard that they can be proud of. Commission Member Curtis Mills said how the ratio would be appealed and what latitude would – Tom Wilson said you would go to the Board of Zoning Appeals and ask that the variance be something other than 6. Commission Member Curtis Mills said then so then no application from the size oriented measures? Tom Wilson said you could seek a variance of something greater than 100, but you could also seek a variance for a portion of it. Commission Member Curtis Mills said so they could seek a variance of up to 200 feet if they agree to that change. Would there be any limits based on the appeal or could they just agree to whatever made sense. Tom Wilson said they could agree to whatever made sense. Chairman Paul Moore said okay, then let’s close discussion and ask for a vote. Motion did not pass. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said wording on page 21 and 26. Section 25, Item E, O-I District. Starting on page 21, Section 24, Item E. 1. (e) – the lots on which the billboard is located shall have sufficient area to accommodate the Fall Zone and except the sign—She said what she suggests they change this to is the bottom at which the billboard is located shall have sufficient area to accommodate the Fall Zone and except for the sign, no parking lots, pedestrian areas, roadways, building structures or appurtenances shall be contained in the Fall Zone. Just adding parking lots, pedestrian areas and roadways, to include this. She said this was her motion. Chairman Paul Moore asked for a second. Commission Member Fred Edwards seconded motion. Chairman Paul Moore asked for any discussion. Tom Wilson said before they voted on this, asked Robyn to repeat the motion. Robyn MacDonald said she had, the lot on which the billboard is located shall have sufficient area to accommodate the Fall Zone and except for the sign, no parking areas, pedestrian areas, roadways, no building structures or appurtenances shall be contained in the Fall Zone. Chairman Paul Moore called for vote. Motion passed unanimously Tom Wilson said okay, and that was in two places, E. and on page 26 H. 1 (e). Chairman Paul Moore said okay, so by that vote we agreed to – Tom Wilson said, I think you need another vote. Page 55 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 56 of 66 Commission Member Cary Schlenke said so do I need to amend my prior motion to include – Tom Wilson said yes, and when you do, it actually shows up in C. 1, C. 2, O-I Commercial and Industrial, so let’s catch all of them at once. He said it will be also be in G 1 (e), E. 1 (e) and H 1 (e). Commission Member Cary Schlenke said she would like to make an amendment to the motion that it also includes G. 1 (e), E. 1 (e) and H 1 (e). Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he seconded it. Commission Member Curtis Mills said he did not think you can amend something that had already been passed. Tom Wilson said just say that G and H 1 (e) is the same as the other, whatever that was. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said she was not sure what she was supposed to say. Chairman Paul Moore said to go back to the original one that you amended and call that out as the reference. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said okay, so 25, Item E. 1 (e) shall be the example for E. 1 (e) – I’m sorry, I mean G. 1 (e) and H 1 (e). Commission Member Fred Edwards seconded the motion. No discussion, vote was taken. Motion passed unanimously. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said there was one addition and it was his mistake. He said his motion is that the language that was inserted into F 1 (h) in 25, he believed on page 23. He said this language should also have been inserted into 25 B. 1 (c). He said all that does is allow for in residential whether it is either a lot or the development, which he believed was consistent with what they talked about before, so each development can have one and each lot in addition can have one. Chairman Paul Moore seconded the motion. Commission Member Bob Moheb said just to clarify it, you want the development to have one and each lot to be able to have one. There was no discussion. Motion passed unanimously. Chairman Paul Moore asked Commission Members one at a time if they had any further changes or additions to this document and they did not. [Open discussion about how to go about approving everything] Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he moved that they recommend to city council Article 33 as presented to them tonight, inclusive of all of the friendly amendments that have been approved this evening. Page 56 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 57 of 66 Commission Member Bob Moheb seconded. There was no discussion. Vote was called for and motion passed unanimously. Tom Wilson said the next 3 documents are rather simple. Chairman Paul Moore said okay, let’s take Article XII-G, which is the State Road 9 Overlay District. Tom Wilson said that the purpose of the edits seen in this document were to add the Highway 9 Overlay District to the purview of the Design Review Board with the exception of single family detached dwelling units. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale moved that they recommend to city council that they approve ordinance number XII G as presented to them at this time. Commission Member Fred Edwards seconded the motion. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he only comment he has and he said Cary and he had discussed this. The want to make sure the right map gets done. There was no public comment. Chairman Paul Moore said there being no further conversation, public comment is closed. Commission Member Cary Schlenke asked where she would make her motion to revisit the Highway 9 Overlay District. Tom Wilson said to redo the Highway 9 Overlay District standards? Commission Member Cary Schlenke said yes, to have more guidelines for the Design Review Board to shore up some loose ends. Tom Wilson said that this would be a fine time to make this motion to instruct staff to do whatever it is you want us to do. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said that this is a different motion than what is now on the table. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said okay, we can do this later or move for a new motion. [Open discussion about whether or not there currently was a motion on the floor and how to proceed with other amendments]. Commission Member Bob Moheb said so there is currently a motion to adopt this article to city council. Vice Chairman asked if there was further discussion. Hearing none, called for vote. Motion passed unanimously. Tom Wilson said let’s just go through the items and then do the motions. Chairman Paul Moore said, okay, let’s talk about 12-H, the City of Milton Overlay Zoning District. Page 57 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 58 of 66 Tom Wilson said that the purpose of this Text Amendment is to one, change the name of the NW Fulton Overlay District to the City of Milton Overlay District and to change the name of the NW Fulton Overlay District Design Review Board to the City of Milton Design Review Board. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he moved to have city council approve and adopt the ordinance 12-H as presented to them this evening with one change, and that being that in Section 12-H (1), that the first sentence be reworded as follows: The City of Milton Overlay Zoning District applies to all properties except attached single family residential land uses within the boundaries of the City of Milton as described in the attached map. Commission Bob Moheb seconded for discussion. Asked George Ragsdale what the purpose of this was. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said the purpose of this was to take it away from the city charter because boundaries described in the city charter is for the entire city and he believed they talked this evening about trying to avoid the conflict between this overlay and the Highway 9 overlay because there is overlap where it exists right now. As a matter of fact, the way it is written, it overlaps all of Highway 9 if you take the way it is written right now. Robyn MacDonald asked Commission Member George Ragsdale to repeat this again. He said all he did was on the fourth line, was take out the words city charter as set forth in the appendix of the charter and inserted attached map. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he thought this would work because everything that has been annexed post the city charter – I don’t think anything has been annexed since the city charter is in Highway 9. Robyn MacDonald said there were some parcels on the west side of the Highway 9 overlay when it was annexed. She said when it was unincorporated those parcels were included in the overlay across on the southern part near Alpharetta. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he meant to ask about that. He told Robyn that when he looks at the Highway 9 overlay map, the area that you are referring to I do not believe was all annexed. Only the commercial area was annexed, but the residential area, Winter Park, right across from Queen of Hearts, that residential area that is in the back, I do not believe that was annexed. Robyn MacDonald said okay, but everything except for that. She said she believed that once they created a new map, they will exclude those that have gone into Alpharetta. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale asked if he could amend his own motion – Said yes he could. He said he is proposing an amendment to the motion that the rewording of 12-H (1) will also include deleted the sentence right after that that says also included in the boundaries are those parcels of land annexed, because the map will reflect that. If we put an accurate map on the back that does not overlap with Highway 9, we would not need the annexed language. The map will reflect what this applies to. Commission Member Cary Schlenke asked if the map would be done by the next council meeting. Tom Wilson told Robyn that there were several weeks until the next council meeting. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked if they need to instruct Staff to attach a revised map so it is on the record. Tom Wilson said they did. Page 58 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 59 of 66 Chairman Paul Moore said okay, so there is a motion on the floor and this is discussion. He asked if there are changes that he would like to follow-up on from last time, would that come after or now as a friendly amendment. A friendly amendment if it is regarding this document. Tom Wilson asked if they voted on the first friendly amendment. Chairman Paul Moore said was that a friendly amendment. Commission Member Bob Moheb said it was a motion to pass it with those changes. Chairman Paul Moore said it was not a friendly amendment George was making, it was an amendment to pass it with the following conditions. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he thought Tom Wilson was right. He did not think the motion could be amended after it had been seconded. He said he could withdraw it if the second was willing to withdraw it, since it had not been voted on. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he would move to withdraw his motion and make a new motion. Commission Member Bob Moheb agreed to this. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he moved to recommend to city council that they adopt Article 12-H as presented to them this evening with the following change: That the first sentence be revised, that the City of Milton Overlay District applies to all properties except attached single family residential land uses within the boundaries of the City of Milton as described in the attached map, and that the second sentence be deleted. Commission Member Fred Edwards seconded the motion. Chairman Paul Moore said that the discussion then would now include friendly amendments to that. He asked if anyone besides him had any. Tom Wilson said he actually had one he would like for them to consider. Tom Wilson said that he was the one that generated this change and that he really had not intended for the NW Fulton Overlay District name to be changed to the City of Milton Overlay District. He said he did intend for the NW Fulton Overlay District Design Review Board’s name to be changed to the City of Milton Design Review Board, so he would like for them to reverse this name change of the overlay district back to the NW Fulton Overlay District. Motion was made by Fred Edwards. Chairman Paul Moore said he would second that. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked what the reason was. Tom Wilson said he wanted to change the name of the NW Fulton Overlay Design Review Board because now it has purview over the entire City of Milton. He said when he asked Robyn to make that change, he said he probably was not as clear as he meant to be so she also changed the overlay district to be the Milton Overlay District, but it is not the entire city, so he thinks they should go back and reverse that and leave it as the NW Fulton Overlay District, but change the name of the NW Fulton Overlay District Design Review Board to the City of Milton Design Review Board. He said he just did not want to change the name. There is no reason to change the name or the boundaries of the NW Fulton Overlay District. Page 59 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 60 of 66 Commission Member Bob Moheb said so just so he was clear, at their briefing they talked about the City of Milton overlay zoning district being the whole entire City of Milton and then the overlays— Tom Wilson explained that because State Road 9 is different. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said that does not mean that they cannot change it going forward, but it does not work right now. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said just for consistency, recommended that they drop the word “zoning” and just call it the NW Fulton Overlay District. Because neither Crabapple nor Highway 9 have the word zoning in the title. This is a friendly amendment. Commission Member Bob Moheb seconded. Chairman Paul Moore asked for any discussion. There was none. Voted and it was unanimous, so motion carried. Chairman Paul Moore said that he would like to say that – this may just have been an oversight, but on 12-H 3. 1, under A-2, said they had talked about changing that from 30 to 20. This is under Landscaping, under A. 2. where it says a tree shall be planted in a center landscape strip a maximum distance of every -- He said he thought they had agreed to change this to 20 feet. Tom Wilson said he did not remember, but they certainly can. Chairman Paul Moore said and also in the same friendly amendment he would like to change 4. to a minimum of 10 foot wide strip shall be planted--- The change would be from 5 feet to 10 feet. Tom Wilson said that may place the sidewalk outside of the right-of-way and that would be a problem. Commission Member Curtis Mills asked what change he was proposing. Chairman Paul Moore said he was suggesting for the landscape strip to be a minimum of 10 foot wide. Tom Wilson said could we just have a 10 foot strip between the back of curb and the back of right-of-way that is the 5 foot sidewalk and the 5 foot grass area with 6 inches to play with. Chairman Paul Moore said then he would strike that suggestion as long as it says minimum, which it does. He said this was he motion. Commission Member Bob Moheb seconded. No discussion so vote was taken. No opposition so motion carried. Chairman Paul Moore said that at some point they talked under 12-H 3.8 (1), Sign Structure Colors [5:21:21 on tape]. There were A. and B. and said this may be moot based on their last discussion, but said they had talked about adding 12 H.3.8.2 to suggest that prohibited signs were going to be billboards. Tom Wilson said they would not do that. Page 60 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 61 of 66 Chairman Paul Moore said that the last question he had for Tom Wilson goes back to their discussion of earlier in the evening. Would this be the appropriate time and place to introduce the Birmingham master plan and the Crabapple plan to have them moved from policy to ordinance by being included in the NW Fulton Overlay. Tom Wilson asked if he wanted to include them in the Birmingham Overlay and the Crabapple Overlay. Chairman Paul Moore said that was his question. Is the master plan today a part of the policy and there are not binding as ordinances. Tom Wilson said that was correct. Chairman Paul Moore said he would like for them to become more binding like an ordinance provides. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said with all due respect, he said he believed this falls into the same category as Cary’s question, because neither one of those plans are written in a way that it can be codified, because it is a plan, it is not written as an ordinance so it would have to be completely rewritten to be included, it could not be included as written. Chairman Paul Moore said that there were conditions in the Master Plan that are true to both. Commission Member Bob Moheb said that he felt the best thing to do would be to instruct Staff to either create committees or go ahead and somehow reword those plans to make them ordinances. Chairman Paul Moore said that he appreciated what both George and Bob were both saying. He said he would obviously be happy to cooperate with that as long as they are not missing the opportunity to – Tom Wilson said that this could be done at any time. If the document is not in the right format for them to do this today, then at any time they can get it into that format, they would have the opportunity to add it and send it to city council. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he wanted to make himself clear. He said that he believed these need to be made into ordinances. Tom Wilson asked if they wanted to go ahead and instruct Staff to do this. Chairman Paul Moore said yes, he would like to formally instruct Staff to review the Crabapple Master Plan and the Birmingham Master Plan to assess it for appropriate wording so that it can be converted from master plans today to ordinances. [Open discussion about order for the master plans] Tom Wilson said Highway 9 is not part of the Master Plan. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said she wanted to add to it and broaden it somewhat. She said she has written up a brief idea about what she wants to do, but had more questions about how it should be handled. The committee and staff approach. She said she felt staff had too much going on and she kind of envisioned them doing what they have been doing with the sign ordinance and redlining items that are glaring and bring forth those items with an amendment to just the current State Route 9 Overlay, not recreating a whole new plan that rolls into it, but I just think there are things that have already been identified in a different overlay district that we can benefit from, recognizing that we do not want barn doors on Highway 9, or we are not trying to make sure everything looks like the Crabapple or Birmingham plan, but finding some balance where there is a good transition, something that sets the tone for what the rest of the city looks like and what we have the balance of what is on Highway 9 and how we can clean it up. Page 61 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 62 of 66 Commission Member Bob Moheb said he thought the main thing is they do need a good transition especially as the commercial goes further and further down 9 towards Bethany and Crooked Creek and those areas. He said we do need something that looks better than just the old brick building or old stucco buildings. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said the biggest complaint she hears from people right now is just a mix of things that have been built and like the Cornham (?) Bank that we had for an example earlier. Right now on the State Route 9 Overlay there is not a definition of what accent materials – not a percentage of the building that can be covered in accent materials and the Cornham Bank was covered in white tile which was to be an accent material, so just that type of thing needs to be done. Tom Wilson said he thought what he is hearing is that they would like to beef up the design standards to something and he is not quite sure he knows what that is. And then he believed he heard what they are saying is that they would like to give that document to Staff to review and take to a public meeting or two to get the buy-in from the citizens about the changes and then bring that back to the Planning Commission as an update to the Highway 9 Overlay District. Robyn MacDonald said she believed she had mentioned this the other night, but the Design Review Board is really looking at it too and they really do want to improve it and change it, so with their expertise and the experience of the Planning Commission, you can work together, since that is their goal too to work on things independently knowing that Staff is pretty stretched, and then come to Staff with suggestions. Commission Member Bob Moheb asked if it would be possible to set up a meeting between the Planning Commission, the DRB and maybe one of the citizen advisory boards. Tom Wilson said there is nothing that would prohibit that that he was aware of. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said even if they just bounce some ideas off of each other via email. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said it seemed to him that they are going to get spread awfully thin if they all work on everything. Maybe it would be a good idea to maybe have Cary and someone from the DRB agree to try to lead this and then come back to the Planning Commission with a recommendation. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said that would be fine too. Chairman Paul Moore said you might also find that there is some interest from citizens that would like to dive in and help out. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said one thing that she wanted to talk about is when they did the Olin Corporation effort, there was work done by a zoning and planning committee and they came up with a list of recommendations that she believed they may have already seen. Tom Wilson said he very well remembered those. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said that would even be a start if they got those in. Tom Wilson said something they might consider would be to have a special called meeting of the Planning Commission to invite the citizenry to come and speak to you about the Highway 9 Overlay District and get some public input without Staff and just have an audience. Page 62 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 63 of 66 Commission Member Curtis Mills said he thought that was a great idea and asked how long it would take to get something like that assembled – a month? Tom Wilson said probably a month. If you voted tonight to do that, we could then have several weeks to get together some advertisement, get it advertised, put on the website, have it put in a newspaper or two. He said you would probably need a month to generate enough interest. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said it would probably take them 3 months for them to figure out what dates they could do it. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said let’s do Thursday and we just know Paul Hackman will not be able to make it. Chairman Paul Moore said okay, and then to bring closure to this discussion, there is a formal request to Staff to consider Crabapple and Birmingham for assessment to change it from a plan to an ordinance document. He said he recognized that this is a big request for Staff. Tom Wilson said that the City Manager would have to instruct them on when to do that. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said they need to have a special called meeting, or maybe they do not need to call a meeting, but they need to think about prioritizing what they really want people working on for them. Because now we have those two and at some point there were a number of ordinances that were identified and others that were never codified that we need to think about doing. Chairman Paul Moore asked if they should allow the City Manager to take a look at that first and make a recommendation back to them as to what would constitute the greatest amount of work. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he thought it is a question of which is the highest priority. As a practical matter, he said if they want to try to incorporate any of the Birmingham or Crabapple Master Plans into the ordinance, they need to do it quickly or they will be built out before this is done. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he believed that Crabapple is really the one they need to pay attention to because it has really already started to go downhill in his opinion. He told Commission Member Cary Schlenke that he did not want her to think he wanted Highway 9 to be Wal-Marts and Super Targets all over the place. He said that something needs to happen to Highway 9 to make it look a lot better than it does right now. Tom Wilson said maybe you need to have a retreat. Chairman Paul Moore said okay and said to close discussion on this and go to the last of the articles, which is Article XII H-1. Tom Wilson said the amendments to this article were to remove single family homes from the purview of the NW Fulton Overlay Design Review Board, now known as the City of Milton Design Review Board. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he would like to make a motion to keep single family residential in the Crabapple Crossroads within the purview of the Design Review Board. Tom Wilson said they need a motion first to approve this document. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale moved that they recommend to city council that they adopt Article XII H.1 as presented to them this evening. Page 63 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 64 of 66 Commission Member Fred Edwards seconded the motion. Chairman Paul Moore asked for public comment. None, so public comment was closed. Commission Member Bob Moheb moved for a motion to keep detached single family residential within the purview of the Design Review Board. He said he believes this is a very small area that you can bring a family that is visiting or friends that are not familiar with the area and sort of show off the city and believes this is very important to get something done in this area. [Open discussion about where the document was and on what page] Commission Member Cary Schlenke said she would second it for discussion. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said that one of the things they talked about in the briefing was that it would be a difficult task to review all of the different plans for the single family residential. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he agreed it would be difficult, but he believed it is also different – this is not under the AG-1 homes, these are less than an acre that are going to be close to each other and is really important to get this section of the city right and in his opinion, they have not done this so far in this overlay. He said that if this was AG 1 and everything had 25 foot setbacks, he would agree. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said to not forget that single family detached, even other than AG-1 are not subject to the Design Review Board in any of the other districts either. Chairman Paul Moore said he believed that was Bob’s point. Regarding the other ones, he is not seeing as much of an issue. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he is just reminding them that this includes other than AG-1, so things that are on smaller lots in other districts, even though they are single family detached – He said I hear Bob making a distinction between AG-1 and other residential and he said he was just pointing out that other residential is not subject to the Design Review Board either. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he was not familiar with any other developments in the overlays. Chairman Paul Moore said he believed the point was, other than the clarification that George brings, which he said he believed is an important one, he said he believed what he was after is because this is intended to be a landmark area, it is finite area with a design standard that is supposed to be asked for a planned community. Commission Member Bob Moheb said it was also his understanding of the overlay that is also supposed to be a pedestrian-oriented overlay and we need to make sure everything meshes well. He said he understood it will be a hard task for the DRB, but he believes it is very important. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said that for an example, White Columns is not AG-1. He said this is an example that I was just trying to point out. If you were to apply that would have required every home in White Columns to have been put through the same design review process. Robyn MacDonald said they are still minimum one acre lot. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said they are CUPs and as CUPs they are not AG-1. Page 64 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 65 of 66 Tom Wilson said it is not that single family homes will not be reviewed and compared to the standards, because Staff will do that. It would just be done by Staff as opposed to the Design Review Board. He said that there are standards in here that apply to single family homes and even if they took it out from the purview of the Design Review Board, Staff will still be reviewing and making certain that those standards are met. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he believed part of the problem in Crabapple is the same thing that Cary is talking about in Highway 9. It is not that the things are not being reviewed, but it is the fact that the underlying standards do not support what the plans said they were going to be. The ordinance does not match the plan. There is not the same level of control in the ordinance as there was in the plan. Commission Member Bob Moheb said that he knows something is wrong at the Crabapple Crossroads and something needs to be done about it. He said as we currently speak, there is nothing but dirt out there right now, and all the trees are torn down and everything is about ready to start building and it may already be too late for a lot of this stuff that is already permanent out there. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said she believed Bob wants to do the same thing on Crabapple that she does on Highway 9. Robyn MacDonald said that much of the Whelan project has not come before the DRB as far as the actual buildings. They are working on their designs. The only thing at this point is if they approve it with the exception of the detached single family homes would go before the DRB and that is a lot. There are a lot of detached town homes, there is commercial, so there is a fair amount that would go before the DRB. Commission Member Bob Moheb said he was open to the Commission’s suggestions on whether they think they should keep this single family within the DRB or whether you think it is more of a design standard that is messed up. He said he thinks something is wrong here and they need to do something about it. Chairman Paul Moore said it absolutely warrants further review and additional standards for absolutely the reasons that have been cited as an issue. There is something really wrong with the Crabapple Crossroads right now and it needs to be fixed immediately. He said immediately also comes with pain and discomfort too, because how do they add this now. It behooves us to do everything they can to begin the same process as Cary has suggested. Commission Member Cary Schlenke said they need to work independently and make recommendations. Commission Member Curtis Mills said he agreed and that time is of the essence. Six months goes by and we will have to live forever with the impact. Chairman Paul Moore said he believed there would be no shortage of community interest in playing a role in taking fast action on this as well, because that is the outcry he is hearing from the citizenry. They feel the same way that they do and much of the preparation work is already too late to turn back. The best they can do now is ensure the structural integrity. Again, and to George’s point earlier, and to Tom’s point, I am not sure it is necessarily accomplished by removing attached single family homes by changing this. Commission Member Bob Moheb said that he would go ahead and withdraw that motion to remove the detached single family homes and move somehow towards changing the guidelines. Tom Wilson said that in this document he would also like to reverse the renaming of the NW Fulton Overlay District to the City of Milton Overlay District for the same reasons they reversed it in the other document. Page 65 of 66 Special Called Work Session of the Planning Commission Thursday, March 22, 2007 Page 66 of 66 Vice Chairman George Ragsdale moved for a friendly amendment to revert back to the NW Fulton Overlay District instead of the Milton Overlay District. Chairman Paul Moore seconded the motion. Chairman Paul Moore asked for discussion. Vote called for and was unanimous, so motion carried. [Open discussion on what to do next] Vice Chairman George Ragsdale asked Tom Wilson if he wanted one all inclusive motion for all four ordinances. Tom Wilson said he was fine with that. Commission Member Curtis Mills said the bigger the better. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale said he moved that city council approve the ordinance, the Article 12-G, 12-H, 12-H(1), and 33 as presented to them and as amended this evening. Commission Member Bob Moheb seconded. Chairman Paul Moore asked for discussion. No was no further discussion, so vote was called for. Vote was unanimous so motion carried. Vice Chairman George Ragsdale moved for adjournment Commission Member Bob Moheb seconded. [Open discussion about what to work on first and about setting up public meeting] Tom Wilson asked if they wanted to set up a Special Called Meeting and advertise so public can come and talk with you about one or both of those two districts (Birmingham and Crabapple) and what to open it up to. [Long open discussion about dates and length of time of meetings]. ADJOURNMENT After no further business, the Special Called Work Session adjourned at 11:30 PM. Dated Approved:______________________ ____________________________________ __________________________________________ Francesca Ivie Paul Moore, Chairman City Clerk’s office Planning Commission Page 66 of 66