Town Council grasps in-depth municipal needs, discussions following ‘great’ retreat

Myriad topics of discussion to be evaluated, implemented through 2020

By Melissa Rosequist
Twitter: @mrosequist_

A successful planning retreat for Paradise Valley Town Council will provide several topics of discussion and items to review through the end of the year, officials say.

At the end of January, town staff and elected officials spent a day looking at myriad items that had been adding up over some period of time, such as how to minimize pass-through traffic in residential neighborhoods, which many on the local dais say deserves a full conversation.

The retreat was the culmination of several months of work from the town’s three boards: Planning Commission, Hillside Building Committee and Board of Adjustment, which, respectively, presented to the recommendations and potential improvements.

The outcome of what was coined “Planning and Zoning Retreat” has resulted in an action plan with 10 topics to be looked at amongst Town Council and Planning Commission.

The action plan initiatives include:

• Native plant preservation;
• Pad elevation height;
• Training, rules and procedures and ongoing education;
• Noticing and applicant intersection at Statement of Direction;
• Hillside overview, solar, open space criteria and member make-up;
• Stormwater management/regulations;
• Options for cut-through traffic;
• Cell infrastructure on Special Use Permit;
• General Plan; and
• Special Use Guidelines.

Town Manager Jill Keimach says the retreat went so well due to a lot of work by staff and council’s good direction during the meeting.

“We had a great, from my point of view, development retreat --- which we didn’t call a development retreat because it’s not about ‘development,’ it’s about planning and processes,” Ms. Keimach said at the onset of a Feb. 27 discussion about the retreat.

“What we didn’t get to was how do we plan this going forward? The key question is receiving feedback on the items and the timing for consideration.”

Some of the topics identified will be for future action items, while others will require robust study session discussions. In addition, two big-picture items identified was the process for the upcoming General Plan adoption and special use permit guidelines.

Items outlined in the new guidelines may include calculating floor-area ratio based on net square footage, not gross; requiring an Alta Survey and Title Report; and adding legal language at the bottom of an application, among other things.

“The specific criteria, which was also discussed tonight, was height, how do we measure it, looking at parking regulations and shared parking as technology changes in the future,” Ms. Keimach said. “Also, looking at the buffers between resorts and residential.”

Complex initiatives to have individual study session discussions are development standards and interpretations; curbing and impact to stormwater; options to address cut-through traffic; and the Hillside Building Committee.

At the end of Ms. Keimach’s overview of the retreat, she presented a calendar identifying how to get council direction on each initiative before the end of the year.

“This doesn’t mean this is the highest priority of the council, it’s a reflection of when we think the material will be able to be discussed and get direction from council,” Ms. Keimach said.

Some of the items identified for improvement have already been set in motion, as Community Development Director Jeremy Knapp says Planning Commission has started looking at noticing changes.

“We’ve started that discussion with the Commission, we talked about current noticing practices within the town as well as in our neighboring communities, because one of the comments from the Planning Commission was ‘how far into Scottsdale do we have to notice if we have something on their boarder? Or in Phoenix?’” Mr. Knapp explained.

“So, we’ve done that research. We’ve had a work study with them, at the last meeting we showed them current practices, things we’re required to do by state law, things that are done by policy through the town --- got some feedback and they asked us to come back and propose some different distances for mailing. But not any discussion yet about changes to when we send out mailing. I think that’s something the council will probably look at in a little more detail in terms of overall process.”

Mayor Jerry Bien-Willner says the goal to look at all 10 initiatives over the next nine months is very aspirational. “We know things come up that are time sensitive that we can’t predict sometimes. I think it’s all of our expectation that everyone will be working hard to do the best we can to keep these things moving,” he said.

“But I think from the council side I feel very confident that we would all --- believe that you have our confidence to schedule things as needed. No one will be absolutely held to this schedule, you know you could get a development proposal that comes in or other things out of the blue and we totally get that.”