ED & Planning Committee
Meeting Summary for September 19, 2007
Page 1
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I.
Subject:
Action:
Accela Software Demonstrations
II. Subject:
Action:
NorthLake Are Plan
III. Subject:
Action:
Process for Studying Residential Street Lighting Policy
IV. Subject:
Present:
Time:
Next Meeting Date
The next meeting date is scheduled for October 3, 2007, at Noon.
Councilmembers John Lassiter, Andy Dulin, Don Lochman, Nancy Carter and
James Mitchell
3:30 p.m. – 5:25 p.m.
I. Subject: Accela Software Demonstrations
John Geer: I will give you a brief background of where ACCELA came from. In 1999 we became involved with the KIVA System and in 2001 KIVA was purchased by the ACCELA
Corporations along with several other large government software concerns so they have rolled this into one large package. They have put out the ACCELA automation product and we’ve got a portal actually over the Automation product which is called B360. In B360, they have taken all the good things out of all the products they have purchased and rolled them into this project. Last year, we approached ACCELA about being the pilot program to move from KIVA to ACCELA out of their KIVA customers. We agreed to do this and we have been in the implementation process for about 6 months. We are due to go live on November 12 th
.
John Geer used a PowerPoint for this presentation to the Committee

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Trisha Demassi: I work with the Administration group for Land Development and I will give you a general overview of how to search and create a project in ACCELA. I will also introduce you to Citizen Access which is a website that allows our customers to search projects and get a project status update. If you look at the home page, at the top for ACCELA, in my task, this allows the user that is signed in to track projects that are assigned to them and the due date when it is actually due and when they have to take action. If you scroll down a little further, it will show all the open projects and also give you the ability to search and create a project. Further down, it shows you the current project that is pulled up in ACCELA. The left-hand side you have tools that allow you to navigate through the current project and reporting as well. When a customer comes into Land Development, they will bring a set of plans and also will bring a paper copy application. What our Admin group does is actually input that information into ACCELA.
Questions/Answers/Comments
Lassiter: I brought this up at our last City Council meeting, and when we toured upstairs all of the plans are folded 8 ½ by 11 and I talked to someone who worked for a
Demassi:
Weekly:
Lassiter:
Weekly:
Lassiter: developer who produced some kind of plan and had to bring in a set that were over 180 pages and had to be folded over and had to break it into six parts in order to fold them over into that size, and it cost $1,800 to print. The point is, is this designed to take those plans in an electronic format, or you scan them and put them in?
We do have that capability. Brendan will touch on that a little bit later. That is what we are moving towards right now.
Let me clarify. This is not a tool, at least not yet, to do digital plans. Brendan will show you a little later that we can start communicating back and forth when a plan is sent to us. We will review those, red line them and start communicating back electronically, but the current process moving forward with implementation of ACCELA, is still a part of the customer to send hard copies.
I want to make sure we are not adding a step. What we are doing is taking those plans and scanning them, converting them to electronic format, if in fact they can be received electronically by the developer.
Actually, by us scanning them it prevents the customer from having to scan them, but we can take a look at that as an option.
It is an expense of time and if they are already producing them electronically for
Weekly:
Lassiter:
Weekly:
Demassi: their own circulation, it seems like almost anybody in this business is doing that.
To give you some history, we have had projects that have digital submittals and if that is not the ones that were received well by development community or design community, there wasn’t really incentive…
Everything is moving that way.
Up to that time, even our staff did not really grasp digital transmittal for viewing things on the computer monitor. With technology and the price going down on larger monitors, we are looking at moving more in that direction, realizing that is where we need to.
When we do get that information, the Admin group will go in here, choose Land
Development and then it will us a drop down of various reviews that we actually provide. I have actually created a commercial review already in the system so we can take a look at that. There are paper copies as far as the application part, when customers do submit plans and we will be inputting that application into
ACCELA. However, in the future looking at citizen access, customers should be

ED & Planning Committee
Meeting Summary for September 19, 2007
Page 3
______________________________________________________________________________________ able to submit it online. To search for a project, and I already have one called
Carmel Country Club. We would simply put in the project name. If by chance you didn’t know the entire project name, you could just put a section of it and it will still pull in any matches for that. You have other options to search which would be address, parcel number and date. By searching the project name it pulls up any matches and it will show the work flow. This is the process for a commercial review. It starts off with the Admin Group and I actually created the application so my name is automatically pulled in and it allows you to sign off as complete, in progress, pending and you have a couple different options for your status and for this situation I will choose complete so I can move on. If I had any comments, it gives me a place to enter those as well. Keep in mind this is just for a commercial review. We have many other reviews but this is the most common review that we have.
The next step would be initial site assessment. This is where the site inspector would review the project and determine the requirement. As you can see it has pulled in the site inspector’s name, which is David Hodges and it automatically assigned the reviewer in the workflow because we have inspectors that are connected to certain GIS layers and whenever we put a person in an application and create that application, it automatically assigns the correct reviewers for that workflow. In this case, I’m going to say complete just as if he did his review and then submit in order to move on to the next step. It would go back to the Admin
Group and this is where we distribute plans and pull in the correct reviewers for this process. As you can see, it was assigned to me again because I originated this application. Here, it is going to give me a choice of who would possibly be pulled into a commercial review. For this presentation, I actually have an
Engineer here who is Brendan Smith, Senior Engineer and then Tom Johnson, our Urban Forrester to go through their part of the workflow. In this situation,
I’m going to pull in the Engineer, Urban Forrester and keep in mind that these are parallel reviews so they can go in and review their task and sign off at anytime.
They don’t have to wait on one another. In the workflow, you will see that the
Engineer and the Urban Forrester in red and you will also see on their home page, under my task, that it is waiting for them to complete and the due date.
Brendan : At this point, the workflow steps that are red are the ones that are active so those reviews need to be completed right now. For the Engineering review, at the top, under my task, if I were logged in, this Carmel Country Club Project, would show up there on my list as a task to complete with a due date. Once it is assigned to me, the plan can then be transferred over to me in my work area in my in-box and I would go ahead and do my engineering review of this plan. We would be looking at the grading, detention plans, general storm water management and erosion control as well.
To sign off, I would basically click on Engineering Review and it would automatically pull me up because I am the assigned Engineer, and I could put in a status. If I was okay with the plan and ready to send it on approved, I would click okay and if I had revisions, click that and then it would push it to the next step in the workflow. For this example, I will click okay, submit it, take it back to the workflow and who that the Engineering Review had been grayed out,

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Dulin:
Smith:
Smith:
Dulin:
Smith:
Dulin: which means it is completed. One thing tying into the digital plan review that I would like to show real quickly is that ACCELA provides us the capability to attach documents to this application. It is pretty simple, just click new, browse to the file, and we have possibilities here. I have three PDS Files to show different scenarios. One might be where we received an electronic submittal from a customer and this is something we are working toward in the future. We can perform the review on the screen with certain technology and we have ADOBE acrobat that does have some of these capabilities and I have some experiment with it. If we were to do this, then we could store this document right in
ACCELA and be able to access it at anytime. For instance, if I get a call from a developer or a citizen with questions about some comments that we made in our review, while I’m on the phone I could quickly pull it up through ACCELA and not have to go through stacks of plans.
Along with that line, if you are in the field will you be able to pull that up?
Tom is going to address being in the field using the tablet PC’s This is a web page application and if you have a wireless access from anywhere, you can pull
Dulin:
Smith:
Carter: up ACCELA, log in and access the attached documents.
Say you were at Carmel County Club pool and you get a call about a C-Store over in Belmont, would you be able to look it up on your laptop?
Absolutely. The web access provides that. The citizens access - the citizen would also be able to search for that project by name and pull up the record from the public website. There is a section that has attachments so they should be able to see them.
When the public accesses, there is no way they can interface with the document,
Smith: correct?
Correct. There are programs and AutoDesk who makes AutoCad software, has a program called Document Manager and that has commenting capabilities and you send that out as an AutoCad file and an Engineer could e-email back. There
Peterson:
Geer: are ways to do all digital review, which we are exploring, and trying to look to that for the future.
Dulin: Will you be able to change that and fax it to the guy so he can see what you have red-lined?
Smith: Absolutely.
We could refer him to the website.
The good thing here is that in Citizen Access the developer or contractor, or whoever, is going to be able to go into Citizen Access, see what Brendan’s comments are on his review and then pull up the plan and see exactly what the red lines are on that plan.
Here is an example – if we were to receive paper copies from an applicant, we could perform our review, handwritten red-line because sometimes it is easier to look at it on the desk instead of the monitor, then we could scan in sheets and store those hand-written red-lines right next to ours.
Is this something you all are getting jacked up about?
Some of us. There is some resistance from some reviewers more so than others.
From a standpoint of efficiency for your department and efficiency for the guys who are building stuff and are actually going to the bank to borrow money and are paying on it, we hold them up for a month for a plan review it could cost them another $86,000.

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Smith:
Dulin:
Smith:
Blackwell:
Dulin:
Geer:
Smith:
Carter:
Geer:
Weekly:
Johnson:
Blackwell:
Johnson:
Dulin:
Johnson:
That is a goal that we would like to explore but for now ACCELA at least provides us the capabilities to attach documents and to have everything stored.
Another thing I should mention, it stores it on ACCELA servers so we pretty much have unlimited storage if we have large files that is okay. We have ways to reduce the resolution on the scan to keep them small, but we can upload as much as we need to for each project.
In the public area, is the public able to go to every single area? Is it public information or are there things that you need to keep?
From this section where we attach documents, pretty much anything we put here will be available on the public access site. I think if we had to store it internally only we could do it on our local network here.
For our Citizen Access, we choose what we want to make available to the public.
We want to give them the information they need whether it is a citizen or a developer.
At some point, it is private information because a developer doesn’t want his competitors to be able to look at what he is doing.
This system is hosted in California by ACCELA so if you’re getting team free network that is headed in California, the server is in California.
This document I am attaching is PDS, but ACCELA lists here the different file type that you can attach. A WORD document if you need to or a DWG which is the AutoCad file type. If we do get files sent to us from engineers in AutoCad format and we review it in AutoCad, we can attach an AutoCad file here if we need to. If we want to put our e-mail in we can, but if we need to put the submitting engineer’s e-mail in, when I submit it, it sends an automatic e-mail out to let that person know that the file has been uploaded.
Are you concerned with security?
No, not really. Between the City’s security and the ACCELA security, it is pretty secure from what we understand.
The information that we have is not really information that we are concerned about someone stealing except payment information when they pay online. We are having to work around those issues to work out the payment online, but we will meet those requirements.
I am on the Urban Forestry, and I do inspections along with the other groups.
These are the tablet PC’s that I am working on and they have a wireless feature that you can use so we will be able to use this in the field.
How is your connection wireless when there is no hardware.
I’m only connected to the projector here. One thing I am able to do in the field is create and sign off on a section at random on any project. What I am looking at is the Carmel Country Club and what I will be able to do is actually set up that inspection and there are a host of inspections that we could set up and the one I am going to create today is a … inspection, submit that. I am the current user so I will create it for me for my use, I can put my comments in, so now it is back in my cue for a list of inspections that are scheduled to be performed. All I have to do is click on the inspection I created and sign off. We use these for projects that are not only in progress, but also those that have been … so I could use, once you are in five-year compliance, and set that up exactly the same way.
Is that system under test now or are you using it?
I have used it. ACCELA isn’t live yet so we are still testing.

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Demassi:
Dulin:
Geer:
Demassi:
Blackwell:
Demassi:
Dulin:
Demassi:
Dulin:
Geer:
Carter:
Geer:
Continued the demonstration. What happened, the reviewers have signed off which will bring it back to the Admin Group and the Admin Group would then close out the project by running fees. The software allows us to process fees, invoice and receive payment. This will bring us down to contact developer.
After we run the fees, ACCELA has offered an additional feature which actually automatic triggers the e-mail notification to professional and owner, letting them know that the project has been approved and the total amount due. At this point,
I would sign off as complete and you will see the e-mail triggered which would be sent to the professional and the owner automatically when a project has been approved and also if there were any revisions, an e-mail would be sent, but in this case we signed off as if it were approved.
If it were electronic it would say, if there were no paper plans?
If there were no paper plans, it would probably link you to a URL where you could review it.
We are still in testing so we do have another feature which would be GIS. It is not up and running at this point, but it would allow us users to go in there and verify the different GIS layers associated with that parcel and also look and see if there are any other projects on that parcel as well. As far as ACCELA, that is the internal user for ACCELA software. I will show you the external which would be for our customers and this is going to be Citizen Access. There is going to be a link on charmeck.org when we actually run live and this allows our customers to search for their projects and get status updates. In this situation, I happen to know the permit number, but you can search by the professional name, the project number, by address and when we actually run live we will have an option to search by project name because that is the majority of what our customers search.
If you were on Carmel Road you would use Carmel?
Exactly, the same situation. If you aren’t sure you could just use Carmel and anything associated with that would pull up.
This list of projects, that is just one inspector’s list, is that correct?
That is just one part, maybe the commercial review, but there could be other text or reviews or it could be a different product.
That represents one human and that represents projects that are in the pool.
An inspection would be attached to that project.
When you are dealing with these, can you pull up … projects as well in a certain radius? My question is generated because of Storm Water concerns and the complex of new development.
That is part of the GIS capability with ACCELA. The GIS will allow you to go in and find a parcel. It will give you the project name with that parcel and you can click on those tab sites and find information that pertains to the parcel in
ACCELA.
Demassi: Continued the demonstration. The customer would put in a search and pull back with one because I knew the specific permit number, so if I click on it, it will pull up more information about that project and give them an update. They are going to be able to see the workflow that we see, but in a user-friendly format. They can see each reviewer and what their due date is along with location, any

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Carter:
Demassi:
Smith:
Geer: inspections that are associated with the project. They can see any comments that we may have had and if there was an attachment, they would be able to pull it up.
Are there ways to connect with those people who are the inspectors?
They would be able to identify who the inspector is.
They could go back under charmeck.org because under Land Development, we have all the contact info, inspector, reviewer, etc.
What should happen, the inspections that you see, if there was an inspection done on that project. This is not linked to what Trisha has been showing you, but what will happen is you will see columns with the inspections that he has done on here also. You will be seeing the whole picture.
Demassi:
Dulin:
Demassi:
We are still testing and it will be a little bit more advanced when we roll out, but that is Citizen Access. I will go back into ACCELA and we will verify GIS is working and I can show you that.
This is not our final walk-through on ACCELA. How many training hours have you got involved for the inspectors to go to the new system? Clearly they are going to classes somewhere or the classes are coming to us.
We have actually had ACCELA come and train for two weeks total and we are also doing another week before we actually run live.
Dulin:
Geer:
How many inspectors are we having to train?
We are training the entire division which involves Land Development and involves Planning.
Are we a pretty big client for ACCELA? Are they pretty excited about coming Dulin: over here and selling Charlotte?
Demassi: Yes.
Geer: They are excited for several reasons. One is that they are looking for land projects also.
Dulin:
Weekly:
Are they selling us this stuff priced like they want the business instead of sticking it to us because I know it is expensive.
This is a pilot project for them. We are their first customer to move from KIVA to ACCELA and of course they are wanting their other KIVA customers to do the same thing. We are getting this for the same price as KIVA …
Geer: Cleveland, Ohio has gotten this same basic setup and it is costing twice what it is costing us.
Lochman: Talk about the training for your own people – how do you train the customer/user/developer?
Peterson: We are actually going to be planning workshops. Trisha and I will be holding public workshops and we will show them the Citizen Access, what they can and
Lochman:
Demassi: can’t do with it. Also, we have newsletters that we’ve communicated to them the products of ACCELA and we will do a caption on our webpage to try to make it very easy for our customers to use that.
You are certain a large percentage of them can digest and use this?
Weekly:
We actually have what KIVA net for KIVA and basically the same exact website.
It is just a different software so they are used to going in on a website and actually search projects. It shouldn’t be too different for them.
We have provided them with more information then they currently have. The good thing about this is that if anybody has used the Internet, they shouldn’t have any problem with this at all.

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Lochman:
Weekly:
The big advantage to them is they will get your feedback more quickly, hopefully doing away with the problem of six months go by and you make two changes and then three more months so it will be more rapid feedback to them.
Yes, if he approves an inspection or at least there is a hold up out in the field, it
Lochman: will show up automatically.
Is there a period beyond what I call a specific trial, a certain period you’ve got to
Weekly: see if this thing really works?
Hopefully, when we go to the testing part we will know that it is 90 to 95%.
Lochman: I said works, but it is embraced by a significant percentage of the user
Weekly:
Lochman: population.
For staff or customers?
Customers. It may be sufficient and useful for you as staff that it is worth …, but if the idea is to involve the development community on a significant level, I would think it would take some period of time to figure out in the real world. Is that going to work? Are they going to digest, etc.? Do you have a certain period of time where you could back off if it is not being used or you think it is not going to be used in that light or is it sufficient in and of itself ?
Weekly:
Demassi:
Carter:
Demassi:
Dulin:
It is sufficient … but our expectations are that customers are going to be very excited about this. One thing we hear from them is better communication.
They will have an additional option in the future to submit on-line applications which will really be great for customers.
It looks like the checklist is no longer burdened … with multitask that incur at the same time because of this ….
Yes, when you pull in the different reviewers they can all sign off and do their review at the same time, no matter what the due date is.
I would be very interested in who we invite to those training classes. I want to make sure that the list of 30 that have contacted me about trying to work on this system at least know we are thinking about something. This will save paper and save time, correct? Do we know how much paper and how much time? Do you have any idea if it will save five hours out of the process? I am as interested in saving staff’s time because your time is valuable also. If you are out in the field and can work on six plans per day instead of four that is a big deal. I don’t
Johnson:
Dulin:
Blackwell:
Dulin:
Weekly:
Dulin: know what your standard day looks like, but if we can get you more efficient and add two of three transactions in your day then this will start rolling.
The wireless capability is really going to turn heads. You will be so much more able to do things, especially with older pieces.
Please track that so that we can show the public that we have spent $400,000 and we’ve got 300 man hours in training, but we’ve just gone from 35 plans to 55 plans. We’ve got to be able to show our success.
The development community is buying this because they see benefits themselves.
The ultimate user and ultimate beneficiary is paying 100% of this cost.
I would like to make it obsolete to have to charge for expedited plan review.
Our thoughts are, if we have an expedited review process, the cost is not much different than the normal plan review process. Our thoughts over time is that it should be less expensive because we are spending less time reviewing them.
You all are quick to make the point that you are fee -based, but if you can access more customers, your fees will go up. This is clearly better than what we have and we are learning a pretty good lesson up at John Lassiter’s building with the

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______________________________________________________________________________________ water problems and the building shutting down. Where are we backing this new system up in case it crashes and how are we protecting the information that is in it from a crash?
Blackwell: ACCELA backs it up and it is backed up daily. What you see right here is on a
Dulin: server in California. Everything that gets clicked here gets clicked there and comes back.
Then let’s have some certainties from them in writing if we are buying into this system that they are backed up. They are sitting out there in earthquake country.
Weekly:
Hu:
Dulin:
Blackwell:
As a matter of fact, I believe they have it backed up.
They have a recovery plan and this is part of their service.
Is there a way that we can reserve or back it up in something here too? If we are relying on them to have everything backed up, then we lose control. If our out is where we thought they were doing it right in California, sorry about that we didn’t mean to lose 150 plan reviews, let’s start over.
I don’t know that we have a way to do that in what we have going on right now. I think there are two complete back-ups, but they don’t have a third level of
Dulin:
Burch:
Dulin:
Geer:
Dulin:
Peterson:
Lochman:
Weekly:
Lochman:
Weekly:
Lochman:
Weekly:
Dulin:
Weekly:
Peterson: redundancy.
I would like for that question to be asked.
I am hearing it is backed up in California and then another location as well.
Do you know where it is backed up? We are dealing with millions and millions, if not billions of dollars worth of development in our City and we have absolutely got to have it wired down where our stuff is going in. Since we are their first to test, if we start hammering them on this, they will learn that they’ve got to have this stuff ready.
We are the first KIVA conversion, but they have lots of other cities that are hosted by it.
It gives us an opportunity to be a son-of-a-bitch to them and push them hard for what we need and have them design the system the way we want it.
The City of New Orleans was probably one of their first bid accounts and they are also hosted off site and had they not been hosted off site they would not have been able to turn around their recovery as quickly as they have.
What is the cost of it, how is it formulated and what is the likely expense?
The actual implementation cost which Council approved last April is $615,000 and you just recently approved a contract for the annual hosting and maintenance services which was approximately $142,000.
Is that an ongoing charge as well?
The annual maintenance and hosting is all in one charge. The maintenance and hosting is $122,000 the first year and that will be ongoing. Annual maintenance is standard for these type of contracts. Hosting – you can elect to host it on site or self-host or by someone else. We actually went through an analysis and determined it was more beneficial to have it hosted on site.
Is there an initial cost of $700,000 to $800,000?
$750,000 for a year.
How much money are you making in a year from fees?
$4 million to $5 million per year.
This isn’t just used by Land Development. Debra’s group will be using it both for the rezoning aspect and the planning. With this system, we can actually track something that started in the rezoning process, maybe has gone to subdivision

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Dulin:
Audience:
Dulin:
Weekly:
Dulin:
Weekly:
Dulin: and then to …
$600,000 covers our equipment and their coming to train us? I’m sure that is in there somewhere because they are not going to fly out here for free.
And the cost of the …
That is my original backbone question. For $120,000 a year, I want to know the maiden name of the lady working in the center in Salt Lake City. We’ve got to know what their system is and that we can trust them to have this stuff backed up.
We have actually had our technology folks evaluate the site and I think their conclusion was that it was even more secure than ours.
They are doing everybody in one place.
I just have the person here who I can rely on to tell me that here in this room.
I had a similar disastrous kind of occurrence in my own personal business several years ago and had I not been prepared, and had John Lassiter not been prepared and been able to get back up, you know he is having to work off site now.
I suspect for the good of their business, they know they’ve got to have secure Lochman:
Weekly: storage and I can’t imagine … This is a situation where the fees are set to absorb the entire budget, right?
We are 100% user fee funded right now. We model our user fees for 100% recovery plus we have a 10% surcharge that pays for the technology.
Lochman: So in answer to my question, it is in effect being absorbed by the user fee?
Weekly: Yes.
Lochman: So it makes it even more important that it is very clear the user has gotten some
… for the increase in their fees.
Weekly:
Burch:
Yes, because they are paying for it.
At the time the users asked for this.
II. Subject: Northlake Area Plan
Alysia Osborne: The purpose of this is to show a draft recommendation for the Northlake Area
Plan and request the Committee to set the Date of October 8 th
to receive public comment on the draft plan.
Ms. Osborne used a PowerPoint for her presentation
Questions/Answers/Comments
Carter: Asked for clarification on the location of I-485 and I-85.
Osborne: Pointed out I-85 and I-77 on the map and said this is adjacent to Huntersville jurisdiction.
Osborne:
Dulin:
Continued her presentation
Along that Old Statesville Road corridor to the right where you have a wedge, there is already development in there. There is a big office park out there and right in there somewhere Gary Knox has a real estate office. Aren’t there some
Osborne:
Dulin: townhouses and office in there?
Pointed out Hucks Road and said along Hucks Road there is a mixture of uses, primarily office, mini-warehouse storage, banquet hall. You may be referring to
Statesville Road .
That’s right it is Statesville Road where it crosses W. T. Harris. On the right is a

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Osborne:
Carter:
Osborne:
Kimbler:
Carter:
Kimbler:
Carter:
Campbell:
Carter:
Campbell:
Burch:
Continued her presentation with slides on Page 5
Do you have any timing or cost projections, particularly Hucks Road?
No, not at this time.
We don’t at this time. These are recommendations that, in the case of the intersection improvements, actually could be redundant for roadway improvements through the long-range transportation plan. For instance, with respect to W. T. Harris Boulevard, the projects that are in the plan with the 2020
… these intersection improvements would not be necessary.
Comments were inaudible……
Cox Road Extension is … transportation plan for the 2020 … from Prosperity
Church Road to Statesville Road. We would have to do a thoroughfare plan amendment and then enter it in the long-range transportation plan to take it over
I-77. It is a critical process which would begin after the adoption of this area plan.
When we have something like this that surfaces the area plan, do you take this recommendation to Transportation to see how it interfaces with their plans long range?
I think we do it as part of our capital needs assessment which is kind of a 10-year look. We also do it because we have a very strong history, the
Mecklenburg/Union Metropolitan Planning Organization, and we also work with them in terms of assessing priorities. There is a lot of interaction between the departments.
So that prioritization is somewhat flexible?
It is, but our … process is more in terms of safety and capacity first and then we go to economic development and there are a number of categories that we try to address.
Council has the opportunity to review the list and look at the way it stands, review the priorities to see if you agree, and if not, you have the opportunity to
…
Osborne:
Lochman:
Osborne:
Lochman:
Osborne:
Continued the presentation on recommendations on Page 7
What does that mean – they would not have come up? Without the plan being adopted they would have come up anyway, the corrective rezoning?
No. These are corrective rezonings to implement the land use vision. The corrective rezonings in the area are primarily in the transit station areas.
Are they down zonings?
These would be up for the most part. The corrective rezonings are primarily in the Eastfield Transit Station Area, Old Statesville Road, Arthur Davis Road and
Hucks Road. We are recommending that these areas be correctively rezoned to transit oriented development, mixed use or transit oriented development residential. The area south of Hucks Road, we are recommending these properties be rezoned to residential, up to 4 dwelling units to the acre to serve as a buffer or transition to the existing Davis Lake neighborhood that is adjacent to this area.
Campbell: Mr. Lochman, those may very well be down zoned. We are aggressively contacting some property owners and we will have a conversation with them so

ED & Planning Committee
Meeting Summary for September 19, 2007
Page 12
______________________________________________________________________________________ they understand what this means. Prior to the adoption process, we will let
Council know how we stand with each property owner.
Lochman: Do they expect to hear what you are going to tell them?
Campbell: Yes.
Dulin:
Campbell:
Dulin:
Campbell:
They expect to hear that we are going to down zone their property.
We are going to recommend.
Will you define aggressively for me please?
Call them on the telephone, ask them to meet with us. Not just send a letter, not
Dulin:
Osborne: just have a sign posted, but actually have an eye to eye, one on one conversation that this plan is recommended, do you understand, what issues do you have so we can record that. At the time that we recommend corrective rezonings we can say we have met with the property owners, heard the concerns that they raised and here is how we recommend that you respond or address them.
Do you have somebody up there in the corner making those calls?
The good thing about it is a lot of these properties are owned by the same person, so it is not like it is a lot of people.
Osborne:
Dulin:
Continued her presentation with Issues in the Area handout
Where is the old prison on Mt. Holly/Huntersville Road?
McCullough: I know what you are talking about, but it is not in this study area.
Osborne:
Campbell:
Continued her presentation with Summary of Land Uses
One of the things we do when we do these area plans is we do a market study and analysis just like if we were going to be the developer that is going to go out and develop all of this land. What has been our challenge with this area has been, we had a market study that said fairly strong market, but not as strong as if we were in SouthPark or doing a plan for some other part of the community.
When we have a lot of property owners coming to us saying they want way more development price than our amount, when we felt we had a fairly good market research person to compile this information for us, it is hard for us to juggle how we disburse or distribute this fairly weak market with all of the acreage. This is a lot of acreage in this area. Everybody wants the higher density in the wedge, but again with market conditions and the actual amount of both residential, retail and office, what happens to our transit corridor. That is where we are trying to encourage it and also in the Center. That is why Alysia talked about Area 4 so
Mitchell: we have tried to step back and say this is the center, maybe we were a little too tight on that area. We’ve got market issues and we’ve got some real transportation issues. That is why we are encouraging a much more dense or richer street network. As you know, we have seen a lot of rezoning in this area.
We think that an area plan that really sticks to our concept of centers, corridors and wedges is the best approach for this area because you do have such a diverse area. We have heard a lot from the property owners in this area who want to have a mixed use development and they got an idea from Sherbrooke in South
Charlotte, but this is a very different market. We are not planning from the 8 th floor, we have a lot of data, information, trend analysis and policy context for these recommendation.
I have a tremendous appreciation for staff. I have been going through this process from the beginning. Two things I would like to leave with you. It would

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Meeting Summary for September 19, 2007
Page 13
______________________________________________________________________________________
Campbell:
Carter: be helpful if we could have all the transportation projects. Part of our discussion has been, this is an urban development versus suburban development and I don’t know the difference in the two. If you could provide us with a one paragraph, this is urban development and this is what it looks like – this is suburban development and this is what it looks like. People are saying there is not enough density, and you’ve got to get the urban development as opposed to suburban.
Just educate me of the difference so I can understand.
We can do that, but I think often times when you hear we are not getting enough density, they are coming from an individual property owner.
Did we address the farmland in this area and preserving the farmland? Talking about the Mecklenburg County Greenway Master Plan, that is going to be updated…
Osborne:
Dulin:
Osborne:
Dulin:
Campbell:
Dulin:
Mitchell:
Campbell:
Carter:
Campbell:
Concluded her presentation with Next Steps
What have you got to do between now and October 8 th
?
Work with the property owners and try to work out some of the recommendation issues.
If you don’t have 100% of those calls done and contacts made, will you push it out or will you go with 95% or 80%?
We think the public comments will be helpful and will be an opportunity which we may even get more issues at the public comments meeting. We will continue to do our best. If anything is pushed up, we would recommend it be the
Committee recommendation and Council approval. We will be very flexible from that point on, but we need to hear all of the comments.
I am very concerned, and I don’t mind planning for that, but I am very concerned that those folks who have owned that property for a 100 years or two years, that they are heard.
It would be helpful if you could give Council information on number two. I think it would be helpful to know how much you have worked with residents of
Forest Acres. I am sure they are going to be down there in tremendous numbers on the 8 th
and I don’t want the Council to be blindsided.
The other thing to remember is this is not a rezoning. This is policy, it is not laws, it is a recommendation.
How much public investment are you anticipating here?
Is that the City investment?
Campbell: We can probably document the … department and cost it out.
Dulin:
VOTE:
As long as you get your work done we will follow you.
Mr. Mitchell made a motion to adopt the schedule for the next steps on the
Northlake Area Plan. Ms. Carter seconded the motion and the vote was unanimous (Mr. Lassiter and Mr. Lochman were absent for the vote).
III. Subject: Process for Studying Residential Street Lighting Policy.
Debra Campbell: You have a one-pager back and forth that talks about a proposed policy. Mr.
Mitchell has requested this and I believe it was referred to Committee for us to look at. The potential for developing a pedestrian scale lighting policy for new residential subdivisions, and

ED & Planning Committee
Meeting Summary for September 19, 2007
Page 14
______________________________________________________________________________________ our first page is a little bit of a background about our existing policy, the types of ordinances that would have to be changed in order to implement a residential street lighting policy. On the back page, we talk about a potential process if we were charged with moving forward and actually drafting changes to the policy. We will come back to you a lot through this process so we provide you with information about policies, research, information that we have gathered before we actually are given the word to go draft something.
Barry Mosley: Staff would like to get input from you on what to look at from the standpoint of multifamily versus single family and whether we just want to look at applying this to single family residential areas or if you want to look at multifamily areas. Also what type of product are you looking for or you are looking to us to develop for you. What type and how much of public involvement process. We are looking at starting our research and gather the data sometime in
November. We are going to look at information from other cities as well as costs, operation and maintenance of installing these types of lighting structures. We are going to work as a collaborative process with CDOT, Duke Energy and Engineering & Property Management. We will start Step 3 between December and January and will come back with information on our research and will get direction from you as to where you want us to go, is this something that you want us to pursue, and if so, we will be looking at an advisory group and putting that together to start that process. Periodically, we will come back to the Council and advise you of our accomplishments. We are looking to report back to you with a draft recommendation from the
Advisory Committee and staff and once that is completed, we will go on to Step 6 in January and report our recommendations. In June or July, it will go before the Council for a public hearing and action. Once this is all completed, we will be able go to pursue the ordinance revision and go through that process. You are looking at approximately 10 months for this entire process, depending on the public involvement process and if there are any issues.
Campbell: Based upon the direction that we get here, step two, we hopefully would have completed by November and then by December we will be coming back for direction as to whether we move forward.
Questions and Answers/Comments
Mitchell: In my mind because of staff’s constraints, I think if we do the multifamily component it gets … My interest was always just the public streets and single
Campbell: family communities. The education on my part … it is up to the developer to choose if they want to put street lights or not. It might be good to complain that our homes are more expensive, yet the other homes that are less expensive have street lights. Clearly, the developer said my heart was to put street lights in this product and I was not going to do it. The two issues I have is making sure it is single family and public streets, but also the wood pole that we use is outdated and it is code outdated. You look at the wood pole … so for a more up to date version of a nice light, I do think the wood pole just don’t do our communities well. The other issue I have if we go with this current schedule then I can hear someone saying we’ve got a new Council in January so let’s push it out some more. What I would like to do is somehow make sure this current Council is in position to direct what staff wants to move forward with this or not. I would like to get your feedback especially with #1, I’m thinking it is just single family as opposed to multifamily.
What we might do is combine Steps 2 and 3, that we come back to you if not

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Meeting Summary for September 19, 2007
Page 15
______________________________________________________________________________________
Carter:
Mitchell:
Burch:
Dulin:
Mitchell:
Dulin:
Burch:
Mitchell:
Dulin: early November, late October with our research and request direction from you.
We will do our best to do that.
The education point could, by this schedule, include the new Council. It looks to me like this process could educate the new Council ….
The really get elected on November 6 th
and they’ve got down time so you could send it to them, but they don’t vote until they are sworn in in December.
Debra and I were just talking, after a certain level of work they feel it would be appropriate to come back to this Committee and then the Committee make the recommendation as to whether or not you move forward or how to move forward and have the full Council endorse it. At the end of November, that would probably the last opportunity with this sitting Council. It sounds like that is doable with the Planning staff.
Are we going to get any feed back from the development community?
Yes, I would think that would be with the Advisory Group. I have talked to six developers already, Home Light, Cambridge, Housing Partnership, Meeting
Street and Crosland and most of them said they didn’t see anything wrong with
…
You have White Water in your district… is that in …
The point that I was trying to make was that before we learn what the Advisory
Group process that we go back to the full Council with the … information about it and then get Council’s endorsement before we engage the broader community.
The Council has the Retreat in January and this gets pushed back.
I know from experience of two years ago that if you are new to the Council, you are jacked up and are really boned up on what is going on. From the District standpoint, I am interested in lighting because I hear about lighting on the agenda.
VOTE: Ms. Carter made a motion to adopt the schedule for the Residential Street
Lighting Policy. Mr. Mitchell seconded the motion. The vote was recorded as unanimous (Mr. Lassiter and Mr. Lochman were absent for the vote)
III. Subject: Next
The next meeting date is scheduled for October 3, 2007 at noon in Room 280.
Carter: Obviously, I have a great interest in Independence Boulevard with regards to redevelopment and revitalization of Independence Boulevard and the transitional setback in certain areas. We really need to address this problem to see where we go with this institutional street that is not improving. I would like to see this on
Campbell:
Mitchell:
Dulin: the agenda as soon as possible.
We take the market study analysis to this Committee and our next phase will be to … .
I know we can’t put all these things on the agenda but for my part, Phase 2 is important. The infrastructure and GDP’s has to eventually come to us.
I think the top three can be done in a meeting. The field visit, I think, ought to be a special meeting because we had the field visit up on 14 and that got us more information than we can do. We were 45 minutes late coming down and we didn’t do it justice, but it is a 2-hour meeting. I don’t know if the Chairman needs to get involved in doing that special meeting. I can do it just about anytime.

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Page 16
______________________________________________________________________________________
Carter:
Dulin:
We could offer it to other Councilmembers as well.
Absolutely. There is some real educational value in learning your way around this building and I am still at it.
The meeting adjourned at 5:25 p.m.

Distribution: Mayor/City Council Curt Walton, City Manager Leadership Team Executive Team

September 19, 2007
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1a
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3a
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Plan recommends institutional and notes that if church uses ceases, consideration be given to the adaptive reuse of existing structure and/or small scale retail up to 15,000 sf interconnected with residential up to 6 dua
Residential up to 4 dua
Residential up to 8 dua
Residential up to 4 dua
Property owner is interested in retail land uses.
Property owner is interested in retail land uses.
Residents of Forest Acres Neighborhood are interested in marketing their properties for a mixed use development.
Desires higher density residential.
•
Residential up to 12 dua.
•
Limit building height to 3 stories
•
Residential, office and/or retail mix, and park/open space
•
Residential up to 12 dua permitted as single use
•
Limit building height to 2 stories along Alexanderana and 4 stories elsewhere
•
Hotels not permitted
•
Residential, office and/or retail mix, and park/open space
•
Residential up to 17 dua permitted as single use
•
Limit building height to 6 stories
•
Maximum 250 hotel rooms allowed (hotel with conference center appropriate)
Property owner adjacent to Northlake Center
Parkway proposes residential up to 17 dua.
Desires more intense uses.
Desires more intense uses.
•
Residential, office and/or retail mix, and park/ open space
•
Residential up to 17 dua
•
Residential permitted as single use
•
Limit building height to 5 stories
•
Office and park/open space
•
Limit office to 175,000 sq ft
•
Hotels not permitted
•
Office, retail, industrial/warehouse distribution mix, and park/open space
•
Limit retail to 70,000 sq ft
Desires freestanding retail.
Property owner is interested in developing a mixture of uses.
Property owner is interested in purchasing and consolidating the adjacent property for retail development, providing that NCDOT abandons the portion of Statesville Road near I-485.

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