Minutes 10-04-2011 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Craig Benedict: Good evening, my name is Craig Benedict, Orange County Planning Director. We are in the process of the Efland-Mebane Small Area Plan that we identified a glitch between urban development and County areas. In County areas, the Department of Transportation is responsible for roads and if there were sidewalks, they would be responsible for sidewalks. DOT policy is that they do not, on a regular basis, do sidewalks, so we're left in a lurch. How do we ask for sidewalks in an urban area under County jurisdiction? That is something that is going to be discussed this Thursday night in a work session. Yes, it is two days' difference. We had hoped to try to bring that information forward. There are some options, but they're not all clear. For example, it does say that if you put sidewalks on private property it would have to be maintained by a homeowner's association. In the Homestead Road area, under County jurisdiction, not yet annexed by Chapel Hill and Carrboro, we were able to do a four-party agreement— County, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and DOT— and kind of transfer that responsibility back to the municipal governments for maintenance of those roadway areas. Those options are not available to us at this time. From a professional standpoint, I think sidewalks in an urban setting, such as this Efland intensity area, are something that we should encourage. I do not have the answers to bring it to the service right. But it will be discussed more at length on Thursday. Commissioner Jacobs: Thank you for all of that information, but you still didn't answer my question, which is why that discussion is coming after this discussion, when we knew this discussion was going to include the issue, which the Planning Board also identified on whether or not this subdivision should have sidewalks. It isn't logical. It's not a logical progression. We're asked to make a decision, which the Planning Board wrestled with, and then have a conversation about how we might have addressed an issue just like this in just this area. I'm just struggling with how we planned it that way. Craig Benedict: I would have enjoyed having the sidewalks discussion at the September work session. It did not come to fruition at an earlier work session during the review of this. The earliest available work session was October 6th. That's how it got out of the sequence. Commissioner Yuhasz: My understanding is that the Planning Board recommended the sidewalks if this particular developer was not going to be obligated to put them in and to maintain them. Is there anything that would preclude a third party, whatever the unidentified third party was, that would put in and maintain the sidewalks. Is there anything that would preclude that from happening within the DOT right-of-way if this project was approved? Craig Benedict: The only clause I'm familiar with is DOT would permit an encroachment agreement that they want some sort of governmental entity to be responsible. So maybe there is a third party we don't know about. Ultimately, if that third party is not a governmental entity, we're going to have to be the cosigner for that. Commissioner Yuhasz: I just want to clarify, there's nothing that would prevent us from doing that in two months or two years from now in this area if that was the decision that this Board came to. Is that correct? Craig Benedict: That's correct. Commissioner Yuhasz: We had an item before us. Were there any other questions of the staff? Seeing none, I think we need to give the public an opportunity to speak. Are there any