By Andy Sevilla.
Before recessing for the end of year holidays, Kyle council members approved a site development fee waiver for a local business seeking to construct a storage facility in its backyard. With doing so, council members also asked the city’s planning staff to develop a small site development fee application that would have a reduced cost.
At their Dec. 17 meeting, council members unanimously approved to waive $1,722.34 for Hair Therapy’s, a hair salon at 206 E. Moore Street, site development application to construct a 560 square-foot storage facility on the property.
City staff recommended approval of a reduced fee – $894.47 – to cover costs for a city engineer review, as well as other staff members’ time and review of the storage facility. Council members also could have denied the waiver request by the property owner, Bernice Valdez, or approved the full request.
Staff recommended the reduced amount, because during this budget cycle they proposed the development of a small site development application fee. The terms of that smaller fee have not yet been determined and approved by council, which is why planning staff was unable to grant the reduced fee administratively, and instead had to approach the elected city leaders for the applicant’s waiver request.
Kyle Planning Director Sofia Nelson said that because the addition of a storage facility on the property would not change the parking and landscaping requirements for the business, and would only call for a review of drainage due to the added square footage, the project could qualify as a small site development.
However, as it stands now “regardless of the size or the type of development that is going on, because the property is zoned and used commercially, the applicant must submit a site development permit and pay all the required fees that are based on the size of the property, not the scope of the actual project itself,” Nelson told council members at the meeting.
“The process that we have right now is the same requirements are in place whether you want to add a small storage facility or a small parking lot, as they would be for a Walmart site,” Nelson said. “The fees are based off of the total acreage of the property, but ultimately the requirements are still the same even though the scopes of the projects are not.”
The present adopted fee schedule outlines a site development fee of $1,631.78, plus $90.56 per acre.
Property owner Bernice Valdez said in a Nov. 18 email to council member Becky Selbera, who represents District 2 where Hair Therapy is located, that the business is in need of storage room to keep adequate inventory and personal belongings, and therefore she wants to place a shed on the premises.
In 2010, Valdez paid for a full site development fee for the hair salon when she improved the property with a small parking lot, landscaping and detention. Seeing as how no new parking or landscaping would be added, and only detention would have to be reviewed, council member Chad Benninghoff seconded a motion for approval by Selbera.
But not everyone on the dais was convinced of a waiver for the full amount.
“I think that’s what the smaller fee is about,” council member David Wilson said. “While we need be sensitive to the little guy trying to do development, which is I know the intent of both the motioner and the second, we do have to pay staff and to that end I would really recommend the smaller - $894.47 – fee.”
Said Mayor Lucy Johnson, “Council member Wilson, I understand your point completely, and I suppose I’m a little ambivalent about the motion, but in the end I think I can be for it.”
In the end, Wilson also voted to waive the fee.
The city’s planning staff has not been able to code the requirements for a small site development fee just yet as they have been concentrating on annexation and other projects, Nelson said in a recent interview. The unanimous approval of Valdez’s request by council also called for staff to “move with haste” in developing the requirements for the small site development application.
And though the site development fee was waived for Valdez, she would still have to pay for building permits and inspections for the storage facility.
