Mayor Doug Medlin and Planning Board member Sally Edens said the initial approval of the Surf City Crossing apartment complex met all state and local zoning requirements. "Our planning board and our system are not broken," Medlin said.
SURF CITY — Mayor Doug Medlin responded to recent remarks made by Councilman Jeremy Shugarts that the town’s planning board had “rubber-stamped” the initial approval of the Surf City Crossing apartment complex, a move Shugarts said represented a “broken system” of development planning.
Medlin and Shugarts are facing each other in November’s race for the mayor’s seat; no other candidates have yet declared as the July 19 filing deadline approaches.
The councilman’s remarks came after Town Council voted last week to approve the new luxury apartment complex after a verbal agreement was reached to regulate civilian traffic to and from the nearby Dogwood Lakes subdivision, an agreement that came in response to residents’ concerns that the development would add excessive thru traffic to its narrow roads.
RELATED: Luxury 340-unit Surf City Crossing apartments approved after agreement to limit nearby thru traffic
A new road is planned to connect Dogwood Lakes to the future Terraces subdivision and Arbors subdivision, which is currently under construction, and then to Alston Road where the apartments will be built. The town’s ordinance requiring interconnectivity between subvidisions would need to be amended before limiting the connection from Dogwood Lakes to an emergency access used only for police, EMS, fire, and town vehicles.
Town and state laws
“Our planning board and our system are not broken,” Medlin said Monday afternoon. The new development, he said, met all state and local requirements before going before the planning board on May 16. Additionally, he said the town’s ordinance requiring interconnectivity between subdivisions is based on North Carolina law.
The town’s current ordinance setting the regulations of streets within subdivisions states that “streets shall interconnect within a development and with adjoining development,” in order to encourage the dispersion of traffic while connecting and integrating neighborhoods “with the existing urban fabric of the Town.”
“Street stubs should be provided with development adjacent to open land to provide for future connections,” the ordinance further states. A stub street is one that terminates at the boundary of a subdivision, designed to connect to adjacent property when it is developed. Medlin said that when Dogwood Lakes was developed more than 10 years ago, the “the connection was put there in case anybody developed on [the northeast] side of it.”
Medlin said the ordinance was based on certain requirements set by the state fire code.
“The state is the one that says you will have interconnectivity. That’s what they call for,” Medlin said.
According to Steve Padgett, who acts as the town’s interim planning director, N.C. State Fire Code Section D107 requires “a second access road if there are more than 30 single-family dwellings.” But the code specifically states that two approved “fire apparatus access roads” are required.
“That’s why we’re going back and looking at making it just an emergency access,” Medlin said. “We would have to do away with requiring it to be open [to all vehicles].”
Medlin also referenced N.C. General Statute 160A-296, which states that a city “shall have general authority and control over all public streets” except when such authority is vested in the Board of Transportation. This includes the “duty to keep the public streets, sidewalks, alleys, and bridges open for travel and free from unnecessary obstructions.”
The statute also gives a city authority to regulate the use of public streets.
Member of planning board responds
Last week Shugarts had argued that the planning board needs to either find new board members or perform its work with more diligence; and because Surf City does not have a permanent director of its planning department — former city planner Todd Rademacher left the post after Hurricane Florence — the issue is exacerbated, according to Shugarts.
Medlin said that Padgett, the town’s building inspector, now acts as the interim planning director while the town is currently in the process of hiring a new town planner.
The planning board is made up of eight Surf City residents, including Sally Edens.
“[Shugarts] says that the planning board rubber-stamped it, but the planning board had no choice but to approve it because it met every state and local ordinance that we have,” Edens said. “Every one.”
She said the board acts with diligence in following town ordinances and state statutes, “[going] through every one with a fine-toothed comb.” She echoed Medlin’s statement that developments only reach the planning board before passing state and local requirements from various agencies, including those regulating environmental restrictions, roads, and police and fire department codes.
“And all of that happens before it gets to us,” Edens said. “All of that has already been approved by all those groups and organizations before it ever gets to us.”
But Shugarts said the planning board should address questions beyond state and local requirements.
“It should say, ‘Wait, is this what’s really best for our city?’ Isn’t that what the planning board is supposed to do? It’s supposed to look and say, ‘How’s it supposed to impact the other developments? How is it going to impact traffic?’ That’s what I’m talking about with ‘diligence’ … And that’s what I mean by ‘rubber-stamping’ things. There’s no discussion, there’s no hard questions asked,” Shugarts said.
Medlin and Edens, however, believe the potential issue of excessive traffic going through Dogwood Lakes is exaggerated by Shugarts, who lives in the community, and fellow residents who have complained of the issue. They said the future apartment’s proximity to Dogwood Lakes, separated by two neighborhoods and multiple roads and turns, will discourage a substantial amount of thru traffic connecting U.S. 17, on the north side of Dogwood Lakes, to N.C 210, on the east side of the future Surf City Crossing apartments.
“[Surf City Crossing residents] would be going way out of their way to drive through there,” Medlin said.
“I don’t know where the thinking is; it makes no sense to me,” Edens said.
She also said Shugarts lacks a thorough understanding of the planning process because he has never attended a planning board meeting. In response, Shugarts said that each of the town’s advisory boards has an established liaison from the city council, and the liaison for the planning board is fellow councilmember Teresa Batts.
“I only don’t go to these other board meetings because there’s a representative from our council chosen to be there,” Medlin said.
During a June 4 council meeting, when a group of Dogwood Lakes residents challenged the town to address the issue, Shugarts and Batts voted to delay the apartment’s approval, followed by a unaminous vote by Council. During the meeting Councilwoman Nelva Albury also urged for better planning of entranceways into new developments.
“I want development to come, but the entrances have got to be planned before they sell a lot,” Albury said. “That would satisfy everybody in the neighborhood.”
Medlin, Edens, and Shugarts did find common ground on one issue: certain ordinances need to be amended as the town continues to grow.
“And we are in the process of re-doing a lot of our ordinances right now,” Edens said.
[Read the story as published here.]