The Pilot Point City Council took a look at its ordinance regarding no conforming properties along U.S. 377 during the Feb. 27 meeting.
With TxDOT continuing to purchase right of way from businesses along the corridor, city staff asked council for direction in shoring up the laws that allow owners to receive proper compensation for the organization and other outside entities.
“When you adopted the ordinance that’s currently in place, it triggers the requirement for TxDOT to compensate the owners,” City Attorney Brenda McDonald said. “That means if someone can’t provide parking for their building, TxDOT compensates them for their entire building, not just the taking of the parking.”
Council, led by Mayor Elisa Beasley, Mayor Pro Tem Andrew Ambrosio and council member Brian Heitzman, addressed several issues with the proposed change from Development Services Director John Taylor, which would allow owners to come before the Board of Adjustments after being forced into noncompliance for a variance.
The first was that this adjustment could negatively impact business owners who have not yet settled with Tx-DOT by giving them an ‘out’ in TxDOT’s eyes.
“If I were representing TxDOT, I would certainly say that because that avenue is open, we’re not required to provide compensation,' Mc-Donald said to the council’s concerns.
Council was further concerned that, because the Board of Adjustments is required to adhere to several strict guidelines, even giving it the ability to grant variances in these cases may not allow it to work case by case with owners’ specific issues as they applied.
“As far as the Board of Adjustments, staff has an application anyone can apply for to get a variance,” Taylor said. “The reason people don’t do it very often is because of the various restrictions on the Board of Adjustments to grant one [from] the State of Texas.”
Ambrosio requested staff confirm with TxDOT how a potential variance would affect compensation to owners, while Beasley looked to confirm the action taken would facilitate the possibility for case-by-case partnership with current and incoming businesses.
Council gave a unanimous chorus of nods when McDonald interpreted the various direction they intoned.
'In that case, I would recommend rather than the Board of Adjustments, we use a waiver proceeding through the city council, because you are the policy makers, not the Board of Adjustments,” McDonald said. “I would also recommend you articulate the criteria on which the waiver would be based. If you’d like us to bring some ideas around that concept, that’s the discussion we were looking for this evening.”
Council later approved an updated 2021 International Property Maintenance Code at the request of Code Enforcement Manager James Kasper after some discussion.
“Almost every city if every state uses the IPMC,” Kasper said. “It’s a structured system that works and doesn’t take away from any life, health and safety issues.”
They unanimously approved the updated codes and their amendments, though Beasley urged Kasper, as she did his predecessor, to “Do us well, go hard on the process, soft on the people.”
“We’re here for educational purposes, notifying the property owners and tenants on what the issues are so we don’t have to use abetments or issue citations,” Kasper said. After returning from executive session, and taking no action, the council’s final item of business was the unanimous approval of a future agenda item from Beasley to look at partnering with the Texas Government Accountability Association.
“I’d be happy to discuss it,” council member Ray Dane said. “I did have some questions about it though.”
