Commission grants variance on Ammon Road left‑turn lane for church; members split 4‑3

The Planning and Zoning Commission approved a variance, 4‑3, from a city engineering requirement that would otherwise have required installation of a left‑turn lane on Ammon Road for a proposed church development in the county‑maintained corridor.

The project applicant, Bridal Fellowship Church, is proposing a roughly 54,000‑square‑foot sanctuary on an 18‑acre parcel east of Boerne that remains in the extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ). City code requires a left‑turn lane at collectors or arterials when left‑turn movements reach five or more vehicles in the peak hour; the applicant’s traffic impact analysis calculated 13 left‑turn vehicles in the Sunday peak hour. After debate, commissioners approved the variance while attaching a requirement that the public‑infrastructure set include traffic‑calming or advanced‑warning measures (to be reviewed in construction plans), and that the applicant construct the right‑turn deceleration lane already proposed.

The applicant argued the site’s traffic is highly concentrated on Sunday mornings and that the church has a long record of using off‑duty Kendall County deputy sheriffs for traffic control at existing locations; the church’s representatives told the commission those controls, together with the right‑turn deceleration lane, would safely manage traffic for the current proposed use. Pastor Jared Patrick told the commission the congregation has operated at nearby locations for several years and has used off‑duty officers to manage Sunday circulation: “We simply want to be honest… we’re not afraid to spend resources on what’s necessary… we just want to steward resources well based on what the TIA shows.”

City staff noted Ammon Road is a county‑maintained major collector, posted at 45 mph in the area, and the county’s engineers advised against waiving the turn‑lane requirement in a letter included in the packet; the county also supplied a rough‑proportionality estimate the county said could apply to mitigation. Staff and the applicant disagreed about whether county or state standards would require the lane if the parcel were outside the ETJ; TxDOT’s threshold for a left‑turn requirement would be 15 trips. The applicant’s traffic engineer said the eastbound trip distribution and the low frequency of left turns from the smaller traffic stream did not make a left‑turn lane necessary and that building one would require about 700 linear feet of new pavement and culvert adjustments that would materially increase project cost.

After discussion about long‑term growth on Ammon Road and the possibility that future development could change traffic volumes, commissioners approved the variance 4‑3 with a stipulation that the applicant include advanced‑warning signage and that public‑infrastructure plans presented later show the traffic‑control measures. The vote was divided, and the motion to approve carried with four commissioners in favor and three opposed.

Commissioners and members of the public repeatedly framed the question as a tradeoff between near‑term project scale and longer‑term safety and infrastructure needs; several commissioners said they would prefer to see future threshold triggers so that if uses change or weekday programs are added the project would be reexamined. Staff said updated TIAs and county reviews would be required for future substantial changes and that any different use or increased frequency would likely trigger additional mitigation.