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Neighbors press commission on sewer, stormwater and access for proposed Lexington Road housing
Summary
Residents and commissioners raised detailed technical concerns about a proposed RM1 rezoning for multiple parcels on Lexington Road, centering on sanitary sewer capacity (proposed holding tanks/pumps), stormwater protection for Cedar Creek, buffers, and single‑point access/traffic; staff said utility review and plan review would be required before approval.
Planning staff brought forward a rezoning request for parcels at 4190 Lexington Road and surrounding addresses that would change future land use to mixed density residential and rezone areas to RM1.
During public comment, Jeff Carter (project engineer) described the concept plan (detached modest single‑family lots and some duplexes) and said the rear two‑thirds of the property is already RM1. Resident Ken Portier delivered an extended technical critique of the sanitary‑sewer approach reported by public utilities — individual holding tanks on lots with pumps that would discharge during off‑peak flows — and calculated likely tank sizes, failure probabilities and unanswered maintenance/ownership questions. Portier said the sewer solution was presented only after the public comment period at planning commission and that stormwater protections for the creek were deferred to plan review, leaving residents without an opportunity to respond to technical fixes.
Commissioners pressed staff and the applicant on wet‑weather vs. dry‑weather sewer capacity, whether the holding‑tank/pump concept had precedent at this scale (staff said it does not), buffer widths (proposed 25‑foot buffer vs. requests for up to 75 feet), traffic and access constraints at the Lexington/Cooper Road intersection and Pine Cone Place (substandard public street), and enforceability of private maintenance regimes for pumps and tanks. Staff said public‑utility and plan‑review standards must be met for sanitary and soil‑erosion controls before final permits would be issued; they also noted that existing zoning could already allow a similar bedroom count (roughly 175 bedrooms) on the site without a rezoning and that the rezoning as proposed would yield a modest net bedroom gain (about five bedrooms) compared with existing entitlements.
No formal rezoning vote occurred at the agenda‑setting session; commissioners asked staff to provide more detailed information on: water/sewer availability classification, long‑term maintenance options for private pump/tank systems, potential timing for public‑utility upgrades in the Cedar Creek subbasin, and cost/ownership models for required road upgrades (Pine Cone Place). Several commissioners suggested waiting for infrastructure upgrades rather than approving a project relying on distributed holding tanks and homeowner maintenance.
