commissioners i will be calling um a witness an engineer with streets all right you can right now
you want to bring your witness on i do yes okay bring them up are they here are they on they they
are okay here in the flesh all right good afternoon
all right you want to state your name in the microphone nice and clearly and spell it for
the record my name is janine wilson j-e-a-n-i-e-n wilson and i am the plane review supervisor for
the right-of-way unit on behalf of the streets department okay thank you and do you swear or
affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth i do okay thank you you
can begin counsel i have requested a screen share on the zoom application
one moment
Thank you.
All right. Thank you for your patience, commissioners.
Mrs. Wilson, thank you for stating your name.
Could you please state the responsibilities that you have in your role?
I um my part of my role with the streets department is to supervise plan reviews
there was another um there was a subordinate that provided the plan review her name is Seema
Azarani as listed on the bottom of the um of the of the conditional approval and the building
approvals for this location I I supervise and oversee the plan review department so
And Mrs. Wilson, are you familiar with 209 and 211 East Wildey Street?
Yes, I am.
How did you become familiar with these properties?
The applicant submitted it via Eclipse to the Sheriff's Department as a part of the prerequisite for zoning and building approvals.
the applicant submitted it via eclipse to the streets apartment as a part of the
And in your role, what activities did you undertake to do the review?
I opened and reviewed all of read over all of the documents that were submitted to us.
Um, there was, um, if there was, I guess, a conflict, we, um, we invited to meet the applicant and the developer to have a meeting to sort through the comments or conflicts.
Did you supervise, uh, other streets department employees in this review?
Yes, I did.
And if you could tell me again, what sorts of documents it was that you reviewed in some detail?
um i review the the standard documents that get submitted to us are the existing conditions
proposed conditions grading plan utility plan a site safety distance plan which is an m not 50s form
and term templates did the process involve any meetings yes it involved meetings
did you take notes of those meetings and is that a practice of yours
yes anytime we have an appointment with an applicant or a developer
i usually take make it a point of taking notes during the meetings and given the the i guess
the prominence of this location i um i did bring my notebook with me to discuss the meetings when
the when the meeting was held and mrs wilson what is the streets review what does it comprise
what is it made up of when reviewing proposed curb cuts for parking access the um streets
review for proposed curb cuts is usually a street zoning submission which is a prerequisite to the
lni zoning and in the streets building submission which is a prerequisite to the the lni building
During the street zoning plan, zoning review, we asked for several documents, such as I previously mentioned, the M-950S form, and we also asked for turn templates showing if the vehicles could turn in and out from the location safely.
Mrs. Wilson, did streets ultimately issue a determination about this proposal?
Yes. Ultimately, based on various meetings, we determined that due to certain site restrictions, we were able to negotiate certain things in order for us to provide a zoning approval so they can move forward with the development.
Since it's a prerequisite, it was necessary for our, for us to give the zoning approval in order for it to be in front of the board.
Mrs. Wilson, I am showing you Exhibit G, a streets approval letter from October of last year. Is this a document that you recognize?
Yes, that is a document I recognize.
What is this document?
if you scroll around a little bit it will tell you what is the um this is the letter that gets
automatically generated for um approved zoning approvals and for building approvals on behalf
of streets department and this is um just basically is and is as an approval letter
per se um we also write the conditions to the approvals um on on that letter
So the condition, what are the conditions regarding parking specifically as shown in these written conditions?
Well, we understand the hardship of having all street parking and we did recognize that there's parking along the entire block, but most of the other houses had seen to have one single car for all street parking for each parcel.
and we recognized that there was already an existing curb cut there so we allowed to have
one all street parker for two for um each each subdivided parcel um so that was one of the
simulations for the first one the second bullet was something that um the owner uh during the
meeting we discussed the owner had agreed upon and the third one was a condition that my um the chief
said since the excavation for the utility connections spread across Weldy
Street so those are the three those are those three conditions thank you mrs.
Wilson before we look at those conditions before we delve into them
look at those conditions uh before we delve into them more i'm going to move to
more I'm going
exhibit d which is a zoning submission from june of last year uh mrs wilson is this a a document
that you recognized yes it's a document recognized mrs wilson could you please orient us in other
In other words, what are we looking at in this plan? What does it show?
If you can scroll down a little bit, that might be helpful.
Basically, this is what this is a turn. This is showing a turn template on one side of the street, primarily showing the to your left.
You have the existing site plan or as proceed as the existing site plan that shows the existing curb cut and all.
and it shows an ada ramp um that's there but that's not there but we also have a zoning
submission to your right on the right hand side you show you're showing a vehicle turning in
um and backing out onto onto wieldy street and it looks as if it's backing out well does it look
like it's backing out onto wieldy street might be towards the parking lane so um that's what
that's the best description i could give right now and mrs mrs wilson what specifically is
proposed here with as it concerns parking spaces here is showing the proposal as the concern is
that there if there is a wall constructed or if there's any kind of barrier that will be constructed
between um 209 and 211 east wildy the um the vehicle has a possibility of hitting that barrier
in between those two parcels when the tendencies with someone will have a side yard they will want
protection for their lot and for their parcels so they will want to put some sort of fencing or
something and it's the character for the remaining of the areas too the yard side yards are open they
protected by fences on each side of the property lines thank you mrs wilson and specifically
with regard to curb cuts what is being proposed in the you know i think of this almost like a
before and after as a as a lay person in the after diagram what is being shown the
curb cuts is being shown as one large continuous curb cut from almost of the point of curvature
with Day Street spreading across the width of both properties.
And where is the proposed new curb cut located with respect to, you know, its proximity to this intersection?
It looks as if the curb cut is located directly at the intersection.
could you speak about the conditions present at that intersection the current intersection is not
stopped controlled at all there is one way traffic going um i believe north arrow is if you're assuming
north is up the existing um travel would be going eastbound on um on loyalty street and there you
have a northbound traffic on day street and there's no traffic control at the at either intersection
In light of conditions like that, does streets follow any guidelines relating to the distance a curb cut lies from an intersection of this kind?
Yes. In most cases, we don't allow any curb cuts within 75 feet of an intersection if it's an uncontrolled intersection.
Mrs. Wilson, about how far is the proposed curb cut from this uncontrolled intersection?
It looks like the flares are located directly at that intersection of the point of curvature.
How many feet do you think, Mrs. Wilson?
To the best of my knowledge, I believe it might be one or two feet if we don't include the flare.
I see.
and so in the real world how would a car safely exit that curb cut they wouldn't even have they
would have to back up and do a multi-point turn and mrs wilson um how does parking work
on Wildey Street right now?
The side of the building with the development on it
is the designated side that you park on.
Mrs. Wilson, does that mean that there are spaces,
parking spaces that actually lie between the illustrated moving car and the property side of
parking spaces that actually lie
between the illustrated moving car?
the, of the street? There's a possibility. Yes. So does this diagram accurately depict
the, the, the safety conditions as they really exist? There is still a, um, given as with a
wildy street there is a there are residential homes on the opposing side of the street that
you don't see necessarily on this plan um that is something that we did bring up during our
appointments with the designer mrs wilson how would you characterize
your safety concerns about this whole plan as you saw it
Our concern is primarily to make sure that a vehicle can safely back out and that another vehicle that's approaching will be able to see it, number one. Number two, we want to make sure that a vehicle that is parked on within that parking lot can be completely confined to that off-street parking space.
That's a second concern. We do not want people blocking the sidewalk to park their car.
Also, we want to make sure that vehicles will be able to pull out of a parking space without dangering any sort of fencing or hedges or something along the property boundary.
So was it because of these conditions that you made the conditional approvals you added that you made those conditions that you that you arrived at.
Yes, those are the reasons those are those are the reasons why that we determined based on based on studying the plans and studying the site.
And also Mrs. Wilson, this was was this the only document you relied upon to make a safety determination?
No, there were multiple plans that were submitted. There were multiple plans submissions that were made at the at the time.
There were various resubmission and modifications of the zoning for these two parcels, and there was modifications for the building of these two parcels.
In the world of materials that you reviewed for this submission, how early was the earliest submission?
um I believe the early submission might have been of um of maybe January or 25 which was the
initial zoning submission uh Mrs. Wilson I'm now going to look at some of the we're not going to
look at at some of the earlier materials that you review me for one second so i just want to get a
time check here because we're running long so hillary we can let her get cross-examined and
then we probably want to do a resumption hearing or are you trying to this is um i defer to um
executive director haggerty um i know we're we're we are we're okay on time but we are getting a
little long um and we do have a few other cases um mr haggerty yeah thanks hey hillary this is ian
um i think we can allocate another 20 minutes at most to this case and then we'll have to go
to a resumption thank you madam chairman and members of the board i must state to you
we have young families who desperately need to get into these homes as soon as possible
this as as we've just heard the streets department has protracted this discussion
for an unusually long period of time it's critical to us that the board hear this case
and uh do so in as timely a fashion as possible all right so let's try to uh speed it along and
give you guys an opportunity um to finish off and give you some cross time okay thank you go ahead
thank you ian thank you hillary thank you commissioner mrs wilson i'm going to briefly
uh go to some other exhibits um because they were materials you consulted first i'm going to
point to exhibit a a zoning submission mrs wilson are you familiar with this this document yes i'm
familiar with the document what does this plan show in terms of layout and access to the street
This was the original zoning approval for the parcel that we had approved, and it shows
an existing curb cut off of in front of 209 East Wildey Street.
in front of 209 East Wildey Street.
Mrs. Wilson, what features, if any, were present here that alerted you to safety concerns?
Objection. We're looking at the current plan that's before the board, not at any other plans. This is just taking up time and and and clouding the issues.
um commissioners if i may address mr labor's comments um the streets department undertakes
a holistic review conducted importantly by subject matter experts not by me not mr labor
but subject matter experts go ahead you can continue just move it along okay so um
it's it's it's a it's a distant curve cut from one side and not the other and also they're
showed the ada ramp adjacent to the other one did you have safety concerns come in response
to that ada ramp yeah we didn't want to use it as a driveway
mrs wilson i'm now going to show you um a document from a little bit later you use um
this is exhibit b this is a site plan document mrs wilson what are we looking at here this is
the initial building submission that we approved it shows the um it shows the full height curve
it shows the ADA ramp located in a different location. It shows the red area towards the
bottom of the screen highlighted is the opposing side of the street. And it also demonstrated that
the trench would need to be in front of the opposing side of the street, would have to be
restored in kind. Were there features present at the corner that presented safety concerns to you?
Yeah, the corner of Day and Wildey have utility poles. There's an inlet there. There's other
pipe posts and things that are located there could that could possibly provide a barrier or
let itself we just don't want a car to back out and to hit the poles
did those poles and similar objects present visibility challenges at that corner and
there for four vehicles possibly yes and mrs wilson are there any curb cuts depicted in this plan
no the only curb cut that would be or change in curb elevation that's that's shown is the ada ramp
mrs wilson when developers submit site plans do they include uh depth
depth descriptions aka curb including curb cuts yes it's usually included on a grading plan if
there is a change in elevations is it common for a developer not to include curb cuts that exist
no it's not
Mrs. Wilson, what meetings did you take with the applicant?
Based on my personal records, um, we did take a meeting on, um, no, um, September the 8th,
2025 regarding the um the project the project was during the meeting the notes that i took that the
project was currently in a variance process and that the um the agreed upon conditions during the
meeting was just the private paving or the paving restoration of the street on the other side of the
street that we will agree to one car per each house um and that there will be and that we were
restricted somehow um for one vehicle for each parcel did mr siebert say that he was offering
to place a deed restriction from my recollection yes um we would not streets department do not
receive reviewed deeds so we would not have even mentioned a deed restriction
unless someone from the outside have noticed it
And finally, Mrs. Wilson, did the totality of what you learned from the June submission,
from the January submission, from the April submission, are those what informed your findings
as shown in the conditional approval?
Thank you very much, Mrs. Wilson.
That is the end of my direct testimony.
Good afternoon, Ms. Wilson. We know each other very well and I hold you in the highest profession.
Good afternoon, Ms. Wilson. We know each other very well, and I hold you in the highest professional regard, but I haven't seen you at the zoning board before. Have you appeared before the zoning board previously?
I do not recall. Not Philadelphia zoning board that I recall.
Highly unusual, to say the least. In any event, you had referred during your testimony to a concern regarding the speculative or potential construction of barriers between 209 and 211 East Wildey Street, either fencing or barriers.
um have you seen any proposed plans for fencing or barriers between those two uh properties
i do not recall and are you aware of fencing or barriers anywhere from
shackamaxon to day street yes i am familiar with it on this side of the block yes where
i cannot state but we did send inspectors out there the streets department did send
inspectors out there to show that there are there are fencing adjacent to other individual lots
i'd be interested to see those but we'll come back to that
um you also mentioned uh in response to a query from your council
regarding the possibility of parking between existing curb cuts along East Wildey Street,
which sounds quite surprising.
What do you think, Ms. Wilson, those approximate dimensions would be
that would permit an automobile to park in between curb cuts here?
I cannot answer that.
It depends on where the existing, there's not enough plan for me to determine it.
I would submit members of the board that there is not and i'm sure they have the intentions here are are are good that but having been out to the site personally looking over all the plans there simply is not room for any standard