March 5, 2026 — Meeting Transcript

I'm or

Okay.

They've spent a lot of time. Pretty good. And they had every possible. For that kind of money, I would. Yeah. I'd be first in line. There's been speculation that the guy came from out of town.

Oh.

There's also speculation that they

must know the family. Yes, he did.

Three doors up from my house. Three in the morning. No luck yet. There we go.

It declined. And we're going to go ahead and promote you to a panelist.

You did right there.

And can you hear us?

Go to participants and see if you can send her a message.

Anna, if you can hear us, can you unmute for a second? Awesome. Can you hear us? If you're speaking, we cannot hear you.

She's connecting to Aya. She can't hear us.

and hear us.

Call them instead.

Hi there, folks. Can you hear me? Sorry about that.

We can now.

Okay, wonderful. I'm going to disconnect from the other. Thank you.

Okay. Welcome to the March 5th City of Clayton Board of Adjustment meeting. The time is now eight minutes after five o'clock. We apologize for the delayed start. My name is Rick Bliss. Today I'm presiding as the chair for this meeting. Let's start with the introduction of the board members and staff and council. I want to start with you, Jason. Jason Laban. Lee Hanson.

Liza Streett.

Liza Street.

Rick Bliss.

Thomas Morgan. Your mic's not on.

Thomas Morgan, sorry.

Brian Helley, planner with the city.

Kevin O'Keefe, city attorney. Board members and alternates are appointed by the mayor and approved by the board of aldermen. Members serve without any monetary compensation. This board consists of five regular members and three alternate members. All members must be residents of Clayton and hold no other office or position in city government. I'd like to note at this time that Richard Lintz has moved to a different board, so we no longer have him as an alternate. If anyone should know of anybody who would like to serve as an alternate for the Board of Adjustment, have them speak up. Four votes in favor of granting a variance are required to decide in favor of the applicant. This is a duly advertised meeting. The proceedings are on the record. Brian, if you would call the roll at this time.

Kevin O'Keefe, city attorney. Board members and alternates are appointed by the mayor and approved by the board of aldermen. Members serve without any monetary compensation. This board consists of five regular members and three alternate members. All members must be residents of Clayton and hold no other office or position in city government. I'd like to note at this time that Richard Lentz has moved to a different board, so we no longer have him as an alternate. If anyone should know of anybody who would like to serve as an alternate for the Board of Adjustment, have them speak up. Four votes in favor of granting a variance are required to decide in favor of the applicant. This is a duly advertised meeting. The proceedings are on the record. Brian, if you would call the roll at this time.

Anna Etzkorn?

Anna Etskorn?

Present.

Jason Lehtman?

Jason Layman?

Here.

Lee Hanson?

Here.

Liza Streett?

Eliza Street?

Here.

Rick Bliss?

Here. The first item on the agenda for tonight's meeting is the approval of the minutes for the last meeting, which was held on November the 6th. Are there any questions, comments or corrections? My only question was on the last meeting we had approved the application with the required requirement that the applicant apply for a demolition permit. within six months of approval of the lot consolidation by the Board of Aldermen. Has that happened yet?

They just received their zoning approval, so they're about to go through the process of building and demolition permits. So fun fact about demolition permits, whenever it's going to be associated with a project, you want to kind of have those joined together. That way, whenever somebody's submitting for that demolition permit, we know what's going to happen on the other end of it. Otherwise, they'd be required to restore the site to a greenfield.

Very good. Okay. I'd like to get a motion to approve the minutes.

I move to approve the minutes of the October 9th November 6th meeting. Sorry. Is

there

a second?

Second. All in favor of approving the minutes as submitted, say aye. Aye. Aye. Anna? We lost her. No, it isn't. I guess we should wait for Anna to come back on. Anna, are you with us?

Yes. Sorry about that.

Okay. Are you in favor of approving the minutes from the last meeting?

Yes.

Let the record show. We're all in favor. Okay. Tonight we have one application on the agenda. It's an appeal from Sharon Doherty for the property located at 6420 Ellenwood. I assume you're ready to go. Okay, very good. Before we go further, if you wish to speak either in favor or in opposition to the application, whether you're here in the chamber or online, we ask that you be sworn in by our court reporter.

Please raise your hand if you

want

to

start again. Is this person

up?

Okay, very good. At this point, I'll ask Mr. City Attorney, does the city have any exhibits to be offered for consideration?

Yes, Mr. Chairman, thank you. The city offers as Exhibit A, the City Code of the City of Clayton, Missouri. As Exhibit B, the portions of Chapter 4 of the City Code contained in Chapter 405, the zoning regulations of the city. Exhibit D, the city code provisions pertaining to the jurisdiction and authority and procedures for the Board of Adjustment. Exhibit D is Section 405.1900 of the city code pertaining to rear yard setback provisions in the R2 residential zoning district. Exhibit E is the files, excuse me, the application filed by the appellant seeking this variance. Exhibit F are the files and records of the city relating to the property, the application for building permit as provided by the appellate, staff report and all other documents and materials maintained by the Department of Planning and Development Services with respect to the property and the proposed construction.

Thank you. Any objection to those being entered into the record? No objection. Thank you. At this point, if you'd like to come forward, come up to the podium, introduce yourself, give us your address, your name and address, and we'll turn it over to you.

Good evening. I'm Sharon Doherty, and I live at 6420 Ellenwood Avenue in the Skinker Heights subdivision. I'll give you cliff notes. I assume all of you got the brochures and everything that I turned in, but just the cliff notes. I have one of the two shallowest lots in our subdivision. My neighbor directly behind me has the other one. I'm told mine is smaller, but I can't testify to that. I've had a deck, an existing deck, and I know it's a different ordinance, that goes beyond the 30-foot setback. I don't have 30 feet. I mean, if I were to have a 30-foot set back, it would be a moot point. It would not be any point in putting in a porch because it would be unusable. When I have my retractable awning open, I believe you got pictures of that over my deck. There's very little change from the proposed clear-sided three-season porch. I have given you letters from both my neighbors behind me and my neighbor to the east who are the only two that would be impacted in any way. And there really is no way that they are impacted, but they are both totally in favor of that. It has clear sides. There's no visual impact, no safety or drainage issues, no impact on light air circulation or the views. It's not solid. It's not like brick. There was a brick garage in that tiny backyard, if you can believe it. There was a one-car garage that was brick, and that was a visual impairment to everybody. I mean, it just stood out, and that is long gone. I been a realtor. I am now retired, but up until last year, I have been a realtor for 31 years. And I'm pretty sure I could say with certainty that this would improve the value of the property. My kitchen is a nice size, but the only eat-in area is on the island. And this would enable a table out in this porch, not year round, but most of the time for entertaining and so forth. I think that's about it. The materials are going to be extruded aluminum and timber tech composite decking that is proposed. So it hopefully will last as long as I need it to. So if you have any questions.

Let me point out at this point, in our packet we received an application from you that is actually titled an appeal to the Board of Aldermen of an architectural review board and or plan commission decision. While it's not the form that was ideally requested, but I think we can understand what you're trying to do here and can accept this as your application.

Basically, because I don't know what I'm doing. This is above my pay grade.

Mr. Chairman, if I may note also that there is a corrected application as well as part of the files.

Correct. Thank you. At this point, can you talk about any alternate plans that you considered?

The only alternate plan I would have would be replace the deck. The deck needs to be replaced regardless. So I would just have a deck, but I would not have an enclosed area.

Okay.

I mean, that's the only option. There's really no other place. As you could see, my backyard is very small. There's really another place to put something like this.

So the deck is, is deteriorating to the point where you feel it needs to be replaced.

Correct. Correct. It's going to be replaced either way. And this would be, I would like to emphasize this. Well, it, you said 10 plus foot setback and the deck people said 12 feet. So it's somewhere in between there. This you're asking for, you're allowing perhaps an 11 foot setback. I talked to Ryan and he said, there is a wiggle room. I'm not going to make it any bigger than the deck. You saw the existing deck and that is exactly the, the footprint that we are following. Exactly.

There was some debate in, in the application that are the materials that I read that if, is it 11 feet, is it 10 feet, nine inches or what have you? Right. And, and I think, um, uh, if it's 10.9 and we, uh, 10, 10 feet, nine inch, and we approve your for 11 feet, uh, it should.

Well, my only concern was the deck people said 12 feet. So I don't know. I don't know if they're measurements are incorrect. I don't You know, who knows which should be correct. But it's just, it's not going to go beyond where the deck is. That is, it's absolutely on the same footprint.

Okay. I'll ask my fellow board members if there's any questions or comments. There's an awning when it's out.

Right.

I mean, that's where it's going to be too.

That's where the roof will be. It'll be a solid roof. Yeah, there are photos that I sent of the awning open. Yeah. And that the roof is pretty much the same thing. The only the only difference the roof will go up to that area of the house that juts out a little bit whereas the awning does not go that far to the to the west. There. Yeah.

Are you um

technically we're supposed to make a judgment on this based on whether there's a hardship can you talk to any hardship you have about not being able to use your property or

well the hardship is the size of the property it's so narrow i mean i could that having a screen porch is obviously an optimal situation um There are so many times when I would like to be sitting out on the deck and it's too hot or it perhaps is too chilly. And, of course, in the evening, the mosquitoes and everything else comes up and bites you one. So it would be just very nice to be able to sit outside and enjoy the outdoors without having those issues. There'd be an overhead fan when it's hot. Yeah. That's, I mean, to call it a hardship is sort of a first world problem.

I'd like to bring up in the staff report, Ryan, on page four, The subject property measures about 9,000 square feet. The lot falls into the 55th percentile of our two lots in terms of lot size, 89th percentile in terms of floor area ratio. We have not typically spoken and addressed floor area ratio issues in this venue. Can you tell us why you feel that's important here?

Yeah, so following the comprehensive plan that we did a couple of years ago, we have a lot of new data now about how to evaluate properties. One of those is floor area ratio. Floor area ratio is a relationship between the square footage of a property, the size of it, and the square footage of building. So if you have one square foot of property and one square foot of house on that property, that's a floor area ratio of one. If you've got two square feet of property on that one square foot of lot, you've got a floor area ratio So the observation of this site is that the property is relatively average in size in the grand scheme of all R2 lots in the city of Clayton, but it is higher in terms of floor area ratio. That means the size of the house is larger on the lot compared to other R2 properties.

Oh, it's a...

The average R2 house is smaller than...

Massing, you're talking about. Yes,

massing of the property. Okay, okay.

So are you, I'm sorry, but are you saying the house isn't bigger than the other houses in the area? No, you're saying for the size of the lot.

For the size of the lots, there is more house per lot area compared to other properties also zoned R2.

Would it be correct to say that what you're describing is that the builder of the property chose to maximize the building and occupy more of the lot than most of the other buildings in the R2 district?

Correct.

Yeah. So that was a choice made when the building was constructed to occupy the buildable area of the lot to the maximum.

Correct.

Right.

I guess I'm trying in the same vein as Liza brought up. Is there a hardship here? We're tasked, Kevin, I believe it's state law? It is, sir. To determine that there needs to be a hardship. I'll let you expound.

Thank you. What you are asking and what any applicant to the Board of Adjustment is asking is that when the city council, the elected leadership of the city, establishes zoning rules that said everybody in the R2 district has to control the construction on their property in this way, that what you are asking is for a variance saying, yes, everybody has to obey that law except me. I don't have to obey that law. I want you to say, I don't have obey that law. Well, of course the standard for that is to establish that the existing law somehow creates a hardship that interferes with your reasonable use of the property such that relief is needed as opposed to just, I don't want to follow the law. I want the law to be different. I want it to be different for me. Can you appreciate that distinction? I

appreciate that, yes.

So the question is not just that it's a technical requirement. It goes to the core of what a board of adjustment can do. We're not here to decide that an applicant is a worthy applicant or that their project is admirable and reasonable and a nice thing. It is, shall this applicant be allowed not to follow the law and to have the law unto themselves for this property because it's required in order to relieve a problem? And I think where the chair and the member who raised the question may be directing their issues is There is a case on court of appeals from Missouri Court of Appeals on boards of adjustment where someone in another community said, I have a pool in my backyard. I have a tennis court in my backyard. And now I want to put up a pool. Now I have a pool and a pool house, and now I want to put up a tennis court, but there's nowhere to put it except in the setback area. So you have to give me a variance so that I can have my tennis court out there. And the court's ruling was essentially, it's not a hardship not to have a tennis court. So it may indeed be worthwhile. It may add value to the property and add to your enjoyment of the property. But what is the hardship not to build what is not allowed? Why do you have to have a roof instead of the awning that you currently have and build a structure that is not allowed, not just as a matter of preference, but as a matter which creates a need for the government to give a variance from the law? I think that's the question that the members are asking.

Well, the awning, obviously, and the roof, as I said, they're pretty similar. It's the enclosure that I would like to have. And I guess I don't want to get malaria. I don't want it to be bitten by the mosquitoes. That's a hardship. You know, just the use of the property. I mean, it really does cut back on the use of the exterior of the property. Is that a Sunsetter awning? I don't even know. I put it in so long ago.

It's a big... I say that because I used to have one, and I'd had it out all season long, and I had screen sides on.

Yeah, I don't know that that would... I don't see that that would work. I mean, that creates another whole set of issues. So I know it's a different... I know we're talking apples and oranges, but there was a brick garage three feet from the fence when we bought the house. It was brick. It really visually, it completely cut us off from the neighboring properties. This would not. There's very, very little as far as anybody looking. I don't think in the neighborhood, certainly it's not setting a precedent because every well in the neighborhood has a lot much larger than mine. I would say in many cases three times as large as mine. Shallow or deep as mine. That's the hardship is the size of the lot. I mean, it really is so shallow as is the one behind me, the Glenn's house.

Without wishing to put words in your mouth, I believe what you are suggesting to the board is that today the market expects that property in this area would have more livable area that could be used more than occasionally, which the current awning and open deck does not allow. Is that correct?

That is correct. It's very accurate. Certainly. Yeah. I would be able to have some furniture out there. And as I said, use it for when guests come and I have house guests and so forth. And plus myself, I would like to be out there a lot more.

your kitchen does not have a kitchen table or

it does not no i just have an island it's a good size kitchen and there's a nice size island but it's there's that's it

okay um Staff observes that the granting of the requested variance is not likely to result in detrimental impact to light and air between the structures. But the staff observation goes on to say it would depart from the intent of the setback regulation by introducing additional massing beyond the setback.

It's hardly massing. I mean, if it were brick or if it were wood or something like that, I could understand mass, but this is pretty clear. It's just going to have the supports and then it's clear on three sides.

Is mass the same as volume or is mass just visual? Yeah, I'm interpreting it as visual.

It's

terms of zoning in terms of you know the way that property presents on the streets you could use mass or volume interchangeably

let me ask Ryan the questions is it staff's opinion that granting the variance would not constitute a change in the district map

correct

Granting the requested variance would not impair an adequate supply of light and air, as we just discussed.

Correct.

Would not increase congestion in public street, in the public streets.

Correct.

There would not be an increased danger of fire.

Correct.

It would not impair established property values. In fact, it might improve them. Correct. Anna, do you have any questions? No, I do not. Allow me, please, just to go through my notes one quick time. Okay. I have no more questions. Anybody else still ask questions? At that point, I guess I'll ask for a motion to address the applicant.

I move to approve an 11-foot variance from the required rear yard setback of 30 feet, section 405.1900.A.2 of Article 13 R2, single family dwelling district.

Is there a second? Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Anna?

Not approved.

Those opposed would be Anna and me. I just don't see the hardship there. That is the threshold that we have to deal with. Should we take a roll call vote?

I have it. Three in favor and two opposed, so the motion does not carry.

Okay, thank you. There's your decision.

I have no other

options. I would not say, I would not agree with that statement.

I mean, are there other options?

If you were to redesign it, I would imagine that there might be. There's

just no way to. I mean, it would be a hallway.

I'm not a designer. There's

no

way. I guess then we'll move on. Next month, do we have any applications?

Nothing submitted yet. I've had some folks submit inquiries, of course, but they have until, I believe, Monday to actually submit an application.

Okay. Okay. In that case, if there are no other comments, Anna, if you have any comments, speak up. Otherwise, I'll accept a motion to adjourn. I

move

to

adjourn. Is

there a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Meeting's adjourned.