October 4, 2021 — Meeting Transcript

Steve Lichtenfeld.

Carolyn Gatiss. Here. Ira Berkowitz. Helen DeFayt? Here. George Hedich?

Here.

David Gipson? Robert Dunlow?

David Gibson? Robert Dunlow?

Helen DeFay, did I call you, Helen? Yes. I'm sorry. Sorry. I'm here once. OK. OK.

PB, Lupita D Montoya, I cannot tell either if the applicant is here for that project, could you please raise your hand and then I can. PB, Lupite D Montoya, recognize you.

Can

you guys hear a distant voice though? A man's voice? Somebody's on a phone, only a phone. I do

not hear anything. Is anyone in the audience here for 448 Edgewood

since we don't

Okay. We do have one hand raised. Yep.

Okay. Good. No, I was muted. Okay. Yes, I'm Mike Thompson, the architect for it.

Oh, I'm Mike Johnson, the architect for It.

Sure. The project's address is 8140 Kingsborough Boulevard. This is for the review of the design and materials associated with the construction of a two-car garage. The site is located on the south side of Kingsborough Boulevard between North Forsyth and North Brentwood. In August of 2021, the ARB approved the demolition of the existing home and the construction of a single family residence. The existing detached 343 square foot rear yard garage was approved to remain During demolition of the existing home, the detached garage was demolished without approval. The applicant is seeking the board's approval to construct a new 408 square foot garage in a similar location as the previous garage. The proposed garage is similar in style and utilizes the same building materials and colors as the existing home. The regulations of the Clayton Gardens Urban Design District stipulate that the height of accessory structures shall be limited to one and a half stories or 16 feet above the existing grade of the site. The proposed garage conforms to this requirement at 15 feet 11 inches in height. The proposed garage also meets the impervious coverage requirements of the Clayton gardens UDD. Primary building material is a top gray brick to match the approved home with secondary stucco being located on the rear elevation. The proposed garage door is a dark brown raised panel door with tempered glass and will be flanked by two gas lanterns on the ends. All windows will be metal clad with a wood interior. The project as proposed is in conformance with the requirements of the R2 Single Family Dwelling District, the Architectural Review Guidelines, and the Clayton Gardens UDD. Staff is of the opinion that the proposed garage is compatible with the existing home and surrounding neighborhood, and our recommendation is to approve as submitted.

No, I don't think I had a picture of the garage door, if you can see that. There's a dark brown garage door with a glass in it.

How do I do that? So you can't, I'm sorry, you can't see the picture there?

Oh, okay. Sorry. So yeah, it's just basically a door as far as got the glass windows in it. otherwise matches the windows. Other than that, every other material just matches what's on the house. The stucco board, which is on the back of the garage, and the brick, the roofing, everything matches exactly.

Correct.

I believe a barbecue. It's just a little covered place to keep the barbecue so it doesn't get rained on as much, that type of thing.

Yes.

I guess, I mean, obviously, I guess it depends on the size of the car. So I actually don't know what my drive. So I mean, a small car certainly could. It depends. I mean, I don't think, I mean, a very large SUV probably would not be able to turn around there.

John Gerstle, that's

Caroline Miller, um I just had a question about the turnaround to, but I think that's kind of an answer, I also had a question about on three of three. looking at the looks like that's the existing garage showing there. That looks a lot smaller than the other one, the new one. The existing was smaller according to this drawing.

Is that true or? Oh I think they were well I think they were roughly about the same size. A

little bit larger but

Miller, Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask if Caroline Miller, If that is the case, and Karen Hollweg, It looks like that could be the case, and I was just mistaken. Karen Hollweg, That's all I have. PB John Gerstle,

Helen.

Helen Russette, Yes, Steve you already asked about the roof overhead my other question is about. How will the stucco board be jointed?

Just the same way as on the house with the 1x4 trim.

Okay, so it won't be on the rear elevation of the garage. It appears to be a true stucco, you know, no seams, no joints. Stucco board would have joints. Okay. I have it on my own garage, so I am familiar with it. So you will be putting the battens on it similar to the house? Yes. Okay. It looks good. And I think you can turn back out of that garage and turn and go... forward out of the driveway. It will be tight, but with the 16 foot wide door, you pick up a little bit of wiggle room. Again, I'm judging on my own and the garage is about the same size, but it's two separate doors. So I don't have that extra room to swim tightly. It will be tight. So looks good to me.

Okay,

thanks. Ira? I'm just curious about how do you end up demolishing an entire building but not have approval for such a move? How did that happen, Mike?

Mike Malin told me one of his demolition guys was going to take the existing house, had a hot tub behind it. And he was going to take that or basically Mike was trying to get rid of it and he said, hey, can I take that? Somehow him trying to wiggle that out with the track hoe, he hit the corner of the existing garage and kind of partially collapsed the garage. So at that point, the decision was made, well, we can't leave this garage like this kind of thing. And so then the decision was made to, well, let's go ahead and take it down just for safety purposes.

But there was no consideration for coming back to this board for a demolition?

Well, oh, yes. I mean, I think by then we had submitted really the decision was made where he was going to put a new garage in. So we had submitted for that. So no, I think we were waiting for this meeting to happen in order to then submit to technically get a demolition permit.

I'm not sure that makes a whole lot of sense in terms of what you needed to do. But I think the permit should have been applied for before the demolition. PB Harmon Zuckerman, They come to us for it. PB Harmon Zuckerton, So all right, but otherwise I you know I had a problem looking at the space between the garage and the House and how that was going to work with the turn around so you all talked about it. PB HarmonZuckerman, Otherwise, I don't have anything else. PB, Lupita D Montoya,

Okay, I think that's a really good point, though, because now that i'm thinking about it it's what if it was a tree 36 inch three and they just. HAB-Juliette Boone, You know nipped it and took it down without any permit or anything so that you know we're kind of setting up almost a precedent that they can go ahead and DEMO. HAB-Julie Peters- doing that, so that that would be my concern. HAB-Judy Nogg- Well that's building getting demolished course i'm interested in the trees for I sorry about that. HAB-Terry

Palmos- that's fine, no, no, no trees houses garages they're all important so. HAB-Jacques Juilland

There's

I'll make a motion to approve as submitted

Aye.

Great.

No, I know that Susan tried to reach out to them, but she did not receive a response.

There's not anyone in the attendees list. Not quite sure what's going on tonight.

First meeting ever.

Yeah.

TAB, This will be a very short presentation, but hopefully a good follow up to carolyn's just give me one moment to share my screen. TAB, Okay, so I will be talking about chapter 400 article two, which is the article about the city plan Commission essentially what it is and what the responsibilities of the plan Commission are. So the purpose, essentially the planning commission exists to advise the Board of Aldermen on how to preserve and protect the community, to guide redevelopment, encourage high standards of design, and to encourage public participation. The code outlines specific powers in this article. Those are submitting a master plan for the development of the city to the Board of Aldermen, acting as a zoning commission and recommending changes to the zoning map to the Board of aldermen and holding public hearings for any amendments to the zoning ordinance. So we have a little picture in the middle there of the current downtown master plan. So one of the components of encouraging public participation is providing public notice. So on the screen, I have listed public hearings, what they are and then the notice requirements. So public hearings, we haven't really had one in a while, but there are Erica Kaurudar, Therefore, rezonings planned unit development districts special development districts and any general text amendments to the zoning ordinance so. Erica KaurudAR, there's a distinction in code between general text amendments and procedural text amendments and it's kind of exactly as it sounds anything that has to do with. Erica Kauruudar, The procedural function of the plan Commission doesn't necessarily require public hearing, but if you are making changes to any section of the zoning code that does. And I think the last public hearing we had was probably for Centene, the STD where they were adding the orthodontist office in their sub-district 2A a couple months ago. So there are public notice requirements and we as staff take care of all of these, but just so you're aware, at least seven days prior to the date of the public hearing, we post notices in five public places Two on the property itself, so usually there's one at City Hall, one at the library, and one at either the county building or the city police building on Brentwood. At least 10 days prior to the date of the public hearing, mail notices are sent to all property owners within 200 feet. And then at least 15 days prior, there are two publications in a newspaper, which is the Countian. TAB, I realized that probably should have done these in the other order. TAB, But those are the notice requirements and I just want to add that we do send out the agendas to all property owners within 200 us an extra step so that's not a code requirement but. TAB, anytime something is on the plan Commission or air the agenda those get sent out about a week in advance to all those property owners, even if it's not a public hearing. And then the makeup of the commission and more information on recommendations. So plan commission is made up of seven members, one of whom is the city manager or designee, and one of whom is a member of the board of aldermen. And as far as recommendations, the Plan Commission recommends regulations to the BOA with regard to the character of the district, its suitability for uses and encouraging the most appropriate land use. Recommendation to the Board of Aldermen is non-binding that the affirmative vote of five Board of Alderman members is required to adopt revisions that are contrary to the recommendation of the Plan Commission. I'm not sure if that has ever happened. Susan can probably shed a little bit more light on that if it has, but that's kind of the way that they can vote in a contrary manner to the recommendation of the PC. And that concludes my presentation. Very short article, but I also thought if you have any questions specifically on the plan commission, on your role, I can answer them, Susan can answer them, and yeah.

So we do have the minutes that are always made available on the city's website. From my understanding, the recordings of the Zoom meetings go to the city's YouTube page. And if people ask for the specific link, I'm always happy to share that as well. I'm not sure how often the YouTube page is updated. Last time I looked, it was a couple meetings behind, but we always maintain the records for anyone who wants to watch or listen.

360. Yeah.

Sounds great.

love

it.

you could send me

Okay. After the last meeting, when you mentioned that I pulled it down, so the last time I pulled it down.

Also, you can this is through general code that publishes the ordinance. And you can also get a username and password since the city of Clayton has their ordinances published through general code. And that will allow you to do multi city or multi state searches. So if you are looking to see maybe how another city regulates a certain land use or has or provides, you know, for regulation. of something pertaining to the commission's business, you could do that. But in order to do that multi-city or multi-state search, you do need a username and password.

I would either Susan or Anissa, you could talk to June and see if they could and see if she could contact General Code. And then it's usually your username is usually your email. And then you can set up your password once you're designated by General Code as a Clayton official. But then that gives you any General Code client across the nation. You can go ahead and search their codes using just keywords.

Wow. Thank you. Okay. I have a question. Ira. So one of the slides was very clear about the fact that the city manager and an alderman are represented on the planning commission. So I've got a couple of questions. One is, do you have any ideas about why the city manager is on the planning commission? but we don't technically have anyone from our planning department that's on the commission.

yes. It's in the charter, and so I've known this, but I just thought I'd throw this out to you guys to see if I could get some feedback also. I mean, I do have some ideas, but I'd like to hear from others about what they think of that as a policy

fine. No, that's fine. I just, right. I mean, I think, you know, that's the plan commission. That's, uh, you know what it is right now, but that doesn't have to be, um, there could be changes made that make more, maybe more sense, uh, for the actual commission. So anybody have any ideas? I know Steve, I know what Steve feels. Well,

Correct. I was just trying to, at this point, see if anyone had an opinion about what we should, how this plan commission should be made up. And I agree that there's some problems with getting it to happen, but it would be great to think about what would be the perfect. And Stephanie, you might have some ideas just based on your experience with other municipalities and the makeup of those plan commissions.

Well, it's my guess that probably the drafters of the charter looked at the state statute, which specifically says for plan commission, you can have between five and 13 members. And then usually the mayor or the chief executive officer is on the commission along with a member of the legislative body. So that's in the actual state statute. I am sure that the framers of the charter looked at that and probably took cues from that.

That's what I would bet because when the drafters of the charter were looking at this, most of the executive authority rests with the city manager. And so that's why they chose the city manager over the mayor, which is what is normally done. And the statute provides for that. And the drafters at the charter probably thought that, well, Um, most of this authority rests with the city manager. So we're going to, we're going to put that person on instead of the mayor. That's just my guess.

Um, yeah, so there's, um, Well, under the state statute. Yes, they should be. There is some language in there, though, that I've actually used where we were having in a small city, we were having trouble getting people who would be willing to serve on the on the plan commission. And so we drafted our ordinance to allow somebody who actually owned and operated a business where they could sit on the commission. But I would say, first and foremost, if you have residents and you have plenty of residents who are willing to serve, I would choose residents over trying to do something to bring in business owners or other stakeholders.

or within the language itself as far as the makeup of the citizen portion. I did not hear anything about wards. Is it specifically written somewhere that we're supposed to be representative of each of the different wards that we have?

There's nothing in that article about specific wards.

You know, that came up when I moved. And that's why I was asking as well. So I moved out of one ward to another and Carolyn and I are across the street from each other. So it's kind of unusual the way that my move.

right i mean we're very happy by down forest right now um is there a reason why we should not get in there and at least have a one one one you know um each of the wards having one representative specifically.

flexibility. The 1-1-1 provides the flexibility to me that if there's a qualified individual from another ward that you could do a minimum of one representative of each ward, I think it would be beneficial to make sure that we're always carrying that.

I'll have Susan or Anissa, if you know about the ordinance, let me know that. But the state statute doesn't have that. I know that that is key for usually the building board of appeals where building permits, those kinds of issues would go. But there might be something in ordinance or certainly there might be something the knowledge or expertise in the areas that are under consideration.

Okay.

Yeah, I could pull that up, but it's going to take a second.

A little difficulty pulling it up for Clayton. I don't know why. I can let you know, I don't recall offhand, but I know historically we've tried to get representatives from, as you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, representatives from the building trade architect, landscape architect, And then citizens as well. If I can find it.

I won't come up.

Yeah, I looked at the ordinance and for sure on architectural review board, at least one member needs to be, and let me go back to that, needs to be a registered architect. Now this is architectural review board. I looked at that first and it does say that at least, so five residents in addition to the city manager and a member of the Board of Aldermen, at least one member shall be a registered architect. Now let me go back to plan commission. That's architectural review board. For plan commission, it says the five members shall be residents of the city qualified by knowledge or experience to act on questions pertaining to the development of a city plan. And then it goes into their appointment. So there it's based on knowledge or experience for plan commission and on ARB, at least one member shall be an architect.

Yes.

Yeah, that language just isn't in the plan commission ordinance, but it does, the plan commission ordinance does reference the knowledge and experience. So yeah, so those two qualifications then would apply to both effectively.

Well, it creates them separately, but let's see. Let's take a look.

It actually says, it just says may be held in conjunction with the regularly scheduled meetings of the city and commission or at any other time deemed necessary by the chairperson. So it gives you the option to hold them at different times.

Yeah, we do identify them on the agenda as separate boards. So each agenda item is titled, if you see under item type on your staff report, it'll say architectural review. And then I don't have a site plan, but the intent is that we identify them as separate bodies looking at separate items for the code and performing to different requirements for each board, but being the same people. We do have to explain that a lot to people. They don't quite get that.

Nobody seems to have a problem with it. They just don't seem to understand that it's the same people wearing two different hats. in the same meeting, so.

I will bring up that there is some inconsistency here on this board as far as that ward requirement compared to at least the Sustainability Advisory Board. And I know that it's a little bit more... This board's a little bit different than some of these other ones, but the Sustainability Advisory Board requires two members from each ward, period. And we don't even mention wards here. Public art, I don't see it in public art, but I do wonder if we should have a minimum representation of one from each ward.

Yeah. And I think that if it's not written into the code, that it's not always available. I mean, I think it should be written as opposed to an always have had. I agree with you since I've been on this. There's always been reputation across the board. But I think it needs to be in writing.

move that those two items be tabled for another meeting.

Second.

Um, should we just keep this material then till the next meeting? So you don't have to copy it all again. Yes, please. Okay, good. No. Okay,

George. And no further comments. Thank you. Helen.

One comment. I'm wondering, unless you sent out an email today about the new format for the application. Did you get any responses from any of us?

I did get a response, Steve, with some good formatting tips. Like I said in the email, working with CitizenServe to try to get something that's a lot nicer looking than what was sent. But they need very specific direction. Just take some time to wiggle through that process with them. Any feedback is welcome. Be as critical as you need to be and I'll work on getting that taken care of. Okay.

The one thing-

Make it pretty please.

As I was reading was that It's hard to distinguish between what is being asked, the question and the answer. So it all kind of blends together, especially when you have those short answers. Brick, no. Siding, no. It just, it's difficult to sort it out. So if one were in bold, and the other one was not in bold, then you could quickly see which was which.

I think Anissa's comment on making it readable really kind of was like, yes, please do.

Ira. Just one comment. Anissa, thank you so much for your summaries. You know, the meetings have been much, much shorter as a result. So I appreciate that. Of course, the fact that the agendas are a little smaller, but I think the fact that you've summarized the reading of these items has been, I think, very helpful. And I appreciate your brevity. So thank you.

Thank you.

I have a couple of things, a couple you already touched on. I just wanted to let you know in the past you had gotten correspondence sometimes from Kelly Abishan, who really was associated with the building division. She is no longer with the city. So I just want to let you know that. And then I just wanted to let the plan commission know that Friday before last, I've been on vacation for a week. So today's my first day back, but Friday before last, um, the steering committee met with H3 studios, um, and we walked, um, downtown Clayton, just mostly on Bemiston up Forsyth and down central and, uh, Merrimack, um, talking about the setback issue and the, um, dining, outdoor dining challenges that this plan commission had brought up the last time we met on the proposed ordinance for the revisions to the downtown overlay. So it took, it was H3 suggesting that we just kind of meet in person and walk those areas of the city so we could see it kind of in use and in real life and I thought we, Steve chime in if you wish. I thought we had a pretty good discussion and being able, you know, we had tape measures out there and we're measuring sidewalks and dining areas and setbacks and the best we could. And I do think the folks on the steering committee walked away with a better understanding of some of the pros and cons associated with potentially having a setback requirement of six feet or some articulation, a percentage of articulation. And then the challenges associated with doing outdoor dining and outdoor programming on our sidewalks in kind of a narrow space. And then obviously the challenges associated with widening sidewalks if that's a possibility for the future. So I Just as soon as that meeting was over that afternoon, I left and I've been gone. So I haven't mapped out next steps. I suspect we'll probably have one more meeting of the steering committee just to discuss what we saw. And then I would forward their recommendation and their comments to the plan commission and to kind of pick up where we left off with that ordinance because I think that six foot setback was the last remaining issue on the ordinance. That's a quick summary of what we did, and I will reach out to John and Tim and see if they can join us in a quick meeting with the steering committee and get things rolling again.

Thank you, Susan. Thank you for that summary and update. You're

welcome.

I am, yeah. Thank you.

TAB, To talk about the next presenter and next week's meeting with these two items being tabled and what we have so far we're looking at six agenda items. TAB, So i'll coordinate with Susan and reach out to whoever is a lucky target I guess will probably be a shorter article, so if Bob will be. Stapp, Will for that meeting. If not, George, you're probably next as far as a topic that can fit on an agenda of that size.

Thanks for the heads up.

I don't have anything further this evening. Thank you.

Good night, everybody. Thank you.