October 9, 2025

Machine-generated transcript — may contain errors.

Welcome to the October 9th City of Clayton Board of Adjustment meeting. The time is now 5 o'clock p.m. My name is Rick Bliss. Today I will be presiding as the chair for this meeting.

We'll start with introductions of the board members, staff, and council. Rich? Rich Lentz. Lee Hanson.

Liza Streett. Bryce Woollen. I'll be crap with the city. Right now the plan of the city.

Kyle Cronin counsel for the city and for the board great and thank you. Board members and alternates are appointed by the mayor approved by the board of aldermen. Members serve without any monetary compensation this board consists of 5 regular members 3 alternate members All members must be residents of Clayton and hold no other office or position in city government. 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. Ryan, if you'll call the roll, please. Rich Lenz?

Here. Lee Hanson? Here. Liza Streett?

Here. Bryce Woollen? 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 june 5th are there any questions comments corrections i noted one um on the agenda on the minutes excuse me on page one under paragraph uh number three It reads an appeal from Mark Birchler with an L. On the back, it references Mark Bircher without an L. And I wasn't sure which was the correct name.

We'll review and update it. OK. Thank you. Subject to the revision, is there a motion to approve?

I move to approve the minutes of the June 5th meeting. Second. All those in favor? Aye.

Aye. No opposed? Okay. Moving on.

Tonight, we have one application on the agenda, an appeal from Stacey Karlovic, applicant on behalf of Ray Lynn Chase and Kelly Chase, owners for the property located at 125 Crandon Drive. Stacey, are you ready to go? All right. Before we go further, anyone wishing to speak either in favor or in opposition to the application needs to be sworn in.

Um, Rebecca, if you'll swore anybody who's going to speak, please stand, raise your arm, raise your right hand. Take it from here. You saw me swear. Stacey, are you not going to speak?

I didn't know if you were safe. I'm not opposing it. So anyone in favor or in opposition, go ahead and raise your hand. I'll swear you.

We'll start with Mr. City Attorney. Does the city have any exhibits to be offered for consideration? Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The city offers the following exhibits. Exhibit A, which is the code of ordinances for the city of Clayton with special, specifically section 405.1900 relating to setback requirements in the R2 single family dwelling district and the Clayton master plan.

That's exhibit A. Exhibit B, the zoning review application and deny letter from Hobie Kropp, the planning technician. Exhibit C, the appeal to the Board of Adjustment. Exhibit D, the plans and survey provided by the owner.

And Exhibit E, the staff report. Okay. Do you have any objection to that those documents offered as evidence for this meeting? Okay.

I will note that the staff report has been revised from what it was originally issued. Is that correct, Ryan? Yes. Correct.

We issued a correction about the encroachments for rear yard patios. The original staff report noted that rear yard patios could encroach 12 feet. That's uncovered rear yard patios can encroach 12 foot. The correction is that there is no setback for an uncovered patio.

OK, thank you. OK, I guess at this point, Stacey, if you want to come forward. Tell us your name, your business address, and what you'd like us to learn tonight. Okay.

My name is Stacey Karlovic. I am the interior designer for this residence. My business address is 5 Georgian Acres in Frontenac. What I want you to know about the project is the patio was existing as was just explained.

They are wanting to, there was like a rotten pergola over part of it. They tore it down. They were just rebuilding over the current patio. They didn't know at the time and then pulled me in that they just thought they could build it.

So it's five feet past what the rules of the setbacks are. His reason is he's going through extreme health treatments right now. He can't be in the sun at all. So to have that in his backyard, like he can't be in a backyard right now at all because he has no cover.

I'm not saying it can't be. um further in like the five feet but i mean it just looks more appealing over the whole patio just for the look of the whole neighborhood it just made more sense to be over the whole patio um and then those high rises right behind him i mean they're staring down at his yard and it's just like anytime he's sitting out there everybody's just like staring down on him um being a retired pro hockey player. He wants a little more privacy and his health conditions are more of his concern that he wants to sit outside in his yard and he really can't because of he just wants to put a roof over it. Okay, those are his those are his biggest reasons of wanting this covered patio.

Okay. Um, this point we'll ask any of the members if they have any questions rich uh did you say that there was a pergola there prior four posts that were like rotting that they took down so they were just putting something back where those posts were but they put a cover on it too i wasn't there for that part so i can't speak on that They pulled me in after to design the inside of it and all of that. We don't know whether the pergola went all the way to the end of the patio or not. Well, they put the posts right where they already had the posts, the original posts.

I do know that. I don't know the extent of what was above it. I never saw it. Lee, anything?

i was curious as to why the contractor didn't pull a permit to begin with because kelly was having somebody he know just do like it's one of his carpenters and he wasn't from here and had no idea and then when kelly pulled him like no you can't can't build a roof like you can do flat work you can do stuff like that but you you like you have to have follow rules when it comes to building up and so that's when they stopped and you know, now that's where we're at now is trying to say how do we move forward from what has been done. Would you kind of walk us through the alternate plans that were considered? He thought of one of those retractable awnings, but they couldn't get one that went far enough that could cover the views of all the balconies behind him. You can only get some that went I think it was like 10 feet out structurally.

So they did think of that then he thought of just getting some type of Like a temporary pergola but that looks really cheap and mean no one wants that in their backyard I mean neighbors would hate that funny it's just like i'll just build a roof line it'll look much nicer for the neighborhood unknown that he needs to follow rules and. get permits. So it was kind of like every other option either he couldn't he couldn't do the retractable because it's not it doesn't go out far enough. You put a temporary one, it's going to be ugly.

I mean, it's not it's not going to look good to the neighborhood. Oh, a structure was the most aesthetically appealing addition in that space. It's just five feet too big. Okay.

or in the audience, would you like to make a questions or statements or anything like that? Please come forward. Tell us your name and your address. Thank you, Stacy.

Thank you all very much. My name is Paul Flotkin. I live at 122 Gay Avenue, which is the townhome directly behind the home that we're discussing. And I'm also president of the Homeowners Association of the townhouses of Clayton, which is the structure behind the house.

Okay. So I have one point of clarification and two questions. One is, I don't think there was a pergola there. We've lived there a few years.

Maybe there was there one before us. So my two questions are, one is, does anybody have a rendering of what this is going to look like when it's finished? To clarify, the covering is finished. i'm sorry the the roof over the patio was already constructed yeah I understand, I was just wondering what the structure of the walls, the columns are unfinished.

So they're just going to be stained wood of where they are right now. Is that is that. Normal okay okay here. Okay.

And then the second thing I wanted to ask was, well, as you can't really see, and obviously the house was not really maintained toward the end. And I was wondering, there are dead trees and significant number of dead branches on these things. And it seems to me, I was asking if there's a landscape plan to be able to possibly shield the They have some privacy for these people and also privacy for the townhomes. There's not a present landscape plan.

A landscape plan would not be within the scope review of this board, and our site plan review regulations would not be triggered by the scope of work that they have undertaken. So there's nothing that would require them to go through a landscape plan. Okay. So there is no, nobody reviews that.

I mean, not only this board, but nobody reviews it. The Planning Commission does review landscape plans. It's just that this scope of work that they have does not require them to provide a landscape plan. Okay.

Then I guess on behalf of the homeowners, I would like to, I mean, we're not in opposition to this whole thing. We don't I'm not representing a group that's, you know, pitchfork people and want to, you know, make this thing not happen. But respectfully like to know if request from the homeowner and representative that they take down some of the dead trees which look really bad put some type of evergreens or something like that that eventually would provide some privacy for the homeowner um that's that's requesting the variance and as well as the people who live behind it that there is and i can definitely recommend it and i don't think that he'd be against it um I did tell him next on his list needs to be landscaping grasp all of it. So I 100% agree with that.

Right there. There's a lot of training needs to be done. Couple to the north of this picture is a couple. They're hanging over the fence and right so i mean it could be part of the project when we do this.

That's great. As I said, we don't have opposition. We just want a little clarification in terms of providing the privacy that he's looking for as well as the privacy we're looking for. Some landscape would work well, some evergreen trees.

Seems like a very reasonable comment. Thank you. Thank you all for your service to the community. Go right ahead.

I have a question for the city. If the structure is not affixed, if it's just a temporary structure, if they go to Home Depot or one of the big box stores and were to buy something that's not attached to the ground and it goes over the setback, would that fall under the same rules? So there's a lot of context in there that's kind of hard to really pin down. If you were to go to a place like Home Depot or whatever, and you were to buy a pergola from them, you are going to at some point get to a size of pergola that does require permitting by the city.

It's also going to depend on that location of the pergola. There's just a lot of moving parts to that. Thank you. I'll ask this question of Ryan.

Is it the observation of staff that there is presently an appropriate amount of light in the air that's not going to be adversely impacted by this structure? Correct. Okay. Is it also your observation or staff's observation that The structure does not materially increase the danger of fire or materially diminish or impair the property value?

Correct. Okay. Does anyone else either here or even virtually, is anybody here virtually in the meeting? No.

No one's here virtually. Okay. If there are no more questions, comments, or concerns, I'll entertain a motion. And Liza, if you would allow me, I'd ask Bryce here to propose a motion that's slightly different.

You and I did not have a chance to talk about it. So let me turn it over here to Bryce. Sure, I move to... Pardon me.

Move to approve a five-foot variance from the required rear yard setback of 30 feet, section 405.1900.A.2 of Article 13R2, single-family dwelling district, to allow for a covered patio constructed without a permit at 125 Crandon Drive. Is there a second? Second. Okay.

All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously.

Stacy, thank you. And thank you. Good to know. Thank you so much.

Ryan, how are we looking for next month? I do expect that we will have a meeting. We have had a zoning review request come in. Have they submitted their appeal?

They did submit that today. Okay, so they have submitted their appeal, so we will be having a meeting in November. Terrific. All right.

Any other business? Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries.

Let the record show it's 518 p.m., and this meeting is over. been a record? I could have just asked if Chase is

MINUTES BOARD OF ADJUSTMENT October 9, 2025 ROLL CALL

RICK BLISS BRYCE WOOLLEN LIZA STREETT LEE HANSON RICH LINTZ

OTHER ATTENDEES:

RYAN HELLE, PLANNER HOBIE KROPP, PLANNING TECHNICIAN KYLE CRONIN, CITY ATTORNEY REBECCA BREWER, COURT REPORTER

Chairman Rick Bliss called the meeting to order at 5:00 pm.

1. Minutes Minutes from June 5th, 2025, were presented for approval. Corrections were noted Liza Streett made a motion to approve the minutes as amended. Bryce Woollen seconded the motion. The motion carried unanimously.

2. 125 Crandon Drive An appeal from Stacey Karlovic, Applicant, on behalf of Raelynn Chase and Kelly Chase, Owners, for the following variance from the City of Clayton’s Zoning Regulations:

A 5 foot variance from the required rear yard setback of 30 feet, Section 405.1900.A.2 of Article XIII (“R-2”) Single-Family Dwelling District to allow for the construction of a covered patio.

Rebecca Brewer swore in all those present wishing to speak on the appeal. Kyle Cronin entered the exhibits into the record. Stacey Karlovic, Applicant, was present. The board discussed the appeal with the applicant. Public comments were heard. Bryce Woollen made a motion to approve a 5-foot variance from the required rear yard setback of 30 feet. Liza Streett seconded the motion. The motion carried unanimously.

3. The meeting adjourned at 5:18 p.m.