Local Planning Agency - Regular Meeting

Okay, so we are going to close the council meeting. Adjourn. Adjourn the council meeting.

Not adjourn. No. What is it? Recess. Recess.

Recess. Sorry. Okay. Long term. Thank you. Rick, is Grace over here?

Yes, sir.

He's on Zoom now. There is? Okay. So you want to do GEP? Okay. Open up.

Just give me a second. Yep. Range meetings here. Slow. All right. Well, I'm not going to wait for... All right. All right, good. Good to go. So we'll do roll call. So Mayor Selver is not here. Vice Mayor Wolf? Here. Councilman Fremark? Here. Councilman Levy?

Here.

Councilman Sklar? Here. We have quorum. Okay, great. Is there a motion to approve the minutes?

I'll make a motion.

I'll second. Okay, very good. It's a voice vote, so all in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? None. Motion passes. We will now move on to LPA1.

Mr. Clerk? Yes, LPA1, an ordinance of the Village Council of Bell Harbor Village, Florida, amending Chapter 21 zoning to regulate lot splits by establishing minimum lot size and width standards in the R1 and R2 single-family residential districts, providing consistent density limits, providing for severability, conflicts, inclusion in the code, and for an effective date. Great, thank you. Mr. Manager?

Mr. Vice Mayor, thank you. This item is coming to you between first reading and second reading of the ordinance. You'll recall last month you approved on first reading this ordinance to allow for minimum standards for lot splits after a discussion item as well. So this is not new to you. However, we're meeting now as the local planning agency. I'll ask Mike Miller to come on up and speak to the issue but as you know this is setting in motion how lot splits can be handled inside your residential gated community particularly as it relates to the minimum widths and minimum sizes of lots.

Good evening. Michael Miller, for the record, Michael Miller Planning Associates, the consultant village planner. Nice to see you all again. There was a presentation at the last meeting. The essence of this is that since your zoning code was written in 1974, many, many years after the community was platted and the developer's deed restrictions acted as the zoning code, if you will, The provision for the lot sizes in the single-family district, either the R1 or the R2, simply says that they are as they were plotted originally. There's no square footage, no lot dimensions, and so forth. the community, as you know, is designed, has a lot of curvilinear roads. So, you know, in some cases, you could have a smaller front yard gets bigger in the back or reverse. And there's a lot of variety in the lot sizes. So we embarked on analyzing that. surveying every waterfront lot dimension, the frontage, the street frontage, the water frontage, the dimensions on either side, and the square footage. And we did a pretty good sampling of the dry lots as well. And based on that, we came up with some suggested minimum numbers, if you will. So obviously the waterfront lots, the R1 lots, are a little bit bigger. So we're suggesting a minimum width of 70 feet there because we do have some skinny frontage that gets wider, and 15,000 square feet for the dry lots, a 10 and a smaller, the 60-foot dimension. So that's the essence of this. So we'll keep the language as it was originally but add dimensional things that would allow people to choose to split or realign lots in the future, some flexibility, but preserve the bigger lots on the water and the little bit smaller lots on the dry lots.

Great. Thank you. Any questions from council? No? Okay. Thank you so much. Any public comment on this item? No?

Nothing here.

Okay. Any further? Yeah.

Buzzy?

You want to make a motion? You're making the motion? Okay. Buzzy's making the motion.

I'll second it.

Okay. Second.

And this is a roll call vote, Mr. Clerk. Councilman Levy? Yes. Councilman Sklar? Yes. Vice Mayor Wolf? Yes. Councilman Fremark? Yes. The motion recommending that the village council pass the ordinance on second reading passes 4-0.

Great, thank you. Okay, LPA2, Mr. Clerk.

LPA2, an ordinance of Bell Harbor Village, Florida, amending Chapter 21 zoning of the Code of Ordinances to modify regulations applicable to municipal buildings and uses in the RM-5 multiple family residential district, providing for severability, inclusion in the code, and conflicts, and for an effective date. Thank you, Mr. Manager.

Mr. Vice Mayor, again, thank you. This, too, came for first reading at last month's hearing, so we're in between hearings for the LPA. In this instance, this has to do with the RM-5 multifamily, specifically the lot that we are designating for municipal use, the new village hall. So it only applies for municipal buildings, so any changes relative to this will only apply for Village Hall. It has to do primarily with the setback and the overhang, but I'll ask Mike Miller to walk you through it real quickly.

Michael Miller again for the record. Again, as the manager stated, we discussed this in some detail at the last meeting. The summary is that The west side of Collins Avenue is our area that's zoned RM5. It was historically designed and built for small multifamily complexes. There has been some discussion about future redevelopment of that. Some of the buildings are a little dated as to flood and other things, but that's a sidebar. The subject, when we were negotiating the expansion of the Bal Harbor shops a couple years ago, We acquired the former Fairfield Manor site, which is the site just to the north of the mall on Collins. Compared to the other RM5 lots, it's the smallest. It has some peculiar dimensions, particularly on Bowcross Drive. It would be wonderful if we had a rectangular lot to deal with, but the Battle Cross is very angular, so we have a peculiar shaped lot. Our task was to work with the capital improvement team, the administration, the architects trying to design something for this building. And as it turns out, because of the setbacks, it decreases the possibility of laying out a reasonable building, if you will. So we looked at what we could and made some adjustments, and that's what's before you. So these are, as George mentioned, these would only be applied to this site, which is a municipal use, and it has some different criteria setbacks than that would be applied to the multifamily lots.

Thank you. Any questions from council? No? Any public comment?

My only concern is how much is the height restrictions going to be different from what it is and what is not. And I always worry about when there's a precedent set, whether that precedent in the future could be applied or somebody through the village, what can only for a municipal building and not for my building, which is private. So my concern would be that might open it up. I'm not worried so much about setbacks, but I'm worried about height restriction that it cannot be used later on. Thank you.

Any other public comment? Mr. Meadows, do you want to?

Yeah, I can address the question. This ordinance doesn't affect the height. This is strictly setbacks and the overhang projection that might hang in over the setback line. And so the setbacks are stipulated at 20 feet on the east side, 15, on the north side, 15, on the west side, and zero on the south side. When you look at the site in relation to its neighbors, South side is the shops and a great distance before the first building. The east side is Collins, and so that's where we're keeping the greatest setback. On the west side, you have the perimeter wall and then the park and a street and two park areas, so there's not a lot of activity on the west side of us. And to the north, it's the building that's under acquisition of some sort. Thank you.

I'll make a motion.

Second. Great. Mr. Clerk, a roll call vote?

Yes, a roll call. Councilman Fremark? Yes. Vice Mayor Wolf? Yes. Councilman Levy? Yes. Councilman Sklar? Yes. The motion recommending that the Village Council pass the ordinance on second reading passes 4-0.

Excellent. Okay. LPA3, Mr. Clerk.

Yes, LPA3, an ordinance of Bell Harbor Village, Florida, amending Chapter 2, administration of the Code of Ordinances to modify procedures and regulations applicable to the Architectural Review Board, providing for severability, inclusion in the code of conflicts, and for an effective date. Mr. Manager?

okay mr vice mayor this ordinance is uh coming to you before you've uh heard the first reading although you did have a discussion item uh in the past on this and this has to do with um the threshold that you establish for when a project does go before the architectural review board you know that's been in place and it serves a purpose but um the net that it catches, it catches a lot of projects that perhaps don't need to necessarily go through that level of process and that expense and that time. And so what we were asked to do is see if there was a way to try to tighten that. What this ordinance does is tighten it by suggesting that primarily it focused on the, again, single-family homes in the gated area, is that if a project is a new home, it will continue to go, of course, but if it's a project that either adds less than 30% additional square footage or does not trigger the substantial improvement or the 50% rule for FEMA that those projects would not need to go to architecture review board and can be handled administratively. Generally, that's the case. Unless Michael needs to add more, I think those are just saying anything that triggers one or the other, not both, but either one of those, if it triggers that, then it will go to ARB and go through the normal process that's been done in the past. So most new homes will go to ARB. But if you're adding a one-room addition or something like that, you don't have to.

All new homes will go to ARB. Pardon? All new homes. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. Did I say that? Oh, no, no, no. I'm sorry. All new homes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Correct. All new homes.

Any questions from council? So this only affects basically behind the gate?

Yeah. Okay. This change affects that? Yeah.

Right.

The R1, R2, and PC districts, which are the ones behind the gate. R5. Okay.

Any public comment? Were you making a public comment or just talking? Okay. I'll make a motion. I'll second. Okay. Roll call, Mr. Clerk?

Yes. Roll call. Councilman Sklar? Yes. Councilman Levy? Yes. Vice Mayor Wolf? Yes. Councilman Fremark? Yes. You motion recommending that the Village Council pass the ordinance on first reading passes 4-0. Okay. Thank you. LPA4, Mr. Clerk? Yes. He's being all busy tonight. LPA4. That's why you're getting into voice phones. LPA4, an ordinance of the Bell Harbor Village, Florida, amending Chapter 21 zoning of the Code of Ordinances to remove garage entry requirements and to amend requirements for parking and impervious surface in the single-family residential districts, providing for severability, inclusion in the Code, conflicts, and for an effective date. Thank you. Mr. Manager?

Mr. Vice Mayor, similarly, this is coming before your first hearing, but a discussion in the past. Historically, homes in the gated area require the garage to not face the street or the right of way. In other words, a side entrance of sorts. And that creates some difficulty in the access and so forth and it limits some of the architectural elements that architects can do. The request was made to perhaps address that and say that isn't required, let the architect come up with aesthetic designs, but that if in fact a garage door faces the front of the right-of-way, that's allowed. I'll let Michael Miller kind of walk through it. What we do normally when we open up an ordinance like this, we try to then take a look at if there are other things that need to be fixed at the same time, so we can just go ahead and do that. And so that's why there are some elements in here that try to do that. It may or may not be acceptable to you all, but Mike will kind of walk you through it.

Michael Miller again for the record. I'm sorry. There's benefits to being tall and some not. Okay, so... When your community was originally designed with the guidelines in the developer's deed restrictions, and even in the early days of the zoning code from 74, it just said you need X number of parking spaces for a house, and that was it, typically two. I was here in the mid-90s when Mayor Herschel, Andrew Herschel was the mayor at the time, and he spoke at the meeting and said, you know, I drive through the community and my neighbor leaves his garage door open all the time and he's got junk in there. I don't want to look at his junk. He never closes his door. And he talked the council into revising the code. to ban garage doors facing a street. So since 1999, which is the date in the code, the code was changed. Prior to that, we have lots of houses, prior to that, the older houses, that had the garage door facing the street. And since that day in 99, you could not have the garage door facing the street. You had to have a side entry garage. We have a little, a corner lot has some special dispensation just because of the position. So while it's, you know, you can agree with some of the thinking that you don't want to see the guy junk if he leaves his door open. And a garage door facing the street is not always beautiful. Double car garage, triple garage, whatever. So there's some benefit into what the idea was. However, when you have a fixed lot size, particularly our dry lots are smaller, typically 80 feet wide. So when you're trying to design a house, and our houses are fairly substantial here, and you try to turn the garage, it takes away the possibility of some square footage area and some lot area to maneuver that, and you're building some additional pavement to get to that door. So as we've been seeing a lot of new reconstruction in recent years, some people have questioned whether we should continue on with the code as it was changed in 99. So that came before you. I know the association expressed some feeling towards that as well. So that's why this is before you. The code currently says that out of the two minimum parking spaces, one has to be in a garage or carport. Traditionally, a carport, you've seen these. They're kind of a cheap metal type thing with canvas over them. I think that's what they were thinking. We do have situations today where there is – it's not enclosed like a garage, but you pull under the home – and it's open maybe on the side and it doesn't have a garage door, and that is considered a carport also. So I think when we as staff are thinking about how to allow more freedom, we didn't want to discourage people from having a covered parking space for your fancy car, but we wanted to maybe get away from that cheap metal thing that was allowed in earlier years. I don't even know if we have any in the community anymore, maybe one or so. So that's the essence of the proposed change.

Great. Thank you. Councilwoman Lee. clarification or questions?

Oh. Mike, speak to, because there may be some question about whether you want to do this or not. It has to do with the minimum, if there's more than X number of bedrooms, do you want to have a minimum number of spaces? I think you may want to go back to just one car space, but speak to that, because that's in here as well. Right. If you have three bedrooms, it requires two parking spaces within a garage. Right. And no dwelling can have more than three parking spaces total in a garage. That's a policy decision you guys wish to either consider or not consider.

Right.

Thank you.

And I think the last of these, we also... looked at what other communities are doing around us. Like, for example, your neighbor next door doesn't require any garage or carport because the homes over there were smaller from day one. So some people ended up, like, paving their whole front yard, and there was no green space, no trees, no landscaping. So they put a 50% rule over there that seems to work pretty good. You can get extra parking, a circular drive, and still get a little bit of landscape. So that's why we're suggesting that here as well. Gotcha. Thank you.

Mike, for those areas, and that's where I was going to go as well, did we get input from the Civic Association, from the residents of the community to that point?

I know they have seen this. There has been some expression on, I think, on the carport issue that I'm aware of prior to the hearing here today. But we haven't received anything in writing that I'm aware of.

So, Mr. Vice Mayor, I'd like to hear from them. Sure. Great. Thank you.

So, on that note, public comment. Yep.

Thank you.

Eitan Zimmerman, 121 Ballcross, on behalf of the Civic Association. So we received this yesterday. Unfortunately, we didn't have a lot of time to really review it. It's definitely a step in the right direction. There's a couple of technical building issues that I think we need to consider. I think the town manager brought up the issue with mandating two parking spots within a garage for a home that has more than three bedrooms. And that's something that typically new construction houses, 6,000, 7,000, 8,000 square feet, typically are going to have a 400 or 500 square foot garage, which accommodates two vehicles. I do think that we are kind of glancing over one of the biggest issues inside the gated community that we've been trying to resolve, which is parking on the street. And having built a home subject to the previous rules, I can speak very clearly. I both, on the carport side, which one of my, the house 131, I built the carport 121. I have three garages. Unfortunately, all of them face in. Well, that requires that you have a substantial driveway in order to be able to turn into, and it's quite a problem because You can't really fit more cars on the driveway because then you can't utilize the garage. And we're dealing with issues where we're not really taking cars off the street. Where that driveway, the garage is facing inward is putting more cars on the street. So I think something that maybe the council wants to consider on the second read is I think moving the doors facing forward, allowing people to build a straight garage is I think a great benefit. We have a impermeable issue when it comes to driveways and I had spoken to the building department to make a long story very condensed. Bay Harbor, as you know, has allotted space on the street by turning into the what they call the right of way so cars can park off of the curb and gutter. The gutter is kind of in the middle. It's not as aesthetically pleasing, I would say. However, it does allow for cars to park on the street and make the street significantly wider. That may be more of a problem. Another solution, which I think is probably the best, is giving some kind of impervious impervious material bonus if allotted to additional parking within the property. So when you build the house, as Mr. Miller knows, we have very specific maximum impervious lot coverage of 50%, house is 40%, 3% bonus with the maids quarters, a lot of calculations. What ends up happening is when you build your driveway, If you're going to straight shot into your garage, if you want to make an extra 200 square foot or 300 square foot of driveway so that you can maybe turn cars off and park within your lot, you're going to have to get rid of the guest room.

You have 300 square feet. Your three minutes are up. One second. Any last?

I want the alarm to go off.

No, pretty much it. I think that we're going in the right direction. I would consider looking at the impervious driveway situation to allow residents to have more parking on site rather than on the street.

Okay, thank you.

Any other public comment?

Well, I have 128 Balfour Drive. I have no problem with parking on a facing street because my house was before the 1990s.

Sorry, I didn't understand what you said.

I said I have no problem with parking facing the street because my house is the older one and it has one. The garage, you mean? The garage, yeah. I have seen houses now that have been built lately and they don't have a garage. And if they have it, it's just for looks. It's not really being used as a garage. I think the person who buys the property or wants to develop it, I think he should have the right to put a garage or not. I mean, I agree if he puts a garage, he should face the street, but if he doesn't and has a driveway for his cars, that should be fine. As far as the parking in the street, because the lot that is the way he's done, everybody, every resident who owns a property, as you know, you have up to the middle of the street in front of your house that's yours. So you could park there. It's not you taking somebody else's space. So I don't want to restrict capitalism in essence that That's forced to be. If somebody wants to have a garage, shoot face. And I think the limit of three bedrooms you should have, too. I think one car space, one parking should be enough if that person wants to put it. But if they don't want to do it because you're talking about premium money, you're talking about $600, $700 a square foot right now, maybe higher for a dry lot to spend $500 a square foot of that just for a parking, if the developer or the person who lives there doesn't want it, I don't think they should be forced to. So that's my concern. Thank you. Nico.

Nico Logan, 64 Camden Drive. I grew up in Bell Harbor, so I've seen both versions. And the straight shot in is beneficial if there's additional parking available on the lot. I grew up... In the house I grew up in and the house I currently live in, both have circular driveways. So there's plenty of parking on our lot to accommodate guests and people. So we don't have to park in the street. And I think that's the problem with the lots. The builds that have been happening since 99 is they're so limited that even two people in the house who have automobiles, You can't get in the garage and have another car parked. If you have kids and somebody got two extra cars, there's no place to put them. And so I agree with Eitan is that we really have to look at the permeability issue and how to... Make it more reasonable to accommodate the size of homes that we have with the number of cars people have. If you have a lot of bedrooms, you're going to have a lot of cars. So that has to be a plan in their scope of their build. Street should not be the solution. That should be for guests and visitors who are coming to something at your home on a temporary basis, but not to park there all the time.

Thank you. Any other public comment? Okay, I think just for the council's edification again, you've heard a lot of things about parking, and parking in the streets has become a significant issue for the neighborhood. Again, I think the challenge that we're seeing is basically it's a two-way street, and in a lot of places we're seeing now cars are parked along one entire street. It's part of the street. So when one car is coming one way and the other car is coming the other way, we're on the same side of the street. And it's becoming a significant challenge and just actually technically dangerous, even for people who are either on bikes or walking around because we have those sidewalks. If a car is coming on your side of the street because they can't be on their side of the street, it's been very dangerous. We've seen some near misses in traffic. just some of my own family in walking or on bicycles, etc. So that's some of the challenges we're trying to address. Mr. Manager, I do think, you know, in the ordinance where we're adding the dwelling units with more than three bedrooms and That whole section where there's no dwelling unit may have more than three spaces. I think according to what Eitan said and some of the other comments, we shouldn't govern that. And I think we should potentially have modifications to remove that addition from the ordinance.

Yeah, there are two things happening in that section. One is the space needs to be in a garage, at least one car garage in the garage, and eliminate the option of it being a carport. I didn't hear anybody saying that's not a good idea. The second part was starting to govern how many spaces and all of that, and I heard a lot of folks say, Let the architect figure that out. Let the owner determine. And so if you strike that last sentence or two sentences from what's in the proposal, but keep the strike part about the carport, I think you accomplish that. And if that's something that as a policy is what you wish to then recommend to the council, you know, then that's something you can do and amend the, whoever makes a motion, amend it with that amendment. The other thing about the law coverage is something we probably want to go and study a little more and we can come back and fix that again at a subsequent thing. It's not advertised for that anyway, but we can... explore that. You know, remember the impervious calculations have to do with making sure that you retain all of your water on site and so we don't want to just come up with a number here today and not really think it through carefully. But conceptually that makes sense. If you can encourage, the key is encourage more off-street parking as much as you can. So if there's a way to incentivize that then we should explore it.

I think actually the house next door to you, you have a little basketball court that stops them from actually going into their driveway. And their cars are always on the street. The one on Park Drive. No, on Park Drive is not next to me. I'm on the back. Right. So I think it's the second house going south on Park Drive. They have like this little kid's basketball court.

It's not. It's like it's a.

Yeah, or soccer goal. And they don't even, I mean, they put all their cars on the street. So, again, internally within the gated community, it's not just putting these things into place. It's also having those conversations with homeowners to actually use their driveways to clear up the streets for you guys.

Yeah, look, I mean, there's also the whole notion of landscapers and contractors and all the other things. These are actual residents. No, I understand. I understand. The parking problem is complex.

I mean, I think that's a conversation more, again, for the BAC president that's here to continue to think how we address that because it continues to be a problem for sure.

Just one question. So for my own education, those roads are private, correct, inside the community. So why are we going to decide on what they can do or not do on those roads? Because it's still an ordinance of the city. So we're modifying an ordinance.

Housing, not the roads.

The main complaint that I heard is that the parking on the street, not the parking in the houses. I'm lost. I'm not sure what we decided on. We decided on them being able to park on the street. No, no.

This motion is not about parking on the street. That's just people are talking because that's an issue. But the motion is about, again, if you read the motion and the changes to the ordinance, is about changes of the garage facing and the requirements around that. That's what we're voting on.

And this ordinance does not stipulate that you must park anywhere, right?

Correct. Yeah, just how you're going to build a house. There's a separate issue that has to be addressed, but that's not what this is addressing.

Thank you.

So, okay, I'll make the motion. You want to amend that, yeah? Yeah, so we need a motion to amend. We're moving those last two sentences in section... 21-3941. Yeah, 3841. 3841, yeah.

Sorry, typo.

I'll make a motion as amended.

Do you want to do that? So I have a comment. I'd be generally okay with that, assuming that the folks in Val Harbor Estates are going to be comfortable with that, because I don't want to keep going through meetings and we end up amending and revising and amending and revising. So I'm not certain that a right answer might not be to defer the item, allow Mike and his team to do the work, socialize that with the civic association so that when it comes back here, we have what could be a finished product. I'm just concerned that we're trying to piecemeal this.

No, I mean, I think it has been socialized. Again, we just saw it. I think there's a very minor, that modification is a very minor modification.

I don't know that it's the only one, but if that's, I'm going to take the word of everybody here from the gated community. I don't live there.

You can talk from there.

I appreciate that for caring about us. That's really sweet. I'm not sure how to interpret that, but okay. In a very positive way. Moving the garages to the front was effectively, at our request in many conversations for many years that preceded me, was allowing us to build garages at face forward. So that's something that the BHCA has wanted for some time. It's unanimous across the board, and it's something we wanted. There was just some additional things that were presented, which... You know, I think they're being stricken if I'm not mistaken or removed from the amendment Yeah, the amendment or whatever, but it's definitely something and and to tell a hundred to your point was This does help a lot with the street parking So as making the garages face forward makes using your driveway a lot easier versus some newer houses like mine, it's very difficult to turn in. And then you don't park a car in the garage because you can't get in. So you're saying this works? This works great. Okay, so that's fine.

As amended. As amended. And understand this sweet conversation is coming from someone that's watching an underground garage going right next door to him. Right. No, I think it's very difficult.

This is a near and dear item. Yeah, with the permeability, it's very difficult to make a functioning garage that you have to turn in with a large car at a turn.

I got it. That's fine. I made the motion as amended.

I'll second it as amended.

That's a motion to amend.

I made the motion to amend. Motion as amended and just one vote. Okay.

You have a motion and you have a second.

Okay. Roll call vote.

Yes. That's why I was asking. Okay. Because the motion to amend is just a smoke vote. All right. So roll call. Oh, do you need a motion? Okay. Roll call. We got it. Yes. Vice Mayor Wolf. Yes. Gutzman-Levy. Yes.

Yes.

Councilman Fremark. Yes. Councilman Sklar. Yes. The motion recommending that the Village Council pass the ordinance as amended on first reading passes 4-0.

Excellent. Thank you. Okay. LPA 5.

Mr. Clerk. It's LPA 5. An ordinance of Val Harbor Village, Florida amending Chapter 21 zoning of the Code of Ordinances to revise standards for hedges, walls, fences, and projections into setbacks and to increase the maximum height and revise the measurement of height of walls and fences in the single-family, multiple-family, residential, and private club districts providing for severability, inclusion in the code, conflicts, and for an effective date.

Mr. Vice Mayor, again, this is prior to your first hearing, though it comes from a discussion item and a request of the Civic Association some months ago. This ordinance does a couple of things. One, relative to recreational courts. and fencing of those, like a tennis court or a basketball court in the property. And then the other thing has to do with vacant or unused, unimproved lots at this moment and their use and how you want to screen that as well. I'll let Mike Miller kind of walk you through the details of it, but it generally starts to address the concerns that have come our way from the gated community. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Manager. Again, Mike Miller for the record. This generated from the association giving us comments. And also I would say from the staff dealing day-to-day with building permits. When we get an application to put up a fence or a wall on a property or a balcony or on waterfront lots, they have a big 40-foot setback and they may have a pool out there. or a barbecue or something, and they were looking for a little bit of, a little extra shade, if you will, over some of those areas without dropping and enclosing it and going into the setback. So it kind of covers a lot of ground here. The essence of this, again, goes back to the original ordinance. So when most of the homes, original homes were built in your community in the 50s and 60s, we know that the The private roads have not changed in elevation. They've been reconfigured or repaved or whatever. Generally, the crown of the road is about five feet above sea level, roughly. And that's the crown. It goes to the edges where the curbs are. The lots were about or equal to about five, six feet when they were graded and built. Before there was FEMA and flood zones, there were the rules said that you generally, the lowest slab of your house must be at least 18 inches above the crown of the road. So very low. When people put walls in or fences around their property, The code as it's written now says that you measure from the crown of the road. So now we have FEMA involved, and instead of your home being 18 inches above the crown of the road and sitting on the lot, now you lift the whole pad up and the house up in the air, generally nine, nine and a half feet plus or minus. So there's quite a difference in grade, if you will. So the code, as it's written again, says that fences you measure from the crown of the road. So now you've got a house lifted up in the area. Many people are putting these small retaining walls around and filling in the lot a little bit, and if they do the retaining wall, they don't want to have somebody fall off the edge of that, so they want to put a little fence on top of that. Pool, security kids, that kind of thing. So we're viewing this as a kind of a cleanup in that regard, but I wanted to explain the topography issue because that drives a lot of the stuff that we're doing here. on the walls and the fences. I did mention that the projections in the setback, we're proposing only on the R1 lots, the waterfront lots, that currently you can only, when you get to the 40-foot waterfront setback, you can have a four-foot projection right now, like an architectural feature or a balcony type of thing. It doesn't provide a lot of shade, and we get requests all the time to put a shade structure, you know, like a trellis or some other thing back there. So there is a proposal here to allow a cantilevered slab to go out further than we've allowed before. It would not have any columns that go to the ground so that they could never enclose it. It's just mostly a shade structure for a patio area, basically. There is one word in here that we see now that we were talking about before the meeting that probably needs to be modified. And it would be that the way it's written right now, the draft language says it may project over the rear setback. Now, when you look at the R1 lots, you would think that the street is the front and the water is the rear. Well, the way the code was written... and not many of us would know that, it says the front is the water and the rear is the street. So we need to change the word rear because that would mean towards the street, towards the water.

Where are you speaking? What part of the ordinance are you speaking of?

This would be in section... 21.3.5.4, Projections into Setback Areas, in subsection E, which is called Architectural Features, and the proposal is to create a new subsection 4.

The underwritten language section 4... may project over the rear setback. And so over the rear setback, it should say, I'm sorry.

It does say front setback. It should change to front setback, which is really the rear.

And if you want to declare, you could put front in parentheses waterfront, so there's no question what it is for the future. Yeah.

Well, Mike, I have a question about that because we all went through this and came up with this language. Are we now saying it's only waterfront setbacks? Because it's currently covered. It does cover R1 and Private Club, all of which have waterfront, but they also have the front facing the street, what is called the rear in there.

Right, but in the intention of this was to put it in the rear, which is the waterfront.

Just the waterfront. Just the waterfront.

It's just clarifying by real means for waterfront because it's not intuitive.

Okay.

Or did you say waterfront? Do that over the waterfront setback.

Anything else, Mike, or that's it?

Let me pick up on this one. The two key things that came from the commuter was the courts. Yes. to be placed to a height of 10 feet as measured as Mike described it, so it's at a higher elevation. But it must be covered with a hedge. That hedge must be planted at the same height as the fence at the time of planting, not that we're going to plant a three-foot hedge and let it grow over five years and that that would be used for protection and screening for basketball, pickleball, tennis courts, whatever that is. Yeah.

Right. Just real quickly, not to make this real long. So, again, the waterfront lots, you can pull the garage and the accessory quarters 10 feet from the street. On the dry lots, it's a 30-foot setback. So we've had – there's not many tennis courts in the community. The property is pretty – lots are pretty expensive. But we have a homeowner at 209 Belle Bay, and they bought the lot next door and knocked down the house, and they're building a tennis court right now. So the lot is a little odd shape, and the way they fit a regulation tennis court in there, it fits side to side and in the back, but in the front, because of the bigger 30-foot setback on a dry lot, there is a corner of the tennis court that sticks into that area. So what the architectural board approved and what we approved zoning-wise to get them this close was that that little projection in the 30-foot setback, they had to put a 5-foot fence, which is what the code allows. And they're asking that that's where they want to put the 10-foot taller fence on that little triangle sticking into the setback. They talked about could we get a variance, and we said, well, why don't we look more globally and see if we can fix the code so that in future arrangements they don't have to do that. So that's what that is.

Great. Thank you. Council, any questions, comments? Public comment?

No?

Okay. Make a motion. Do we need to amend with that one wording? Yes.

Yes, the appropriate amendment, if you wish to do that, would be to amend 21-354E4 to change the word weir to waterfront. Thank you.

Okay. I'll make that amendment. Do we need to vote on that amendment? I know. Okay.

I'll make a second, and then I'll make a motion as amended.

Okay.

I'll second.

Okay.

Great. A roll call vote. Great. Yes, roll call. Councilman Fremark. Yes. Councilman Sklar. Yes. Councilman Levy. Yes. Vice Mayor Wolf. Yes. The motion to recommend that the Village Council pass the ordinance as amended on first reading passes 4-0. Okay.

Excellent. Okay. We will close or adjourn the LPA meeting at this time and rejoin our regular council meeting.

That's a long LPA meeting. Needy things in there.