City Council - Regular Meeting

June meeting here. Chase, would you please call the roll? Mr. Boddy? Here. Ms. Broadwell?

Here.

Ms. Denbo? Ms. Ennis?

Here.

Mr. McComber? Here. Mr. Phillips? Here. Mr. Remus is absent. Mr. Stalter? Here. And Mr. Waddell? Here.

Thank you. Next on the agenda is the approval of the minutes from our prior meeting, which was two months ago. Those minutes have been passed out to the members of the commission here ahead of time. Are there any corrections or additions or deletions to those minutes? Okay, then they are approved as they were sent out to us. Next on the agenda is the lobby visitation. Since there seems to be no one in the audience tonight, I think this is going to be pretty short.

I think you just call the mayor no one.

Does anyone want to address the commission? All right, we'll close lobby visitation. We'll go next to our annual election of officers. The way this will work, we'll have a nomination. If there's a second, then we'll vote on that person. And if they get a majority of the votes, we're done. If they don't get a majority, we'll seek another nominee. and we'll do that until we have someone who has a majority vote. I will nominate for chairperson Bob Waddell. And I will second it. Judy will second it.

Are there really no other volunteers? I think you're it.

I'm here.

All right, Chase, do you want to call the roll then for that vote?

Give her a chance to get seated real quick.

We're voting on chairperson and Bob Bottles. All right, ready? Are you ready, Amanda? Yeah.

All right, Mr. Boddy? Yes. Ms. Broadwell?

Yes. Yes.

Ms. Denbo?

Yes.

Ms. Ennis?

Yes.

Mr. McComber?

Yes.

Mr. Phillips? Yes. Mr. Remus is absent. Mr. Stalter? Yes. Mr. Waddle? Yes.

Yes.

Congratulations.

I did notice that Mr. Phillips hesitated, though. I don't know if that comes from working with me in the past or not.

Congratulations, and I will turn the chair over to you, and it is your meeting.

I wasn't quite expecting that, but thank you very much. I appreciate it. Are there any volunteers or anyone that would like to serve as vice chair?

Yeah, I'll do it.

I would nominate Mr. Stalter. Is there a second? Second.

Could we have the roll call, please? Okay. Mr. Waddell? Yes. Mr. Stalter? Yes. Mr. Remus is absent. Mr. Phillips? Yes. Mr. McComber? Yes. Ms. Ennis? Yes. Ms. Denbo? Yes. Ms. Broadwell? Yes. Mr. Boddy?

Yes. Because he retired.

That's it. Thank you, sir. Appreciate that. You're not allowed to miss any meeting. Okay. Representative to the Zoning Board of Appeals. Is there?

I would nominate Mr. McCumber. I'll second that.

Okay. Mr. Boddy?

Yes.

Ms. Broadwell?

Yes.

Ms. Denbo?

Yes.

Ms. Ennis?

Yes.

Mr. McComber? Yes. Mr. Phillips? Yes. Mr. Remus is absent. Mr. Stalter? Yes. And Mr. Waddell? Yes.

Okay, I guess we're set. The fifth item on the agenda is the rezoning request. And I and in terms of guidance if I remember correctly Bob would read the entire section here So a rezoning request for 22 plus or minus acres located at the southeast corner of South Dunbridge Road and Expressway Drive, identified as parcel numbers B07, 511, 210, 003, 005, 000, B07, 511, 210, 000, 022, 000, and B-07-511-210-000-019-000, from Interstate Commerce to Institutional Zoning Classification. Marcus Levine, a Vermilion Development applicant on behalf of Whitson Properties LLC, property owner. Heather?

So we would request that you set that for public hearing, which would be July 1st.

Are there any questions or comments before we set the public hearing?

I just have a question. But I don't see anybody here from Vermillion Development. Is there anybody here for that?

No, they had asked us if normally people need to attend this meeting to introduce it, and we said normally nothing happens. So I apologize. That's okay.

I was just curious, because they refer to this senior living as three different categories. In one category, it's senior housing. In one place, they call it... Don't a skilled care and in another place they call it even though it's in quotes nursing home So I was just curious. Which is it is it all three?

since they're going to have three floors or We certainly can ask them next time they will be here at the public hearing to answer questions, okay so I have a question regarding the location because I went out there and I

It looks like it would be right up to the north. It would be against the Holiday Inn Express. Am I looking at that correctly? Like there's an entry. Would that be the there's currently no drive there and there's an epoxy depot then to the east. Am I?

Yeah, so it's three pretty large parcels. So that parcel, the way it's configured, does have a little bit of frontage on East Worcester. But the site plan they provided as part of your packet shows it concentrated more on that southeast corner. I guess you'd say to the south of Quick Trip where that's being built right now.

Okay. Okay. So you think the residence would be probably just south of Quick Trip?

Right, the principal building.

Okay. Because I thought we were going to have someone here to talk about it, because I'm really, you know, it's not like just that's a gas station, that's a semi-truck area, and I think that that would be a terrible spot for an assisted living for seniors. But I'll wait to hear my comments when someone's here. I would vote against it at this point.

Do we need to make a motion to set the public hearing?

Yes, please.

Okay. So I'll go forward with the motion to set the public hearing for our next meeting, which is the first, correct?

Yes, July 1st. I'll second it. All right.

Ms. Broadwell?

What am I voting on?

Setting the public hearing for July 1st.

Yes, I'm sorry. Yes.

Ms. Denbo? Yes. Dennis? Yes. Mr. McComber? Yes. Mr. Phillips? Yes. Mr. Stalter? Yes. Mr. Waddell?

Yes. And Mr. Boddy?

Yes.

Okay, the next item on the agenda is the planning document, the update to the City of Bowling Green access management policies and guidelines, chapter 156 of the codified ordinances. Heather, I'll let you take it away. Sounds good. Introduce our guest.

Yes, I will. First of all, the access management policies and guidelines are Chapter 156 of our codified ordinances, and we hired in a consultant, Mannequin Smith, and she is here for Mannequin Smith to give us the overview of this update. This has taken us nearly two years, but we've had some other projects in between, and they've been busy. But we're finally at the point that we're ready to introduce this draft to Planning Commission, get your feedback, and then you would make a recommendation to council. You're not required to have a public hearing. However, looking into our past best practices with Planning Commission, you have scheduled a public hearing similar to how you handle a zoning change. So I would advise that you do that. But first of all, we have Pat here to give us an overview of this document. There's a lot to it. It's a very technical document, but we're excited to at least introduce that to you. And I'll hand it over to Pat.

Thanks Heather. How do I forward this? I want to thank you for inviting me tonight to the Planning Commission to give you an overview of the, just going to highlight the changes. access management policies and guidelines. One thing too, just this earlier this year ODOT updated their access management manual. They updated several other, their location and design manual. So this is actually really good timing to have this out now because we were able to get their latest version. And they usually go quite a few years with their versions of those documents. So it's good timing to get this finalized here to look at. And I want to give thanks to the steering committee for the time and input and the great discussions we had through the process. On that committee was Heather Saylor, the planning director, Brad Holman, the city engineer, McMurray Public Works, Rachel Phipps, the council member, Mark Ramos, commission member, Adam Scaff, deputy police chief, Bill Moorman, fire chief, Brian O'Connell with utilities director. So great mix of folks with different expertise that gave a lot of input into this document to make it a little more functional for the city. First of all, not everybody might not be familiar with what access management is and they just wanted to highlight uh... the intent of the access management policies and guidelines to provide rules and regulations for managing access to land development uh... preserve traffic flow regarding safety speed past the of the roadway so you don't have to upgrade the roadway so often because that can get very expensive provide guidelines for right away needs off the roadway improvements It's aimed to provide safe and equitable access to both vehicular and non-motorized transportation and to support Bowling Green's active transportation and complete streets policy that was passed in, was that 25? I think it was 2025. So it's a good tool to use to do all those things in the city. This is a busy slide, but I'm just going to highlight what is factored into access management. There's a lot of things. You have safety, mobility, and traffic operations. You want to promote and preserve economic vitality of corridors in areas of the city, environmental impacts, the land use and the context that is involved on the different areas of the city. driveway and median design. You want those to be standardized so you don't have driveways that aren't functioning very good. Multimodal considerations, you got bikes, peds, wheelchairs, handicapped folks as well using the facilities. And then the red there is the policies and guidelines try to tie all this together. So that was pretty much the intent of the policies and guidelines for the city. If anybody has a question as I'm going through this, it's not the most exciting stuff to go through, but if you see something you wanna ask, just raise your hand, I'm fine with that. And then access management is also for long-range planning. So you look at the functional classification of the roadway, which is how it's determined by ODOT and FHWA. They define different classifications to roadways, traffic volumes, right-of-way needs, lane needs for a roadway. traffic control devices turn lane requirements when is it needed when a developments coming in and then traffic impact studies as well as There's also a lesser one called access request studies that are also highlighted in this document Why the update? Again, the original one was done 19 years ago in 2007, so it's been in place for quite a while. Several key documents have been updated since 2007. You've had the complete streets resolution that was actually created. The Bowling Green Together Safe Routes to School Travel Plan is created recently. The bicycle and facilities destinations map was updated. And the future land use plan, improvement plan was in 2014. So all those have happened since 2007. And then Heather and the city thought it was a good time to dive into the access management and kind of incorporate all that stuff into it. And then as I mentioned, I'm not gonna go through all those there, but there's several key state documents that were updated since 2007, which the Access Management Manual kind of uses that as a basis, and then the city does have some tweaks that they've done to the criteria of those documents too. Chapters and appendices of the document. Chapter one is the policies and guidelines and establishing that. Chapter two talks about traffic impact study and access request study policies. Chapter three gets into signal, traffic signal policy, signal design preferences and ADA standards. And then chapter four of the document is the appeals process that a developer or landowner can go through. And then appendixes, the appendices have quite a bit of technical information and design guidelines that developers and landowners can utilize to develop their site plans and how they're going to access the public roadways. So now that you know what access management is and what this document is looking to do, I'm just going to highlight some of the key changes from the old one to this most current one. We did add functional classifications just to kind of show folks in a nice graphic way The higher up on the upside down triangle, so like interstate, other free using, those have stronger access management where you're not allowed access as much as you do when you get down to the local roads. So in the document, we have three access categories, category One, two, and three. Category one, we'll get into this a little bit, is more your interstate, other freeways, and principal arterials. And then access category two is more the minor arterials collectors. And then all local roads are access category three. And each of those have standards that's set up in the document. Right-of-way planning policy chapter or section. We updated the functional class map to what it currently is with ODOT. inserted the bicycles and facilities destination map so that can be used as a tool to guide developers coming in if you know if there's a shared use pass spelled out on a certain area this they'll have to make for it right away and build that when they build their site so it's nice to have that in there and then a right away future needs map is also in here section 1.36 Talks about the lane needs policy. We updated the lane need guidelines to reflect ODOT's new multimodal design guide they have. So you can see kind of the volumes there and talks about turn lanes that are needed. And then level of service goals, which is how a roadway is functioning. It's basically letter grades A through C. It looks at the capacity of the roadway. And just like school, ABC are okay. You get into the DEFs, you want to start looking at changes for the roadway. So that's kind of a way to look at those. The access management categories, this is the updated map that's in the new policies and guidelines, and you can see there the access category one are the blue corridors, and those are your more major roads. in the city that you want to have a little tighter access on, access management. Green are other key roadways where you want to have not as tight access management, but you still want decent access management. And then anything not blue or green is a local road. So there's a different category in the manual for those as well. And then US 6 and 75, those are all controlled by ODOT and Federal Highway, so those aren't part of the access categories. access category one again these are the blue corridors of the major roadways in the city we updated this to new current ODOT access management standards and it lays out like intersection spacing signal spacing drive spacing traffic movements whether it can only be right in right out right turn lane left turn lane so it gives you a lot of criteria and like I said I'm not going to go through all this I just want to give you a snapshot of was there was there any significant changes in what the state was they did change some of the spacing requirements they did change some of the design guidelines. So there was quite a few changes in it.

But did you and your firm find them to be better, aggressive, better? How would you describe them?

They're a little improved. The last one was very I want to say it was kind of cloudy on what they they really refined then to find stuff so that is the big chain but there was some distances they've made better so like sight distance they cleared up some of the sight distance issues coming off of a driveway and turning into a driveway I know the fire chief had issues with like medians that came out too far and it was hard for him to get his fire trucks turned in. So we added some of that stuff to the document as well with setbacks so they can get in quicker. So there were a lot of tweaks and some of the tweaks too was on the traffic impact studies, for example. They used to have two categories, how many trips per day a site developed or how many trips per hour. Well, they got rid of the daily criteria and just went to 100 trips per hour. It's in here, but, you know, if it's that many or more, it's a certain criteria. You only got to look at 10 years as opposed to they used to do 20. But if it's over 500 trips now per hour, then you've got to look at 20-year horizon. So there were some changes more like that that were more significant.

Thank you.

Yep. Then Access Category 2 again. We updated the manual to reflect the changes ODOT made there as well. And then Access Category 3. And you can see on these the signal spacing and distance that they get a little more lacks because you're on local roads instead of the major arterials and collectors in the city. Driveways, now this was one that did change quite a bit from what ODOT used to have in there. They used to have just one distance, and they have now added categories with distances. They split them up. So you can see Essex Category 1, which is the heavier traveled roadways. low, medium, and high impact trips per hour. They added different impacts, and then those are the distance based on the speed limit of the roadway, minimum distance, and then they have a recommended distance for the other categories with minimal use. So they split up a lot more detail on this document than the other one did. So it gives a little more flexibility.

Yeah. When I, and maybe it was just me, but when I was reading some of the changes on driveways, they said something about which I thought was really surprising. Traffic lights may be put on coming out of driveways. It was like on a major highway or something.

Yeah, you have that now, like... trying to find an example, like the Kroger Drive here in the city up on North Main. That's technically on a private drive. That's not a public roadway going into Kroger. So if you have a big development like that, it's considered a private signal, even though the city maintains it once it's in, but the developer would pay for that. And then where you've got two public roads, that's just a public signal. So there is a distinction between, you know, if you've got a factory that's coming in on 25 somewhere and they have a lot of traffic, they're going to want a signal. Or what we did incorporate into this document as well is which they weren't prevalent back in 2007 roundabouts. So instead of a signal, now there's roundabout language in here you can look at instead of a signal, look at roundabouts. So we have some of that in the appendices because they tend to be a lot safer and they actually get traffic through a little better at lower speeds. It's more conducive for pedestrians and bikes to pass through those when people are going slower. So that's some of the additional language we put in here in addition to private and public signals.

I will tell you, just reading about the roundabouts made me nervous.

I'll tell you what, they're popping up everywhere.

Oh, they are. Oh, trust me, I know.

Driveway overlap, ODOT did update their manual and they put in, try to not get left turns locking, so they put in some guidance figures that we incorporated into this update, how to better make it so you offset your driveways from one side of the street to the other side of the street so your left turns don't lock. So you want something like the first figure there preferred. We kind of offset the driveways so that they don't overlap. Whereas the second one, you got two left turns, each one trying to turn left and it just creates some conflict points and leads to higher crashes is what that does. So there's some guidance in here on that. This is kind of what I was mentioning earlier, the throat length of driveways. You don't want any interruptions and you don't want medians within a certain distance. And there's a figure in here later we'll show on that. Driveway types now this did change to the previous ODOT manual and the previous city's Policies and guidelines had different categories. So this reflects the current Categories ODOT hands for driveways. So that did change as well You have rural residential and field drives urban residential drives commercial drives and then signalized commercial and industrial drives and Driveway dimensions, these also changed. I think what ODOT found and also the city, we were working with the engineering staff, we changed these distance because sometimes when these private drives go in, if they have trucks visiting for deliveries, they jump the curb, they're tearing up sidewalks, they're tearing up curb ramps. So the distances were improved to accommodate trucks better. So that's in this manual as well. Here's the example that the fire chief was interested in, a 50 foot setback of like the median so a truck pulling in doesn't have to really slow down to get into a fire that's in a residential boulevarded street or something. So we got a graphic in there for that. And I have to admit that's AI. I dabbled in that. But it turned out decent. The TIS, which is the Traffic Impact Study and Access Request Study thresholds, like I mentioned earlier, these did change from the previous document. So now for a TIS, The 10-year horizon you have to look at for a development is 100 or more trips in the peak hour of traffic for the site generated. And if they generate 500 or more trips in the peak hour, then they have to look at a 20-year horizon. And that's to project traffic out and see what the lanes would be needed on those private drives or if any turn lanes are needed on the public roadways. So that's what their traffic impact study would have to look at. depending on how intensive traffic's generated by the development. And then, again, I mentioned earlier we eliminated the 800 daily trip threshold to reflect ODOT's new manual. They got rid of their daily and just went with peak hour generation. updated the access request study threshold of less than 100 trips in the peak hour. So if it's under 100, development still has to do an access request study. It's a lot less intense than a traffic impact study. And one thing that was added to this update is an exemption clause for the city to have as an option on a case-by-case basis and What that is is if a developments coming in it's pretty low traffic generation and there's been recent Improvements to a roadway that you know they're not going to have anything that they need to do anyways it's just kind of common sense not to make a Facility go through all this stuff just because you're not going to have any impacts because it's you know generating 5 10 15 vehicles in the peak hour It's it's not going to have an impact on the roadway So so we did add that clause that gives the city a little more flexibility for those case-by-case scenarios and memorandum of understanding this is something new that's in this manual and it's in a lot of other access management manuals from other communities it's basically a memorandum that the developer or the developers consultant traffic consultant comes up with and to give to the city saying, here's what we anticipate looking at based on your policies. Can we get agreement on what we need to look at? So it's just basically getting everything in writing what they're gonna look at. So they don't leave anything out. It kind of clears up the process for them. And then the city also has that early on opportunity to say, now we want you to look at this intersection and this intersection, not just this one. So it'll tie down the traffic impact studies a lot better and get rid of that iterative process of going back and forth. traffic impact study requirements. We added discussion to clarify what is needed. We did a nice bulleted list of items as well so they don't have to look through so much text. They can just look at here's what we need for a traffic impact study. And then we did add they now have to look at at least a crash history summary of the roadway they're accessing to see if there's any issues going on that You don't want them to make it worse. So we did add that as well that they have to do as part of the traffic impact study requirements. That wasn't in there previously. And then also we added traffic data and count requirements. We made sure to get in there that when they do their traffic counts for their development, for their traffic impact study, they have to make sure BG and BGSU schools are both in session because Both of those impact traffic quite a bit. Traffic signal policy. We added a paragraph, like I mentioned, discussing consideration of roundabouts instead of traffic signals. And then private driveway traffic signal and public roadway access added a couple items Bullet to list so why a proposed signal by developer may be denied so kind of went through some items Because you don't want to signal everywhere if something else makes sense Whether it's an access at a different side street or whatnot so We did add that text to it uh... one thing to uh... just uh... because it is a pretty technical document we added uh... appeals process in a flowchart just to give the developer a quick look at yet your proposed development you know what do you need to do do you do a t i s ernie ira access request study and it just kinda goes through the the chart yet the exemption box there that mentions that as well, so, and then point of contact with the city planning department. Guess that's it so Like I said, it's a pretty detailed document Appendices are got a lot of great information in it. So You know, I think the original ones has served the city Decently over the years and just having these new changes in and I think I'll really help out with it moving forward Any other questions?

I do have a question. I apologize if that's in here and I didn't read it. Is this for new development coming in or are changes going to be made to current streets and roads?

It's for new developments and change in use. somebody's coming in and you know tearing something down or if they're renovating a building and going from like a low-use facility to something that's more like a gas station or something that's gonna generate a lot more traffic they are also into this have to go through this as well yep it will also impact

The city decides to rebuild a road, I assume, and it'd be to these standards instead of the current ones? If the city decides to rebuild a road, widening road, whatever, I assume it'll have to follow this?

Yeah, you would want to look at the driveway standards and whatnot and make sure the driveways are decent size that you're rebuilding. Yep. Thank you.

To get back to Julie's question, page three of the draft policies and guidelines lists what can trigger an access request study or a traffic impact study, which says a change in use may include but is not limited to structural modifications, remodeling, a change in the type of business conducted, expansion of an existing business, a change in zoning, a division of property creating new parcels and new developments.

Tell me again where it is. Page three. This is in the larger packet you're talking about. Yes. Okay, go ahead. Page three.

Yes, labeled page three at the bottom right corner.

And you said 1.3.3? Yes. That's what you just read. Thank you very much. You're welcome.

Thank you. Also, we have the draft document on our city website under the planning department for anyone to review, along with the existing document. So you can easily compare the existing document versus all the changes that Pat highlighted.

And there's other changes in there. I just went through the key ones. I didn't want to bore you that much on a nice night.

We understand it's a lot of information. That's why I appreciate Pat being here to do an overview. We don't have any transportation engineers on staff, so we really rely on people like Pat's firm to help us through these types of issues. And when we do have a traffic impact study or an access request study, we do have it reviewed by an outside consultant that has that traffic engineering background to help compare the request to our guidelines.

That's the current standard?

Yes.

this might be in the document, were people mobility being studied too, not just the vehicles, so people walking around and all, and how, you know, make them safer?

Yeah, yep, we have in there, like I mentioned, we've incorporated the bicycle facilities map destination that shows like where, you know, if a development's coming in, if they're on a corridor where a future shared use path is supposed to be, they will have to make accommodations to build that and set aside right away for that as well, which will cut down costs for the city having to put it in. So, and then at the intersections, you know, the signal standards, you know, it'll have like the countdown pedestrian signals and stuff like that as well that, That'll help out with walking and biking and whatnot yep, and making a all ramps Ada curb ramps accessible American Disabilities Act Yep any other questions

Thank you very much, appreciate it. As Heather pointed out in her letter to us that the Commission is not required to hold a public hearing, but it's been the past practice of the Commission to hold a public hearing on the planning documents. So I would like to propose that we create a public hearing at our next meeting to review these documents. Is that the appropriate way to do that?

Yes, that's fine.

Okay. I'll second.

Ms. Broadwell?

Yes.

Ms. Denbo? Yes. Ms. Ennis? Yes. Mr. McComber? Yes. Mr. Phillips? Yes. Mr. Stalter? Yes. Mr. Waddell? Yes. Mr. Boddy? Yes.

I would encourage you if you have further questions that are pretty technical to get them before the next meeting. That will help us be able to answer those instead of on the fly. I'd appreciate that. We do work with this pretty regularly when it comes to new development, but we're really excited to see this document updated. As Pat indicated, it's been a while. It's overdue, and we're excited to include our complete streets policy. And again, mentioning not only cars, what our current access management only talks about.

Thank you. I guess next is reports, and the first is representative to the Zoning Board of Appeals, Mr. McCumber.

Yeah, thank you, Bob. We've had a couple of ZBA meetings since the last time the Planning Commission met, so we do have, I think, three things that came across at those meetings. April meeting, Emanuel Tembo 800 Longford Drive, one of the variants to construct a driveway extension and widening, which was four and a half feet wider than the maximum width normally allowed. And in the short time I've been on the ZBA, this is the second one of these that we've had. And, in fact, next week we'll have another one.

I can see you get a lot of them.

And what it essentially amounts to is people wanting to construct something to the outside of their driveway so that they have some additional parking beyond just the width, the normal width of the driveway, which generally is about the same width as the garage door. and in places where there is limited parking on the street, and that's a problem, then that causes these kinds of requests, which we have so far viewed pretty favorably. His request was approved unanimously. The next one also at the April meeting was an interesting one. Neil Gerhart wanted a variance to allow the construction of a two-unit dwelling which would encroach on two setbacks. Neil owns the property at the corner of 4th Street and Elm. And what was kind of unique about this was that he wanted to construct two single unit buildings, one story. Most of that neighborhood has student housing, which is a typical apartment building with two stories. four apartments on top, four apartments on the bottom kind of thing. But Neil wanted to put in single-story units, which would be attached to each other also. It was an interesting discussion because at first he started out by saying that maybe he didn't qualify because of the practical difficulties test. And he said, I could build a two-story apartment building here right now. I don't need any variance to do that. The lot is empty right now. What used to be there has since has long since been raised and gone. So he said, I don't need any variance for that, so maybe I'm asking for the wrong thing. But a somewhat lengthy discussion concluded that he did possibly qualify for having a practical difficulty to build what he wanted to build, and that the request was evaluated in light of that. And eventually, it also was unanimously passed to grant him the variance that he requested. In May, David Chatfield, 225 Winfield Drive, wanted a variance to allow the construction of a 18-foot driveway addition, which did not lead to the existing garage and allows parking in the front yard, which is prohibited. Mr. Chatfield, a lot of us are probably familiar with the location on Winfield Drive there. It's the second house north of Pearl Street on the east side. And he has neighbors who have circular driveways so that they can park on those circular driveways because Winfield Drive is a tough street to park on. It has a lot of pedestrians. It's narrow. He has a driveway that goes the length of his property up to the garage door, but he wanted to construct a second driveway which would mimic some of the neighbors and have this circular driveway that would allow additional parking without people having to park in his yard or on the street or any such thing. And that request was, I think the thought was that the prohibition against parking in the front yards was not intended to address a situation like this. and that it made sense given the location and that several of his neighbors already had circular driveways to grant his request. So that request was granted also. And that's what we've had since the last PC meeting. Thank you. Heather?

Yes.

Okay, have a brief report just to give you an update here. It's our busy summertime. Our permits right now are at near at the same as this time last year. We're at 168 so far this year compared to 169 at this time last year. We've had 31 single family housing starts compared to 32 at this time last year. We've had one two-unit dwelling permit issued, which Bob had already mentioned that had a variance. compared to none at this time last year. We've had no multi-unit permits. We had one at this time last year. We've had one commercial zoning permit applied for compared to none at this time last year. And then we've not had any new construction for innovation and employment. We had one at this time last year. We've had one institutional zoning permit compared to two at this time last year. Since we last met, we issued a permit for Mid-County Ambulance in addition over on County Home Road, which is near completion. Best Western, we've issued a permit for some ADA site improvements at 1450 East Wooster Street. Wood Lane Residential, they got a permit for an alteration and renovation at 850 West Poe Road. You've probably seen that construction or noticed that if you're out that way. Wood County Board of DD, they received a permit for a new playground at 1921 East Gypsy Lane. And Ohio Logistics applied for a very small addition, which I'm sorry, typo there. I forgot the addition part. At 134 Woodgate Drive. Permits that are currently under review are on hold. Tin Man Warehouse, 1358 Beller Drive. New construction at 1187 South Main Street, which would be a Chipotle Mexican Grill. In addition to an industrial building at 2501 Woodstream Drive is also currently under review. As far as subdivisions, Two Saints Springs, Plat 2, you approved that Plat 2 back in December of 2025. Their infrastructure improvements are well underway out there if you've been by there lately too. Chapter 151, the subdivision regulation update continues. We actually are on track so far to hopefully have a document to you maybe the next two months or so. We still have, again, a lot of technical information, not only in access management we've been dealing with, but also the subdivision regulations. As far as any community or comprehensive plan updates, we actually implemented this year our first ever Downtown Facade Grant Program, which is mentioned on page 37 of the Future Land Use Plan under Downtown Actions, and we announced that grant in March, and we have issued three grant agreements so far, and we still have about a little over half the money left to implement have businesses apply for. So it's been very popular so far, and we're working with a lot of business owners in the downtown, and we're excited to hopefully see those results with the grants. As far as miscellaneous, council did pass legislation to regulate short-term rentals on May 18th. Just a heads up on, you know, so you're aware of that, because that is a new legislation that we would be implementing within the planning department. A public hearing was held by council on the text amendments you may recall reviewing. recently on the zoning code, and they did pass the legislation, but it was amended. And I gave you a copy of that, just so you had that. That becomes effective in 30 days, so once that's effective, we'll let you know. And if you ever want a printed copy of the zoning code, just let us know. We know it's online, but we also understand that some people prefer the printed copy to be able to review and take notes on. We had a new zoning code enforcement officer start today, Michael Klingenpiel. We're real excited about that. And we just finished celebrating May as National Preservation Month. We had a local history bike pedal tour, scavenger hunt, and you may have noticed that History Lives Here self-guided tour the yard signs around town. And we also will be starting a historic plaque program that is only for properties on the local historic register, or that received the historic overlay zoning, which you recall that you recommend that zoning too. So we'll have a 50-50 program only for those people on the local register that they could buy a plaque for their home. Parks and Rec will also be starting their five-year master plan update. I believe they're settling on a contractor or consultant to help them do that update soon, and there'll be more information coming out soon on that. Also, we started our digital permit and application process on April 13th, so we're going on nearly, well, close to two months with that program, and I gave you just a little snippet there. You can look at our website if you wanted to, if you're doing something at your house this summer or any time, I would suggest you go to this online portal, make your account, and then you have your account forever. And you can apply for your permits there very easily from the comfort of your own home. We've had a lot of good feedback so far. It's not perfect, but it's worked really well so far. And we've got over little bumps here and there. We've had a lot of compliments, so we're excited about that. I also gave you a copy of what the website looks like as a user. So if you were to use this, get your account going. And then on the next page is an example of the information you get. So let's say you're going to type your address in or click on your parcel where you live. It will auto-populate your address. Then you go to your permit type, so whether that be a shed or a pool or a fence or whatever, it automatically populates your zoning. So that's a huge... thing for you because not only does that bring up your zoning, you don't have to look it up or call us, we don't have to look it up either. So it brings up the zoning automatically and then it also brings up your regulations based on what permit type you are picking and based on your zoning. So it'll tell you wait a minute, you can't do a fence over six foot tall in the front yard. So it's just a way to educate the public when they apply for permit, hopefully catch things early on. So I gave you a screenshot of an example of a shed. So for example, you would put in, you know, you're doing a shed as accessory structure, you would enter the height, it tells you how to enter it, and the length and width, and then it automatically calculates the square footage. So then you know if you're actually under 100 square feet or less, then you don't even need a permit. So it tells you in red letters, you don't need a permit. So I'm really excited about that. And then it gives you the setbacks that are required based on the height that you enter into the portal. So a lot of good things. Again, this is just one example. So imagine we had to do this for every single zoning classification, every single permit type. It was not a quick or simple process. But if you ever hear any feedback on the process or let us know your experiences, we appreciate that because we always want to keep improving. So that's it, unless you have questions.

very much appreciate it is there any other questions comments anything else for the commission if not is there a motion to adjourn second all in favor aye thank you very much