Board of Zoning Appeals - Regular Meeting

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do this thing. We do this thing. Okay. I'm going to call the regular June 3rd Columbus City Board of Zillian Fields meeting to order. Amanda, roll call, please. Kathy Gardner, here. Patricia Hatcher here. John Kissinger here. Anthony Ormano here. Sornet present. All right. Previous meeting minutes. We have four. So, we're going to start with October 1st, 2024. Um, does anybody have uh objections of the minutes? Just real quick change on page two. Um, down about towards the middle it says Miss Gardener. Why? So, what's on page two? Ask, I guess, needs to be in there. Ask why board or that's it. Very minor, but All right. Anybody else have any changes? If not, can I hear a motion? I'll make a motion to approve the minutes as submitted with that just minor little correction. Have a motion from Kathy. Second and I have a second from Tony. All those in favor raise your right hand one abstension. Okay. Uh the next one is we have um October. How did we do? How was I get to the right one? December. Do I have anybody that has any um questions or changes to the October minutes? November December. I got too many in

front of me here. I move to accept minutes. I got a one u one from Tony. I second that. I got a second from Kathy. All those raise right hand. One thing. One thing. Thank you. Okay. Let me see if I can grab the right one now. Let's go to February. All right. The February um meeting minutes. Does anybody have a question or concerns with that one? If not, I'll attend the motion. Make a motion. I have one motion. Second. I have a second. All those to raise my hand. And I'm going to abstain because I was not able to read this. I might not have even been there. You were not. I was here. I think that one you uh we're electronic. Yes. I think so, too. So, you wasn't doing snow angels and not yet. No, I'd already done them. Oh, okay. In the sand. In the sand. In the sand. All right. The last we have March March meeting minutes. Um, do I have anybody has any questions? to accept. I have a motion to accept from Tony. Second. And I have a second from you, Kathy. That's me. Oh, you Pat. All those in favor, raise your right hand. I'll abstain because I could not get those. I could not get on that night. So, I know I couldn't. All right, that closes the minutes and we are going to move on to the witness to the oath. So, Mr. uh Hakamire can swear up. Anybody in it that wants to speak tonight, please stand. Raise your right hand. Even if you might possibly speak, please take the oath. Raise your

right hands. Thank you very much. Do you or the other right hand? Do you swear or affirm under the penalties of perjury the testimony that you were about to offer will be the truth? If so, answer I do. Thank you. You Nathan, do we have any old business tonight? Uh, we do not. All right, moving on to new business. We have 25- C-B6. Sabrina M Martinez is asking for a variance on a fence height. Nathan, give us the staff report. Sure thing. So, bring that up. So, this is uh located at 183 North Anry Lane uh zoned R1 single family residential. It's lot 46 of Irish Glenn on the east side of US30. What is being proposed is to construct a six- foot tall wood privacy fence which would include mo enclose most of the west yard, the backyard. Uh this is a corner lot. The proposed setbacks for the fence are 11 feet give or take from the west property line which avoids the platted easement on that side about 3 and 1/2 ft from the north property line and about 10 ft from Bridget Lane right ofway on the south side. Uh staff is not aware of a homeowners association in Irish Glenn. There does seem to be some uh provision in the covenants. Let me make sure that this is it. Uh that no fences are to be placed near the to a street unless approved by the architectural committee. Uh if there is one. Again, you guys

don't enforce covenants, but you've asked for me to include those notes before if I can. Uh so, uh as a reminder, this is needing a variance because the maximum height for fences in front yards is 4 feet. uh that was just adopted uh last week, two weeks ago. Uh and then for reference, front yard has uh a specific definition which we've talked about before, but doesn't really come in play with this one. Uh so highlighted there in blue is the subject yard. Uh the pink dashed lines are easements, the yellow dashed lines are the platted setbacks. This does have a 35- f foot platted building line which matches the R1 standard. Guess I didn't have to zoom in. Here's a closer view. the submitted site plan. You can see that the where the location of the fence is going to go enclosing the uh shed place and most of this uh notably it does not go uh very far up the side of the house. It uh aligns with the back of the body of the house here. uh the snippet of the plat for reference if we need to refer to that. Uh going to the review criteria quickly, staff doesn't feel that this would be particularly injurious to public health safety. Uh while it does come closer to the ride ofway uh because of the fact that this is on a short culde-sac uh and the visibility on that culde-sac really won't be affected by having a fence uh nearer than the uh front setback. Uh this doesn't go up to the right ofway line which is an

important distinction. It still does have a 10-ft setback. use and value again uh staff doesn't feel would be uh substantially impacted uh really wouldn't have any impact on the use of the surrounding properties because there are setbacks involved and value the area already has other neighbors have similar fences throughout the subdivision strict application creating practical difficulties that is one that uh I can't direct you to a specific practical difficulty Y uh because this corner lot is very similar to virtually every other corner lot, especially in the subdivision. However, there are other corner lots in the subdivision that do have similar uh privacy and uh privacy fence in uh encroachments as well. Whether they were done illegally or not, don't know. That would involve a lot of research uh going back quite a few years. uh but the fact that they're there may be a practical difficulty in that uh there's a consistency or fairness but again it's the application of the uh strict application of the terms of the ordinance that you're looking at. Uh and there may be others that you may uh reveal as you discuss with the petitioner as well. Uh so with that any questions for me? Anybody? All right. Would the petitioner please come to the podum and raise your right hand and give us your address and kind of fill us in on Hi. I'm Sabrina Martinez. My address is 183 North Anarie Lane, Columbia City, Indiana 46725. Thank you. The reason for the fencing is I am disabled now and I want to have my service dog back at home. So, she's out at the farm where my ex is at and he's

got her. So, I need to have her back with me. So, currently that's why I'm having the fence put up and I have the money now to put a fence up and amounts to the money that I had to put out for all of this and um having to extend out my fence. was my main reason for the corner lot when I purchased this was to build a fencing. Um, not necessarily when I got my dog, but because this happened 5 years ago to me. I was paralyzed from the collar bone down. Um, I've got Parkinson's and Gon Beret, which I've got neuropathy. Um, she's a great support animal and I don't want her out to get out like a neighbor on the other end of the other culde-sac had a a German Shepherd break through the window and try to attack another um neighbor. I don't want that for my dog to be feared for other people. I want her to have enough room to roam around in the yard when she's not with me. Um, so I want to be able to have my animals back home with me and my daughter. My daughter is autistic, so I want to make sure that she's able to have support at home also and the security for the animal and not for my neighbors to be feared for them. Um, so that's pretty much my reason for the amount of yard to be taken up for that safety of my neighbors. Um, the neighbor behind me. um that has the fencing over there. They have a little dog that the neighbor in the other cult about got taken out by that dog. Um I want to make sure everybody's safe. I know when I had my little dog and didn't I had an ingground fence that the neighbors before would let their dog out on the little leash that they could recoil it back would taunt my dog. And

it's not fair to other animals to be treated that way. I'd rather have them in fencing than let them roam and you don't know what other animals are bringing that are bringing into your yard any kind of diseases or anything. So, I want to make sure my pet is safe along with everybody else's pets along with the kids that play in the area. So, I know that there's some women out there that carry mace around and it's not safe for them to carry it around if they can't use it properly either against animals. So, I want to make sure that everybody's safe in the neighborhood from my my animal along with themselves. That's why I'm asking for enough of my yard to be utilized. That was the whole reason I purchased that corner lot back in 2002. As a single parent, anybody got any questions? Is Is the 10 ft measured from the sidewalk? I believe so. Yeah, I I'm not approaching all the way to the sidewalk. I wouldn't do that. I have a neighbor lady across the street that comes over and she mows my yard just for fun to keep herself exercised up. So, and I offer to give her gift cards and everything else like that. She's like, "Nope, I don't want any money. I don't want anything." But I've given her food cards and stuff like that and whatnot. So, she goes around and mows everybody's yards actually. So, well, when I was there today, um measured from um the sidewalk into uh to the tree trunk and it's like 15 feet. Yeah. So, um I'm looking at this drawing here. Appears it's like 10 feet from the sidewalk. Yeah. Basic. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not opposed to having it 10

feet in. I wasn't gonna take up the whole yard anyways. I just want enough room for her to roam around if she's not in the house. The house is only 900 square foot roughly. Um, it's not a huge house. So, for my size of dog that I have, she's not little and she thinks she's a lap dog and she's not. Does anybody else have any questions? Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else here that would like to speak on behalf of the petitioner? Is there anyone here like to speak um against petitioner hearing? None. I close the floor and open up the board discussion. Any questions? Well, being out there, normally I'm not a big proponent of um fences in a front yard like this. However, in going out there, I really did not feel that this fence would look out of character. Um she's already got um the fence along the west side and up and around on the north and east sides around to the house. It looks really nice. So um I get the reasoning behind it, too. You got to place that right in the yard there, too. I see. So, um I just guess I would like to make sure she was a minimum of 10 feet from the sidewalk. She's going to measure that way. That's my opinion. Tony, do you have anything that

the warden? No. Okay. I'll umend a motion or I'll make a motion that we approve um variance 25 C um six for the height variance with the stipulation that the um go south south um fence line is a minimum of 10 feet from the sidewalk or off of the sidewalk. I'll second that. I have a motion from Kathy and a second from Tony. All those in favor raise right here. Thank you. Sabrina. All right, we're going to move on to the next uh one. We have 25- C-B7 Jeffrey Loop. I'm sorry if I butchered that. Variance of a Fenth Height for 839 South Redstone Court Nathan Staff Court. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, going to these slides. Uh, this property is at 839 South Red Storm Court. uh zoned our two single two family residential uh lot 17 of Seeks Village. Uh what is being proposed is to construct up to an 8ft tall wood privacy fence extension already an existing privacy fence on the property uh on the east side of the yard and then also partially on the north and south sides. And I'll point out that a little bit more in this site plan. Uh the current six-foot fence was permitted and installed in 2016. Uh there was there is no HOA in this subdivision and there were no fence restrictions that I can find in the covenants uh or

standards for fences in the covenants. Uh the uh applicable development standard is that uh fences residential fences are limited to six foot in height. uh no matter where they're located. So this highlighted in blue is the subject property. Redstone court is there to the left. Uh this view has the topography turned on. The pink lines are two-foot contours. So, you can see that in the backyard, you're going from an 858 uh contour basically up against the house uh down to an 856 where the existing fence is, which is also the edge of the platted easement and then uh most likely continues down a little bit farther to the where the property line is as well. Uh it's a I have to assume drainage soil was intended through there. I'm not sure how much water actually flows through there at any point in time, but it definitely drops off two more than two feet, maybe even three or even north of 3 ft uh between the house and the property line. Uh oblique view, you again can see some of that drop off here. If you look closely, these uh fences uh you can see that the one on the east is relatively flat, but both of these fences have an angle to them. And you can especially see this up here on the north one uh where the fence drops off. the proposed site plan uh showing that this eastern portion would have the two-foot extension to accommodate or

compensate for that twoft drop in elevation and then to make it everything look relatively even. Uh the petitioner is proposing to uh basically blend it back westward. uh I believe one panel or two panels on either side and he can give you more specific details on I both but it would be blended back down to that six foot six foot height on those two uh corners. uh the petitioner's photos that he submitted uh again showing the arrangement of the backyard. Uh the upper left one would be looking northeast uh towards this shed. The upper right one is to the southeast. You can see that again it does drop off uh somewhat. You can see already the fence of the neighbor on the other side of the utility easement. And then the bottom one here, uh, you can see again that fence that is beyond, uh, his property. Normally with a sixoot privacy fence, uh, you can't see beyond it if you're if you're in the backyard, but again, there is, uh, a substantial drop in grade between where he's standing on the patio and that back property line. Uh, another view. This is from Google Street View. Uh the photos I took when I was out there uh honestly just didn't show quite the the angle that this does. Uh so going to the review criteria for this case. Uh I don't feel that this would be injurious to public health safety. An extra 2 ft of fence especially when it's only a portion of the yard really wouldn't impact the uh safety of the area. definitely wouldn't

impact the health. Sometimes when you have fences that are tall, you do worry about the ability to uh have people go in in case of emergency, but again, this is only a portion of the overall fence. Uh use and value use wouldn't be affected uh of any of the neighboring lots. We don't have like we do at the lakes where views are very important. Uh actually the opposite is is the case here. Trying to block views with the additional value uh might be affected just because the fence would be somewhat out of norm but I would say that it's likely not going to be substantial. The fence itself is very much uh similar to other fences in the area, being able privacy fence. And a practical difficulty uh definitely the uh 2 and 12 to 3 ft worth of grade drop between the house and that back uh property line uh definitely is a sightspecific uh practical difficulty. Not specific only to this lot. Several other lots in this area have similar grades uh but very specific to that cause. I will say uh in the research I did for the recent fence code amendment uh many codes do have ways of addressing this that allow for average height uh height from a uh say six foot but it's an averaged height. So you do have the ability to go higher if you need to because of grade. Uh so there are codes out there that address this in uh in other fashions. I didn't include it in the amendment because we're trying to keep it simple, but just FYI, this is a concept that's other communities have dealt with. Uh so any questions for me? I don't believe

so. Will the petitioner like to come to the podium? Please give your name and address and fill us in on anything else that Nathan did not. Hello. Uh my name is Jeff Lucky is how we initially pronounce it. No. Um um at 839 South Redstone Court, Columbia City, Indiana 46725. And this is the first year of my full retirement where there's just no work at all. So I mean a lot of hours on my hands. A lot. And the house that I have over there, the living room is the central most room in the house. Everything is built around it. There's no skylights, no windows. Um it's very dark all year round and it's hard getting fresh air in. So, I kind of feel like it's imperative that I try to use my three seats in the room, my patio, my backyard as much as I can. Um, or I would just be sitting in that living room 12 months a year, 16 hours a day. Um, so I'm outside a lot. I like to grill, like to do some yard work, um, listen to the radio, play on the laptop, and one thing my family has always done over 50 plus years and is we like to watch the Cubs. We turn the cubs on because it's just a good way to pass time during the summertime. So, my little setup there, I have a little 32 inch TV in my threeseason room and I can spin it with swivel it inside when it's rainy or cold or I'm assuming the next couple weeks when the mosquitoes get real bad, I'll be in there a lot. Um, or I can swivel it outside where I just sit on my little patio and watch the TV. Um, but I'm asking or I'm for the fence raise because I don't want to try to disturb anybody else. I mean, my my whole goal is to try to utilize the area

I have available to me without disrupting the neighborhood around me. Um, and it, you know, it's my goal just to, like I said, make sure that everybody is comfortable in the situation, but that I can still kind of use the lot and the the area that I have. Um, so by raising the fence, you know, it would give a much more level um area of privacy where it feels like it's way private up by the house and then there's just a whole line of sight right on the east side there. Um, it would be the quickest, the most sturdy constructed, and the most permanent thing I think I could do because I all the other options I have just I would worry about the wind. It's just so windy around here. I've never lived in Columbia City before and I don't know if we're high up there or what, but it just blows every day. Um hopefully it would go ahead and it would minimize any discomfort or annoyance that I am causing to the neighbors on the other side just from being out. Like I mean I'm out sometimes 8 10 hours a day. Um and it would um I'm sorry I'm trying to read my notes here. It would give me a little piece of mind to know that I have tried pretty much everything I can try. This would be the ninth thing that I have tried since uh starting this. And I really just started in March when I first got outside last year. I was working 80% of the time. So I didn't get to use any of the facil or any of the yard much. Um but without taking too much time just like to say, you know, the one first thing I think I did is I bought a house with the privacy fence. So I mean I was trying trying to get a little area where I could just sit back and kind of live without affecting anybody. I uh the threeseason room didn't have

any blinds or anything in it. It was just seven windows and a door and it's up a little higher than the patio. So when you sat in it, you just felt like you were in a fish room and I never got to use it. I um went this year and I ordered and installed seven blinds for the patio. Um and they took a long time. They came from China. Um, I talked to a lady named I believe her name was Sally and she said she was in oh, utilities and when I talking to her about the TV, she said the thing that we would be the most worried about is the noise or if there's any noise. So, what I ended up doing is I ended up getting a pair of earbuds and I listen to nothing but the earbuds now with the radio if I'm playing any music and they've turned out to be a real blessing because not only can we not hear your music, but you can't hear anything. Um, I tried three different levels for the TV. I started out with a regular stand at 24 in. Then I turned it on his belly and it went down to 15 in. I couldn't tell where the sight line was. And then I ended up scrapping the stand altogether and I went and just got a hard side suitcase. So now it's 7 in off the ground. The TV itself is only like 2.9 in the top of it. So no matter where you're looking, you're looking down at it. Um, I have researched potted plants for around the patio. I researched shrubs and trees for around the fence line to see if we could do that. Of course, they would have to be at least up to 8 feet tall. Um, I looked at flower boxes that go onto the fence and the flower boxes that sit on your patio that have like the trellis. Um, I've looked at all of those and they're all possibilities, but again, with the wind, I'm very, very leerary of what I'm set out there. I don't want to have anything blowing or projectiles. Um, I rearrange things on the patio because when I sit down and I look east, all I see is fence and

rooftops and I love it. That's perfect for me. But when I turn north, there is one house on the northeast corner. He was showing that you can see the back of the house a little bit. So, I I tried, in fact, I was kind of laughing because you guys seen my I tried my fake plant there. It was actually my old fake Christmas tree that I just used the top of it on. That's why it was land there and it was like the most hillbilly looking thing you ever seen. But I was born in Indiana the 60s. So I'll own that. I'll own that. Uh but anyways, I ended up moving my grill over so that when I do sit there and I watch the Cubs game, I can't see anything but fence and treetops. Um I bought the biggest thing or took me the longest was on my TV. It's an old set and there was no port to actually put headphones on. So, I had to do a little researching and I had to go out and get is called a Y adapt and a Y adapter sticks into the ports for like the speaker outputs and then you can plug your headphones into that. Uh the eighth thing was I bought a 15T extension cord for the headphones so I can actually have the TV on and sitting on the patio and still just listen headphones. Nobody can hear it. Um, and then the last thing was going through the beer process. And I just say that to say I'm actually trying my darnest to see if I can make this work for everyone. I really am. Um, but besides that, I I I don't know if I have anything else to say. There's any questions? Now, you you'll be using the old fence with an addition to the top of it, right? No. No. What they're what they're proposing is we just take the entire east section down. Okay. And start over because right now they just have 4x4 or 4x4 I think post and then the boards to six feet. Well, we're going to have to go a little bigger. I think it's 4x6 or 4x8 to make it sturdy. And then you're going to go street solid 8ft planks. Okay. And it

what it would be is it would be the entire east side and one section of the southeast like from the 4x4 to the 4x4. And then from there we were going to diagonal down from 8 to six over by the shed on the northeast side. We weren't going to really do that section because because of the shed nobody can see through. I can't see out. But we are just going to take that 8ft board on the very top of the east side and then diagonal down right to there. Um, I was going to use a a company called Sam and Suns here in town. Um, and anything else or I don't I don't question. Thank you. Oh, that's okay. My heart still my feet. Let's hope it's not that bad. Okay. Is there anyone else here like to speak on behalf of the petitioner? Is there anyone here that would like to speak against petitioner? Hearing none, I close the floor and open it to board discussion. I make a motion for the approval of 20 C-B7. I'll second. I have a motion from Dennis and a second from Tony. All those in favor, raise your right hand. And I was going to say the reason why I would be against it is because we had a petition come before this board um requesting an 8 foot fence, privacy fence, um by the Huntley's and that was denied. And so I feel like I need to be consistent with my voting on this. All

right. Any other business tonight, Nathan? No, but I have a couple quick reports. All right. Unless you had other business me. I do not. Uh, so first one is uh a notice that legal counsel is switching as of July 1. Greg is not going to be legal counsel anymore for the board. Uh Quen Rhyrs, who's out in the audience waving. I just stand up. Come on. There we go. Uh who's been the legal counsel for the plan commission. He's now going to take over for BCA as well. Um Greg kind of filled in for the board here the last few months while going got his feet wet with plank commission so on. So so you'll be seeing him the next time we have a meeting and then the other thing is the a reminder that our fifth Monday training session is coming up at the end of this month on June 30th. uh it will be here at six o'clock and the tenative topic is going to be uh ethics and conflicts of interest. Um and I love AI. I was trying to say generating this real nice uh representative image of what uh conflicts of interest are. Uh so far from suits. Yeah. Yeah. Notice it says plan commission, not board it own appeals. You guys are cool. Um but anyway, so yeah, seriously a reminder that that's coming up at the end of the month. Um and that's what I had for you.

All right, motion to close. We have a motion to end the meeting. All in favor say I. I. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]