Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

This conference will now be recorded. I thought you had it on earlier. Yeah, I'm working on that. [Music] Well, good evening. Welcome planning commission that the clock on the wall now says 6 o'clock. Very, very exciting. Um, like to call this meeting to order. Roll call. Here, Templan here. Lane here. Huggin here. Milbour here. Mock here. Schultz here.

All are present today. Item 3A, approve a planning commission agenda. I have a suggestion and I don't know whether anyone's here on behalf of the carriage houses to consider the replat, but kind of seems a little rude to put them at the very bottom of the agenda because that chances are won't be horribly controversial. Maybe move that to the first item under old business out of courtesy. Does anyone have an objection? I don't see anybody here from the carriage houses, but uh certainly can do that. That should be a fairly quick agenda. I second. Seems kind of like a bad thing to have at the end of the other discussions. Yeah. So motion second. All approve. Say I.

I. Same. Opposed. Same sign as modified. Looking for a motion to approve the planning commission agenda. I make a motion that we approve the planning commission agenda with the noted changes. Second. moved and seconded. All in favor say I. I. Oppose. Same sign. Thank you. Item 3B, approve the minutes of the planning commission meeting held on August 26th. Oddly, I don't know that I got those. Was that that was part of the packet? Did you all get them? Do you see anything that's objectionable? Well, I trust you if you're good with them. 25 of us. Yeah. Motion. Make a motion we approve the minutes. Second.

Yeah. Moved and seconded. Any further corrections or additions? All in favor say I. I. Oppose. Same sign. Thank you. Item 3 C, disclosure of conflicts of interest. Anything to disclose tonight regarding matters before the planning commission? Uh, chairman, I'll have to excuse myself from agenda item 5 A and 7B as well. Okay. Maybe just question Y7B. Did you consult with the city on that?

I was in a meeting with staff about a potential project that would potentially need a longer culde-sac. Okay. Totally your call. I was just curious because it wasn't actually an item for us in discussion. It could be coming up very soon. Okay. Anything else to disclose? Nope. Item 3D, disclosure of outside communications regarding commission business. I've had some discussions on uh 6B with Missy and John.

Okay. Anyone else? Okay. Moving then to call to the public. Members of the public who wish to address the planning commission regarding items not on the agenda may do so at this time. Any presentations forformational purposes only. No action will be taken and there's a 4-minute time limit. If you'd like to address the planning commission, please come to the podium. Give us your name and address. Not seeing anybody leap up. There's no one online. I'll close the call to the public. Item 5A. Consider reszoning of tract at 8870 Commerce Drive from OI to M1.

All right. Thank you, chairman. Did want to just say how the carriage houses got 7C. They did turn their plat in after the deadline. So, I was like, you know, if you're going to So, I was gracious to put them on the agenda, but if you do that, you're going to get put to the end of the line. But

I didn't realize it was punishment. I'm sorry. [Laughter] All right. Thank you everyone. Uh what you have before you on this public hearing is a resoning from office institutional to light industrial. Dustin Baker who's in the audience is the applicant for this tract. Uh we've had preliminary discussions for some sort of self storage type unit. However, just because those are what we've talked about doesn't mean that's what happen going to happen. You do need to consider all the potential uses that might be available in the M1 light industrial district. Taking care of the signs, the advertising also notification letters have been sent out. Have not received any comments from anybody who was notified on this potential reszoning. As you can see, as the tract under consideration is zoned office institutional, it has multifamily. The residences of Lexington are to the west. Across the street is Raric Pacific. North is a vacant tract which is M1. And then south is a vacant tract which is also office institutional. There is some offices and doctor buildings um office institutional which is active. It's the third I guess the or the most southern office institutional track and you can see it here on the next page. uh the surrounding area the aerial photo so you can see that there there is a use of office institutional in the area this tract this corridor is mostly light industrial however there is some commercial uses you know harps and pizza hut and all those things some of them actually are still zone light industrial even though they have a commercial use that did go through a a variance or a special permit

process quite some time ago and they've had those uses established. But in this case, just overall don't see any issues with the at least from staff's perspective of changing this to an M1 use. Like I said, the as far as land mass wise, the light industrial zoning in the area is the most prevalent even though there is quite a bit of mix of uses in this area including the office institutional but there's like I said R3 to the west and then the other tracks are vacant. So um because there is is interest in this tract and there hasn't been any kind of uh interest since I've been dodto for any of these three tracks. This would be a positive moving forward. Commerce Drive has been developed for quite some time. There's utilities, water, sewer in the area, electricity. It's it's a track that's just really waiting to be developed. It just hasn't happened. And now is the time. I could go in depth through all these items, but this one is pretty straightforward as far as I'm concerned. I've met with the applicant on this item. They've developed a lot of property in Dninnesota have done a good job. So, I feel confident that they'll work with staff and and create the site plans and all the things that the planning commission will ultimately review and uh to move forward with this development. So the first step in that process is a resoning from office institutional to M1. So with that, I'll stand for any questions you may have.

Thank you. Questions for Brad? Is, if I'm not mistaken, the track to the west, I guess, which would be on the left hand side of the picture, that's where those large uh multipplex uh apartments are going up, right? Okay. Correct. which is awesome. No, nothing no concern from an easement perspective or anything along those lines in terms that's also Dustin's project. Yeah. Yeah. And there's actually concerns from you Dustin

there is a fair amount of landscaping and buffering. We do have a 20 foot buffer on the the apartment side. So there is going to be a fair amount of distance. And then of course the the light industrial tract will also have some landscaping as well. So there'll be a good separation between the two uses. Thank you. Other questions for Brad? Okay. Well, this is a matter is a public hearing. So, at this point, I would invite members of the public who have comments with regard to this application to please approach the podium, give us your name and address and tell us your thoughts. Nobody's interested. So, no one online. Okay. I'll close the public hearing. The matter is before the planning commission. I'll make a motion to approve the reszoning from to say uh to M1 Light Industrial.

Second. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Roll call. Huggin. Yes. Lane, yes. Templan, yes. Martin, yes. Med, yes. Schultz, yes. Motion carries. Thank you. Under our newly modified agenda. Then I would move to item 7 C. Consider the replat for carriage houses number 15. Brad.

All right. Thank you, chairman. What you have before you is the actually the final building for the carriage houses. This was approved in a previous development plan. However, it was sort of skipped over. A couple other buildings were built and now this is the last one. as you know that once the building walls are up that they actually have to go in and survey each individual unit because they are sold. It's a condominium type process and there are six units in here. So this is a replat of the carriage houses. But for this building back here, building H, there are six units. So we've done this 15 times at least previously. So, it's just a uh step in the process. So, they can now start selling those those units and breaking them up into individual tracks instead of one larger track, which they do just to get the building permit and get the process going. And then once they have buyers lined up with sizes and where they want to have their how much space they want to have, then they divide those the big building up in individual tracks and then it comes back to the planning commission and it is parcled out into smaller units so it can be sold. So with that, I'll stand for any questions you may have.

Thank you, Brad. Questions for Brad? Have you seen one of these before? Me? Yeah. No. Okay. So look at you. The these condos we have to go through this process once they get them built then they have to come back and replplat them so they can sell them. Okay. So it's relatively preuncter. Yep. Okay. Thank you Brad. Any further discussion? Motion. Make a motion we approve the final plat as submitted and recommend we move forward to uh city council for acceptance of rideaway and easements. Second. There's been seconded. Further discussion.

Roll call. Okay. Schultz, yes. Maddox, yes. Milbour, yes. Huggin, yes. Lane, yes. Templan, yes. Martin, yes. Motion carries. Thank you. Item 6A, discuss future land use plan update.

All right. Thank you, chairman. We talked about this item at the previous meeting. gave you some information on the Johnson County Carniff Plan and also the Astra Enterprise Park development plan. It's really all spun off from the southwest growth area plan, which is that area from K10 South to Lexington to now 103rd Street, now Energy Way, which a lot of the residents wanted to see a little bit more concrete evidence of what might go around them so they could start marketing their property and and think about future decisions that they might have to make. So, we've incorporated the southwest growth area plan into our existing land use plan and also updated the road network. Now, there's still a little bit of work that needs to be done on the carips. Still working with our consultant trying to get some of these line weights and types and everything just right, but we're diligently getting through all that. But really wanted to focus on the land use areas that we think is going to happen in Dninnesota. Now, for a long time, we've kind of reserved the east side of Dninnesota for large lot subdivisions, the downtown district and the RH zoning. And those areas are kind of the old old Dodto locations. And then, of course, Merc and Lexington Lake Park are to the west. And then, of course, south is Southwest Growth area. Then also the Astra Enterprise Park. So, areas we really kind of need to focus on. um are those areas I guess beyond Merc on the sort of north side of K10 Highway. We've had some property that's been annexed that's been zoned commercial. We've got those shown. I do have a couple little adjustments on the uh city limit lines that need to be added, but also the roadway network. something we wanted

really distinguish on and might correct me if I'm wrong, but the current plan never really got to what we had talked about was an expressway like a highway going down to to uh I35 and through by past Edertton. Looks like it now. They're still wanting to study it, but it's a fourlane arterial turn lanes, very similar to what Lexington is, but something we may want to consider is upgrading that to something a little bit higher intensity. Also, there are some changes with Kill Creek. That's now the going to be the primary north south corridor from basically gardener into Dodto and up to K10 highway which has now been designated as a four-lane arterial and then also Astra Enterprise or Astra Parkway should be a four-lane road going southeast down to 127th Street. It's been built four lanes down to about a little bit short of College Boulevard just past the Panasonic site. So, we've got a little bit of tweaking there to do as well. But, so that's where we're at with this the land use update. And this, like I said, this was all part of a function of the southwest growth area plan and making sure that that is something that the residents wanted or felt comfortable with as we move forward with development in this area because that's kind of the the hot spot in Dotto ground zero zero if you will. But these other areas need the attention as as well. And I was thinking more about the the 95th and Evening Star area and some of those that location which does have the possibility of being sewwards because of the work at the Panasonic site and then also having to take the path that we had to get the sewer lines down to the sewer treatment

plant. So there's basically it's relatively unchanged, but like I said, the southwest growth area plan that north I guess west area as well also needs some some look at. And then we do have that very large chunk of purple which is mixed use. And I know we've had some discussions about do we really want to have that much mixed use, but um yeah, that's Astress Park. They just sell multi-use as well. They're they're probably okay with that designation in that area. I've not spoken with anybody with Sunflower Development. I guess they still go by that, but so really it's just a discussion item like to have a schedule a public hearing on this. No, actually, pardon me. We've had the public hearing. So now we're still in the discussion stage before we make a recommendation to the city council. After this moves forward, we'll proceed with an overall comprehensive plan for the city of Dodto based on some of the findings that we've had. We've updated the zoning map. We'll updated the the land use so we can give our probably be a consultant that we'll work with update the whole comprehensive plan. But this kind of gives them the basis to move forward. And they'll certainly be another, you know, bite at the apple when we come back around to this probably in about 8, nine months. But, uh, this is where things stand now. We just want to make sure that the southwest growth area plan was incorporated into our current comprehensive plan before we go on with the update. So, with that, I'll stand for any questions you may have. Uh question I have Brad is the the area um I guess it's north of 95th and like between Lexington and and Sunflower is that area is that included in the southwest growth area

was yeah that's the whole sort of yeah that yes so essentially the stuff that's shown in there I mean essentially anything in the southwest grow there is just essentially copied from that exhibit to here correct Okay. So, we're really not not focusing on updating any of that stuff. We're just kind of go with what the consultant recommended. Yeah. And so, that's why we're looking at these, I guess, broader areas. Okay.

And and what's and we talked about this a little bit. Our area of influence basically goes from Garden to Road. Even though that's unincorporated Johnson County, we're not really focusing on that. But it's it's an area that we've established through previous planning efforts going back to the two the early 2000s is this is kind of where Dn Dotto needs to focus our attention. But while right like I said earlier the the hot spot is the the south southwest growth area and some of the ancillary areas where utilities are now available primarily sanitary sewer lines to allow for development a more intense development than just rural agriculture or large lot homes.

Okay. I guess did did did you just submit this updated plan? That's This is something that's a newer plan than what I have printed out. I might not have printed the latest one because I was just kind of focusing on the stuff that was just reserved. Well, this should be the one that's been posted. I mean, I can go back and double check that I emailed. Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. I was ask I was going to ask questions about that corner updated. So, which corner are you looking at? I'm looking at the north side of K10 at Evening Star. Uh the print out that I had probably the old one. Brad probably just updated it. There's some of the stuff that we haven't talked about. I mean, we said we were going to talk about it. We haven't talked.

Okay. I kind of feel like we should just dedicate an entire commission meeting just to this because that this is like to me it's overwhelming as a single agenda item just to say, "Yep, looks good." Um, I don't know what your guys' thoughts are or what precedent is uh here. Well, I I don't know that we're at a final version because I don't think we've had that discussion. That was the part that I flag to.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was just looking at that and I think some of it looks like it's been updated from what I printed out. I think it was just you just sent it out like a draft form on Thursday and that's the one I printed and I think it's been just updated because it looks different than what I have which is actually what I was going to point out. those some of those recent resonings that have come through now it's been updated to commercial. Yeah. And that's also that area that um the city limit lines the black dashed areas need to be adjusted a little bit and like I said it's been just back and forth working with our consultant on getting those lines right. So I do apologize for that.

Just kind of a reminder the reason we brought this initially was to only to incorporate the results of the southwest growth area plan. So, we have we have the plan. It's it's finalized. We've accepted it, but it doesn't represent any sort of formal policy document within the city until we formally incorporate it into the comprehens. So, that's thing number one. Um, coincidentally, um, subsequent to that, uh, we have the completion of this, uh, transportation corridor study that we've been doing with the county and several other jurisdictions. So that's why the road stuff got in really and I think the primary focus of this was let's just incorporate the the recommendations of these two studies and then just get them in our complex and that that's why we didn't this process didn't like get preceded by work sessions or normally we come together we have public input we have you know we're putting stickers on maps and we're all this business we did that within those kind of context of those two so that was primary thing and then you know as you start to look at this we we've kind of snowballed maybe got a little bit fuzzy as what we're trying to do into these other areas like we're talking about now which we haven't really had this I think that's

it's just sort of a scope creep I guess on what this agenda item has been maybe maybe it's worth saying oh let's just do what we've already what all the engagement stuff was on the southwest growth area and on that transit let's just get those and then within the context of a bigger because we do have budgeted money budgeted for the rest of this year and next year to do an overall comprehensive plan revision. So hey Brad does that makes sense.

Yeah it does. Now I guess adding on to what you said Mike the part of the reason that I kind of did the scope creep so to speak is there things I hear from planning commission over the course of the last few three four years that you know maybe we ought to do something about this on the future land use plan. So it's like well let's go ahead and maybe take care of some of those. I like the comment about all the mixed use that was on there. I get it and we get beat over the head with the with the future land use map every time it comes back. So, I do think it's important to do it, but I think Mike's right. We haven't had those discussions about these other changes outside the Southwest Area Group. And before we start just flipping colors, we probably ought to have that discussion.

I think that's that's a good point. And I think the other big thing is Astro Enterprise Park. Yeah. Because, you know, they've had this I'm just playing this. This is the SRL's kind of marketing document that has been out there in the public and I think In general terms, I don't think anybody's necessarily opposed to this sort of thing, but it's a lot of mixed use. Like you were saying, um, our current land, future land use, it sort of semi resembles what that is, but it's not. So, that's another sort of main topic item that we we need to workshop, right? We need we need in the context of just

and I don't think that the public hearing we had on this previously ne covers all that. I don't really I mean technically sure we're changing the map. A little uncomfortable with that. Can I make a comment

chair? Sure. This is this is Patrick. Um in order to incorporate this future land use map, unfortunately we will have to do it via the statute. There's no like there's no other vehicle different than the zoning map because there we weren't making any changes. We were simply incorporating changes that had already been made. Here since there are changes, we'll have to, you know, make it part of the comp plan uh through the statutory process. But as Mike says, it can be,

you know, everyone does subject to change um all that. Just wanted to make that com. But if I had my brothers, I would say that what we're going to present as part of the in the action item here, you're looking for is a final version to be brought before the planning commission in October. I would say we should probably only have the changes reflected by the southwest area plan the the road network the other things that we're talking about. I just don't think we've really vetted those. That's my view.

I so I fully agree with what you guys are saying. We we tend to lean on this pretty hard in terms of whether determination of approval or not. And I feel like that's one of the charges of of sitting on the commission is making sure that we're being good stewards of our of the people that we represent. So, you know, that's why I wanted to spend some more time on it because I do think it's so important. I worse than that, it is thrust at us. Yeah. If somebody proposes something that's consistent with it, not necess necessarily just the people that we represent in the city, but the people on the outer edges there that Yeah. are affected by the decisions also like

there's a up there off 90 between 95th and 103rd off Edertton Road or Evening Star. Yep. where all the multif family is right now. That's all farmland and a lot of those people were out here at the last reszoning deal and if they were involved with this I don't think that would be a brown area with multif family. So, if you're looking for direction, we have a consensus. Bring it back to us with the Southwest Area Growth Plan and your road updates, but let's don't mess with the other areas unless we've until we've had an opportunity to vet them. Okay,

I agree. Agreed. That's our formal action. Discussion.

Moving then to 6B. Discuss home occupations, limited retail use, and residential zoning district. All right. Thank you, chairman. We had this discussion at the previous meeting when this issue was first brought forward to city staff, and there's just a lot of different ways to look at this. You know, part of no harm, no foul, or is it something that is a um basically a zoning rights issue? If you're in a residential district, you know, no retail sales, it's just for home occupation only. So I did look at gave you some information from the city of gardener and they don't allow retail sales in the in residential districts. Alth has a way to do it but it's a very bureaucratic so it probably is a way to kind of say no you can't do it but uh it's just very difficult to get around there. But in Dninnesota, we've we've got such a unique community where we've got large tracks where you can do a lot of different things with limited impact to your neighbors and residences. We're now talking about a downtown district or you know the RH district where there's fairly dense population, smaller lots, things like that versus, you know, five, six, 10 acre track where, you know, you could have multiple people coming and going in cars and really not have much of an impact at all. So that's the discussion that we need to have is is residential solely residential you know and there are some exceptions gardener does have one if you're doing a mail order business or it's entirely contained within your household you can do that and then Patrick brought up a good point we were talking earlier today the reason you have no accessory buildings things like that because at

some point if the business gets too big it starts impacting your life as a resident as your house and you want to ultimately move to a place where you can expand your business. So it's sort of a intrinsic check and balance within that as well. And there's a lot of people we've talked about are doing internet sales and things like that that have no impact on the use of the neighbor. They're just the neighborhood. they're just they're they don't have customers coming and going and things like that. So that's really the distinction between all of this information that we're providing and we've got a few of these items that are cooking right now within Dodto on some exceptions that you can say well you know we're we're a community that tries to find ways for to allow people to you know use their property and in a in a freedom manner where they can limit impacts on neighbors and residents around them and if the residents around them are okay with that then maybe we can proceed. So what we have suggested is and just need to get input from planning commission is a special use permit process for residential retail sales which would allow an accessory building. I think that's one of the key distinctions between what and gardener have is gardener is just no tha does allow accessory buildings but as I said it's kind of a tough process to go through a lot of steps that they have to go through as well and they also tha doesn't allow employees at on a on a retail base it needs to be the resident operating the business so if you start looking at some of the things that we have in our code about home occupations. We do allow space for an one employee.

So, I've put together just a suggestion uh for a special use permit process and it does sunset after two years. Certainly, what we've shown is a two-year special use permit with a potential extension for two years, which would be an approval process by the planning commission, doesn't necessarily have to have a public hearing and notification, but it would allow up to four years for a retail use in a residential district, provided that, you know, some of the other things we have in there is that it's not a nuisance. there's not you know coming and going too much activity where and there's no off street no off streetet parking all those things need to be taken care of in context so it does protect the surrounding neighbors rights as far as unless I want to live in the residential district I want peace and quiet I don't want to have customers coming and going and so that's kind of the balancing act we're trying to provide here is and then this does come down to a lot of, you know, we've got these large lots on the east side of town where you can do a lot of things and not really impact your neighbors a whole lot, but when you come across these policies that then flow into somebody's house who's just maybe a half acre and they can somehow squeeze away in there, all of a sudden you've got something that maybe we don't want and we don't want don't want to go down this slippery slope and then all of a sudden and have too much retail activity in a residential district. So, we're kind of trying to thread the needle here with a resident that has put some effort and time into developing their business and has an accessory structure and they've done a nice job of fixing it up and it's

by and large, I mean, it's just a nice little cozy feeling type of a location, but it kind of talks about this bigger picture of retail sales in a residential district. And we do have some inconsistencies as chairman's pointed out. We've don't allow antique sales or secondhand merchandise sales, but you can sell brand new stuff all day long. So, um kind of

So, with that, I'll just open it up for any kind of comments because we're going to have we've just need to kind of flush these issues out before we hold a public hearing and make a recommendation to the city council, which is what you've been charged to do by the council. Brad, I appreciate the effort. I think this is a a good step to where I think this probably should go. That said, I've got some questions. So the language used is that permitted home occupation shall not in any event include the following. Retail sales by special use permit. Probably should be retail sales except by special use permit. Okay.

And then with conditions in addition to section 12, but then we're modifying section 10 on the proposed language below. Yeah. Well, the the this the home occupations is in a dis different dis area and that's the other thing that sort of drives me kind a little bit crazy about our code. Not just ours, all city codes have okay a section on this and then but C-section here and you got to bounce around and

so section 12 wasn't provided to us. Is there anything in section 12 that's relevant then? Well, section 12 is the I guess the the proposed area the proposed conditions is the appendix C zoning regulations. The other part this whole thing is section 12. Yeah, that whole thing is section 12 except for the the red area on the bottom of the page. In addition to the provisions in this, you'll also have to abide by special use permit, right? And then special use permits is its own section. So that's where that would show up. So you've got

then on the special use permit. I mean I think the idea here was that they they would have off- streetet parking to accommodate folks. Is there a reason we wouldn't allow for on street parking? I mean should we say specifically special use permit but no customer parking uh on the streets should be permitted? Yeah, we can certainly strengthen that. I think we probably want that because that's probably the most likely thing that's going to generate complaints is people parking up and down the streets to go to the retail location. And then my last question is why have it terminate after four years? Thank you.

Well, I guess the my thinking was is I don't think we want to have this use continue. It's either at some point your business grows and you move to a district that is commercial. We don't want to have, at least my thing is, we don't want to just have this perpetual retail sales in the R1 district. And this is um some influence by Commissioner Milbour who had brought up at the meetings like you know residential is residential and if you come in a later date and you don't want that there you kind of negate some of the issues of why you have residential districts. Why four instead of six is there

there's no magic to that. I just figured you know if if you're going to make it and you're going to make it in four years if you we'll know by then if you're going to Okay. So if so there's no magic to that sense, can they just come back and apply again? They could reapply, but then they'd have to start all the way over with a special use permit. It's not a renewal at that point. It is not a renewal. If they're happy just having a little business there, then I'm not too sure about why we need the sun set up myself. But I mean I not causing any problems. I think the size of the building is going to limit whether the business gets bigger because they're not going to add on to the building.

And well, if there's complaints, you can always bring them up with with the right with the special use permit. If to me, if everything is going as planned, I don't see any reason to limit them. I would agree with that. I would agree with that. So that's kind that's kind that's kind of the object of a special use per in my opinion.

Okay. So I mean all the comments that Chairman Timberlin made I agree with but I'm just going to step back again at a 10,000 foot level and I honestly don't agree with having retail sales in a residential area. I mean staff's done a great job doing research. They looked at Gardener, looked at THAA. We're not out of line with our the stuff that we have on the books right now. So, I mean, if they had that stuff and they allowed retail sales, fine. Okay, we can make some adjustments. But, you know, you know, honestly, people are they have the right to private enjoyment of their property in residential areas, but you would also complain if it was an issue.

I understand. So, and that could pull their permit, correct? or bring it up for advisement. Yeah, I know. So,

but you know, also you got to think too myself, you know, if this goes through, my neighbor on either side of me has a right to have retail sales right beside me. So, you got to also think that, too. So, I mean, if this goes through, we got to be happy with our decision. We did allow retail sales in residential areas and I mean honestly that's the reason why we have planning and zoning is to keep these uses sep se separate and again I want to echo some of the comments that I had on the last meeting. I completely agree with this homeowner. I wish them the best of luck with their business. I do because I started my business out of my own home, too. And I I I'm really split on this because I agree with it, but I don't.

I think you're also kind of in ways thinking when my your business progressed, you had ultimately had to purchase a building and move out of your home. Yes. because it became to a a level where it was no longer I guess palatable for you and potentially your your clients to operate out of the house photography business at our house and we didn't want it to grow. We just wanted to do the local thing and just so we weren't in that that's allowed under our current code, right? Just having a Yeah, that's different than retail.

Wow. Okay. But all I mean this position I'm sitting right here as a planning commission member not a business owner or so I'm just doing my job. Maybe just to I hear exactly what you're saying. I'm I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea that there are certain things you don't want to have in a in a residential area and retail would be pretty much top of my list. Don't think I'd want it. I get it. That said, I think our job also is to respond to the needs of the community and to to see if there is a way we can facilitate it in in a way that's not going to be disruptive, right? Which is I think what we asked you to do and come back with some of a special use permit process.

Yeah. I I personally think this is the right way to address the issue. And you know, I I don't I don't see the community clamoring about it. Sure, is this going to open the door? It's possible, but you got 300 square feet they're working with. So, you're not going to be able to open a large retail establishment in the neighborhood. It's not a mini Walmart. It's probably going to be more like the hobbyist who wants to do this, call it a business, what it is. And so, to me, this isn't isn't offensive. My my question about the four years is just it's it's a random date.

I don't know whether four is appropriate. I do agree with your idea that if it is successful, they probably should move to someplace where they can do it more effectively, but I think you're going to find people that are do this just because they really love doing it and it's just their hobby. Yes. So, it's more of a hobby retail, I suppose. Should we permit it or not? Other cities say no. I totally get that. Um, but I think we do have at least a need in the community for people who want to try to find way well and they want to make some extra money with some of these things. So, on the business being successful and putting it in a different place. They've looked at places in town. There is no place that's affordable.

Well, that that doesn't help me with that issue. Places in town and there's Yeah, I mean merely because there's no other option that's affordable in town. So, I'm going to go ahead and direct my own shack and that doesn't make me want to do it. Well, that brings up a point. Are we going to Does this building, whatever building they do, does that have to meet codes as far as Well, that was going to be my question about emergency vehicles or ADA or anything along those lines, does that trigger accessory buildings are pretty wide open in this town? Yeah, they really are. So, it doesn't have to meet codes or anything? Well, they we would have some basic fire safety codes certainly that would have to be met.

You know, we have to have your fuse box and all those things inspected. and they've identified things that they need to change and they're more than willing to do that. Well, that's good. But I'm talking about for anybody else that comes up and might want because I think you do raise a good point on that the ADA accessibility. Maybe that's something we add to,

you know, I first of all, I like the idea and we're going I'd like to try to figure out a way to make it work. I just want to make sure with echo what Linda said is if we're going to open up the box, we should probably make sure that it's well defined. Which also brings me to the point, what about, you know, little farm stands that are popping up and flower stands and people are selling produce and stuff on the sides? Is that all where does that fall into? Is that something that's going to require a special use permit or where is this stuff coming from? because that could be the same thing. People are going to I've seen several things where people are selling baked goods and different things along the side of the road. Do I mean where does this get considered?

Yeah. Well, that's also going to take a little more research because you do see I see those as well. Some of them are you know on the honor system they just have a Yes. little they're trying to help little building and they grow tomatoes and cucumbers and to me I I don't consider that a home occupation but if they're bringing in fruit from Georgia and selling it by the side that's different probably from their own selling from their own garden. I don't know that I guess you consider that a home occupation. Okay. So it's still putting up a stand though if they make a little stand and put it up next to the Well, if they're going to erect a stand and I think it's potentially an issue. I would agree. I'm talking about I'm seeing them with a little stand on wheels so they can move them around.

Well, moving around is that they're in a permanent structure. I mean, I I You're good with that. I don't think somebody who's going to put up a lemonade stand and use a cardboard. No, I don't mean is a problem. No, no, no. I'm not talking about lemonade. But I mean, whether they're selling tomatoes or lemonade, it's something they take in every night. But if they don't take it in at night and they're not and they're stocking it, that's my thing. I would agree. That's an issue. So, but I also don't think it's permitted. Well, that's what we're I'm trying to open that up for conversation right now. We're talking about these type of things and allowing a little building. Would this be applicable as well?

I think the produce stand u we do have there's a separate provision in the code for street vendors, vendors like that that addresses those temporary um they do have to get a permit. There's a pro there's a license application for those. Uh there's size restrictions. Um it those are addressed separately. Okay. Even if it's on their own property and it's not public property. Okay. Um that question, let me do a little reading. I might have to answer. Okay. Yeah. They're separate. This is after a couple. Sure.

No, go ahead. Um yeah, with this um I just wonder so are we going to have an acreage limitation in order to apply or just keep it keep it wide open? That's one question I have for bringing this back. So I think to a certain degree the minimum off- streetet parking including two spaces plus one for an employee probably takes out the small lot from that because they've got eight parking spots. Yeah. So I mean I think do we need another restriction on top of that?

No I just throwing it out there. Would we limit it to you know you have to have suffic minimum acorage before you can even do this. But maybe not, you know, we can just address it. But then um secondly, I wonder if limiting it to an accessory building no larger than 300 square feet is going to be a problem from the standpoint of the the uh resident that um we talked to, you know, before we pursued this text amendment. At one point, he talked of putting that small building inside a large building than he has on the property. And I just that made me think that, you know, particularly larger acreage properties, I could see them having a larger accessory building that maybe they just want to use part of it for a home business. So, um it just seems like under this language, even if you were just leaving using corner of that building. You couldn't do it because your your building's over 300 square feet.

Well, at the city council meeting, didn't the mayor mention like a five or six acre uh limit on it? Yeah, I think one of the suggestions was some limit in that in that range. I can't remember. Yeah, I brought that up. 10 acres. seemed like that would because if I remember right at the meeting they said if they did that the five or six acres that would limit to possibly like 18 properties in the city in that zoning category if I remember correctly. Yeah, you narrowed it down quite a bit

and a lot of them are in that neighborhood. I I actually kind of like that because I I feel like that partially addresses Justin's concern, too. It helps with the concern. You're not easy to please. So, helps helps is good on this issue. I'm still not real thrilled about the the sunset thing on there, but No, never mind. I know I know what Missy's intention is. It's a micro boutique in honor of her mother. I don't think she

think outside the box. We're not focusing on that. We're thinking out. We've got to keep everybody in mind for this. Could we tie it to a Go ahead. Could Could we tie it to a zoning? This R zoning.

See any reason why not? We talked about that and just to for discussion like I could see this any residential area someone wanting this so it seems like if we limited it to two zonings and someone you know would it be worth reszoning or I could see them saying well you know if it's allowed in one residential zoning district what's the justification for not allowing in all res I would size lot size. Well, then stick with the lot size limitation if that's what you want to do.

So, if they're going to have to do off straight parking, is this going to meet city standards for commercial parking? Well, that's a good point. I hadn't thought about that, but we do allow campers, things like that just to be hard surfaced, which can be compacted gravel. So that my thinking was compacted gravel counts as off- streetet parking, but we might have to put that. I want to clarify that. Yeah. Mhm. And and if you do not allow on straight parking, does that mean there's no parking in front of these houses?

Not customer parking is the thing I was saying. Sounds like an administrative nightmare. Well, if it becomes a complaint, it becomes a problem, then you have a way to deal with it. I guess that's all I was trying to give it. Give you a tool. Yeah. I guess my only fear and you know once again you can slice this up you want but then the resident parks their vehicles on the street and then they say oh I got parking in my driveway so I meet the requirement I wasn't shopping I was at my friend's house

so you're right Commissioner Huggin there the more we try to shoehorn this in there does make it more difficult for staff to try to enforce. So you're this is a discussion item. Did you have enough discussion to bring something else back? Yeah, we can certainly the things that you've talked about the necessarily reach consensus on anything.

Yeah, but I do think things about maybe putting in there must be practical building codes. I think I do think the ADA requirement is something that needs to be likely included and then you know the pave parking potentially you can have that discussion whether it needs to be compacted or it needs to be actual concrete or asphalt and consider a minimum acreage requirement. Did we come to a conclusion on sunsets yet or where are we going to go with that? I would like to see the sunset go away. Well, and that's the other thing. If you're going to require them to put all this upfront money,

probably need to extend that or potentially eliminate that. Uh, but then it becomes a, you know, sort of a perpetual right as long as they're in that spot, which I guess they still have to renew challenge for years. Commissioner Milurn, do they still have to renew every two years? And we could certainly have that requirement. I would say from my opinion, they'd have to renew every two years. Yes. Well, so they don't have a sunset date and they have to renew every two years. If they have complaints, then we've got an option to address it. Right. And if you're limiting it to a certain lot size and larger, you're already going to narrow down the selection quite a bit of what eligible Yeah, I would agree.

Yeah. Okay. If it's if it's not transferable to subsequent owners, right? They haven't had an issue with that either. Yeah. Okay. Are we good? I am. Maybe. We'll see you next time. Well, then let's talk goats. Okay. Item 7A.

All right. Yeah, we've got some interesting discussions to going tonight. Um, so we've talked about I guess we haven't talked about formula at a meeting, but I'm sure you're all aware there's a couple of goats that have been as a resident at 8510 WEA Street. Apparently, they've been there for several years and nobody really noticed. I mean, I guess people knew I knew city some members of the staff kind of thought it was cute that there is some goats and didn't really think twice about it. But at a council meeting, we mayor received a complaint about the goats and a lot of our policies are complaint driven. So we looked into it. Sure enough, there's a couple goats there. And if you look at our current policy, goats are considered livestock and they're not allowed in tracks less than two acres. And interestingly, this did come up before the planning commission. I think Commissioner Lane was the only member still on on the planning commission, but we did recommend and it was adopted that livestock because we do have policies you can have cows and horses and all sorts of things in Dodto but you have to have the amount right amount of acreage plan commission at that time felt like goats were livestock I mean they're not pets that you bring into the house and those need to be on have a minimum acreage requirement now of course there is a lot of information out there says goats don't need a lot of acreage age and you've got that information from Douglas County that was part of the packet that I gave out last about seven or eight years ago that shows that you can have goats on less than that. And then of course we did receive a lot of information from the property owners and also surrounding members that support the goats being here in Bodto uh that uh

you can have goats on quite a bit less than 2 acres. So so this also puts us in this sort of where we want to accommodate our residents and and once again no harm no foul. Nobody seems to think that the goats are a problem. They're not. I guess as Commissioner Tempson probably had to look this up, but goats bleet. Is that right? You obviously don't get much internet use because there are videos of goats bleeding all over.

Okay. So, we have not had, you know, noise problems or odor problems or goats getting out problems. So, they're pretty happy and content where they're at and what they're doing. So that kind of gets that whole no harm no foul kind of approach or do we you know talk about hey rules are rules and that's our job to establish these lines and so you can see I have the information from the nexa and goats are not allowed they're considered livestock and can't have them in residential districts small but residential districts and the interesting thing about Dotto's old town area. There are some larger lots in those areas, too, that are over an acre. So, you could still probably figure out a way to do it. Uh, so that's kind of where we're at with this. And then I guess what Patrick and we talked about then the suggestion in your staff report is to once again put a time frame on it. If you don't declare your goat with a written permit of some sort, we probably charge a dollar or something very insignificant and say you're declaring we've got a goat and you've got a certain goat's uh certain amount of time and then they do need to conform to the policy. So there's they'll be essentially grandfathered into the community. So you can see there's a lot of support for our goat friends in Dodto. But um is this once again a policy decision we want to make to allow livestock in residential districts? Small lot residential districts and typically small lot in Dninnesota is not I don't know if it's specifically defined but one acre or less than an

acre because you have to have to have a septic system you have to have one acre of buildable property. So that's kind of where we draw the line is at the one acre mark. However, the planning commission seven or eight years ago said two acres for livestock. And so that's kind of where we're at now. And once here we are back trying to thread the needle on how to approach this because the council's once again asked the planning commission to study this and make a recommendation. I just want to know if these are really the goats. Are these the goats? They're very good looking goats. They're cute little goats.

I didn't I didn't know how you got them to pose for a picture. They're very well behaved goats. I know they're referenced as livestock, but they really are my pets. They are They're very good pets. Yeah. Yeah. Which brings me to the point that I don't like the after three years they've got to get rid of them because they are pets. Nobody wants to get rid of their pets. And if they haven't been causing a problem before, I'd like to put it back so that you know if they do become a problem and something changes, we could have some recourse, but I don't like to put a deadline on it myself. But three years seem pretty random. I don't know if that was

I don't want a deadline in there at all because if they're your pet, nobody wants to have to get rid of their pet unless they're obviously their pets. So that's my feeling. Okay. My other suggestion is that um and there again, we're not just talking about this specific case. We're talking about anybody else that might want to do it. So, I'd like to see more information put on there about um the owner of the animals shall not allow animal waste to gather and remain on the premises. I've had those before and I know if you don't take care of them that can get a little clean, messy. So they'd be responsible for making sure their conditions are sanitary and no objectionable odors and make sure they're properly contained because if they do get out sometimes they like to climb on things. So

can I make a comment?

Go ahead. So just to be clear on this, our entire objective here was to protect these goats at this location. So we're essentially saying that if you have goats that are not the pygmy goats and there is some trouble with the language. The language I had given to Brad says goats but excluding the breed Nigerian pygmy since they're addressed elsewhere. But anyway, um the thought being that um and that's why I asked the question at the council meeting. Are we aware of any other goats um in town? Because these goats are I mean they're large animals and uh it does seem to be the consensus of the council and it sounds like the planning commission we don't want to disrupt what is already there. Um but the problem that we have to get our head around is um goats generally speaking there has to be two goats. So in this situation if we pass this revision they would be protected but then what do you do if one of these goats dies and the property owner wants to buy a second goat to keep the first goat company then it would perpetuate. So, you know, if we can figure out a way to address that, I think um you know, we could solve. But again, this was geared towards this property, towards these goats because our thought was that the size of these goats, you probably they're probably just not conducive to, you know, small res.

So, can you clarify the three-year um verbiage in here? Are you saying that they have we they would just have to reapply after three years or says they'll be removed? Well, that's what I'm I don't That kind of contradicts what Patrick was saying was like Yeah. So, I'm just kind of wondering. Yeah. No, and I don't know if Brad has done that.

My thought was we would talk to the owners and figure out like I don't even know thevious, you know, how long goats live, but obviously Since we're crafting this for this property, we want to make sure whatever we do works for the property owner and certainly I'm willing to talk through with them, you know, like for example, the size of the shed. I don't, you know, we want to make sure it matches up with whatever shed they have there. So, so anyway, I think definitely that's a step we need to take is talk to the owners and then The trouble we were having is just how do we address that one goat dies then do you just allow the one goat um not any new goats or do you allow another replacement goat

so Patrick is this specific we are not really talking about making any changes we're just talking about this specific case period well the change would be to allow this specific case because you have to have goats in the city by certain date. I'm I know. Yeah, we would have a few changes and I one thing that did come up is this whole dehorning thing. I I do agree with a lot of the information that's been presented that we probably ought to take that out of the requirement if you're going to have a Nigerian pygmy goat or a miniature goat. But dehorning's bad for them. Yeah, it's just it's if they have the space to roam Yeah. They're okay.

So, and part of this comes from with zoning. You can't stop. So, we couldn't pass a regulation saying, you know, this address is zoned to have go to allow you can't do that. So, but what Kansas cases have said you can do is what's set out here where you you indicate that essentially this use on X date and that's what we're doing. If you Yeah. So, if there is another property owner in the city that we don't know about that has the same goats, they could take advantage of this, but our understanding is there is not. So essentially it is just so we're basically grandfathering them in these people. Yes.

All right. Yeah. And not making any other changes except the dehorning. Sounds like it. So there's no Well, what about the deadline for having the goats? It's an inherent I guess. Yeah, it would be. I mean, obviously we're going to be we know where those goats are, so it's not any kind of mystery, but uh is that was that and now we we could require them to just put a little affidavit and sign it and say, "I've got two goats at this address, and their names are Kevin and Steve." And

the proposal is permitted for a one-time period of three years. So, I don't think it's designed to be like a renewable special use permit or anything. No, it was not. What's the life expectancy of a goat? About 40. About 40. Say a lot longer than three. They're hardy animals. How old are they now? Three. What if we had a permit that said that you wouldn't be able to replace one if you lost one? That's that's tough because what do you do with the other one? You know what it's going to happen? is they'll start acting up and there's only one left. All it's going to do is try to escape.

Yeah. They'll make noises, all kinds of stuff. Yeah. I don't It sounds like a three-year permit doesn't help you much. Larry, if you don't mind, would you mind for the record coming and give us your name and so we can get your comments on here? Larry Baxter. I live at 8510 WEA Street, the goat residence. Right. Thank you.

So, they're pygmy goats and they're which are allowed on the two acres, which I did not look at when we bought them. I looked at are they allowed in the city? Yes. So, we got the two goats. Well, we got one and it was a gift, so we got the other one because you have to. And we've had them for It's going to be coming up on four years. It's, you know, we passed the three-ear mark, but we're we're getting there. Uh, and we never had a problem with them. Our all our neighbors watch them. They enjoy them. People come take pictures with them. It's it would just be devastating for us to lose them or move.

So Larry, there was a question about whether these goats are actually pygmy goats, and I don't know if that just has to do with definitions or not. They absolutely are. One's a Nigerian dwarf, which is actually smaller than a pygmy, and the other one's a miniature. Okay. Lamacha. So, is that distinction something we might be able to get away do away with? Well, Nigerian pygmy goats, but we'll make an exception to that as opposed to opening up a category for all goats that aren't Nigerian pygmies because apparently you think they are. Yeah, they are. Okay. So, Larry, can you explain I guess I'm not familiar with goats at all. I'll be honest with you. So, what happens if if you only have one? What What happens with the other goat?

That Well, they're considered a herd animal. So, if It's going to look for another one somewhere. Okay? You know, they're like cattle. Cattle do the same thing. So, when we bought that first one, first thing it did is get out. Okay. So, we bought the other one. Never had a problem since. So, you need two regardless. And I'd like to say something on the horn thing, too. You know how your dog pants when it's hot? That's how a goat releases its heat in the summer is through its horns. I didn't know that. Okay. Wow.

It's a little more devastating to dehorn them than one would think. Got it. So, how much do these goats weigh? Between 40 and 50. Same as my dog. The same big dog. Under 23 in or Yes. They I mean they they eat. It's all they do. So they're almost as wide as they are tall. So I think I heard you correct. You said these goats will live 40 years, right? They're it's coming up on it's somewhere. It's close to four years. But they'll live how long? 40 years. 40. Yeah. Yeah.

They can. I'm not saying they all do, but Yeah. So this weight limit we've got is yeah they fall under that they fall we fall under everything but the two acres and which if you look I don't know if it's on these but a pygmy goat only needs 200 square foot. Yeah I think that the acreage is is a noise issue. Yeah. And most pygmy goats and minis are that there's no screaming minis or pygmies, you know, they ba a little bit and only when she comes outside.

So, do they graze or do you feed them grain? We grain hay. They got their own They got a almost 200 square foot house and then there's a separate little hay bin and they do great. They Yeah. I don't have to pick up leaves in the back. Could we borrow them? Yeah, it's I don't weed eat the fence either. Oh, please. Here. Thank you, Larry. Anybody else have questions for Larry? Thank you. Thank you.

So, um, you know, it seems to me that as a discussion item, this is probably what we can do tonight, but, um, I I would encourage staff to go back and kind of see if what what's being proposed is even workable for this situation. Sounds to me like a three-year time limit may or may not necessarily satisfy this particular, and I don't know what the right answer is. I mean, I I think replacing if you lose one I understand the wisdom of replacing them but you kind of perpetuate it then and that the product of the problem is this is a special deal that's basically because you have an existing use that you know hasn't been objectionable

but letting it proliferate could be a problem and so you kind of have to think about how that's going to work and you know I it would seem to me that the the most reasonable solution on that would be that you have the goats but you're not allowed to replace them so when you lose one place or the other one. But that would be my take on it. And maybe there's a better solution. I don't know what it would be, but I think allowing it to perpetuate indefinitely is probably a a potential problem. So, I I certainly would encourage staff to try to come up with something that works, but three years sounds like short.

Yeah, I don't like that at all. Could we do something like a special use thing on here so that if you know as long as there's no complaints they could um maybe for the replacement code if they want to do a replacement then I'll just because I don't like the idea but even then I mean it's it's an awfully special deal that they're doing for you and other people in the city are like well why are you doing this for Larry and not for me it's like well that that's a problem. It's a tough balancing act, but I do get the idea. Does anybody have any real desire to fight about whether dehorning is important? No. No, not at all. Okay.

Especially with his explanation, you know, that I get it. Be like making you or I were a stocking cap in the middle of summer. Hey, you know, not a good call. Any other discussion on this or do you feel like you got what you need, Brad? You need something more from us? Got enough to get us through the next meeting at least. We we look anxiously anticipate discussing goats again. Well, I was also thinking and it doesn't I mean it's interesting. We've got this mural with a big goat on it. So, we ought to try to find a way to sort of we're sort of advertising it. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Item 7B, discuss culde-sacs streets. Thank you, chair. Now, this is another interesting item that's come up because we had several um property owners approach myself about culde-sac lengths. And this is where

just need to note that Commissioner Milurn. [Laughter] So, two of the uh locations are large lot tracks on the east side of Dotto. As you can imagine, if you're you got 20, 30, 40 acres and you want to do large lots by the time you weave a road back there and if you don't have the you know, as you know, Dotto's rather hilly out east and it makes it hard to make connections to our road network and so you have a culde-sac in there. It makes it it only limits you can only go so far. I guess the thing in my mind was like if you've got, you know, a minimum of one acre, two acre, maybe even three, four acre lots, I mean, how much traffic is it really going to be? We have that requirement because if something happened, fire engine's trying to get there and who knows, somebody panics and something happens, car flips over and now the fire truck can't get to where it's supposed to go. Stranger things have happened. So that's why those types of requirements are there. We and when we have the fire code says anything that have more than 30 residents you have to have two access points. So those are why those are in place because there are situations where you for safety reasons and human health reasons you have these codes and restrictions. So, but when you think about a large lot subdivision, how many is that point? You could have 30 lots on a tract on a single culde-sac or less and probably not have any kind of issues. And we actually do have several areas in the eastern part of Dodto that exceed our actually in the RORO district, we have a thousand feet is what we have for

We don't have any that exceeds that, do we? Yeah, we do. Really? There's a few. I mean, not much. I mean, there's 1,600. One's like almost 2,000. By the time you wind there, what's that? They only have like two or three houses in there, do they? Yeah. If you know where that Taylor Court area is, and then there's I think Broome Drive also has a culde-sac that goes back quite a ways. It kind of turns left. The Ravenswood area up there, that's up on top of the hill. Those all exceed 1,000 feet. Suppose that's true because it goes down and it has a T and it goes down again.

So, you've got some of those situations and and certainly in denser subdivisions, you know, like Arbor Ridge or uh Primrose area that, you know, we've got a 500 foot max on those gold sack lengths and that's for that reason. I guess the other thing is she the D ripples here. She's one of the land owners that have been talking to me about this is there they have a concept of a sort of a family communal farm and the first 400 ft is roughly going to be part of this communal farm. So they're going to have 400 feet where they're burning up that distance of their culde-sac. There won't be any residents there. So they're kind of penalized a little bit for wanting to come up with this unique approach to allowing large lot subdivision. So looking at our code and I went through and talked to Patrick about it. I mean we do have the some clauses and a lot of this is this is just a lot of it's just for your information because I think there's at least my interpretation of reading it. And I went and talked to Patrick about is this right that the planning commission can approve Culac lengths longer than 1,000 ft for the RORO district and other districts actually. But they've got to talk to city engineer, city staff, I mean the fire chief. There's a lot of checks and balances. And a lot of times by the time you get through those, if we don't agree and they still want to push at the planning commission, generally speaking, you've you've backed up city staff and said, "No, we're going to allow our professionals that we have here in the city's recommendation to stop that process." So most of the time when we have these discussions with developers and we say your culac's too long or something like that, they'll make arrangements and changes. Now the other location that has come up where

this comes into play is the Mr. Goodsense property owner there has some plans for developing potentially storage units farther down what used to be good Mr. good sense to drive. I think it's 91st Street Joe Bone. And sure enough, if you go any much farther than what he has now, you're blowing past that 500 foot distance and you've got self storage down there. I mean, they're just not heavily used. You know, a lot of times they're kind of the few times that I've had to use them when I went to my unit. I mean, I didn't see a soul out there and I'd be there in a you'd think a Saturday afternoon people would be getting stuff out of their units or whatever and there's nobody there,

you know. So, um, so that's kind of the the other issue is because we've got in this instance a very deep a narrow but fairly deep lot has the ability for utilities, the electricity, the water, the sewer, everything's there. But if you have this rule that says, "I'm sorry, 500 feet and you're done." All of a sudden, Joe Bazone's got several acres back there he can't do anything with. And you know, when I've looked at different culde-sac lengths around, I mean, they vary. They really do. Once again, we talk about arbitrary numbers where it's three years, two years, two-year rollovers for special use permits. You know, what there's somebody that's got one that's completely odd and different. I've seen them up to almost 1,800 ft. So, one I remember was 1320 ft. And I'm like, well, how in the world did they come up with these different lengths? And to me, it really boils down to it's kind of that fire safety issue. I was my thinking was initially was you could have 1500 foot long culde-sac in the RO district, which with you have a 100 foot frontage, you can get 30 homes and that's it. So he would still meet the 30 or less for the single access point. But then when I kind of looked at this and talked to Patrick, his his thinking was the way the code's written, planning commission can approve longer than that. So at this point, I guess I'm just trying to bring this up because this is kind of swirling around out there. Um, we might very well have a preliminary plat or a site plan that shows this and just want to sort of bring you up to speed on what's what we're thinking is could be a challenging issue because we are kind of going against some of the norms out there. But on the

other hand, if the use itself is going to be very low intensity and low travel, is that necessarily the right approach to saying, "I'm sorry, 500 ft and I don't care if you've got 25 acres of developable light industrial ground. You can't get to it." or 40 acres and you want to do a communal farm and you've used up half of your length through the farm area which is sort of your drawing for this whole development is to have this kind of approach to to living. So, um

well, it's not the 40 acre track that's the issue because typically a 40acre track you'd probably build some kind of internal traffic flow with that, right? Yeah, you're right. But the thing is when you look at when you look at some of these tracks and the way they're all shaped and you know the terrain and with Kill Creek and Cedar Creek and Captain's Creek, you just can't get to them. You just can't make it work. Yeah.

And so either they're going to sit there vacant in perpetuity or we allow some sort of access point. I mean, we went through that whole thing with that private development. um they've got potentially five lots on their their their private drive goes well below beyond 1,000 feet because it's 1,000 feet up to their gate and then they go back. So

once again, this is just my thinking of trying to find a way where we can get something going on the east side of DInnesota knowing there's probably never going to be sewers. We'll never have dense development there. So you want to give property owners or people that have creative ideas like Miss Dal Rimple to hey let's do something back here. Let's kind of find a interesting approach that can make Dodto have another type of living style type of aspect of our community that makes us more unique rather than just cookie cutter subdivision subdivision, you know, Office Park, Home Depot, Walmart subdivision, you know, etc. So, are you feeling that the variance opportunity doesn't give staff enough to kind of work with these folks?

Not necessarily going to the BCA because one of the things the criteria and also Commissioner Lane's on the BCA so she gets to hear all this again. But if the applicant brings the request, that's really kind of a Well, this isn't a BZA variance. This would be a variance granted. Oh, okay. All right. So, I was thinking that. All right. No. So you mean the planning commission can now we have that that you have that ability. That's not adequate to address this.

No, I think it is adequate in my thinking. But I just right now this is just bringing up because if we showed up tomorrow with a 1,800T culde-sac I think you'd probably all of you would say are you out of your mind? What are you doing? Well I I wouldn't if it's a unique to utilize property that otherwise wouldn't be utilized. I I have faith that my fellow commissioners would see logic in that. But if you're telling me that we need to make a rule,

no, I don't think we actually I don't think we need to change anything. I think I'm just bringing this up because we've got three applica or three pending applications that are going to show up and they're going to have more than a fairly significant length of culde-sac which might be a little I don't know maybe a little disturbing odd. It's just I mean for for me it has a lot to do with a lot more to do with how many units are being built on that coite and you know I live in Oak Country and we've had times where one of the access points is closed and you'd have thought the world had ended.

So I I can't even imagine living in a long culde-sac and having the only way out to be that particular road and and certainly if you got 25 homes that's a whole lot of people that got to get out. So, you know, I my reservation would be a lot more with the density you're putting on that cold sac, but that's me. But that Yeah, but that's our, you know, the fire coats is 30 units or less. Yeah. 29 would probably be too many for me if you got an 1800T cul. Yeah. But you're talking about that point, you know, you might have 150 ft of frontage per lot. So, I mean that's pretty spread out.

Also, there may be more than one way to address that and you might be able to do something where you can actually create or something else points of access. I don't know. I mean, I I I personally love the fact that Dotto has the ability for people to do unique housing that is not cookie cutter. Absolutely.

I think it's great. I think that's that's part of the attraction of the town and I don't want to discourage that. That said, my concern is that the more we're doing this, the more we're creating small lot size front footage and those kinds of things, the more we're actually creating ways for us to create two intense developments for the areas that we really have traditionally enjoyed having a large areas to work with. And so, you know, that that'll be where my my flag gets raised on this is where somebody's trying to squeeze in a 30 unit subdivision on a culde-sac just because it's cheaper than actually building two points of access. So, that that's going to be my problem.

Yeah. Well, the two applicants I've talked to that want to do these large lots, I don't think their issue is trying to squeeze in as many lots. Yeah. They want to have as many as they can, but they're not they're not overdoing it. They're not showing up with, you know, 29 or 30 units. They're significantly less than that, but one of them at 1,000 ft and two 200 foot little spurs off of there. So, it's, you know, one of them is 1,200 ft. I was like, well, you know, that's kind of outside the bounds. It's of what we would typically approve for the RO district. And then as I start looking into this, well, the planning commission has the ability to approve that. Now, we would have obviously Joe's input with fire marshal Cameron's input, Chief Maxton's input, myself, Mike's before we would even Yeah, we would definitely uh uh move forward with a recommendation that city staff agreed with before we would and if it were a split vote between city staff, it's not going anywhere.

I don't have a problem with that. What do you guys think? I I think I would probably look at the nature of the project. You know, if there's a,

you know, because even the fire marshall requirement for 30 lots on one entrance, I don't think would apply if there's a future second. Not that it's built at the time, but so if a piece of property has options and and the resident for whatever the developer for whatever reason doesn't want to utilize that option, that's when I would probably be more inclined to restrict that.

Right. And that's what we required with that Countryside Farms was we gave them one access point, but they widened the road and they showed a future access point on 95th Street. But some of these lots may not be able to because of the nature of the east side. There isn't something near to just say, "Hey, we're going to tie in over here." You just can't get there. Essentially, if it makes the entire property and not the entire property, it makes using the entire property unusable. because there's no alternative for access then that's the time I would say yeah I would support Mark speaks for me okay

sounds good and I expect that the planning commission will be reasonable at that so I I don't have a real problem with that doing it by variance unless you're telling us that in order to do what staff needs to do with these we need to to change that requirement uh of the the thousand foot limitation I mean to me if it's more than thousand feet we ought look at it because it's a special case. Makes sense to me. So anyway, I all this to say stay tuned because it's it's swirling around out there. It may not amount to anything, but I wanted you all to be informed as to Okay,

what we talk about at the staff level quite a bit of time. Want to grab Justin? I believe that concludes the published agenda. Anything anybody wants to talk about? I have a question. Did Did Dustin talk to you about using that property that he just got reszoned to give him another access point to the apartments? Yeah, we did talk about that in L. I was thinking the same thing. Yes. And that was part of his plan when I talked in that way on the plat, right?

Yeah, it is. It is. And we did talk about that with it had a preliminary layout for the storage units and it had a access from Commerce Drive into the residences of Lexington. Anybody else have gripes, complaints? [Laughter] Our troublemakers. You're You're the one who wants to go by the rules. Better hurry. Yeah. Make sure to get two with that. Then I think we take a motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjurnn. Second. Moved and second. And we're jjourn.