Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

It is 1:00. I will call this meeting of the Douglas County Planning Commission to order and note the absence of Vice com Vice Chair Bryce Klutz. Kirk, will you lead us in the pledge of allegiance, please? I to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. It is now time for opening public comment. Public comment is limited to three minutes per speaker on matters over which the planning commission has jurisdiction. The planning commission wants to encourage respectful consideration of all views by a member of the public. If content is disruptive, disrespectful, irrelevant, or offensive, the individual will be asked to stop speaking. Public comment will also be taken on agenda items that are identified for possible action and we will have closing public comment. I will now open public comment. Please sign the roster. Say your name for the record into the microphone. First speaker, please don't all rush to the microphone at once. Seeing no one rise, I will close public comment. And now we will move to approval of the agenda. Does anyone have any changes? Seeing none, do we have a motion?

Move to approve the agenda. We have a motion by Lori and a second by Dan. All those in favor? I I motion passes unanimously. And now we have approval of the minutes. Does anyone have corrections? Seeing none, do we have a motion? I'll move to approve the minutes. Second. Motion by Jim, second by Lori. All those in favor? I.

And please note that Bryce is absent for both. Item one, are there any disclosures? This will be for possible action. Discussion of a major variance application DP25-0141, a request to reduce the westside yard setback from 7 ft to 0 ft for a 534 square ft second story addition above an existing garage located at 239 engine house circle in the R-058 residential zoning district in the Glen Brookke plan area of the Daho region. The applicant is Neielson Separate Property Trust 20007 and the applicant's representative is Keith Rubin, Wilson Engineering, APN 1418-10-710-074. Kate Morales O'Neal presenting some more. I'm going to ask, are there any disclosures?

None. Kate, please continue.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And for the record, Kate Moris O'Neal uh planning department. I am here um representing uh Lou Lucille Rayo. She is on vacation, so I am doing this item for her. I did anticipate the applicant to a representative to be here today. Um but they have requested a continuence. So we are asking the planning commission members um for a continuence. uh no dates specific. I think they do anticipate December, but without the confirmation from the applicant representative, I would just ask for a continuous at continuance at this time. Okay. Since this is for possible action, uh we don't have to open this for public hearing or anything, do we?

AJ HS for the record. Yes, Madam Chair, I would uh suggest you do open it since it is for possible action and it sounds like this the recommended action is going to be a continuence that is still sufficient action uh to warrant public comment. Okay, I will open this for public comment. Is there anyone here? Seeing no one rise, I will close public comment and bring it back to the board. Are there any questions? Dan, I'll move continuence. Is there a second? I'll second that.

We have a motion by Dan, a second by Jim to grant the continuence. All those in favor? I. Motion passes. And once again, Bryce Klutz is absent. Thank you, Kate. And we will move on to item two for possible action. Discussion on major variance application DP24-000025 requesting two variances arising out of a boundary line adjustment involving two abuing parcels. Parcel one is located at 1321 Highway 50 and parcel 2 is located at 1323 Highway 50. The first request is to maintain an existing encroachment into the side setback of parcel 2 with the encroachment ranging from 4'8 in to 4t 10 in. The second request is to reduce the size of parcel 1 from 634 square ft to 439 ft and increase the size of parcel 2 from 2900 square ft to 4986 ft. The subject parcels are located in the R-063 residential zoning district in the Lincoln plan area of the Tahoe region. The applicant is Phil Gillanfar of Gillanfar Architecture and the owner of both parcels is the Talibi family trust 2013 as Talibi and Mo Mosan Tibbe. Excuse me for butchering that. Trustees APN's 1418-27-43-005 parcel 1 and 1418-27-43-006 parcel 2 Linda Dohy presenting are there any disclosures

Madam Chair I'd like to make a disclosure I've known Mr. Gillanfar and worked with him and we our children have played sports together and music together um for over 30 years. So I wanted to disclose close to 40 years. Thank you sir. Um so I wanted to disclose that that past relationship. Will it interfere with your ability to make a pair a fair vote? Uh no ma'am it will not. I have no financial interest in this or in his uh business. Are there any other disclosures? Seeing none, Linda, you may continue.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, planning commissioners, everyone here today. Linda Doherty, assistant planner, uh Douglas County for the record. Um today we're going to be discussing major variance application DP24-000025 uh two abuing parcels under the same ownership um located at 1321 and 1323 Highway 50. I'm going to pull up. These are just uh to show the homes on the parcels in question. Let me see if I can make it a little bigger. Okay. Um, that doesn't really help you with the variance though. Let me go to see here. There we go. What I'm going to show you right now is the the two lots. Um, I apologize. The pink is a little hard to see, but the pink indicates the current configuration. So, this is parcel two on top. You can see it's narrow. And then the yellow indicates um the proposed boundary lines uh for both parcels uh through a boundary line adjustment if the variance is approved today. Okay. So, the purpose of the major variance, um, there are a couple of parts to it. Um, one is for the side setback for parcel 2. Um, the home, um, was built in 1946 and, uh, we obviously didn't have setback standards back then. So it

currently uh encroaches 4 foot8 to 4 foot 10 into the setback which today's standard is 7 feet. Um they also would like to add a third level towards the rear of the home not over the whole home but just towards the rear. And they are not asking to encroach any more than the house already does. Um and then the other part of the variance has to do with the lot sizes. They're both non-conforming in size for today's standards. Um, one of the parcels, parcel two, they would like to increase the size and then that would reduce the size of parcel one, but they would end up with two parcels that are similar in size so they could have average size homes on each parcel. Um, the house on parcel one will be torn down and then uh rebuilt. Okay. And so I'd like to introduce Mr. Gillan Far here. He's representing the owners and um he'll talk a little bit about the history and the findings. Do

I push a button? Yes. The one with the face.

Okay. Oh, thank you. Uh thank you, Linda, and uh the staff at Douglas County uh and and all of Tom's team. Um, we've worked through this uh over a year with the homeowners and excuse me, I'm Phil Gillanfar and I brought Kira with me. I I threatened to uh have her speak um for her inaugural opportunity and I I felt like this was the most the best place to be for that, but she she refused. Um anyway anyway, so we met the Talabi family. We worked on this idea for a couple of years. They have this really cute little the picture might have show shown it. The picture on the right is the little cottage or what they might call say the carriage house. I think most of us know this this little place has been there for a million years. If any anyone ever ate a burger at man Mandy's they probably Manny's they knew it was like just a few doors down from there. Um there's an existing cut in the in the front of the property which you you saw in the uh there you can see the garage is kind of tucked into the hillside. So the idea was to that they wanted to go forward with was to try to maintain and keep this carriage house which is the little house that's that's in in the second picture. And part of that was how do we incorporate a garage so that we can have some type of connection with the property there um in and keep the carriage house. Um the yellow house is fairly run down and in not in in good shape, but the garage gives us the ability to have a level garage from a TRPA standpoint. We're not over excavating because there's already an excavation there. So, it started to make sense that we combine this kind of L-shape um with the two properties. We discovered almost immediately the two properties were were not one was just at

the size it needs to be according to zoning. The other one was substantially smaller. I'm not really sure where that came from. Uh we I you know I'd like to do a little history trying to figure out kind of how did the property even get there in the first place. And we don't really know. There might have been another parcel just to the north of this property at one point. Maybe this was a larger parcel that got changed when the road was changed going into Cave Rock. We don't really know what the history was there with respect to that. But we looked at this and thought the the best thing to do is maybe divide this into two more equalsiz parcels even though both of them now would be somewhat non-conforming. So that's really the reason why we went forward, why we're going forward with this request on the lot change and the variance change for the lot sizes is really so that we can accommodate two equally sized properties. If we were to split the properties directly in half and take that pink line and just shift it down, then it would have made both parcels kind of more difficult to develop and it would have made it more difficult to utilize this preexisting condition of a cut off the highway. So that's really why we did that. Um you can see on the very top of the sheet there where the variance request is. It's it's really redu that's an existing condition. You can kind of see where the dotted line is there um of the house and then we're expanding to the rear to make the cottage a little bit bigger um but not further impacting the setback on the north side of the property. So, we went through um we've gone back and forth on a number of items and it's been uh really quite nice to work with Douglas County staff, especially Linda on this because we found a number of of things that we could kind of work through and find the best resolution. So, we are supportive of all the findings that we put together. We we wrote most of the findings, but I think Linda also helped

us kind of really enhance those and we support those and we support all the required conditions that are as part of the the um the variance request. So it I'm available for any questions. U but we'd appreciate your support on the variance requests.

Are there questions, Lori? So, um, in general, I think the idea is a good idea. So, I'm not questioning any of that, but I'm really confused by this exhibit here. So, we've got an existing house that's that little carriage house that is not connected right now to any garage. Yeah. Yeah. And I we don't have the exhibit of the kind of the existing site plan, but there there where the where it says existing garage now is in the first picture. It showed the garage with the yellow structure on top of it, right? That would essentially be removed. And then there is the carriage house which is up on parcel two,

right? Which you saw in the picture. There is a very odd We won't go in there, but there appears to be a tunnel. going over to the house, but it comes out in the basement of this little church house. So, yes, they're semiconnected, I guess. So, the existing garage over the I'm going to call it the yellow house and the tan house just for that purpose. So, the existing garage on the yellow house is staying and it will become the garage for the other. Yeah. So we so that was when we we just going through this process we determined that in order for the cottage house to have a garage. Yeah.

And otherwise we would be requesting a variance for no parking. I guess I don't know how else we do that. Um we decided we'd use this current excavation and link it to the carriage house which then allowed us to create a building area on the remaining parcel. The yellow house goes away. The garage becomes underground because we would just put a live roof on top of it essentially.

And then we can build now we can come up the easement that's on the south side of the yellow line. You can see the driveway going up to the ex to that parcel. That driveway already exists. So then that allows us to build a garage and a house which we have a concept plan for that that fits in there that uh we've already So the access to the yellow house garage is now off a curb cut on 50. Is that curb cut staying or is that going away and they're all accessing off this other one? No, this the the the current curb cut you see in the photograph would stay pretty much the way it looks now today except that instead of having this structure sitting on top of it

it would just be a glass a grass roof much similar to the one that's maybe about a mile further down that you can see just the garage door stuffed in the hillside. Okay. So we try to that way the house that sits on the upper parcel would not have something interfering with its view corridor etc. Okay. It also provides a little bit better setback from the visual aspect of this large structure sitting right on the highway. Right. Okay. All right. That helps because I was getting really back on this a more difficult one only because it's a difficult site. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That answers my questions.

Other questions, Jim? And as far as the neighbors, is there any comment from your neighbors that I know I read through the packet, but is there something that was brought up by any neighbors or questions they had?

Alinda Dhy for the record. Um, the parcels to the north and east are owned by Douglas County and then the parcel to the south is owned by the state of Nevada, but we did send noticing out to those across Highway 50 and um, we haven't received sorry we haven't received any comments from uh, mail, phone, or email. All right. Thank you. Lori, can you turn off your microphone? Anything else? Dan, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Does a tan house exist?

Yes, both both those structures exist today. Okay. So, the building area is where the where the tan house is. Yeah. This is the the cottage house is on the left, which is on parcel two, which is on the skinny skinny parcel to the north. And then you the yellow house that you saw on the next photo was parcel one there existing today. Thank you. If there are no other cl

Thank you madam chair. Um I did uh go by the property and look at it. it uh it's a very unique uh uh structures and uh uh elevations, lot sizes, uh access points. Um for people who are not familiar with it, it's right across from Cave Rock State Park and it's uh below uh I guess that's Cave Rock Estates that winds up in the hill. Um, so you I think successfully uh met some of the challenges and I I agree uh Linda that you uh accurately portrayed things in the staff report. It's making it less non-conforming uh which we try and do uh and also respect the property owner's right to uh uh do something uh that's constructive with the uh the the property and make it uh a good uh good neighborhood. uh the the noticing uh I'm glad Jim brought that up because I think that's important. Uh there is also a sign in the property noticing. So I think uh that uh that comports with what I uh always like to see. The one question I have I think uh maybe uh AJ you're the best person to answer this or Mr. Gillanfar if you're familiar with the history the the lawsuits that were included in our packet that uh occurred I believe in September of uh 2022. Um, I'm not uh not uh well-versed in the legal, but the way I interpret that is that was kind of a a necessary requirement that a lawsuit be filed. It wasn't a a question where the county was trying to block the uh property owners from doing what they wanted to do. Um, but can you clarify, AJ? Uh, we're all on the same page on this. that wasn't something that was a hostile action taken uh on either either side.

Yeah. AJ, for the record, I wasn't involved in this particular lawsuit, but it it appears to me to be fairly straightforward. The parties just needed a court order in order for the assessor to assign the parcel numbers. And so that's what happened. Thank you. Uh Mr. Gillanfar, your your comments on that. Yeah, that was the same recollection I had. It was it was a mechanism in order to drive that. There were two there were two underlying lots, but in order for the trigger to actually occur to to separate them with separate APN numbers, we went through that process or the homeowner went through that process. Thank you. I don't have any other questions, Madam Chair.

Anything else? This is for possible action. So, I will open it up for public comment. Seeing no one rise, I will close public comment and bring it back to the board. Are there any other comments? And I have to remind the commission that we are only concerned with the granting of variances. We're not cons to concern ourselves with the construction of the new home or the height of the new addition or anything else. So are there other comments regarding the variances? Seeing none, do we have a motion? it. We have a motion that was written for us in our packet on page 142. Madam Chair, I move that uh the planning commission approve major variance application DP24-000025 subject to the conditions in the staff report because the required findings are met.

Do you have a second? I'll second. We have a motion by Kirk, second by Lori. All those in favor? I. And Bryce is absent. Thank you very much. Thank you all. Appreciate it. And now it is time for closing public comment. I see no one rise. Kirk.

Uh, thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to make a closing comment at this time. Uh, I'd like to take a minute to congratulate our chair. Uh, earlier this month, uh, if you're not aware, Chair Casey was announced as the 2025 DBORE Excellence in Planning Citizen Planner Award by the Nevada chapter of the American Planning Association. Let me quote from their statement. Moren Casey is celebrated for her deep commitment to public service and her advocacy for land use planning. As a long-erving member of the state land use planning advisory council, she has also helped shape statewide planning policy while championing championing transparency and community involvement at the local level. So, congratulations uh Chair Casey. We appreciate your your diligent work both with the planning commission and the state plant land use uh organization. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm embarrassed now. It was very unexpected and and I am honored. Thank you, Kate, for the nomination. And I have a couple announcements. Uh BOCC will be having the first reading of the VHR ordinance that we worked on on Thursday and it'll be at the Tahoe Justice Court 175 Highway 50 at state line. While they will not be voting on it, they will be discussing it and taking testimony from the public. And then our November meeting, I believe we are having one. It will be on November 4th and it will be at 1 p.m. here. Are there any other comments from the commission? Nope. Okay, then this meeting is adjourned. Record time 1:25. Thank you all.