Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome, everyone. It's 530. Would you please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance?

I pledge allegiance 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.

Thank you, everyone. First on the agenda tonight is approval of the agenda We have one additional item that's been added to the agenda tonight. City Attorney John Huff will be speaking after the approval of the minutes. May I have a motion and a second to approve the amended agenda?

So moved.

Second.

All those in favor say yes. Yes. Opposed say no. Motion carries. Next on the agenda is approval of the minutes from the July 14, 2026 meeting. Are there any additions or corrections? If not, may I have a motion and a second to approve the minutes?

So moved.

Second.

All those in favor say yes.

Yes. Yes.

Opposed say no. Minutes are approved. Next, City Attorney John Huff will give us an update.

Well, this will be a short update. As you may know from what you've either seen on TV or read in the paper, Judge Quist ruled that the protest petition submitted by the residents was valid, which meant that there would now be a five vote required instead of a four. We will be meeting, we meaning city attorneys, with the city commission. We'll start that process a week from Monday because that's a regular city commission meeting. We'll have an executive session there. Unfortunately, three commissioners are going to miss that meeting, so we'll have to have a subsequent meeting as well where everybody will be included. The commission is the one that makes the decision on what happens next. We will be presenting them with a list of options, but we're not going to be in a position to say anything about what the city's going to decide to do until after they make that decision. And then we'll be happy to share it with you and explain it to you. But obviously we don't want the commissioners finding about that you knew it or somebody else knew it before they even knew what was going on. So that's the reason we're gonna do that. And other than that, I guess I don't have anything to say.

Any questions?

Just does it take a five vote supermajority to select an option? Or, like, I know that it's 4-3 when they pass something, but the new determination is 5-2, but, like, if you give them option A, B, and C, is that a 4-3 vote to move ahead, or does that also require a 5-2 vote?

I would say anything that would be considered a final vote that would approve the project is going to require five votes. So, I mean, I think to answer your question, if there were three options on the table, you might be able to have four votes to

picked the option but obviously you'd have to be certain that you felt that that was the option that might pass five have the have the five vote majority thanks thanks john next is public comment on non-agenda items will you please note there's not any public present thank you next is a study session on generators by zoning administrator jay gianatti Please note that tonight's study session is informational only and no decisions are being made tonight. Jay, it's all yours, however you want to do it.

Okay, Madam Chair, if it's okay, I'll run everything from the chair here, so to speak. So we have two study sessions tonight. These are based on topics that we've been looking to get some feedback, potentially make some changes to it for a while, but obviously because of things such as Gaslight Village and the master plan update, we've had to take a back burner. Now that we have some free time between all of these things, we're looking to get some feedback about some potential updates to some of the zoning regulations on a couple different topics. I'll start with what is potentially the easier of the two topics tonight and that relates to generators in a residential lot. So you've been provided in your packet a copy of section 5.61 of the zoning ordinance which talks about allowable encroachments into a required yard. These are Elements that go along with a residential lot that are permitted to have some encroachment into a required yard or required front setback, side setback, or a rear setback. The whole list has been provided for your review or your background. Specifically, we're talking about generators. This falls under the category of essentially exposed mechanical equipment, which is not just generators, but also air conditioners, equipment related to a pool are probably the three most common things that fall under this category. But essentially what they are required in this section is that they can encroach into a required yard, but no more than three feet into a required yard, side or rear, not at all in the front yard. It still must be entirely located within five foot of a building, whether it's the primary building or an accessory building. And also cannot be any closer than two feet from the property line. Again, these requirements apply to any kind of exposed mechanical equipment. When we get into talking about generators, however, there's also the Michigan Building Code, which requires generators to be located at least five feet away from a window, door, or other opening in the wall of a building. We have been finding in recent times that these two requirements sometimes do not play well together, that sometimes it's not possible for someone that wants to have a generator to be able to put in a compliant location that is still compliant with both the zoning ordinance and the building code. So we wanted to kind of talk to you tonight about your thoughts about this, whether there is some opportunity for some leeway or expanded standards for the placement of a generator in light of these things. And to give an example of what we're talking about, this is a house where not too long ago we faced this concern where this person having a very small house, which is important to clarify because there may be some thoughts or assumption that if we're talking about a larger, more modern house, that's not always the case. This is a much older house. This is on Estelle, I believe. where someone wanted the generator for a smaller house, but because of how the windows and all that were designed, it was very, very difficult to meet both the building code standards of five feet away from a window while also staying compliant with the zoning ordinance standards we talked about. I think in the end we were able to find some resolution to this. We were able to find some location. It wasn't necessarily ideal from the homeowner's perspective, but it was the location that we felt met, in general, the standards of our zoning ordinance while still being compliant with the building code. But in light of these two things, we are wondering if there is some opportunity to have some deference in these situations. So the first thing we did at the city is kind of look at what kind of generators are we actually talking about in terms of... How did that one end up?

What was the solution?

So in the end, it's kind of off the screen here because this is taken from a Google Street View, but in the end, where it went was... Let me get my mouse over there. So in the end, it kind of went off in this corner here. It's kind of off the camera, but in that general location against the fence, So it was far enough away from this window in the end is where it was ultimately placed.

So it met the distance from an operable window, but probably not the setback?

I think we were able to get it pretty close in terms of orientation and while still keeping it far enough away from the window where it met the building code.

Jay, excuse me, is that a good example of how you've been dealing with it? You're just really wrestling, you find a spot that comes pretty close, but maybe not except.

I think what we try to do at the absolute minimum is to have at least some portion of the generator within five feet. So it may not be entirely within five feet, but it's still close enough, as close as possible where it's a compromise in the end, but we try to at least try and keep it as close as we can to the house if this kind of situation arises. Thanks.

Is there a screening requirement on the generator?

Yes, we do require, and that's for all exposed mechanical equipment to be screened from public view as well. So the first thing we looked at is trying to identify what sort of generators we're talking about in terms of what we're likely to see. So this chart you see here, we took from bobvila.com. It kind of looks at sort of different size of generators that are out there and what their capacities are in terms of electric production. And you see starting from left to right, we're looking at 7,500 watts is kind of the smallest that are out there, all the way up to this table, 25,000 watts or 25 kilowatts when we get into the specific examples. When you get to the 18,000 watts or 18 kilowatt example, that's starting to be the area where we're starting to get into a full house application or a generator that's able to provide electricity for an entire house. So that's kind of where we narrowed our search is looking at generators in this range as this is what we're presuming is gonna be the most popular type of generator that people are gonna be wanting to have installed. So we found some samples that kind of fit that range. This is not necessarily an exhaustive sample, but I think this in terms of size, capacity and specifications are a pretty good representation we think of what kind of generators are most likely to be seen. So starting with this Generac, there are various models from 10 kilowatts to 26 kilowatts. However, these all have the same specifications in terms of size, which is 48-inch length, 25-inch wide, 29-inch height, up to 67 decibels, which is in the range of a standard air conditioner for comparison purposes in terms of the sound output of it. This is from Briggs and Stratton, also variable from 18 to 25 kilowatts. Similar dimensions, 46 and a half length, 26.8 width. Slightly shorter, but again, the same general ballpark as the Gener-X we looked at. For someone that didn't want to home house edition solution. This is a 13 kilowatt generator, more of a square type, 28 by five by 25.5. Interestingly, a bit taller than the other ones, but in terms of overall footprint, a bit smaller. This is from the Champion brand, a 22 kilowatt version, a bit longer and a bit wider than the other ones, but 30 inches height, 54 inches long, but similar sound output in height. A color version, ranging from 14 kilowatts to 26 kilowatts, back in the range of what the Briggs & Stratton and the Generacs were, 47 inches long, 22.6 wide. A little bit taller, but similar otherwise. And for those wanting something smaller, a 10 to 12 kilowatt option is 30.6 long by 28 wide. We did look at a couple of larger options because, although they're not very common, we have seen, particularly on larger houses, on larger lots, we have seen larger generators being installed or being requested. This is a Cummings generator. It's technically rated for 25 kilowatts. However, this one is much, much larger than the more residential solutions. This one is six feet or 72 inches long, 34 inches wide. Interesting though, in terms of the decibel rating, it's on par with the smaller generators we looked at. And then a larger Generic generator. This one has the capacity of 32 to 40 kilowatts. This one longer still at 83.4 inches and wider at 34 inches. Again, not as common, but for larger houses on larger lots, we do occasionally deal with these types of generators. So just to sum it up, most of the residential size generators we see have the width of 25 to 30 inches. In terms of the installation, usually, not always, but usually we see contractors try to align them so that the longest side of the generator parallels the house. So taking that into mind, we were looking at, for most circumstances, a range of 25 inches to 30 inches width extending from the house. Again, we don't see the larger ones very often, but they do occasionally crop up on larger houses and larger lots. One suggestion that we kind of talked about was, and this kind of goes along with some of the questions you just raised about what we do if we can find a solution that's fully compliant, and that is to allow a generator to be as close as possible, but to have at least one face of the generator at least within five feet of the house. Some caveats we thought about in conjunction with that is to require that it be the longest face of the generator that is no more than five feet. That would be to try to mitigate the encroachment or extension from the house as much as possible. Applying this standard only to generators that are less than 30 inches wide. So only apply to the more residential consumer size generators, not so much the larger sizes. And also still requiring the two foot separation from the property line. in all cases and still requiring the screening from public view in all cases. Any thoughts, comments on some of these approaches from the commission?

What problem are we trying to solve with, I think for me it's two problems. I would be, if I'm a neighbor of someone that wants to put a generator close to the property line, Noise would be my first thing versus aesthetics. So the screening from public view, could we make it screening from all views so that there's some sound attenuation or some sound baffling? And then do we care if the generator is five feet away from the house? Is that a problem?

I think the general intent kind of covers both the way you talk about both aesthetics and sound. I think the thought was that the closest to the house you can keep it, the less the visual impact is, the less the sound impact is to neighboring properties and to neighbors.

Do we do anything to regulate the portable generators that I guess if they're not permanently installed, we don't really regulate those?

No, those are not regulated. Generally, those are only out for a duration of a power outage, really due to a storm, so we're just silent on that. I think to Jay's point, without regulation or without a contractor or homeowner looking at regulations, we typically will see that they will try to push the mechanic equipment as far away from their house, as close as they can to the property line to their neighbor. And so that's why we have some of these things already in place. But the building code requirement is so that we're not, the unit is not close enough to a window or a vent or something like that that's bringing in oxygen. So you're not bringing in exhaust into the home. So those are kind of the, it's the life safety piece. in balancing that with what we naturally see with people. We see some of the site plans where it's like, oh, wow, that's interesting. You've managed to put that all the way next to your neighbor's window, but not, you know. So you'll be shocked, but for the same reasons that neighbors would be concerned, the homeowner themselves is concerned about those issues too. So it's kind of that, what's that balancing act of making sure that we have the life safety piece, but also, you know, being cognizant of the adjacent properties.

You had mentioned, Jay, that the decibels of the generator are comparable to an air conditioning unit. And I'm just speaking from my own personal perspective. My neighbor has a generator. And I think a couple of years ago when we had power outage for a couple of years, I could hear his generator. It was loud. It was much louder than an air conditioning unit from my just untrained eyes. Was it a portable one or was it one of these? It was a Generac type, you know. One of those turbos? Yeah, and it was annoying in part because I didn't have one and he had one. And after two days of not having electricity, I was a little jealous more than anything. But I just would want to make sure that when we make that assertion that that's not based on, you know, that it's being evaluated. Equally because I would think that a generators sound output is a lot more than air conditioners And I just chat, you know, I just looked at chat GPT and it you know kind of suggests that maybe there was Industry differences between the two so I just want to make sure that we evaluate that I will say the numbers we've cited here are from the actual spec sheets for these so at least in terms of

the decibel levels of these generators, those are from the manufacturer themselves.

It's the manufacturer, but maybe there's a different way of evaluating an air conditioner versus I'm just saying, it just, it feels to me like there would be a different decibel level.

It seems like the sound on generators carries differently than it carries louder. That's what I would think.

Why don't you're hearing it? The built-in, the portable ones have got to be five times as loud as those built-in. Those ones are so, like my portable one, you can hear two blocks over if I have to run that thing. So I think just looking at these, my first take is it does what we need to do, which is our first job is to make sure that they're up to code and that we're not pumping carbon monoxide inside someone's bedroom. You're five feet from the house is the state code and you're doing the same thing here. Um, you know, our second job, probably as soon as you've met state safety requirements is to do what commissioner Roseman is talking about, which is it to then be as close to your house as possible, because I don't want to hear Steve's generator. I don't, and he don't want to hear my generator. So we should put it as close to our house as we can within state code. Um, the two foot property separation is already in what is this 5.61. So we're preserving that. Uh, so I think this is, uh, what's on the screen right now is like the least possible change to still allow for safety, which is clearly important. So I, I think this is great. This is exactly what we should be doing. Sound is a big deal though.

When you think about it, when a generator comes on, oh yeah, there's no sound, right? It's silent, right? Silence. So I think it magnifies that. And if it's summer, everybody's opening their windows. Now you really hear that generator. So I think we have to be really cognizant of that, that, when the noise is happening, it's at the worst case scenario. And as Chris said, you you're jealous that you're hot.

Well, and that's why I like this, right? Like this keeps it as close to your house as we can within safety. It's not letting you push it over to your neighbor's property line. Cause man, that'd be infuriating. And I'd be jealous. You're right.

Can we stay at a certain distance from the neighbor, from a neighboring house? I mean, I'm not saying it's a good idea or bad idea. I'm just talking a lot.

I think that would be a little tricky to try to manage because, you know, A, there's just so much variability in what that distance is, whether it be existing or if someone decides to do something different with their house. So that would be a little trickier, I would guess.

Are there noise suppression or CO2 suppression options that could be evaluated as well?

I think that's really product specific. So I think some people, just like with different air conditioning units, et cetera, or even some of the pool pump equipment and stuff, there's variability. It's really the homeowner or the contractor selects it for maybe those reasons, because it's close to their home or maybe for energy savings or whatever other aspects. But there's not like a uniform, like each manufacturer has a certain component to it that can be added to it for those types of things. That's kind of the challenge when we've evaluated these. There seems to be a variety of reasons why people may select them and there's not like a universal aspect to noise, et cetera. I think kind of what Jay alluded to and some of you have alluded to is by at least allowing for it in these cases where we have closer, homes closer together, you know, meet the state code requirements for life safety, but also then it requires it and even, you know, we're talking about more smaller lots here, but in a larger lot, it would give you that larger side yard still so it's far away from other homeowners. We just wanted to make sure we had a conversation to look at this because we've run into that a few times where, you know, we're not going to be able to, we can't preempt any state building code with zoning And since that's a conflict, would it be better just to address that component so that way we're not, if a neighbor's coming over and saying, hey, I found your zoning code online and it's not in the right spot, and then we have to go through a long explanation of explaining what the state code is, that's never a good place to operate from. So we'd prefer to be able to, since we have some time to talk about this and some other topics, we'd rather have it codified that way instead of having to have an explanation because I know in the limited circumstances I wouldn't say that limited. We've had more than just that example there when we're able to have that conversation with the homeowners, the contractors and maybe a neighbor or something that's aware of what's going on. Everyone understands the situation and they understand the life safety piece first and then very quickly after that it gets to what we're talking about which is, okay, well I want that to be far away as possible from my house and as close as possible to their house. And that's kind of why we wanted to, um, look at kind of at least, uh, having a, a framework of, for the discussion today to sort of balance those interests.

Could we have a condition such that if they wanted to go farther than the minimum sound mitigation became a component of, you know, whether it's a, a dog house kind of thing that surrounds it or,

I think we could put a requirement that says that some form of sound mitigation, but in terms of a specified kind, I don't think we could do that. Could we do something with words? Yeah, there's such a variation there, so I think if we said that screening with the adjacent neighbor with verification of some sound reduction impact, we can get cut sheets on almost anything to show that it does help. you know, but I think coming with an exact standard and that's going to be really hard for us to sort of sort out. That makes sense.

Yeah. I was wondering, is there something that you could kind of keep it so that it can be like a director review?

Yeah.

That way you're not totally specifying it, but you're kind of saying, Hey, this, but ultimately Jay's going to say, yes, no bad idea.

I mean, that's something that we can take from feedback from, from this particular session to, to come back to a future meeting with some more information not to say, Hey, we, we think we can hit here and address that component and yeah.

I'd like to address a few things.

Do you have to have a permit? Yes, we do require permits if it's in the side yard, we do. No, building.

Yes. Electrical.

Electrical, right, it's electrical permit.

We're the only of the, we partner with Cascade township building services for all of our state inspections, and we're the only entity in this area, so Ada, Cascade, Lowell, Plainfield, ourselves, a couple others, we're the only ones that have a zoning requirement as well. So they don't require none of the other energy requires screening, uh, location other than what the state code is. So what about GR city? Uh, I don't believe they do either. I don't know if you know, Jay, I do not know if they do or not.

It's I feel like lot size, like all these little lots that we have, we're more like, that's where that's gate NATO for sure. Correct.

Yeah. But I think that's where you run into these issues for sure. Uh, cascade township, uh, on our behalf, we'll inspect that right for the electrical permit. And then do we send our zoning official out there to look at those?

So this is a mechanical is a little tricky because it only requires a mechanical permit, not a building permit. And not getting into too deep into the weeds. And there's sometimes been a little push and pull in terms of us finding out if people are putting in generators or not. We do the best we can, but sometimes we don't always are aware of everything that goes in. And that's just kind of based on how the permitting process works.

It's possible something might pass the building inspection, but wouldn't that pass the zoning?

So I think what Jay's alluding to is if somebody pulls a permit from Cascade, if you look at their website, it'll say other permits required by the local agency. And you'll see there's not just that one, but others that we have here that will require that. I think what he's saying is sometimes and HVAC contractor, whoever's installing these, doesn't pull any permit and just does it. And so then they're not getting an inspection from Cascade or from us. But when they do a touch point either with us on the first end, they may contact us and say, hey, we'll say, yeah, we do a zoning review. We have a zoning compliance permit that you have to have, but also then the mechanical permitting is through Cascade. So either way, whether they contact Cascade or us, we make the connection there. But yes, it's true, like almost anything, you know, if somebody doesn't, unless we are tipped off or having to run into ourselves, you know, sometimes those things.

So Cascade will routinely notify you?

Yeah, we typically have a, yeah, there's a handshake there where they'll note on their permitting stuff that check with EGR to make sure, you know, that kind of thing.

Next. Another thing about the noise, is the noise much more continuous, right, than your condenser in the backyard for the AC?

Probably, although it generally runs when there's power outages. It probably runs less time overall, I would say, compared to an air conditioner.

But it might run nonstop for two or three days.

It might be nonstop. It might be nonstop for a couple days, but then you might not hear it the rest of the year, depending.

Right. But that is a consideration. It could go to a perception, right? Yeah, it's nonstop while it's operating. So it's not just the decibels, right? It's also how long it's operating, right? Continuous operation. So that is something just to be aware of, I think. And then I'm wondering if... Unless I'm missing something, if we added a line that was for generators citing the Michigan building code, right? A section, number or whatever, and then front yard none, side yard allowed encroachment three feet, rear yard encroachment three feet. And then instead of saying no more than five feet, it'd be not less than five feet from the building. but retaining the no closer than two feet.

No more than one, because this as long as face is no more than five feet, right? So this is the slide is requiring you within five feet of the house, but exact, basically exactly five feet, but no less than five feet would allow you to put it 10 feet away. And have the long side, the long side would be facing parallel to the, I mean, with that at five feet, would that take care of it?

Not, not including the potential for sound, you know, mitigation stuff, but in general, does that, would that solve kind of the basic problem that we're talking?

I think so, because if the current building code requirement is a five foot separation, I think this will at least keep some part of the generator within, I think, a level that we would be comfortable with.

Well, if it doesn't fit in the side yard, it goes to the rear yard, right? It either fits or it doesn't in either the AC stuff or the generator unless I'm missing something.

Are other units have some part of versus all of it needs to fit in the parameters?

I'm sorry, repeat that please.

Are other mechanical units have the some part of?

The expectation is that for all the units that they'll be entirely within five feet of the house. And again, in terms of looking at the other most common things, which are air conditioners and pool equipment, because they don't have the same exhaust or whatever considerations that a generator does, I think we would say it's much, much easier to have those stay within those parameters and they don't require an exception for those.

And how often are generators often, Tested are they once a week. I know there's a cycle or something they test is there reasonable to say Expect that that to be done during daytime hours or some certain hours You know the regular testing cycle or doesn't that matter?

There is a there's a recommended testing cycle. Of course, that's up to the homeowner. I know it's recommended that that's done weekly and So I'm not saying people do it weekly, but, you know, it's like people getting oil changes in their car where it was recommended. So basically when you go to sell your house, they'll turn it on and see if it works.

Well, that's what home inspectors tell us all the time. It's going to run once a week.

Yes. It should be exercised once a week.

Yeah. The newer one, like my neighbor has a Genrac. It runs Sunday afternoon at like 2 o'clock every week. So it actually does. I mean, the newer ones are all pre-programmed and pick a time.

Kind of like the first Friday siren.

Yeah.

Are they using marine gas? I'm wondering if it doesn't break down. It's natural gas. It's all natural gas? Yes.

OK. Sorry. Do we specifically exclude? Well, I guess they don't make diesel that small, do they? No diesel. Yeah, we don't want those.

So if it's built-in, it's the same as natural gas if it's portable.

Yeah, correct.

We've already kind of talked about a couple of different things, such as whether there's an opportunity or an interest in allowing them even further in certain circumstances. We can talk about that if that's something that people feel is an option. One other question that we could raise that isn't on the slide but could be relevant is if we do go with this route, is the Planning Commission comfortable with allowing these just by right or should be if there's any sort of additional review or permitting that should be required for exceeding the five foot distance or not?

What would be the point of allowing them to go farther away?

So one thing that happens occasionally is we hear requests from people to put these things in the farthest corner of their lots. Right. Under the guise of if you put it that far away from the house, then no one will be able to hear it. Not in the neighbor, not the homeowner, or anyone. There's also cases where there's really large lots in very lower dense neighborhoods. I mean, if there's less of a reason to stick to that strict five foot limit if houses are that far apart or the lots are that large that this is the sound of this thing, so that that's important in those situations or not.

So we could allow that by special approval?

That's kind of what we're asking, if you think that's something that's worthy of delving into or not.

If it was written as no less than five feet, doesn't that allow it to go?

So this would be kind of an additional requirement or additional option we would provide.

To solve which problem?

I don't know if I'd say it's a problem per se. I would say this is more of a preference.

To me, it's no different than an air conditioning compressor, which has to be within five feet. And the only reason that we're allowing these to be more than that is because of the code. So I feel like it's in the same realm of those things. So the only reason that it would go farther away is because somebody's like, I don't want to hear it. I don't want to see it. I want to hide it. Well, if we're going to allow, I mean, then why don't we let everybody do that with everything? I just feel like it opens a door to a lot.

And I don't think it should be, I mean, the question should be more, not the lot size, but the proximity to neighbors. And I don't know how you would apply that. I mean, just because you have a larger lot, you may have a backyard that's, you know, close to a neighbor. And so how do you apply that?

So I think that's where the, I think, I think with Jay, if I'm hearing you correctly, you're offering this as an opportunity where it's, whether it's your review or it's a zoning review, just give it an option. So it's a case by case situation. You got to kind of look at all the stuff. Cause there are like some homes that I built, like people will build like vaults and the far reaches, OF THEIR PROPERTY AND IT'S LIKE A BUNKER WHERE THEY HIDE THE GENERATOR SO THEY DON'T HEAR IT AND IT DOESN'T BUG THE NEIGHBORS BECAUSE THERE'S NO NEIGHBORS AROUND.

TO ME THE QUESTION not based on the size of the lot, but how far it is away, you know, from other neighbors.

What are they doing to mitigate? Are they building a bunker around it? Right. Yeah.

Like, I mean, you could have a, I mean, if something was more than five feet away, but the sound, you know,

sound suppression and exhaust was a non-factor then maybe that's something we should look into but so i like the previous slide because it promises without some sort of special review this thing's at five feet from your house because we're saying it has to be one one edge of this has to be five feet out so in a hundred percent of cases we're not disturbing neighbors then we can do a special review for something special you know something like this and then I'm comfortable with the idea that you can do it on a larger lot or in a different proximity, but I think it needs to be looked at because you just don't know if your neighbors are on a small lot right next to the back corner of your lot, then we've created the same problem we're trying to solve for. So.

I would just question the standards we would need to establish to make it. Right. How do you make it consistent? Yeah. Like how would we apply a standard that would make that okay? I mean, maybe it's possible.

No closer than two feet to all property lines is. It's way too permissive, right? On a big lot, I think so. Small lot.

Small lot, that might be all you can do. Or do we use the rear yard setback? That it can't be any closer to the rear yard setback.

If there's no home within 50 feet, then it could be possible with staff review or something.

Yeah, right. I'm with you, Matt. It's like what Chris is saying. You want separation with a neighbor. Yeah.

by a third through a lot and all of a sudden there's a home.

Why don't we, um, I think there's enough interest in kind of the conversation. Why don't we try to tease that out with some examples? And between, between now and a future meeting, we'll try to look at, you know, the uniformity of the approach that we've generally feel comfortable with, but for a more flexible approach, let's look at some, we'll take a look at some larger lots and neighbors and some of the large lots that are close to smaller lots, try to get some variation there and see how that interplay might allow for things to be spaced further away and that kind of thing. And we can bring that back if that sounds okay.

And define what a large lot is.

I think we'll just, we'll just pick some pockets in the city and look at some, some permits where we've had some difficulty and we'll just try to try to show up, try to try to see what it shows us. If we were allowed to, if we had a choice, the zoning tells us, tells us we have to put it here if under the, under these regulations we're looking at. But if we had some flexibility, could we make the situation better somehow and try to figure out what that mechanism would be? So we'll try to put, we'll try to do some, So analysis, and we could bring that back to see if we can find something that might work, or if we can't, then we'll tell you we can't. Hey, Jay.

So Plymouth, where it backs up to Briarwood, you've got really big lots backing up to smaller lots. So if it goes deep in those big lots, now you're close to their house. That would be good, for me, would be a good example to see an impact on dissimilar sized lots.

Yeah. And we'll talk more about that in a minute.

You could have a rear yard setback of 10 feet. I mean, you could have a larger rear yard setback than the other mechanical equipment. Just a thought.

Next, Jay will do a, sorry.

I mean, the encroachment into the setback.

I do think this is kind of a, I don't know, is this like a five-year window where... natural gas power generators are still a thing and we move towards batteries, home batteries and portable batteries like your car. The whole intent is that your car is gonna be charged when the grid is there and then when the grid is not, it charges your house. So that's where things are going. So this might be a temporary zoning ordinance thing.

Anything else? Next, Jay will do a study session on ThruLots.

Give me one minute while I write my note down real quick. All right. So this is another topic we've wanted to kind of tease out a bit to address some issues that have arisen in terms of what can be done with through loss. Because this is a kind of a unique type of situation that doesn't exist very commonly in the city. But at the same time, it brings a lot of interesting challenges and differences in terms of what can be done in terms of developing them and using them. I'll start with a quick definition of what we're talking about here. So when we're talking about a through lot, we're talking about an interior lot. So it's bordered by other lots on either side of it. That is bordered by the two lots and two more or less parallel streets. So this graphic from our zoning ordinance kind of illustrates what the through lot would be in the red box. It has lots on either side of it and also two streets on either side of it. Distinctly, a lot that is bordered by an alley in the back is not a through lot. So for the few pockets of the cities where alleys exist, that does not create a through lot situation. It only applies to public planted streets, for lack of a better term. Or streets that are intended for general through ferrets. Most of the regulations that are specific to through lots are in sections 5.28D and 5.63 of the ordinance, basically stating that through lots have two front yards, two side yards, and no rear yard. And also that access to a thrott shall only be from the primary street or front yard. There's also special setbacks that are required for a through lot. It depends on how prevalent through lots are in an area. If we're talking about a situation where there's only one or two through lots contiguous, the building envelope is restricted to whatever is the most restrictive rear yard setback of an adjacent lot. So as an example of this graphic here, this is a single through lot. The lots on either side of it to the left and right have different rear yards and rear lot lines. So in this case, whichever is the most restrictive or the smallest is the one that will dictate what the, Building envelope is going to be for the through lot So in this case because the one on the left has the smallest rear yard The allowable building area for the through lot is based off of that rear yard In the cases where there's three or more contiguous through lots then the building envelope is Simply the same as whatever is the front yard for that district so if it's an r1 r2 The rear yard is 30 feet. So then that setback on the secondary street side is 30 feet. R2 and R3, a 25-foot rear yard. So then that would be 25 feet on the secondary front yard. If you're wondering where these came from, this was adopted in 2015. And some of our longer-serving Atlantic Christians may recall this particular case that gave rise to these regulations. came out of a situation where a person bought back-to-back lots and consolidated them into one lot, a through lot, and essentially built a house that extended most of the length of that lot. So these regulations were adopted to try and limit this sort of scenario from happening in the future and also to create further through lots and basically try to ensure that through lot development in the future was better in harmony with the neighborhood as a whole. So this is an aerial view of this lot in particular, 915 Lakeside that stretches all the way from Lakeside to Orchard Avenue. You can kind of see in this aerial just what the footprint of this house looks like. So this is kind of the activity that happened that spurred the creation of the through lot amendments and regulations that we have. While the intent of this may have been well meant, this has lifted some unintended consequences in terms of how a through lot can be used. First off, accessory buildings. As we've kind of alluded to in the past, we've had other discussions about accessory buildings. The ordinance, with only a couple of main exceptions, requires that all accessory buildings are to be developed in a rear yard only. However, if a through lot does not have a rear yard, then that technically means that you cannot build an accessory building on a through lot in any location. The two main exceptions are a detached garage, which is allowed in the side yard, and a pool house, which is allowed in a side yard if it is adjacent to a pool and is at least 60 feet from the front property line or a street property line. There's also implications regarding fences. Again, because through lots do not have a rear yard, what would normally be considered the rear yard of a through lot would have to follow the fence regulations for the front yard, which currently essentially means cannot be more than four foot tall and cannot exceed 50% opacity. And going back to section 5.61A again, again, we talked about certain things that are allowed to encroach into yards for certain elements, because again, because there are no rear yards on a through lot, this could impact this section as well. There may be certain elements that can not encroach at all into the secondary yard because it's not a rear yard. We'd have to look at whatever the front yard regulations are in those circumstances. So a lot of things that could otherwise have been allowed, such as The mechanical equipment we just talked about, porches or decks potentially, would have to follow whatever those standards for a rear yard is, or excuse me, the standards for whatever the front yard is, not a rear yard. In some cases, this could preclude some improvements entirely. In some cases, they could still be allowed, but could have more strict standards to follow compared to a rear yard. So for this topic, what we wanted to discuss is can development standards for through lots be modified to allow some more flexibility for improvements without changing the overall intent of the 2015 amendments? So for this, we're gonna go over some examples of through lots that do exist in the city and kind of get your feedback on two different questions or observations on two different topics. First, looking at the through lots that we show, what is sort of the overall character of each through lot, both on its own and in context with the neighborhood where it is found? And second, with that in mind, to consider what sort of improvements could be appropriate for that lot that might not be currently permitted or not. A couple of caveats before we get into this discussion. We've tried to provide a good sampling of through lots. Claiming that this covers every throughout that exists, but we feel that we have kind of hit all the different types to provide a good cross section of different scenarios that could come up in this topic. Again, it's probably because of the different locations that we're going to look at and different characters we're going to look at, it's not going to be possible to come up with something that's going to fit every situation. We're kind of looking at just things we can do to try and correct some of the major imbalances, if it is felt that there are any in this case. And last but not least, for many of these, we've tried to provide some graphical mock-ups in terms of what building envelopes would look like, what setbacks as they're currently developed would look like. We've tried to be as accurate as possible. understand there could be some reasonable margin of error in terms of the graphical representation of these things. But we've tried to be as accurate and as representative as possible in terms of the existing conditions of these examples. Any questions or thoughts before we dive into the examples?

It would help me to understand what kind of requests have you received from residents?

Probably the most common ones, and again, There aren't that many through lots, so we don't get this question a whole lot. But some of the biggest ones we get to are the accessory building questions. Again, with very few exceptions, there just isn't an opportunity to do that based on how things are defined currently. Sometimes the fence question comes up, particularly, I would say, the block of Cambridge that borders Briarwood. I know that's been kind of a push and pull tug of war in terms Fences in those kind of areas in terms of because most of those Lots currently have fences that are six feet tall Whereas the current warrants wouldn't allow that anymore. It's So sometimes that creates a bit of a push and pull in terms of what that can be done in the future when? Fences need to be replaced or not. It's Thank you.

I guess I would Am I the only person who was here in 2015 when we passed this I think yeah, so Yeah, so the fence thing was so, so I know we have it on potentially unintended consequences. That was so intended that Cambridge and Briarwood was the point of discussion that was highlighted as look at this catastrophe for people who have to live on Briarwood and look across the street at someone's at and Cambridge treats us like an alley that I don't live there. And I'm not saying us like me, but I'm channeling the thoughts of these folks. Like I live on Briarwood and I'm Cambridge's alley. And I want to be on the street. Don't, you don't want to do this to Lakeside and Orchard, because on that example that we saw, everyone on Orchard's like, oh my gosh, we're going to be the Cambridge alley of Briarwood except for Lakeside. Please do not allow backyard fences in my front yard, which was, that was entirely an intended outcome of this, was to prohibit exactly what you have on Cambridge and Briarwood. So I do not think accessory buildings were discussed at length. I don't think so. But I think the majority of like the, the double front yard instead of a front yard and a rear yard was absolutely the intended outcome of this. So for whatever, for what it's worth, that's also 11 years ago. It doesn't mean it always has to be the intended outcome, but I think that actually was exactly what people wanted, which was no, you can't build that fence here. No, you can't put your, you know, big shed out by the sidewalk of my front yard because it's your backyard, those types of things. So for what it's worth.

I don't remember the fence issue quite as much. For me back then, it was more a concern that it would become a development pattern where people started buying back-to-back houses and punching holes through and really disrupting the continuity of blocks.

More recently, there was a discussion. Was it at zoning board of appeals or was it here? We were looking at through that situation. Was it just you were going through a list of potential things for us to deal with or was there a particular?

I mean, some of the issues that have been brought up by Commissioners Miller and Fiennes certainly are in terms of the historical background to this. Just in the last couple of years, a few years ago. I think what you're talking about, I think I remember what you're talking about. I mean, that kind of highlighted to some degree, some of the differences in terms of what you can do on a three lot compared to a interior lot or a corner lot. And like the various requests was based on that distinction. Yes.

There was an issue about what was the front yard.

So in the case, if I remember correctly, it was someone that wanted to do a detached garage in what would have been the secondary front yard. So because he can't do an accessory building in that area that they were requesting a variance to do that.

It's And maybe at that time there was a discussion like ideally we'd like to see if the lot is long, you know long enough and I think we will I think we will have that area an example and in this list of examples we will have that areas it's but there was a discussion of kind of a policy type of thing where You know, ideally we don't want there's a perfectly assuming that the lot size, minimum lot size and everything has worked out, but right. Do we, do we want to waste a perfectly, you know, buildable lot to give somebody a big long backyard when, you know, somebody, right. That was, that was something that was talked about. It's kind of a goal to increase housing options given the fact that we're, we're built out and we don't have lots of options. Right. I think that was kind of a, I don't know if that was just discussed as something to think about or to push for or, Anybody remember that discussion?

I think there was some lady, I don't remember whether it was in front of you guys or in front of the city commission, came in and made it, and Doug, I think you were at that meeting, made kind of an impassioned plea about these regulations are really thwarting my ability to use a lot, and my lot in particular, whatever the requirements were, I don't remember, really didn't fit well with the current through-the-lot regulations. I mean, they were imposing restrictions that were probably unnecessary or difficult to apply to her property. And as I say, I don't remember who it was, but it seems to me it was a lady who came in and said that. And I'm thinking, in fact, your response at the time is, well, we're working on this, and we'll look at that. But I don't remember her name, and nor do I remember the exact I want to say it's more up in the Hodenpile area where, you know, not everything is a straight through lot and there were curves and things like that. And it was like, you really have created unnecessarily prohibited my ability to develop this, for instance, into two lots.

I think that was your objection. That sounds pretty accurate. Yeah. And I think Jay, if we start walking through some of the examples that he's looked at, you know, some things we've thought about, like, you know, even things like, the ADU ordinance that we now have in place. If you own a through lot, if you were putting your ADU to face the other direction, would that be a problem or not? Because it's more like a house, would that be acceptable? They've come up during the ADU discussion. Right, so those are some of the types of, Jay will lead us through a few things, but those are just some things to think about in terms of the regulations that might work well in a neighborhood if somebody had that situation for placement, because that might be better than having those clustered close together on the one side versus spread out and more in line with the homes.

It's stepping back and more of a bigger picture. Again, it doesn't come up very often, but you know, not, it says in J summary, not all through lots can be split into conforming interior lots. So they likely to remain, remain for the foreseeable future, unless there are other zoning amendments made. And that's, that goes to this, uh, goal of the master plan that there will be a process to review minimum lot sizes instead of having a relatively small number of minimum lot sizes that are kind of imposed on areas where they really don't fit. We're going to try to tweak that and really customize lot sizes, maybe recognizing the existing plat and so forth. But it seems to me that One goal could be to make sure that a lot that could be split isn't permanently put out of commission in terms of being able to become a buildable lot. I don't know if anybody else feels about it.

I mean, conceptually, I don't even like the idea of a third lot. But I could see, Tom, where there might be some exceptions like that.

Where you could build.

Yeah. Maybe there's a lot that's just constricted. But when I first read this, I'm like, I don't even know why we're considering this to give more flexibility. to encourage through lots, but maybe Tom, you raised a good point that there might be some lots that we have these restrictions. I just don't like the whole concept of it. I don't think it, you know, matches the whole intent of our community by having that. So I don't know why we even conceptually we would want to get more flexibility.

We'll talk about it as we go through the examples. I mean, there are some cases, as Commissioner Tillman alluded to, where maybe in the future with other changes that could be done. But you will see some other examples where it's probably not realistic for them to go away. They're probably not going to go away. So we kind of try to kind of hit both avenues to where in terms of flexibility also means where we are pretty confident they're gonna remain for a long, long time, still providing options that are reasonable. It's bad.

I would just hate for us to come up with something that will permanently ruin those potential split, you know, splittable lots given we redo the minimum lot size, go through that whole process. So now we have a new situation where that lot could be split and you could build another house on it on the other street. But what we're doing here, I just don't want, you know, I wouldn't want what we're doing here to make that an impossibility. So I haven't thought that all through, but that seems like a worthy goal in terms of, you know, maybe there's a dozen potential lots, which would be a lot, right? A community that are going to be smaller homes, which would be great too, right?

Is that kind of the thought? Was that really what prompted this was that there might be some opportunities for some of those lots to

I think the intent for this, I think, was strictly to look at, you know, if there's opportunities for other things that could be done with a through lot. In terms of how it relates to the master plan, in terms of using these as opportunities for infill housing or something like that, I think that maybe is a more broader discussion that we could have at a little later time when we can start talking more about the master plan recommendations and kind of how we want to tackle some of those things. That topic, I think, probably is more suited for that kind of conversation.

And so I'm thinking of like a multi-family district to like you could do that like that would help that for a multi it would be beneficial to a multi-family more beneficial to a multi-family type development.

Ready to get into this it's yeah, all right. We'll start small then So this is an example that's on Gilmore Street between Gilmore and Santa Monica As is this is a kind of similar to the lakeside example that did happen in terms of size and the type of neighborhood We're looking at It's 50 foot wide, expands the entire length, so this would be a 200 foot depth lot. And looking at what the building envelope for this would be under the current regulations, that's kind of the smaller dashed line that you see here. Oops, there's a cursor here. So as developed, this house appears to cover pretty much all of this building envelope. So in terms of being able to build further, this lot is probably precluded from doing anything substantial in that area. Also worth noting is this lot does have an accessory detached garage here, although in this case, this garage is more aligned with the garages on the Santa Monica side of the lot, not the Gilmore side of the lot.

Is this an older home or something more recent?

I don't recall the age of this house in particular Where does that how did they access the driveway? So this one is still accessed from Gilmore. I believe it's so the driveway is safe and make it out. I believe it's I Believe it's here. Yeah. Oh, I see. There it is.

Yeah Yeah, there's no driveway in Santa Monica, I mean I Looking at this one, this is exactly like the current ordinance we have was authored specifically to prevent someone who owned a lot like this from building a long skinny house. This is a cut and dry. I agree. In terms of like the intent of 2015, cut and dry, this is why that building envelope is small. This one's nice and simple. I scrolled ahead. They're not all that simple. But this one's pretty simple.

And that's where we are at now. Yeah.

This current ordinance looks great on something like this. Okay. In terms of some of the other elements we talked about, like the accessory buildings, fences and other encroachments, any thoughts about what could be appropriate here or not?

So in this scenario, would we currently, a couple of things, would we currently allow anything to be built in that 72.5?

Essentially, no. And certainly the garage could not be done there. if it were ever to be taken down. There are potentially some encroachments, attachments, such as a deck or a patio that could happen on this side, although it may be more restricted than if this was a traditional interior lot. But in terms of buildings, I would say for the most part, probably very limited if anything exists.

Can a deck be built off the house, the main house?

It could. In this case, an uncovered deck could go Five feet into a front yard. So if this house is up to the building envelope line The deck can only go another five feet from there.

It's it's And then they cannot have a fence on the Santa Monica side, correct?

They could but it would be this you have to follow the front yard fence standards So no more than five foot tall no more than 50% opaque And it could be all the way out to the sidewalk on Santa Monica if it if it met those standards then it could go all the way to Santa Monica that's it's

the same as the houses next door, right? Like any, any of these people could photo fence out here as long as it meets those.

Got it. Correct. It's like two feet back from the sidewalk. I can't draw that well, but Jay, it's also back from the sidewalk a couple of feet, right? There's a, it's like back here, right?

Yeah.

I mean, I, so yeah, I'll tell you what I think about accessory buildings. If I lived in this house here or this house here, I don't want you to build a shed here because that's like the residential street. If you pull up Street View on Santa Monica, it's a bunch of fronts of houses. It'd be pretty upsetting to have a lawn mower shed and a tall fence on that side of the street because that's everyone's front yard.

What happens if it looked like the front of the house?

Do we enforce that anywhere? That'd be a tough thing to enforce, right?

I mean, that's the ADU question. I think it's a valid question. I don't know the- What happens if you built like the Gilmore setback all the way to the Santa Monica and just had a long, skinny house? That's definitely what we tried to prohibit.

So that is not allowed under the current law. Very full room. Yeah. And when we talked about that back then, I mean, I think Matt, you're talking about this a little, a house like this, now everybody who lives in these houses that used to have trees all through here and a nice long view, they just have a giant wall there. So that was the objection 11 years ago.

Under the current standards, could an ADR be built in the 72.5? No.

That's the problem, right? Or the potential problem. I think that's kind of what we're getting at is there's two things, I think, with the accessory structures or an ADU accessory structure is you can't build anything essentially in that other half of your property. So, would we be open to some way to try to allow for, like this example shows, a detached garage that aligns with the garages. So if you're looking throughout the neighborhood, it fits, but it's on the other side, but it's still an alignment with those other ones. So they can use part of that property. Um, and, or potentially if it was an ADU, how would, how would you feel if it, you know, in terms of setbacks, et cetera, because that might look more like it's not going to have like the, the example we talk about with Lakeside and Orchard, I refer to it as a aircraft carrier. Even has the same color, I think. But you can't see, like you said, you can't see between the backyards. But in this example, you can. It's an alignment with the other side, the homes on the other side of the street for that garage. It allows you to use some of that space. I think the challenge we run into is it's having property that you really can't do anything with. And I think that's even from Attorney Huff, that's sort of been the challenge if we were challenged on that is can we look at some other ways to to mitigate, uh, you know, that type of scenario that we experienced back, you know, 11 years ago, but allow for something that, you know, otherwise fits pretty well in a neighborhood. Um, we'd have to, we, that's what we want to talk about, you know, what we feel comfortable with, what we like, what we don't like, and then be able to come back and look at some ways we might be able to regulate that.

Aside from, uh, Cambridge and Briarwood, that situation between wealthy and lake, Are there, you know, a dozen of these? There's more.

I do think alignment with adjacent buildings or garages. I mean, I know we did that very early on when we looked at some of the setbacks and alignment down the street. I think that's really important in this application.

Agreed.

I know I've accepted it's kind of off the topic, but just while we have this screen up, Let's say somebody bought the whole property and wanted to build a little house on Santa Monica that's the same size as 2433. and then moved the garage door to the other side of the garage and then built the new garage. Brian, can you show what that garage? You can't do that. You just saw the extent of my capabilities. Yeah, I mean, with somebody who's thinking they're being really creative and they're trying to make some money off that property that they own, they wouldn't be allowed to do that right now, right, because of the minimum lot size?

Yeah, so this is in an R2 district. So as you're kind of leading to earlier, you have this because the width of this is less than what is prescribed. That would be a problem as things currently stand.

That's kind of the thing we're going to be looking at, right? That's a master plan recommendation. This is maybe not the best example, but it just highlights that kind of that issue that at some point it was decided that The lot of that 24-33 line is no longer an acceptable lot size to rent your family on or something, right? And so we have non-conforming possibilities there. Okay, thanks. Okay.

Let's see what else we got.

All right. So here's an example on Breton. This is a much larger lot, but also a through lot. It's a single through lot. This one is interesting because it's a much, much larger lot. And again, applying the current building envelope standards that are in place, this small dashed line here is the allowable building envelope for a house, which in this case is rather narrow considering the overall size of the lot. Again, technically based on the width, this is also technically not splittable. at least going east-west. You could split this one north to south and create a wide lot, a wider lot than deep. But again, this one also has two accessory buildings, again, kind of sort of in line with the houses on the other side of the street, one here and a garage here. This one also has a pool, which technically, not necessarily okay because we don't regulate pools based on the yard they're in. But certainly the buildings, especially things that are here under the current standards would not be allowable today. So any thoughts about this sort of scenario?

property. Yeah, it is. It's good thing that house is already there. Yeah. It's one of the original farmhouses in that area. It is.

Yeah. What's the street on? Is that Boston on the bottom?

Yes.

And then Roslyn to the, to the West. Over here.

I mean, first thing I'd say is I'm sure glad we don't allow this because that would stink, right? Like it is, it is nice that we have, I still think it's nice that we require you to, you know, kind of, pick an end to build on. I get it that what's in there now is, well, I guess it's really not that, but it's like, you know, this is the house, right? And then this is a building and this is a building, but it would, it would be, it would be unbelievable to live next to a monolith like that. So I don't know. I'm glad that we still require the split personally in a situation like this. Ton of vegetation right here on this property. And it's not really, You don't even notice.

You don't even notice it. So the only issue might be the fence by the, you know, along the street by the pool, you know, like what is a fence needed? Is there a fence? What height would it be? Right. That issue, which apparently has been settled.

So Jay, if they wanted to do an addition, they could do an addition, right?

They could do the addition to the front.

Because that would still be within the other one. The Breton Street, but not on the south side?

South side they could. They could do something on the south side. Where it gets tricky is that we do have provisions where we can't allow an addition in a non-conforming area if setbacks are at least 50% of what's required. So if someone was starting from scratch, they would be restricted to this dashed line. But if someone was expanding this house, They wouldn't necessarily be precluded as long as they didn't extend the setback any further. And what they have currently is at least half of what's required. The short answer is it may still be possible to do additions on all sides of the house, not just in the area where the actual envelope is.

And a deck would be?

Yeah, a deck would be the problem, again, because.

Because you're outside of the, odds are you're going to put it towards Roslyn side, which you can't do. That's right. I think we want to look at opening up some of that stuff to allow small incursions.

Decks and patios. Yeah. On that previous issue today, we were looking at all those different items and how far they can go.

Because I can tell you right now that whoever buys this house doesn't realize that they can't do that. Sure. You see a giant piece of property. And all of a sudden they go, what? Agreed. Yeah. At least provide a path.

To me, I would rather them split that lot than to make an accommodation to build a deck or a pool.

To split the house down the middle?

Yeah. Wouldn't we want that more than to allow an accessory?

I mean... In theory, perhaps, but the practicality of this, at least as long as this house stands, I mean, again, the way the law standards are currently, and the only option to split this is, as mentioned, is just to go this way.

Right.

Which, you know, at this point requires demolishing the house most likely. Right.

To me, that would be the preferable route, in my opinion.

And that may be the case, but the practicality of that happening, at least at any time in the foreseeable future, I mean, That's going to be the unknown, obviously.

You're saying it's not practical, yeah.

This is really off topic, but is the pool south of that looks a little green?

I don't know when this photo was taken, so I can't speak to that.

Typically those aerials are taken like in the fall and the trees have lost vegetation. So usually they're already winterized.

There's another view that shows it bright, bright turquoise blue. So good.

One other feature that's alluded to earlier is that this lot, in addition to having the garage in the back also has a driveway access on, I guess the secondary front yard. Again, technically this is a conflict because through us are technically nowadays required to have access only from the primary side, not the secondary side. So this is a situation where there's access on both sides, actually. It's Breton and Rosalind.

So it's a through lot with a through driveway.

In this case, yeah, the driveway actually goes all the way through. And we don't restrict that? Not preferable. Today we would because you could only have one access point on it. Because I think that's a good idea to restrict that. Yeah. All right. So there's actually a second example on Breton that we are looking at, too. This one actually, because of the lots around it, has an even narrower building envelope as it currently stands. That's another beauty. Unlike the examples we've looked at to this point, this one actually would be splittable in a more traditional manner, both north-south and east-west. So this could be a candidate for a split into something that mimics the lots around it. But otherwise, as it stands, this is how this lot could be used in its current state. No further comments on this one, sir?

All right. You're saying this could be split?

This one could be split because it's 150 wide by 216 deep.

So it would be this way again, right?

Yes.

Yes.

And you could, and that's what you could go. You could go either way. It's when you could go both ways. So this one could be split into this way as well.

This, this actually was a, this actually, we actually had somebody vet this and an application right before the pandemic and they pulled it, but that house is for sale and it, it does work, but it was sold to somebody who wasn't interested in that and wanted to live in it the way it is. So.

All right. Moving on to Reeds Lake, this is an example in the R1 district of a single through lot in the R1 district. Similar sort of characteristics to the Gilmore example and the Lakeside example in that based on where the lot lines are on the neighboring lots, it has a fairly restricted building envelope. And in this case, the house that exists fills up the vast majority of it. Hard to see because of all the trees on this lot, but there is a shed in this location here, which again, technically would not be allowed in the current regulations as it's the secondary front yard in this case. And again, because this is R1, this also would not be splittable under current regulations.

And if you all recall, we've had the resident that owns this property has been before you for public comment a couple times asking for some level of review, et cetera, consideration be given. Because I believe he wants to build an accessory structure. Is that correct, Jay?

A garage. I believe a garage is what he wants. Like a three cell garage or something? I don't know exactly. I don't know the specifics. The specifics I don't know.

I walk by this a lot on Pioneer Club, and it feels like a backyard.

And the accessory dwelling, remind me, so it's not allowed because it's got to be behind the house?

So a detached accessory. So did you want to clarify or distinguish between the detached types versus the ones that can be attached? So an attached type could be permissible if it's, you know, fit in the building envelope or otherwise fits with the space of the house. But the detached kinds or the garage kinds, those would not be allowed in this situation.

I mean, I agree with Brian. I don't want to see a mega structure here filling up the whole lot. But if they did a detached garage and it was behind the houses on Pioneer Club, I don't think anybody would even notice it. Back here, you mean?

Yeah. It's up here that you're worried. Yeah. You can't let it be a rear yard because then you're set back. It's so tiny. Right.

Which way would you access it?

Off of Reeds Lake Boulevard.

Right.

come all the way through. Pioneer Club's actually like six or seven feet above the property. There's quite a hill right there that goes down.

Yeah, it's like vegetated. I go back there. It's like a bunch of trees and it dips. There's like a little path with steps that they can pop up.

I don't know. I think that neighbors would not like that, the 2863 and 2905. Even if it's behind them? Yeah.

Are we talking, Greg, back here? Not up here.

I think it would be up to us to figure out where that should be, but yeah, behind.

I think if you slide over to, look, a few homes down to 2944, see how they have a detached garage there? I think that's kind of where we're going. I think that's where some of the discussion is going, is something like that acceptable if there's a way for us to look at aligning something where it's behind the homes that are on the Pioneer Club side from Reed's Lake Boulevard side, but then allowing that flexibility so they have something because clearly right now as is articulated with the building envelope in the dashed yellow They really can't do anything This thing here Mary yes, what is what is that it's probably a shed I

because 2944 and 2920 is something similar where they are kind of all lined up.

Right, and I think that's what we're saying is that we're kind of teasing out. Is there, if we can find a mechanism to account for that. That should be okay.

But make sure that they don't overstep. Kind of to Chris's point too, to respect the neighbors.

So it's harmonious.

If the rear lot line was similar to the neighbor's. Right, imaginary rear lot line or something like that.

Projected and look at average setbacks or something like that.

I'm sure none of those neighbors have a two-and-a-half-story mega garage either. That's the kind of stuff that we can, as long as it's an accessory building, we've already got that pretty much locked down, right?

So you're saying kind of required to be kind of close to the house or attached? Is that what we're saying?

close to the existing house, right? So if you're, I think we're saying, if you like imagine a rear lot line, you could put something here, which, because this would be the line and that would be fine. If this had worked with your bill.

And if that's how we're thinking about, you know, potential to split the lot and everyone that could be would fit.

Yeah.

That's that compliments that idea, I guess.

And that works on ones like Gilmore where it's tiny, right? You can go through there and be like, hey, draw the dotted line or whatever. You have to move a lot of earth.

And if we did like an imaginary rear yard line, we could even say could go beyond by up to, I'm pulling a number out of my butt, 10 feet with planning director approval or something like that. So if there's a mitigating circumstance within a certain amount, it gives Jay some latitude to say, yeah, you can do that. Still largely restricted to that area. Yeah. But I mean, I think we can determine that, but cause this is a big property and they've already got a, This one in particular, they've already got an accessory building well beyond that imaginary line. So I think just to give Jay some flexibility to push the rules a little bit. I mean, I think it's something for us to suss out. It may work on this property and not on any other ones.

But that concept would have been pretty close on every one we've seen so far. I think so, yeah. So far it seems to be true. Use the buildable envelope, use the theoretical rear lot line and some sort of proximity.

Mm-hmm.

Any other thoughts on this one, sir? All right, now we get into some fun examples. So here we are in Manhattan. So this one actually features both a single through lots, which we've talked a lot about, but also what we call the established through lots, which is three contiguous through lots. So as you noted the single lot on the west is the one singular so again Building line is dictated by the rear lot line of the house next to it for the other three contiguous through lots or established through lots Their building of both would technically extend Up to where the required front yard would be on that side. So 30 feet from Reeds Lake Boulevard to the north and So this is one of the situations, and this is kind of where that one variance ZBA example that Commissioner Tim was referring to was in this area. I forget which house exactly it was, but they wanted to do a garage. I think it was this house, but if not, you know, it's an example. It was in generally this area. So close to the house, but technically extending into the secondary front yard. So technically not allowed. It was ultimately denied for the record because they felt that there were other options that could be done. But nevertheless, it does illustrate that in a case like this where you have established through lots, particularly on lots as large as these, the large amount of area that is very limited in how it could be used or improved.

Why was that not approved?

Essentially, ZBA didn't find that there was a practical difficulty or that there were other options to have a garage on the lot.

And they were able to make it work. They did build something there too. A garage in the front yard if it went too far back.

It's worth pointing out that garages are one exception where you can do it in the side yard as long as it's not any closer to a street than either your house or the house closest to you. There was still a theoretical option to do a garage in the side, what would be the side.

So Jay, the far right property there, there's that probably a garage on the far right side. Yep. Is that technically, would that not be allowed because that's technically in the front yard or is that side yard?

It would be technically not allowed because it's beyond where the back of the house is. Therefore, that constitutes the secondary front yard. Yeah.

Thanks, Jay.

This is what I think should be allowed. Mm-hmm. And that would work under the discussion we just had, right? Because you got your fake, even on a contiguous multiple lots, you got a fake backyard, and you got a space you could put something in there. Jay, can you remind us what the difference when there's more than, it's like something triggers when there's three of these in a row.

Yeah, when there's three or more, it becomes established through lots.

So that's where this line comes from, right? This top line up here?

Yes, yes.

So it's still two front yards, but you have a bigger building envelope, or how does it work?

Yes, so you have a bigger building envelope in this case. So you could build a gigantic house. But I can't build a detached garage.

Really long, skinny houses. Battleships.

Or aircraft carriers or whatever. In theory, yes. But they can't do a detached garage. In theory, yes.

No, it's bad.

How did 3040 Reed's Lake get built?

So that was, so just as a quick history lesson, the way this street was platted, they were all through lots, at least on the north side. This, the lot here, was approved for a split.

Yeah, because that was built.

And it was conforming? It was conforming, yes. So they could split these?

In theory, yes. In this particular example, there are some topography and wetland issues on the north sides of these properties. So while theoretically they could be split, there could be some significant practical difficulties with actually improving them or building on them. I do know there was another request on one of these lots for something similar and it was denied on the basis that There were just so many wetland concerns or flimpling concerns that it just wouldn't be buildable or usable otherwise.

It required quite a bit of permitting from EGLE and with the wetland issue. I mean, can you do anything with engineering? Sure, but, you know.

Yeah, because that house does kind of stand out at 30, 40.

It just looks kind of isolated. That's crazy. I can ask a question about what Commissioner Tilma has been talking about, which is using the master plan to look at encouraging things like splitting to increase density in places. And the discussion we're having, is there any risk that modifying the code for the through lots discourages what it is that we're trying to do later with the master plan? Like should we hold, is there any, because I'm just thinking like, and I don't know, this is not like, I'm not leading this anywhere, but like, tiny bit wondering if saying, Hey, we're going to let, we're going to reduce the, reduce the restrictions on through lots causes then later when we're like, yeah, now we want to take a look at our twos and our threes and places where there's through lots creating more nonconformity. Is that a possibility?

Well, I mean, I worry about, or like, I think if this, you know, my, my sort of taken that initially is, I think if we're talking about the discussion seems to be more, um, around accessory structures, those types of things, those seem to be okay for allowing some way to make that still fit in the neighborhood. If somebody was able to split that lot and sell it, they would have to demo the other structure. It's an accessory structure. Right, right, because that would make it a non-conforming, the other lot non-conforming, just like with other approvals that we looked at. I mean, even with the Brookby estate, we can't create those, so those have to be a requirement of the lot split is that you would have to then demo that accessory structure or that other encroachment, et cetera. I don't know that it would be more of a challenge if like they were allowed to build the home into that space. But then again, they could, we see a lot of interesting stuff that happens in this community, but I don't know that it would be a problem per se. And I think the issue is more related to, we've had some ZBA requests and some people that are really trying to work around like this example here where it seems like they're, I think even the ZBA looked at it and was like, we have to apply these standards very strictly so we can't do it, but gee, it seems like it would be okay if you were able to do your detached garage, you know, in that space. So I think this is really trying to thread the needle between some of the challenges, but also again, going back to, as Jay laid out, when we started to also avoid the, or try to eliminate and keep, you know, front of, or top of mind, some unusual large home that could be built that doesn't fit very well in the neighborhood or surrounding area.

Like I'm almost you know I'm coming around to this whole idea but like it's almost like I almost want more splits but if it can't be split then maybe there would be more likely flexibility.

Yeah. But if it can be split, I mean, I'd prefer to have them stay within one block.

Yeah. Right. That's kind of where I'm at. Not to be too far off topic, but I know we are planning at some point in the future to have more of a deep dive into the master plan recommendations and kind of have a discussion about, you know, what are the more pressing topics or how it's more interesting to pursue. I think of some of the comments, I think it sounds like there's already an interest in one aspect in terms of finding ways to create more buildable lots. if we do consider going forward with the through lots, you know, modifications, we certainly will stay cognizant that, you know, that's preserving the right to, you know, create new lots out of these where possible is probably the bigger priority. So we can certainly, you know, keep that in mind when we're bringing some language or ideas forward. It's.

So we're going to, that's kind of where I'm at. Yeah. In terms of implementing master plan recommendations like that, that'd be cut it. relatively complex to study, right, to look at all the, you know, non-conform mean lot sizes that have been created over the decades, that that's a project that, you know, we'd probably need our consulting planners to help our in-house planner and so forth.

I think potentially we've done, we have done levels of analysis of this over the years for a variety of things. And I think even one of the, one of the graphics that was embedded in the, um, the master plan update we did, uh, we're able to utilize, uh, just GIS to kind of show us some of those too. So I think that we have some, you know, with some software, um, you know, we're able to really give us some different good visual views to kind of, kind of help us frame what we're looking at, you know, um, by, you know, I think, um, I think that we've had really good feedback tonight on kind of like a few things that we could try to tease out with some examples to come back to some of these and say, if we applied this type of language, here's how it would work on all these types of scenarios we're giving you. Again, so we can bring back some stuff to react to at a future meeting. would apply maybe more flexibly or what a more rigid standard might look like in all these scenarios. So that way, like as Jay noted, we tried to, there's still more examples here to look at, but try to look at these pockets everywhere and say like, what just looks terrible? What looks, gee, that seems fine. And how do we try to look at addressing some changes there? Whereas right now you can't do anything.

In terms of like a project or a process for doing that evaluation of the minimum lot size, the residential zones as they currently are defined, do we have a sense when we might start that or how we would start that?

We've already had conversations about trying to chart that out. As Jay noted, we've obviously had some other projects in front of us and I think we'll have a little bit of a break there where we'll be spending more time on a lot of those types of things.

could be a project that could start in kind of this slow period, turning out to be slower than we thought it may be.

All right. We've already kind of talked about this one a little bit, but this is the Cambridge example, the Cambridge block between Wealthy and Lake as it backs up to Briarwood. Just to add a little bit of context that's already kind of talked about. Again, this is an R1 district. So most of these lots are planned to be 70 foot wide and only 127 deep. So again, this is probably not changing any time in the foreseeable future. Also of note and probably contributing to the idea of Briarwood being an alley is that most if not all of these houses have their access only on the Briarwood side. So very few of these houses are accessible from Cambridge. Most of them have detached garages, and most of them are accessed from Briarwood. So again, not technically allowed by the zoning ordinance currently, but at the same time, based on the age and existing development pattern of this block, the feasibility or realistic-ality of that changing could be in question.

I think this is something that we would not want. happen in the future.

You don't want to encourage it, in other words.

Right, right, right.

I agree. I mean, I know you can't undo, you can't go make people take their fences down, but it is kind of a non-standard, like I don't know how much time you spend on Briarwood. I ride my bike through there a lot. It's kind of weird. You certainly would not want to make more of that. It's never going to feel... No. Yeah, you can't fix it, but you don't want to make more of it.

walk it a lot with a dog it's nice it's a quiet street oh yeah because of it safe place to ride i love that alley it's got its own character you know but but those fences are a little someone could not split one of those lots and do two small homes no and again because these are so i don't say so narrow but they're narrow to the point where again this is not

likely to change anytime soon. It's likely always going to be like this. All right. Heading back northward, an interesting area encompassing Hodenpile, Pioneer Club, and some more of Reeds Lake. We have a kind of a smorgasbord of single through lots. So these two lots here are technically through lots, even though there is no actual improved street behind them. This is also something that the ZBA had to wrestle with back in the day. And they confirmed that even though this is not an improved street, it's still a platted right of way. So that was enough to constitute as a street and by definition make these through lots. Just to the east of this is another sort of block of through lots. Although in this case, unlike Cambridge, which is pretty uniform, we have through lots of various different sizes and different orientations. Some have their frontage on Pioneer Club. Some have their frontage on Houghton Piles.

That's wild. Hey, Jay, the houses between Lakewood and Pioneer Club, those are also through lots too, right?

So I know I've highlighted this one. This one technically would not be because it's a corner. And through lots are only interior lots technically.

What about above it? Yeah, those three lots right there.

So again, I would say this is a corner lot. And technically back here, this is planted as Upton Drive, I believe is the name of it. But again, similar to this situation here, this is technically a planted public right-of-way street. So that's why these would technically be through lots, and this is technically a corner lot.

But then the other two on Lakewood would be through lots, right?

I would say probably yes. I mean, I suppose one could argue that the angle of Lakewood could be such that perhaps not, but I don't believe that's ever been vetted or brought forward. So I don't know.

I was curious how that plays into it. Okay. Interesting. So any thoughts about this area?

Those are so crazy and different that I don't know what. Whatever we decide works great for everything else. These will be your exceptions. This road is actually just forest. These are all crazy little, this is like a dirt road that turns into someone's yard. That's a fun and crazy little spot back there. but it's going to be very hard to draft anything that works great.

This is a case by case basis.

Just give them lots of variances.

Yeah. So that's where variances come from.

This is where they're coming from. Guaranteed.

But it's opening it up so it's not so hard for the BZA to, you know, when you go to the BZA, it's tough. Right. So it's, what can we do to... give some flexibility so it doesn't have to.

So like the best example is that backyard garage concept that you talked about. Then at least there's room for discussion. Cause now we've said, we wish, we want you to be able to do this with your three lot. Then, I mean, I don't know what some of them are doing here, but certainly it's an improvement.

But like those two on Reed's Lake, this feels like they should have a lot more flexibility. Yeah.

I don't think he's going to put a road there anytime soon. No. It's actually the name of it is Meadowville. That's the name of the road.

There's a lot and a lot in there along there. And then our size may not be buildable. Is this actually like a road?

Is it start to be paved? It's right away. There's utility. There are two utilities there too. All the way, all the way up. Yes. All right.

It's a new bike trail. And then maybe the craziest area of them all.

We have the area of Bonnell, Darby, and Mary. The lots that have Reeds Lake Boulevard cutting right through their lots. So even though these lots back up to Reed's Lake because there's that road going through there that technically creates a through lot situation for these Lots so a lot of these built Accessory buildings in the last so in this years.

How did that happen?

So in this particular area there were multiple variances for these and this is one area where the ZBA did routinely grant them going to the very unique situation that is this year.

The other, I would say the other aspect that sort of fueled proliferation of building those was the city was considering a buffer zone, a non-development buffer zone. Yeah, I remember that. Tweed's Lake, and so very quickly after that discussion, they went in just because they would, no matter what happened, they would be existing and conforming.

conversation around maybe they wouldn't have done these just just the fact that people might have lost the opportunity that proliferated the development actually yeah interesting i forgot about that yeah so it's go ahead oh in this case these lots actually all like uh extend all the way to the right front the road passes through there

Is there no situation where from Reed's Lake Boulevard to actual Reed's Lake, that's a separate parcel? Yes, there is. All these over here too. These are all going to split in the last two or five years.

No, but even to the left. There's a couple. Yeah, go straight up towards Reed's Lake. Those two lots I think are privately owned. Yes.

Yep. Okay.

It's not an easement. Those are privately owned and they're basically used for access to the lake. They've been owned by families for generations. Rage Lake Boulevard there is not an easement.

They're going to go to the beach.

So it's really two lots. This guy doesn't own that. No, they do project through. It's not an easement. It is right-of-way, and the city has actually looked at vacating that, and we lost the lawsuit with the residents there. It's a good walking trail.

I know, it's perfect in the spring. Looked at vacating it years ago. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. I love it.

Journey Huff. It's not so many times, but we do have a whole packet we give anybody who comes up with, I got a great idea. And we're like, well, the court says no.

Everybody was in favor of it until all of a sudden they weren't. Right.

The city wanted to vacate that?

Right.

The road? Really?

Right. We didn't want to have to take care of it. Yeah. Yeah. but there was a lot of pushback that the neighbors themselves liked having it as a road because they use it to get to their boats and everything else, and they didn't want to have responsibility for it.

I see. And they don't want somebody to buy and block their...

I mean, you just feel like you're not going on this part anymore. It's heavily used by walkers and cyclists. Right, yeah. It's a great asset to the city.

They were, through the vacation, they were going to retain pedestrian rights. It was the vehicular traffic that was going to be prohibited.

So to me, this is a perfect scenario where the ZBA process works here, right? If we want to ADU, why change it to make it more flexible? If you want to build something down here, you got to go through the ZBA.

And they've been granting variances on that already, so that's been- And they have, and there's some precedent for that. They won't anymore?

When it was the city commission, I would say yes.

Well, they said yes to everything.

Right. Right. Not so much.

How many did you vote against when you were on the city commission?

I can tell you now, Chris, 100% of my clients do not want to go to BDA. I bet, yeah. Because it's a 50% shot at best, and for a lot of my clients, it's very stressful. And if you lose, you're dumb, right?

It's not like you have to have a substantially different...

There's no... It's yes or no. There's no playing around or trying to come to a consensus. So just from that standpoint, if there's a way to... smartly allow some things that don't have to go to BZA. I think let's, let's look at it.

I think, I think we could look at like, you know, for through lots that are bisected by public right of way or something like that, we could cut, we could try to come up with something.

Yeah.

But that would be something that would, would be a way to address this unique circumstance that doesn't seem to bother, you know, but that's something we could, when we tease out some examples and some stuff for you guys for the next time to react to, we can, we can certainly look at that. Please do pass the common sense test.

So like I'm just thinking about someone wants to build an ADU on that, let's say on the other side of the lake property. A boat house with a bed in it. I guess that's not the end of the world, right?

There's some up there already. And they're gorgeous. I'd live in those as my primary residence. I'll rent that from you if you build it, Chris. OK. All right.

Yeah. All right. So just to kind of wrap up and what we talked about already, they're not necessarily very many through lots. But as we've seen, there's lots of different types of through lots where they do exist, where we do have continuous contiguous building through lots, which is, again, three or more in a row. They are allowed more buildable area just based on the ordinance definitions. But because of the other regulations that are in place, it could still place some significant restrictions on how they can be used in different ways. And again, in most of these cases, just because of the way they developed or because of the way the sorting ordinance is currently written. Most of what we looked at cannot be split, at least as the ordinance is currently formulated. So without additional changes to the sorting ordinance, many of these are likely to remain as such, at least for the foreseeable future. But again, as we discussed, if there is interest, it sounds like there is interest to tackle that in some way or form, this could reduce the number of through lots in the future, depending on how that shakes out.

This thing about the imaginary rear lot line, is that something that we're going to keep thinking about or talking about, how that might affect the current?

You're going to bring us some.

Yeah, we've got enough notes here from feedback. Yep. So what we will do is we'll take some data. We'll take some different looks from some of the feedback we've received from y'all tonight. And we'll try to play with some. Here's what this would look like on this lot. Here's what you could do this lot, that lot. Look, we've found some unintended consequences of that. It actually probably doesn't do what we want. So we'll tease that out for some examples based off of the feedback and bring that back to you. Thanks.

All right. So we've kind of already hit these questions throughout our discussion. So at this point, this is the end of our formal presentation.

Sorry, I'm coming back to through lots. Is there a way that we could come up with some things and say it only applies to through lots prior to 1990? Pick a date, right? So that way, if somebody tomorrow creates a through lot, this doesn't automatically apply to that. So basically discourage what happened in 2015 So have a set of rules for that, but then have another set of rules for those that, and I don't know legally if that's, if we're allowed to do that. I don't know if it makes sense, but.

It's possible. Pre-existing.

Yeah, pre-existing, but pre-existing except for the 2015. We don't want that to go.

And even like, if you think of the 2015, if the stuff that we talked about today, so you have the existing ordinance in place today and you change, you add the flexibility we have, if you go back to what prompted that 2015, ordinance, that would not be permissible today. Because the whole battleship thing, you can't build anymore. So if someone buys two million dollar houses on back-to-back lots, tears them both down, they're only going to get to build one back in its place. So we haven't really, even today's ordinance plus the flexibility we talked about today, you've avoided the issue that prompted that anyways. No more battleships, right? That's what we don't want. No more battleships. All right.

All set.

Thank you. Thanks. This was good. Thank you.

Thank you lots of work Next we'll have a report of the City Commission by deputy city manager Doug LaVey Yep, I'm gonna pinch it a few things.

There's been a lot of conversation about parking in schools, too So I'll belabor much on that I'm sure you all paid attention to that if you if you have not you can watch multiple hours of the meetings that are happening Riveting. I'll leave it at that. Just for things coming up in the city, next week we'll have Taste of East and Rally on Reeds coming up. Those are on the same day, which is Wednesday. That will be on Wealthy from 4 to 9. So there will be lots of activity happening there too. You will note the city is working with the Kent County Road Commission to do some intersection maintenance and Gaslight Village, the concrete intersection. So we're going to do some spot repairs with them. that will not close traffic or anything like that down, but you'll see some activity there. So we'll have some temporary lane shifts, those types of things, but they'll be accommodating around these events. So just in case you see some green trucks, it's just an intergovernmental partnership for some skills they have and some equipment they have that we don't have just to work together. Construction projects in the city are almost complete. So if you've been around town, you may have seen some of those. So a lot of our mill and fill projects are done. Our water utility work in Boston that you've seen, which is a lining project, that is all being put back together and we'll be wrapping that up this week with some patching of those access pits and decommissioning the above ground temple water service. And Cambridge was about a 90% reconstruct between MLK and Lake Drive. So that's wrapped up. We have Consumers Energy coming in right now to do some modifications to their street lighting there. But that was all utilities were touched in that project. So we're glad that's wrapped up. We did finish up the Reeds Lake Trail extension between the Reeds Lake Trail and Robinson Road and the road project intersection project with a new roundabout by the rock there if you've been through that particular area. So that's all wrapped up. We're sitting pretty good to have everything wrapped up before school starts for the most part. That's just always our goal. And so those things have worked out really well. I also wanted to just mention that the Department of Public Safety this last weekend, if you've seen our recent Facebook post, they had an event where they partnered with some churches in East Town for fishing with the Popo event where they partnered with East Grand Rapids, yeah, that was their request. They've done this in other communities, but they partnered with East Grand Rapids Public Safety, Grand Rapids Police Department, and some other law enforcement agencies to pair up youth, provide them with fishing poles, and then take them out with officers and community members to have an experience where they can learn how to fish or have a good time and just build a different type of relationship in a positive environment. I would say one of the cool things that I heard was that a resident, an East Grand Rapids resident, was at John Collins Park this weekend and hadn't heard about the event, didn't know about it, and they were so excited about it, they went home and got their boat and brought it in and wanted to jump in and participate, so they took kids on their boat too. So that was a really positive thing for the community. Cool. With that, that's all I have.

Is there a different company that did the street markings and stuff this year?

We have several that are here. So a lot of times they're project specific. We do a refresh community wide each year too. That particular company is the same one for the last two years. I think there's one more year in their contracts.

A lot of it looks like they've used watered down paint and there's scraps of paint all over like on wealthy.

No, what that is, is that it's actually polyurea, which is a higher grade and it just does not bond well to concrete in that sense. Actually, the waterborne paint actually does better on the concrete. It will go away as soon as you run plow trucks and salt over it, but that's one of the challenges when you have different surfaces from asphalt to concrete to brick.

Thank you.

That's something that actually I think tonight is going to be addressed with some discussion. some pavement markings. Since you mentioned that area, from our mobility bike action plan, some areas where we couldn't get dedicated bike lanes, we sort of connected them based off of traffic volumes with Sheroes. Um, there's a enhanced Cheryl, um, that's been utilized in Oregon and Washington state that, um, there's more frequency of them and they do provide, um, uh, uh, recommended, um, lanes more speak, but not fully. And so, uh, we're actually going to be, uh, implementing those about five o'clock tomorrow morning. Cool. So take a look and take a look and see what that looks like. Yeah. Where will they be? They will be through Gaslight Village, so they'll start at Lovett where the bike lanes end and where that short transition happens to Lakeside. So if you're out about tomorrow morning, you'll see what those look like. But it's something that it still follows the same regulation, but just given the cross section we have there, it's kind of unique because we have nine feet for parking and a minimum would be seven. So we can allow for a door zone in some space where it really... there's some shared space there, but it sort of designates for the cyclists or the other mobility users really where they should be maybe instead of the full lane. So something we're just trying and something that's out there. We had to make our own template because they did out in Oregon and Washington. So we're just gonna try it out and see how it goes. And it's just paint marking paint. So we're gonna catch some of those areas where you noted. So we'll freshen those up. And- Marking in the in the area and it's certainly in the area.

Yep, so we're just gonna try it out and see how the community reacts and Anything else said J. Nope not from here Our next planning Commission meeting is the third Tuesday of September September 15th because of how Labor Day falls in the City Commission meeting so make sure you're not confused when you see that date September 15th and Next is adjournment. May I have a motion and a second?

So moved. Second.

All those in favor say yes. Yes. Opposed say no. Meeting's adjourned. Enjoy the last weeks of summer, everyone.