Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

There you go. Sweet. I will call the Georgetown Planning Commission meeting to order. The date is Wednesday, November 9th at 6:04 p.m. July 18th. Oh, November 19th. Sorry. So, one um I will do the roll call. Kathy H here. Jay Cooper. Christian Dixon here. Chris Stanford here. Natasha Jackson here. Shane Henry. And you're I'm here. You're here. And you're on the board tonight. Okay. That's great.

Yeah. Our first item on the agenda is the application for encroachments and mention the approval of minutes of the previous two dates. Dennis, would you or John, can you hear us? or Dennis, would you like to give a staff report on this or Michael's going to do that? He's online. Okay, cool.

Okay, they're both online. So, perfect. Hey, I can hear. Thank you. Michael, do you want to do the introduction for item one on the agenda? Yes, just a moment. Um, getting to my memo here. Okay. Uh, I'm Mike Davenport with You might have your uh You might have mute on my I thought I just turned uh I thought I just turned I thought I just unmuted myself. Let me check. We also cannot see or hear you. If you can hear us, I can see you.

Okay. I've just been uh upgraded to a as a panelist and and Shane Hill is here now. Hello everyone.

Okay. Can you see me? Can you hear me? That might

Are you able to see things like that? Just a moment. Okay, got it. should be able to see me now.

Yeah. Where's the sound coming from? Can you hear me now? It's on his side, isn't it? We're looking at our side. John doesn't care about it. Can you hear me? Zoom workplace. I think it would be in our settings. Usually it's from the other side. That's what I said.

Michael, so we just can't hear either. I can I can hear you. It's going to clicked off. I'm gonna try and he's not Michael, can you hear us? I can hear you. Okay, hold on. We're trying to get this sound issue resolved on our end.

Okay. Okay, give it a try, Michael. Okay, can you hear? Can you hear? Okay, sounds good. Sounds good.

Okay, my name's My name's Go ahead. Go ahead. Okay. My name is Mike. My name's Mike Port. I'm the uh community matters. planner for the

the town of Georgetown. And this is a review of an application by property owner John Sprunger, owner of 1110 Main Street, who seeks approval for an encroachment license for a fence into the rideway. the fence along would run along the north property line of his property. And he's seeking to be able to extend that fence, continue it into the right ofway to where it would reach a stone, an existing stone wall that provides a vertical separation from his yard level and the street level, which is several feet below. Um, so in reviewing the application, there's several points. There are several items that are included with the application. There is the letter of application from the property owner. There's information from the county assessor, usually just to let you know that yes, this person is listed as the owner of the property. Um, the memo reviews the process for reviewing such an application. And finally, there's an an improvement survey plat showing uh where this fence would go. Now, in terms of process, the in 2005, the board of selectmen adopted the attached procedures for reviewing encroachment agreements. The applicant submits the application to the town clerk who sends it out to staff and other referral agencies like utility companies for their review. planning commission makes a recommendation. The board of selectment makes a decision uh regarding the application. The municipal code also provides that a fence is a type of improvement on a property that has to also be be reviewed by the design review commission. Um the

site, as I mentioned, is 1110 Main Street. The street slopes up to the north and the property slopes up to the east. Um, and as I mentioned, there's a vertical drop at this stone wall. Stone walls in the rideway. There's a drop of several feet at that particular point. Um, the property is surrounded by other single family detached homes and lots. One of the things I look at is the comprehensive plan. So, I've listed a number of different maps. I looked at as well as the comprehensive plan. And probably the key piece of information there is besides the fact that it is a residential area and residential fences are allowed is that the property is not in a flood hazard area. In terms of criteria for approval, these are listed on the uh the encroachment document that is attached. Uh there are several criteria that relate to do town staff and the other outside parties who get a copy of the application do they have any concerns about it and then there are several criteria after that I'll go through. So briefly going through it criteria a circulation both road and bridge and clear creek fire authority indicated no problem regarding street maintenance. Again, Roaden Bridge said they did not see an issue on utilities. The uh town did not receive any response from utility companies. However, as is noted later in the memo, state law does require that before there's any digging, even for shallow digging like the fence, the post for a fence, there is a require there is a state requirement that you do have to uh contact Colorado 811, which is the name and number of a website on the internet. And that provides you directions on how do you request a

locate for them to come out and check are there any um utility lines that might be affected by where the fence is being proposed. Uh D under enforcement. Uh again, Clear Creek uh Fire Authority did not have an issue, nor did the sheriff. In terms of criteria E, expansion, um that's really not applicable in this case. income space at this point. Criteria F probably not applicable either. That may whether or not the applicant uh proposes to do that in the future that would be affected by the agreement if this project is approved. Adopted plans the proposed as I've noted previously the proposed plan and from reading through the comprehensive plan there don't seem to be any policies against what's being asked here. And finally, probably the main one is the benefit. The uh encroachment policies of the town say uh one of the following two need to be either true. It either has to be about the encroachment is basically occurring um to acknowledge an existing condition or because there's some public amenity involved. Public amenity is not applicable. So we just get to the first criteria under benefit which is basically what is being recognized here is there actually is a physical change that occurs in the land where there is a drop of several feet. So it appears that the applicant's request does meet that. So the findings are that the as the consultant we're recom excuse me recommending uh uh recommendation of approval planning commission has the options of either to recommend approval approve with conditions to continue or

to recommend denial. And so again the um we as the planners for the town are recommending uh approval with the conditions listed in the recommended motions. And those are number one, the applicant obtained a certificate of appropriateness from the design review commission for the fence. Number two, prior to any digging or construction of the fence, any underground utilities be located as required by Colorado statutes, and that's as noted in the uh on the Colorado 811 website. and three, the fence is subject to an encroachment agreement approved by the town attorney and that is the staff report.

Thank you. I have one question. Go ahead. Is it required um for the adjacent homeowners to you know obviously it's it's up to us to make the approval but do the adjacent homeowners have any say in this? It's not listed in the policies adopted by the by the town. The um the property owner to the north along whose property this fence would be uh running. They're listed in the information, but I don't believe um there was any public notice requirement.

Okay, that's what I thought. I didn't see it. Okay.

I'll also add um the um assistant administrator mentioned that typically what the design review commission has been uh approving are basically the short open picket type of fence. And if you look at that area in surrounding properties, that's the type of fence that you see. In other words, not a 6-ft privacy fence, but typically more of a a decorative type of fence that's usually about three or four feet in height. That's what you see on adjacent properties um in this location. I'm curious about what happens if the town decides to redo the the road in that area and takes care of that problem of the slope coming down into the right of way at this point.

Then what the guy who's built the fence that two parts to that is that that would be covered by the encroachment agreement that has to be approved by the PR town attorney. The normal situations in this type of agreement is that the usually the way those agreements are written, it says the the owner is responsible for the the town has the ability to go in and just remove the fence or have or request the owner to remove the fence. Um, and number two, at this point, Road and Bridge has said they don't think that will be needed in the future, but that would be something that will be covered by the encroachment agreement, which has to be approved by the town attorney.

If I might piggy back on that, whenever whenever a property owner owner enters into an encroachment agreement, they are always assuming the risk that whatever they put out there is going to be destroyed at some point. they will be solely responsible for replacing it, not the town. That's the risk they take for using the town's property for an employment like this. And and and typically, for example, if someone plants shrubs in a utility easement, the utility company can go ahead and just take those shrubs out. It's not their responsibility, and they have no responsibility to replace those slub those shrubs after they have done whatever work they needed to do in a trench.

[clears throat]

And could you explain? So, so under the benefit aspect of of our decision to recommend this to the board of selection, it it says, "Is the encroachment beneficial to the town of Georgetown? As general policy, it is not in the town's interest to grant encroachments, thereby granting public property to private use. Could you elaborate or explain again how this is this is beneficial for for the town or because like I understand it's not it's like up on top of the hill. It's not going to be a a that there isn't much use for the town except it's part of their front yard essentially. But in in what way is this beneficial for the town because because or like or are we going to have the next houses down the street wanting to encroach their fence into the into the rideways?

Well, on the second part of of your question is that yes, that certainly could happen. On the first part, it's something I did discuss with the um assistant administrator in in terms of the specific point uh regarding is there a a benefit or not to the town. And it was more recognition that this didn't seem to be a harm to the town to allow it as opposed to saying if there's a benefit, it may be if there's a benefit, it might be when it gets to the design review commission as to what the character of the neighborhood would look like. But um no, I wasn't able to find a specific benefit beyond the notion of this is recognizing the logical physical break in the land even it's not the boundary line between right of way and property

if it could be improvement to the property value by adding expense too. Sure. Sure. And one more thing, it it is also sometimes rigidly translated as benefit to the town being benefit to the entire town, but by benefiting a resident of the town, it is also assumed as a benefit to the town. Great. Cool. Uh I recommend a motion.

Yeah. John's on the if you want to ask John or any questions. We give him an opportunity to make a comment. John, are you there? Yeah, I'm here. Um, no questions. Uh, I think we've got everything right. And, uh, I've already done the, uh, the 811, uh, locate. Yeah. And as mentioned, this would just be a a 4ft tall uh, portion of the fence that would be in the encroachment. And that's it.

Okay. I move to recommend approval under an encroachment agreement for property at 1110 Main Street for fence extending from the north property line to the rightway to the existing stone wall subject to the following conditions. Number one, applicant obtain a certificate of appropriateness from the design review commission for the fence prior to any digging or construction of fence and underground utilities be located as required by Colorado statutes. Fence subject to an encroachment agreement approved by the town. Second approve. I Okay, so I'll I'll vote to approve. Yes.

Great. Uh well, thank you, John and Michael. Okay. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you. It's Michael. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Bye. and these over here. I'm not sure if the minutes are I have a copy on my computer. Okay. Well, we have a motion to approve the minutes of September 17th and October 15th, 2025. Motion second. First,

all in favor? All right. All opposed. And a motion to adjurnn. A motion to second. Where's the candy in it? [laughter] Be sarcastic here. Okay, we are. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Happy Thanksgiving everybody. Happy Thanksgiving. Don't forget that it's important. What was the Thursday morning?