Plan Commission - Regular Meeting

I couldn't figure that out because Braxton was that when he was ahead of cuz he was he was two years. Oh, really? We could just do so and two years. His birthday is the 28th instead of the you know so anyway Davidson that's all well you know he's coaching football too we played played against him let me know when you're ready Kayla is Derek going to be on Zoom or is he just not here or what's who's new Pal this week

believe he is going to be out the first couple meetings The first couple I didn't Yeah. And I didn't get a link sent out to him. So I'm Okay. He's on vacation. Vacation. Yep. This one and next one. 30 to 28, I think. Okay. We got to be decent. Real decent, right? I'm I'm ready when you guys are. Okay. Unmuted. The gator's ranked, too.

New thing. All right. All right. We'll call the meeting to order this evening. The August 26th, 2025 meeting of the Area Plan Commission. Um, I'll just go ahead and go through all this stuff. We ask you please turn off your cell phones and electronic devices. Uh, our first order of business this evening will be the adoption of last month's meeting minutes that were submitted electronically. So, I'll take a motion for that. Motion approved. Second. All right. moved and seconded to adopt last month's meeting minutes as submitted. All those in favor signify by saying I. I.

Oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. I would like to advise everybody that your testimony is being recorded and taken under oath. Anyone wishing to speak this evening will do so when called upon. We'll ask that you face our attorney to my left to be sworn in before speaking. All persons speaking will be asked to give their full name for the record spelling their last name so that we have accurate uh minutes and records. uh please uh speak directly into the mic microphone so that you're fully recorded. Uh Caleb will give a staff report and then the petitioner will be given 10 minutes for their presentation. That's followed by 10 minutes of uh collective 10 minutes for remmonstrators. We offer then five minutes for government officials wishing to speak and then a final five minutes for the petitioner's rebuttal. Uh questions from the board do not count towards those minutes. Uh, our attorney gives a twominut and a one minute warning as your time is expiring. We ask that all persons conduct themselves in a civil manner. If you can't do that, we reserve the right to ask you to leave. Uh, and then uh, this meeting is now being recorded and streamed for public viewing. By participating, you acknowledge that your image, voice, and comments may be captured and made publicly available. This meeting has been properly noticed in accordance with Indiana Code 514 1.5. Um the first uh thing is we did have one hearing item for this evening that has been withdrawn. So just to make it nice and clean, we'll just have a motion to accept the withdrawal.

Motion to accept the withdrawal. Second. Right. Been moved and seconded to accept the withdrawal of the Beex minor subdivision lot one uh replat. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. All those opposed. Same sign.

Motion carries. Uh we have three other business items and then we are going to add a fourth other business item. Uh number four will be what we have handed out here this evening um which is a couple of uh little plat ordinance changes and Kayla and Rhonda have been working on and we'll go through that. We've seen it once before. It's been to the commissioners and now back for um its final stage. Um, I would also like to note that um the commissioners have replaced uh they have made the appointment to replace Tyler Eden and that will be Derek Tol. He is unfortunately not going to be here due to um vacationing this month and I believe next month, but we will see him uh in uh October. Um, I I was going to s suggest that we consider holding an election. Tyler was our voice vice president. I was going to suggest that we put that on next month's meeting agenda. Um, I don't know if you prefer to wait until Derek's here so that we have all four, but I would like to get a vice president in place. So, we could put that on next month's agenda. Anyway, we regardless, maybe he'll be able to join by Zoom and participate in that. So, uh, anybody interested in the vice president duties is just really, um, be prepared to do what I do, I guess, um, if I'm not here. So, think that over and the glory that it could be for you. been there.

Uh I have anything else on I guess with that we will just jump right into our um other business item um which our big one will be uh the UDO update that Kayla's been doing a lot of lot of work on.

Address the minutes. Yeah. Okay, we're good. All right. I missed that. All right. I went fast.

So, I've handed you different documents. You should have a comparison and uh zoning ordinance chapter one and two. There should be definitions chapter print out. Definitions chapter. Thank you. And there is a couple different printouts of the land use matrix. So we can go over this however you guys would like. Um I I expect there will be questions. Um one of the just to let you know my method here. Chapter two is all of the zoning districts. Uh so that shows how they compared to the old zoning districts and where there were significant changes or not. Um and that pretty well translates into what uses are allowed in which districts. So the next thing I did was went through our land use matrix um new and old merged them together um to look at them to see how how is that table changed where are we changing things where are we more or less keeping them the same. I printed out two different versions of that table. One is sorted by category. So accessory, uh, agriculture, commercial uses are all grouped together. And then each land use that is categorized within those sections. And the second table, which I'm sorry, it's pretty small. Um, that is an alphabetical listing of land use alone.

You'll notice that there are c the categories are italicized, bold or regular font. This indicates whether uh something was in the old ordinance only, whether it is in the new UDO only or whether it is in both and relatively the same. So, italics means it was as it was in the old land use table. Bold means it's a new item in the land use table. And uh regular font means it was in both more or less in the same fashion. if there were differences in the zoning districts where they were allowed. Um, I used a uh a um kind of an arrow to note that this went from a special exception use to a permitted use in this zoning district or um in other cases an italic meant that it was say permitted an itallic P in this zoning district previously but has not been addressed in the new zoning district in that uh zoning district. So kind of went through to try to keep track of what happened with this use in this zoning district. Is it permitted? Is it special exception? Is that a new thing or an old thing? Where are we? How has it changed? This was complicated and time consuming. Um I did make um some decisions on for example um equestrian facility just as an example. note that is an agricultural use. I've got a note next to that that it previously was animal stables excluding kennels and riding stables. So that's two uses now that are combined into one.

So you'll see that under agriculture that is a regular font P, but I also note writing stables was an S. the little things like this um as you go across to note where things were um where they were S's where they were P's where it was one or the other and where we've made a change that and how that is permitted. So uh but overall I've tried to leave it really as it was in our in uh the new and the old zoning district uh table. So the two these two things are the same or different?

Same content just a different layout. The beauty of it was all in Excel. So I could sort it whatever way you needed me to sort it. So one is sorted by uh category. That far left. Yeah.

The landscape orientation document. The portrait uh orientation uh is sorted by use alphabetically. Mine is not. [Laughter] [Music] I think I've got them both out.

Okay. But I was worried you wouldn't be able to read it, so I printed it out. Got it. Okay. Yeah, here we are. All right. Got it. All right. Okay. There we go. Okay. So, one is sorted by you've got two pages front and back. One is by category, the other is category and then use the other one is just by use. So, if you were curious if kennel got mentioned under agriculture or something like that, that would show you here's kennel every time it is mentioned. Yeah, I think this is Yeah, this works.

And that's how I went through try my very best to remove duplicates, do things like that and show where things have, where they've So, a few orientation questions. We are now saying, for example, that row one, you can have beekeeping in an R1 residential estate as a permitted use. Where did that come from? That was a note that was part of the new use. Sorry, is there draws a draw of this like we're saying? So, this is new that we could say you get a beekeeping in an R1 or R2, R3. I I think that was a change in state law that you had to allow.

Okay. So, that's what I'm at. Like, what's the reason for that one? Is it us saying

there was a need in this process to update where people could have like hobby farm or small uh scale chickens 4 kind of hobby farm type things going on. Um so we added that back into the accessory table that was previously removed in about 2015. recreational keeping of livestock used to live in our accessory use table. However, everybody forgot we had an accessory use table because it's buried in development standards. Um, and we kept granting variances for 4 pigs and things at the BCA. So, it was felt like it was a good time to add accessory keeping of small agriculture like beekeeping, chickens, maybe rabbits because I think there was also some curious curiosity about how that's handled in state law. Um, back into the use table. Uh, next question. Uh, for SCES micro, we we've dealt with that most recently. It's an italicized S in column two for rural residential because that entire

district is being deleted. That's why it's atalicized. Correct. So if I see it atalicized that means old and abandoned. So for example under the industrial second row down industrial assembly facility means old and abandoned. We're not using it anymore.

Yes. Because in some of those cases as well we are dealing with it in a different way in the new use matrix. So for example, if you go to the industrial section you'll see that there is industrial heavy and light and it is now broken down simply into is this an heavy industrial or light industrial use something I think needs a little more fleshing out. Um but that is we were looking at handling it in a little bit more generic of a fashion. Um however that this are some of the things I was curious to know your opinion on um as a board. Do we want to keep assembly facility or do we want to just f kind of put it all together as a manufacturing facility? To be honest, at the level of our expertise in the planning department, the difference between a fabrication facility, an assembly facility, a manufacturing facility, and a package well there's packaging. There's there are these very like fine little differences in some of these that are they look the same and so we were curious if we could combine them down into a more general industrial facility type category.

Is that a BCA item kind of on this? and we had to ask those questions of assembly and it was a one one man show. So I think we have to yeah flush it out a bit because we didn't have clear direction. Okay, we can do that. And then last question for me kayo um second row down on agriculture it's permitted it was the same. So if we want to have any other handling of it going forward we that is open for our discussion. It is permitted in the agricultural district. So at this point um that is where it no discussion occurred in the in the meetings.

Oh in the steering committee meetings yes there was insistence that it remain permitted in agriculture full stop [Music] without okay and that's because it's regulatory required. Yeah, there's there's a regulation at the state level requiring us to have a permitted use in agricultural zoning districts for capos. No, there was there is regulation of it at the state level, right? Sorry Rhonda, I'm putting you in the spot. Confined feeding operations. There is. But what but if it's a permitted use are that seemed to indicate to me we're not going to do anything. We're going to let those

That's just what I'm asking. If it's open for us to discuss, I would say, do we want parameters? That's a good question.

Yeah, there are regulations in our current zoning ordinance and they remain in our existing one. I'll have to double check if that actually needs an asterisk after it. Um, but yes, they would go through uh permit review just like any other permit. Um, I'm thinking about this and it's to me I think this might need to be broken down under multiple meetings because I think it's just going to take so long because like we just discussed beekeeping and I looked that one up and so now you got to have a question on beekeeping is yes it's it's it's a use it's it's permitted by state law. However, governing bodies can re can implement rules regarding the number of hives a resident can keep and also the location of the hives. So, you know, I don't I don't know anything about that law. I just looked it up and I'm like, and it's just that's the complexity this is going to be is that every one of these rules is going to be analyzed. I would hope and then people are going to be like I would think people are going to have something to say about it and say, "Well, I'm worried to I'm allergic like my mom's allergic to honey and bees." So, I mean, you don't I don't want a hundred hives next door resident versus if there's one hive, I can't stop it because it's allowed by state law. So, I think there's going to be questions like that. That goes for every item. I mean, it's just that's that's how tough I think this is going to be.

All right. Well, no, you can't strike it. It's just I don't know how you would do it because you could limit like you can only limit you can limit to one hive. So where I'm at right now, yeah, you're correct. Sub or is that something that would go before the BCA and the B somebody would say because I don't know how many people and the BCA would say, okay, how many hives you going to have? Okay, how many acres do you have? Okay, that the question is does the law require it to be permitted use or does it allow for us to consider it a special except to the law I think if I just read it, but the law states that you can't restrict it. You can't ban it. Can't ban it. I can't ban it, but you can limit it. you can. Okay. So, it just be a special exception. We would properly define beekeeping. It's not defined and then that's what that's how we handle that, right?

Yeah. And so, and so I think that but that's just one item. That's I mean I know I'm just talking about that. I mean, not to make a big deal by beekeep because I'm fine with it. But it's just every items like you did the CAFO. I haven't looked I'd have to look it up. I I thought it was allowed. I don't really have a problem with it, but maybe within certain areas it wouldn't be the best idea right now. It's just wherever there's a and there's a everywhere.

Yeah. And so that's those I mean every single item is going to be like that. That's and I don't know if there's a way to break it up where we do it over multiple meetings because that's my concern. That's why I'm speaking up is my concern is that I don't want to sit here for six hours and you're going to have this place packed because somebody doesn't like each person doesn't like one item versus hey we're going to address this now, this now and this now and try to break it up into multiple meetings. I don't know. That's my that's my question. I don't I just fear that it's going to be a very long meeting. And

so I just noticed that if you look at the in the definitions packet hobby farm because I remember when we were talking about this a small agricultural operation operated accessory to another land use generally for pleasure or for household use and which does not include the raising of livestock except for beekeeping and chickens and poultry. But then on the first line we have beekeeping, poultry, rabbits. That was a change this evening that I am bringing up I guess right now. I can scratch out rabbits, but I thought anything kept in a hutch we might want to consider as part of that. So our definition in our I can amend the the definition if we need to. So rabbits was just added this evening. Yes.

Okay. Yeah. This is discussion. I'm kind of seeing where are we with this? Is this a good idea or a bad idea? No, I think it's a great idea. It's just I'm worried about the time it's going to take and and the and you know how many people have in the audience that want to speak about each little item because it's I don't think this is the issue. I think the other issues were really brought up with the realators and stuff. They're really concerned about the restrictions elsewhere. So I think we're going to have a lot of people coming and I don't know. I'm just I'm just thinking you're just thinking about the adoption process.

Yes, the adoption process. And because I mean I it's fine. It's just now we got to sit down and say, "Okay, do we all agree with this? How can we how can we write this in a way that works best and doesn't put the BCA under even more cases than they already have.

But I mean, unless we do a very good job of defining this at this point, these things should go in front of the BCA." Okay, that's some of the problem. But in that case, no one would have any of these things because unless it was a special exception use. Um I guess um all right. I have a question. Mhm. Um because of the current uh governor's attention to nuclear.

So where would like the small modular reactor pieces that he's talking about when see where where does that fall into any of the zoning? That probably would be a new one. I would think a power generation facility uh was in our old ordinance and see how translated over this is a definitely a different kind of power than what but that nuclear would fall under the category if you don't have a special category for nuclear

it's all special exception it looks like Yeah. So that would all go before the BCA then, right? Special exceptions would Yes. So any type of power generation facility currently is only special exception egg and I can't IG and I L depending upon size though, right?

This says S by all three says commercial. Yes, it says power generation facility commercial. So let's be close. see that that could be something that's going to be come could come before the county as a new. May I maybe there's a recommendation that the commission appoint a subcommittee have that six-hour meeting with you and then come back with some recommendations and a secondary recommendation that it goes to um the BCA and the B BCA specifically would need to endorse any of special BS's I think you have to get that that should go to the BZA should I reconvene the steering committee to go over the final product. Would that be a

I mean that could make sense because the people on that committee are very diverse that hits all these different segments be sort of experts in that specific area. Um, I I think that the the main question or what or what I think I what I was looking at was is this a format that I felt like I could look at cuz this is just the first

I think I think it is. And then well is it is this something that I could take home read through develop my list of questions come back ask those questions in the front of this group I guess and get the answers and we would all do that and then feel comfortable then making a recommendation to the commissioners I guess is kind of where I've been with it was how do I digest it chapter by chapter in the quickest way and I think that this helps to do that. I don't I don't think we should sit together and do that like you said for six hours, but try and do it on your own time. Come back with Do it on your own time and say and then you could provide a list of all the things that bother you. Yeah. Exactly.

And then if everybody's got the same thing, then we're gonna But we know how we're going to change that. Yeah. So then we would just generate and I don't know if there's a way to, you know, do a a Google sheet or something like that that you could pop open and put in your list of concerns that then could be addressed at the next meeting or something like that. That would be amazing. So each time we meet, we another chapter. Sorry to interrupt, but not that for the public to see it too, right? Would be Yeah, it could be that. And it would help us too. It's definitely the commissioners because they're going to they're going to have to listen to the public more than anybody else. Yeah, it could be completely transparent. It could be public, I suppose. Yeah. If we had a clean enough document, we just couldn't let everybody from the public uh edit it, you know. No, no. But yeah,

I think the only thing they're missing on this would be knowing what S&Ps are. I think, you know, understand what those um because it's not stayed on here, but Mhm. I think otherwise I think most of it's kind of stuff like selfexplanatory because I like this document as well that is sort of sort of a side byside UDO versus the old chapter one. Um and then you jump over to something like this. So I'm just I guess what I'm So you'll do this for every chapter essentially. You'll have these types of documents and so we just take a chapter or two a month

I guess and go at it that way. So would this be something that I think especially the comparison piece would this be something that would be on our website that the the community could could look at the old and the new or is this just for us this point this is just for us and I guess anybody who requests it since it's here at this meeting but um in our document so public document might as well make it available

if I was thinking especially the development community the real you know having them look at that because they had questions and concerns would be a good idea. So I didn't know like are we going to be able to share that in this form with them to get their feedback. But in terms of your question tonight, I I is this a good I think it's great. It was easy to for me to follow and I could quickly already see that. Yeah. And Lacy, you know, we're quick to find out. She's already pointing them out and we're like and and and we all are, you know, realizing, yeah, this this going to work if we can figure out what we're concerned about real quick.

I think what's missing in here right now is where you have questions for us. We're not we don't know if you have a question or if you presented it as final. So, if there is a question, do you want to include rabbits? We need to a highlight or an indication or some sort of a another font where then and then we we can answer it. So I think if it's answer questions here or if there was significant conflict at the steering committee level highlighting that just so we can know when that would is it the whole thing. Well is it the whole thing

the steering committee um the term hobby farm it is livestock is very the community is very open to having livestock in a lot of places. So establishing this whole accessory use category was trying to fence in how do we deal with residential non-farm residents to have be able to have and explore livestock without limiting them too much. That's how that category got put in alto together. And we had HOA representation on that. Some some sort of a do we have anyone from HOA on there?

Two surveyors. We had uh Steve Ellbury representing the kind of egg and viewpoint. Um trying to think who else we had on that from the Randy Surell. Yeah. Randy Sell was on it for economic development viewpoint developers. Uh we had anybody who was on tech was involved. So Lace McCartney was our a rep as well from Purdue Extension. Right. Who from the B who from the business community who are going to develop developers? Mr. Goen. Who is it? Mr. Goen's a part of the Yes. two surveyors.

Well, we had surveyors. Yeah. We didn't have any developers per se, any business people, economic development people weren't really a part of it. Philip going and also Chris. Yeah. But I felt like those two kind of represented that because they were always their questions always were how do I how does my client react to this you know so because their clients are the developers typically you know so how do they deal with it might be a good proxy for a for the business decisions I think that's a big miss

the other thing this this document the 8 and 1 half by 11 one the other thing that I found myself going to quickly was the Kayla Brooks notes reading from back to front. I guess that's a quick description of you know kind of her in her words the why and what I guess and then you can go and then read the the detail that could almost be put in the front actually maybe would it be possible for us to get access to the minutes of the steering committee meeting so we review this we can maybe solve

all of that just before this I need to request that still So, do you do you want to put this on other business uh each month then? So, like next month we'll we'll come back and we'll and we'll have discussion on chapter one. Is that maybe the the idea here? Honestly, and this might be a bit much, but I'd really like for this board to get through the chapter parts of chap the chapter one and the part of chapter 2, which is just part that is provided here. Um, this is just a comparison of our current zoning districts versus the old. That's all that is.

Oh, yes. Chapter one and two. Yeah. Yes. Yep. And then the use matrix. I knew you guys would have questions about what's allowed in those districts and how and if that's changed. sort of how that kind of line like well what is the what is allowed in the a district why are we you know changing the a district lot standards well let's look at the uses that are allowed chapter one and two they're they're probably going to be the hardest ones to do I guess as well so

so I would I would love it if you guys could get through all of the zoning district comparisons um which are as you get used to it they're pretty cut and dry and the way it's laid out um these are things that we refer to every day um in my office as things come in permit-wise. What's the lot coverage? How tall can it be? How much square footage is required? Lot size. All of these things are things we look at every single day. How many chapters are there? I

think 10 definitions. I printed out two. That's chapter 10. Just for your own reference, so you can see how are we defining things. And if something's missing, please make a note. So, will you be able to create like a a Google doc or Google sheet or something that could have cells for questions that we could enter? I can see what it wants me to use or just come with questions in the next meeting or I just thought if we did it you email me I can incorporate them into a sheet really easily. Maybe just email the questions to you then. Okay. Homework. Everybody's homework.

Yeah. And just can I go over a few of the things in the um in the chapter 2 that I'm thinking of I guess as I'm looking at this with you? I think I had a question on chapter 2 I think. Okay. On uh I guess this is a and it looks like it's going to a minimum of three acres. Who made that decision kind of

that was our committee. The steering committee decided three acres. The county started out with one acre and we decided that was too small. And the county went to two acres, decided that was too large, so they went to an acre and a half to try to save farmland. Now we're boosting up to three acres. I don't see how that saves farm ground.

You know what I mean? understand the idea behind it, but I also see I guess my side of it, which is all the minor subdivisions we see come through at a minimum of those one and a half acres. Um, and what we're seeing is that one and a half acres is not consistent with the purpose statement of the agricultural zoning district. It does not allow for that. Um I guess is is the the minimum of 10 acres still there?

That is the minimum for an exempt division of land which totally circumvents our entire planning process. Um I would have I haven't gotten to that chapter. I know we have amended that a little bit. So that's not exactly the same as it um was in the original draft. So if you purchase 10 acres to build on now Mhm. Is that going to go away for people? No, you can still build on that. You if you you only need three acres. That's a Yeah. If it's on day

and that might be a cut out of 100 acres, but the actual parcel set aside for the lot size is three acres. And I'm just saying the county started out with one acre, thought that was too too small because you you know you really couldn't do septics and stuff. They went to two acres and the county figured years ago that was too large then. So we went to acre and a half and so now we're doubling it. I mean just historically of course the county's changed but that's just a big jump. I mean, I'm just saying doesn't save farm ground.

I think I think the acres and the and the size of the structures, I think those changes, I think people are going to be concerned about it. I think it's something that when we have the public meeting, we're going to see how you know how many people in the egg communities like this this is dumb or this is a good idea. We don't I mean, most of us don't I don't know if anybody here has a 100 acre farm, but we're not thinking about subdividing if you did. And so those are the people you're going to want to talk to is hey you have 100 acre farm but you think about subdividing what would be best for you. I think those kind questions besides the because I mean that's what your concern is is is that that farmer with 100 acres or 500 acres whatever you know have saying okay I'm going to sell a little bit of my land to give to a for my a friend or family member to buy build a house there you know I don't want to lose that much farm ground. You see what I'm saying? I think that's what your argument is one that's why one and a half acres is there versus three.

I'm just saying that's what the county did in the past. I know but the question I mean I would want to hear is the farmers themselves you know people own those big acreage lots of where where they stand on change like this.

And then of course I also keep in mind that this county is divided in half. We have the half a county that is going crazy and being and then we have the eastern side of the county and whatever rules we make for the west side of the county affects everyone in the eastern side of the county also. So I just think they have to be considered at some point is a fine balance. I would also point out that a lot of the property on the west side of the county while still farmed is not zoned agriculturally anymore. It's kind of a a breakdown there. You can farm land that is zoned and um but it is a lot of times zoned already to industrial or commercial or residential.

There's a lot residential. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of ground on the east side's been zoned residential already, even though it's still all farm ground. What' you say? I couldn't hear. There's a lot of ground on the east side that's been reszoned residential already. If you look at the maps around Shirley, Shirley, Wilkinson there, there is no farm ground around those two towns. Basically, it's all residential. How close are several miles out? How how close are sewers to that side of the county? Early has sewers. Close. Wilkinson has a semi sewer. Those are two towns. So,

so that is definitely something we're looking at. But more and more what we're seeing um on agriculturally zoned land is that people want to live a kind of truly rural lifestyle. and more or less it is very difficult to lay out a very rural farmat on one and a half acres. So that is what we're seeing and so that was a response of both our steering committee um which involved residents Wendell was on that um as well as uh some of the experts on our technical committee that reviews all the minor subdivisions um and just staff in general and what we're seeing. So, we're seeing some speculative splits as well, and that's been kind of hard to put a clamp down on. So,

it's it's not so much the preserving the farmland, it's preserving the rural land, I guess, is what you're doing because it's it's uh less less density for sure as opposed to a stack of a bunch of 1.5 acre lots along a county road. And I know that was a big part of what we were thinking about. Right now, you can take a farm and just start doing one and a half acre lots all the way down the road.

Now, a subdivision is not real living. By making the lot bigger, they can't put as many in as quickly. They want to do that, they need to put in for a subdivision and actually do it right. If you're if you're a farmer and you want to gift your son or daughter a bu a lot to build on, but you only think they need one acre, you carve out three, still farm the other two, you know, it's it's not this under different ownership. So yeah, it's to preserve the rural nature, not so much the agriculture

and that uh we've consulted with infrastructure for that. I mean, well, that's the other thing. It's like, you know, when you build, like Windows, Wendle was saying, you know, you got a a row of 1.5 acre lots, you know, that become starts to become a problem with driveways and the road and um emergency services and all that stuff. You know, it's like you just have more density, wet utilities.

Yeah. You have you have density in a place that you shouldn't be having density is what was happening. I mean, that's not the only thing going in. They're on 100 South. I mean, they're doing an acre and a half to two acres, you know. Of course, all those houses are going to be a million dollars or more. Yeah. Which is fine, but you know, it's uh it it means that infrastructure improvement is reactionary at that point. Not we're not planning the residential areas. We're reacting to the residential areas. a little bit harder to be react

and still as is the case today major subdivisions are not permitted in the agricultural zoning district. So the practical impact what is the intended practical impact of going to the three. What is the intent

to better meet the purpose statement for the agricultural zoning district which talks about being very much in line with agriculture and agricultural uses not to make it more friendly for single family to sprawl into rural Hancock County where there aren't the services, the roads, the infrastructure to support single family residential growth. I I also think that like she was saying the whole hobby farm concept is, you know, they they would start with 1.5 acres and put the house in the middle of it. Then they want a barn, then they want a second barn and then a swimming pool. And now we're at the BCA looking for setback variances on this 1.5 acre parcel that's out in the middle of the country. So it's like start with a with the size of land that probably is going to be needed to do what you want to do with your hobby farm, you know. So I think that that was kind of the intent. And then it gives you the area for the secondary septic area as well. So you can carve off areas for that

exception. Not the rule. Hobby farming. That's what I was thinking. Yeah. I don't know that that should be what it's a what's the tail and the dog on that

necessarily just not necessarily just hobby farming but you know you've been on the BCA for a while now it's like how many people come in you know they I I need a barn now because my diesel mechanic business is booming that I run out of my house you know we get that kind of stuff all the time it's like so now I want to build a bigger barn I want an exception to the home occupation of the three I want to I want a 20,000 foot barn in my home occupation, you know. So, it's like and we're squeezing all this stuff and look at the aerial and you see this maybe it's a hobby farm, maybe it's a hobby business, maybe it's just a guy that collects cars, you know, but it's just like this little parcel just gets cranky.

I think that's a bigger issue that we ought to be looking at is the businesses, okay? It's really hard to find land for businesses, especially a small business, especially during the recession. So there was nothing in the code for the small businessman really. So then we started using that in the BZA which really was not meant for you know it was right. Yeah. Meant for just

Yeah. doing a itty bitty teeny business out and but we expanded because there was nothing in the code to really it was just a big gap. Somebody I'll be looking to filling in that gap. So small businesses have a place to go. Yeah. Besides going to the BCA asking for Yeah. And we've I think

I think that the like contractor's storage yard and contractor's warehouse stuff was addressed in here as well. And that's one to take a look at because that's the one that we get a lot of that for because it's usually a landscaping type business or a mobile mechanic or it's contractor type. Yeah. That stuff. And that's what we deal with a lot at the BCA. So that was the the hope was to create some parcels that they could be doing. But it's not limited to just contractors. I mean, there's a lot of small business that try to start up, but they all can't buy one of those warehouses out there at a million square feet either. You know,

I would look at the category under accessory uh uses. Homebased business is a new use and it is kind of a home occupation on steroids, I guess, is how I would say that. Um, home occupation has actually gone from being a uh special exception to just a permitted use. If you meet the definition of a home occupation, which is entirely within your um dwelling, then you don't even need to come to the BCA. You meet those standards, if you are not in violation, open, you can operate your business out of your home. Yeah, but you're basically talking about the ones that don't have people clients coming to their home, you know.

Yes. If you've grown beyond that home occupation, then you do still need to come to the BCA and ask for a special exception as a homebased business, which does offer limited operation out of an accessory dwelling and limited occupation of people outside of your family. So, I would look at that definition as part of your homework. So that should help what you're saying, Byron, because I agree with that.

Well, it sounds more like the same just with a different definition. I'm talking about actually having something for small businesses to start up and be able to afford to run a business, a small business. I mean, we're going to take care of all the big businesses, but we're not really looking after the small individual. Maybe we don't want them. I don't know, Mitchell. It sounds like you've got some homework. Yeah, Mitchell. I think home Yeah, I mean, homebased business was the start of that, but you're right. It probably needs more attention than what it's what it has in homebased business. So the