Zoning Board of Appeals - Regular Meeting

. . All right. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the February 12th meeting of the city of Kalamazoo Zoning board of appeals. We are a volunteer advisory board appointed by the city commission. Time for roll call, would staff please take the role. Brandon Hamburg here. Work here. Holer here urban. Here Han here. Excellent. Any changes or enou any, are there any announcements or changes to the Agenda? Agenda. There are no announcements or changes to the Agenda. Excellent. Any correction needed to last month's minutes. Excellent. Anybody wish to make 'em that we approved. Last meetings minutes. I second. Any discussion. Nope. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Then the minutes are approved. All right before we open the public hearings, this is the procedure that those will all follow. For each applic for each application, the secretary will read the request into the record. The applicant are representative will come up, have 10 minutes to present on that request. You need to make sure to state your name and address at the podium and keep your marks brief, please. That 10 minutes will fly by if you start introducing. 20 different people after that will be Public Comment. Public commenters will be limited to three minutes. Those in favor speak first. Those opposed. Second. Then we will turn to Colin comments. Those. Callers may dial 8 8, 8 3 8, 2 95 56 during the designated periods. Periods remarks are live and not. Recorded then the public hearing will close and the board will state

and vote on a finding of fact. That vote is not a decision on the request itself, just on the fact. Finding effects, excuse me. The board then will deliver it deliberate and may ask, follow up questions of prior speakers. The board will then take a roll call, vote to approve or deny the request. A full board is six members for affirmative votes are required to grant any. Variance. However, because we have. Five. Identical requests. We're just going to attack them all. As one thing, we will vote on them each individually, when the time comes. But we're just going to. Have one presentation on them and we will. We'll hopefully expedite things one way or the other. And I talked, Charlie said that's acceptable. So. As long as we vote on it separately on each of them separately, we should be good. All right. So with the acting, I suppose, acting secretary, read the. Applications into the record, please. Okay. An application for a variance for provisions of the Zoning Ordinance has been filed with the Zoning board of appeals by statewide rentals, LLC. L C the applicant is requesting. A variance from the natural features protect protection Ordinance chapter 50, section 50 dash 6.2. H one to authorize. The proposed development of a duplex. Which will have a 12 foot wide driveway encroaching. Into the protected slope from the street. Level to the Ridge of the slope. Where protected slopes with a grade greater than 20% are not to be encroached upon. And a variance from natural features protection Ordinance, chapter 50, section 50 dash 6.2 H three, to authorize the proposed development of a duplex,

we, which will have a par parking area and a driveway in front of the duplex that will encroach. 100% into the 12.5 foot protected slope setback. Where the protected slope setback is not to be encroached upon. Please note that this request will not change the Zoning classifications of the properties. Yes. May I interject. So these requests are extremely similar. But the wording is a little different in. Number two. Along the, the three lots that are deeper. Which are the one 20, the 1 26 and the 1 32. So just just, you know, my suggestion would be to, you know, this, what, what was just read into the record applies to one. 12 and one 14. So if we now read in to the record, the request for the remaining three. 1 21 26 at 1 32. You know, that would cover the variances. Variances, sir. Thank you, please. Thank you. Do that. Or you can pull it off one second. So like that one right there. Okay. An application for a variance for provisions of the Zoning Ordinance has been filed with the Zoning board of appeals by statewide rentals, LLC for one 20 west cork street in the residential multi dwelling district, R M fifth, 15 and natural features protection. Overlay the applicant is requesting. One, a variance from the natural features protection Ordinance. Chapter 50 section 50 dash 6.2 H one to authorize the proposed development of a duplex. Which will have a 12 foot

wide driveway encroaching into the protected slope from the street level. To the Ridge of the slope where protected slopes with a grade greater than 20% are not to be encroached upon. To a variance from the natural features protection Ordinance, chapter 50. Section 50 dash 6.2 H three. To authorize the proposed development of a duplex, which will have a driveway in front of the duplex that will encroach. 25% into the 10 foot protected slope setback, where the protected slope setback is not to be encroached upon. Thank you. Excellent. I think we're good there, then Pete. Excellent. Excellent. All right. So would the, I suppose the applicant or the representative go ahead and step up. Sign in state your name, address, and go ahead and. Let us know what we need to know. Okay, I'm gonna start now. My name's Jeremy Cole. I own the. All addresses here. I own the LLC that owns all the addresses that are listed here. 1 12 1 14, 1 21 26 and 1 32 west cork street. Being that there's only 10 minutes. I'm gonna be a bit brief here and try to get everything out. Got a quick prepared speech here first. So good afternoon. My name is Jeremy Cole. I'm here to respectfully request limited relief from the NFP slope standards for five parcels along cork street. All of these parcels share the same existing condition. Steep slopes that exceed the N F P threshold. And occupy a significant portion of the buildable depth of each lot. These slopes are natural, longstanding conditions. And they were not created by the applicant. Without limited slope relief. It would not be possible to construct

residential buildings or provide safe driveway access to west cork street. And practical terms, the Ordinance as applied would eliminate all reasonable use of these platted residential lots. Lots. The relief we're requesting is very narrow in scope. It is limited only to the minimum area necessary to construct the duplex footprints, building access, driveway access, and the utility corridor. We're not proposing widespread, widespread grading or disturbance. No slope disturbances are proposed outside of the clearly defined boundaries shown on the plans. Plans we've incorporated protective measures, including fencing at limits of disturbances. Disturbances and preservation of remaining slopes in Woodland areas. Areas Woodland protection is calculated by area. And tree removal is limited to no more than 75% per parcel. Which is consistent with the Ordinance standards. Standards. This request aligns with the intent of the Ordinance by balancing environmental protection, with reasonable use of property. The goal of the NFP standard is preservation. Not the effective prohibition of development on legally platted, residential lots. Lots. We believe the proposal respects both environmental goals of the Ordinance. And the property rights of the landowner. For those reasons we respectfully request approval of the limited scope. Relief as shown. And P I sent you the last file. I'm not sure if that was yet passed out. That is so after the NFP meeting, Pete basically said, we need a little more detail. So if you can do this. I think that will help. So what it is is. We had a topographic survey PR. Created and on that we overlaid the buildings. Buildings the driveway and the utility corridor, the utility corridor and the driveway are gonna be the same. Power gas. Water sewer are all under the road that, that fits within that 12 foot corridor. The city minimums for a residential driveway are 12 foot

for one rope for one driveway. Which is why we're only requesting the minimum that is allowed. And also when you do water, you have to have a 10 foot easement. So. We went with 12 foot because obviously that's the minimum we could. But when you're, when you've got water, you can't have any trees. On five, five feet of either side of it. Again, we're not here for the trees. Because that's, we're saving more than 25% of the trees. So this is strictly on the slope. Each of these lots has absolutely no access to the buildable area without. A driveway without relief. So the slopes are on the entire, the entirety of the south side of these properties. As shown on that map. So from west cork street, you can't access. Wherever the buildings would be. Allowed to be built without the driveway corridor. So again, we're, we're requesting. The minimum allowable. Driveway and width. That we could approve that, that the city would approve essentially. One of the things I wanna pass out to you here is when we look at. I've got neighbors here too. So when we look at the plans that we originally had, we had a larger development. These lots, 1 12, 1 14 could have up to four units. On each lot. We're proposing two. 1 21 26. Could each have six units. We're proposing two. 1 32 west cork street. We're allowed to build up to eight units. We're proposing two. One of the reasons the NFP didn't like the, the plan is the, the, the, I can't remember his name, but. The one that was kind of leading the group. Said that he didn't like it because we weren't using the. The properties, the parcels to their full. Zoning use, which allows for 30. 35 units. We're only requesting to build 10.

And one of the reasons we did that is because of our neighbors. We originally had driveways on opposite streets. We had different accesses. Fire apparatuses needed larger. Turnarounds. So we would've eaten up quite a bit more slope. If we left one 12 through 1 30, 2 combined or not, if we left it, if we tried to combine those two. We would have to do. We would have to eat up a lot more of the slope. So doing it this way. And Pete brought up a point during one of the meetings is, well, if you go to sell one 12, or if you go to sell one of these addresses, that access agreement may cause a bit of confusion or. Challenges. And so we said, well, we'll just give each one of the parcels, their own driveway. And that way, if somebody decides to buy one 12, they're buying the building, they're buying the land and they're buying and they've got the one driveway access. There's no shared access. There's no shared utilities. Each one of these lots is, is platted was, was on the original plat map and, and intended to be developed. So you've got the plat map in front of you. I've got a small rendering here. That kind of shows the building footprint. I'll pass it out. If you guys wanna take a look at it, but you just see the corridors, it's similar to what you already see, but you'll see the actual structures. You'll see the one 20 to one 20 through 1 32 that are set back. Because we can avoid the, essentially the entirety of the slope and the majority of the slope set. And then one 12 and one 14 is just impossible. To to cuz those are only 150 feet deep. It's impossible to build anything on those two without relief. At all. So that's my little speech there. Let's see here. Oh preservation. One of the things that someone brought up is. Why not just say this entire parcel. And we presented that to the city. Actually, I presented it to. Jared chambers, who is a representative of the city. He oversees something in community planning and development, and I

offered to trade. The city for these, these parcels, I said, I'll give you eight parcels. Parcels these five and then three additional parcels for one of your brownfield contaminated lots over on west Michigan, or I'm sorry, east, Michigan. That property on east Michigan has been sitting vacant and blighted for. 23 years, it's been undeveloped. And I said, I'll trade you. These partials. Partials for those parcels and you can leave this, you can create a park or just an, a natural preserve. You can leave it in its entirety. And I've got the email thread here. I'm gonna pass out. So you guys can see that that started back last fall. And I just said, take your time. We're run it through the, you know, the, the Commissioner and over two, two and a half month period, Jerry. Jared came back and said, we're not, we're not interested in that. We're not interested in that. We, we we've looked at it. We decided not to go forward with it. And we don't recommend you reach out to the city commissioners to see about trading those parcels. Parcels, even if you were to, he started talking values, the, the east Michigan parcel is valued at 400,000. These are valued at, I think 175,000. He said, even if you were to come up with a cash difference. We don't think the board would be interested in, in it. And so we suggest that you apply for the NFP. NFP variance and go that route. And so we're here. And so again, we've, we've brought the development way down to just two units per parcel. Although 33 are allowed, we are down to 10 total. So I'm here to answer any questions. Questions that you guys may have. First and, and foremost, and very simple. I heard Jerry Cole. Is that correct? Jeremy, Jeremy Cole. All right. Thank you, Jeremy. You bet. Bet. Thank you. Go ahead and see, we may ask more questions later. Thank you. Yep. Mr. Cole. Staff does or Pete, does staff have any comments on

the request? I, I do have a few comments on the request. I don't think the land swap is germane to the discussion tonight, just to clarify that. So we don't. Don't spend too much time on it. So we're talking about individual. Residential lots in the RM. RM 15 zone district. Asked Mr. Cole pointed out. He is looking to reduce the density. So where some of these lots might allow. Four units. Six units or I think 1 32 would allow up to 13 units. So, you know, the, the, the pros here are. Reducing density. Limiting the encroachments, at least as proposed. With the 12 foot wide driveway. You know, but some of the other things there's, there's still questions about, you know, which, which can be asked of the applicant as far as the alignment of the utilities. That wasn't understood in the drawing exactly where the leads are located. So, you know, so they're, you know, there is some things that come out of this. I am, you know, and, and looking at the review criteria. You know, number one is, is very clear where it talks about the. You know, utilization of the property. I mean, it is clear that some sort of relief is necessary to grant. Access to each of these sites to allow for development. But then review criteria. Number two talks about is the extent of the relief. The minimum needed. To permit reasonable utilization of the site. And that is

where staff. Disagreed with the applicant. That there are you know, questions raised that need to be. Answered as far as positioning of utilities and so forth. And you know, is there, the, there was also the. Questions raised about the retaining walls by the NFP board. And a number of other things. That were, you know, that were, were brought up. But what we need to understand in better detail is, is, you know, have all other. Options to limit the impact on the slope. You know, been explored as far as. Possibly shared driveways, that sort of thing. And so that is why staff is, you know, has indicated the, the note, you know, the no support on number two. And then the third request or third criteria is the demonstration of relief that can grant. Be granted without substantial detriment to the public. Good. And will not substantially impair the intent and purpose of the NFP. NFP overlay district that one staff disagreed with the applicant that. You know, it's not clear. That, that this will not impair the intent and purpose of the NFP Ordinance. So, so two of the four review criteria. Staff felt the applicant did not meet. And that is why there was not any support for these variances tonight by staff. You know, further it's, it's recommended that you know, that these other. Alternatives be explored and explained. And that this matter be considered for a future natural features protection review board.

Once the rest of that information is made available. So, and, and going back to the. To the natural features protection review board meeting. That occurred in January. That at the time the board was not comfortable with the. The level of specificity and detail they were looking at. So there was a, a vote. To not make a recommendation for approval. Of the NFP variances for any of the five properties. And then after that meeting the board chair reached out to the board members to find out in more detail, what was missing from the application. He Nolan Bergstrom. This that is. Then put this information together and sent it to the applicant. You know, to, so he could better understand what was. You know, what the board felt was lacking from the application. So that level of detail has been relayed. Mr. Cole has provided an updated. Updated topographic map with, with the footprint of the. Buildings and the driveways and parking areas for the board tonight. But I, I don't feel that answers all the questions raised at the N F P. Board and the NFP board is really the expert on this subject material. So. You know, it, it that's, that's why staff was leaning towards. Towards this, returning to that board. One more time. So I, I know I'm jumping out of order here a bit, but let's just ask it straight up. You would rather if I hear you correctly,

you'd rather us delay on doing anything with this until they can take the details back to the NFP. NFP see what they have to say, and if they approve it, then come back here. That would be ideal because if the variances are denied tonight, then the same request cannot be brought back for a year. So that could create a setback for the developer. Well, then I would, to what extent can I just do that? Or can we just vote to, to Adjourn these or. Weight on these. I have a couple of questions before, and that's fine. I'm not, I don't want to take those away from, of course, because. I also thought about the, you can't bring the request back for a while. If we say no. Okay. The, the procedure, I'll answer that question and then we can proceed with other questions. You know, you don't have to. Act right this minute to, yeah. Depending on the answer, but yes, you can Adjourn this to. Time certain the next meeting. Or more if you probably would need to. To allow it to go back to the natural features protection board. Certainly and this is consistent with the authority. Of the, this board. To request additional information. And is consistent with the normal. Procedures in dealing with the natural features protection Ordinance. So. I maybe recognize. Sure. Well, I have a question. Is it. Possible to simply ask the applicant. If he wishes to consider withdrawing his request. So we

don't have any time limits that are pressing him or pressing anybody. It's up to him to. Make a decision. Does he want to go ahead with it as. As, as he has intended to this evening. Or in light of what we're staff has just said here. He should have the option to withdraw. His request if he chooses, I think you and I were thinking along the same lines, because my question was how long's it gonna take to get back to the N F P. NFP. So the, the next available meeting date. Is 24th. And the application deadline would be March 3rd. So really. Okay. So if we. This is not gonna come back here any sooner than like, may realistically. Well, it could come back in April. There's reasons why I'm saying may okay. That are aside from, from all of that. Okay. But I think Jack and I maybe were having a similar thought just in a different. Like maybe the applicant wants to say, Hey, I'll go back to the NFP first. As opposed to us saying, well, take it back to them and come back in two to three months. So the NFP board did not approve it. And the city. Does not approve it the way it is. And so I heard a couple of times that it would be up to this board to offer some kind of a relief. If it was not approved. And I don't see how we could give him any relief. Not knowing what he wants to do. With things in the future.

There's there's gotta be. More planning that takes place. So I, and then the other thing. Who platted this property and how long ago was it? I didn't see any of that. Do you know right off the top of your head or I, I don't have that information. Okay. And then when I was out to the site, I saw a sign that said short term rentals. What what's that all about? Do we know Airbnb or something like that. And it is. Yeah. Yeah. I, I I'll let Mr. Cole. Address that? Sure. So one of the development companies we have is KSU BMB. So. As Pete knows, and he's already, we've already discussed this. Thoroughly is at this location. Short-term rentals are not allowed mid-term and long-term rentals are. So we don't only do short-term and I'll break those down. Short-term is anything less than 30 days? Midterm is 30 days or more. Long term, as you typically are gonna sign a year, lease. Right, but on your sign you had short-term rentals. No. Yes. On the signage, on the sign, it just says K B B. It says what? K Zu, B and B. Not short-term rentals. No short-term rentals. That's right. I didn't see short-term rentals on the, it says vacation rentals, but nothing says short-term rentals. Vacation rentals. Yeah. Vacation not short-term correct. But this site allows for mid-term rentals. So essentially what we, what we do is instead of the doctor or not doctor, instead of the nurse or the folks that are working on, like when Pfizer came in, we housed some of those folks instead of them taking some of that long-term house off the market. We could house those folks in the mid-term parentals. So they'd sign a three month, a six month lease. Versus taking year lease rentals off of the market. If that does that kind of, does that make sense?

Or I could, yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I mean at this point, I think Jack and I are attacking it from a different position, which is he wants the, he would like, and I'm not opposed to it. Having the applicant say fine, we'll return to the NFP with this information. And come back and if the applicant's not going to, I, I don't know that I can move forward or if I can just say, we need to Adjourn this one to the may meeting and give them time to, to run through that process so that we come back here with action actual approval. From the N F P. Well, but yeah, the NFP may still not approve it. It depends on how the applicant. Phrases his request. He's he wants to have. Driveways on all. Five of these properties, each having an individual. One and for a, from a marketing standpoint, that makes that makes sense. He's he's a businessman and he wants to have a, a. His maximize his chances to, to. To rent the property, however, by putting in all five. Driveways. Driveways that's more than the minimum needed. In my opinion to gain reasonable acts reasonable use of the property. And so I'll just signal. To everybody that as far as I'm concerned, I would like to see a proposal that. Involves some sharing of driveways. There needs to be more than one driveway. Any driveway that's shared has to have another access to the, no, it can't be blocked,

you know, considerations like that, that are make sense from a traffic point. Point of view, but if you're running something for, for three months or, or four months, it doesn't seem like a great hardship to share a driveway. I agree now. That's that's. That's I'm just speaking for myself here. This is, this is not. An official position that anybody here can take. Cause we haven't heard. All that we could hear yet on this thing this evening. But I'm just giving you my. my take on it at this point. And I wanted you to have the benefit of that and respond if you'd like. Yeah. So thank you for making that Mr. Urban. And that's an option that I actually propose. Proposed to Pete and his other staff members. I said, why don't we just do one driver? So originally the plan was to have the driveways come off of Imperial hearing from some of the neighbors. They did not appreciate all the additional traffic that would be coming down the street. So we said, well, why don't we just put the driveway on west, on court street? Mm-hmm and one. Driveway shared. And then Pete and his staff said, well, that's gonna, if you go over, I can't remember the square footage, Pete knows it, but if you exceed this many square footage on the shared driveway, then you've gotta have like detention ponds. And if we put a detention pond in, we're eating up even more of the slope. So while I appreciate the one driveway, argument, I already presented that and that was shot down. Pete may give a differing. Option or detail of that. But I did present that first. And that goes in line with me, reducing this from. 33 units to 16 units. Down now down to 10 units. The city staff said, well, why don't you just put an S driveway in and exit on Imperial street? The only way that that's possible is to, again, increase that traffic for my neighbors, which we are choosing, or we're trying not to do, but if that's what the

city and the board are choosing. That you know is the best way to move forward. We'll do it, but it's gonna become at the detriment of these, you know, the neighbors and I'll let them speak to how they, you know, feel about that. But. I would rather you guys just say let's postpone it. Have the applicant get an approval from the NFP first. Once you say that, then we go back to NFP. We'll give them the plans for the S driveway. And then we will, re-present it. And you know, we'll allow the neighbors to kind of speak. Their piece on what was, what the change had to be made. But thank you, Mr. Urban. Sure. I'd love that idea. Originally having the one driveway, we had it 24 feet in mm-hmm we had it at a 10% grade, but we are eating up quite a bit of slope because of fire apparatus has to be able to turn around. On on a shared driveway like that on residential driveways that we're proposing on this each individual. We don't have to have that slope for a fire apparatus to make it up the hill. So we are gonna be eating up quite a bit of slope. Going that route, but that was something we did propose and we're willing to go back. As long as you guys say, we're gonna pause on this. Go get an approval from NFP, but I'd like that decision to be made by the sport, please. Thank you. Thank you. That's wonderful. Do we need a motion on that or can we just motion to Adjourn that out? Need a motion, your honor. Somebody go further. The motion. Please. I move. We Adjourn. This hearing until the may meeting. Thank you. I think you should state the reason for adjournment, so that to allow to allow for the applicant to. Re uhit his, his proposal to the NFP board. And we can get a definitive recommendation from, from them based on their. Best thinking. Thank you. Is are three months. Enough Pete. Or should we look at something a little bit further out and then they can come back whenever they're ready.

I, I think that's, that's sufficient. I mean, I, I did correspond with the. With Nolan Bergstrom, who is the liaison to the natural features protection review board. And said, you know, what's the next available meeting date? That this could go on. If that's the direction. You know, the discussion and ends up going tonight at the ZBA. And he said that March. 23rd date. So it, it, it could go to the board in March. So that, yeah, I think the, I think the may is, yeah. Know is, is plenty of time. Mr. Cole, what do you, what do you think is that if that is decision of the board here, we'll get back with Nolan and Pete and we'll get on the NFPS board meeting for. March. And I think we actually scheduled it January, February for NFP ZBA. So we could come back as early as April. But if you guys think may is better, I think may is better. Okay. Yeah, let's do it. I support the motion. Thank you. All those in favor of the motion. All right. Aye. Aye. Opposed none. Thank you. That will be put onto the schedule for the Mai meeting. Moving on to heard my Agenda go. Thank you for, for bearing with us, Mr. Cole. Sure this doesn't have the discussion items on it. There we go. Discussion action items, election of board. Officers for 2026. Go for it. Okay. Just, just one quick pause here. So. Attorney bear. Is there anything. Else that needs to be clarified here. So what the, the voice approval to move? This was. For all five of the parcels. Parcels. Yes. Yes. I just wanted to make sure we clarify that for the record. Okay. Yes. I'm sorry. I get to like on a right informal sometimes, but yes, it would

apply to all of them. Okay. Since they're all virtually identical. Or they're identical enough. Yeah. It's all the same property owner. More or less. The only difference I think is these are longer than those two. I I'm do two Imperial street. I'm Tim Ock. I moved, bought the house in. 1990s, early 1990s. Nineties and yeah, the platting for this whole division was done. Decades ago. And long before the natural features protection. Ordinance and obviously that. Really positive problem for those properties. So. You know, without some kind of relief. They're undevelopable mm-hmm undevelopable yeah. And, and I recently reached out to, to Jeremy to try to. Have less adversarial . Relationship and even maybe trying to. To help figure something out that would be more acceptable for us. I think as the neighborhood, we're happier that they're not going to be short term rentals. We're happy that they're not gonna be. Micro homes. Homes, but at the same time, this is this property there. That's not real. Usable as it currently is and would be challenging for just about anybody. I think the. Previous owner was Kevin Klein. That Jeremy bought it from. I know that he had plans on building. A house in there. I don't know if he maybe had plans on building something more. But I've actually seen those properties go through several hands. Over the decades and you know, we don't want to just see the property flipping from.

One I person who has an idea of what they could do with it to another. The, the challenge does come down to, if he has a shared driveway, then there's rules that kick in regarding the grade of the driveway that it has to. The higher equipment either needs to be able to turn around. Or have a different exit that they can exit through. I very cautious and suggesting this, but. If the main entrance was off of. Cork, but they had an auxiliary. Exit onto Imperial. That would be more acceptable from my perspective. In that might facilitate more options that preserve as much of the natural features. Features as possible, obviously doing anything. Where the entrance and the exit would be both off a clerk. It would be challenge. And. Cause of the slope. You know, if you've been on Imperial, it's not. A highly developed road. There's no cement curbs. Curbs on it. There's no, cul-de-sac on it. In fact, you know, we deal with people. Turning around in our driveway all the time for the lack of a cul-de-sac. I watch people get stuck there. in the wintertime all the time. So I think anything can do to try to bridge between. The concerns that natural features. Features is aiming to protect. And the needs of a developer to. Come up with some kind of good use of those property. Yes, we enjoy it as being natural space right now, but I know that's not realistic that it's gonna stay that way. And so if we can come up with something that. That is functional. As far as the developer. And at the same time, respecting

the people on Imperial street where there's really not that many existing houses. There to begun with. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And I just want to clarify before we get off this topic that this. Shared drive could be, you know, shared drive. That accesses, you know, two of the properties. So maybe there's there's groupings where a driveway, you know, there may be a total of three driveways that access all five properties. Like you have a shared driveway for the far. East side where one 12 and one 14 are because that's the steepest. And then obviously 1 32 is the widest parcel. Or lot is the furthest on the west. So it doesn't have to be one drive. It was just the exploration of trying to. Share drives, you know, in some manner to reduce the number of overall driveways. Driveways. Thank you. Thank you. Excuse me, sir. Could I need your name please? I didn't quite catch that. Tim Hicock. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, he needs to sign in. Yeah. Oh, hopefully the ne the next meeting on this will have remembered all of these notes. Are you gonna be here? I'm gonna keep them. Oh yes. Excellent. Excellent. All right. E is the discussion items. Can we move on to that then? Pete? Yes. Thank you. Election of board officers. Officers. So this is the considering, oh, you guys don't have to hang around. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yep.

We're done on that request. So this is considered the, the annual meeting. And we elect the board officers, the chair vice-chair and secretary. At this meeting, which will then serve from March of this year till February of next year. And there has been, you know, some. Discussion behind the scenes, as far as just, you know, if you know where the current. Elected officers stand on, you know, if they were. Requested to be, you know, put forth as the candidates for the. You know, for this coming year. But as I mentioned in the email, it also said, you know, we are open to other. Board members that are interested in these officer positions as well. I have a question. So the secretary position, can they also. Can they also do a finding of fact as secretary or are they. Asked not to similar to the chair. They could do a finding of fact, there's no prohibition on that. Okay. All right. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I there's no prohibition, so they certainly could. Yeah. There's nothing in the Ordinance. There's nothing. Bylaws. There's nothing in anything. So that about the secretary position. Can we discuss that? Yes more. I know that Remy has had a difficult time over, you know, it seems like the last few months. In getting here and thankfully Mr. Urban came the one time he was watching

it on television. Or YouTube or whatever, and came and filled in. So we were able to. Move forward. But I I'd like to nominate Beth. For secretary position. Excuse me. Do we require a second for that or? No? I, I don't know, not for this. It would just be a matter of. Putting the names out there and then doing a voice vote. And we can go position by position in this case. So, I guess what I can add is that. Remy was comfortable serving again. Is what she relayed to me. So. You know, so that would be, you know, two, two possible options for secretary. I just gotta be here. But yeah, she is not present. Not here again tonight. So it's why I would nominate Beth. Anyway. Okay. You wanna take, is there any other nominations for secret secretary then? So. No. Okay. So we should vote on that one. So, or do you want us to nominate each other or whatever for. Chair and vice chair. So we can, we can approve the whole slate. Well, you have two for secretaries, so you're gonna have to vote on each individual. There. Do you do a slate for the other offices? Or vote on those individually. Or we could

go, I think you could. Perhaps it makes more sense just to do each one individually. Okay, so we'll do each. Board officer position individually. And we have two candidates for the secretary role. So what I can do. Is I, I can just do a. Roll call or we can do. A I, I don't know if a silent. Silent ballad is allowed. I guess we have do a ballot. I think if you're doing a voice vote, it would be a. Well, so if you keep it to a voice vote or a roll call vote. Yeah to keep what's. Okay. The roll call on that. I think it's easier to track and count. Okay. All right. Many we have. Well, then let's so our, our candidate that is here, Beth. This will be a what is do a roll call vote. Those in favor of Beth. Assuming the rule as secretary for the coming year. Please signify by saying yes. And we'll start with. Wark. Yes. Yep. Yes. Good for she brought water. Urban. No. Huh? Yes. Okay.

So that's the, you know, simple majority here. So. The majority again, still say. Good to ask those in favor of okay. Remy. So we'll, we'll now do a roll call. Vote those in favor of. Having Remy Harrington serve as secretary for the next. Next year here. And we'll start with work. No, holer no. Urban yes Han no. Abandon Hamburg. Abstain. That's fine. She didn't Remy were gonna cancel each other out anyway, if they both uploaded . Yeah. So, okay. So, so the new secretary for the 2026 year will be Beth Fannin, Hamburg. Okay. Okay, and this, now we can move on to the vice chair. Do we have any nominations for vice chair? The nominate Gary work. To continue as vice chair. I accept. Is there any other candidates for vice chair? See none. I think we can proceed with a, a V a. Voice vote for all those in favor of Gary Wark, serving as the 2026 vice chair, please signify by saying aye. Aye, aye, aye. And other oppos, those opposed. It was opposed. Same sign. No opposed. Okay. And then for the board chair. Do we have any. Nominations for the board chair. I nominate Joe. I accept.

Is there any other nominations? To put forth tonight. No. Okay. Seeing none. All those in favor of Joe holer serving as the 2026. Board chair, please signify by saying yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Those opposed. Same sign say, look me dead in the eye. If you say no, . Thank you. Okay. So our, so our slate for this coming year of board officers. Officers is Joe hoer as chair Gary Wark as vice-chair and Beth Vanden Hamburg as secretary. Yay. Thank you. Don't worry. The position's not so powerful. I can get the heat turned down in here. it's a little warm. It is a little warm tonight. Isn't it? Do we have anything else on our Agenda? No, thank you too. Yes, we have one. The annual report, the annual. Report which everyone looks forward to the Zoning board of appeals annual report. Did I get a copy of that? Was it my email and I just ignored it or they're on pitch. Yes, it was there. It was in the Agenda package. I didn't pick up the Agenda. It's over there. No, no, it was, it was in the, the electronic package. Oh, oh, well, I was, I like looking at that. I like, so, yeah, so anyways, and for the viewing audience, so every year, the oh, there it is. This board puts together. An annual report summarizing who served on the board. Initiatives undertaken. Undertaken and actions by the board. And any, you know, any summation of, of the requests that, you know, were any sort of patterns developing. That, that we need to, we, as the, as the planning staff need to pay more attention to. So under, under new initiatives

undertaken for the 20, 25 year. We updated the rules of procedure. And change that name to bylaws. We also have. Put the wording in place. To expand this board to a seven member board from the current six member format. The the last step in that process is an Ordinance amendment to the Zoning Ordinance. Which is going before the planning commission next month. And then it will move on to the city commission and we will. Then officially be a seven member board with two alternates. Alternates the other initiative undertaken, there was a joint meeting of the Zoning board of appeals. The natural features protection board. And the planning commission on November 12th of last year. You know, basically a, a, a joint training. To bring the boards together to better understand what each board does. And the, the governing rules behind each board. And the overarching land use regulations that we work under from the state, the state level. So those were the two initiatives. Initiatives. And then, you know, just going through and looking at. NFP variances that came before the board. There were only two of those. 1609 whites road, which is the Kalamazoo country club. And 4 33 Reed avenue. Which was a city of Kalamazoo. Stormwater management project. And you know, other other things that kind of stood out was the level of activity surrounding food trucks and food trailers last year. We had actually three

of them come before the board. Requesting additional time to locate. In various commercial parking lots around the city. You know, and, and staff has since switched gears and. Is working with these these food truck and food trailer operators to, you know, to explain to them how the site plan review process works, because that. You know, that process does allow for. You know, the, the permanent placement of food trucks and food trailers on commercial property. You know, you know, if they. Can go, you know, successfully complete the site plan, review process. Was there any other trends I wanted to point out here. The number of requests was a little higher than in past years at 38 total variances. Variances, I would say the part of the reason for the jump is. Related to the event center downtown. And the you know, the, the numerous variances that had to be approved. For that project. So I think that was really the. In, in a nutshell, why we had a little, a little jump in the, the overall numbers. But other than that, I don't really have any items to point out. Were there any questions related to an, to the annual report? I have a comment. Yes. The training with the other boards at the planning center there or. Yeah, the planning building there. Was great. I'd like to see more of that. Was really, that was nice. Yeah. Very informative. Mm-hmm thank you. Thank you. In fact. We thought it was so successful. We'd like to replicate it again this

year. Oh, good. So yeah. Good. But I, I appreciate the feedback. Once a month once a quarter, maybe we're getting paid then. Right. All right. Well, that was all I have in addition. You know, to our, our, our elections tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Sounds like we've exhausted our Agenda and we're adjourned. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Good. I'll be gone in April. That's why specifically picking. We know we have