Board of Zoning Appeals - Regular Meeting

walks off. Is Daisy no longer with us? She is. She's just not here. Oh, okay. All right. Call to order the meeting of the board of zoning Charlestown Board of Zoning Appeals for January 12th. Uh We're being live streamed by under production multimedia and like to start the meeting by leading everybody the pledge pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. So, let's call roll. Make sure we get a terum. Uh, Daisy's absent. Karen Wilson here. Wayne Bergen here. Jonathan Holliver here. Uh, Mr. Leech is getting replaced. So, we do have a quorum.

Uh, we have the agenda in the iPad. We're using the iPads now. Uh, I'd like to have a motion for approval of the agenda. I'll make that motion. I'll second it. Have a motion by Mr. Bur and a second by Mrs. Wilson. All in favor say I. I. And we have a approval of the prior meeting minutes. If you had a chance to read them, there's any changes or anything. If not, entertain a motion for approval of the prior minutes. I make a motion. I'll second it. Motion by Mr. Bergen, second by Mrs. Wilson. All in favor say I. I. New business. Here comes the fun part.

Election of officers. I don't want it this year because I've retired. I can't do it. My mom is she's got cancer. I'm taking care of her right now. Well, I'll tell you what we can do. I I can easily tell cuz uh Daisy will be here and Mr. Leech is no longer going to be with us. So, that's the council. council has to make that appointment.

So that's a good thing. And the we can wait till the next meeting. What? So we can do that. Wait till the next meeting to elect office officers. That way they'll all be here and they'll have the appointment because we got to have the uh at our next meeting there's going to be uh there's some things that has to get changed at the BCA is the only one that can change them. We have uh we do have the there's a company that's wanting to do some uh talked to us about doing some storage some up-to-date modern storage facilities and uh the be it has to be a special exception in the special attention and this board is the only one can give them that plan commission can't do it. Uh so we'll just wait and do that on the meeting dates. You see they had some meeting dates in there.

Mhm. I saw those. And we're we're a call board unlike the unlike the APC, we're a call board and not always needed. So we just usually call it, but we don't know when that's going to be. So what I've come up with, we do need to meet about every third Thursday third day. So on the on the what you'll see is on these meeting minutes meeting days, I'm sorry. Uh it's January 12th, April 12th, you'll see it in blue. July 12th, and October 13th. Uh, I have those scheduled as BCA meeting just so we can make sure we meet meet new requirements from the state. State requirements to meet every three months. So, so the next time you're actually going to meet will be the 13th of April.

Yeah. Our next schedule would be the 13th of April. Now, can you do them any sooner if you call it? Yes. Yeah. That that and that usually what happens then we can just move by then. I mean that's it's fine with me if we can just find a date where everybody will be here or whoever the next Yeah. And I was telling them the uh the Well, let's get this take first. So this is the the schedule B. So entertain motion to approve this meeting dates. I make that motion. I'll second it. Motion by Mr. Bird, second by Mr. Wilson. All in favor say I. I.

All right. And then I was telling them earlier, I don't know if Karen was here or not, we have a uh the next thing we have done, we approved the or approved it to go up to the recommendation to the city council is the uh comprehensive plan and they'll take that. The next step for the city is to do the they call it a a UD now, but it's it's a it's our zoning code and we're going to have some committees and meetings on that. So, opening you guys would be interested in sitting in that. Uh it's it's it's pretty good. It's it's pretty fun to do. You can see what all they help decide what goes on. Like I said, I was telling them earlier when we did the last one in 2016, our we had an issue with just stuff being thrown all around Market Street cuz we knew we were growing. So, they put a blanket DH zoning all the way from 62 to the hospital, the city limits, which was great. I mean, it was fine. It's basically the same thing as a B1, but it was more restrictive for construction and it it had created so many needs for us to have. We had a lot of uh variances because it was in there. So, what we're going to do is we're I'm going to recommend that we change from the hospital to Thompson Street back to B1, which is what it is, business one, and then from Thompson to 62 to the DH downtown historical makes more sense. And uh this is going to be pretty important to get this building right now and incorporate a lot of things. Pleasant Ridge when it was constructed was done by the army. It didn't have any specific boundaries. The streets were bigger than what they used to be that some of them ran into that where they want to do a lot of building up there. We had to get variances. We really as far as the variances are told, there was there was lots up there. Anybody that

lived up there for a while knew that the streets were smaller back then. And so they had the people's property lines went out farther. But then we kept paving as the city would pay. They kept getting wider and wider and wider and they got they got out of the easements. David Hayes had a property up here in them when the guy come to build he's like what do I do? He says I said well your your actual I knew where his property line was. He had a good 6 ft of pavement that was so you know so what we doing is I'm recommending that we have a it's called a uh what did I say it was? What is it? the shony sing single family.

Oh, single family dwelling. Yeah. Sing single family historical. Yeah. Which because it was the historical says, okay, it's historical because the way it was done. The army I've got the original plans, but they're so out of date, you can't even do anything with them. So, we we just had to say, okay, this is a putt. That's what it is. So each lot was being developed

just for that lot because there was not enough people to to really it was so spread out and too many owners that we couldn't really do any kind of sewing with it. So we had to call it that. So this will bring it into conformity. This will help a lot understand it for the future when people start saying okay well I want to do this and I want to do that. They know where they're at. So, and we have to incorporate um then the outer subdivisions we had uh we've done a lot of variances for that six foot, but we really didn't need to because the court decided years ago that all those outlying subdivisions their property lines of the counties they were 6 ft from the property line you can build six feet. Well, ours is 12 feet, 15 ft. It people were getting confused. So I think this time we can kind of clarify it better. We say six being called a 612 or whatever. We got to clear that up too. So when you're trying to enforce codes, you're trying to keep everybody have to come to get for variances all the time. If you're getting too many variants for the same things and they say you need to change the code, we need to go back to change the code. So other than that,

so we're going to have a committee on that. Yeah, we're going to have a committee. So, if you guys would be interested in sitting on it, but just come to the meetings, having input. Yeah. Is it a an additional meeting a month or Well, that's the thing. We got to it'll be they're open to the public. It's a meeting. It wouldn't be during this time. It's the same people that did our comprehensive plan. They're the ones that does the other plan, does the zoning plan or UDO. And so they'll have to determine they'll meet with the mayor and meet with whoever technical committee is and say, "Okay, what dates can you meet?" It's usually right around 6:00 at night sometimes. Okay?

And we'll probably have four or five on those. But you'll get copies as we're doing this. This board will get copies of what we're doing. That way you're you're you're you've got input on it. You got you can look at it. We don't miss anything. So both boards will have that. We learned to do that for last. We're going to start doing that. Well, that's what we got to determine when they're going to start. It's got to be soon, though, cuz it goes hand in hand with Like I said, I got six days left. So, I might be interested in sitting in on something. All right. Let's see what's going on. It'll be my fifth one. So,

it's just I'll tell you what, I've learned so much on these meetings. It's things that I didn't know why it takes so long to people get so frustrated because it's so much takes too long to get something built. Well, I don't didn't know what went on behind the scenes, how much work was into it, what the state had to do, what the city had to do. And so,

yeah, state design releases and you try to work with developers. We're pretty friendly for, you know, trying to get development in here. And you want the right stuff, but when these developers start, a lot of them, a lot of people don't realize that they've got to meet certain criteria to get paid. They got to pay their employees. So, they'll be rushing. They they they wait till the last second and they rush to do something because that's the way it is. And then sometimes they get held up by the banks and people don't understand that. Why does it take this long? Why does it take that long? But at least you finally we're going the right direction. That's all you can do. Yep. I know you've been working on that zoning from historical district where we've been talking about that years.

Yep. This is this is part of it. And that mainly come up when they want to build Papa Jones. Yeah. When they want to build Papa John. Yeah. Yeah. That was that the dollar store and all that. What's going They is Goodwill going in that old dollar store or somebody said something about Goodwill. Well, the last we heard they they they were looking at it. They were looking at it and they they they're trying to get I think it was a couple million dollars for trying to get some grand money. Goodwill works off grants.

But didn't they uh didn't they just put a somebody put a new air conditioning unit on top of that? They got what happened over there was dollar store took advantage of the insurance. It got sold. Somebody vandalized units on top, stole all the copper out of it. And uh then the dollar store, the owner of the building turned it on insurance. Made sense. I mean, I would have Yeah. Going to take some money to fix. That's a good sign. They're going to do something there. They're not going to tear it down. And everybody says $2 million. What are you going to do? But their electric is so bad. Yeah, it was dangerous when they were in there. That place needs a total rehab.

It'd be a nice place to put it. Yeah, but I mean it's in a good spot. Cly located. Got a traffic light there. They still ain't can Are they allowed to build onto it or anything? They don't have the They just have that parking lot right there. That whole square right there is a lot to do up into the woods. That's another that's another property own. The church owns that. Okay. That's another thing for Okay. Well, we need to get this young lady over here. All right. So, that's it. Anybody got any other questions? If not, I'll make entertain a motion for adjournment. You can do it this time. No, you go ahead. I'll make the motion to adjurnn. I'll second it again. Motion by Mr. Burton. Second by Mr. Wilson. All in favor say I. I. He can make motions.