Board of Zoning Appeals - Regular Meeting

meeting to order. Uh we'll start with the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the standsyice for all. We're live streaming today, so when you speak, please remember to use the mic. First item of business is the approval from our June meeting. Like a motion to approve. Like to make a motion to approve. Second. All in favor say I. I. I. Opposed. Same sign. Any agenda modifications? Mark. Rolling into new business. Um item A SD 2025 for preliminary plot for the Jones Stevenson site. Yes. Case SD 2025-4. Uh petitioner is Brenda Jones. The case is to consider the premier plat approval of the Jones plat. Property location is 1090 block of State Road 47 South in Wayland, Indiana. Land use and zoning. Existing land use is vacant. Uh existing zoning is industrial. Property was originally part of the Grasshopper Nor warehouse property now owned by Beex Hybrids. Petitioner is requesting premier play approval of the Jones plat. The proposed split 1.5 acres out of the Binda Jonesowned 5.8 acre parcel and the plat is for the purpose of a auto repair location of the road systems. The property is proposed to be accessed through an

ingress egress to the beex hyd hybrid entrance off of state 47 via the Jones ingress egress easement. Your land use ordinance zoning ordinance the proposed plat the one lot split for the purpose of selling property to Stevens Auto to develop auto repair shop on 1.5 acres meets the zoning code. It is zoned industrial. No special flood hazard areas located on the proposed site. No delineated wetlands exist on the property. Uh the stormwater ordinance uh is being evaluated now and it is not required for this PL review. Any development located that is on the proposed property would be required to submit calculation for the drainage plan and the drainage plan is being developed. The petitioner has submitted all the items necessary for preliminary plat and staff does recommend approval of the preliminary plan. Thank you Mark. Does the petitioner have anything to add? Hi, I'm Jim Swift with Swift Land Consulting, 130 West Main Street in Crawfordville. And um this is Todd Stevenson. I don't know, you know, Todd had a shop down um on 231 and it burned last year in Ralph Cory's building and he's trying to build a new facility closer to home. He lives in Park County, already does business in Wavelin. So, he's trying to take a corner of that that big paved area and put a put a shop on it. So, um I don't usually do drainage plans in

Montgomery County. I do do drainage plans on commercial sites in Boone County. I used to do drainage plans in Montgomery County 20 years ago before I went and worked for Boone County. And since I've come back to do my own private business here, I focus more on just surveying, not on the engineering. And I work with Roger Azar a lot and I leave him to that engineering part. on this particular site. I took Todd's my friend and he's done me right with my cars and I wanted to do him right and so I took on this project and it caused me to become aware of your current drainage ordinance and I just would like to just bring to your attention what I saw kind of from an informed outsider view almost. um your old drainage ordinance was what it was and and you had to basically you developed a property you couldn't release more water post development in a 100year storm than it was three pre-development in a three-year storm. So the old ordinance penalized you for developing land, but it took into account things like what the existing surface was, whether it was grass going to hard surface or not or what. I got into this and in 2020, the drainage ordinance was altered by the commissioner. She passed a new drainage ordinance and as far as I can tell, there were two primary alterations to that. one, it was taken out of the purview of the drainage board to review and it was given to your board, the plan commission. So, you guys inherited the the drainage ordinance. Um, and the other thing is they took out all that business of a hundredyear pre, you know, three-year pre and 100year post and taking into consideration what the existing conditions were. And the new

ordinance just puts a flat number on how much you can release and it takes into no consideration whatsoever as to what what the ground was before. And once I ran the numbers, I was just amazed. I was shocked. And I' I brought it up and I've discussed it with Mark and I detected a sympathetic ear because I think he's heard this from other people and I don't know that you've heard it. And I'm just here to I'm here to advocate for Todd, but also to say, "Hey, I know enough about this to see that I think it puts an ownerous burden on properties like this." Basically, you have you can release no more than 0.4 cubic feet per second per acre postdevelopment, no matter what the site was pre-development. So, in this particular case, he's on high ground. right down here as it is right now. It's it's all that's all densely packed asphalt millings. As far as I'm concerned, it's hard surface and it's high ground. And he's going to he's going to put a pretty small building that's more hard surface because it's roof on the hard surface. But the drainage ordinance doesn't take any of that into account at all. It's almost as if we took a swamp and we paved it. He would have to do the exact same amount of detention. And when I calculated on this site, if we use the old ordinance, he literally has to make a detention basin four times the size of of what the ordinance would have done because it doesn't take into account. And and he would have to make that same detention basin. Like I say, if this were all grass where the rain hits and it soaks in versus if it was all hard surface. And in this particular situation, that

big pond up there was built as part of the it was built as part of their drainage ordinance, but it's also part of the fire suppression system for the Beex program and the Beex building. And Ralph Jones, I don't know if you guys know Ralph, but Ralph, he aced it. He He put tiles around this big parking area. This thing that site drains as well as I've ever seen anything. It's just like perfectly laid out. Ralph nailed it. And if we follow your ordinance to the letter, it's my professional opinion. We're going to make everything just plain worse. It's we're going to have to do a big old detention basin down by the that pond. We're going to concentrate flow into area whereas it kind of goes off by sheet flow now and it's just I just by this 0.4 CFS you just you take your ordinance and frankly you make matters worse in this particular situation. I think you make a burden on people in most situations with the current ordinance and I think the commissioners ought to consider reducing that making it a little easier to get along with but and I don't know Mark I'm just spouting right now but I guess I'd like to say since you guys the ordinance says you guys have the right to to wave you have the right to increase runoff amounts I would like to just speak for common sense that I don't think building the detention bas that the ordinance calls for in this site is a benefit to anybody. It's a burden on Todd and Ralph Jones. They're willing to do it, but it it isn't going to make anything better. And it isn't going to slow down water getting to Sugar Creek in the event of an extreme flood. It's really going to accomplish very little, I think. So, I don't know what the process is to ask for ask for a waiver or ask for an

increase in in release. Can you comment on that, Mark? Not this discussion isn't pertinent to your plat case today, but yeah, I mean it would be a waiver request through for the on the drainage plan. Has nothing to do with the plat. Well, because the but for this particular phase of the plat, but the next phase of the plaque can't be approved without a drainage plan, right? So, I guess I'm projecting forward. So, then when we come back next month with that request after I've given you ations. The initial drainage plan will have to go through review come back from our reviewer and then we could schedule that drainage approval. So, so I guess I guess can we I mean but if I put out a plan that says here's what your ordinance says and here's what that causes them to have to do on the site strikes me as I'm boxing them into having to do that on this site and I don't think I think it's burdensome. So maybe I'm going to put out a plan that has a a less a higher CFS rate and then after your reviewer says, "Hey, that's not what our ordinance says," then I can come to the board and say because you guys have the authority to change that. I just think I just think if you go by your ordinance in all sincerity, it is my personal and professional opinion, you make matters worse out there. You just you just make it worse. So, I guess I'll be back next month having gone through a drainage review, seeing that we can't get an official variance. But I want I want you guys since since the drainage ordinance is your baby now, I want you to be aware of the the impact it has. I do think you'll I think you'll find anybody else who does drainage CS in Montgomery County will go, "Holy moly, holy moly." If I

were doing the same thing in Boone County, we would do a even though they have a similar kind of ordinance the way it all shakes out, we would do a much much smaller little detention basin. And I don't think it's in Montgomery Countyy's interest to to make it harder to do things like build a mechanic shop on the outskirts of W. I think it's in our interest to make it easier. So that's what I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. I hope you approve the plan. Any other questions from the board? Comments? Any public comment? There's no discussion. This is the preliminary plat approval. Uh we do these for every subdivision, every subdivision of tracks. Um you don't necessarily have to have the drainage solved. Now, we won't sign final plat till the drainage is approved or a waiver is submitted. Um, but it has nothing to do with the plat itself. The the plat itself meets our code and he can be working on the drains in the meantime. Um, if the plan commission wanted to hear a waiver request without him submitting a drainage fund, that's up to the plan commission, but um, that's not part of this process here, right? It's an approval we need to finalize this process in final plat. So we're ready to have a motion made. I move to approve the PL.

Motion to approve for a second. Second. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Thank you. Item B. Um we have a member that has to recuse themselves. So, we're going to reschedu um a special meeting for July 29th at 4M. Would that work for the group? I'd like to make a motion that we have a special meeting to for the preliminary plot for the FA project on July 29th at 4 p.m. a motion a second. All in favor say I. I opposed. Thank you. Item C, conceptual plot for the Kelly Jones property. So again, this is just introduction of of the Charles Kelly subdivision. This is on Newport Road. just south of Landar. This is Landar and this is Newport Road here. And just a quick introduction of it because it is a subdivision of tracks. Stephen Jones owns two tracks here and the potential developer wants to

it's not a very straight line but they they want to uh parcel off 12 acres next to Landstar. Uh there actually is an A easement between Landstar and this property. Uh but it would be again it would be taking a piece of two parcels on Newport Road and splitting it for a subdivision of one parcel of 12 acres for a a truck stop location, truck parking location. That's it for the the introduction because I don't have a lot more information for you. Uh but if you have any questions about that area, I'd be happy to answer those questions. We will schedule that preliminary plat for well once we have the actual plat. I don't have the plat yet. I just have a concept of the plat. So once I have the plat and have review it, we'll schedule the preliminary plat. Is this going to be something connected with pilot or a separate? No, this is this is a private company. Okay. Thank you, Mark. Um, other business, text amendment discussion. We do have edits to the uh, subdivision code and um, I brought those to you just to hand them out today and have a little discussion there. There is a redline version that in front of you. U go through that, look at the the red line changes that we're proposing to make and if there's anything else that that you see that needs to be in that that code, we can get that get that to me and Dan as soon as you can and we can get that scheduled for next month to have the initial hearing on the amendments to the subdivision control ordinance. Um there's uh mainly there's some administrative things in there um that

are changes and then we also do have a a uh change of time span for um for noticing not for noticing for approving plants that the state has handed down. Um so we'll be adding that to that as well. So, I just wanted to hand it out to you today and have a quick discussion if there's anything on anybody's mind as far as the subdivision code and the edit. What section are handed out from the state? Is it the timeline? You said that some of these updates are because we have to match state. Well, I was just asking what sections, right? Is that what you just said? That you were matching a state ordinance now? There's a since this draft we've the attorney has brought to light there's a requirement that we take to preliminary or take to platting within 30 days of submission which hinders us right now you have to have we have to have 20 days prior for review and and then setting it for a a legal hearing. So, they're saying we have to have it entered. Dan can tell you for sure, but entered or even approved within 30 days. Yeah, the this trap was done before the new law was passed. So, that change that Mark's talking about will be added to this. It's not in there yet. We we were just Mark and I reviewed this in the spring and and these were some technical changes that we wanted to make to um deal with some cases that have come along. But then section 15242 which is on page 16. We've included a new provision for minor plat. Minor plats tend to be very uh simple to deal with and yet we had no separate process. So, under the proposed

language, uh once the minor plat received preliminary approval, then the zoning administrator could administratively do the final approval, so you wouldn't have to deal with that. And that's very common. We didn't have that in our original. So, that's one thing that's pretty significant. Aside from the the uh there's some language in there to deal with what happens if an application for a plat is incomplete. So, we've dealt with that and all the changes are in in red. There's one other state law change that just took effect last week and that is there is now a new law um which also requires us to use certain storm uh data. Um in the past counties in India were allowed to use any of a number of data sources for what you know average rainfall is so that engineers could make calculations. State legislature heard complaints about that because engineers who went to different counties to deal with different ordinances just like Mr. Swift said. So now the new law says that we have to use FEMA's uh data and Noah, which is the uh National Atmospheric and Oceanic U agency. So we're going to have uh two two two more changes to this when you see it next time. It's going to be those two new laws. We don't have much choice about those, but that's what it's going to have. And I'll I'll staff report all this subdivision control ordinance for next month's meeting. So you'll have all those explanations and we will be adding a couple things to it. So it also affects flood plane ordinances as well. These changes that the states are making uh in a couple situations about the data that you use for review of FEMA flood planes and the

rate insurance map. So there's a lot of things that are affected by this legislation. It's down in the weeds. It affects the building department. We're now not allowed to ask for architecture stamps on class two structures. Class two structures are or houses, you know, living spaces. Um they're restricting the time span in which we can review those as well. Um making it possible for people to use private inspectors and things like that. So there's several changes in this bill that affects everything we do in land use. So specifically you'll see that in the subdivision control also the storm water. So then just like process of all the red stuff is stuff we could vote on next meeting because it was presented today correct like technically because but then because he's adding more stuff we have to wait another month after that. It's a good question. It's already the law. So in reviewing any drainage calculations submitted by anyone, we have to apply those new rules and then we we'll be essentially this subdivision controller to be catching up to the new law. And one other thing on the zoning ordinance on our can we have I know it says like adopted 2019, but can we have the last updated or is that somewhere else in here? I'm not the last the last page in there gives you the there's a revision history table in the back. In the back. Okay. Thank you. I was in the front. Yeah. And it it's on page 142. And it shows all the uh revisions that have been made since this was adopted starting in 2020 and all the way through current. Uh the last change being made in February of this year. And so we include the articles that were affected, the subject matter, the date, and the

ordinance number. So, so that yeah, if you wondered like where we've gone since we originally adopted that cover page, I can I'd be happy to include that except that you'll see we would have uh already 12 amended dates below that. So, we kind of left that alone, but that's why we put that schedule in the back on 40 142 and 143. The index is starts on page two. I in the table contents and it's very detailed. Page two. Page 142. Is that what you mean? on page eight. Page eight it says go to table B. Yeah, you're going to make me defensive. I worked hard on that table of contents. I really did. Okay. Well, um I guess our next special meeting is July 29th at 4 PM. We'll see you then. I make a motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor say I.