Planning & Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

I just sold the yard fertilizer, what have you.

Oh yeah, we got all that Fox Valley just kind of kind of stay up in the farm field too. always.

Yeah. The whole thing. Yeah. used to walk back. He doesn't know that before we get vacation this week or something. Yep. England. Howard, you're right. Next day. We'll turn around, huh? All right. Meet some new people. I'm sorry. Got our next strong meeting on Thursday this week. We'll see how it goes. It's uh looks good. Kind of nervous.

Second time around my iPad. Turns almost into a puppy. It's a golden retriever. In the summer, huh? Kids start school today. I'm gonna talk about my 5-year-old research. I'll talk about it. Harry's doing a poodle. See how that goes. We got Taylory next one. So we'll see.

My daughter. She's like three years over then she did third second and third

and that was heard already there. It's crazy cuz Maya's birthday comes late in October. like she could have but they won't any circumstance she was at LA and she basically had Google search like he can read whatever you do don't be

blessed to learn very creative Now she's select classes that teacher comes in to different classes. But yeah, I think he likes it because he gets like a a year between everything together. She loves her.

Yeah, exactly. The car. Okay. [Music] There had to be one of the highway. Good. Everybody ready? Yeah. Get this one going. I will now call to order the August 25th, 2025 Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. Uh the time is 5:45 p.m. Uh Hillary, would you call the role for us, please?

Eden, here. Henders, here. Thompson, here. Stiger Samuelson here. Forest here. Reganator here. Item number three is the approval of tonight's agenda. Any changes to this evening's agenda? Hearing nothing, I would entertain a motion and a second to approve tonight's agenda. Need motion. Thompson second. All in favor say I. I. I. I. Item number four is the approval of the July 28th, 2025 minutes. Any changes to those minutes?

Hearing nothing, I will entertain a motion and a second to approve the July 28th, 2025 minutes. Samson a motion. Second. All in favor say I. I. Uh we don't have any guests here in person tonight and uh don't believe there are any on the Zoom. Um so we'll move on to our public hearing. Um this is a public hearing and recommendation on a zoning amendment to the Norwok zoning ordinance related to accessory dwelling units. Um we'll open the public hearing at 5:47 p.m. Elliot, would you brief us on this item, please? No,

blue. Yay. Oh, yeah. you get to listen to me tonight. You didn't realize when you signed up.

Um so, uh earlier this year, uh in spring during the uh state house session, the state approved a new Senate file that is uh related to accessory dwelling units and the cities um and counties actually ability to regulate them. Um and so what it essentially does is uh makes it so that there's very few things that we can regulate about accessory dwelling units. Um we currently have on file uh a chapter on accessory dwelling units that would no longer conform with what the state's rules are. Um so this ordinance basically uh cleans that up so that we'll be in conformance with the state code. Um you know uh from a high level perspective uh it's a little frustrating uh the state kind of removing the city's local control on such issues especially as I think we've been talking a lot about accessory dwelling units and been moving towards finding a way to make it work in Norwok and then to just have this dropped on us is a little frustrating. Um, with that said, generally, uh, accessory dwelling units look pretty favorably from the planning perspective of things, especially as trying to find more ways for there to be affordable housing, um, within communities. So, it's not without its benefits. Um, I included in your agenda packet, I won't run through everything that the state um, is requiring or restricting cities from doing, um, but it's there in that bulletointed list. Um really ordinance-wise, we just had a couple things that we uh needed to do to clean up the ordinance. Um first was related to definition of accessory dwelling unit. Um we swapped out our current definition for what the state definition

is. Um and then we pretty much uh rewrote our accessory dwelling unit chapter or section of of 175A to mirror what the uh state code says. Um there's one point in there that I've highlighted. It's number five that is um there's a little bit of wiggle room that the city has on where we want to regulate something. Um so I'll cover that in a minute and we can kind of get some discussion and any decision on that. Um and then the last thing we have to do with this ordinance is actually identify in our R1 districts that it's an allowed as an accessory uh dwelling units allowed on a single family home lot. Um, I did include a little note there. The wording of this is very specific because the how the zoning works is things that are allowed in R1 are allowed in R2 and then on R3. Um, not really concerned about a town home lot having an accessory dwelling unit be built on it just from a spatial. You know, there's just not room. Um, but when we say on a lot with the current single family home, that kind of restricts it to what the intent of the uh state code is. And then there's a draft ordinance at the very end which just repeats all of that same information but puts it in ordinance format. Um so the point of contention that we can discuss um and see where where you all feel we should lie would be on what setback requirements the accessory dwelling unit should follow. Um, so the state code says that the city can restrict an accessory dwelling unit to have to fit into the same box as the principal dwelling unit setbacks. So for like the R160 zoning, that'd be a 7 foot setback on one side and 8 foot on the other and then, correct me if I'm wrong here, 35 from the front street, 30 from

the front and 35 from the rear. So that kind of box is what it is. Um, we also and what our current accessory dwelling unit language says is that it just has to meet accessory structure setbacks. So that's five foot from the rear lot line, 5 foot from the uh side lot line and then a minimum of 10 feet from the main structure itself. So, in one regard, if we kind of kept with our normal accessory structure setbacks, that would allow more lots to be able to fit an accessory dwelling unit because they're lesser. Um, if we decided to use the principal building setbacks, which state code allows us to, then that would make uh accessory dwelling units maybe more difficult to site on our lot, which would make them less likely in certain situations. Um, so it's just there's kind of two. Do we want to be a little more strict on setbacks or a little more lenient? I don't have a particular concern one way or another. I mean, we've we've talked about accessory dwelling units off and on as something that the city might want to allow. We've had, I think, two instances in the last well time since Elliot's been here. Um, and three since I've worked here of folks that wanted to do accessory dwelling units. Um, are you aware of how many De Moines's allowed them for a while?

2019 and they've not had seven built. Seven built. So, do we have any currently?

Um, we have one. Um, well, technically too, we were talking about the Britt Baker property recently. um the Brit Baker's uh property out there. He has a kind of a big A property that uh there's an accessory dwelling unit in one of the horse barns. And then there's a another A property um that's up in what's called the Lakeland Estates off of County Line Road um that has an accessory dwelling unit. Um our previous code would only allow them in the A district. Um then in the uh Maple Heights PUB that we approved uh couple years ago, we've got the prelim plat out there. They're in the process of developing that one allowed for accessory dwelling units within it as kind of a let's see how it works in a normal neighborhood scenario. Um so we don't even know if there's real demand for that yet. Um but the state uh again lobbyed by uh AP again not necessarily bad things but you know we don't always love that we have our local control

thinking people build them for their parents to live that that's the the push from the AP of the independent living you know not having to go off into skilled care until you really need to or or retirement communities um what do they call it the aging in place uh aspect of retirement. um really pushes that idea of uh being able to do accessory dwelling units. So yeah,

my two cents would be feel like the if we held it to the standard setbacks that's really restrictive. Like I'm just think about my lot, right? Like I've got like a typical if I'm 80 foot or 90 foot residential lot that's 120 ft deep by the time I do my setbacks. like that it takes a lot of your back. Basically, we have to be like right out my back door essentially, right? But 10 feet out my back door. Yeah. And really limit it. Um is there a big lot or what?

And it's it's a I mean, it's a bigger residential lot. I mean, it was 10 years ago, right? They're not building lots that big anymore typically. Um there's not what are the accessory building setbacks? uh five foot from basically rear rear and side setbacks and then um you have to be 10 foot from any other structure. I guess the one of the notes you said in here it didn't limit height, right? Um that was one of the things we could not restrict the height of your height. You could house Yeah,

we still could or could not. It was up in the bullet points. We um it's less I think it's less more big than that. It's like 50% of the size of the Yeah. matches property that's already there or we'd be limited by whatever our single family residential height is. I think it's our single family residential height. So residential height 35t. So, in theory, I could go and I could build a garage with a two-story apartment above it, right? I think we may have to do a code check on this. I don't know if an accessory building can be taller than your principal.

Okay. So, that might be the one thing getting in the way of an ADU being, you know, three stories, single story principal house, right? Yeah. Well, that's an aspect in this I might need to read. We might need to visit and do a tweak before we go to council. I I guess I don't have any problem with the shorter setbacks. I would have a problem with the shorter setback if somebody's going to build something that's 5t from the back property line that all of a sudden turns into like a threetory, right? Like you could in in theory, you know, for some reason a two-story one wouldn't bother me, but a three-tory one for some reason kind of like Yeah, it seems excessive,

right? I mean, in and in theory, you could have a small um uh ranch house that's, you know, doesn't exceed 15 foot in height, but then in the backyard have as long as you didn't meet go past these square foot standards, you know, I don't know that you get to threetory uh if you were over a thousand square feet, but um you know, you might certainly twotory. Is there any language around use of the unit? I see a lot of folks in densely populated areas where they're using them for Airbnbs and can't restrict that.

There's a there's a separate law that doesn't let us restrict Airbnbs that was enacted a few years ago. I don't see that happening here for a while, but I know in like New York, you know, uh California, because I'm in the real estate business, they're doing that a lot. Yeah. There's no space. They're just building them. Yep. And renting them out, right? Yeah. And it does uh the state law did say that we cannot regulate the use of an ADU as a rental or short-term rental. So they really I mean they that goes for houses, too. Yep. Um the state did their homework on this. They really they really locked us down to what we can and can't do. So

well yeah it's it was written by ARP I'm sure which again if I were to write standards for ADUs if as an advocate for them this is great right but the you know not being able to rightsize it for our community is frustrating. So practically speaking with the ADUs if if this goes forward which you know it our hands are sort of tied with the state law change what will what if anything will change with the process through this through staff for the

process wise it'll just be like building a house. So they'll still have to pull building permit do all that stuff. Um Elliot reviewed site plans for every house lot. Um he continued to do the same thing for an ADU to make sure that it met whatever setback we had. Um all inspections would be the same. Um we do have some language about utility connections. Um we can require that uh they have separate metered utilities. Um we can't require that it is a separate connection to the city main. So you could come off of your ser your own service line on your lot and then go over to a adu and as long as they were separately meet which would be fine because you're not daisy chaining your metering right um that would be the one thing that we wouldn't allow would be to have the new ADU come after the meter I guess I don't know if we would we might allow that then just one person paying all the water I guess I don't know why you would do that but So

I guess if we went with the restrict from back to the setbacks like if we went back to the restrictive setbacks for the lot itself or the zoning itself I mean that would limit in theory you could build a garage but you could not put an ADU over top. Correct. Correct.

I guess that defeats the purpose of the whole ordinance in my mind. Right. That not that that's the answer but I mean that's that's kind of your typical MO. The other thing that I believe we can do is I mean there's a middle like we're on either we're on either extreme of this right now of principal building or accessory. We can if you want have us put together ADU setbacks and maybe you feel better about 10 foot off of a side lot line and 10 foot off of a rear, right? like just can you tie it to the fact that if it does have an accessory function to it you could tie it to that like if you were going to build a garage underneath you could go to the five foots but if you're not going to build a garage to it you go to a different setback or is it all is it not that

I think you we could tie it to the accessory blowing unit I want to make it easy for you guys I feel like I see what you're getting at I feel like that's slightly backwards just because you'd be talking about garage plus ADU. Yeah. Having a five foot setback as opposed to just ADU then needing more. So I get what you're saying.

I guess I don't know that I have a problem. I mean, yeah, we we can talk a lot about a lot of whatifs and like worst case scenario, but practically when I learned that, you know, De Moines has had seven in the last six years, you know, I'm and I know that we've had three in the, you know, 11 years I've worked here, like I don't they're hard to finance. They're really Yeah. I don't think that we're gonna that's the main problem. Feels like we get something in place and then if we have an issue that we're like, oh, you know what? we didn't like how that turned out, then we can come back and and change that. Yeah. Advocacy group that

Yeah. The rest of them are just like ones that have existed for decades fit within the new ordinance. Yeah. I think we make the rules of whereby if someone decides to do it, you give them as much space as possible to make it look nice. Yeah. Don't force them into a little box and then it looks terrible. Sure. Yeah.

Any other questions before we close the public hearing? Did you guys get good enough out of us to Yeah. Anybody on Zoom? No objection. Okay. We'll close the public hearing at 602. Um, but I'm with you guys as far as I like the lesser setbacks I think makes the most sense. I just have whatever your motion is if you can motion with that C just so that we're picking one of those and then we'll take it to council with that option. We need to say something about the height like AJ said. I mean I

we state law doesn't let us do that. State law says that we can't require height requirements different than the single family residence from that specific single family residence or from what from what we require what we have in the code. So I could have my ranch house and I could put a threetory ADU out back. Could you put a threetory? I could in theory. Yeah. A garage and then two levels on top of it if I wanted to. you still then have to meet the you can't exceed um the footprint threshold. I mean there

functionally to do that if you have a ranch it's probably a smaller house than to get a three unit building or a three-story building that meets that square foot threshold I think it would be tricky so because I mean you're talking I mean I guess 500 square foot per level I guess you could put that on top of a garage twocar garage and call it a threetory building But

yeah, it's one of those things if we end up with it, we can maybe take a picture of it and then email it to your state representatives and say, "This is why you need to give us more control over these things. So, I guess at this point I would entertain a motion that approves the zoning amendment with the change to the setbacks consistent with our current accessory dwelling unit setbacks. Yep, that works. Accessory building setback.

Accessory building. Yeah, building. Yeah, there you go. Samson motion. Thompson second. Hillary, would you call the role please? Samuelson. Hi. Forest. Hi. Eaton. Hi. Henders. Hi. Thompson. Hi. Reganire. Hi. Thanks everyone. Hillary. Did I verbalize a time closing the public hearing? You did. You said 602. Great. Um, item number seven is a city council update. George, anything for us? No,

I don't think Colleen's joined us on Zoom. Luke, community development update. Uh, I don't got anything for you either today. Oh, and keep it quick. Elliot,

get your picture fixed for next meeting. Um nothing real substantial except that we do have an agenda item for next meeting. So there will be a September 8th meeting. Um the only other thing uh I was made of aware of an article that came out about how the city of Helsinki population over 600,000 has not had a single traffic fatality in over a year. Um that's cool. It's googleable. you guys are intelligent human beings and it's a three minute read. Um, but I'm gonna be talking about that at a at a public meeting on uh Thursday for Strong Towns De Moine that I'm a part of. So, that's pretty cool. And uh yeah, just pointing that out. I got nothing else.

Great. Like Elliot said, our next meeting is September 8th, 2025 at 5:45 p.m. And I would entertain a motion in a second to adjurnn. Need motions. Seconds. All in favor say I. I. Thanks guys for joining on Zoom. Yeah.