Planning and Zoning Board - Regular Meeting

Okay. Will the Tuesday, December 2nd, 2025 regular meeting of the planning and zoning board of town of Miller Beach please come to order? First item on the agenda is a roll call. Chairman David Campbell here. Vice Chairman Kurt Bellstein here. Member April Evans here. Member Dan Harper here. Member Gabbor Kosi here. Alternate Todd Albert here. Alternate Jason Judge here. Interim town manager Lisa Frasier here. Town planner Cory O' Gorman here. The new building admin Steve Freeman here.

Town clerk Amber Brown is also present. Next item on the agenda is approval of the minutes of the November 3rd meeting. Anybody got any changes to the minutes? Move accept. Second.

It's been moved and second to approve. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Those opposed, no. Minutes are approved. Next item that we're covering since we don't have any public hearings is continuation of the site plan approval for 305 Oak Street. And if I remember correctly, the only thing wrong with this one was vegetation. Didn't have the proper vegetation, right? Yes. I think that's uh we asked them to go back and get the landscaping plan which they provided in complete detail. Appeared to me. Looks good to me.

Looks good to me. I'd uh move for acceptance of the uh site plan for

Oak Street. I don't know if this is the proper time to do it, but clarification from Corey over some of the things that we saw in u in our plan in our stuff here having to do with finish floor elevation, total elevation, and how it's counted uh taking into consideration the ordinance was passed about six months ago and all of this does fall in line with that. Is that correct? Correct. Yes, ma'am. Um Cory O Gorman, town planner, um chair, vice chair, board members, um uh reviewed the the site plan and the building elevations um for compliance with 755 and the amendments in 2025-1. Um the um in in this particular case um the the finished floor elevation um uh is 16

2T.

Yes. The the the the finished floor elevation the minimum finished floor elevation is 16. Um the um the finished floor elevation that's provided is 18. Um the um the overall building height is of course a maximum of 28 feet. Um my staff report incorrectly uh noted that it was 22. The elevations show the um the overall height at 26 12. The 26 1/2 is actually measured from grade and not from the finished floor elevation. So um in in this case where the the finished floor is actually 2 feet higher than the required um finished floor elevation and 7A55 uh requires that the overall height be reduced um by that same amount. Um with the finished floor elevation um or rather with the overall height being taken from the finished floor elevation, the the the height of the building um is actually uh at 20 26 and a half measured from measured from the finished floor. Um sorry if I'm not saying that correctly. Um the let me So the the 26 and 1/2 is actually measured from grade the um the the total height um is actually 24 and a half measured from finished floor. So it is consistent with um 7A55

for the overall height of the building. I hope that answers your question. Okay. I I guess my concerns was the the ordinance that was passed about six months ago requires that I guess grade not be higher than what it would have been uh 4 and 1/2 ft before above the crown of the road.

36. Okay. 36 inches above the crown of the road. And so that I was under the impression that's where we had to start the measurements. The amendment um is that in the event the existing grade or existing floor elevation exceeds 36 in above the crown of the street, the measurement of building height shall be measured from 36 in above the crown of the street. Correct. Um and in this case, let me go to the plans. The um the crown of the street is at 14 145

145. Um 36 in above that would be at 7 145 175. Um and the finished floor elevation in on the plans is I'm sorry. Bear with me for just a moment.

Is 18. So the um the the finished floor elevation of 18 is within 6 in of the the um 175. Um does that answer your question? Okay. Yeah. So that we're just we're squeaking in there and still keeping it in touch. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Anybody else got any comments on this one? It's been moved to approve. Second. All in favor signify by saying I. I.

The 30. So the next is site plan review continuation for 205 rivers. 206 if you had vegetation issues. 206. 206. Thanks. You know, um, chairman, I just wanted to add on the, uh, on the Oak Street. If, uh, if we, uh, hadn't in our wisdom been able to, uh, slow down that environmental, uh, proposal, this, uh, this homeowner would have had to plant 27 oak trees.

Can you find 27 oak trees in the area? Well, all right. I found the uh found the setbacks to be in line and the um the height constraint to be in line, the pvious and and u uh residence footprint. I found those to to be in compliance. Chairman, the um I know we're I know we're in transition on who's responsible for what as far as the plan submittals go and such. And uh I suspect that'll be tightened up a little bit down the road. Um, so I'm not going to I'm not going to make any further comments on that. Uh, I think everything's in compliance. I I just uh maybe we can talk a little bit afterwards as to who's responsible for what um going forward anyway.

Okay, very good. I didn't I found it all in compliance with our various metrics, chairman, but uh looks good to me. One question on u one of our forms here. It says the recommendation is to approve the site plan contingent on approval from town engineer. Is that still a valid recommendation? What what uh help us out here. What what's the town engineer uh approving? The storm water or something else?

Yes. the town engineer would only be in charge of the drainage and the, you know, the drainage calculations and making sure that it was approved. Um, Amber, it was my understanding that they did approve this. It's I'm trying to look it up to see if there's been an update. What was in there was the last update I received from the building department, but I'm checking to see if there's a new email recently.

The uh in the packet we were given the uh is it BSSE? I think is the town engineer. He had not this did not include his approval of the drainage plan. Uh that's I kind of gave some leeway on that given we're kind of in this transition. And then I I would recommend that that the motion include the contingency for approval by the town by the uh town engineer. Okay. Well, I make a motion that we approve uh the site plan for 206 Riverside Drive contingent on approval from the town engineer.

Second. All right. We move him secondly. We approve contingent on the town engineer. All in favor signify by saying I I report by the town manager. Public comment. I'm sorry. I kind of thought maybe you happy with that. I'm sorry. Uh come in here to report.

Yes, sir. Thank you. Uh this evening we are pleased to introduce you to Steve Freeman. He is our building I called him the permit technician but I believe it's help me out here Amber. It was advertised building admin. building admin. So, I apologize. This is Steve Freeman. He's this is his second day here at the town and uh he's jumping in with two feet and I asked him to come to this meeting tonight just to be introduced and to get a feel for what you all look for when you review your site plans so that he can provide you with the most educated information that you can have. Steve, would you like to say anything about your background or Um,

go ahead. Turn on the mic. Thank you. Yeah, I got about 30 years invested in the construction industry. Um, mostly in the distribution aspect of it. I've been working for general contractors for um upwards of 10 years of that time. Uh, I've got a vast knowledge and just looking forward to jump right into this and uh get the building department going back to where it should be. Is he taking Robert's spot or Kim's spot? Uh, Kim's spot. Okay. So, it'll be Kim's spot. So, we still have uh Cape um CAP, I'm sorry. They are our outsourced building official who is

CAP CAP um government. CAP government, I believe is the the name of the consultant. And so, they're providing us with the building official and all the inspectors. Uh they were uh in the interimm providing us with a permit technician who was Kim who has left this the town. Um but we are grateful that we have found Stephen and um he will be our staff liaison if you will between the building department and town management. And who's say that who's the building department now? Is that Corey or is that CAPS? No caps is the is the equivalent of the building department?

That's correct. They they provide the building official and um the inspectors. All of the permitting, all of the taking of the the permit fees is at town hall. That has not moved. That is part of town hall. What Steve will be doing is processing all of those applications and making sure that um inspections have been scheduled and do all of the public facing type of um of work that occurs every single day at the town hall. Does that answer your question, sir? Yeah. Are you going to go through who's who's responsible for what there? I am. In fact, I'm going to give you a handout of it.

Okay. So, we actually have an existing um in in our code. It is design. Sorry, there's a whole bunch of things attached to it. I don't want to have to give you that stuff. Hold on a moment, please. There you go. Um take one, pass it down, please. So, in 7A1-170, it talks about designated administrative and enforcement officials. Okay. So in that section of our code, it goes through who would be designated in taking over certain parts of the land development code. Um it's all under the direction of the town manager, which is good because in the code it gives a lot of these responsibilities to the building official that shouldn't be under them. building official uh uh uh what do I say is required to follow the building code not the land development code. They in fact in all of my previous um positions they want to stay very hands off on any of the land development code and just concentrate on the building code. That is their license. That is what they they are trained to follow. Um, in this instance, because we are a small town, they um will also be taking on like the coastal setback regulations, which they just did uh for 305. Building officials take on building, they take on the flood protection. They are they are our certified flood plane managers and they take on the coastal construction setback type of um information that is not often required here in town but obviously sometimes with 305 being an example. Most of the land development code is done under your town planner or your zoning official.

And you'll see that to be the case under the town planner. Your town engineer typically takes care of concurrency issues as in traffic or of course your storm water and drainage. Um any permitting that is outside of your local municipality, your state agencies. Um they also would be assigned the flood resistance development which is during um which we don't have much of here but new roads um any type of utilities going in making sure that that they're resistant to to flooding by making sure they're the right depths. Um and then of course they review all the site plan drainage reviews and we're going to keep that as it is. um we unfortunately the process has not been um as measured as I would like to see. So we are making putting in those type of um processes into place now as far as making sure that your reports are not only covered by Corey and Corey's here this evening. I asked him to come in and meet me for the first time after being here serving the town for the last 10 years. Um, and we went over a plethora of things that have been sitting there. So, it's been a lovely afternoon with Corey. Um, and he'll he'll come up to the meetings when and if it's necessary at any time to discuss things with you. Um, but we also went through what the task designations will be and um, what he's going to be looking for in the future. For instance, landscaping. Corey has never really he's telling me in the last like years when he started doing a lot of the site plan reviews and was never involved in the landscaping. That's typically a planner's job. So I don't know who was doing it before. Was it the building official? Robert.

Was it the building official? Nobody. We had it. They didn't have it before. So I mean if the building official was looking at it then that's lovely. But that's this this outsourced company will not be doing that. um they want to stay really with clean with building um the building code. So that's why I've provided this for you. And if you have any questions, please please ask. Couple quick ones for me. Just sir, of course. I'm uh appreciate your input. So just whipping down through here, tell me who's responsible for uh these items for building height. Would that be Corey? Uh yes. So building heights, building setbacks. Let me go through these. Building height setbacks. Would that be Corey? Yes,

Pervious. Uh, that's the town engineer. The town engineer. That would be BSE. Well, we have three town engineers now, but at this time BSE, who has now been bought out, they are now LPIJ, something that um they are still taking care of the site plan reviews at this P point. But when you're looking at impervious, impervious, and you're looking at drainage, it's all going to be Let me ask U. Corey he's done a lot of this of course

now uh I don't know why the engineer the pvious and the uh principal structure you know percentage those are basically just numbers off the site plans and I presume you just take their numbers and do a double check calculation or something they you know the the uh the contractor has his uh site plan drafter do all those computations right on your face as you know right so uh Lisa number one I don't know what an engineer would add to that

math and I'm asking Corey what do you do you just take his math you don't go back and check his square footage or anything like that do you not usually no sir um I mean in some cases u I would try to do a a simple takeoff just to see if they're in the right ballpark okay if I had a question about it but If if the um I I guess you know having reviewed enough site plans over the years um I I think there are a couple things. One is the pvious impervious is is important from an engineering perspective for the drainage calculations. They they they in their storm water plan they take all that into account. Exactly. So

um but it's also important from a land development code perspective um to be sure that they're not exceeding the maximum impervious requirement buildable area. But is that is that an engineer's function to do the arithmetic? Well, they're they're not do I understand the engineer does the storm water drainage plan? Understand that. That's a good duty for him. But to simply do the division for the pvious why would the So your pvious area is going to determine what how much drainage and Yes. Yes. He takes that into account along with his soils into his storm water plan. I'm just talking about on our little thing we get, we always check the pvious computation. Uhhuh.

So, you're going to give that the engineer is going to submit something written that says he checked the pvious. I'm sorry. What are you looking at? The per Well, I'm just looking at my list. I don't understand this. Well, here you could look at a set of plans where we calculate the pvious or they always calculate the pvious percentage on the front of the site plan. Yes, I understand that. And tip in the past in the past Robert did his page where he said I verified all these things. Okay. So now who's going to give that page that said they verified those things? Is it apparently you're going to have the engineer do it?

Well the engineer in calculates their drainage and their storm water treatment based on imperous area. That is how it's calculated. So they will be looking at the impervious area. But I believe what you're referring to is not impervious area. It's amount of buildable area in a lot. Negative. Negative. Both differences. Both. Both. I'm referring to both.

Sometimes they're the same and sometimes they're not. So when you're looking at zoning, that will be Corey. He will look and make sure that they have this the right amount of buildable area. Sometimes it's less, sometimes it's more. If it's more then of course they have to go down to less. But the imperous surface is used by the engineer to determine how much treatment volume is necessary in the storm water plan. Yes. So when you're using the word imperous surface

that connotates to drainage when you're looking at buildable area or um what's the word I'm looking not buildable area but the buildout area the envelope that you can have on lot coverage. Thank you. That was the word I was looking for. Thank you very much. when you're looking at lot coverage it's not necessarily the same as imperous areas. I don't think anybody said that Lisa but anyway who is it table this all right fine long drawn out discussion about building and cover anything else oh I'm sorry I you got anything else me no sir

so if you have any questions about these these are your your individ individuals that would cover that but you can come right through me or Cy. Thank you. Anybody got anything we need to add to future meetings? Not at the moment. Does anybody make an a motion to adjurnn? Oh, motion to adjourn. Second. Meeting adjourn. What was that? Thank you gentlemen for coming tonight. I appreciate that.