Planning & Zoning - Regular Meeting

You guessed it.

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Yeah. Yeah.

And if so, do we have a motion to approve? I'll make a motion. I'll second. Motion and a second. New business general updates. We've got minutes. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Approval of minutes from previous meetings. So everybody had a chance to review. So is there a motion to approve? Almost. Motion to approve. We have a second? Second. All right. New business. General updates from Matt.

Thanks for coming tonight. We just had a meeting in a while, and so we wanted to kind of get caught up on a few different things that have been going on with our Other board, potentially system changes that we're instituting to help make meetings run smoother on that. And part of it is having a statement to read when we go into open public hearing. So like what was just done on this one here, where we have the motions to approve and the seconds by, when we have meetings where public Everybody's going to be here for that. You will notice on the agenda that we're going to call for a vote after each one of those and have votes happen. And then when we get down to the actual case where we're going to open public hearing, that is where the chairperson is going to read out this statement. This statement really kind of sets the ground rules for how the meeting is going to be conducted. And it should help. keep the public in a better discord as the meeting's going on, and then hopefully keep from anybody hollering out from the crowd. And so when we get into, we'll open the public hearing, and that will take a motion, a second, and a vote. We'll go into hearing the applicant's testimony on it, and the applicant could be the county staff. It could be somebody who's proposing a change on their own. come in and to plead their case on that. And then we'll have people come up and speak for it. And then when they're done speaking for it, then we'll have people come up and speak against it. And then the applicant would have a chance to come up and give their rebuttal portion of it. And then we will do another, then it will be on to the commission to, when we see that the public comment has died out, right? The chair could ask, you know, is there any more public comment? Nobody else is getting up? Okay. And they can entertain a motion to close public hearing then. And then that'll be motion to close public hearing. Second, do a vote on it. Public hearing is then closed. And what we want to keep from happening then is as we go into commission's discussion on this, like it'll go then to like a staff report on whatever the proposed case may be on it. As tempting as it is, we don't want anybody from the public to interject any further. If they do, we can kind of politely say, we're in board discussion right now. The public hearing's been closed. We can't have any more feedback from you on this. But it is very important that none of you engage the public at that time just to say, well, I just have one question. We don't want to even ask that one question because the minute you ask the one question, you've now opened the door. The people for and against, everybody's going to want to speak again, right? So we want to really try to just keep to that format of it. and that should help transpire to keep our meetings running smoother. When we get into, let's say, you know, the case law, what we're going to talk about is like, if we have anything come up on the wind ordinance, you know, solar, where we get a lot of people in the room, it'll help that meeting run smooth, keep the public, hopefully, that it's a more transparent process for them because they each get their input, nobody's getting more over the other, and we're done. It goes into the commission's decision. at that point in time.

So when you talk about a motion, a second, are we taking in the vote or is it going to be all in favor?

All in favor. Okay. On those. Now, if we have to, when we get to the point where you all are going to make a recommendation on it, on the decision, right? After the meeting is closed or that portion of it is closed and we go to say, okay, what's going to be the recommendation of the commission? and somebody makes the motion for recommendation, somebody seconds it, at that point in time, that vote will be a roll call. Yeah.

I thought about that. You have a layout of all this.

It will be all laid out. So on those meetings, it'll be all laid out right on the agenda for our first fall. So you'll have more of a script to follow on those. And then that way, if you go down public-facing agenda, won't have the scripted portion of it all laid out. It'll look fairly similar to what we have now. But whoever's chair at the time will definitely have that script to go off of to just read along with it. But you may have either Roger or I, if we skip a step, we may prompt to go back and say, hey, we need to do those portions of it. But we can't. It can. But we've had in the zoning board of adjustment meetings, we have had those kind of hot topic meetings happening and where a number of neighbors come in to speak about an issue. And that's been something that we've been working really hard to try to shut down is that board engagement after public hearing splits. It's like once you give them that foot in the door, everybody wants to talk again. and tempers are still getting heated more and more where we're just nipping the bud then we can move forward because everybody you know and then the statement it talks about repetitiveness of a comment so if we're doing if a code change is coming up and people have the same concerns and i have concerns about noise and you know we can step in and say we understand there's concerns about noise And once we've seen that, once you kind of do that once, then the other ones will just come up and just say, they'll come up and be like, I just want to agree with the points that were made previous to me about noise, traffic. I would only add this portion of it and they'll just add that quick portion of it and then they'll go back and sit down. So it does have a real positive effect on public comments area to it. So we don't have to sit there You know, if it's a landfill hearing or something, we don't have to sit there until midnight hearing the same things over and over again. Say, you know, it's repetitive information. We've got that. We could move forward on it. So that was it on the meeting aspect of it. It won't be something that obviously we know we're going to jump into and get perfect right, but we'll keep scripting it out and work to get better on those aspects of it. The project updates, I was going to give you all really quick is on the solar. You've said MidAmerican Energy's got their solar project out there. We're meeting with them once a month. It's a construction meeting. They just do a quick update on there. Their attorneys are still in contact with us. They send us updates in writing plus the construction meetings that are happening. So they're being really great about the communication on that one. They had a It's really right now that it's really been more with the engineer than it necessarily has involved us because they were wanting to put up some signs. The engineer was like, no, we're not going to put up those signs because they want to stick with their normal process of doing signs. But other than that, it's been pretty good on there. The other solar project, the large solar one on the west side of the county over here is moving forward and it's picking up steam. I have a meeting with the company representative and their attorneys this Thursday. They are, and they're moving forward. They have an upcoming training next week. No, it's Thursday. That's Thursday this week. So they're going to do their fire training now, already preemptive of their conditional use permit hearings on that. They've also worked with the local foundations and are setting up to be able to donate money back into the community. So they've taken a lot of positive steps on that one, and it's definitely something that's going to happen. Onder's been in communication a lot with their company representatives and their attorneys in communication with me. A lot of it's about the conditional use process because they're getting close to submitting.

How many people are there?

6,500? It'll be 5,000. 5,000.

There's a portion of it that's on both sides of the interstate. The majority of it is on the west side of the interstate, but there's a smaller portion on the eastern side, all kind of from the Bellevue interchange south. The last kind of snafu that they hit was the levee districts contacted us, and the Army Corps engineers was requesting a 500-foot setback from their levees. So they had just come in and showed us the site plan of what they were looking at. And then I got a phone call from the attorney from Columbia Districts. And we had to call the company back and say, hey, we get what you're doing.

Here's what our record engineer wants. Yeah, it is.

It really is.

I can't hear you.

And then the other thing I was going to talk to you about was the Iowa Supreme Court decision that's there in front of you. It's worthwhile wind versus Worth County. This was a wind project and it went all the way to the Supreme Court. On page one there, you can see that Eric up the graft from Hopkins. He was at Hopkins and Huber at the time.

They've gone out and they're up on another lot for him now.

But we actually had a chance to talk with Eric about this before the Supreme Court issued their decision. And he was fairly adamant that he should have won in district court. He should have won on his appeal to district court. And so when it went through Iowa Supreme Court, Iowa Supreme Court answered back and won in favor of Worth County for the project. And there was only one dissenting opinion on it, but on, it's 32 pages long altogether. So I printed that so you all could be able to take it home and read over it. But on page 12, at the bottom of page 12, on point three, this is, and the whole argument through this point has been about vested rights. and how vested rights is determined and how it's determined differently in different states. And so that gets into how the Worthwiles-Winds case or argument of vested rights did not apply here. And that was because the only thing that they had permitted was a Met Tower, which is the meteorological towers that they put up to collect the data that they need to figure out where the wind's going to be at. placement of their towers they had not actually permitted a wind generation turbine and so the supreme court was like you know irregardless of the amount of money that they were spending towards these other things they had not permitted a commercial generation wind tower so therefore that argument failed and they said well you know we put a couple million dollars towards this already and the supreme court was like yeah but you said the project's million dollars that you put into it you're actually only like one percent invested in the project right now so that's not an argument that you've had a substantial investment even though you think hey almost two million dollars that's a substantial investment the springboard's like no it's not not when you're saying it's a 300 million dollars so they're they evaluated that based on the total uh project that was there and then they they go into saying how the company representatives themselves had did not even go back and try to say well what if we did a shorter wind turbine How many of them will we need? Where would we place them at? None of them, they hadn't purchased a single tournament for the project itself. So their vested rights case failed on that. And the next thing that the wind companies have gone to is then, well, then you acted in bad faith. The county's acting in bad faith. The planning commission's acting in bad faith. And that argument on page 15 is where that's not failed as well. Even though They did question a little bit, kind of the language that they put in the moratorium. They were like, that seemed, that was a little vague of what they said in there. And they didn't put the moratorium in place until they had learned of the project. But that, and I, so I bring this portion of it up because if and when we come across a code change like this, and when we're either in a public hearing or you're talking to member of the company outside of this, you don't ever want to say anything that could be led back to that this is targeting just a specific project. You know, it's always, because they can, they will try to take it and use that against it. You know, if you're sitting up there on the commission and as they're going through some changes like that, you can say, well, you know, I don't even like the terms. you know, those winter or droggly, you know, they're a nuisance or this or that, then they're going to try to point it out as, you know, Joe's acting in bad faith. He doesn't like my term.

He doesn't want him in the county anyways.

No matter what you say, he's not going to do anything on that. And that goes, this was, you know, directed at their board of supervisors on that, but it's just a good reminder as even as an appointed position, you want to be careful on what language you use while you're up there talking about whether it's wind, solar, whatever the case may be. Um, on how you word things as they're talking. And on page 19, that is where at the bottom of that, it's where they conclude. So, and that was one of the pieces that Eric lost. He said, well, there was some comments made by some of the Board of Supervisors and things like that in that county.

on these things. But the Supreme Court comes back and says, we find that you guys did not act in bad faith.

Not all of your legal processes from your code change aspect of it were followed. And the counties have a right to change codes and zone their counties as they see, as they deem fit. So, because that was, when talking with him, he was just kind of shocked a little bit that he had lost something out of bad faith. He was like, yeah, they said some things and their moratorium wasn't as great, but it wasn't. certainly shouldn't have met the legal precedent with a bad faith. So I think he was a little bit justified in that aspect of it. So there was this one that came, so these two things happen somewhat simultaneously about maybe a week or two apart from one another. But Iowa Supreme Court comes out and they say, hey, Worth County, you're in the right, you have the right to change your codes and put these things into place. Then Iowa Utilities Commissioner, Iowa Utilities Board, the IUCIUB, whichever one you want to call them, gave an approval for a solar farm in Cerro Gordo County, where the solar developer did not even go to the county to ask for any kind of permitting process to the county to be able to construct a solar farm in the county. They went straight to the Iowa Utilities Commission. Iowa Utilities Commission says, go ahead. you're good. It's power generation. That's under our jurisdiction. You can build that there. So now we're going to be kind of waiting to see how it works out between Saragota County and Iowa Utilities Commission because it does sound as though they did file suit against them. But when the pipeline discussion was going on for the carbon pipeline, our utility board was pretty adamant that they have the ability to make these kind of decisions and that the county could not interfere with them, even though at the time of the carbon pipeline, they had never been challenged in court on that. They admitted it. It says that we have the authority to do it, but nobody's ever challenged us. So it'll be interesting to see how this one plays out for us. because we do know that there are wind projects now who are looking at going directly to the Environmental Utilities Commission to get permits and be okay from them to be able to construct and skip the county regulation.

That sounds like a wild bus. There's bypassing people.

Yeah. It'll be an interesting two years while it all settles out.

Start forcing things. There's going to be go around to that. Let's go around them.

When they have that energy project for Saragota County, they already have their webpage up. They already can talk about their community engagement that they're doing. I mean, it's like full speed ahead on the solar project that's going on up there.

But it is something that we're paying attention to and we will make sure that we keep everybody updated on it as we Yes. Across the COSO group, which is the county zoning officials group, there is a lot of talk about the battery storage ones. There's a lot of talk about data centers.

rural areas and counties adopting language for that. The data center conversation really triggered off from around Palo Alto over there. There's a data center over there. They were dealing with the county at first. It sounded like the county was being a little bit difficult to deal with. So there was a small town kind of not directly next to it, but a little ways away. So the data center just went and annexed in. to the town and was like, we're gonna go ahead and build it as it is and skip all the regulations that you wanted to put on us from there. But realistically, data centers need to be in a jurisdiction, not a rural jurisdiction. They need to be in the community and not in a rural jurisdiction. we don't have the services for them, can't provide them the water that they need. We don't have the sewer treatment pieces of it that are out there for them. So I believe that we're better off currently having it as not an allowable land use for them. And if they were to come in, then they can get, you know, if they want to come in, let's say if one were to come down here, you know, they could be in one way. They can construct there, they can construct over an alphabet supply, and they can construct an alphabet supply. and having them out there well or in heat loops or whatever it is that they're trying to do.

Any updates on the mini-nuclear stuff? Was it South Dakota or Wyoming?

Wyoming was doing some of those, but I haven't heard anything more new come out of there from that. Iowa has now established their nuclear think tank. And I would imagine they'll come out with some sort of recommendations. And then lastly, quick on the comp plan update on the comp plan. And I just wanted to let you all know that we have not had any bumps in the road from the new comp plan. So it's me that really kind of just goes for all of the work that was put into it leading up to the adoption of it. I think that it's working out really well right now. That was a lot of work on that, a long time. Any questions of us?

Well, isn't it kind of negative what the state's doing as far as how they're trying to reshuffle county structure anyway? As far as kind of not the county as a regional area versus the county seat? Is that part of why they're looking at?

I think a lot of us was Reynolds push. I mean, she wanted I want to be the screen energy our house supplier out there. So we're obviously going to have a change in office up there so We it can kind of stop that push. I would think that that should, to me, that should have been a major election issue, or it's going to, it should have to be a major election issue coming up to see which candidate is going to slow down the big green energy push in the state and the wind farms and solar farms are going to come in and take over.

Because the battery energy pieces of it is going to be very popular. That's a good point.

restored it was like a blip they were all kind of looking yeah it was when the tax credits first changed so when the federal government rolled back the tax credits on wind and solar put those timelines on them then but they didn't on batteries that and that was what caused the uptick all of a sudden hey what is what's going on with batteries where can we so it must have been a bunch of people looking to cite it really quick thankfully they've been also I do think it's going to be kind of one of those deals where we will have to kind of watch and make sure that we don't inadvertently open the door to something by putting it in as a land use anywhere and just being the most restrictive we can be and not having it as a land use until the time period at which we would be approached. And then we won't get in trouble. It's not like we would get in trouble at that point in time because we wouldn't even have to issue a moratorium to say, well, we're not going to do, we're not going to, the board would have to issue a moratorium to us to say, hey, don't issue a permit for a battery storage center. Well, then we would just be like, well, we can't issue a permit anyway because it's not about land use. And then they can really dig in and say, what do we want to do with these codes? Where can we place that? Yeah. Yeah. it's the same a lot of counties on the eastern side are trying to adopt data center ordinances it just makes you worry like well if it's not allowed land use then just when you rather keep it there then you try to put in all these restrictions on your water and everything else is that you have to water your power they're putting restrictions on power water noise um and they Some of the conversations that I heard surrounding it are going back to the shipping container, data mining, Bitcoin setups. And I don't know if that's because... But that sweep seemed to kind of already come through here. And it's nice to be able to tell them that it's just not a lot like it used to be. Can't be because... I mean, everybody saw the news stories at the time about the amount of noise that's generated off those fans and things that have pulled them down. Was it Fremont County that got one down there? Yeah. we had one go one of them approached us in poc county it's not a lot of land use so they actually annexed that little piece of ground into the city of shelby up there and then they got it up and running and company walked away people coming around trying to buy it it was on the news they did a news story on it it was one that was generating a lot of noise.

Or if it's KATV or WWT. You said the processes for the renewable energy is really being followed well. So far, I think so. You said it was really good.

Kind of thankfully, Barrett Home was the one who helped Mills County establish those. And then so far on both of the big permits, Barrett Home is the one representing them as they work their way through the process. So they know the process really well because they established it.

So really, there's no ordinances we need to read from at all? Not currently. Now I've heard, you know, I asked around and there was some people say this morning ordinances are too strict. And we just not certain on those assignments.

The biggest complaint we get on the side ordinances is from people who are not in the sign industry and they say is really complicated to read. I would say on our side of it, for us, that's a good thing because then we can say, that's why we want you to work with a sign company. Go come up with your design that meets the ordinances and then submit it to us because it is, it does get complicated when you're doing, if you, if you have a business going in and the amount of wall signages, the wall signage that you can have compared to a pole sign compared to a monument sign out in front and

that was a bear oh yeah that's what i'm saying we haven't looked at that for ages i didn't know that was a question that was i've heard that is that lincoln that said he figured out if he just mounted up the dirt in his monuments no that's no yeah that's we've got one come in uh

because the playhouse came in, they wanted to change some signs around on theirs, but they haven't, right? They're currently non-conforming. They've been non-conforming since the ordinance got adopted. So it does help a little bit on that where it's like, listen, if you touch it, then you're going to have to come into compliance with what we have. You're going to actually lose signs that you already have.

So then it kind of keeps them from... Billboards. You do billboards, right?

They're only allowed in the commercial zone. So they have to get it if they're along the interstate.

How are you working on reviewing some of the ordinances, subdivisions? Is there any more work we need to look at on that?

There hasn't been any movement on those yet. I don't know.

I can't remember. We had a discussion about it. I'm trying to remember what all it's been like.

Well, the goal of what I would like to see on the subdivision is that it be revised to have preliminary plots reviewed by the Planning Commission sent forward to the Board of Supervisors meets the subdivision ordinance. But I just don't know that that's something the board wants us to take up currently.

There was something about having, trying to do a subdivision off a gravel road and then that subdivision had to be paved roads and the complexity that that would cost the county. Now they go from a motor grader to a snow plow and all that stuff. Maybe I dropped it too. You were there. I don't know. You're right. I remember, but maybe it wasn't one of these meetings. Maybe it was a different meeting I was sitting in.

But ultimately, yes, that would be really nice to have the planning of those things come through for your altar view on the board of supervisors.

Currently, the Board of Supervisors has sold all that in there where they review and approve them.

Thanks. Just everything's going good. It's great.

So for this fiscal year, we projected we would make $200,000. We are around, we need around 30,000 to hit that by the end of June. So we've done very well. And that's just building. So

And initially we thought, man, that number is really high. But to come this close, it's really good. It shows, I mean, even with the interest rates have gone up and construction costs are up, I mean, people are still out there, still building. Housing numbers are still really good.

You know, when we've had a house with inspections or anything, they're all doing what they're supposed to do.

I'm not going to say that.

It's on them now.

It is on the contractor now, yes.

We are getting... Audra's been getting some... She gets some backlash from every now and again a bad actor comes in and doesn't do the work as well as what the homeowners would have liked to have seen. So they come in to Audra and find out what they can do to... I think there's been at least two scenarios that I can think of where they've come in.

One big

One of them skipped out on a foundation drain and it basically flooded. The other one, the roof was leaking and some other issues on the stairs and not having a footing under a three-season roof.

Then yesterday's was deck issues. here is not deep enough to do things.

Yeah, so I mean, it does happen. You definitely have to stay on top of the contractors for that. Thankfully, it hasn't been a lot.

Word hasn't spread too well. Does the county, is there any recourse that they can use through the county on something like that, or is that just you didn't vet your builder and you give it a code and it's up to you to do it?

They could go civil that we don't have.

You just basically listen to the complaint.

And maybe advise them on what direction they can go. If they need an inspector, we can connect them with a third party inspector.

So the builder is responsible?

The homeowner would be responsible for the inspection when they like They would want to hire a third-party inspector to come in on their behalf, I would think, and look at everything.

We do have a contractor that hires an inspector to inspect all the homes.

Can you say that again? You have a contractor?

We have a contractor that has an inspector that comes in and does the homes, inspects all the homes.

For the builder.

For the builder. So it's either one's choice.

So do they automatically do that? Use the inspector to look at the...

It's their own inspector. If Joe Martin Construction has... I have an inspector that I have hired to come inspect all my work to make sure it meets code, then that inspector probably carries some sort of liability. If he says, yep, it's all good and it's not, then the homeowner can't go back to the builder. The builder would go to the inspector and... try to get it worked out that way is what I would assume.

But on the flip side of that, a lot of the new property owners don't know. So we assume they're getting new when that's covered.

So I would assume, yeah. So do you think it's then in that homeowner's best interest to request from that builder. If they had copy of their inspection, if they had an inspector.

If it's a good home, if it's a good home builder and you vetted them appropriately, we're going to provide you with that anyways. If it was my own peace of mind, I would have my own inspector. I don't think that fee is going to cost that much money. Even if they've got their own inspector, I would have my own And then let those two inspectors look at things and see how everything lines up. And then, you know, you're getting, you know, you've got someone that's representing you. He's got someone that's representing him. Everything should be pretty by code anyway. So there's not a lot of, you know, for your big stuff, there wouldn't be much of a gray area. It either meets code or doesn't meet code. So, but that would just be my recommendation to someone building a house. But I'm guessing, you know, similar to the first house I built, I don't know any of it. You know, I just take the builder's word for it and be like, oh, should I, should I maybe look at that a little closer? It's just more green.

Yeah. Yeah. Foundation green.

And it's amazing that, you know, you figure it's one of your major investments in life that you're doing. The number of people who would be like, I'm not going to pay $1,500. It's like, that's $1,500. That's really. Yeah.

And you can, you can save, you leave. Yeah.

I mean, you know,

Everything's like, I can just look at it. I'll be able to tell if it's right or wrong. Will you? This isn't being covered up, but the wrong stuff's going to be covered up by the time you go.

Well, I just wondered if it was improving from the way we changed it from the LMS and site inspectors.

It has modified things because we just had another instance where people had permitted a poll. And then they came back around and they said, call the bottom and they're like, hey, I need a certificate of occupancy for this thing. It's like, what do you mean? You've got a pole barn permit. And they turned it into a house. So, but then the reason why that popped up was because they went to go refinance or something with the bank and the bank said, hey, we need to ship the occupancy on this place. And they're like, oh yeah, well, sorry.

They had looked on Iowa land records and found the certificate of incompletion because that had been issued because they never turned in even the pole barn. And that was when we still had an inspector. They did not complete all their inspections. So they got a certificate of incompletion. So

I didn't want anybody to see the interior finish. Really quick inspections.

But I mean, it's coming around.

It's coming around full circle. It's just taking a little while longer.

Have you had many ask about it? Did you use anything with that? Oh, yeah. We have quite a few.

Yeah. Since that came out.

We did one more outside of area builders. I'm counting.

It's the usual bunch. Occasionally we get somebody new from Omaha, but they're usually licensed in the state or they're willing to license in the state.

I don't know if they're more focused on it.

Does the county ever, would the county ever blacklist the builder? Let's say you got multiple complaints on geomarket construction,

is that it is a possibility to do yeah if you and that would be um just based on if they they didn't complete permits with us uh we can withhold this union another permit until they go back and complete the permits to it and they made it more the reason why they probably didn't complete it was because they you know walked away from the job or the customer's not happy so um yeah there are recourses that we can take to it it's hard to get to that level Yes. I mean, it's more us telling them, you know, you can call the, if they're licensed through the state, hey, you can call up to the state and issue your complaint through them. Tell them that it was zero.

Has it been good for the county to be out of the inspection side of it? So far.

I'm not going to say it's that better or worse? I mean, it.

Has it saved the county money? Yes. Because they don't have to have, they don't have to have a lot of staff.

Yeah. I know it was nice when we built here, that the inspector was here. It just took, you know, but did. It's a piece of money. Yeah, but like, my inspection wouldn't have cost enough to justify, you know, 30 inspections a year to probably justify a person on staff, 100 inspections or whatever they have, what all that costs.

I understand why the move was to get rid of it. At that time, they were doing everything from, even if you, because we still housed electrical, so somebody could just pull an electrical permit or a plumbing permit, a mechanical permit. And our inspectors would go out and do that as well. So it wasn't just homes or buildings. It was just everything. But it is cheaper going this route.

It would be nice to see a change to where they're, if it's at least for a brand new home. Maybe you don't have to necessarily do additions or something like that for the initial house to have a requirement in there for a third-party inspector. Mm-hmm. We were able to provide a list and say, hey, here's a list of residents to inspect.

I would think John would be taking care of that stuff. We require referring.

Give me this loan. We were going too happy. I mean, the funny thing to bring that up, I used to do the instruction and have to go out and do inspections. And the customer would be like, well, what did it look like? I'm like, I'm not out here to know if it was done right. I'm out here to see. He's asking for windows and siding. This, that, and the other get funded. Is that there and is it complete? That's all I'm out there for. Yeah.

You're not doing the inspection. Uh-uh. Have I seen some shoddy stuff? Yeah.

Technically, it's got windows.

I don't want to see beer cans.

I don't want to see crap all over the floors. I don't want to see guys out there drinking beer. And I'm going through because if I see it, then... Your homeowner will see it, but you're required to see it. And that means then I don't have to pay. But they don't buy the house. Well, they drink their beer in the roof now. He doesn't have a ladder on his car. But yeah, I think this is something we maybe need to be more detailed on as far as this. I mean, we know most of the people who are dealing with them on the construction side have been there for a while. some of these and some of these we don't know.

You're saying like to have a requirement and then have a list so they can? Is that what you're saying?

I would just have to expect, yeah, have to expect, I might expect to have a list. You provide the list and that list comes up short. We let everything look good that you said. I can look at footings and this and that, but I don't know if they're incorrect.

handrails to code and all that. And there's just no way. I was at a place the other day doing an inspection and got down to the basement. There were two bedrooms down in the basement. And go through the normal walk around and you get over to where the window's at and you're just like, what? And it's a walkout basement and it had in the bedroom it had probably a 24 by 32 inch window there was a slider and I'm like, you didn't, so I had to turn, I'm like, why didn't you put egress windows in your basement and bedrooms out there? And they're like, what do you mean they're not egress? I'm like, well, they're, I said, they're 42 inches off the ground, which that's about, you know, 44 is max that you can get to. But if you're a kid, you're not getting out that window at 42 inches. And I go, you have to have, you know, tell them about the whole 5.7 square feet of area to get out of there. And I said, you're squeezing a five-year-old through but I'm like, there's no adult that's getting out through that window.

Five-year-old can't get to the window.

Then they say the firefighters come through with their equipment on. That's where they can get that space too. And if they can't get in.

Even their general called me up and tried to argue with me on that they were egressible windows and I had to send them the code section.

And I'm like, well, I don't know what code section you're looking at, but that is not an egressible window.

Like it looks silly in the room. I can't believe you put it in there. It's like, brand new house. Why would you do that? This is a weird situation. But that's the kind of things that you come in against. And the homeowners or even these people were general in the house on their own. They didn't necessarily, they didn't know the difference of it. And they were like, well, we need to list this as a four-bedroom house. How can we do that? I'm like, well, you put not conforming.

I mean, they're concrete saws. Yeah. That's a mess, too.

Well, at least I was on the walk outside. So it's just frame. They can just do it a little bit better. Oh, it was on it was on the frame would frame would frame wall that but you're still putting up drywall and reframing members and house already been painted. I mean, they were cleaning it so

If it's wood frame, I'll watch.

That's not the first place. Even when you drove around the back of the house, because on the street side, you could turn and look back at the house. They just looked odd. They had little windows. They're so small. It's not an area that you necessarily want to try to save money on.

How do we get that window open? $200, $300 cheaper than we can get that window open. That's what we could have boiled down.

And that was the Minden, you know, they're rebuilding the houses from the tornadoes. So we weren't doing inspections from top to bottom on. I was just doing it as a volunteer thing because they had some grant dollars from the state to build some houses in there. And this was one of the houses that was built on the state grant dollars. And so, but they needed a certificate of occupancy to be able to get their grant funds back. So I was like, well, I can just use it.

You know, when you're spending that kind of money, you just save a couple hundred bucks. It's like, anybody that's built a house knows. I mean, I talked to one of our contractor customers, and I go, okay, what you're seeing, what our houses are like, construction, and you're around $300 per square foot. It's not So if you're going to spend that much money, I don't know why. Why would you feel like that? Yeah.

$1,500, $2,000. Then you can spend three times that much money cutting it back out and putting the right one in. Some lessons are better learned the hard way. You could have had a finished bathroom. You could have had shower doors instead of that curtain.

Well, the best part is when they go back to their banker and go, hey, I need to get more money. And they're like, well, what? And we get the wrong menus. That sounds like a problem. Yeah.

When you're rehabbing houses, you've got to really watch that step. Right, you do. What's going on there.

Yeah, we've moved away from, we've really started watching the bedroom aspect of, even for this northward septics and things. If it doesn't meet the standards of it, it does not have heat dress on it.

have bedroom utilizing as a bedroom we don't want the county to have acknowledged that they don't even list bedrooms on the assessor side anymore we have no clue when can you go in the house hello anybody else got anything no let's see

Well, do we have a motion to adjourn? Motion to second. Approves. Aye. Opposed, same sign.