Planning & Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thursday morning. Are you not going that

evening Howard? Hey Howard, how's it going? live stream is active. So that tech wise um good to go.

This is good. What's Open that like what his old office look like. I don't know. All right. All right. We will go. Um, I'm going to call the meeting to order. It is 5:45 p.m. on February 23rd, 2026.

Uh, Hillary, would you call the role, please? For present. Eaton here. Henders here. Thompson. Stiger. Samuelson here. All right, we have quorum, so we're going to keep on rolling. Um, first item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda. Does anybody have any changes or things they would like to see modified in the agenda or can I have a motion to approve the agenda as is? Need motions. Second, Andrew. All in favor say I. I. I.

Okay. Approval of the agenda passed and we're going to get an approval of the minutes from our last meeting on February 9th, 2026. Uh if anybody has any comments, please share them. If not, I will entertain a motion to approve the minutes. Motions second. Um all those in favor say I. I. I. I. Thank you. Approval of the minutes. Our next item, uh, number five, is the welcome of guests and public comment. If anybody has anything that they'd like to say that is not on tonight's agenda, now would be the time.

You want to talk about something that's on the agenda? I just came to listen. Just came to listen. Okay. Uh, Elliot, is there anybody online by chance?

I do not believe so. Although, we do have we do have Dan. I don't know if Dan has a comment on anything not on the agenda, but he's welcome to unmute and speak if so. Right. Right. I think we're good. We're going to move on to item number six, which is a public hearing and recommendation on a zoning amendment to change all all R1 zone lots in plats David Gordon Heights, Westwood Estates plats 1 and two and Norwok Nolles plats 1, two, and three from R1 single family to residential to RF founders residential. Uh the time is 5:47 and we will open the public hearing at this time. Um Elliot, would you be uh like to brief us?

Yes. And I'm going to say a lot of things, so hopefully I cover everything that is involved with this amendment. We have the staff report that was in the agenda packet for tonight. We also did an open house last week uh for everybody who lives in this affected area who wanted to come and ask questions. Sometimes the zoning and governmental stuff is uh confusing. So, we wanted to give folks an opportunity to come and be open about uh what what we're intending to do in this area. So, I have a presentation that we gave at that open house that I might touch on as well. So, this proposed zoning amendment covers this whole area within I've got city hall outlined as well, but um all of the properties within this turquoise polygon. Um you you'll probably notice getting if you were to drill down into it that this is not every structure within those plats, but these are all of the lots that are zoned are one single family residential. On the east side of this polygon, there's a smattering of R2, R3, R4, and some commercial parcels as well. Those are being left alone. This is single family residential only. And so really what this request stems from is we've gotten over the years the occasional request from property owners who developed prior to the modern iteration of our zoning ordinance. We did a an amendment um around 1990 that kind of is the zoning we have today. Little things have changed here and there, but by and large that 1990 code is what we see in our current code. Um, prior to that, development was done under a different set of standards. And

one of those standards deals with where accessory buildings get placed on a lot. South of City Hall is what is commonly known as the Founders District. That's already zoned RF. It was zoned that way. um the creation of that that zoning class back in what year? 2013 uh like 1415 probably

145. That district was created to accommodate lots that were developed under old zoning codes so that if you were to tear down an accessory building that was built in a location no longer permissible, you could do that and then reconstruct it where it was. So, if you had a garage slab that was still stable, you could tear down the existing building, put up a brand new one in the same spot, and still abide by code. That zoning class was really only applied to the area south of city hall, but it wasn't the only area of town that developed under old zoning codes. That photo on the wall is a pretty good example of properties that were built prior to our modern um zoning regulations. So, the primary differences between R1, the existing zoning class, and RF, I'm going to hope that this all loads. I put in there kind of the two um sections and the the things within them that differ. Um, one of these is about the keeping of chickens. That's not really gerine to to the discussion tonight, but I included it for thoroughess's sake. Um, the main differences between R1 and RF is that in R1, you're required to have a twocar garage with certain dimensional um details. And then in RF, you're allowed to have a onecar garage with single family home. Uh the other differences really are just in the setback tables. So the one that I have here is from the R1 category. There are certain variations of R1 throughout the community out in Blooming Heights in Timberview. There's a lot of R180 where the lot width minimum is 80 feet. We have some R1 100 out there. Similarly,

lot width minimum of 100 feet and some modified setbacks therein. RF from a bulk regs standpoint really was designed to reflect the way the older parts of town developed. So if you go south of city hall, get out a measuring tape and find out where the front of a house is relative to the property line, a lot of them are going to be 25 ft. A lot of them are going to have narrower rear yard setbacks and they're also going to be closer to the corners. Um so those are basically the the only differences between R1 and RF zoning classes. Everything that I have omitted from that comparison on those uh three pages in the staff report is identical word for word. So RF was created modeled off of the old R1 but to help deal with some of those unique aspects of older properties. And so the request here really is to take this area of town, which was developed around the same time. It's not as old as the founders district, of course, um but to give the folks that have, you know, garages that are three feet from the property line or at least under five feet an opportunity to rebuild them, invest in their properties again, um and just kind of lessen the burden so that they don't have to tear out their whole slab, move it two feet, and then rebuild it. That adds another 5,000 $8,000 to the cost of that type of construction. This particular agenda item is really precipitated by one individual who approached city council with a request related to this. He is not the only person that we've heard from over the years dealing with this kind of issue. In the past, folks have called my office usually and I've told them, "Nope, you can't do that." I don't know that necessarily that's right. I feel like

it's a good idea to try to open the box for folks that are facing that kind of thing. To put a little bit of a visual onto it in our presentation, Luke made this. This is a comparison of the on the left. That would be what an R1 lot currently permits. So, it'd be a 30- foot front yard setback, 35 rear yard setback. Side setbacks we're not too worried about with the main house on this, but an accessory building can be built within five feet both side and rear property line. So that orange box, that's not you can't fill that orange box with accessory buildings, but you can place a shed, garage, greenhouse within a certain amount of square feet anywhere within that box. The founders district on the right. Luke illustrated these pretty much to scale. That would reduce the front yard set back to 25 feet, the rear yard set back to 25 ft and then that accessory structure buildable area increases by two feet on. So those are that's the fundamental difference and this will like I said allow people to renovate easier and give them more latitude with their properties. Um one of the primary things that we talked about at the open house was separation requirements for fire code. Some of you might know that 10 feet is the typical separation for not requiring a firewall. If you're to build structures closer than that, a firewall is required. That's a thing that could come up if someone builds three feet from the property line and the neighbor wants to do the same thing. We as a department, Luke, myself, and our inspectors are

going to need to keep an eye on where people are building these things. If somebody tears down a garage that's 3 feet from the property line and it didn't have a firewall, now it's going to need. That's a responsibility that we will have to take. We can't do anything really in the zoning code for that. That's a building code requirement. Luke, have I left anything out? I think you've covered it all. Hopefully that sums up the situation. I'm happy to answer any questions now or after public comment.

If the firewall situation would come up, like say AJ wants to tear his down, but mine is still staying 3 feet his builds. Like, do we both have to build the firewall or just

just the new him? So, it's only Yeah. Retroactively, you won't have to do anything. But if he took his down and then you wanted to build a new one and not do a firewall, then you're going to have to be eight, you were going to have to have 10 feet of total separation. So you'd have to be 8 ft away then at that point instead of uh what five is what we would have said in the past. Um so there again, Elliot Elliot said there's not really a way to write that in the zoning. It's just going to have to be something as we evaluate all those site plans for garages and sheds that we keep an eye to so we make sure the the right situation is is constructed.

Just to add on to that, the approval of this amendment would compel no one to do anything to their property. There's no nobody have to go back and retrofit or bring their property back. No, it leaves everything as is. It makes it easier for somebody wanting to rebuild their garage basically. So they could leave it the same dimensions as the one our garage or if they wanted to get fancy they could Yeah. Yep. We are going to ask for public comment at this time. So, if there's anybody in person or online that would like to make a comment on the item in front of the planning and zoning commission.

Okay. Not hearing anything for anybody online or in person. We will move on and we will go to questions from the commission. Commissioners, do you have any additional questions from staff? You said this was prompted by one person coming between or coming before city council. You mentioned there were those in the past. Is that something that it's just a general question? Have they those people who in the past you've said no to have they done changes? Have they just let it sit? Would you go to them and say, "Hey, we've now passed this."

Right. Well, they should be those folks should be aware that this is on the table because I sent a letter to everybody who u who's in that in that polygon. Um I think what we tend to tell people is you we've we as staff have said no to your thing. If you would like to see an amendment to code that would permit it, come to council, ask them to give staff direction to look for a solution. And that's where we've wound up with here. Nobody else in the past has decided to do that. And another thing that that I didn't mention is let's say that guy said, "Well, can I go to the board of adjustment and request a variance to rebuild my garage or shed in in a spot?" Um, the board of adjustment should deny that. Uh, I won't go into the legal ease of it, but that that gentleman also could say, "Well, why not just reszone my property?" Well, you don't want to do just one because that's a spot zoning and that's just considered bad planning practice. Um, that's the kind of thing that Jim Doherty would say like no, if you're going to do this for one guy, do it for everybody around him too so that that right to build in that way is shared

for the properties adjacent to this outline. Was there any feedback or comments from those folks regarding the change? I fielded a bunch of phone calls about this. Um, I think all of them were from within the polygon because every phone call I received was in response to the open house letter which only went to the people inside this. The letter for today's meeting went to folks within 200 feet of this as well. Were there

mostly just info gathering? I haven't I don't recall anybody expressing much of an opinion on this in my correspondence. Almost all of it was on the phone. How were how was the open house? Did you have a lot of people? Did you have a lot of

We had five people at the open house. Um one was a couple, so four households were represented. Um, most of that conversation with them dealt with fire separation, potential for drainage, questions about drainage issues, um, I guess kind of the motivations for for why this is being considered by council

that staff request. I attended that and that's a pretty good summary. There was I think most of the questions were related. We're about the three foot to five foot setback for for accessory structures and u I think staff did a great job of clarifying why we were doing this and kind of the impetus for it and and rank I think everybody left the meeting with an understanding of what we were trying to accomplish with this. I guess the way that I view it is is that now if you build a house in no rock you've got to build a two-car attached garage, right? That's just part of the rules. Whereas when these neighborhoods were all developed, a lot of those houses were built without garages, period. Right? And so this is basically I think in my mind it's resetting the code in these neighborhoods to allow for things that we would have allowed essentially when they were established. So kind of rewinding the clock and kind of resetting that in my mind.

And this is the same um as what is just founders already. Nothing funky. And just Yes. Yes.

In the side by side example, it looks like we stretched out the boundaries for these accessory structure building areas. Um why was that why is that necessary to shrink that from five to three which kind of shrinks that space in between? So the the reason that this is on the table is the gentleman who came and spoke to us about rebuilding his garage. It currently is three feet from the lot line. So under the current rules, if he were to tear that down or if it were to be destroyed by a tornado or fire, he would have to move it two feet into his lot.

But do we know of other structures similar? or three feet or is there a variant? I drove around that neighborhood before we had the public meeting and

it seemed like most folks that had garages back there were probably below five feet. There's a lot of three feet. And I guess one of the things I think that got brought up was was um I had an older when I lived in West M. I had an older house and like my driveway I wouldn't have had to replace, but if I were going to rebuild my garage, all of a sudden my garage my my driveway I got to either redo it all or I got to kink it when it gets to the garage because my my driveway is already pretty at the property line kind of a deal. So, I think it makes sense to allow folks to basically rebuild in the condition that they've got and keep that three-foot set back. It kind of matches with that character of homes that have the detached garages. I think one of the other comments that was brought up where was a potential just an evaluation of property values, but in my mind I I guess I would say that this is it makes it easier to rebuild what you've already got or it makes it easier to build an accessory structure. So it makes it a little bit easier to do things. It's not going to hurt your property val.

And this is only for accessory structures though. So like if a house would catch on fire, they would still have to change the setback when they were their front and rear setbacks would change to this one would be reduced. So now like if the house not quite not quite very this is like detail beyond this request. There's a rather obscure piece of code that I learned about less than a year ago. um that regardless of how city code changes for a principal structure, your front setback is whatever your plat says.

So, we're reducing in theory the front setback from 30 to 25 feet, but if these plat documents say 30 feet, you still have to build and that's just for the front setback. So, the side setback would be seven and a half and then it would be 25 to the rear. So that's the the one setback aside from the three and five feet that would change. Everything else would remain the way it appears all flat. Any more questions or deliberation or comments from the commission? Okay, not hearing anything. Thanks staff for the comments and response to the questions.

We're going to officially close the public hearing now at 6:05 p.m. And now there's a little bit more time if the commission wants to deliberate or any further discussion on this item. Are there other parts of town that this may eventually go to as well? Like I know Lakewood has a lot of maybe older homes.

I could see like this area between Cherry and Highway 28 potentially doing that. It was developed at kind of a similar time as the area we're talking about tonight. Um Lakewood certainly has areas where that's possible. I think the one thing we would have to do maybe a little research on as staff is look at the date Lakewood was annexed versus which I honestly don't know precisely when that was um but like that date versus when properties were developed to see if like they were developed in the county or in the city first. So Lakewood could be

like Lakewood was all county for the most part maybe a little bit down the west end of it but so the western ones were done in the 90s but

thanks for the discussion. Um I would at this point in time I would entertain a motion to recommend approval or the denial to the city council. Then we'll recommend the approval. Second. Okay. Hillary, would you call the role? Henders. Yes. Thompson. Hi. Forest. Hi. Sorry. Eden. Hi. Samuelson. I.

Motion to recommend approval of the zoning amendment uh goes on to council. And that wraps up item number six. We will now move on to item number seven, a public hearing and recommendation on a zoning amendment related to the bulk regulations for accessory structures in RE1 single family rule estates R1 single family residential and RF founders residential zoning districts and an amendment to the zoning ordinance chapter 175A.29.2 accessory buildings in residential zoning districts. Um, we're gonna open up the public hearing at 6:08 p.m. and then I will ask Elliot for uh briefing.

I think we've set a single meeting record for the most words per agenda item in my time here. I'm very proud of that. Thank you.

Um, I'll do my best to to explain this one. I may need to lean on Luke a little bit. So, this is related to the previous thing. Um but it's broader. This is not confined to any one geography in the city of Norwok. But we have observed that in the current founders district in this neighborhood that we just had the amendment about some of Windflower, some of that area between Highway 28 and Cherry, folks have had some concerns about the amount of square footage their accessory buildings are allowed to have. And so, um, Luke and I spent pretty good amount of time in his office just brain powering this thing to see, um, to see what we could do to help accommodate some folks if they wanted to build bigger accessory buildings. So, when I get an application from someone to build detached garage, shed, greenhouse, etc., I'm required to look at a at a few things. One of them is setbacks. Those are pretty straightforward in general. 5 ft from the rear and side lot lines. Don't be in a storm water easement. That part's not too challenging. The second thing I need to look at is the size in square footage of that building. The fifth page of the staff report identifies what those square footage caps are in the RE1, R1, and RF zoning districts. um residents can apply to the board of adjustment for a special use permit if they want to exceed that. So in that case their neighbors would get a letter and would be able to come to a public meeting to talk about it. But essentially that's a soft cap if you will. There's just an extra step involved if you want to exceed those numbers.

The third thing that I look at, and this doesn't really come up very much because the math of all of these setbacks and size rags kind of uh makes it unnecessary, is just how much of a lot area accessory buildings can take up. So, if you have a 10,000 square foot lot, you're allowed to have a thousand square feet of accessory building per this 10% rule that we have. Um, currently we also have a second thing on there that says accessory buildings will not be more than 30% of the area of the rear yard. It is you would need a shockingly large building to hit that number on almost any property. Luke and I ran the numbers and it's that 10% number that actually is a little bit more limiting depending on the lot that you're that you're building on. Aside from the 1500 in RE1 and then the 1,00 in R1 and RF, both of those pieces of code are identical. And so we were exploring the idea of of uh not so much changing those, but this last line. So it reads slightly different, but it more or less means the same thing. In no instance shall the accessory structure exceed the principal structure in gross building floor area. The way that we've interpreted that in the past is looking from the top down. Your detached building should not be bigger than your house. That's the way that we've treated it since the beginning of time. Um, but there are areas in town where you have houses that are not 1,000 square feet. Does it make sense to limit someone with an 800 foot house to an 800 square foot building when by right maybe their neighbor can have a 1,000 foot building? We don't think that necessarily makes sense. We have had to tell people that

they are restricted in their accessory building size because of that last line. So, we thought it was worth contemplating just taking out that last line and just using the square footage limiter

and the percent lot coverage instead. We are proposing changing that lot coverage from 10% to 20%. We found after running some numbers that that would help alleviate some size restrictions more so than that rear yard coverage of 30%. The second part of this amendment is just correcting a text error. Um, in our general zoning code, there's a really long paragraph that talks about accessory buildings in single family districts or rather districts where single family can be built because you can build single family in R2. And it refers to RTC. We are 99% sure that it means RF, but

I did go back and look at some notes. That was RTC was the original name we came up for it when we were writing everything and a council member wanted to call the RF because that's kind of the district. It was known as the founders district. So, we changed it from TC to F, but we missed it for 10 years. We've missed it in that one section. So, and I don't want to start denying people in RF permission to do things because this says RTC. That seems silly. So, that's just cleaning up a a textual error. My explanation of the first part of this. Does that make sense? Questions? Makes sense.

Elliot, did you hit on? So, this is related to the uh gentleman's request at city council for the last item, too. You did hit on that. For context, can you like thousand square feet? A three-car garage is what 7 750 ish. Okay. So, just trying to get some context when we're talking like size-wise for detach structures. So, and in that gentleman's situation, he has a a smaller ranch home, I believe, and you know, wanting to do an accessory structure that's garage plus workshop plus, you know, people do a lot more in their garages these days than park cars. So, um, that's where his request came from. Um,

you mentioned, um, looking down at the footprint, is there something about how tall it can be? Because if you have like a branch and you've got something, a monolith over top of it.

Yes. The height limit in the residential districts is 15 feet, you can apply for a special use permit to exceed that. And we have had people do that within the last few years. Just a handful. Most of them I think it was I think we've only had two actually. I think they're both in stealth. Yeah. It tended to be for folks doing RV storage getting a higher height door. So their their structure had to be a little bit taller. Um are there any we are doing a public hearing here. So, are there any comments or questions from the general public about this item?

Okay. Hearing nothing for comment from the public. Any more questions from the commission or staff before we close the public hearing? Is that 15 feet? Is that to the eve? I'm um I think it's is it to I think it's to the midpoint in Yeah, there's there's some Yeah, it's basically go to the peak. Uh depending on roof type, there's different ones, but in your traditional uh peak, your your 15 ft is the midpoint between the the the peak and the eaves. So yeah,

I'm assuming this will make your guys' jobs a little bit easier when looking at accessory structures for a lot of the things or make it more difficult. No, I mean it's I don't know for Elliot does the review like we had a big discussion about is this something that because again it's a reaction to a council direction on something. Um I'm pretty neutral on it. I don't have a problem enforcing the code as it was. I think I probably end up more on the side of let people do more with their property in general. So, I'd probably be like, "Yeah, this is a fine thing." Um, Elliot, you can kind of speak to the review side of it.

I mean, from the review side, it's just going to change what I tell people. I don't I have no problem letting somebody know if if what they want to do would be denied or not. Usually what I do with this sort of thing is give guidance and then typically I'll receive something that meets code. So is this is this tied to ADUs or is this a totally separate code than ADU structures? This is this is totally separate. Okay. Yeah. They would interact occasionally if you were trying to do a like above.

Yeah. But and then the square footage kind of goes more towards I don't think we can use this to deny an ADU I guess if if that's okay the thought would be but yeah any more questions from the commission hearing nothing I will close the public hearing at 6:17 p.m. Since the public hearing is over, can I make a remark? Sure. I'm realizing I did a lousy copy and paste job in my staff report. And in the amendment, I left the thing that we're saying to get rid of. So, you need to tell us we need

So, in the motion, please say something about striking the last line in each amendment paragraph. I just got on automatic, I guess. I have no excuses. I'm sorry. Any more deliberations from the commission? I will entertain a motion to approve the zoning amendment with the caveat that we remove the last line of each section relating to limitations on the accessory structure and exceeding the principal structure for engrossing floor area. That

eat motions. Second. Hillary, would you call the RO? Thompson. Hi. Forced I. Eaton. I. Hinders. I. Samuelson. I. Motion carries. Thank you everyone for that discussion. Um, item number eight, city council update. I do not see Andy on the line. He is in New York. Okay. Okay. So, we will not be hearing from him tonight. Uh, I do not see Holly. We will won't be doing item number nine, a community development update. Elliot, nothing from me. Luke,

um, I think I don't think we updated you on the annexation stuff the last time we had a meeting. Um, we did go uh to the city development board again for a smaller annexation of uh 300 acres off of Delaware. Um, related to a economic development project we're working on. Um, so they did approve that. Um, it has a similar uh kind of public comment period appeal period as um all woods. So, we're kind of in that wait and see moment now. Um there's a 30-day for that. So, uh early next month, so a couple weeks, um that should hopefully be finalized and then go on to the Secretary of State to be approved and officially recorded. So,

the voluntary annexation of the property out just Yep. south and west. Okay. Yep. Awesome. Thank you. With that, our next meeting date will be March 9th at 5 be 5:00 pm. With that, I will entertain a motion to adjurnn. Motions.

Awesome. All those in favor? I Thank you everyone. Carson and Brett, thank you for zooming in. Thank you. Thank you guys.