Planning & Community Design Commission - Regular Meeting

Ready? Yes, sir. All right. I will call to order the June 18th, 2026 meeting of the Planning and Community Design Commission meeting. Acting Secretary, will you call the roll?

Yes. Sam Wallach?

Present.

Tim Spiegelblas?

Present.

Felicia Ford? Present. We'll note that Jenna Nat and Petrie Powell are both absent and I am Laura Ragsdale. So I'm present.

Thank you very much, Laura. Um, we also have Carlos Trejo director and Dawn Doty senior planner and online. We also have our city council liaison, Kate Pinchon Hellman. Welcome Kate to our first meeting as our liaison. Good to have you. Um, Welcome, everybody. We follow an agenda. There's copies in the back if you don't have one already. And we'll go through that agenda item by item. There will be time at the beginning for public comments not related to any items otherwise on the agenda. Since we don't have any petitions on the agenda, my assumption is that the folks in attendance here will be speaking during public comments. During public comments, we ask that you come up to the lectern, make sure that the microphone is on by pressing the button and you'll see the red light. Say your name and your address for the record, please. We also ask that you keep your comments to three minutes or less to be respectful of everybody's time. Is anybody online, Carlos?

No, sir.

Okay. Then I will skip the Zoom announcements for the moment. Anything else, Carlos?

No, sir. You have everything covered. Thank you.

Do you want to do any announcements first, or should we go straight to public comments?

Public comments would be fine.

Okay. Thank you. We will move on to public comments. Number two, then. Any public comments? Please.

And then Merrick, there you go. Thank you, sir.

There you go. My name is Merrick Felder. I live at 31 Crabapple Court. Some of my neighbors are with me. And I've been there for 29 years. My house, my backyard is flooded the entire time. Although I've spent a great deal of money trying to mitigate that problem. The flooding water comes from the bowling alley. You know, Olivet Lanes is right behind my house and their houses also. The entire bowling alley roof slopes to the back, which is the south, which is where my property abuts that property. There's an eight-foot retaining wall so that my property is eight feet lower in elevation. And all the water from the roof, a lot of the water from the huge parking lot, it's an acre and a half, something like that, comes through the wall and floods our properties. And you can't see the water. In fact, the owner of my property blocked up those little relief vents, and they put in walls. Water was coming through there. He put concrete in, and the flooding is still there, exactly the same. Water comes under the wall. That's how much water pressure there is. And during a storm, we have lakes and rivers in our backyard. And so the... The bank, I mean, the bowling alley owner told me that he was going to sell his property and the city had asked him to upgrade, do some upgrades. And I think one is regarding the flooding problem. So this document that I'm giving you just has more detail, but... They, I'm not sure what they want to do. They have not submitted drawings or a permit. One thing I know is that they don't have a civil engineer on board. This is necessary because we're talking about rainwater detention, stormwater detention, which is, you know, the law. And that property has no detention whatsoever. It's entirely asphalted plus the roof, of course. So we're wondering if they're, This is for informational purposes if there's anything that we can do to mitigate the flooding to make sure that what they do, whatever they do, will reduce the flooding or eliminate it. And there are a couple of other problems that I've mentioned that we've had along with this. One is the fence, is chain link fence. And the parking lot has parties every night, sometimes very loud and they are obnoxious, about which we've complained. But So we're asking, is there a place in the ordinances for putting in a sightproof and soundproof wall where the fence is? It's been done. There's precedent for it. And this is certainly a good spot for it. I also see it in the ordinances, but it says existing structures are not required to upgrade their fence. So we're asking if that could be looked into if there's any possibility. Also, the lights on the back of the bowling alley are very bright, shine into our yard. There is also an ordinance that talks about light trespass, if I'm using the right term. And there's no grandfather clause in that ordinance. And we'd like to see if that can be applied in this case, since the bowling alley is changing ownership.

Okay, thank you for your comments. Any other public comments? Please.

My name is Roman Jurinsky. I live in 32 Krabatkov Court since 1999. And since we bought our property, we experienced a lot of different problems. I visited the city council when we had a previous owner Drinking alcohol. I have hundreds of report and kind of this and everything. So it didn't work. Even previous mayor was on my property. So what's happened probably when it was a previous owner, I was in my backyard. it was windy outside the fence what previous commented said fell on my head completely fell on my head during when i was in the backyard doing some some kind of work so what's happened i still cannot understand i knew it was ordinance we did not allow to put this fence where we have a chain fence. It's supposed to be solid. I simply cannot discuss this time about this one. It was incorrect. A problem is both owners for these years never maintained anything. So city allows them to put this fence one foot behind the property. So it means there is a gap. One foot between the fence and the wall. I believe because Mr. Trechos was on my property about 10 times. I show him what's going on. There is no asphalt. Everything is washed out. I have some movies directly when it was raining, even not heavy raining. It's clearly indicate how water comes over through this hole each eight feet. Even I plug them with the wood, everything, it doesn't help anything. My shed is completely rotten. I have moss everywhere. Just growing in backyard. Now it's in the front here too. I try to remove it just doesn't help anything. So a problem not visible. Yes, it was never was maintained. The rest of crack everything. So water coming from everywhere from cracks. My neighbor in Torrey tree, I just noticed recently and she has a different one. vol retaining not like ours because in 1995 her wall collapsed i i don't know exactly i saw the picture from this mr trejo's department they show me i don't remember it was concrete or it was blocks they they leak anyway it doesn't matter i see how the water coming from her property and she made confession about this one so anyway I believe owner of the property doesn't want to cooperate. I visited him about 10 times, and he said, yeah, we will do anything about to fix these problems. What he did, he just brought a truck of gravel. He put in these holes, and next day when it was raining, this all gravel was on my property. It was so heavy, it's washed out. Next time, he brought some patches and put some patches from the Home Depot about kind of asphalt. It's everything collapsed dust. So... this fence is embedded between wall and the asphalt that he put about four years ago. So it means they get four inches now. So there is no, nothing can be done until you remove the fence and just do something about this wall. Yes, the water need to be diverted. There is no problem with the water. It's a concrete reinforcement wall. And I am professional construction engineer. See, He he just three weeks or four weeks ago, the owner of the property sent somebody a contractor he just wanted just to demolish his wallet everything I told them look. He presented himself like. What. Structural engineer, he never look at the wall. He's a contractor. He won't simply just spend six months in my backyard, just remove whatever trees, kind of this and kind of this. He put this one, he never explain how he's going to divert this water. The water is a problem. Yes, there is no retaining wells, nothing. So we need a professional contractor. civil engineer who who need to just examination i told the owner he he he doesn't want to cooperate he just told me he's going to sell this property to the easy storage and i contacted them and they said it's not true they're not going so we simply puzzled who is going to buy this property what for reason you know and No one just simply in a business now to buy bowling area, and he he just only told me he's going to be manager in this property. So something is fishy about this one. But we visited a city manager. She doesn't want to talk to us. She said it's too expensive now. They agree to invest money in the retaining wall, which has no purpose because it doesn't matter how much they put this wall, it will not stay. It could be even worse than reinforcing concrete. See, this is my purpose and it's something that needs to be done. Well, I believe you will present this to the city council. They will come here if you have more time to present. our arguments about this, maybe they will take care of that. Not to allow him to sell this property and make a disclosure who is going to buy, what purpose. I don't believe they're going to keep this property, either for construction or for whatever. Look, it will take anything. I had previous mayor, Mr. Clark on my property, he saw what's going on. It was many years ago. It's now, it's much worse. And I have a live picture if somebody want to look at this. I would give you, you can just put it and see what's going on.

Okay.

For two days, I cannot go up small rating for two days. I cannot go on my property. My shed is completely rotten. Everything who's going to pay. Okay.

Thank you for your comments.

Hello, councils. My name is Phyllis Blalock, and I live at 30 Crabapple Court, and I just have a picture of the flooding, and I can just show it to you guys. This is February 14th after the rain, and this is the flooding. I'll show you more. And it's been going on, so I didn't know what it was. I didn't.

If you're going to talk, can you go back to the microphone just so we can pick it up on the recording? Thank you.

I apologize.

No, it's okay.

So, like I said, this has been going on for a couple of years. When I first bought the property, it wasn't like that. And I bought it in the summertime and it wasn't, unfortunately, it wasn't raining during that time. And so since then, whenever it rains, it backs up like that. It's just like a little river right there. So I don't know what to do. Now I have a big old hole, like a sinkhole in my backyard now because of all this flooding. So I don't know. I don't know what to do.

Okay.

Thank you for your comments. Thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

Bye.

Any additional public comments? Okay. Can I ask you to do something? Will you give a copy to Carlos and he can distribute it to us? Okay. All right. He'll send it to us and we can take a look at it. Okay. Thank you. Okay. All right. Carlos, I guess as sort of a threshold question, Um, what authority do we have upon a change of ownership in the business to take any sort of action right now? Because the, my understanding is that just a change of ownership of the business that doesn't trigger anything for, for this commission, but you tell me what, what you think we can and can't do.

Correct. The, the, the jurisdiction of the commission doesn't apply in this scenario. It's an administrative function, uh, in there. And it was noted in their occupancy report, uh, regarding the items that have been brought forward by the neighbors. I've been in Mr. Jasinski's house several times in the past 20 years. He's the only one that I've actually directly dealt with or brought it to my attention in there. So the, what I believe would be the previous owner had initiated several, things that tried to address the issues regarding the wall in there. When we were made or informed that the property was changing hands, we took the opportunity saying that a condition of that had to include the replacement of the wall. It's my professional opinion that The replacement of the wall will address a lot of the flooding and stormwater issues that are being experienced because there's no lip up on top and there's no direction to go. But since we spoke with Mr. Felder a couple of weeks ago, we did talk to the owner expressing some of the concerns and looking at what other options they can do after we get the plans for the retaining wall. Ms. Doty was on the site for the commercial occupancy inspection. Lights are a standard process that we take a look at in there. So I believe those are items that are in the list to be addressed. And they're regarding the noise complaints. I am familiar several years ago regarding some complaints that were brought forward to the council. I believe that I'm not sure if they were fully addressed, but I can check with the police chief to see if she has any further complaints since that one last incident in there. And then I do understand the issue regarding the fence and I'll be afforded, you know, the way there is a code section that when a property is redeveloped, on the Olive Boulevard corridor, they are now required to put a solid kind of masonry type fence in there. And I think it's a minimum of 12, eight feet in there. But the code's pretty specific, only for properties that are redeveloped. It's not regarding a change of occupancy or so. Right now, until we get the plans for the retaining wall replacement, we'll find out what they're proposing for. for the fencing in there. We can go ahead and talk with the owner's been pretty, or the purchaser's been pretty welcoming. He's been at the council at least once or twice in there and we can talk with him about that. Can't make any promises on those items, but each of those points that have been brought forward to you have been noted.

Okay. Yeah, I just want to say this commission is very sympathetic to the issues that you've brought up. We spend a tremendous amount of time on stormwater issues in particular. And that's a focus of every review that comes before this commission. The reason why I asked Carlos about that, though, is that we can only do what this commission is legally permitted to do. So while this actual commission as I understand it right now, can't take any specific action as it relates to the change of ownership. It sounds like Carlos and the department and the city of Olivet's doing what they can at the moment and working with the owner. So I thank you for your comments and coming in and letting us know. I just want to give you an idea of what we're capable of doing.

Hi again. This is Phyllis Blalock, 30 Crab Apple Court. I just want to know, so what you're saying is that right now, Carlos said something about administrative. That's the only thing that basically you guys can do. So when you're talking about administrative, you're saying that you're addressing the colds or the what's going wrong with the flooding, with the water, with the drainage.

No, not necessarily. I will take a look into the comments that have been brought forward today. But since the only person that has approached me prior has been Mr. Zavinsky and has made, you know, I've been to his property several times years back when I started. in there that he noted, you know, some erosion in the backyard. And he's implemented several French drains and pipes back there to try to address the water. Mr. Felder, I know from my Creve Coeur days back in the 1990s, and it wasn't until two weeks ago that he brought that to my attention regarding the stormwater. He's an architect. He's very familiar with the process. And unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to meet with you before in the past. that I recall. And then we did do the development next door, which you would have been a resident at that time when we sent those notices in there. So that's another thing.

I didn't receive any notices at all.

So when the Plant Haven development was put into place, that one did have to meet the wall requirements in there and then does have detention because there was no...

He's been in business since, what, 2022?

I guess time flies.

2023?

At least three years, I think. So what I am asking, since you said that you are administration and... What we'll do is I'll be glad to coordinate with you and get your number and I'll call and we'll go over the process and inform you on that.

What I would like to know is the codes or...

Absolutely. I'll be glad to spend time.

This is for, you know, addressing this drainage problem. Because my backyard floods. My dogs can't even go out there and go do what they need to do because it's so much water out there after it rains. Correct.

Something I can assess with you and then take a look.

It's the same thing that all of my neighbors are saying. So it's no different.

Yeah, I think we understand your concerns. I think just our point is this commission isn't the tool that can be used to address your concerns. Carlos, on the other hand, is the person who knows what can and cannot be done.

That's what I'm asking about the administration part. And he said that.

So I guess what I'm asking is, Since Carlos is that person, we'd like you to get in contact with Carlos directly, and he's the person who can help you.

Well, I'm just having the same issues as everyone else, you know, so I need to call you up personally.

We can schedule something early next week. We're off tomorrow, so I can't go there tomorrow, but I'll be glad to go there Monday, Tuesday.

Okay, so I have to call you. If I don't call you, then you're going to drop it, right?

No, they brought this issue up in there. So it'll be something.

I'm trying.

Again, I'm sorry.

My niece who's an engineer and was asking her about what we need to do.

Okay.

You know, so I just want to know what kind of codes or what would the Olivet municipality do about some, what kind of codes is already in place to prevent this type of stuff?

I'd be glad to go through that with you.

Proactive.

Yes. So early next week.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you. We appreciate your comments.

One minute.

OK, I'll give you one minute.

My understanding, we have ordinance which clearly says that owners or adjusted property need to some maintain water prevention kind of this. And you've been raising this issue for 20 years. Nothing happened. Nothing happened.

As I said, this commission is very sympathetic. And if we had the authority to do what you're asking us to do. You cannot. Excuse me. Please let me. If we had the authority to do what you're asking for, I would hear out your full arguments. We would do everything we could do to help you on condo resolution. My point is this commission doesn't have the authority to do it. Carlos can help you do whatever the city has the authority to do. And that's all I can tell you. I can't do something we don't have.

My experience, if my neighbors agree, probably looking probably to hire a lawyer. City cannot do anything about this. If the city allow him to put the asphalt in the slope to this, this is crazy.

Here's what I'll say. It's your right to retain a lawyer if you would like to. That's also something that's outside of the domain of this commission. So, again... we're very sympathetic to what you're saying. It's just we can only do what we can do. So I thank you for your comments. Really, I do. Okay. Any additional public comments? All right. In that case, we will move on to number three, 2024 Comprehensive Plan Update. Carlos?

Thank you.

right thank you chairman one of the and i'll go through this uh quickly this was uh given that we only have four in attendance and commissioner powell was wanting me to do some research regarding some housing trends that are that are currently out there as we were trying to address Our first and primary goal, which deals with the neighborhoods and housing from our 2024 comprehensive plan. I'm not going to go through the whole plan. We've gone through all those slides in there. And then you have copies of the initial goal one. neighborhoods and housing and all the information there. You know, so part of goal one was to accommodate all stages of life from young adults and first time home buyers to growing families, families and retirees looking to downsize or age in place. It talks about the current trends that are out there about housing preservation, trying to maintain the existing housing stock as a means to attain attainable housing, attainable housing itself, which is, kind of a duplicate of this missing middle housing in there. So, well, I take that back. The preservation of the existing housing stock, attainable housing, which is more within a percentage range of gross income. Missing middle housing, which is where you include it in different types of dwelling types within one unit, So you have like duplexes, triplexes, townhomes, apartments that are integrated into a house or a structure, accessory dwelling units, different things like that are missing middle. And then multi-generational housing. in terms where you have different occupants that are not family related within the housing stock. So there is some information and some definitions within that distribution of goal one in there. And then for those online, it's all accessible on the website, along as part of the 2024 comprehensive plan. In there, you'll also find, you need to understand our housing. We have based back in 2021, 3,355 dwelling units. We talked about this back in February, and we went over the housing trends and statistics that are in the comprehensive plan. 67% of those units are single-family dwellings in there. And then I'll note, because When we did the plan, the 2021 ACS data provided by the Census Bureau was what was out there. And then we, of course, have completed and made occupiable an additional 536 dwelling units in the form of apartments that fall under the 20-plus unit category. So I want to just make sure that you're aware of that and then that that brings that 77% total down to about 67%. being single family. So one of the things is, again, two-thirds majority of the house of Olivet, it consists of detached single family dwellings in there. Back in February, we talked about the median housing value. And for Olivet, it was $400,300 based on the 2021 data in the comprehensive plan. And we kind of fall in the middle amongst our neighbors. with Creve Coeur and Ledoux, of course, on the upper end, and then U City, Overland, you know, behind us. And then you can see County here at 171. We also talked about some of the things that are currently going on because the comprehensive talked about the housing preservation. And we talked about the number of interior remodels, basement finishes, and additions that have been done to existing housing stock, and then how many new homes have been built since January 21st. So these total, since that nearly five-year period, we've had about 201 homes renovations, we had 30 additions versus just seven homes built per year. And again, if you look at the little statistic here of the 2021 houses in there, you can see right here, half of them were built before 1960. So again, it goes back to this preservation component, um, as a means. And then we, you know, back in February, we also talked about, you know, what are the current statistics when we got this data just kind of off of Zillow and, uh, and some of the other online realty services in there. Uh, the, the, the actual cost of the house, uh, somewhat stabilized, but it is up 430,000. Um, The year change for Olivet was 2%. And then you can see us, you know, next to some of our peers in the same school district, Creve Coeur, Frontenac, Ledoux, and then Olivet in here, right here. So those are the things we talked about back then, just a quick overview of our housing stock, some of the characteristics. A lot of that data was already in our comprehensive plan for your reference and look, and then we tried to kind of update some of the things since it's adoption two years ago. Okay, so go back to Go A, they encourage high quality housing that is diverse in terms of type and price. The objectives are to improve the quality and maintenance of all housing, increased housing types and accommodations, maintain or increase housing that is affordable to moderate earners, increase options for single family housing to respond to changing demographics and preferences, and then encourage sustainable practices in the existing and future development in there. When we look at the housing that is affordable to moderate, again, we kind of chose specifically the term attainable in there. it's kind of defined that 30% of your gross income, the median gross income in the city of Olivet is almost $158,000. 30% of that under Zillow would get you a house under $215,000. According to the Wall Street Journal, which they're doing a pretty good series of studies, housing articles this week, they estimate the price about $450,000 to $550,000. So that's that median price in there. So what are the housing types? Going back into our comprehensive We talked about ranch style. If you want houses where you age in place, ranch style homes, accessory dwelling units, that's what the ADUs are, townhouses and condos, retirement communities, and senior co-housing. What is attainable housing? Well, that's that missing middle, duplexes, townhouses, smaller multifamily type of housing. units, like a four-unit facility. And then other things that are out there in trends, and I'll go through some others, are looking at the construction component and controlling costs, and that's the modular and factory-built homes. Then there are accessory dwelling units, which supplements another property. And then there's workforce housing apartments. It is a practice out there. And the other thing I think we should look at when we consider the different types of housing types is, you know, you got to take a step back and look at it holistically. Things that impact the cost of housing or land use, construction, you know, the market, and, you know, direct assistance. And that's usually affordable housing where you're providing some types of subsidies or assistance in the purchase price in there. And then alternative type of housing that, you know, that is out there in the trend is, you know, that missing middle duplexes, townhouses, smaller multifamily, the modular, the ADUs workforce. But, you know, you hear every once in a while, especially like in the city, you know, the tiny houses, the container homes, you know, There are also the mobile homes, there are straw bale houses, there's a houseboat, there's converted sheds, kind of like an ADU in there. And those are some of the far trends that are going on in other areas where they're trying to address the cost of housing and the availability of housing. So one of the things I guess we're doing and have been discussing is looking at it from a land use perspective in terms of You know, we do have some things in our zoning code that could assist in terms of trying to encourage the attainable housing product. And one is, you know, what we use as a definition of a family. We changed that back in the early 2000s to kind of emphasize related by blood or by a legal document. that allowed and accommodated the transitional families that we were starting to see in our community. We still have a lot of single-family zoning that is in place. We have one single-family zoning district in there, and that can impact some of the densities. We have density, we have height, and we have mass, and those are some of the tools that we can utilize to try to address or increase either the number of units in terms of whether they're detached or whether we consider other alternatives like we've gone through here. And there, as we look at the preservation component, we have, you know, it goes both ways. We have occupancy inspections as a means to preserve and code enforcement, but also there are costs to those that are, you know, that a seller has to comply with in there. The big thing that we don't control or one of the hardest components to control is the land cost. And, you know, A 10,000 square foot of property here and all of that because of the school district is probably going to go somewhere between $300 or $400, regardless of what's on there at a low rate. Where next door to the north, it's going to be a third to a quarter of that. And to the south of us, it could be exponentially two to three times that also being within the same school district. And how you control land costs, those become policy issues in terms of, you know, going back to the direct assistance or some type of, you know, market controls in that process if you take a step back and look at it holistically. And then building codes, you know, the building codes have changed. And I think for... For the better. However, we still get a lot of resistance, especially as it talks about, you know, some of the energy efficiency requirements, some of the safety requirements like the installation of fire sprinklers and those things. So, you know, there's a lot of mixed information and messages out there regarding that. So that I think kind of gives a, you know, an overall look on that. I do want to discuss this again back in our July meeting when this power is here and we'll kind of get a little bit more information put in place, but I was hoping to get some guidance from the commissioner and answer any questions, at least at this point.

Anybody have any questions? None.

Are there any types of housing that you've heard of that you've thought of as a potential solution for the missing middle that we're trying to find? It's the... CompPlan itself provides suggestions for what they thought are what are the best planning practices for the to fill that missing middle housing. So And that was what was requested like at the last meetings to look at for what, what the options were. But if there's things that you need us to look into or, you know, cause it's, it's pretty far flung, you know, a lot of different professions are looking at this problem as it affects a lot of people, affordable housing and, you know, people want to live closer to, you know, their family and people have a hard time finding homes, you know? So, yeah. I don't know anybody who hasn't been affected.

I guess the things that jump out to me are sort of going down this list almost a little bit is that one, we've already got a significant amount of ranch style homes. So focusing on ways to maintain or incentivize those ranch style homes being kept and not knocked down and having bigger homes, two-story homes be built. That seems like our biggest opportunity because one of the issues we have is just we're not starting a community from scratch here. And so these alternative housing types, we could only look for opportunities where we're actually able to implement those. ADUs seems promising to me as well. Again, you have to have the right sort of lot to accommodate that. But if it makes sense for that particular property, that seems promising. And then maybe similarly for the townhouses and condos, we've got the ones across the street, of course, but there's only so many opportunities and locations where those probably make sense to me. Retirement communities, I mean, that's even... I'm not saying it's unlikely, but a harder needle to thread there because you have to find somebody who's going to come in and build that and operate that. That's not, you know, no small thing. So, I mean, to me, those top three there, range-style homes, ADUs, and townhouses and condos seem like... The ones that are most likely that I think probably would be most palatable to the community as a whole, but that's just my thought.

Tim. Sure. Um, I agree with everything you're saying. The only thing I want to add is I've thought about, I've looked at it. I mean, the small houses on like Amazon and stuff like that. I mean, somebody could put a couple of those houses on a lot. And if we would let them do it, that would, that would be a big thing to throw a couple of those little houses on a lot. You couldn't take care of two families, three families on that one. It's true. So that's the only thing that I thought about outside of the box. So yeah, It would be tough to get us to approve it, but I think it would be a good thing. Yeah, Laura.

I would agree that I've looked at those little tiny houses. Um, and some of them are really done well. Um. And I guess just making sure that we have. The appropriate plans and codes in place for those. ADUs and how much land and setbacks, because it's not a full size house. So how it could fit on a property, but still like, would it need a certain amount of space between each, the house itself and the ADU and making sure we have all that kind of laid out. Especially if it's the same family or family members living there. Like if my mother-in-law, If we wanted to build one for my mother-in-law, I wouldn't care that it was six feet from my back door. But if it was a stranger, I wouldn't want them six feet from my back door. So they're that kind of thing. So.

We share anything you want to add?

Kate has her hand raised.

Oh, Kate, sorry. I wasn't looking at the screen there. You got your hand raised waiting patiently.

It's fine. I'd like to hear from the commissioners first. I just wanted to put the hand up there so you know I have something to say eventually. Thanks.

Well, your hand went up before mine did. No, I agree with you guys. I'm kind of curious as for the ADUs, like what kind of space you have to have on your property to add those for existing properties that there are. And when it comes to the... And I like the thought of the tiny homes, but where in the world do we have land for that?

Yeah, I don't know. On the ADUs question, I think that it's a little bit of an emerging issue for us where we're still trying to figure out what the parameters of that are going to be. I think in concept, most of the commission is open to that. so long as it makes sense to us. But I don't know that we've got a definition yet about what is the requirement for ADU. Carlos, correct me if I'm wrong on that.

It would be up to the, no, because the ADU would fall under any regulation of whether the commission wanted to have a minimum square footage or a maximum square footage. in there. A dwelling unit by code is required to have, you know, water, electric, heat. You need a kitchen and you need a bedroom. So, you know, and for each of those, there's a minimum square footage that's required. So there are code things that kind of dictate what the minimums would be. The community discussion would probably evolve, well, how big, you know, would we would we do it and then how they're implemented, whether they're a basement conversion or they're attached to the existing house or whether they're detached or whether they're above another, you know, a garage. And we had a similar product like that recently. So you start looking at those aspects of it in there. And then in terms of setbacks, again, you know, we control what would be a reasonable setback as we do currently, like with a detached garage and its placement or a pool. And whether, you know, as we get into the nuts and bolts, especially with a lot of lots that we have is some of the flexibility, you know, is it, you know, would the proximity to the side neighbor be less than the proximity to the back, the rear of the house in there? And that's kind of how some of our codes are written. You can put a, well, yeah, you could put a pool closer to your backyard lot line than you can to your side, to your neighbor's side in there, because we generally consider our lots more narrow, but with greater depth than some places that are reversed, like in Queensborough. So those are things that we'd have to take a look at. There are a lot of standards out there and references that we can look, you know, one of the other things that, you know, to keep in mind will be indentures and the impact of indentures and, you know, you know, what are we willing to kind of, you know, permit by right under our codes, but require the, you know, a subdivision to enforce, you know, what is under covenants and things of that nature. That always puts us in a sticky situation in there.

Yeah, I think those indentures, that's a real issue. Like even in Indian Meadows, we know that you're not supposed to have two story, but yet they're starting to creep in. And then it's going to become a matter of how do you enforce the indentures, which we've had those conversations repeatedly. And then not only that, since some are there now, then you have the, okay, well, they did it. So why can't, you know, it's the legal argument and the fight of you let some and not others. So the indentures get a little sticky sometimes. And I think there are several communities that have those that say, you know, there's a set that we want here. But maybe we can look at how our codes line up with some of those to keep our existing housing ranch style. Because those are more affordable. But once they get knocked down for those two stories, it changes everything.

I'd say, sorry, Kate, I'm just saying one more thing. To me, just by the sheer volume of these different options here, like the range style home seems like the area we should focus on first, because I think that in the aggregate is going to have the greatest effect. I think we're open to ADUs. Certainly we're open to townhouses and condos and maybe some of these other things, but it's just going to be more rare where it's even a possibility and we're going to rely on third-party builders or whoever, developers to come in here and facilitate those things. Whereas we already have the range style houses now. And so to me, that's an area to focus on to have the biggest effect. Okay. Sorry, Kate, go ahead.

No, that's fine. So there were four additional things that I just wanted to kind of put before the commission to think about. And I will acknowledge up front that some of these are controversial ideas and and new sort of ideas. So one is the land grants model, which I know Webster Groves, not directly through their government, but through an affiliated nonprofit operates a land grant property ownership type of thing where the land that a house is on is owned by the nonprofit that's affiliated with the city, but the property can then be bought and sold at a reduced rate because the land itself is owned by the city and it's just the building that then gets bought and sold, allowing the total sale price to go down. They're complicated and there's lots of things involved in that, but I just wanted to kind of put that on people's radar as another option. Another option is, and this came up during conversations during the comprehensive planning process, was looking at the possibility for financial assistance for home repairs. So for some of those smaller homes where people's incomes might be more limited and more stretched, evaluating if there's a type of funding mechanism that can assist homeowners with repairs so that when it comes time to sell those homes, they are more likely to be sold to another family or another individual rather than being in such bad repair that really the only option is to tear them down and rebuild. And then another one that I have not heard of really in the Midwest so much, but has some precedent in the West Coast. is real estate, and this would be a very legal question that I don't know the answer to, I'll say that upfront, doing real estate property sales that are limited to the general public before developers are allowed to even come in and build on the property or bid on the property rather. So for some of those smaller homes where a developer can, easily pay more for the land in order to tear it down and build something that's much more expensive, that if there's an opportunity for the sale to go through to the general public first, that that is another mechanism for keeping some of those smaller properties as they are, rather than being torn down and rebuilt into much larger homes. And then the final one, and this is very much a policy thing from probably more likely a council perspective, but potentially in front of the PCDC as well, is requiring affordable units in multifamily developments. And this is very common, where a certain percentage of affordable units, especially when there's a TIF involved or some kind of tax incentive, that if there is a multifamily development that is coming before the commission or the council, that there's a required percentage or number of those units to be allocated for a reduced rate that would be in line with more affordable housing. So just wanted to kind of put those out as additional options. Some data that I think would be really helpful to have if we're able to get the data is a breakdown of the current housing stock by price, kind of looking at the different price point breakdowns. I'd be really interested to see that data to kind of get a sense of where where things stand because we have the median home price at 478 um but i know there's lots of homes that are way above that price point and a few that are below it so for me it'd be helpful to have that data if it's available on that data if you don't mind me interrupting just just for clarification are you looking for like is

It's easy to access publicly, like housing value in terms of like what the county is using in there, or are you looking at the last sale price? Because there is a difference in there. Again, it's very easy to get access to what your house is assessed at or so. But to get the housing by price, It becomes a little bit more complicated. And we can go both ways. I was just getting some clarification of which one you were looking at.

I think probably for just equivalency sake, the assessed value would probably be the most standardized way to look at it with kind of the recognition that usually assessed values are lower than the actual sale price of the home.

And those we can bring back at our July 2nd meeting and those we have available. So, okay.

Thank you, Kate. Those are all intriguing for sure. I'd like to know more about the Webster land grant program and how that works. For the financial assistance, this is, I was actually making a note before you were talking about that, about Financial assistance, I was tying it to age since, you know, aging in a home is such a focus for us too. But... financial ability could fit in just as easily. Obviously, that'd have to be a program that's actually funded in some way. So that's probably above our pay grade in some respects. But I don't know, Carlos, if such a thing exists already, if there's been any discussion about that.

I think in general, in the council, I've heard in the past, yes. But I think that goes back to, and I appreciate what our liaison has brought. I mean, you know, Looking at it from our land use reformer, just solely from a plan commission perspective, you know, we're, we're missing, you know, again, a lot of policy. Yeah. In there, so, you know, like, the, the 4 items you bring in from the perspective of the council, you know, have have a. You know. have to all these four kind of have to work together. You know, the the commission in land use the council in in, in these last two, and then, you know, construction, again, which, you know, we don't, we don't want to use the term dictate, but we control the codes and what the codes do in there in that, you know, all those together, you know, provide a means to look at a housing strategy. And that is one of the you know, possible action items, you know, uh, that's noted in, in, in goal one. So. Fantastic.

And I will say too, that the council, um, at our planning retreat earlier this year did identify housing, um, as, as a priority and a goal for us as the council to look at more in depth. And, um, so I really do look forward to this ongoing conversation and, um, learning more and seeing more about how we can, you know, really move forward with a holistic strategy that, that feels right and appropriate for all of it.

Two things I'll note for our liaison being at your, so, and I'm not sure that's been shared with council. I believe it has, but you know, so the commission did take the, the, the council items that were brought back from the retreat and then incorporated them into the the comprehensive plan priorities. And then this, we started to creating what would be kind of our outline of how our implementation process would go. And what you see here are some of the ones in yellow were some items, some of the priorities from the council, and then the priorities of the commission. And that was done through the survey process. process that Don kind of coordinated with council members and put all the data together. And then we looked at each one of these and kind of ranked them in the process. And then from going in there, housing being one of the highest topics that both council and the commission were looking at, we started looking at the northeast quadrant, which is the hilltop, Arrowhead, Collingwood, in which we have a variety of different types of land uses, residential land uses, all in one compact area. and looking at how we can look at, you know, getting out of this one single family district fits all. And it goes back to some of the, like Commissioner Ford had kind of noted and Commissioner Ragsdale, you know, here are opportunities to implement, you know, right now in the one single family district fits all we allow a 35 foot height and here's an opportunity that in some of these areas and it's not to penalize but in some of these areas in an effort to try to maintain some of that housing stock is and maybe reduce the height, but to provide them a little bit more flexibility in the setbacks. One of the biggest drawbacks in these neighborhoods has been the carport conversion or lack of a carport or garage on those. And that's usually when residents reach out to us, they're trying to figure out, how can I get a car enclosure? uh, put in here or, or, or working on, on an addition. And usually it's that side yard setback that, that always kind of stumbles the process. So, uh, we're, we're taking a look at those, uh, that area. Again, it's a little bit more manageable to kind of do an overview and then, uh, we've collected indentures. We reached out with an Arrowhead trustee subdivision in Collingwood and collecting their indentures so we could see what the original intent of those subdivisions were and then trying to cater zoning districts that are more appropriate to what's actually out there. Fantastic. All right.

All right. Anything else on that, Carl? That's it. That's it? Right. All right. And unless anybody has anything else, we'll move on to number four, other business, meeting minutes.

I do not have meeting minutes prepared. We'll get those, try to catch up within the next month. All right.

Then we'll move on to reports, Carlos.

A couple of reports in there. We are going to have a busy July. I think right now we have... four special permit requests that have been officially submitted that we're working on and trying to schedule. We do have one commercial property that is doing an outdoor patio area, the brass tap will be coming in. And then I also have a proposals for two code changes, one in the COR district and one in the light industrial district that we're working on putting together. Residential and construction wise, I don't wanna say it's been slow, but we haven't had anything that's met the threshold to bring back to the commission. There's a couple of positives in that because our volume of permits has increased, but the commission has also given us a little bit more flexibility before things have to come in here, in there. And that's because we made our code requirements, especially stormwater, more stringent and that we can handle that in-house in there. And we just haven't had any new homes in there. I think there's a variety of different factors of why that's kind of slow right now, but uh, in there. So please take a look at, uh, keep me up to speed in terms of, uh, you know, your availability in July, that would be the 2nd and the 16th. And then we have a list there, uh, for the rest of the month or the, excuse me, the rest of the year, uh, regarding, um, activities, uh, I think maybe within two weeks, we'll have our first occupants across the street on the northern half. We're getting really close. They're doing the sidewalks in there. The interiors are pretty well set. And there's some pictures that we forwarded to the council will be seen on Tuesday. And then outside of that, Ace Hardware is moving along. They would like to have an early July opening. They're also one of the special permits. So it's going to come to the commission regarding outdoor cells in there. And then Mercy has submitted the elevation updates for the building facade facing Olive. And that I'll probably bring to you at the July 2nd meeting. Be glad to answer any additional questions.

Any questions, anybody?

Nope. Okay. Dawn, you have anything to add?

Not really. You may want to notice it's not until September, but all of that night out is coming up and you may want to mention to your subdivision trustees that there is a policy discussion to take place on the neighborhood improvement districts, which I did not put on this schedule. And I'm blanking on the date, but that's something that we can circulate. And it's on our website currently.

Okay.

Yeah.

Thank you, Dawn. Laura, did you have something?

I'm going to be out, I'm 90% sure, August 20th.

Thank you. I am out July 16th. I think I've noted that already, though. Yes. It's good to know.

I'm also probably out. August 20th. And I think that's it.

Okay. And we'll keep those in again. Conflicts do arise. Just let us know in there. We still have a new appointee, I believe, by our August meetings. So we'll be back up to seven in there. Great. All right. Kate?

Yeah.

Am I muted? No, I'm okay.

So we had our public hearing on June 9th for the council budget or for the city budget. And surprisingly, no one came to talk and offer their public comments about the budget. We will have the vote at our next meeting, the 22nd, to approve the budget. We did have at the meeting on the 9th, a number of citizens from Indian Meadows subdivision come and speak to us about their concerns and issues. with things that are taking place in Indian Meadows Park. And so council along with staff are looking into that a little bit more deeply to see what might be possible to help with the concerns that are that have been going on at Indian Meadows Park for some time and see what we might be able to do to work on those issues. And then residents also came and spoke to us about the ongoing concerns that they have with AZZ galvanizing facility, which is in the industrial part of unincorporated St. Louis County, but butts right up to the, the north side of the Indian Meadows subdivision. And then on, this is going back a little bit, but on May 27th, Olivet is part of the Cool Cities group, which is a group of elected officials in the St. Louis region that work towards sustainability issues. And we hosted a show me less plastic workshop at Five Oaks. And it was well attended with representatives, both elected officials and staff from throughout the St. Louis region who came to learn about different policy strategies and practical strategies for reducing plastic use and thereby reducing plastic pollution. So that was great to host that. It was with the Stream Teams United, Mid-America, Clean Future, and the Missouri River Bird Observatory. And then Dawn had mentioned about the NID discussion. That is taking place on July 8th. Coffee with the Mayor. This Coffee with the Mayor is happening in the evening or the early evening, I'd say. It's at five o'clock. And so it's a different time and a different format. And we would really love to hear and see from as many folks as possible because there's been We have a new policy that we're working on and really want to try to get as much public comment and feedback on the policy as possible. And this specific one is to help subdivisions, neighborhoods that are not part of the public streets taken care of by public works, if they're private streets, that we would be working with them to assist with financing. Not that we would pay for it, but we would use like the funding mechanisms in the city in order to help the subdivision obtain the financing that they need in order to make some of these large street repairs feasible for them. All that to say, please join us July 8th for a coffee with the mayor where you can ask all the wonderful technical questions that you would like to, and we will do our best to answer them. And by we, I mean the city manager, Jennifer Yackley. Thank you.

Great.

I'm sorry. Is that at Five Oaks? Um, I am pretty sure it's at five Oaks, but as I'm going through my notes, I don't have the location written down. Um, but I would assume yes, because most of all the most recent coffee with the mayors have been at five Oaks.

Thank you.

But I do need to clarify that for sure.

Okay. Fantastic. All right. Well, unless anybody has anything else looking around now. Okay. Then I will call the meeting to a close at 8.22.

Thank you, Chairman. I'm going to stop the recording.