Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA)

Town of Zionsville Board of Zoning Appeals November 27, 2012 Pledge of Allegiance was said and attendance was taken by the Secretary. Present: Larry Mitchell, Greg Morical, Steve Schanke, Al Wopshall, Jay Parks. Staff attending: Wayne DeLong, Carol Sparks Drake, attorney. A quorum is present. Mitchell Good evening. I’d like to call the November 27 meeting of the Zionsville Board of Zoning Appeals. The first item on the Agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance. All Pledge of Allegiance. Mitchell Next is the attendance. Mitchell We have a full Board tonight. Approval of the September 25 meeting minutes. Are there any changes? Schanke I had one on the last page, about halfway down: “Are we going to be assigning” and it should be “signing.” Mitchell Right. I believe there was another change on the question mark. Morical Yes, I sent an e-mail this afternoon noting that I believe in the minutes there are several question marks denoting who made certain comments and, with the exception of one of them, I believe I am all of those question marks. Mitchell All righty. Are there any changes to the minutes? Hearing none, I would entertain a motion to approve. Parks I move that we approve the minutes as amended. Schanke I will second that. Mitchell A motion has been made and seconded. All those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye? All Aye. Mitchell Opposed? Nay. Motion carries. The next item is new business. There are four items on our docket tonight. The first in the four items have been continued, so if you have a copy of our Agenda, there’s no docket number, but the name is Sullivan Muncie Replat that has been continued to the January 28 meeting and the docket number 2012-17-DSV under the name of Wal-Mart has been continued also to the January 28 meeting, so if you’re here for those we will not be hearing them tonight. We will be hearing them on January 28. That leaves two items on our Agenda docket number 2012-15-DSV under the name of C. Bauman and the docket number 2012-16-DSV under the name of D.IDE Here’s how this works. We basically have the petitioner come up, present their case, everybody speaking at the microphone if you could state your name and your address for the record before you speak. We’ll have 15 minutes for the petitioner to present their case. We’ll have 15 minutes of remonstration followed by 15 minutes for rebuttal by the petitioner and finally 15 minutes of rebuttal by any remonstrators here. The Board will be allowed to ask questions throughout your Zionsville Board of Zoning Appeals November 27, 2012 Page 2 of 10 presentation. It will not be counted against your 15 minutes. We do ask that you speak clearly into the microphone. Everything is recorded and we do take the minutes for the record, so the first item on the Agenda is 2012-15-DSV under the name of C. Bauman. The property address is 260 West Cedar Street. It’s a petition for Development Standards Variance for an increase of lot coverage of 7.7 percent above the allowable 35 percent for installation of a garage and screened-in porch in an RV residential village-zoning district. Would the petitioner please come forward? Bauman Good evening, and thanks for taking the time to consider this. My name’s Chad Bauman and as you’ve just indicated my address is 260 West Cedar Street, Zionsville. I’ve gotten the sense that you’d like me to give just a brief overview of the project. Okay, so we purchased this house in September of this year. This is the Old Tom Carnegie house, the yellow house near Lincoln Park. The previous owner had actually torn down a 1.5 car garage because it was dilapidated, according to his report. In fact, it was being held up by 2 x 4’s sticking out the side because it was leaning so much, so he tore it down and our petition is basically to rebuild a garage there, a 2.5 car garage and there’s a couple of reasons that we deem it desirable and necessary. The first is parking. We are about a half a block from Lincoln Park and two blocks from the downtown brick area, so whenever there’s any large events in the downtown area or a wedding or some other event at Lincoln Park if we leave during the event and we come home, there’s no parking in front of the house, so that’s one issue. The second issue is storage. There’s no shed or any other kind of storage in the house. No back building, so there’s currently no place to put trash and recycling which because of that sits out in the lawn which is kind of a hygiene issue and also an aesthetic issue for the neighborhood. I’d like to get that hidden away if possible and then the third reason is that we do a lot of renovations. We completely renovated an old farmhouse up in Whitestown before we moved to this house and we wanted to make certain we could preserve the historic nature of this house and its architecture and also improve in areas where it’s been lost over the years. We have the tools to do it and the ability to do that, but at the moment we don’t have the space to do that. There’s no shop space, only one of those ancient cellars which isn’t a very good space for storing tools or working, so a garage, a 2.25 or 2¼ car garage 24 x 26 feet would address all three of these issues. It would allow for parking. It would allow for storage of trash and recycling and it would also allow space for us to have a really small shop to store tools in and use them as we work on the house and then the second part, which is quite a bit of a smaller project, is a screened-in porch at the back side of the home. We could add this under our current lot coverage limits now. It’s only 0.6 percent added on to what we have now, but we want to build them at the same time, so we decided just to simplify and propose them all at the same time here, so it’d be a screened-in porch just out the back side of the house, relatively small. The size I believe is 10 x 14 or 12 x 14. You have it there on the design and in addition to this, you know, just being a good space we also have a daughter who swells up with welts the size of baseballs every time she gets stung by a, or bit by a mosquito. She may grow out of it at some point, but she hasn’t yet, so it’d be nice to be able to have her sort of outside while not being completely exposed, so that’s the project. We are wanting to preserve the beauty of the property and the area. We’ve hired a designer who’s well known, Tim Jennings, and he’s also 2 Zionsville Board of Zoning Appeals November 27, 2012 Page 3 of 10 been featured in the Better Homes and Gardens story on building garages that fit the home, so we’re, he’s designed something for us and you have the preliminary plans, but he’s designed something for us that will both fit with the home, integrate some of the architectural pieces of interest in the home and also will serve our needs and just look right on the property. So I think it’s a relatively standard request petition we’re making here. We can’t conceive of any way it would endanger the hygiene or the health and the safety of the neighborhood or the value of homes nearby. In fact, we think it would increase all those things and redound positively to home values, our own and those around us. It would increase privacy. It would increase hygiene and sanitary issues by getting those trash cans stored away and we can’t think of any other way. With conversations with our neighbors we haven’t come upon any issues where these things would have a negative impact on the neighborhood, so that’s the project. It would take us to 42.67 percent of lot coverage. Mitchell Are there questions for the petitioner? Schanke Yes I did notice that it’s a two-car garage and you do indicate a stairway to the second level. Will that just be a shop? That won’t be a spare, you know, guest house or anything? Bauman Yeah, no the plan for that is only for storage and we understand that could never be an apartment or a rented space. We understand that we could finish it off as a great room later as we wanted to, but actually that’s not our plan. The plan actually is to use it largely for storage, so that’ll be a bare bones staircase, basically as small, narrow, and as steep permitting regulations would allow just to get up there and store things. The shop area would be on the lower, I mean the actual usable, workable shop area would be on the edges of the lower level. Schanke It looks like a pretty steep roof though, so there will be some, quite a bit of space up there. Bauman Yeah that is the hope. Schanke And that’s fine, that’s fine. Bauman Yeah, that was the hope. Plus that also better matches the home. We didn’t want to put a kind of shed roof on there. It just wouldn’t look quite right, so. Schanke That’s all I saw. Bauman Okay. Mitchell Any further questions? Are there any remonstrators here tonight? Seeing none come forward, the Staff’s report. DeLong Thank you. Staff is recommending approval of the petition. There are no conditions in the Staff Report. Again, Staff is recommending approval and I would be happy to answer any questions. 3 Zionsville Board of Zoning Appeals November 27, 2012 Page 4 of 10 Mitchell Are there any questions for staff? Hearing none, I would entertain a motion. Parks I will make a comment before a motion, the comment is that it’s standard in this Town itself to have a detached garage. It’s not very standard to have an attached garage and so this conforms to what is the norm that the Village has maintained over the years and so with that I move that Docket 2012-15-DSV, Development Standards Variance to exceed the maximum lot coverage in the residential village for the property located at 260 West Cedar Street be approved based upon the findings in the Staff Report as presented. Mitchell A motion has been made. Is there a second? Monical Second. Mitchell Motion has been properly made and seconded. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye? All Aye. Mitchell Opposed? Motion carried unanimously. Thank you. Bauman Thank you. Mitchell Go Bulldogs. The next item on the Agenda is Docket #2012-16-DSV under the name D.Ide. The property address is 4308 Sedge Court. It’s a petition for Development Standards Variance for an increase of lot coverage of 10 percent above the allowable 20 percent for installation of an in-ground pool in an RSF-2 residential single family-zoning district. Would the petitioner please come forward? Ide Thank you. My name is David Ide and I do in fact live at 4308 Sedge Court in Zionsville. I appreciate the time and feel fortunate that Wal-Mart pushed back until January. I’m happy about that. My project is relatively straightforward and that is the fact that we’re interested in putting in an in-ground pool in our home. Now I’ll be the first to admit that there is general desire to have this pool and as indicated in my report my neighbors seem to be very in favor of the idea, but primarily where we’ve come to this is over the six years we’ve been in Zionsville we have two wonderful children, twins, who will be 16 in June. My son, Austin, struggles significantly with autism. Austin is solidly on the autism spectrum relatively delayed, significant communication delays, etc, but more importantly has a relatively narrow arena of interests. One that tops that list is water. He absolutely loves being in the water. For the first three years that we were here at Zionsville we were members at Zion Aqua, but membership there and his attendance there is somewhat problematic in a number of cases, and so over the past six years we’ve saved and planned and whatnot to have the opportunity to put a pool actually in our home. Along with the Pools of Fun people we’ve attempted to design a pool that fits the home, is not overly ornate or large or fancy or anything, but does, in fact, give us the opportunity for Austin to be able to walk off our back deck and be able to enjoy the water whenever he desires. That’s pretty straightforward, so. 4 Zionsville Board of Zoning Appeals November 27, 2012 Page 5 of 10 Mitchell All right are there any questions for the petitioner? Schanke The, and it’s just a question, will you, what will be surrounding the pool that’s shown on your drawing here, will that be I assume pavers to match the existing pavers or concrete impervious or, you show the pool out here at a 40, at an angle. Ide Correct. Schanke And then there’s a surrounding--? Ide Yes, a very narrow ribbon strip of concrete, designer concrete. Schanke Stamped, well it doesn’t matter. Ide Yes, yeah. Schanke And the only other thing I do see it calls for an auto cover. I believe they, and Greg I may be wrong, not Greg, I’m sorry, Wayne, I saw Greg, I believe it’s the permitting process requires either a 6-foot fence or an auto cover, but, so it doesn’t have to have the fence in this case? DeLong That’s correct. And our permitting requirements are in tune with state law. State law is actually a 5-foot tall fence or an auto cover with a latchable device, lockable device, and if they’re providing one or the other, that is sufficient. Schanke That’s all I saw. Mitchell Seeing no other questions for the petitioner is there any remonstration? Seeing none, we will hear the Staff Report. DeLong Thank you. Staff is recommending approval of this petition subject, there are no conditions in the Staff Report, but this petition as well as the previous one is subject to the findings of fact that are either on file or in the Staff Report. This particular petition the Staff Report includes findings of fact with a pool request the findings need to be more in tune with the use of the property related to the pool and the presence of the pool and so we just went ahead and fine-tuned those findings for you and presented those in the Staff Report. We’ll provide those on the form for the next meeting for approval if the petition is approved this evening. But, again, this is becoming a customary petition, if you will, in this particular neighborhood. This is the second one this group has heard in the last 90 days for a pool in this subdivision, but again Staff is recommending approval of this petition and I would be happy to answer any questions. Mitchell Are there any questions for Staff? Schanke No. The only thing is, I believe I did see a letter that the Homeowners’ Association or whatever the body is, approved it also provided that they got the variance, so in that respect it does blend in with the neighborhood or as we mentioned the use of the property, so that was it. 5 Zionsville Board of Zoning Appeals November 27, 2012 Page 6 of 10 Mitchell Do you want to make a motion? Schanke Yes I will. I would like to move that Docket #2012-16 the Development Standards Variance to exceed the maximum lot coverage in the urban single family residential district to provide for lot coverage of 30 percent of the property located at 4308 Sedge Court be approved based upon the findings in the Staff Report as presented. Mitchell A motion has been made. Is there a second? Parks Second. Mitchell The motion has been properly made and seconded. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye? All Aye. Mitchell Opposed? Nay. Motion carries. Thank you. Ide Thank you. Schanke Enjoy your pool when it gets a little warmer. Mitchell All right. The next item on the Agenda--we’re going to take these couple other matters to be considered a little out of order because I think it’s more appropriate to. We need to vote on the change in our rules of procedures. It was a single page document provided to everybody. The old rule is the lower half of it; the new rule is on the upper half with the highlighted changes. Essentially, we are moving from the fourth Tuesday every month to the second Tuesday every month. Parks And from bimonthly to monthly. Schanke And we’re going to every month rather than every other. Mitchell Yes. Those are essentially the two changes in the regular minute section of our BZA rules and procedure. Is there any discussion regarding these changes? Schanke I wonder if may be, I know we won’t move again, but may be we should just say at the Zionsville Town Hall or other you know I mean, never mind. I withdraw my comment. Mitchell All right. This does require--we want to get a vote on the record for making this change, so if there’s no further discussion I would -- Parks I did have a question. What’s the, I was just curious as to what is the reason for the move upward in the month, to be ahead of the Planning Commission? DeLong That’s exactly right. 6 Zionsville Board of Zoning Appeals November 27, 2012 Page 7 of 10 Parks Okay. DeLong There’s a definite desire to streamline the development procedures within the Town and one step is to put the BZA date prior to the Planning Commission. If there is no business for that month we will continue as normal and not have the hearing, but this at least creates a stronger opportunity to streamline, better streamline the process. Parks I’m just so excited. DeLong Well we appreciate your excitement and so does the Town Council. Morical For the record I think that’s a great idea to not, you know, delay the ability of petitioners to come before us and to allow worthy projects to move forward. Mitchell Great. Chair can’t make a motion, so I would entertain a motion to accept the changes to our rules or procedure. Morical I move that we make a motion or move that we accept the changes to the rules and procedures that have been provided to the Board in advance. Schanke I will second that. Mitchell All right motion has been made and seconded. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye? All Aye. Mitchell Opposed, nay? Motion carries unanimously. Okay, so the next thing we have to approve the actual BZA meeting dates which were provided in everybody’s packet. It’s marked draft at the top. By us approving these it no longer is a draft, it becomes official, so and it’s basically in the spirit in what we just approved in our changes of the rules and procedures that we will be meeting on the second Tuesday of every month and this will be the actual legal times and dates for people to make their application filings and notifications. Are there any questions on the docket presented to you? Morical The only question is our new change, new procedures go into effect January 1? Mitchell Yes. Parks And therefore the deadlines for filing then they get backed up yet into this year? Mitchell That is correct. Parks As you can see there that December 6 for the meeting on January 8 they only have another basically a week to file if they’re not already in the cue. 7 Zionsville Board of Zoning Appeals November 27, 2012 Page 8 of 10 Mitchell Which leads to another question is the, should the first line read December 6, 2012? DeLong That’s correct. Schanke Down to the BZA meeting date and then at that point it changed to 13. Mitchell So, just for the record, the top line of dates of this document, there are four December dates: December 6, December 18, December 26, and December 28. Those items all currently have in the draft 2013 after them they should be changed to 2012 in the final document that will be approved tonight. If there are no further changes, is there a motion to approve? Parks So moved. Mitchell Is there a second? ? Second. Mitchell The motion has been made and seconded. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye? All Aye. Mitchell Opposed, nay? Motion carries. Okay next we need to do the execution of the following findings of fact, which will be handed down by the secretary. The findings of fact will be 2012-10-DSV, Hall; 2012-11-DSV, Smith. Do we need to take these one by one and approve them or just sign off on them? Wayne? DeLong You can take them one at a time. I don’t know. Schanke I believe last time counsel recommended that we actually vote on each one and approve it. Drake That is my recommendation. Mitchell Your recommendation is to take them one by one and approve them? Drake Yes. Mitchell Does the Board feel comfortable voting on them without having the information in front of them? DeLong Well, these findings were in your packets the last month. Mitchell The previous time. DeLong In previous months. Mitchell Okay. 8 Zionsville Board of Zoning Appeals November 27, 2012 Page 9 of 10 DeLong Yes it’s been 30 days since you’ve seen the information. Mitchell All right, so a motion to approve the findings of fact of 2012-10-DSV, Hall? Schanke I’ll make that motion that we approve the findings of fact on that. Mitchell Is there a second? Wopshall I’ll second the motion. Mitchell The motion has been made and seconded, any discussion? Hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye? All Aye. Mitchell Opposed, nay? Motion carries. Next we have 2012-11-DSV, Smith. Is there any commentary on this one? Parks I move that we adopt the findings of fact of 2012-11-DSV for Smith. Mitchell Is there a second? Wopshall I second. Mitchell The motion has been made and seconded. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye? All Aye. Mitchell Opposed, nay? Motion carries. Next is 2012-12-DSV, Wortenberger. Is there a motion to approve the findings of fact for 2012-12-DSV? Morical So moved. Mitchell Is there a second? Schanke I’ll second it. Mitchell Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye? All Aye. Mitchell Opposed, nay? Motion carries. Next is 2012-13-SE, Shalk. Parks I noticed that in the packet that we have that they have, in fact, filed commitments concerning the use of development of real property in which they incorporated the right to farm commitment that we had specified in the motion that was made in the last meeting and therefore I would move that we accept the findings of fact and the commitment that has been filed relating to 2012-13-SE. 9 Zionsville Board of Zoning Appeals November 27, 2012 Page 10 of 10 Schanke I’ll second that. Mitchell A motion has been made and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye? All Aye. Mitchell Opposed, nay? Motion carries. Final item is 2012-14-UV, Ike and Fritz Ventures. Morical Mr. Chairman, a reminder. I abstain from this particular matter. Mitchell So noted. Parks And I would move that we accept the findings of fact and sign off on them for 2012-14-UV for Ike and Fritz Ventures. Mitchell Is there a second? Schanke And that was approved. Wopshall I’ll second. Mitchell A motion has been made and seconded. Further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye? All Aye. Mitchell Opposed, nay? Motion carries. Morical And I abstain. Mitchell Correct. As so noted. Morical Thank you. Mitchell As no other items on the agenda or presented to come before this Board, I call this meeting closed. 10