MEETING OF THE EATON PLANNING BOARD
ON APRIL 11, 2006
AT 7:00 P.M., IN COUNCIL CHAMBERS
The Eaton Planning Board met in regular session in Council Chambers on Tuesday, April 11, 2006, at 7:00 p.m.
The roll was called and the following were found to be:
Present: Ron Coleman
Stanley Spencer
Tim Lane
Harold Geeting (Vice Chairman)
Steve Deffner
Gary Wagner
Tom Jordan (Chairman)
Also in attendance were Mayor Robert Stonecash, Law Director Donnette Fisher and Projects Manager Joe Ferriell. The meeting was called to order at 7:00 p.m.
MINUTES:
The minutes of the February 14, 2006, meeting were approved. A motion was made by GaryWagner and seconded by Harold Geeting. The motion passed as follows:
Ayes: Coleman, Spencer, Lane, Geeting, Deffner, Wagner, Jordan (7)
Nays: None
The minutes of the March 14, 2006, meeting will be approved at the next meeting.
SWEARING IN:
All members of the audience anticipating to testify before the Board were asked to raise their right hand and be sworn in. The secretary administered the oath or affirmation to the audience.
MJ-06-02 - Major Subdivision - Cy & Barb French - 410- Hillcrest Drive:
Jordan: Who is representing this request tonight?
Kramer B.: Mr. Chairman, I am Brad Kramer with Kramer & Associates here to represent Cy and Barb French, land owners, at this address. It is a pretty simple request, we are coming to this Board for consideration of a Major Subdivision. It is just a lot split, there is 10 acres and they want to split it in a 6-acre parcel and a 4-acre parcel. We don’t have enough frontage right now with the existing property, it is a little narrow, roughly a 32’ strip on Hillcrest Drive and we don’t have enough frontage to satisfy the legal definition of a City Lot, which requires 40’ of frontage. We are going to have to come before this Board with a Major Subdivision application because we have to access one of the properties by way of an easement and the other tract, you see on here Lot 1, will have real property extending all of the way out to the existing narrow frontage. Lot 2, the larger of the two tracts, will be served by an ingress and egress easement, that is the way to make things work with the current Unified Development Ordinance. What we are for is consideration of this lot split or this Major Subdivision tonight. I have been in contact, I spoke with Andy Eddy of the Service Department this morning, and utilities are available. It is just a matter of how we are going to get them back there. There is a 12' water line out on Hillcrest Drive, so we can tap into that and run a service lateral back the land. There are three options, I want to apologize, I brought you a revised map with the north arrow pointing in the proper direction and a couple of additional lines labeled and some clarifications. We had Treble County instead of Preble and I apologize for rushing you a map with mistakes on it to start with. If you look and your map says Preble not Treble, you have the proper map. In the rear of the property, which is the furthest north, you see the property zoned ‘A-1,’ owned by Conley, there is an existing 8' sewer down there and that is pretty deep, that is one possibility for tying in our sewer. Right now the current house, which is shown here on the 6.3 acres tract Lot 2, is served by a well and a septic system leach field. We have another sewer project in the makings. The City is currently in the process of extending a sanitary sewer from Mary Lane in the direction of the school, which would be westward, in the backs of these front lots and that is option two for our sanitary sewer to tie into that. The third option is a manhole down at the corner of the driveway, which is actually on the school property, was recently installed, just a couple of years ago with the construction of the school and that is another option for tying into the sanitary sewer. Services are available and we are just going through this lot split procedure. We ask this Board to approve this contingent upon our receiving a variance. We have to go for a variance for lot frontage before the Zoning Appeals Board. I don’t anticipate any real troubles with, but that is how we have to approach this now and the steps and the process, you are step one.
Does anyone have any questions, Mr. Chairman?
Jordan: Does any of the Board members have any questions?
Geeting: That 32’ width, is that enough, if you would go to that option of taking that sewer line down there, does that give you enough room?
Kramer: Yes, there is plenty of room on either side of the drive to run a sanitary sewer lateral. That doesn’t take a whole lot of depth, especially if it is a forced main or a grinder pump type of line, that wouldn’t require a lot of depth. I think we have plenty of room to get something under there.
Spencer: Can I ask you a question, there on where that comes off of Hillcrest there? The 32,' and you look back on the flag lot where it goes back to Lot 1, I think Runks used to live in that house there?
Kramer: That is correct.
Spencer: Then they built the new one back here in the back?
Kramer: I believe, I thought you were referring to the new one. I remember seeing maps abandoning this entire property.
Spencer: The reason I am asking that, if you look there, there is 26,’ when you are coming out of Lot 1 going out to Hillcrest, it comes out and then jogs up 26’ and then goes, I wonder why they didn’t, at the time that was put in, just straighten that out, just run the 26’ onto the 32?’
Kramer: That is a good question. I think I have the answer for you, Mr. Spencer. If you see a little dash line that is labeled, old lot line, that is how the lot was originally configured so there would have been 60 plus feet width running out to the road. At some time in the recent 25 years or so, there was an additional purchase of 30’ or so and that lot on the end became a new piece of property. It all had to do with the house up front, maybe extending the garage or they wanted more side yard. I am not certain why they left that 30 some ft. strip around the driveway. This is what we are left with.
Coleman: You said something about supposing to have 40 ft. frontage, right?
Kramer: Yes, by definition a lot in the City of Eaton has 40 ft. of frontage.
Coleman: Here we are going to have two lots sharing 32 ft.?
Kramer: Yes, exactly. This is one of those unusual circumstances where there is a lot of land back in there with this situation before it.
Jordan: How will that drive be maintained, by joint?
Kramer: There will be a Maintenance Agreement drafted up by their attorney like it is with all common drives, it should be with a good situation. Mrs. French and I have talked about that.
Jordan: Any more questions for Mr. Kramer at this time? If not, Joe what is staff review on this?
Ferriell: I spent some time with Brad on this. As far as compliance with the UDO, that meets, the Comp Plan, we are okay there. This is Agricultural, ‘A-1,' I don’t know if you caught that or not? As far as detrimental to other properties, there is not an issue there, as far as egress and ingress for emergency, that is adequate, there is adequate space for building on the lots. The survey information is on here that we require and as far as emergency access, there is not an issue there. I would like to point out that this is just the preliminary plat, there will be a final plat with more details and actually showing the houses and all of that at a later date.
Jordan: I hadn’t caught that this was an ‘A-1’ district, I hadn’t noticed that. They could actually split that off into 10 one-acre lots if they wanted to?
Ferriell: Yes, if they wanted to.
Jordan: So basically this is a better option.
Fisher: The way it is, the only problem that they have with that would be that the County Engineer controls easements, so far as how they are recorded, and he will only allow 3 houses per easement, so the most they could get out there would be three unless they actually put a street in. This would have went through as a Minor if it wouldn’t have been for that access easement. That is what made it a Major.
Coleman: Donnette, I have a question for you. This is what is called a “flag lot.' I looked through our book and we didn’t address flag lots, there is not a definition of a flag lot. Does the City recommend flag lots or do we not want flag lots?
Fisher: That would be a decision for you as Planning Board tonight, do you want them or not want them?
When I was with the County we saw a lot of flag lots out in the county. I think a flag lot is not a bad idea when you get into issues of clustering your development and instead of having three houses and three separate drives along a road, if you can put in one drive and have three houses back here, you preserve more open space and you are only having one access on to a public street. I don’t think we have allowed the creation of any new flag lots that I can think of.
Coleman: We might be getting them.
Fisher: I don’t know what we can do with ones that are already there, but I know we haven’t allowed any new ones.
Coleman: We got one this month and then last month we had that one behind Genth.
Fisher: That one out on Park you saw subdivisions that were started in the 50’s or 60’s that were never completed. You got these access drives. We saw that when the hospital went in, you got that one access drive coming off. When they divided that land up along the street for houses, they left an access and they came in and were going to subdivide that land in the back. We haven’t seen any new creations of that. I think the UDO takes care of that. I certainly don’t want to see anymore created because then you always get an issue with street frontage and if you want to try and split it up then you have problems there. If nothing else I think we will certainly watch for it.
Coleman: There was nothing in the minutes, the packets about the Fire Chief or the City Police Chief or Emergency Squad. I didn’t see anything what they said. Joe said it was okay but I haven’t seen anything from those people.
Fisher: I know Joe talked to them.
Ferriell: There wasn’t an issue with anything there.
Fisher: One driveway is always easier than two.
Wagner: For who?
Fisher: For ODOT purposes, for traffic safety purposes, the Chief of course would rather see one than two and a lot of it is just going to be about how you address them. If it 115 and 115 ½ and you are going to 115.
Kramer: I might add, Mr. Coleman, the flag lot issue resurfaced again with, across the state with ODOT, and then with a lot of the counties adopting Access Management regulation. At one time, because of the sharing issues and the complexities involved with those types of maintenance agreements, it might have been looked at, build two driveways parallel to each other, that became just as bad as one drive or even a worse situation would be to build two driveways along side of each other, now we are gaining courage by Access Management, especially on busy highways and you may consider Hillcrest Drive to have some traffic concerns, to share common access. That would address that.
Fisher: Did you ever take a drive down through Butler County, all of those farm fields, there is house, house, house all right along the roadway and if you could get the same number of houses you put one access drive going back instead of putting them all here you put them here and you just have one drive. You will probably see more of those in the County.
Coleman: What does the City Police do? Do they drive back in there or what?
Jordan: It is private property. It is just like your driveway, that is their driveway, that is not City property.
Fisher: Part of the reason in our new code and we have seen many issues come up with it, when you get into the issue of easements, even for driveways, we have had, I don’t know how many, people come in with issues, we are not sure where the easement is, we are not sure what it says. A lot of those easements were not recorded, so one of the issues in the new UDO we said that if you are going to create an access easement then it has to be a Major so that it gets recorded. It is actually on the books, if at some point fifty years from now somebody comes in and wants to develop that lot further, we know where that easement is and we know exactly where it is, we know how wide it is and we know what it can be used for and what it can’t. That is one of the issues that we did that in the new UDO.
Coleman: So, if it comes snow, they will have to open that up themselves if they want out? It has to be a hard surface?
Fisher: The part that is in the right-of-way.
Wagner: I have a question for Brad, is it the property owners intention to build one house back there?
Kramer: Yes, one house on the four acres.
Wagner: All of the utilities, water, sewer and utilities are all private?
Kramer: Yes, everything is private. The only reason we are asking, we are in this classification of Major Subdivision is because we couldn’t fit it neatly under the definition of the lot split or in this town it is called Minor Subdivision. We are not planning to extend any public utilities. All we are doing is creating a new property line, we have no intention of public utilities extension, street extensions or any increased burden or another house on any of the public services.
Wagner: Is the topography of that ground pretty flat, I didn’t go out there and look, I didn’t want to drive down a private driveway. Does it drop off or is it pretty flat?
French: It stays flat pretty far back before it drops off.
Kramer: It stays flat back along the lane and then you get a natural drainage area, which is where the pond is, and that heads down where the new sewer is being built there, Mary Lane and then it is rolly and flat back through the wooded area and then it drops down, you can almost see a dark tree ridge where it starts dropping down and heads down towards the small stream at the back property line.
Jordan: Joe, did you have anymore? Board members have any more questions? If not, I will consider a motion.
Fisher: I made a note on your sheets, if you want you can combine your approval of the Preliminary and Final in one. If you approve the Preliminary, when the Final comes back it isn’t going to look any different than that. Unlike most major subdivisions we have, there is not an issue of putting in the street or the public utilities or where exactly is the lot line going to be, it is all on there.
Wagner: If we should only approve the Preliminary Plat then they have to come back in for Final Plat approval?
Fisher: Yes, and it is going to look exactly like this.
Wagner: Exactly like this.
Fisher: There wasn’t anything else we needed to know on the Final. Joe and I talked about it.
Ferriell: Nothing.
Kramer: This has rounding and rough distances on the property line, it was all prior to survey. I have surveyed enough around it that I know we are pretty close so approximate acreage, approximate property line distances on this and the final will show to the nearest 100th of a foot.
Fisher: It will have to be surveyed for the new deed so I am sure those exact measurements will be on the Plat he brings in for us to sign.
Wagner: I move that we approve case MJ-06-02 in that it meets the applicable standards in Chapter 1115.06, under Major Subdivisions, and the motion includes the approval of the Preliminary Plat and the Final Plat, contingent upon the approval from the Appeals Board on the Variance for the Street variance. The motion was seconded by Harold Geeting and passed as follows:
Ayes: Spencer, Geeting, Deffner, Wagner, Jordan (5)
Nayes Coleman (1)
Abstain: Lain (1)
Z-06-02 - Zoning Amendment - City of Eaton - North Barron Street:
Jordan: Joe, are you going to explain this?
Ferriell: You all have your maps. Once we had the map updated, the UDO, now we want to go through and update areas that may not have been used, for example the area that we are looking at, that area is zoned ‘C-2’ and a lot of them are being actually used as ‘C-1.’ We decided to start in this area, blanket that area and go ahead and change all of this to ‘C-1’ to conform to what most of the businesses are being operated as.
Fisher: We removed a lot of the businesses that we formally allowed in ‘C-3’ which is now ‘C-2.’ When we did this, if those businesses burned down they can’t rebuild them because of how much more stringent we are now with nonconforming uses, so this just puts them into where they should be.
Coleman: On Leatherman Drive we got that dentist office in there right? That black line should go down a little bit further.
Fisher: I think it cuts out.
Jordan: It’s right.
Ferriell: It is already ‘C-1’ and McDonalds is already ‘C-1.’
Jordan: I didn’t realize that that lot behind Burger King was that deep. I knew it was back there but I thought it was residential back there. There is no access to it.
Fisher: It probably should be residential.
A lot of the reason we wanted to do this to is, you have all that empty space in that little center next to McCabe’s, you have Pizza Hut that is empty, you have a lot of empty space up there. You have people who come in and are interested in putting things in there and because it is Community Commercial, and we have really limited what you can put in there, a lot of the businesses that should be in that kind of area can’t go in under the ‘C-2.’
Ferriell: The list is on page 50 if you want to take a look at it.
Fisher: Fast food restaurants are prohibited in ‘C-2’ so McDonalds or Kentucky Fried not allowed. Restaurants are a conditional use.
Wagner: Once this is voted on by Planning Board it has to go to Council because of the zoning change?
Fisher: Yes. Everyone up there was notified and was told there was to be a Public Hearing and they will all be notified before Council meeting.
Dave wrote a real nice letter to everyone who owns a property there just explaining what we are trying to do, that we are not trying to hurt you, we are trying to help.
Jordan: Basically we are just flip-flopping the zoning code to what it should be to what is existing and what the new UDO covers. We are trying to clean up the map.
Fisher: We wanted to get this done before, I think we talked about this before, what we want to do is staff will go through and we will break the City down into sections. We are going to go out and physically look at each section, what is it zoned, what is it actually being used for. If you drive down on Lexington, you have all of that ‘I-1’ where you have the baseball field. There are areas like that that we need to definitely look at about correcting. This was one we thought needed to be done right away.
Jordan: Any other questions? I will accept a motion.
Wagner: I move for a recommendation for approval to the City Council for Z-06-02, changing the proposed zoning district from ‘C-2’ to ‘C-1.’ The motion was seconded by Ron Coleman and passed as follows:
Ayes: Coleman, Spencer, Lane, Geeting, Deffner, Wagner, Jordan (7)
Nays: None
OLD BUSINESS:
None
NEW BUSINESS:
Wagner: I have one comment. City Council addressed two signs downtown one for the new sports bar, Jells I think it is called, and the new beauty shop down there. We had to get a variance on the sign because they have 20’ frontage and they were only allowed to have, based on their frontage, 5 sq. ft. sign. I am not recommending anything but I think as Planning Board we need to look at that sign size for those 20 ft. frontage lots. That is not enough signage for those kinds of businesses downtown, I don’t believe personally.
Jordan: Basically, the Just Teasing, is that what it is called, they basically replaced the existing sign didn’t they?
Wagner: We made them make that sign smaller.
Fisher: I don’t think they made that smaller.
Wagner: According to their drawing they did.
(Discussion - inaudible)
Wagner: Driving down through there, the blocks from Barron and Main to Cherry, there is a lot of those 20’ frontage businesses in there and if they want to change their sign they have to come to the Historical District Board of course and then they only have the wherewithal to go 5 sq. ft. basically. Those signs that we approved down there, I think one was 15 sq. ft. and the other was like 20 (interrupted)
Fisher: 15 for Jells.
Wagner: And the other one we weren’t sure. I just noticed that if you drive down there and take a look and count how many 20’ stores are down there and making those businesses come in for a variance all of the time (interrupted)
Fisher: They are going to have to come in for a sign permit, anyway.
Wagner: I know but not for a variance.
Fisher: Yes, but since Council does it all in the Historic Review District, there is no separate application, you do it all at once. They are going to have to be here anyway.
Wagner: Okay. I was just thinking as a Councilperson.
Jordan: Maybe we can go down there and keep an eye on them. We can look at the existing signs and see what they look like and maybe if we have to review it, we will review it.
Wagner: I don’t think there is a sign down there where there is a 20’ frontage that is 5 sq. feet. They are all bigger. That might have been bad on our part when we did this whole deal.
Fisher: We do have some big ones down there. The bank is on the corner, Your Flower Shop that is a pretty wide building.
Wagner: That is forty foot, probably. I am just concerned about twenty footers.
Spencer: That is not much of a sign, even six sq. foot is not even.
Jordan: I think when we did that, I don’t think we even considered the 20 ft. frontage down there.
Wagner: That is exactly correct.
Jordan: I don’t think we even thought about that.
Wagner: I think that is why I am bringing that up because we didn’t consider that and maybe we would want to consider amending that part of the UDO.
Jordan: That is a good point Gary, we need to take a look at that.
Fisher: If we doubled it, do you think that would be enough?
Wagner: If you read the UDO, it is so many square feet per frontage and has a maximum of 15 square foot or whichever is less.
Kramer: Fifteen would be the Bicentennial Banner there and six would be the paper map.
Wagner: I was just thinking that if we increased that four feet to six feet or eight feet per frontage with a limit of size on it of fifteen square feet. Fifteen square feet is a nice size sign for a 20 ft. frontage building.
Fisher: We say one sq. ft. per 4 lineal feet of building frontage. You could cut that down to two.
Wagner: That would make it 10 square feet.
Fisher: And make the minimum like 20?
Wagner: I don’t think the minimum needs to be…It is currently one per 4?
Fisher: We say one sq. ft. per 4 lineal feet of building frontage or 15 sq. ft., whichever is less.
Wagner: If we said two, less would be 10 sq. feet. If we made it three, it would be fifteen.
Fisher: Do you want one per three?
Wagner: That is what my suggestion is. If it is fifteen right now and you make that twenty. I am just throwing this out.
Geeting: If you up it to twenty, that is a pretty good size sign for a small shop.
Wagner: If you are going to make it three for four, the minimum of fifteen is what it is going to be.
Fisher: Now, the projecting nameplate sign where it actually comes out, where it is flush with the building, you had limited that to twelve square feet, do you want to up that to fifteen?
Wagner: Can we think about this whole deal and come back next month with an idea as to what we want to do there?
Jordan: Okay.
Fisher: I am just making some notes.
Wagner: I want to read that portion again.
Fisher: It is page 167, the table.
Jordan: Do we have any other new business? If not I will accept a motion for adjournment.
Lain: I make a motion to adjourn and it was seconded by Ron Coleman.
All ayes, meeting adjourned.
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Secretary Chairman