Clay Township Plannng Commission

MINUTES OF THE CLAY TOWNSHIP PLANNING COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING HELD WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 2014 - IN THE CLAY TOWNSHIP MEETING HALL, 4710 PTE. TREMBLE ROAD, CLAY TOWNSHIP, MICHIGAN 48001

1. CALL TO ORDER:

Chairman Antkowiak called the meeting to order at 7:30 p.m.

2. ROLL CALL:

PRESENT: Tom Kozel, Mark Borchardt, Lesly Cahill, Christine Holcomb, Whitey Simon, Kathie Schweikart, Charles Miller, Edward Keller, and Anthony Antkowiak

A quorum was established.

Also present: David Birchler, Clearzoning

3. AMENDMENTS TO AGENDA:

4. APPROVAL OF MINUTES OF MAY 28, 2014:

Motion made by Cahill, supported by Schweikart, to approve the Minutes of May 28, 2014 meeting, as submitted.

AYES: All NAYS: None MOTION CARRIED.

5. WORKSHOP/ZONING ORDINANCE #126:

Birchler: Colocation is probably the easiest because I think it was just a couple of misspellings. We didn’t have any other revisions that were recommended. If you like the looks of that one then you could probably let that one get started for public hearing. Chairman Antkowiak: Patty will do that, she has to send out notice.

Birchler: Site plan approval one now. Based on our discussion last time, I rewrote that first subparagraph A so that the process now would be that the zoning administrator, who is Sid, your building inspector, would review one of the three copies that comes in, send one to the township planning consultant for review and there would be a determination made whether the preliminary site plan is complete and acceptable for site plan review by the Planning Commission. It would take both the zoning administrator and the planning consultant to come to that conclusion. If one of us thought there was something missing then that would require them to complete the plans first. If that happens, the applicant CLAY TOWNSHIP PLANNNG COMMISSION MINUTES OF JUNE 11, 2014 Page 2

would be notified to go to part B below. If the site plan is incomplete, then that 3 rd copy that they submit would be returned to them marked incomplete, along with the letters from the zoning administrator or me that identify the deficiencies on the plan. Once they get one that is complete, then it goes through the normal process of being placed on your agenda. Part C is sort of self-explanatory, it goes along with Part A, if they don’t make it through the first time, they do have to resubmit to be reconsidered. So basically, this is going to replace what in the past was a mandatory trip to the site plan committee and there are certainly times when the site plan committee can be a positive process. Applicants can contact the township and request a pre-application meeting with me, that’s a standard service that we provide. It’s in my fee schedule with the township. In fact I prepared an application form for Patty. In the future we have that set up now so they know the fee to charge to cover the cost of that so the township isn’t out any money for doing that. Most applicants would likely prefer to get that kind of basic information about requirements, processing, and timing of these sorts of things. They can usually get most of that from a combination of me and the building department well in advance of when you see it. I think this will really help to streamline things quite a bit. We’re going to likely shorten up the amount of time it takes someone’s site plan to get through the process and yet, by the time it comes to you you’ll have all the information that you need. You’ll have a review from your planner and the building department and the police, fire and DPW and all those folks. They’ll all have reviewed those and given you their recommendations. Chairman Antkowiak: You had mentioned though that the site plan committee can answer some questions. Will they have that opportunity to ask questions other than having a meeting with you or talk to Sid? Birchler: They can always request a meeting of the site plan committee. I don’t think we’ve eliminated that ability because as long as you as a Planning Commission have that three-person committee someone could ask to meet with you. What we eliminated was the mandatory. We can have it in there as an option. I would think we would want to work that in to part 1, the administrative review of the preliminary site plan, as maybe an option, maybe add item D that has the option that if the applicant would like to meet with the site plan committee to review a preliminary site plan they could request that.

Discussion was held regarding changing the wording from “shall” to “may” regarding the pre-site plan review committee meeting for all submitted site plans. Discussion continued regarding obtaining an engineering feasibility review with site plans.

Chairman Antkowiak: So we could add this review as part of what we’re requiring prior to the pre-site, whether we do it or Sid does it. Birchler: I’m going to suggest this: I think in #1 it should say “The applicant shall submit four (4) copies of the site plan. The zoning administrator shall review one copy and send one copy each to the township planning and engineering consultants for review to determine whether the site plan is acceptable.” So that way immediately it’s going to me and to Project Control for a sufficiency review and you’re going to get a letter that’ll tell you whether there’s enough information there for him to consider. Then I think we should add a letter D and that should be the first couple of sentences on 21.05, #1 as it CLAY TOWNSHIP PLANNNG COMMISSION MINUTES OF JUNE 11, 2014 Page 3

exists now so that there is an optional review by the site plan committee if the applicant requests one. I’ll just reword that a little bit. Kozel: Should we make a flow chart out of this? Birchler: I could show you some examples of that. If you go to our website and click on our client tab. We have done a number of projects for other communities that are procedures manuals or developmental approval manuals. Patty has given me copies of the materials that they hand out to an applicant, like if someone comes in for a commercial site plan application what they get is the site plan application form and a description of the process they have to go through and then a copy of the entire commercial zoning district provisions out of the zoning ordinance. The approach that we’ve taken in those procedures manuals is a little bit more like what Tom’s talking about where we have some basic instructions to the applicant that explains the process they’re going to be going through. We have the application form, and then we do have a flow chart that shows exactly the process from the day that they submit and an approximate time line and it comes out the other end with an approval or denial depending on whether you do your work properly. Those kinds of administrative things you want a little bit of flexibility there so if something is not working, if we keep it at the administrative level it’ll keep the process a little bit more nimble. Miller: We, historically, we would get a preliminary application and we would get the checkbox deal, everybody looked at this and that, yes, yes, yes and so on. In a very frequent number of cases there were a lot of N/As and it wasn’t clear whether the N/A was because it wasn’t applicable or whether it was not enough or if it was outside of their purview. Birchler: I noticed that this evening. Particularly the police and fire reviews had a lot of N/As checked and they were for questions like “Is there an appropriate sidewalk connection between the parking lot and the building?” and it was N/A, does that mean you’re not sure or does that mean that it doesn’t apply? It certainly applies so it must mean that you’re not sure. It’s probably too much to tackle right this minute but in the future, we probably want to find a way to get a little bit more substantive review from those department heads. I think that the way that the township has structured it in the past, we’re only asking our departments for very minimal information when we could be asking them for a more formal review. I’m wondering when and where that formal review occurs. Maybe at the detailed engineering level. Miller: I think my point is, that that procedure that we were dealing with is #1 archaic and #2 is driven by a desire to not spend money so we tried as much as we could to keep it internal, and when questions came up that they weren’t comfortable answering it got an N/A and it didn’t go any further than that. That’s why I think we’re raising this issue about engineering. What I see here is that you’re obviating that whole procedure, you’re obviating that checkbox. You guys up front and the engineering people are going to handle all of that as an internal component of your preliminary evaluation. Birchler: Most of that we might hit on in terms of whether or not the information is there and if it’s not there we’re going to say it needs to be provided. Miller: So what I’m saying is when it comes to us, this thing has been culled pretty good and we can feel reasonably comfortable if you’re bringing it to the board that this thing should be in a condition to fly. CLAY TOWNSHIP PLANNNG COMMISSION MINUTES OF JUNE 11, 2014 Page 4

Birchler: I don’t think we want to bypass critical department heads. I’m just not sure when it is that we’re asking the fire chief to make sure that he’s got the circulation that he’s supposed to have around a building, etc. Bryson: We might have to have a meeting with the department heads. Birchler: That’s a good follow up that we could do.

Chairman Antkowiak: It’s not that we never have gotten information. So I don’t think it’s totally unnecessary. A revision of some kind perhaps or at least an understanding of what we want from them. Schweikart: Maybe like Artie said, a department head meeting to see what everybody thinks they’re supposed to be doing. Birchler: I think that’s a great idea.

Chairman Antkowiak: We’re still dealing with the site plan committee right? Section 21.01, at the bottom of it, it indicates all site plan reviews except those permitted by one and two-family dwellings shall be reviewed by the three-member site plan review committee of the Planning Commission led by the Planning Commission Chair. This includes those site plans which would subsequently require full Planning Commission. We have to get that out of there or revise that. Birchler: Thank you for catching that.

Discussion continued regarding the site plan review committee and reoccupancy.

Birchler: I did a bunch more research after the last meeting. I talked at length with Sid. I have not talked to Keith Zick yet. I felt like I had a pretty good idea of what we needed to do after talking to Sid. But there’s an issue with the term we were using in the previous draft, navigable waterways. Sid was concerned that he thought it was a Corps of Engineers definition, but it’s actually a court definition. It’s actually been determined by litigation in the federal court system, what constitutes a navigable waterway. A navigable waterway based on federal case law is one that can accommodate commercial shipping. So that’s a term that, if we were to use that one, it would only be talking about some parts of the lakes and maybe not even all of the channels. I did a little bit more digging and I think what we’re talking about is what we would call a boatable waterway and I provided a definition of that being, for purposes of the ordinance, a boatable waterway shall mean any water body that is wide enough and deep enough to float pleasure-craft or boats of any size. I got some of that from the court rulings that I was reading and then a little bit from some online research. I think maybe that definition will actually work for the purposes that we’ve been talking about – the channels, the lake, the canals, those are all boatable in the sense that someone can put a canoe or a kayak or a motorboat or fishing boat, I mean that’s the whole purpose of those waterways is to get folks that are on the canals or the channels out to the lake. So now, we would be saying that all properties abutting a boatable waterway have to maintain that unobstructed yard space. I changed some of the terminology here to say “Beginning at the seawall, the bulkhead or the normal high watermark of the shoreline, the full depth of the minimum required rear yard setback in the zoning district.” So, what we could say then is that they have to maintain CLAY TOWNSHIP PLANNNG COMMISSION MINUTES OF JUNE 11, 2014 Page 5

that unobstructed view for what would normally be the rear yard setback required in their zoning district. Any non-required yard areas, they are free to put an accessory building up or whatever they want, as long as it’s in that non-required rear yard. The way the ordinance is currently structured, it’s almost like designed to have neighbors fighting with one another. If they’re doing what they’re allowed to do under the ordinance then we kind of get ourselves out of that neighborhood squabble sort of situation. To me, the current regulation with that 45 degree angle coming off the corners of the house is creating this wavy line and that means some people get more benefit and other people get less. To me, there’s just something patently wrong with that. We need to establish a line that’s fair to everyone. Section 3.11 in your ordinance has some supplementary setback provisions for lake, river and canal lots, so this was already in your ordinance. In the course of looking at this, I noticed that the language in there is rather poorly constructed. I underlined the part that was troubling me, it says “In the event that there are principal buildings located on adjacent lots which are different than the setback minimums listed above, than an alternative setback line may be established by averaging the setback of principal structures located within 330’ in both directions of the subject property.” Different from the minimum could mean larger than the minimum or less than the minimum, it doesn’t say. Larger than the minimum, where you’re saying if the guy next door has a greater setback than what he’s required to have then you’re also going to have to have a greater setback, it won’t be as great as his but it’ll be the average of his and everybody else’s within 330’. I was a little bit uncertain how to make these things mesh properly. Miller: Are you saying take that underlined section out? Birchler: Well, I think if there’s an established setback that’s less than what’s required those averaging provisions make sense. But when there’s an established setback that’s more than the minimum required I don’t think we can make people set their house back further. I’m not even sure why there’s two variations of it, what’s the difference, you have lake, river or canal lots and then you basically have everybody else and then you have the same language that they all have to abide by an established setback. That seems to me to be very complicated to enforce and administer. I seriously doubt that Sid Brown is doing this, but this literally challenges him every time he gets a building permit application to go out to the site, go 300’ in each direction from that house and make sure that everybody else is all the way up to that minimum line and if not he has to calculate an average and tell this guy he has to move his house back. I don’t think Sid’s doing that. But this ordinance says that this is what Sid is supposed to be doing. We went after what we thought were 3 simple things that we were going to do amendments on and there’s these other sections of the ordinance that I need to address, that are directly related to the site plan committee and here’s one that’s related to the concept of unobstructed yard space. Does this section require people to have a greater rear yard than what the minimum is? Simon: It says “may be established” by averaging. It doesn’t really make much sense at all. Would it make sense to pull it out? Birchler: I feel like I need to think about section 3.11 a little bit more, but it does bear some relationship to the unobstructed yard space. If you’re comfortable with the unobstructed yard space that we’ve developed to this point, I think we can move ahead CLAY TOWNSHIP PLANNNG COMMISSION MINUTES OF JUNE 11, 2014 Page 6

with that independently of 3.11 to see whether we need to amend it. It is what it is. Either we’re applying it right now or we’re not. Sid brought it to my attention, I don’t know how it’s being applied. Miller: Maybe it shouldn’t be applied at all. Birchler: I guess that’s the question that we need to address. There is a direct relationship in part 1 to the unobstructed yard, because it specifies the shoreline setback and what it’s specifying is the rear yard setback for each of those districts which is exactly what we’re saying in unobstructed yard space in 3.29. I mean, we’re saying the same thing in 3.29 that 3.11 says. Kozel: What happens if someone tries to reclaim some submerged property like during a time of low water, the DNR lets them put their seawall out, say another 50’ or something and now we’re saying you have to go by the bulkhead and all of a sudden that person can move their house up forward in front of everybody else? Birchler: That’s a really good question. Most of the time everybody’s seawall lines up.

Discussion regarding unobstructed yard space continued.

Miller: Did you mean to drop the 3’? Birchler: I think I did intend to drop that. Chairman Antkowiak: Are you referring to the original in the ordinance? Miller: 3.29. Chairman Antkowiak: But now, if we’re going to eliminate the original unobstructed yard space we have no reference to the grass, sod, shrubs, hedges, etc. for the 3’. There is no mention of that. Birchler: Okay, do we still want to let people have anything they want up to 3’, including a fence that’s 3’? Kozel: Sure. Chairman Antkowiak: It really doesn’t say a fence, we just kind of interpreted it that way. Kozel: Can they put a fence just on one side of their property and not the other? Birchler: This is such a complicated problem. Miller: The way he handles fence between the two I really kind of like his A, B and C in terms of how the findings play out. Because it goes back to the issue of need, security and purpose. That’s great. So the idea of throwing the word fence in here as we had it in our existing, now that we defined it and set up those criteria, I don’t see that it causes us any heartburn at all. Chairman Antkowiak: I agree it goes back to the original question about the ZBA having this authority and how do we define this authority and how do we set up the standards. Now we’ve also gone about saying that the 45 degree unobstructed yard space is gone. Are we not going to get an avalanche of people coming to us? Birchler: Are we saying that we do want to put back into the definition “void of all buildings, structures, fences, shrubs, hedges and similar improvements in landscaping above a height of 3’”? Are we saying that that really needs to be back in there, so they can put up a 3’ fence, just not anything taller? Simon: 3’, that’s not very secure. Chairman Antkowiak: Well that’s a separate thing. CLAY TOWNSHIP PLANNNG COMMISSION MINUTES OF JUNE 11, 2014 Page 7

Birchler: That’s where the board of appeals comes in. That’s much more like a traditional ZBA variance case. It puts it into the normal bailiwick of the ZBA, it’s now much more like a variance or something that is a change in the normal standard in the ordinance and only the board of appeals has the power to make those kind of changes. I’ve taken that one about as far as I know how to take it and I think there is still a relationship between that and section 3.11 but I haven’t come up with a mental plan for what I would suggest we modify. Chairman Antkowiak: My thought was that this language of giving the ZBA authority to do it based on those standards is not going to open up fences throughout this whole community because those are pretty stringent. Miller: Those three standards are awesome, right on. Chairman Antkowiak: Then we can deal with it that way. I don’t know about the 45 degree.

Chairman Antkowiak: I doubt that we’re going to finish this tonight. Do you have enough there? Birchler: I do and I might suggest that we make a little bit of a tweak to section 3.11 so that’s it clear that it’s only when everyone else is already closer than the minimum that that average could come into play. Chairman Antkowiak: So we could leave all that information in there but just make it clear. Birchler: Because I really think that the way that it’s written it goes both ways

Chairman Antkowiak: So in review here, we have the issue about colocation which is going to be set up for public hearing. You will provide us with more information on the site plan approval thing. We may look at it on the 23rd. As for the unobstructed, you’re going to work on it.

6. PLANNING CONSULTANT'S REPORT:

Birchler: Nothing to report.

7. Z.B.A. REPRESENTATIVE’S REPORT:

Chairman Antkowiak: Nothing to report.

8. BOARD REPRESENTATIVE’S REPORT:

Miller: The only thing I’ll make mention of is since we’ve been making all these changes in these ordinances about sending people back to have more studies done, you should be aware that we did jack up the rates for all of the fees and stuff like that to make them more consistent with other organizations in taking care of that. So, that’s a pretty substantial bump.

9. CHAIRPERSON’S REPORT: CLAY TOWNSHIP PLANNNG COMMISSION MINUTES OF JUNE 11, 2014 Page 8

Chairman Antkowiak: Nothing to report.

10. PLANNING COMMISSION MEMBERS COMMENTS:

Nothing.

11. PUBLIC COMMENTS:

Bryson: I tell you, the zoning enforcement, we got a few big wins this couple three weeks on Harsens Island, on the private part of North Channel Drive there has been for 8-10 years a mound of dirt blocking the view from people and that has been leveled out. The guy moved all the boats off a residential property, there were about 15 boats illegally stored. Our new grass ordinance is in effect and we sent about 20 some letters out and all but 2-3 are cut. There are a couple of bank-owned ones that we’re probably going to have to cut next week, but actually it is working out really well.

12. ADJOURNMENT:

Motion made by Holcomb, supported by Schweikart to adjourn the meeting at 9:10 p.m.

AYES: All NAYS: None MOTION CARRIED.

Respectfully Submitted,

Victoria Brobst Anthony Antkowiak, Chairperson Recording Secretary Clay Township Planning Commission