Document Missoula_doc_d3a6b0d922

MISSOULA CONSOLIDATED PLANNING BOARD MINUTES JUNE 1, 2010 TABLE OF CONTENTS I. CALL TO 2 II. ROLL 2 III. APPROVAL OF MINUTES 2 IV. PUBLIC 3 V. STAFF 3 VI. PUBLIC HEARINGS 3 A. TITLE 20 CITY ZONING ORDINANCE: PROPOSED MAINTENANCE AMENDMENTS – 2010 VII. COMMUNICATIONS AND SPECIAL 31 VIII. COMMITTEE REPORTS 31 IX. OLD 31 X. NEW BUSINESS AND REFERRALS 31 XI. COMMENTS FROM BOARD MEMBERS 32 XII. 32 ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 2 of 32 MISSOULA CONSOLIDATED PLANNING BOARD MINUTES JUNE 1, 2010—7:00 p.m. Missoula City Council Chambers, 140 West Pine MEMBERS PRESENT Heidi Kendall, Vice Chair John DiBari Kelley Durbin Tim Ibey Don MacArthur Jerry Petasek ALTERNATES PRESENT Tim Skufca [7:06 pm] MEMBERS ABSENT Jennifer Clary, Chair Jonathan Haber Jerry O’Connell ALTERNATES ABSENT Carol Evans STAFF PRESENT Jen Gress Tom Zavitz Sharon E. Reed OTHERS PRESENT Elaine Hawk John Hendrickson Steve Laber Please Note: Written comment and meeting handouts received at this meeting are available for review at the Office of Planning and Grants. Planning Board, City Council and County Commissioners have received copies of the comments for consideration. Photocopies may be obtained from OPG. An administrative fee is required for photocopies. I. CALL TO ORDER Heidi Kendall: All right. Good evening, I’m going to call the Missoula Consolidated Planning Board meeting of June 1st to order. [7:01 pm] II. ROLL CALL Heidi Kendall: Can we have a roll call, please. Roll call indicated that there were 6 members and 0 alternates present. [Tim Skufca arrived at 7:06 Sharon Reed: Madam Chair, you don’t have any alternates to fill in for the missing members. You do have six members present; so you have a quorum. Heidi Kendall: All right. Thank you very much. III. APPROVAL OF MINUTES Heidi Kendall: We have a set of minutes to approve. If there are not any questions or concerns about those, I would entertain a motion to approve those. Tim Ibey: So moved. Heidi Kendall: Moved by Tim Ibey. John DiBari: Second. Heidi Kendall: Seconded by John DiBari. Any discussion? All in favor, please say “aye.” [All Board members answered “aye.”] Any opposed? [All Board members were silent.] Heidi Kendall: That’s unanimous. And Tim Skufca raised the issue of electronic minutes, which I thought we could consider if someone wants to bring it up under New Business later in the evening. ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 3 of 32 IV. PUBLIC COMMENT Heidi Kendall: Is there any public comment tonight on things that are not on the agenda. Nothing. So we will move on. V. STAFF ANNOUNCEMENTS Heidi Kendall: Staff announcements, we have little memo from Mary McCrea noting that our schedule of meetings has been amended. We will not have a meeting on July 6th. We will have a meeting in place of that one on June 29th and that will be at the usual time, at 7:00 p.m. And we will have a hearing on June 15th, a County Rezoning Request at 3580 Highway 200. And that’s all we have for staff announcements. VI. PUBLIC HEARINGS A. Title 20 City Zoning Ordinance: Proposed Maintenance Amendments – 2010 This is a consideration of proposed annual maintenance revisions to Title 20. Fifty proposed corrections and clarifications are proposed and are located in various chapters throughout the ordinance. The proposed revisions can be viewed at the Office of Planning and Grants or on the web at www.co.missoula.mt.us/opgweb “News and Updates.” As directed by the Missoula City Council, the Missoula Office of Planning and Grants has drafted maintenance amendments to the Title 20 Zoning Ordinance intended to clarify or correct language in various sections of the code. The proposed revisions were drafted after consideration of comments from interested parties, and agencies. The Missoula City Council will conduct a public hearing on this item on a date yet to be determined. Heidi Kendall: All right, now we will move into the public hearing portion of our meeting; and we have one item, which is the proposed maintenance amendments to the new zoning ordinance, Title 20; and I will hand it over to Tom Zavitz for that. Tom Zavitz: Thanks Heidi. This is Tom Zavitz with the Office of Planning and Grants and I’m here today to ask you to consider and approve the maintenance revisions to Title 20, it’s a 50-item list that you have in front of you. Title 20 has been in effect for about six months, now; and our office has been keeping a list of errors and clarifications based on what we’ve heard from builders, architects, agencies, and staff, especially pertaining to errors in clarifications, as I’ve said. The list was circulated for agency and interested party comment in early March; we made some appropriate revisions; and then took the list to City Council on May 5th, where it was referred to you on May 10th. The list contains, again, unintended omissions, error corrections, and statements needing clarifications. Those are kind of the three general areas that all of these comments fall under. There are 50 of them this time and this project is one that we intend to do once a year; hopefully, the same time next year. My guess is that we would normally have something like five to ten items, but because it’s a new ordinance we have 50. And so based on that, I’m open for questions. And, as well, I could give an example or two, but I’m not sure… Heidi Kendall: Sure, I think that would be helpful to get any discussion started that we might want to have about this. Tom Zavitz: Okay. I’m going to first give my kind of a typical example of an item that there was a failure to bring some language forward and the description of a new method of, in this case, measuring the gross floor area for purposes of determining the required parking, which is No. 18. Our ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 4 of 32 consultant suggested that we simplify the measure…the calculation for measuring gross floor area; and in the past, we took the gross floor area, or footprint, of a building and then subtracted the storage areas, stairwells, restrooms, things like that, came up with a square footage, used that in a parking calculation to determine the required parking. What the consultant did was to change…to just eliminate this gross floor area…or the net floor area idea and just go with the footprint of the building, including all of those areas. In doing that, we needed to make an adjustment to the numbers in the parking table, especially the uses that used the gross floor area for the calculation; and it was inadvertently left off, the changes to all the numbers in the parking table. So, what we did to make up for the difference between measuring gross floor area and net floor area was to increase the calculation number for each parking use by 20 percent. And you don’t see those numbers there, but for…in the parking table for the uses that per…that use gross floor area for…to begin the calculation, those numbers would be increased by 20 percent. So that’s something that we simply just left off. And it seems a little complicated, it was just that we started it and we failed to bring the numbers through adjusted. There’s another example would be, and this one’s a little bit more complicated, but No. 47. Our permit staff asked that we tightened up the definition for existing grade, and especially, I guess, the question came up pretty quickly, hey what if a…we have a lot of lots that don’t have a final plat? What do we do then? When do we make a determine of…the determination for when existing grade measurement should be made. And so they’re…we took out some, as Permits Staff suggested, some sort of vague language and added: “In situations when a final plat is not available or the parcel is developed or partially developed, existing grade is the grade that exists at the time of application for building permit/zoning compliance permit.” So that one is more of a clarification, there; and I think that, by far and away, most of them are clarifications or corrections. We do have some new language, but that pertains to uses in the Parking Chapter where we found some uses that we really didn’t have a category for, so we added, I think, three or four new use classifications for the parking. But I’m…you know, I’m willing to answer questions, if there are any. There are 50, I could go through one-by-one, but I think there are many that are sort of very straight- forward. Heidi Kendall: I think that’s fine, Tom. I don’t think we need to have you walk us through each one of these changes. So, thanks for the staff report. I will now ask for public comment. Is there any comment from citizens on this item? No public comment, all right. So I’ll close the public hearing. And now we can think about how we want to consider this. My sense of this is that as a list of technical corrections that seem pretty straight-forward. It would probably be fine to have a motion and then raise any issues or questions that any of us have and move sort of efficiently in that way. I don’t know if anyone has any questions that they want to ask about this or concerns or anything like that. But, that seems to me a good way to go. Tim? Tim Ibey: Well I think it would be good to have some discussion on it first in case there are some changes, then we don’t have to amend the motion; and I don’t know that it needs a lot of discussion. Heidi Kendall: All right, sure, that’s fine. John. John DiBari: Well one of the things I noticed in reading through here is that there is a…I’m not sure what’s the right word, a going back about that to some of the language or thoughts that were associated with Title 19. And given the fact that Title 20 was supposed to abandon Title 19 and stand on its own merits, I just thought it would be worth, perhaps, Tom giving us some philosophical justification for why it is. There’s the…I thought to go back to some of the things in Title 19 and I could come up with some reasons why that might be the case, but just to kind of get us going a little bit more, too, just…I might be helpful to understand some of the philosophy behind going back to a document that we just decided to away with. ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 5 of 32 Tom Zavitz: I…Tom Zavitz, OPG, I’m trying to look for an example here. Is there one that sticks out? What I would say is where we refer to the Title 19, it is an item where what came through in the rewrite was not…the language did something that was completely unintended and the…the regulation in 19 wasn’t meant to be described differently, but especially as identified by the Permit Staff. Most of all of these where we say we’re coming from…we’re looking back to 19; it’s something usually where the Permits Staff has said this is vague and it doesn’t carry through what we…you know, what the law was and what we still…there’s been no comment or suggestion to make a change or to rewrite it or update it, and you got that wrong. And we needed to go back and more clearly carry through whatever particular language; and I think, really, there’s not much more to it than that. Heidi Kendall: Tim. Tim Ibey: You brought up the parking ratio, I think it’s No. 18, and I’m reading that…now, does that increase the amount of parking that is needed or was that ratio reduced in the…in the draft? Tom Zavitz: Yeah, if we would have left the calculation as it is, without increasing the square footage in the table, we would have inadvertently (and we did) increase the required parking by something like 20 percent; it’s pretty close to 20 percent and I’ve had a couple of architects suggest that that 20 percent was fairly close. It can’t be exact for each and every use, but something like 20 percent and that seemed to carry over with using 20 percent, the same amount of parking that we required before. Tim Ibey: Thank you. Heidi Kendall: John. John DiBari: I have some specific questions, but I’m still trying to get my head around some of the rationale for things. We saw this, was it last week when there was…maybe two weeks, whenever we had the change for the building setback for garage. And so I’m wondering to what extent is that there’s really a problem with some of the things that you just mentioned from the permitting staff? To what extent there’s an actual problem with Title 20; and how much of it is well, we’re just not that familiar with Title 20 yet, and so let’s just go back to those things that we’ve been doing in Title 19, because we get that a little bit better, we’ve been doing it for so long? Are there compelling…I mean, I understand that some of the specifics of this do provide some compelling reasons to make some adjustments to Title 20; but, for instance, let’s talk about that Title…oh, No. 18, which is the off-street parking. You know, is there really a compelling reason to add 20 percent or does…what does that actually get us? How many fractional units of parking spaces can we deal with, and are we going to round up or round down, and can we just leave it there and see how things actually go? Tom Zavitz: And maybe I didn’t explain that as clearly as I could have. And maybe another way of putting it is that if we measure just the gross floor area, and then take that number to the parking calculation chapter, we wind up with 20 percent more…something like 20 percent more gross floor area than we did before…or floor area, let’s just call it floor area—we use floor area to calculate parking for some uses. So, say, with this new…and he did this in order to simplify, instead of having…and we would often have arguments about what was calculated in the net floor area, what areas were storage, what areas were office space, what areas were to not be counted in the floor area. And he…I suggested this just to simplify making that first, initial calculation. So, in doing that, the floor areas are generally something like, and maybe this isn’t exact, but it increased the parking requirements for each of the uses by something like 20 percent. So, as…you know, as we went through the process, there was never really anybody asking to increase the parking requirements; and we inadvertently increased the parking requirements by changing that first calculation. If…I guess we could run through an example, but essentially, the floor area that we used before…say, on a 10,000 square foot, say, building. If you took out the bathrooms, and you took out stairwells, and you took out the storage areas, say you had 8,000 square feet. Now, I take that 8,000 square feet to the parking table, and to…for instance, let’s go to, say...okay, fraternal organization: one parking space per 200 ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 6 of 32 square feet. Well, we now have more square feet in the building by simplifying our calculation and including rest rooms, storage areas, stairwells, so by increasing the floor area that we’re measuring in the same building, we’re increasing the parking because we divide 200 square feet into that 10,000 now, instead of dividing 200 into the, say 8,000, if you didn’t include the storage areas and things like that. Heidi Kendall: I saw a couple of hands go up. Jerry. Jerry Petasek: Just real quick, I wanted to say that when I was reading through it, and for the fifth time I saw, oh, and in Title 19, that’s when I started saying…well, the same thing you’re saying, why are we going back to Title 19? And then I realized, you think back to when we did Title 19, doing Title 20 was actually a process of cleaning up Title 19; it wasn’t necessarily changing everything we had on the books, it was to make Title 19 more readable, more easily understood. And so it does make sense to look back to 19 and say, what was the intent of 19 and how did we fail when we rewrote 20? And so by changing just a few things around, you know, and I’m looking at, you know, No. 13 about Home Occupations. Well, Home Occupations are permitted in rental units in 19, but they are not now in 20; so we’re going to clean up that language and make it possible. So I was right where you were, but I think ultimately referencing 19 still makes sense. It’s just the intent of 19 is where 20 is supposed to be. Heidi Kendall: Thank you, Jerry. I think that’s a really…that really captures well a good answer to what John was asking. I think if you’re asking, you know, was there a philosophical, you know, an attempt to change the philosophy, I think the answer clearly is no. And so if the number of parking places resulted in a higher number, that was certainly not the intent and this is a way of making it neutral to what it was before. Mr. Hendrickson, did you want to say something about this? John Hendrickson: John Hendrickson, MBIA. No, I think Jerry and you cleared it up. That’s what I wanted to say. Not everything in Title 19 was bad, it’s just that there’s a rush to get things done; there was words left out and language and all kind of consequences. So now we’re going back and cleaning everything up. I think you two said it quite well, thank you. Heidi Kendall: Thank you. I wouldn’t say there was a rush to get it done. Tim…Skufca, first and then Tim Ibey. Tim Skufca: So, therefore, we are assuming that Title 20 isn’t pushing Missoula into any new territory; we’re just trying to keep the status quo and just make it simpler? Heidi Kendall: Tom, do you want to take that one? Tom Zavitz: Well, the main intent in doing this was to keep the intentions from 19 that were good, bring them forward with clearer language, and sometimes we have interpretations that weren’t even written. But now they are and it’s just an attempt to modernize and bring this old code up-to-date, and so when it…we don’t mean to look back to 19 as, you know, a let’s go back to that. I think it’s just more of, we really missed the intent on that in the new language and we need to change it so that it carries through as it was intended to. Heidi Kendall: Follow up? Tim Skufca: Well I guess…take, for example, two weeks ago when we talking about the garage. We got a lot of backlash from the building community because it…it hit too hard, what maybe the intent of 20 was supposed to do. And so we rewrote it and then, is that…I kind of understand where John is coming from; it’s like maybe the staff isn’t onboard with what 20 could be instead of saying, oh, this isn’t where everybody thought it should be, and so let’s push it back to where we’re comfortable. ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 7 of 32 Tom Zavitz: There’s some of that, yes. In some cases here, and if…as with those garages, we’re…and we’re really trying hard and that’s another thing that could be done tonight. Any of these that seem like too much of a policy change, like those garages, we would like to have those stay separate. We felt that these didn’t rise to that level. But, you know, if there is the feeling that they do, or that they might, then maybe they don’t need to be reviewed here. Really, we’re hoping that this is the beginning of a housekeeping project that you see every year and that you do see those other ones, like the garages, separately, because they represent a sort of a significant policy change, yeah. But, yeah, you’re first point, yeah, there probably is some of that where the new language just wasn’t…it just failed to bring through what we use as a town, as a community, and we needed to look back at 20; and those…most of these…and, by the way, most of these have been brought forward because they were really road-tested, they were used, they were found while reviewing permits. So, you know, maybe there is some of that, and that’s possible, sure. Heidi Kendall: Tim Ibey. Tim Ibey: You know, I understand that 20 is a living document and I’m just wondering when we’re going to bury 19 and quit going back; and, not that we’ve done a lot of that, but at some point, we have to let a document stand on its own and make the changes to it without always referring…otherwise, we’ve got 19 and 20, and they both seem to be alive and well. And it would be nice to move into 20 and make our changes in 20 without consistently going back to another document that seems to be or was supposed to have been put aside. Tom Zavitz: And you make a good point, I really…I can’t argue with you, because I…you know, 19 was a nightmare in a lot of ways, so…I think maybe that’s possible that we might have looked at this a little differently and taken a different approach, but this is the one we landed on, anyway. Heidi Kendall: John. John DiBari: So to go specifically to an item, can we go to No. 18, like we started with a little bit ago? Tom Zavitz: Sure. John DiBari: So, what is the upshot of this? From my interpretation in reading this, we were going to increase parking by making this change, but it sounded like you were then…after your description, that we were going to wind up decreasing parking by changing this. Which one is it? Tom Zavitz: By changing this we will…we will wind up with the same parking or very similar parking requirements as we did with 19. John DiBari: Okay, relative to 20, though, are we increasing it or decreasing it? Tom Zavitz: With 20, it wound up probably increasing everything 20 percent. John DiBari: So we’re going to…relative to 20, we would be increasing the amount of parking by 20 percent; relative to 19, we’d be keeping it the same. Tom Zavitz: Yes. We’re going to…. Heidi Kendall: This change that’s being proposed in this table, decreases the parking requirement? Tom Zavitz: From what it is now in 20, which was an inadvertent increase. John DiBari: Okay. ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 8 of 32 Jen Gress: Do you understand it? John DiBari: We’re decreasing it relative to 20, to make it consistent with what was in 19. Jen Gress: Right. There was no intention to…there was no intention to raise the parking for the existing the categories through Title 20, but it did happen. Heidi Kendall: Are there other issues? Don. Don MacArthur: I got to a couple. So Tom, on the first (that’s all right, it’s only the agenda) the item No. 4, Introductory Provisions, it says some stuff about clarify the development in overlay districts adopted under Title 19 will continue to be reviewed under Title 19 standards. Can you tell me which are those that are still…this is Item No. 4 on Tom’s list. I thought we had addressed all those overlays and either created new overlays or that they were gone. What are we talking about here? Tom Zavitz: Especially with the Special Districts, all of the special districts, which are zoning districts that stand on their own, those were not included in this change. For instance, SD 2, overlay districts like EC that remain as zoning on the ground, even though we changed EC from a zoning district to a use with development standards, we still have EC mapped on the ground. So we have EC zoning, when a person comes in to do a project on EC zoning, we have to go back to that 19 language from when that was…same with an SD2, any kind of zoning… Don MacArthur: So this is waiting for the next step, the remapping step, to clear up these issues. So at that time EC would maybe go away and EC standards would apply. Is that right? We’re kind of in this, because at the time that this came forward it was presented to us as a two-stage process—the first is to get the structure of the document and do the, you know, clean up the writing, but do nothing to the mapping and the definition of the size and location of the mapped zones and that there was going to second piece which was addressing that mapping and maybe there’s some…there’s a place in between those two things that we’re caught. Is that accurate? Tom Zavitz: Yes. I don’t know what the energy is and when that next step will occur. We intended, for instance, to bring SD2 along, but once we got to looking at SD2 and the kind of time it was taking us with the rest of the ordinance, we…the decision was made to leave off the Special Districts so that at this point, they stand on their own and they stand with their language; and, for instance, if it was EC, yes, you would have to refer to Title 19. Also, in other types of developments, where they refer, in their language, to Title 19, that intent for that development to, you know, develop and remain under 19 was left, so that we will always look back at 19 for some site-specific developments, right? As well as special districts. Don MacArthur: Like a PUD or a something? Tom Zavitz: Yes. Now, I could…we could talk about that for a long time, but we were…we were at one point sort of forced to make a decision on what we were going to do about all of these that refer to Title 19 in their language, we couldn’t just ignore…we can’t ignore that; that’s in zoning, and so we say in our new language if it does…if it refers to Title 19 but doesn’t refer to a specific date or time then we say we’ll fall back on according to the last-archived version of Title 19, unless the regulations of Title 20 explicitly state otherwise. So, yes, there is some zoning out there that will…that at some time could or should be changed. CLBs, also, I think is a good example. Don MacArthur: Right. Okay. Let me go through my other questions, unless anyone wants to follow up on that… John DiBari: Could I? ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 9 of 32 Heidi Kendall: Oh, sorry. John. John DiBari: So, I was under the impression that Title 19 was repealed, so how…just…maybe you don’t have the answer to this; but from a legal standpoint, if there is no more Title 19, how do you go back to the last archived version of it? I mean, or is that consistent, legally? Tom Zavitz: I would say that it’s consistently, legally. I mean, we’ve…there’s been a large amount of thought put into that and we’ve reviewed that answer and that’s the best we can do with what we’ve got, here, and I think that by…I think the point is that by all of a sudden, now, referring to 20 for some special districts and special developments that then the intents for those districts would be a…fairly well changed, and that wasn’t the intent. Don MacArthur: I mean that it does seem like there’s a lesson learned here that we should never do this again. You know, when you write a special district, it ought to stand alone as its own thing without referencing all the other standards within the…the code, or it ought to reference whatever the code is at the time. I mean, whatever the special provisions are ought to stand alone and be their own thing and we shouldn’t write referencing other pieces of the code that will change over time, it just doesn’t make sense. Tom Zavitz: That’s...you’re right. Don MacArthur: So part of this is a…I mean, I understand where we are right now, we have to address all this code writing that we’ve done over the last 25 years in an attempt to be flexible. I mean, the purpose of all these special districts was a good purpose, that we were trying to advance the, you know, the vision statement of the ordinance as a whole, but piece-by-piece we’re making more and more problems for ourselves that are going to be hard to administer over time. So, it’s a lesson, I think, about writing code in such a way that when we do a special thing it doesn’t cause us problems in the future. I guess we’re…it looks to me like what they’ve suggested is a reasonable solution, although not a great one. I mean, it gets us through, maybe, and I’m sure we’ll have fights over it, but hopefully it won’t be that big. All right, so my next question was on the…Item No. 5, there was a residential district thing, it says “Amend the description of ‘two-unit house’ to better reflect the previous approach with Title 19. Multi- dwelling building standards are applicable if multiple two-unit houses are located on a single parcel.” Does this apply, also, to if there’s more than three single-family parcel units on a single parcel. I mean, is it just the number of units on a parcel that triggers it or is it a configuration, too? Tom Zavitz: I believe it is…it is the number of units on a parcel. Don MacArthur: So, maybe it ought to include, you know, more than…if, you know, more than one two-unit or more than three one-unit houses, you know, just to clarify that it’s all about how many dwelling units there are on a parcel. Tom Zavitz: I think you’re right, there, but…I’m going to pass that…I think that we can make that change now. Heidi Kendall: John. John DiBari: Is there something germane in Title 19 that’s brining this forward because I can’t remember what the reference to Title 19 was that caught your eye here and why you mentioned this. Don MacArthur: I guess I was…I don’t remember, I mean, I do have Title 19 in front of me, I don’t remember how it said in Title 19, and I guess I just was thinking that if the purpose with this was to clarify that two…that two duplexes constituted multi-family then, by extension, that we ought to also ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 10 of 32 clarify that more than three single families constituted a multi-dwelling, also. I mean it, just to be consistent because it seemed like we…you know, we were saying maybe initially single family or duplexes don’t ever have this to apply to them. Well now we’re saying, no, they do; and I just want to make sure we’re carrying it all the way through. You, okay, Heidi, if I keep going? Heidi Kendall: Well how do we want to handle this? I mean, there seems to be some interest in making a change, here? Don MacArthur: Well I guess my thinking is that, you know, I’d be happy to make a motion that we…that we…I’ll move that we take Item 5 from Chapter 20.05 and ask staff to review and add more than…a sentence saying something like: more than three single-unit houses would also trigger multi- dwelling building standards. I mean, I guess I want staff to go back and make sure that that is consistent with the intent of Title 19; and if it is, then add it in. Heidi Kendall: Okay, so we a motion, we don’t have a second, yet. Tom, do you want to react to that further? Tom Zavitz: Yes. I’m looking at 19 and I’m reading for multi-dwelling residential standards and the application says the provision of this chapter applies to multi-dwelling residential buildings that contain three or more dwelling units, including apartments, condominiums, or retirement homes. They also apply when a single parcel holds either multiple duplexes or a combination of multi-dwelling residential structures, duplex structures, or non-residential. So now I’m thinking the opposite of what I had said before that they had just left out two duplex units and that it wasn’t intended to be applied to three single or three detached units. Don MacArthur: So, my…I guess to be consistent with Title 19, we do nothing…to be consistent, we would do something. So I guess I’m not sure which is right because I think that you could have…you know, you could have 17 one-unit dwellings on a parcel that certainly should be subject to multi- dwelling standards; and I don’t know what the right answer is… Tom Zavitz: Don, we’re prepared to take something like that out and bring it back to you…write some language, or you know, make sure we have the intent right, because with 19 (and I’m looking in Jen’s book) we had copious notes that goes along with the text. So to be sure, let’s pull that one from the list right now, if that’s okay. Heidi Kendall: So the way we should handle substantive concerns that we have is to pull them rather than…so we will be recommending to City Council that a reduced number of changes be made and a change like this one, if we agree to this, will be handled separately. Tom Zavitz: Yes. Yes. Or if we… Heidi Kendall: So we won’t try to fix the changes here tonight? Tom Zavitz: We could try to fix the changes here tonight. We could if we want, if it seems like we’ve got the right thing. Heidi Kendall: I see, okay. Don MacArthur: So, you know, alternatively, I would feel comfortable…I’m not…I don’t care that much about this one. I guess I would feel comfortable putting it forward to ask Tom to bring forward to Council with a…that we were interested in this and wanted that to be reviewed by Council, but that we didn’t have language in front of us, and we weren’t exactly sure about it. I mean, just to sort of pass it along so we don’t see it again, I’d like to…I mean the whole point of this maintenance amendments thing in my view is that it should be done swiftly and we ought to…if things are problematic, we take ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 11 of 32 them off the table and get rid of them, but the other stuff should go through cleanly and it ought to be routine. We don’t fight through it, and we don’t spend four meetings doing it. We just deal with it and move. So I kind of like…you know, I’d like to put it back in Tom’s court and… Heidi Kendall: Okay. Don MacArthur: …and say, you know, take our motion and bring it forward to Council with your recommendation; and, you know, if this body approves the motion, then it’s a motion to direct Tom to bring forward an option for this and have Council decide. Heidi Kendall: That sounds great to me. Tim Ibey: Second. Heidi Kendall: Okay, so we do have a second to Don’s motion. Any discussion on that? Okay, let’s vote. All in favor, please say “aye.” [All Board members say “aye.”] Any opposed? [All Board members are silent.] Heidi Kendall: Okay, so Tom has some direction to explore that further. Sharon Reed: Excuse me, Heidi, who seconded that? Heidi Kendall: Tim Ibey. All right, Don. Don MacArthur: All right, so I…and I don’t have comments on every item, but I do have a comment on 6, so, this is the RM2.7 that used to be called Mixed Use, I think, in Title 19. And it says…and maybe this was always the intent, was that commercial and industrial buildings could be…you know, replacement of buildings. Can you explain this to me, Tom, and what the intent is and how this clarifies? Tom Zavitz: I’m going to try to do that. Let me look at my notes, here, number Tim Ibey: Don, as I recall, it was brought up that if you were replacing a building that had a present use; and if it was going into the same use, that was fine, but once it was changed to away from the commercial and industrial, then it would no longer be commercial and industrial. It wouldn’t have the option of going from one back and then again being commercial and industrial. Tom Zavitz: And so, to add to that, that when 2.7 was created, the mixed use and R12 were combined; and we wanted to carry forward the restriction to commercial or industrial, and we didn’t do that—that was just omitted accidentally, we meant to… Don MacArthur: Right, right. Okay. Heidi Kendall: Do you have more? Don MacArthur: I do. Heidi Kendall: Okay. Don MacArthur: If I can go through. I’m on 20.40, Item 12, that says that amend townhouse standards to reflect the previous approach with Title 19, minimum parcel area reference in Title 20 does not correspond with regulation under Title 19 and should not require a minimum parcel size. So this, as I understand it, this is now a new…like there…previously, in Title 20 the minimum parcel ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 12 of 32 anywhere that was allowed was 3,000 square feet. Is that right? And now, if you do townhouses, the minimum parcel is…there is no minimum. Tom Zavitz: And there was no minimum in 19, either, so. Townhouse standards were intended to stand alone and have that and, again, that was just something that was omitted and not brought forward. Don MacArthur: Okay. So, subdivision standards don’t necessarily dovetail with that. Is that true? Is it possible to make…to subdivide into a lot smaller than 3,000 square feet without a variance? I don’t remember the answer to that. I mean, I know we’ve been around this before that…this, to me, is a good thing. Townhouses absolutely should be allowed on a parcel smaller than 3,000 square feet, that is way too big for most townhouses. So this is good, makes sense, and it would be nice if the subdivision regulations also dovetailed with that so it was actually possible and encouraged to do this rather than discouraged and penalized through a variance processes. Tom Zavitz: I’m guessing that that’s the case, but we can certainly find out, you know. Don MacArthur: That’s okay, it’s outside our purview. Heidi Kendall: Yes, John. John DiBari: So, do we ever get one townhouse, or do townhouses come in more than ones. Don MacArthur: Yes. John DiBari: So, would it make sense—I mean, if you had three townhouses, would…is it still too much to have 9,000 square feet? Don MacArthur: Absolutely. John DiBari: Okay. Don MacArthur: I mean, a townhouse could be done a 2,000 square foot lot, appropriately. John DiBari: With landscaping, and parking and all that. Don MacArthur: Oh, yeah… John DiBari: Okay. I was just checking. Don MacArthur: Yeah, it’s…you know, you can do three of them, or you could do ten of them on 20,000 square feet. So I noticed…I was on Item 17, we had a lot of discussion about visible deck supports and exposed foundations and, you know, that thing that got changed to 12 feet from 8 feet, so there is now 12 feet of visible deck under there. It’s kind of crummy looking but I don’t know if I care that much, but…yeah, you can have a 10-foot ceiling in your basement with a 12-foot…I mean, there are steep slopes where this is hard to do, the 8-foot thing. And we…I think when we went through this before we thought this is going to be hard to do, it would look better, but it’s going to be hard. And here we are. Tim Ibey: Well I know you look at some of places up off from…I forget the name of the street, now, but off of the end of Russell, on the left-hand side, there, there has to be some of those decks that are 15, 18 feet off the ground with a 4X4 underneath them. But, you know, I’m not so sure that that’s…when I envisioned it, I envisioned having to have a deck that might have a set of stairs down to a lower part of the deck and I thought, gee whiz, you know, that would sure clean up a lot of the stuff ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 13 of 32 that we were looking at as you drive up that street and see all these decks that are way up there and a story and a half below. Don MacArthur: I think a lot of the ones you’re talking about, Tim, are also the ones where they…you know, they’re basically single-level living but they are on a steep-sloping site, so they have a 10- or 12-foot basement and the deck even extends out beyond that and then it’s posts have to go 15 feet down in order to have the deck off the first story. Tim Ibey: Right. Don MacArthur: So it really is kind of an ugly thing for the rest of the community, you know, it kind of works for the people who live there, because they never see it. Tim Ibey: Except when they are driving up to their house. Don MacArthur: Yeah. Heidi Kendall: John. John DiBari: Well and this is sort of what I brought up earlier. Maybe part of the intent was to not have what we’ve just described and to have Title 20 create what would be a meaningful change to the view of what we see in new development creating. So maybe we need to let this one ride for a little bit and see how it works before we go changing it so that we can have 15-foot porches. Or I don’t know, I’m just bringing this up as a discussion point. I mean, this might be one of those things that we actually intended to do in Title 20, like we did with the, you know, the garages but we fixed. So maybe this is one that we pull and see how it actually works out before we go about changing it. Heidi Kendall: I think we have some public comment on this one. Come on up, in any order. Steve Laber: My name is Steve Laber. When we…when this came up, what came about was a typical basement was anywhere from…roughly…it can be a little bit… Heidi Kendall: Excuse me for a second, can you be sure you’re speaking into the mic so that we can get you. Steve Laber: Yeah. You could be a little bit below 8 feet, but, typically, in a new house construction you want to design a ceiling that’s about 8 feet tall, then you have the thickness of the floor, or the thickness of the decking. The way the ordinance reads, is it’s to the top of the deck surface. So with a simple 8-foot basement, walking out, the top of the deck is going to be at least 9 feet above that grade to begin with. So the 8 foot doesn’t really work at all and yet be able to build a basement with a deck on your next level up. Then when you throw in the fact that you’ve got a hillside lot and you want to patio, you want your deck to extend a few feet out around the house, you’ve got the grade going down, then what you do is, all of a sudden now you’re 9 feet, 10 feet, so we had some discussion with the people from OPG and 12 foot seemed to be a reasonable compromise to where you could still build a customer a basement, maybe with a 9-foot ceiling, so you could hide your ductwork up in there, still have your deck come out. Because the thickness of the deck is included in that footage, that was why that came about. It wasn’t that we were trying to build 12 foot supports, it’s that from the surface of the deck down to the grade, realistically on any kind of a hillside, you can’t really do it with 8 feet. I don’t know if that helps any. Heidi Kendall: Thank you. Don MacArthur: Makes sense to me. Should I keep going? ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 14 of 32 Heidi Kendall: More comment? Looks like we have another comment. John Hendrickson: John Hendrickson, MBIA. As Steve said, we…the builders notice this and there were plans going through OPG and they were rejected, daylight basement type of potential, not in all cases, but in some instances of not being able to be built on hillside construction. We got together with Tom, and Laval and four people from MBIA sat down, you know, and went through and the language before you is a result of that. But, it all came about, as Tom said, when people came to the permit process, submitted the plans, and said all of a sudden, oh-oh, we can’t do that. And that wasn’t the intended consequence, you know, part of the Title 20. Heidi Kendall: Thank you. Don MacArthur: Can I keep going? Heidi Kendall: Yes. Don MacArthur: So I am on item 25, there is clarify the fact that some alleys may not be appropriate as the access to a parcel due to topographic, physical, or easement constraints. And I guess I…the response is to amend the following statement, “driveways from streets may not be created in residential zoning districts for parcels with access to an alley except those approved by City Engineer.” I would like to add to that sentence, “Except those approved by the City Engineer due to topographic, physical or easement constraint.” I mean, I guess my…I do think that there are some cases where this is true and that the alleys are problematic; but I don’t want to just put this in the discretion of the City Engineer, I want to make sure that it is for the purposes of dealing with those constraints. Heidi Kendall: Okay. John. John DiBari: Yeah. This is one that I had flagged, too. I guess my question is, isn’t that what a variance is for and then why would we put this in the hands of the City Engineer even for those conditions because there’s already a mechanism to address hardship? Heidi Kendall: Tom. Tom Zavitz: I really don’t have anything to add. That was a comment and suggestion that came from the City Engineer, from that agency; and you know, the intent is what Don stated, does allow a person to lobby the City Engineer. There is some, you know, flexibility there, if you just need an approval; but the intent is what Don is getting at, so it seems like a reasonable way to describe that situation. Don MacArthur: I mean, a variance is a pain in the neck and is subject to your neighbors not liking you and, you know, causing trouble for you. And it takes a lot of city time and if it’s an obvious thing, the City Engineer can make that call. I’m in favor of not needing a variance for this, myself; and I just want to, you know, make clear what the purpose is, not that the City Engineer just has discretion… John DiBari: Right. Don MacArthur: …but that City Engineer has discretion when there’s a constraint. John DiBari: It seems like this is written to improve efficiency, and I was just curious what the rationale was because we already do have a mechanism to work through this process that this would be somewhat circumventing. Tom Zavitz: You’re right. ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 15 of 32 Don MacArthur: So how did Title 19 put it? I mean, because I think that this may have been strengthened in Title 20. Tom Zavitz: I don’t know that they did describe that or describe the ability to get an approval from the City Engineer. I think that was just added by them in this comment round. And it seemed reasonable to the compilers. So it’s really up to you as to what you think. Heidi Kendall: So, Don, what you’re proposing is just to make sure that the City Engineer has these constraints, and if these constraints don’t exist, we don’t want the code to say that the City Engineer can change something when it should go through the variance process? Don MacArthur: That’s my take on it, is that if those constraints don’t exist, that the City Engineer should not be able to approve it just because he wants to. Heidi Kendall: Then that seems like a pretty minor change to me, but one that has merit. And so can we recommend that? Should we do a motion or could we just…we did it as a motion before, right? Don MacArthur: All right, I’ll make a motion that the…that Item 5 read, “driveways from streets may not be created in residential zoning districts for parcels with access to an alley except where approved by the City Engineer due to topographic, physical, or easement constraint.” John DiBari: Second. Don MacArthur: And that could be word-smithed, if it could be cleaned up, language-wise, but. Heidi Kendall: And that was seconded twice, but I think first by John DiBari. So we have a motion and a second. Is there discussion or public comment? All right. All in favor, please say “aye.” [All Board members answered “aye.”] Any opposed? [All Board members were silent.] All right, that’s unanimous. Don. Don MacArthur: So item 32, this was one of the odder of the provisions in Title 20. That you had to make a 6-foot landscape area outside of a fence on your property. So you have a fence on your property and then 6 feet of landscaping on the other side of your fence. So I appreciate that we’re fixing that, and I wondered on the second part of it, I’m wondering why…you know, it says provide a landscaped area at least 6 feet in width with a 6-foot solid wall fence or fence along or within the buffer area. So is this…do we think this now paraphrases what 19 had in it? I’m…because it somehow I think that in Title 20 it still talks about the landscaped area being more than just grass and in Title 19 I think it actually also allowed you to put parking into that area and now it does not. And I’m just wondering…this is actually…this is like one of those ones that is pretty critical for the development of smaller-scale apartment buildings in Missoula and I’m wondering, Tom, if you could…I’m not asking a good question—the good…the question is: Is this now the same as Title 19? I’m in support of what’s here, but I’m wondering whether we should get rid of the landscaped area, also because Title 19, I think, allowed parking within there, specifically, and this seems like a change. Tom Zavitz: I’m…we’re working on the 19 part of that and I’m…this arose when some…in the Permits Division there was question as to where the fence belonged, they wanted it spelled out, where does the fence need to be within that buffer area and so this change just allows more flexibility about where to put it. The whole regulation may be new or at least a new way of describing a buffer area, are you seeing anything, Jen, in 19… ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 16 of 32 Don MacArthur: So one other…you know, I was one of the people who started this permit question. The other thing is a lot of times there’s already fences that exist on the property line that might be owned by the neighbor—are you then supposed to put another fence up there? I mean, this seems to indicate you have to put a fence up. It’s kind of dumb to have two fences back-to-back. Tom Zavitz: Well yeah, it doesn’t address that particular situation; and your concern about the parking as well, I’ll say, again, I think that is up to you and… Don MacArthur: Well let me…I was trying to look at it in a…I’m not trying to be adversarial, here, I’m just trying to get at it because I don’t know if I know it well enough, but I was looking at Title 19 and it looks like, let’s see…buffer area inside in rear yards except yards adjacent to alleys; new multi- dwelling uses shall provide a buffer where the adjacent use or zoning district is a single dwelling and/or duplex. Buffer shall be a minimum of 7½ feet wide; paved vehicular use areas may extend into the buffer area if a fence or wall meet the buffer standards is provided along the property line. So that’s what I read in Title 19, page 221-5. Tom Zavitz: Okay, and I’m reading just prior to that, also, I think this pertains that walls or fences may be used as part of a buffer screen, they shall be a minimum of 5 feet high and a maximum of 6 feet high. So I think that it’s there, I think that the new language…I think it’s somewhat new, I think that’s the answer to your question, minimum width of 6 feet… Don MacArthur: We used to have…what I understand is from that…the previous buffering and screening paragraphs that there was…you could either put a 5- or 6-foot high fence, or you could put a 6-foot wide shrub and landscape buffer. Tom Zavitz: That’s right. Don MacArthur: And now you have to do both. Tom Zavitz: That’s right. Don MacArthur: And I guess I kind of don’t think you need to do both, but the purposes of a buffer, if you put a 6-foot high fence up there, the neighbor can’t see the landscaping you put in there anyway. So, then it’s just a question of may be for your own parcel. So I guess I…the point of all this was to suggest, and I don’t know how this should be addressed as a motion, but I think that it would be better if we said either/or; you know, either provide a 6-foot landscaped area or a 6-foot solid wall or fence, you know, at the property line. Heidi Kendall: John. John DiBari: I think maybe the point of this is that the landscaping would break up the mass of a 6- foot high fence or wall. Right? Does that make sense? Don MacArthur: For who? John DiBari: For the adjacent property owner. Don MacArthur: So if it was on the…if the wall was inside, I mean… John DiBari: This says that the wall is 6 foot…6 feet inside of the property line, and that there needs to be landscaping outside of that wall and my assumption is is that landscaping breaks up the wall for the adjacent property owners, right, and this only…this is only applic…I’m just trying to understand this, here, this is only applicable with, associated with multi-family. ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 17 of 32 Don MacArthur: Yes. We just did a property where there was a 5 foot side yard setback, so we…looking at this, said our building was 6 feet off the property line, and then if you follow that, you’d have to a fence that went right along the face of the building. John DiBari: Yeah, and then landscaping on the other side of that fence. Don MacArthur: Right. Which, I mean, all of that makes no sense. So the…what does seem to make sense to me—I guess the point is that I don’t think it makes sense if you have a fence to buffer, you know, to create a foreground for a fence on the other side of the property, I think the fence ought to be on the property line, then you can maintain up to it, and, frankly, I don’t see what the landscaping does in there and I think you ought to be able to put parking or other things up to it if you…if it’s right. Heidi Kendall: Tim. Tim Skufca: It’s more for when is a buffer required and not. Obviously, in your example, a buffer is not appropriate on a 5 foot side yard setback. So, it would seem that we should identify what instances buffers are needed, and then we follow it. Heidi Kendall: Jen. Jen Gress: I just wanted to make a comment for what it’s worth that that is one of three options, Letter B, it is both provide landscape area at least 6 feet in width with a 6-foot solid wall or fence along the interior of the buffer area, one deciduous tree is required per 20 linear feet of fence or wall—so I think it’s some of both, what John DiBari was saying as far as landscaping that fence. But it is an option, it’s Letter B of three options—so, I don’t know if it has anything to do with your conversation, but it seemed important to me. Don MacArthur: So I think that one of the other options was an 8-foot landscaped berm or landscaped area or something like that and then… Jen Gress: Provide a landscaped area at least 8 feet in width with at least one shrub per 2 linear feet of buffer area plus at least one evergreen tree and on deciduous tree per 30 linear feet of buffer area. Shrubs must be at least 3 feet in height at time of planting. And then the third option is a landscaped berm—provide a landscaped berm between 4 or 6 feet in height, if the berm is less than 6 feet in height, it must include at least one shrub per 3 linear feet along the top of the berm. So it seems to me that if you’re getting the 6 foot width, they’re wanting a little bit more buffering in there with it…the fence. And, initially, yes, the fence was required to be 6 feet into the property line so the landscaping was on the exterior of that fence. Don MacArthur: Right. So I guess my motion would be that the…that it would be that we amend the subsection to provide a 6-foot solid wall or fence along or within the buffer area and we eliminate the landscaped area of 6 foot in width. Because I don’t think that was the intent of Title 19, that…this is a new thing to add those two together. I remember when we looked at this, I said I’m not looking at this because you told me that it hasn’t been changed from the previous and it is changed from the previous and I think it should change back. You know, I’m okay with the 8 foot in width, and I think I’m okay with a 6-foot fence, but I don’t think you should have to do both. Heidi Kendall: Tim. Tim Ibey: Well, and I’m in concurrence because I see so much of this where there’s a landscaped area with a fence behind it, but if you bump that fence, you knock it over, because it hasn’t been maintained in years and that’s what people get to look at, because they don’t get to look at the nice landscaping that’s being taken care of on the inside, all they are seeing is a dilapidated fence until such time as it falls down, it doesn’t get maintained. ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 18 of 32 Don MacArthur: And I agree with all that and I think that it also ought to, you know, say that where a 6-foot, you know, an appropriate fence exists already, you don’t have to build another one. You know, if there is a fence that is already on the property line that works, 6 feet high and is appropriately opaque, go with it. Heidi Kendall: So, do you want to go over what that motion would be, then? Don MacArthur: So the motion is amend the subsection to say provide a 6 foot solid wall or fence along the property line; if an existing fence meets…fence or wall meets requirements, that can serve as your fence or wall (that should be better language), And that’s it, it doesn’t say anything about landscape. Tim Ibey: Well it just seems to me as though if I own a fence and you build next to me, you ought to participate in the maintenance of that fence. Don MacArthur: So, okay, you’ve got your fence up there along the property line right now, I’m building next to you, I build my fence right beside your fence, now how are we maintaining in between our fences? Tim Ibey: I’m just saying just that if you’re going to take advantage of my fence, I would like you to help me maintain your side of it. Don MacArthur: That’s a neighbor thing. Tim Ibey: Okay. Heidi Kendall: Okay. We have a motion, do we have a second? Tim Ibey: Second. Heidi Kendall: Seconded by Tim. Okay, any further discussion on this? John. John DiBari: I’m not going to vote for this and the reason why is because if I live next door and someone built a 6-foot-high concrete block wall, I wouldn’t want to look at it, I’d like to have them plant trees so to break up that mass and there’s two other options here, you don’t have to choose this one, so, I don’t think I’m going to support your amendment. Don MacArthur: So you weren’t supporting staff’s motion, either, because you’d be able to have…you just want to get rid of this wall altogether, or it has to be inside the buffer. John DiBari: Yes. Don MacArthur: Okay. Heidi Kendall: Okay. Any other discussion on this one? Don MacArthur: So let me clarify, because I didn’t mention this final sentence in the…about one deciduous tree is required per 20 lineal feet of fence or wall. You know, I happen to know that doesn’t work, either, because a lot of times you have things like five-foot setbacks and then you’re putting trees, I guess they are going to have to be really small trees in a 5-foot area. I’m going to leave it in there. So, I’m clarifying that that last sentence is included in the motion, that one deciduous is required per 20 linear feet of fence or wall. ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 19 of 32 Heidi Kendall: Tim. Tim Ibey: Is there some standards that a person has to come up to with a fence. I mean, a concrete block wall, I haven’t seen a lot of them, but I suppose they could be built. Is there some standards for fencing? Tom Zavitz: Not with our department, but with the Engineering Department, there would be, right. Heidi Kendall: Elaine, do you want to…? Elaine Hawk. Elaine Hawk with PLAND Land Use Consulting, and also speaking…representing the MBIA. I just want to go on the record saying we support Don’s amendment. I think that is very excessive and not very practical, too, and I also would like to see that you can still have the parking in the buffer. So if you’re talking about, you know, a 100- foot linear space, there, you’re easily eating up 600 square feet. And on your smaller lots, especially, that’s starting to eat up into, you know, other landscaping standards, parking requirements, and eventually you can’t have commercial there. So I would…we would like to see that supported. And just a note, too, there is the Title 12 fence ordinance and there’s also…this only applies when you’re next door to multi-family, correct? And residential single family? So, also, in lots of situations you’re next to multi-family that also has buffer standards, so you are getting quite a bit of separation when you’re applying this on the ground. Thanks. Heidi Kendall: Thank you. Don MacArthur: So I guess I would leave the motion as it is, but come back with another motion to have Tom bring forward to Council something on investigating the parking in the rear buffer. Heidi Kendall: And, I’m sorry, that’s something you want to do as a separate motion? Don MacArthur: Separate motion. I think that was in Title 19, it was in Title 19, that you could park in that rear buffer against a fence, you know, a 6-foot-high fence, so you can’t see it from the adjacent property, and I think it kind of makes sense to me but I’m not…I’m just throwing it out there and I think it should be weighed by the decision-making body and I don’t think we have the…I don’t think we have the language or the staff support to make it up right now. I’m suggesting that it get brought forward at Council. Heidi Kendall: Okay. All right, so we have a motion and a second, we’ve had some discussion and some public comment, is there anything more you want to say or ask, staff—Tom, Jen—or are we cool with this? Tom Zavitz: I think we’re cool with it. We’ve heard a few comments about that particular item and, yeah. Heidi Kendall: Okay. All right, are we ready to vote? All in favor, please say… Yes, Mr. Hendrickson? John Hendrickson: Just for clarification, is Don asking OPG Staff to bring forward the parking before Council? Don MacArthur: I will as the next motion. John Hendrickson: Oh, okay. Don MacArthur: You’ll get a chance on that, too. ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 20 of 32 Heidi Kendall: Okay, let’s vote on the motion. All in favor, please say “aye.” [Six Board members answered “aye.”] Any opposed? John DiBari: No. Heidi Kendall: One opposed. So the motion passes. Don MacArthur: So I would further move that…that we have staff investigate and bring forward to Council a motion that…that…that proposes that buffer space…that parking be allowed to go to within some closer distance of that fence, if a fence is used. And I think that is supported by Title 19 language, where buffers are allowed to have…side and rear yard buffers are allowed to have paved vehicular use areas in to them with a fence and I’d like to see a return to that potential. Nice motion. Heidi Kendall: All right, we have a motion, do we have a second? Tim Ibey: Second. Heidi Kendall: Seconded by Tim Ibey. Discussion on that? John. John DiBari: So it’s your thought that this makes for a more efficient use of that space or that there’s not wasted space that’s green that could be used for parking? Don MacArthur: So, you know, in many conditions, even when you abut a single family residence, most single family residences have a garage right against the property line or within 2 or 3 feet of the property line. So you’re talking about often a condition where you might need to put a fence, then 6 feet of landscaped area against somebody else’s parking area or garage. And it feels to me like it’s a better use of space to yes, require the fence, because that kind of takes the curse off that car for the next person over, but if there’s…it allows efficient use of that space which is oftentimes just sort of left over kind of crummy space along that back alley. So I think it’s better use…you know, it sometimes might get used for dumpsters or other things like that as well that are important to serve these buildings. Tim Skufca: So that’s the property line along the alley, 6 feet of buffer, fence, and parking within…right into that 6 foot… Don MacArthur: Side or rear yard buffers, not a front yard or anything like that, but if you had a side yard setback adjacent to another property that you wouldn’t be forced to pull 6 feet off of it when there’s a garage 2 feet on his side, you know, you’d be able to park right up to his…to the property line. That’s what I was thinking. Tim Skufca: Right. Don MacArthur: And that could be either a rear or a side yard depending on the configuration that we’ll see on this diagram that we’re about to look at. Heidi Kendall: Let’s have some public comment. Elaine Hawk: Elaine Hawk, again. In response to John, your comment, I would say, yes, that’s why I support it is that, yeah, it’s a much more efficient use of space. And another thing is to keep in mind that it’s not just parking, it was vehicular paved surface, so that could be your drive, your in and out, which in lots of cases your…you know, your curb cut and your placement location of your access or ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 21 of 32 egress is, you know, tricky. The first one that came to my mind was the Dairy Queen down on South Higgins, so, thanks. Heidi Kendall: Thank you. Tom, do you have any comment on this one? Tom Zavitz: I don’t. I think I’m for leaving it with the architects. I do, I feel like, well, you’ve got three options and I do…you know, I see the point. It is a little different, I think, than it was in 19, and… Heidi Kendall: It’s different now? Tom Zavitz: I think it’s meant to be maybe a little bit more stringent with the buffer but I don’t know that our department would, you know, insist on that. I don’t think we have that much of a stance on this particular one. I mean, as long as we have what we had, which was essentially a fence, and I think there was some talk about that the vehicles could overhang in that six-foot buffer area, but I don’t know that they…I’m willing to go with what, you know, with what seems to be right, here, and I think we are, as a department. Don MacArthur: You know, as a case in point, if anyone wants to go look at this in a pretty high intensity location, the Dearborn project that we designed uses that side yard against a residential single family use with a fence and I think that it’s very successful and low impact on the neighbors and I don’t actually think that it would be any lower impact if there was 6 more feet of distance. I mean, you can’t see…in some ways you can see the car less when it’s close up to that fence than when it’s far away. So I think it allowed…you know, in that condition, it allowed for a much more efficient use of space and I think it’ll be that way in many conditions around the city when we look to do…you know, as we look to create some higher-density housing in the urban area that’s…these things are important, each little implement. Heidi Kendall: All right, thanks. Tim. Tim Ibey: Well, and I think you still have a certain square footage that has to be landscaped within anyways, so either you have green grass and shrubs closer to the building or you have them in an area where they’re pretty much unusable. Don MacArthur: Right. Tim Ibey: And so I would rather see them closer to the building and usable than outside. Heidi Kendall: Yes, John. John DiBari: So for me there’s a little bit of tension, here, because my predisposition is to have…to use the land as efficiently as possible, but I also don’t want there to be just monolithic blocks of pavement interrupted by fences. So I’m trying to figure out how…you know, how we strike that balance and I don’t want there to be, you know, 6 feet of knapweed, that’s not what I want, either. So, you know, anyhow, that’s just sort of where I’m coming down on this and I want to make sure that if the intent is efficiency, that we get efficiency, but not at the expense of it just being ugly and just getting rid of green space. Don MacArthur: So, I would say to you that this is like a…it’s kind of like a microcosm of Missoula, that every time we look at zoning, it’s always easy to say, more green space, you know, that’s safer and better and we like green. And we do like green space. I mean, there’s nothing that is wrong with green space, except when it’s in the wrong place and a lot of times when you put it into urban context, it just allows…it creates inefficient land use and it doesn’t allow the right zoning that might be in place to actually be utilized. So, these are the kinds of things…you know, ever since I’ve been on Planning Board I’ve been kind of doing battle with anti-urban ordinance, which almost every one of our ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 22 of 32 ordinances has these little kernels of anti-urban. You know, if you do a multi-family house, you must protect it by a huge barrier of 50-feet of landscaped area, because it’s so evil. And this is not true at all—good multi-family housing is a great neighbor. And it just is about taking care to make it reasonably designed, but that’s true of single family house, too. So, you know, it’s just about good design and it’s about when you go into an area that allows, you know, maybe 45 dwelling units per acre, and fairly intensive, it doesn’t make sense to then require the six-foot strip that, as Tim points out, can never be other than kind of a leftover landscape area. It’s not really going to do anything good, let’s put the effort where it really belongs. John DiBari: The optimal word being good. So I’m in favor in good. We have plenty of examples of not good. Heidi Kendall: All right, we have a motion, that’s been seconded, we’ve had discussion, do we need to have the motion restated or we all…we’re okay. All right, let’s vote. All in favor, please say “aye.” [All Board members answered “aye.”] Any opposed? [All Board members were silent.] All right, that’s unanimous. Elaine. Elaine Hawk: Elaine Hawk, just one thought, quickly. Maybe I wonder if that’s something staff—the brick wall scenario or cement wall scenario is something that staff could look up in time for the City Council meeting to find out if Title 12 would permit that or not. Just a suggestion. Don MacArthur: Have you ever seen that? I mean, I’ve never seen someone go to the expense of a concrete wall, it’s a lot more expensive than a wood fence, it would have to be an active trying to be negative to your neighbor. John DiBari: Actually, I have seen it. It wasn’t here, but, you know, I lived in Tucson and our house had block walls all around it with an 8-foot-tall block wall in the back, so, you know, I… Don MacArthur: That’s the only thing that holds up there. I mean it is–it is brutal. John DiBari: It is, yeah. Heidi Kendall: Don, your next item? Don MacArthur: Okay, so I’m onto Item 47, Terminology…47. So the…we spent some time on this existing grade definition...47…so now the suggestion is to modify the existing definition and clarify as follows: grade, existing—the grade or elevation of the ground surface as approved with the final plat, situations when a final plat is not available or the parcel is developed or partially developed, existing grade is the grade that exists at the time of application. So this is what was suggested to us when we were looking at this; and we said, no, we want to go back further than that, and we don’t want somebody to be encouraged to plow the ground into whatever they want it to be and then come asking to call that the existing grade. We knew that it was kind of hard to figure out how to do this, but this…I don’t really want to change what we had. I mean, I’d like to change it if we could make it stronger or better but I don’t really want to change the intent to this, which is different. Heidi Kendall: Tim. Tim Ibey: Well, and I think some of what Don’s referring to is we saw a subdivision out in East Missoula that had obviously been cut into the hillside significantly and then brought forward for subdivision. ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 23 of 32 Don MacArthur: Are you on the mic? Tim Ibey: I’m probably just not talking into it. And that was…that was a real problem for us, here. I mean, you know, we all of a sudden have unstable ground that wasn’t natural and yeah, maybe it could be engineered around. But I think what we were looking at was something that was significantly improved or changed; and this, to me, just allows that. Don MacArthur: So the…the subdivision…there is subdivision and then there’s zoning, and subdivision, how does it read in subdivision now about the existing grade? You probably aren’t prepared to answer that. Tom Zavitz: No. Don MacArthur: But, I mean I guess the way it comes and dovetails is that you have to be in compliance with zoning in order to do the subdivision, so why shouldn’t the zoning also sort of, you know, further the notion that you’re really dealing with existing grade, not whatever grade you created before you came to apply. Tim Ibey: Correct. Heidi Kendall: Tom, I wonder if you could give us a little more background on this particular one. Is there a story to tell here? Why did this come forward? Tom Zavitz: Well I think the back…we covered the background and we’re…we’re…we are in favor, very much, of having a point in time established which would prevent grading before subdividing and then come in for your permit and all of a sudden you don’t have hillside. We’re…what Don is talking about is what we would like to see. We just, within our department, have not been able to land on anything and I remember the Planning Board discussion before, it was really difficult. This…our particular suggestion has to do with…doesn’t have to do with subdivision, it’s more referring to the lots that don’t have a final plat, and that’s what this language is intended to help with. But if we don’t want to go with final plat, you know, this is maybe one of those real ones where we do pull it out and we need to do some real work on this particular one before we go forward. We would…we just haven’t been able to land on what works for all cases, and so this was just meant to help us in the case where, it may be in a remodel, or a lot that just doesn’t have a final plat that we then have something to go by here, existing grade is the grade that exists at the time of application. But we’re not, by any means, looking for something that would allow grading beforehand. We’re, in fact, the opposite and, you know, where ever that answer can come from, we’d be happy to go for it. Don MacArthur: Isn’t there a…don’t we have two-foot contours of the whole city? I mean, there’s an aerial survey that was done of the city. Tom Zavitz: Okay. Yes. Don MacArthur: That’s close enough for me. I mean, we just say at the time of the aerial survey or, you know, I’m just looking for a point in time that there’s information about the entire city area, and, you know, gosh, if it was like that at the time of that survey, we’re good. I’m… Tom Zavitz: I’m not going to disagree with you because I think if…I know this—I know people in the department, somebody has found a reason that that doesn’t work. I don’t know what that is right now, and I’m not saying that it doesn’t work, I’m saying it may work. So, I don’t know, but if it works, then we’d be for that. Don MacArthur: So they…I guess there’s two questions, really, what brought this up is the existing grade for when a final plat is not available. ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 24 of 32 Tom Zavitz: Right. Don MacArthur: And what happened is that the entire existing grade definition kind of got dug up. I mean, it…because it took away all this thing about before human alteration and it just got to be much less, sort of precise, about what the intent was and maybe we don’t need to do that, maybe we just need to say what happens when a final plat is not available. You know, if a final plat is not available, refer to the 2002 2-foot contours. Tom Zavitz: Sure. Heidi Kendall: John. John DiBari: I know we have been searching for something and we’ve never hit on the right thing. I’m willing to try something and see if it sticks. Don MacArthur: Okay, I’ll make a motion that…that…I’d like to…I’ll make a motion that we do…we say the following as the definition: grade, existing: the grade or elevation of the ground surface after approval of the final plat and before human alteration such as grading, grubbing, filling or excavating. In situations when a final plat is not available, existing grade is determined by reference to the 2002 two-foot contour city aerial surveys. And I’m looking to you, Tom, for help about the exact date of that, what the most recent one is, that’s the most recent that I think I have, but there might be more better one. Tom Zavitz: Okay, I’ve got that. Heidi Kendall: Okay, we have a motion on that. Tim Ibey: Second. Heidi Kendall: Seconded by Tim Ibey. Discussion? Jerry Petasek: Do you want to name it by date or do you want to just say “most recent.” Don MacArthur: No. I want to name it by a point in time, I don’t want it to be constantly changing so that if you plow it up one year and then there’s an aerial survey the next year, then you’re okay. You know, as of some point in the past, that was the fixed point. You know, if you could prove that…you know, if you’ve got some hardship where that got changed and you weren’t in control, you’re going to have to argue it up with…you know, through variance or OPG or something. Heidi Kendall: I don’t know this stuff well enough to know for sure what this means, but I’m just trying to think of a hypothetical and so what if you have…I mean I can’t think of why there wouldn’t be a final plat, but what if you have an acre and you decide to get rid of a berm so that you can plant a vegetable garden? I mean, is that a…and then you want to develop something. Is that a hardship that you would…do you know what I mean? Is that question…does that even make any sense? But just thinking about something about where there would be some grubbing or whatever those other words are, where you would do something…where you would make a change for a positive social good, you know what I’m saying? I mean, maybe that’s okay, maybe it’s rare enough that that’s something that could be handled through a… Don MacArthur: So, my recollection, and this is…this is feeble after two years or a year since we really looked through this, but this existing grade definition appears in the hillside standards—that’s where it really has teeth. So, number one your flat…your flat farmland or whatever isn’t where it’s going to matter. It matters where there’s a hillside condition and that’s where we want it to matter that ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 25 of 32 nobody really grades very much without being really careful. So I think it still fits together, that that existing grade, you know, that was…it’s like the measure of height, the height measure goes off existing grade or, you know, we need Don Latham here with his computer to cross-reference the existing grades but there were, you know, there were…there’s two or three different locations in that height ordinance where it references, I think, that existing grade and that’s…we don’t want somebody modifying that. Heidi Kendall: All right. Thanks. Further discussion. Tom Zavitz: I would just like to say that he’s right. This is to get at where evading hillside standards by grading prior to subdividing, this is what we’re trying to address, so, yeah. Don MacArthur: Or to, you know, to evade the issues with the hill…with the height on a hillside by grading right before you’re about to go apply for a building permit. That, no…yeah. Tom Zavitz: Right. Heidi Kendall: Elaine. Elaine Hawk: Elaine Hawk. So just to clarify, you’re talking about this definition would only apply when there is no final plat for the property. So on the hillside, it wouldn’t be up on the South Hills, necessarily, typically. Don MacArthur: So, help me understand all the ramifications of that, because the final plat…I mean I’m not sure…I don’t think we had the final plat in our definition when it went out of Planning Board. Maybe we did, but I don’t think so. Elaine Hawk: So why I would want to know that? Don MacArthur: So why was the final plat the reference, was that just a fixed point in time that made some sense? Tom Zavitz: Yes. Don MacArthur: So, I mean, the final plat, the good parts about that is that all the improvements to the subdivision are…are they complete at the time of filing a final plat. No necessarily. Elaine Hawk: No. They’re not complete, but they’re planned for. So then it makes sense if you file a final plat and you have a plan for a parking lot and you go in and do some grading and you come in for building permit, this doesn’t hit you and say you couldn’t do any grading. Does that make sense? Don MacArthur: Yeah. Elaine Hawk: Because that wouldn’t make sense. Don MacArthur: So you’re okay with it the way we just said it, that if there’s a final plat, you go off the condition at final plat, if there’s not a final plat, you go off the condition off the 200X survey. Elaine Hawk: Right, that makes sense to me, because the final plat was reviewed for those grade changes, so I would assume that’s okay. Don MacArthur: And, you know, the future subdivision will make sure that we take care of those things and we address what it’s going to be. I think I’m okay with that. ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 26 of 32 Elaine Hawk: Okay, thank you. Heidi Kendall: Thank you. Any more discussion on this? Are we ready to vote? We have a motion and a second, discussion, and all that? Okay. All in favor, please say “aye.” [All Board members answered “aye.”] Any opposed? [All Board members were silent.] That passes unanimously. Do you want to let John go? Okay, John. John DiBari: I want to go back, that’s why I…I wanted a little bit of clarification on Number 45 and maybe this is something we should have talked about for Title 20, but what is the nexus between zoning and advertising on buses and taxis? And should this even be in a zoning ordinance, or… Tom Zavitz: That’s a good question. It’s been suggested that it isn’t a zoning issue. But because we have this term “mobile billboard” I think we’re just trying to…well, you make point. Don MacArthur: Didn’t we address this somewhere else in the Ordinance? I want to say that there was a discussion about this at the time that we went through and we already sort of had some special exception for these conditions but maybe it just needs to be added into this definition. I for…where is that in the… Tom Zavitz: It’s in the Sign Ordinance. John DiBari: It’s on Page 20.102. Tom Zavitz: Or was… Don MacArthur: I think actually in the sign ordinance there was some reference to, you know, buses and other things not needing to comply with the sign ordinance or something. John DiBari: I guess where I’m coming from, I’d rather see no advertising on taxis and buses, but that’s beside the point, I’m not sure what it has to do with zoning and why there would be a compelling reason to add taxis to this. Heidi Kendall: John Hendrickson. Don MacArthur: What about all those vehicles with the big advertisement all over them that are, you know, that are just…they are not even a business’ vehicle; they’re just a driving billboard. Are we going to zone those? John Hendrickson: John Hendrickson. And it was addressed, this is all addressed in the sign question of zoning. And to answer your question about taxis and stuff like that—buses and taxis are both regulated by PSC…Public Safety…yeah, no, Public, yeah. And taxis were inadvertently left out, but not really left out, it wasn’t meant, so it was a clarification when it came forth. So any taxis are considered public conveyances and public conveyances are allowed to advertise. So that could even be a rickshaw here in town, so it’s all inclusive, it was just left out inadvertently so it was brought forward. Heidi Kendall: Next item. Who has the next item? Don. Don MacArthur: I think this, the final chart, Number 50 is maybe to people who don’t deal with this all the time, but it’s worth looking at kind of carefully. The changes that are in here, I think all make sense. But you’ll notice on the, like the left-side of that little diagram there are a number ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 27 of 32 of F/2 setbacks, which is half of a front yard setback if you’re on a…if you’re on a side street that perpendicular to an alley, your front yard setback is half a normal front yard. I think…you know, that actually matches the pattern like in the university area and things like that, if you drive around the main streets and have a 20 or a little bit more foot set back and the side street that runs perpendicular to the alley tends to be 10 or 12 feet, more like a side yard setback and I think that makes the best pattern in the city and I think it all makes sense. It is…it’s certainly a change from what was in Title 20. You know, Title 20 required a front yard setback in that location. Heidi Kendall: Tim. Tim Ibey: Didn’t we just go over this two meetings ago and this was brought up at that time. Don MacArthur: I brought it up to ask how it was going to be and this is, I think, the result of that and, probably others, commenting on it. But this, I think, is a good response, it’s just worth looking at. Heidi Kendall: John. John DiBari: So the point here is that if this wasn’t a front yard setback divided by two, then you might have a number of instances where you have entitled lots that you can’t build on. Don MacArthur: Well, I think… John DiBari: Or that there would be a need for a variance or some other… Don MacArthur: Not necessarily that as much as just like good…if you look at that left-most block in the diagram, you see that the one on the bottom of the diagram has a front yard setback that faces the main street parallel to the alley and then it has an SS, which is a street side setback. John DiBari: Right Don MacArthur: And the point is is that the front yards on those two lots to the, you know, up the sheet, should be pretty in with that street side setback. So that was, I think what they’ve done is generally workable and makes sense. Tom Zavitz: Right. They could be unbuildable if you had to come up with the full front yard setback, right? Don MacArthur: They could be, or tough to build for sure. And I think this is right, I just wanted to bring it to everyone’s attention. Heidi Kendall: Tim. Tim Ibey: And, maybe you can refresh my memory, Don, but how does work with curb cuts and garages on that? Let’s just take the center one because at 10 or 12 feet, you would still be in the…with my small F350, you’d still be hanging out in the street if you pulled up to your garage. So how…I’m just…that’s just something that came to mind and I’m wondering about how that works. Don MacArthur: So you got to follow the snout house regulations that say that you’ve got to be 20 feet back, right? I mean I don’t remember what it actually ended at. The garage has to be at least 20 feet back. Tim Ibey: That’s what I wanted, thank you. I was having trouble clarifying that in my mind. ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 28 of 32 John DiBari: I was going to bring up something like, too. Because so looking at that furthest left diagram, then, so the…pretending that north is at the top of the page, at that furthest north lot, they would have to access from the alley, correct? And the furthest south lot, they likely would have to access off the front street, not the side street and then the middle lot has this half a front yard setback but the garage has to be far enough back that your F350 doesn’t go into the sidewalk. Don MacArthur: I mean, point of fact, this little diagram is extremely unlikely to occur in the typical lot scale of Missoula. There’s quite a few cases where that distance is split into two, like the one on the other side of the street. There’s very few where it’s split into three that way, it’s just not long enough to really do it. John DiBari: Right. Don MacArthur: So it almost always would be like the one on the other side of the street. John DiBari: In instances like maybe on the north side or parts of town where the original lots were really narrow, you might get something like that with sort of combinations of half-lots and things like that. That’s likely to be the places where this might show up—where you have 30-foot wide lots or… Don MacArthur: So if, you know, you had three 30-foot wide lots and you did a boundary line relocation and turned all the lots the other direction, you know, you could end up with what they show there. That is unlikely to be a good way to proceed. It’s kind of…it would be stupid, there would be better ways to develop that lot. Jerry Petasek: We actually have this configuration on my block on the north side, and the homes are so old that parking wasn’t required, they just have driveways. I think that’s what happened. Don MacArthur: So, I have one other kind of…this fits in, I guess, under Item 7, and I’m not sure whether this is appropriate. I have had discuss with Laval about this at some level and, you know, I found a few uses that were…in the time between when Title 20 went into affect and now that don’t really…that weren’t well-defined in Title 19 and now that they are better defined in Title 20, they are not permitted in some places. One of these uses is a Research and Development use which I’ve actually done a project a couple of years ago and have been talking with some folks about doing another project and Research and Development is now not permitted in business and commercial districts, basically at all. And in the old days it kind of was, because it wasn’t well-defined. I think that Research and Development uses should be allowed in commercial districts where they are not creating a lot of obnoxious manufacturing or toxic, you know, gases or anything like that. I think it’s the kind of, you know, if we envision Missoula as having some tech sector, it’s going to be attractive to have some of that near the university and near places where, you know, we might get kind of the folks who would want to work in those places to want to live here, too, not just push them out into industrial areas, I guess. And I think, I guess I’m seeing a lot of these buildings are kind of like a…like a college building or something and I don’t think they’re obnoxious neighbors. So, this was one that I was going to make a suggestion that we see, you know, float it out to Tom to see if you could…you know, I’ve…Laval and I have had several discussions about this, Tom, and maybe you’ve been part of those, but the…the…you know, her suggestion was that maybe was one that maybe we sort of floated out and started the process in, and if it doesn’t happen right way, maybe we go to it next time or whatever. But that we asked if you could review this use and determine whether it was permitted in Title 19 and that, at least from my perspective, I think it could be permitted in Title 20 in commercial locations and should be. Tom Zavitz: Yeah, I think that could fall under the definition of what we’re doing here as well, so I don’t think it necessarily needs to be separate and we could add that. ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 29 of 32 Don MacArthur: Okay, so there…the possibilities are that we either make a new definition of Research and Development that somehow makes it, you know, distinguishes that low-intensity uses aren’t considered that and that they could be housed in commercial districts or that…you know, I don’t know how the most effective way to get there is. Tom Zavitz: And I know what you’re getting at, where we’re not producing noises, gases, odors… Don MacArthur: Right. Tom Zavitz: …things like that, that it’s… Don MacArthur: Not a lot of… Tom Zavitz: …it’s low-intense… Don MacArthur: Not a lot of truck action coming in and out, you know, there’s not any toxic products from it and, you know, they’re not noisy and most of the places that I’ve been around are very good neighbors. Tom Zavitz: And which we did allow them in those areas. Don MacArthur: Yes, yes. Tom Zavitz: Right. Don MacArthur: So do we need a motion on that or can we just… Tom Zavitz: I think you need a motion. Don MacArthur: So I’m going to move to ask Tom to figure out the best way to bring this forward to Council to allow lower-intensity Research and Development to be permitted in business and commercial districts. John DiBari: Second. Heidi Kendall: Seconded by John DiBari. Discussion? Tim Ibey: Yes. Heidi Kendall: Tim. Tim Ibey: Along with that, we should have some sort of definition. I know that there was some sort of…there was a lot of hoopla about, you know, when Ribi Immunochem, you know, expanded their operations in Hamilton. Whereas I think they’re very good neighbors, I think they’ve got an excellent safety record, but they do have biohazards there, and, so, perhaps a definition, especially if you’re talking about bringing them close to a residential area, that would be… Don MacArthur: I think bio-hazards are…absolutely, I agree, that’s not a…that constitutes obnoxious, I think, if there’s biohazards. Not that it can’t be mitigated, but I don’t think it actually ought to be encouraged in the center of our city. Tim Ibey: Right. That’s why I was just asking for a definition along with that. ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 30 of 32 Don MacArthur: Right. I agree, that should not…if it’s low intensity, it should not include biohazards. So that would be…you know, that would have to be an industrial district or manufacturing. Heidi Kendall: Was there a public comment on this? John Hendrickson: John Hendrickson. I agree with Don and I agree with Tim. You know, we should bring forth as many definitions and/or examples as much as possible and I, you know, agree that biomass, you know, well, biohazard material should not be allowed. But low density stuff, should low density intensity. Thank you. Heidi Kendall: Thank you. Further discussion. All right, we have a motion, a second, discussion, public comment, let’s vote. All in favor, please say “aye.” [All Board members answered “aye.”] Any opposed? [All Board members were silent.] That passes unanimously. Any other items? Concerns? How about a motion on… Tim Ibey: I move… Heidi Kendall: Go ahead. Tim Ibey: I move that the proposed Title 20 City Zoning Ordinance Proposed Maintenance Amendments 2010, dated 5-14 of 2010 as shown in Attachment A of the Staff Report as amended be recommended to the City Council for approval. Don MacArthur: Second. Heidi Kendall: Motion by Tim Ibey, second by Don MacArthur. Any further discussion on this? Don MacArthur: I just want to give kudos to staff for following up and getting this done and keeping it moving and I do, you know, judging by the lack of public outcry, here, I think that this is, you know, it’s right to get the document on the books and then go in and keep working it and make it better and better all the time. And so I’m glad that we’re doing this, I hope we keep this momentum going so that it’s not a one-time deal and we do it annually, even if it’s only two items. Great. It’s quick, doesn’t take a lot of time, let’s do it annually. Heidi Kendall: All right. Thank you. Okay, let’s vote. All in favor…I’m sorry, was there a public comment? No? Okay. [Unidentified Speaker, inaudible, off microphone] Heidi Kendall: Sure, okay. All in favor, please say “aye.” [All Board members answered “aye.”] Any opposed? [All Board members were silent.] That passes unanimously. I don’t think we need a roll call vote on that, do we? Okay. All right, good. Do you want to speak now, Elaine, or is there another point in the agenda that would…we do have a few more things to do. Elaine Hawk: I just wanted to follow up with a similar comment to Don’s, both as a planner and an a representative of the building industry. We really appreciate working with OPG to keep this maintenance going and keep looking at the document and appreciate your guys’ consideration and ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 31 of 32 time looking into it. I think it’s fantastic. I think that’s one of the things that we did really see a lot with Title 20 was that regular maintenance and so I’m really excited to see that and thank you. Heidi Kendall: Thank you. VII. COMMUNICATIONS AND SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS Heidi Kendall: All right, thanks everyone. Now, moving on, are there any Communications and Special Presentations? No? VIII. COMMITTEE REPORTS Heidi Kendall: Committee Reports? Nope. IX. OLD BUSINESS Heidi Kendall: Old business? X. NEW BUSINESS AND REFERRALS Heidi Kendall: New business and referrals. Tim Skufca, I wanted to give you a chance to raise your issue at this point. Tim Skufca: Sure. I just thought we might be able to save some paper by just approving and not having to send out the minutes hard copies to everybody and that we can identify that we received it and if there’s objections or changes needed, then we could do that electronically. Don MacArthur: So the electronic changes or objections, how does that go? Do you email on the Planning Board, I noticed this and suggest this. Tim Skufca: And can we bring it up. Don MacArthur: And then bring it up at the meeting afterwards, just so everyone sees what the problem was and has the text… Tim Skufca: The time to look at it and… Don MacArthur: Yeah. Heidi Kendall: I think this is a great idea and what I thought we could do, since we have approval of minutes as an agenda item on our agenda. I mean, if we just get them electronically and we still go through this little agenda item. Tim Skufca: Yeah. Heidi Kendall: I can’t think of a time when someone has ever had a change that they want. I’m sure it has happened before, but I can’t remember a time. But we would still be able to do it in our meeting, right? Tim Skufca: That would be right. Heidi Kendall: But if OPG staff does not have to send out the hard copies of the minutes to each of us, then that…that makes a better world. Yeah. Sounds great. So is that a motion? ---PAGE BREAK--- Missoula Consolidated Planning Board Minutes June 1, 2010 Page 32 of 32 Tim Skufca: Suggestion to OPG, I guess. Heidi Kendall: Do we vote on… Tim Skufca: And then they can… Heidi Kendall: Why don’t vote on it, so that we can show that we support it… Tim Skufca: Okay. Heidi Kendall: …as a group. Tim Skufca: I’ll make it a motion. Tim Ibey: Second. Heidi Kendall: Seconded by Tim Ibey. Is that clear, what we want? Okay. Any discussion? All in favor, please say “aye.” [All Board members answered “aye.”] Any opposed? [All Board members were silent.] That passes unanimously, good. XI. COMMENTS FROM BOARD MEMBERS Heidi Kendall: Any comments from us? XII. ADJOURNMENT Heidi Kendall: We’ll be adjourned. Thank you. The meeting adjourned at 9:07 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Recording Secretary: Transcribed by: Sharon E. Reed Deni Forestek Administrative Secretary Administrative Aide Missoula Office of Planning and Grants Missoula Office of Planning and Grants