11/15/1988 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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~ ~ ,, • EXHIBIT - VERBATIM TRANSCRIPT MINUTES OF PUBLIC HEARING NOVEMBER 15, 198$ 7:00 P.M. Present: President Janet Saringer, Councilwomen Bahas, Councilmen Boehmer, Bohlmann, McKay, O'Grady, Tallon, Wilamosky Also present: Law Director Michael Gareau, Clerk of Council Florence Campbell. Absent: Mayor Petrigac and Finance Director Boyle. Public Hearing was called to order by President Saringer at 7:10 P.M. Saringer: The Public Hearing for Ordinances No. 88-112 and No. 88-118 will now come to order. We will take Ordinance No. 88-112 first: an ordinance amending Section 1135.02 of the Zoning Code entitled "Accessory Uses and Buildings" of Chapter 1135 of the Zoning Code entitled "Residence Districts". (I'll give Mr. Tallon a minute to sit down here and I would like to ask him a question seeing that this has been in his committee.) Ron, is there anything -could you point out some of the major changes i~n 88-ll2? Tallon: The only major change in 88-112 is the height of the fence and it hasn't been in committee yet. I will be asking that it be removed from the agenda tonight until it goes into committee. Saringer: Is there anyone in the audience who would like to address council on this piece of legislation? Remmel: My name is C. H. Remmel. Do you want my address? Clerk: I have it, sir. (23354 Stoneybrook Drive) Remmel: Okay. I am currently the Chairman of the Zoning Board of Appeals and I think we have some experiesnce that should be of value to this committee before this is considered. We've never had any run-down on what is proposed in that change; we heard about it only through the Law Director and of course at a meeting when we were considering a fence case. And I take it, so the rumor reaches us, that there's a swell of people that are not satisfied with the present law. And that may well be but it hasn't come to us. Now, to give you some ides - and it's hard for me to believe that the council would take its valuable time on something like this - I got a run-down from-:the records today. In 1987, we had seven fence variances approved -four denied; we had a total of eleven cases in the entire year. 1988, 'til now, we had seven approved so far; five denied; a total of twelve cases. So, again, there's a dot more than. the height of the fence involved. I hope you an the committee have read that very carefully. Many of our cases are not so much the bare height of six feet. For your information, we have generally, as a policy, granted six foot fences, where they are deserved: where the city backs up to some other community, namely, in this case, the Olmsted Township and you have that creek back there and so on. We have never denied, to my knorledge, any request there. We also have allowed it in cases where there is an absolute, unsightly situation that you wouldn't want to live in. We have done that. However, a six foot fence, it comes to me again, is somebody said, "well, they sell six foot plywood for these fences and six foot boards and so on". That should not be the problem with the city. One other problem we have here is