 Welcome to the Board of Zoning Appeals. Members, staff and guests, we ask for your patience during this virtual meeting. Multiple staff members are behind the scenes to make sure all applicants and citizens are able to communicate with the board at the appropriate times. Board members and applicants are participating via Zoom. Some are using video and all are using their audio. I will unmute applicants or ask them to unmute themselves when their cases are called. And applicants, just please make sure to keep your cameras off until your case is called as well. And just please be aware of your audio and be mindful of anything that might be in the background of your video just to eliminate distractions. The public has the opportunity to participate in a number of ways. They can watch via city TV. They can send emails. They can call in from the phone or log in to publicinput.com to hear the audio. You can stream at youtube.com slash user slash Columbia SC government. You can also go to the main city website, main page, and there will be a ticker at the top in red that you can click that'll take you directly to the video. The public can submit letters and statements via email to COC board meeting at Columbia SC.gov leading up to and during the meeting. Those emails are monitored for cases up until the board goes into discussion. The public may participate via phone by calling 1-855-925-2801 and when prompted enter the meeting code 9600. Once you call in, you're going to have three options. So star one allows you to hear the audio. Star two, if you're unable to stay on the line until your case is called, you can record a voice message with your public comment. Just make sure to speak clearly and leave the case information so we know which case you're calling on. And star three allows you to be placed in a queue to speak live when prompted. So at any time during the call you're able to hit star three. So we ask that you wait until your specific case is called to hit star three so we make sure that you're in the queue for the proper case. You can also go to publicinput.com slash cocboza-may 2021 to watch the video as well. And if you're participating by phone while also streaming on your computer, go ahead and mute the audio on your computer so that there's no playback issues or double audio. There is an audio delay between Zoom and the live recording on city TV and public input. So if you notice we pause at certain times, it's to allow that audio to catch up. Now go ahead and do roll, Mr. Dinkins. Here. Mr. Gregory. Here. Mr. Primus. Here. Ms. Stevens. Here. Ms. Finner. Ms. Finner. I saw her on here. She's here. She's muted. Here. There you are. I've got earphones in. I was like, I know I saw you. And I know Mr. Gignard was not able to join today. So we do have a quorum. Applicants with requests before the Board of Zoning Appeals are allotted a presentation time of 10 minutes. This time should include but is not limited to an overview of the project, case history, and any pertinent meetings held regarding the request. This time also includes all persons presenting information on behalf of the applicant such as attorneys, engineers, and architects. This time limit does not include any questions asked by the Board of Zoning Appeals or staff regarding the request. Any member of the general public may address the board in intervals of three minutes or five minutes if by a spokesperson for an established body or for a group of three or more. The applicant will then have five minutes for a buttle. The Board reserves the right to amend these procedures on a case-by-case basis. The Board uses the consent agenda to approve non-controversial or routine matters by a single motion and vote. If a member of the Board or the general public wishes to discuss an item that's on consent, that item is removed and then heard on the regular agenda. The Board then approves the remaining consent agenda items. And just as a quick note to the Board, I do have the timers this time. We were able to find them. All right, and we'll go through the consent agenda. The approval of the April 1st minutes, case 2021-0041, special exception at 119 Deer Lake Drive to permit an in-home daycare, case 2021-0043, special exception at 919 True Street, unit P, to permit a beauty shop, case 2021-0044, also at 919 True Street, unit L, special exception to permit a beauty shop. Case 2021-0046, special exception at 7550 Garner Sperry Road, this is a special exception to establish two drive-through facilities for restaurant uses on the parcel. 2021-0047, also at 919 True Street, unit R, special exception to permit a beauty shop. Case 2021-0048, for 2100 Waverly Street, this is a special exception to expand an existing elementary school. Case 2021-0051, special exception at 901 Spears Creek Court, to permit a second drive-through facility for an additional restaurant use on the parcel. I think they were before you all last year for the first drive-through. In case 2021-0053, for 1444 Barnwell Street, suite B, special exception to permit a miscellaneous personal service, a day spa. In case 2021-0054, special exception at 1015 Wailly Street to permit a food and convenience store. So in any kind of food store within the plan development overlay that that's with and requires that special exception. And if anyone wishes to have a case removed from the consent agenda prior to the board vote, let us know now. We'll pause to give time for audio to catch up and we will check in with staff on public input to see if anyone's on the line. I haven't seen any emails come in. It looks like there's one hand raised, not sure which case is it on. So I think she might let them through just to see what they're calling about. Erica, is that still the case? Erica or Andrew? Yes, Rachel, I think they are being connected right now. Okay, thank you. Yes, I believe that I am currently unmuted. Yes. Okay, so you can hear me on the line. Yes, which case were you calling on today? I am calling regarding the cell phone tower on Rosewood. Okay, all right. That one is coming up here shortly. We're going over the consent agenda right now and taking input on that. So if you can stay on the line, we'll put you back in the queue to make sure that you're patched through when we're going through that case. Okay, sounds great. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, and ma'am, you may need to press star three again to raise your hand again after we end this session. So just be aware of that. But I have made note of your phone number, so if need be, I can unmute you when the time is ready. Okay, so as soon as when you go to the next case, just hit star three. Correct. Okay, thank you. Take care. All right, was that the only one on the line? Yes. Perfect. All right. Okay, very good. Could we get a motion for the consent agenda, please? Move to approve the consent agenda. Second. Subject to staff comments, Kevin. I'm sorry. Subject to staff comments. Thank you. Okay, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Anyone oppose? Water and the fridge. Okay. Perfect. And just for those who are on the line, if your case was on the consent agenda, you're welcome to go ahead and jump off. You don't have to stay on for the rest of the meeting unless you want to. All right, we'll get going with our regular agenda. So we will be using the following outline for the regular agenda items. I will introduce the case. Does that mean that ours has not been approved? Yes, the full consent agenda was, so you're welcome to go ahead and jump off. Okay, so thank you so much. I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank the staff for the tremendous cooperation and the help they have given us. They've come over and above. They have been fabulous. And thank y'all. Have a great day. Have a great week and we appreciate it. Bye-bye. Thank you. Now we can leave. Yes. So I will introduce the cases and the applicant will have 10 minutes to make their presentation. So the board will be able to ask questions at any point during that presentation or after. And then we will go to public input via email, voicemail or phone. And the applicants will then have an opportunity for rebuttal before going into board discussion by the board. The first matter on the agenda is case 2021-0008 for 3624 Rosewood Drive. This is a special exception to permit a stealth wireless communication facility, a monopine cell tower. And I believe the applicant is on the line and they are welcome to begin their presentation when they are ready. Rachel, thank you so very much to the board. Glad to be with you virtually today, Jonathan Yates. If you know me, you know, it usually takes me five minutes just to say my name. So we're going to move quickly here a lot to cover, but I cannot move quick enough without saying a big handout to Rachel and Erica. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You've got great staff there. We're trying to lure them to the city of Charleston. I'm warning you. What we have before you today is a project that we've been working on for many years. It's a very important project for T-Mobile and Dish Wireless. But it's something that we've gone through a lot of reiterations trying to get it better and better for those around while delivering the necessary wireless infrastructure. In the interest of time, I'll quit introducing myself and I'm going to quickly turn to my good friend and client, Keith Powell, of Optima Towers, who's going to do a quick walkthrough for you of what towers this board has approved in the past in Columbia and what we are going to look like. What we hope you get at the end of this while we are a cellular tower, where it's something that you really haven't quite seen exactly before. I'm going to turn it now to Keith Powell. Hello, board chairman. Thank you very much for having me today. Thanks for reviewing the application. Rachel, on our slide deck, if we could go to slide one, two, three, four, five, starting with six. Let's see where we get to. Let me know when I get there. We will. And thank you, Rachel, right here. Okay, all right. So I want to go through a few items here for some comparison contrast for our application here. I think it's kind of important to show the depth and broad work we've done here. So this slide shows, so the first couple slides here, we're going to show some existing sites in Columbia. And then we're going to kind of go through our concepts of how we got to where we got to here real quick. And then I want to show you some highlights regarding some of the simulations we provided. And then just a real quick point of view of some of these existing sites where normal people see. So the first two slides here are some existing monopoles and cell supports. Millwood Avenue, two-notch road. If you can go to the next slide, please. Forest Drive, Avondale. We have a stealth facility on the next slide there right here. This is located at Millwood and Woodrow. This is a slick, we call it a slick and sealed pole. And if everybody remembers this area, this pole is built first and then the neighborhood is built around it. So I think it's kind of important we'll get to a little detail. Next slide, please. We have Howard Street and Rosewood is another existing facility. It's about a mile west of where we are. There's two poles there, again concealed, somewhat diminutive, excuse me, in height. Next slide. So this is our blank canvas. We've surveyed the property there and we have an existing building with really a vacant rear lot. And so we've had quite a few meetings with neighborhood groups. We've gained some input. They've had a couple issues along the way. They've had some parking issue for our neighbor. They run a music business and we kind of heard a desire for traditional parking. Do you feel better if you took your shirt off? Excuse me? Sorry, I've needed the board members to go on. Sorry. So the concept we've come up here with, we've taken some input on a parking need, some fencing that would be preferred to be brick versus wood, and then being able to conceal our facility inside the existing building and we've moved our pole away from the residential areas to the south. Our four concept pages here kind of give a difference. Can you switch, go to the next four slowly, the next one after that? Is there a copy of our renderings? Next one. Next one. This is taken from, this is proposed from the rear south of the lot showing the existing lot, we're proposing here for the parking element we're adding. Next slide. We have some engineer drawings on these next four pages showing some of the elements and kind of the schematic building to the front, parking to the rear, a cut view of the tower right here. The next slide are a couple of architectural building cuts, excuse me, architectural details of the existing building with elevations and some of the materials. Now in your package, you have a set of photograph and simulations and we don't have enough time to go through each one of them, I'm sure you've studied your package very quickly. Some more of the input that we received from the neighborhood was a very common question from what you're viewing there and your pictures of. They noticed we took our pictures in the summer, that just happened to be when we did this package of the simulation, so they said, what does it look like in the winter? So we did simulations for all those, but I'm going to want to concentrate on four of them just for time. Location number three, location number four, location seven, location ten, I've highlighted on the screen there. So the next slide shows photograph three and that this is in your package, the red arrow pointing up shows where this tower would be in the horizon. We're calling this not visible. The trees that you see in front of it, excuse me, are between where we're located and where the tower is. If you go to the next slide, this is the same location in the winter and we are showing this is not visible for the reasons, but you notice obviously the most majority of the leaves are off trees, but again, this location will be not visible. And again, Keith, you put the red arrow where the tower would be if you could see it. Yes, sir. There you go. Thank you for clarifying. The next location is location four at Kilburn and Rosewood. Obviously a big view shed here. You see the power lines, street lights, building fronts, and you see our tower in the profile there, the red arrow pointing to the simulation. The next slide is the same shot in winter. Not much change there. Obviously a few leaves off trees. Let's go to location seven, the south side of Rosewood. We show the arrow pointing where the tower would be. We're calling that not visible. Obviously all the leaves and the trees in front of it cover it. That same picture on the next slide is what it looks like in winter and this kind of, this picture can say a thousand words. This is exactly doing what we are doing. This is exactly why we are doing what we're doing. This is what camouflaging is. We are meeting our environs. Obviously you can see it through the tree, but it is a tree. So that is what our design is supposed to do here. The next location is just south location 10, Prince Avenue and Bonham Road. The summer photograph, I have the arrow pointing where the site would be. There are trees blocking the view of that location. The next slide shows that same location, however, with leaves off the trees. Again, picture says a thousand words. That's what the proposed image is going to look like. All right. So the last two sets, the last four pages here are what a point of view. So let's go back to a site of Millwood and Woodrow Street. I wanted to give everybody on the board a thought of this is what the average person would see on the street looking at it. We did a point of view location. Cypress Street and Maple Street were approximately 560 feet away. If you go to the next slide, please. The next slide shows a very partially visible, if that, but I've got the right arrow pointing where the site would be. Excuse me where the site is. This is the existing tower. Yes. Excuse me. This is the existing tower where it's located. Obviously you see the trees in front of it. This was taking in the winter. So in the spring, that would be a not visible structure. The last location I want to give everybody a point of view. There is a existing site located at Ternum and Beltline. It is this. In fact, there's a monopine a little bit taller, but regardless the adjacent road in the Gregor, we wanted to give you a point of view of what they're looking at. So if you go to the next slide, I've placed the arrow where the tree would be for your own benefit because I'm not sure you could pick that out, but this is textbook of why we're doing what we're doing with our application here. You can't see that site because of the trees because we made it that previous one look like a tree. Keith, thank you very much. Keith, in summary, what you're doing is 100 foot monopine 30 feet shorter than the one on Ternum Beltline and versus a most sell sites where you have all the equipment on the ground behind a chain link fence, you're taking the existing building on the property and all the carry equipment going there and you're adding parking in the rear for the adjacent property. Yes, sir. All right. Now I'd like to quickly, in interest of time, I'd like to call on Mr. Tom Chambers representing T-Mobile USA. Tom, can you join us? Thank you, Jonathan. Can you all see me? Yes, we can see you, Tom. Thank you, brother. I appreciate it. I'm speaking with you. My name's Tom Chambers. I'm speaking with you from my home in Columbia and I appreciate the opportunity to be here today and speak. I'm speaking on behalf of T-Mobile. T-Mobile's current neck, if you would, Rachel, please go back to the first slide. Right there? The very first one. So I want to speak to you a little bit about T-Mobile's needs and the reason we're here today. Our current network is, if you would back up one slide, Rachel, this shows all existing cell towers that are located within 1.6 miles. There are nine of them. T-Mobile is currently located on all nine of these existing towers within 1.6 miles of the proposed site. Rachel, if you'd move to the next slide, please. This is an existing coverage map. This map depicts T-Mobile's existing coverage utilizing those nine towers that they are currently co-located on. What it depicts here and what it highlights is the areas of weak coverage and poor coverage in the lighter green areas. Those particular areas are from the proposed tower site going all the way up to Devine Street to the north and bounded by Sims Avenue and all the way over to Kilburn and then down to the southwest in areas of central Rosewood that are not currently being covered by the existing towers at Howard Street. And then primarily the coverage down highlights the poor and almost non-existing coverage from Rosewood Avenue down through the south Kilburn neighborhood all the way down to Owensfield. So those are areas where currently have what we consider substandard coverage where our subscribers are not getting the services that they need to operate their phones and their devices in an efficient fashion. So the proposed site, what it does it address if you move to the next slide please, Rachel. Sure. And I just wanted to ask the chair real quick. The 10 minutes is up. Did you want to allot them any additional time? Yes, I saw that absolutely. Rachel, this is a complicated what I would consider very important case. They are not only do they have to meet all the standards for the special exception but there's an additional burden on these wireless cases as you notice. I think it warrants some additional time. So yes, please. Okay. I'll put in an additional five. Absolutely. Yep. Go ahead. Sorry. I'll be brief. So this is the coverage after the proposed site is installed and as you can see all of those coverage areas that were previously highlighted in a lighter color are now darker green. So what this proposed site does is it provides coverage in all of those areas that are currently underserved and all the residents in those neighborhoods can enjoy the same level of coverage that the rest of the residents in the city of Columbia currently enjoy. So that's why we're here today. Thank you so much, Tom and Tom will be around for any questions. In addition, I'd like to introduce the call Kim Mitchell of Dish Wireless. Good afternoon. I'm representing Dish today. Can you all hear me? Yes. Okay. I'm here to attest on Dish's behalf the need for the coverage in this area of Columbia to meet not only Dish's network objectives, but as you just heard other carriers, the current forecast for Dish in the Columbia market is to have a seamless voice advanced data and internet service in place by mid-year 2022. So bottom line, Dish is a part of this application process for this particular site so that they can meet their coverage objectives. No other site, no other existing site will provide coverage to this area. Thank you. Thank you so much, Tim. Mr. Chair, I will now quickly try to, I got two sets of criteria to go through. I will try to go through them rapidly, but of course I'll be around as well for any questions. What I'd like to look at first is the WCF special exception criteria for any WCF. First and foremost, we cannot endanger the safety of residents, employees, or travelers not limited to likelihood of failure. We enhance public health and safety by providing effective access to 911 first responders in emergencies, semi-emergencies, and when people need them. As to the likelihood of failure, South Carolina professional engineer Michael Blaviznak has certified this facility to both the ANSI and the International Building Code standards for Columbia of 116 mile per hour wind and he has certified a certified fall zone of 30 feet. We need to be our next standard. We cannot be where we would substantially in the standard to substantially detract from aesthetics and neighborhood character or impact the use of neighborhood properties. That's why we gave Keith so much time when we didn't know how much time we had. Look at the photo sets. It's almost like the fine Waldo game. You have to look to find it. Keith also showed you what standard cell towers look like in Columbia and then some other stealth facilities. We have killed ourselves on this to make it the most innocuous possible. Next criteria under the WCF special exception criteria, we cannot be within a thousand feet of another communication tower. There are no communication towers within 0.9 miles of us. Almost a mile away, Tom broached that with you of all the surrounding ones. There is not one within a thousand feet. Next question under your special exception criteria, the user is attempted to co-locate on existing WCFs. T-Mobile is on all of them as Tom showed you. Dish is entering the market and is going on all of them also, but they need this to cover this area. Last question under the special exception criteria for WCF, will we allow others to co-locate? Absolutely. This has been designed for T-Mobile, Dish, and at least two other broadband carriers in the market. We have space for them. I will now and I'll go as quickly as I can. I'm going to look at the 17-112-2C criteria. First question, will we have a substantial, substantial adverse impact on vehicle and traffic, vehicle and pedestrian safety and adequate positions for parking and loading? Keith can get this thing all done in about 60 days. After that, the carriers visit maybe on a monthly basis. We create no traffic. We create no traffic congestion and we have more than adequate parking loading on John McDaniel's property. Next question under the 17-112-2C, will we have a substantial adverse impact on driving property in terms of noise, lights, glare, vibration, hues, odor, obstruction of air, or light and litter? We produce none of those off-site. No noise. No obstruction of air. Nothing. We do not produce anything. We'll not have a substantial adverse impact on public safety, create a nuisance, or result in increased law enforcement. We aid public safety by access to 9-1-1. I do not have the current data for Richmond County, but my home county of Charleston County, our consolidated dispatch, 80, almost 84% of all calls from 9-1-1 to Charleston County come from a wireless device. I misplaced one criteria and I apologize in trying to go too quickly. The criteria is will we have a substantial adverse impact on the aesthetic character of the area? That is what we've been working three years to not have. This started out as a taller tower. It didn't start out as a monopine. It started out with typical equipment around the tower. We have done everything possible, getting the height low, going with the upgraded monopine, moving all the carrier equipment into the existing building. Look at the photosynthesis. The standard is substantial adverse impact on the aesthetic character. It's hard to see it's even going to be there. Next criteria, we cannot create a concentration or proliferation of the same or similar type of uses. As you saw from the map, the closest towers are almost one mile away. You saw all of 1.6 miles away. There is no tower right here. Are we consistent with the character and intent of the underlying district? That's the nut and that is the main reason we're here today. We are here to serve the district. Tom showed you clearly the deficit in the district. We are no different than power, water, tailcoat, and sewer. We are here to serve. T-Mobile is here to serve. Dish is here to serve. We're doing it in the best way possible, but our purpose is to serve this district with wireless infrastructure. Are we appropriate for its location and compatible with permitted uses of Jason 2 and the vicinity? We're adjacent to a music academy to one side, an insurance agency to the other side. We're off a very, very busy commercial corridor. We are appropriate. Final question, will it not adversely affect the public interest? We're here to provide vital and necessary wireless infrastructure, but we're in this case, we're doing it in the most innocuous way. I've done many, many towers in South Carolina. I have never done one like this. It clearly, I'm very certain if we are allowed to do it, it will end up being the most expensive tower facility ever built in the Carolinas. We've gone the extra mile at every single step to make this work. I know we're low on time, but I had to get the criteria on the record. If I live nearby, one of the first questions I'd have, first of all, I'd be pretty excited to get service. That's just me. But one question I would have is what does this mean for my property value? If they get to put this monopine in, what does that mean? I cannot answer that, so we reached out to local appraiser Tommy Wenger. Tommy has been in the Columbia market for more years than he'll admit to, and Tommy did some very quick analysis and good analysis of from the Columbia market of property values went before and after a tower goes into the neighborhood. I now turn over to Tommy Wenger. Good afternoon, everyone. Like Jonathan said, I've been in the valuation business in the Columbia market for 46 years. I didn't know he had been that long because it's gone by very quickly. But whenever I was asked to do an analysis on what could be the effects of a cell tower in this area on surrounding property bays or properties to the cell tower, I looked at two other existing cell towers in the Columbia market. And I know you guys are very familiar with these. The first one was on the corner of Forest Drive and Beltline Boulevard, is one right behind Walgreens. I live in that area. I can see that tower from my side porch. Quickly, please, Mr. Wenger, quickly. We got to wrap this up. Okay. Well, the methodology that I employed was to find out when those cell towers were built and find out what properties were selling for before and reselling before the cell towers were constructed. And then afterwards, what the properties were selling for and reselling after the existing cell towers were constructed to see if there were any deleterious effects from the cell towers, from the cell towers being located approximate to these properties. And I don't know if you have a copy of my report, but you'll see the percentages of what the change in property bays were before and after. The methodology employed is very similar to any kind of before and after analysis to see what the effects of an existing structure would be. And it really has no effects on it. And a lot of it may, if you look at the percentages, they differ. And that could be for several reasons. It could be for changes. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Wenger. We're out of time for this. It's all on the record. I appreciate it. We've given you great leniency, not to you, but your team as a whole. And I think you had plenty of time. But thank you very much. We're going to wrap this up. We appreciate it, Mr. Chairman. We thank you for your indulgence. You're welcome. Okay. Well, very, very good thorough presentation. This is a difficult case. That's part of the reason why we didn't give you so much time. You're not only do you have to meet all the criteria for a special exception, but you have to meet some additional criteria enabled to do these facilities. So I thought it warranted much longer than normal presentation. So thank you, board members for hanging in there. But anyway, let's move this thing along. Do any of our, all that being said, do any board members have any questions for the outfit? I do. Very good. Let's get started. Okay. You guys flip, we have, I understand that the FCC has preempted any of the environmental concerns, but I noticed that you provided some slides. I could see them in my packet, but I know that several of the people who are opposed to this have raised those concerns. I think there's some public concern about it. And I wonder if you could just spend just two minutes or something just briefly explaining what I believe you had some slides that you went past really quickly, that this is not, in fact, particularly, no more dangerous than, and you, you had some slides on that. If you could just spend a few minutes on that, that'd be nice. Wait a minute. Before you start, let's hang on one second, Katherine and Rachel, this is a question procedurally. I thought the way I've read these cases for that we're specifically, we absolutely are specifically prohibited from letting any of Katherine's, letting her question, I thought we couldn't rule based upon that whatsoever. So I just don't want to sway us, Katherine. It's a good question. Right. Right. That's preemption. Right. So yeah, okay. I'm sorry. Rachel, go ahead. Yeah, I was gonna say, I think Katherine was referencing there was some information in their slideshow and it might have been in the packet too. I think they were just touching on some statistics. It's up to you all if you want them to run through that information. You're correct. You're both correct. There is preemption there. But I understand where her question was coming from as well. It's up to you all if you want that information. Yeah, absolutely. Because Katherine had a question. And so certainly, when I just wanted to make sure before we move forward that we weren't procedurally doing something improper. So all means sorry to interrupt you, Katherine. But yeah, just as, yeah, as the case everybody said that. Thank you for clarifying. Thank you. I'm doing it more. I understand the concept of preemption for the people at home who don't know. I'm a lawyer. I understand that when the FCC says that we are not allowed to consider certain things, I understand what that means. I just was thinking that since there seem to be a lot of public concern on this and several of the people protesting were concerned about that specific issue that may be just in the interest of public service, we might spend just two minutes going over it. Not that we would make our decision on that because that would be wrong. Yeah. So thank you. Yes. Thank you very much, Commissioner. At this point I'd like to introduce we tried a lot of time for him, but I talked to Stephen Kennedy, who is an expert in both radio frequency energy transmission and health. We have Stephen slide. Stephen, are you with us coming in? Yes, sir, I am. Stephen, I turn the mic to you. If you could ask the board try to answer the board members question, give a little background. Again, we under all understand the federal preemption, but we thought it important to give the background to help to make people understand a little better what we're talking about. Thank you, Stephen. Yes, sir. Rachel, can you go back to that last slide, please? Yes. All right. So radio waves, radio energy works on two things. There's different types of radio waves and energy. There's ionizing versus non-ionizing. So ionizing is like gamma rays, x-rays. Those are things that when you go to the dentist's office and you have to put the lead overcoat on before you get your x-rays on your teeth and the nurse steps out of the room and then they take the picture and it's a really quick beep and you're done. Those are ionizing waves. Those are ionizing energy. They actually send photons through your body and they have the ability to affect DNA over long term exposure. The second type is non-ionizing. Non-ionizing is just the only side effect is heat. So if you look at your light bulb, the light bulb goes out and you go to change it very fast. It's warm, right? So it's generating non-ionizing energy. So it's making light and it's making heat. The same thing happens with your wireless phone. If anybody's ever noticed when they talk on their wireless phone for a long time, it starts to get warm. Well, that amplifier is generating two things. It's generating radio waves and it's generating heat. It's getting warm. Now, those are the two differences. Ionizing versus non-ionizing. Car radios, television, your Wi-Fi access points at home, Bluetooth headsets that you use, anything. Cell phones, they create non-ionizing energy. Once again, the only side effect is heat. If you can go to the next slide, Rachel. Okay. So there's two types of limits. So the FCC, back in the 80s and 90s, when they were generating the health and safety limits, they employed a lot of different groups, OSHA, NC standard groups, a lot of groups, a lot of engineering groups, a lot of surgeons, doctors, all these people got involved. And they came up with this limit, this absorption limit for how much radio energy can a human body absorb and it become unsafe. And that limit's about one point, I believe, one point four, a specific absorbed race, one point four kilograms a minute, lots per kilogram. So there's two types of occupational limit or two types of limits, occupational and general public. Occupational is, okay, so let's say there's antennas on a rooftop, a person goes up to work on the air conditioner on that rooftop. They're getting into a controlled space. There's a door. There's a lock. You get up there and those limits are higher because they can get in there and there has to be some specific access and that's limited, rooftop, compound access, etc. And that's for people who would know. And so there's signage posted and there's barriers to make sure people don't get too close to the antennas. And that's what the occupational level is. The general public limit is I don't know there's a tower in and around me. I'm just walking around and walking up and down the street, I'm driving my car, I'm in my house, whatever. And the limits are much more reduced. So the limits of when the FCC figured out this limit, they cut that level by half and then they reduced it even further for general public. So it's a very, very, very small amount of energy. Now the energy or the limits are relation to proximity. So the closer you are to the transmitter, the more energy there is. Now this phone right here that everybody uses on a daily basis, it generates 50% of the general public limit. So when you're talking to on the phone, it's next year, it's 50% of the limit, that tower because those antennas are high up in the sky, they're 100 foot up in the air, 60, 70, 80, 100 foot in the air, their energy is spreading out. So down on the ground below the site or 50 feet from the site or 200 feet from the site, you're going to get maybe 5% of the general public limit, maybe. So your phone's generating more because of the distance, it is close to you, it's generating 50% of the public limit. Now if you double your distance from the antenna to you, it cuts that power in half or it squares it, it drops it down. So every time you double the distance farther away, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. So these general public limits, non-paytional limits created by the FCC, these are what all wireless carriers have to follow. This is federal law. These licenses that these companies pay all this money for, if they don't follow this law, they get in trouble, they risk losing their licenses and that's a lot of money to risk. So they follow these rules very, very closely. It's called OET65. It's an operational bulletin that was issued by the FCC for all wireless carriers. Anybody who has a licensed transmitter has to follow these rules, whether it's the police, the fire, anybody, municipalities follow it, everybody has to follow these laws. Go to the next slide. So once again, we'll look at the site where it's behind the tower or the towers behind the building. The power on the ground is one-one-thousandth of the power that's up next to the antenna. The area that's going to be affected down below, it's very, very small. Like I said, it's maybe 10%, 5 to 10% of the public limit down on the ground next to the tower. The energy is up above. It wants to serve. It wants to spread out. It doesn't want to stay underneath the tower. Go to the next slide. So there's two types of bands. A lot of people get excited about 5G. There's two types of deployments going on. There's 5G on existing frequency bands. So let's say, remember when phones used to have 3G instead of 4G and all of a sudden all the carriers started moving towards 4G. So they took existing spectrum and they took the 3G technology out and put the 4G technology in. And now the same thing's happening again. They're taking the 4G technology out, putting the 5G in. So they're just doing deployments on existing bands. The second type is what we call small cells. Next, usually in downtown areas where you're putting antennas on a light pole or a street light signal, something like that, whether 20, 30 foot, that's 28 and 39 gigahertz. So a very, very, very high frequency, very, very wide bandwidth. But the coverage area of that site is maybe a block. So those are the two types of bands that are going on right now, types of uses. And that's how 5G is utilized. So regardless of what band is being used or technology is being used, it's regulated by the FCC. These carriers have to follow these guidelines. This is federal law and they don't want to risk their licenses. This is the only side effect is heat. Your phone gets warm. The same thing, the antenna gets warm. But you're a lot further away from that antenna on that tower than you are with your phone next to your head. So I'm available for any more questions, but that's kind of what I wanted to talk about. Thank you. I certainly feel a lot better, although I think I'm not going to be using my cell phone. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Okay. That was certainly very thorough and helpful. Good question, Captain. Do any, one of the questions that board members have for the applicants team? Well, your presentation certainly was thorough. I don't have many questions myself. I'll ask one and give the rest of our board a chance to think about it for a second. But my question is just sort of a general question. Your presentation got me thinking. One of the very first slides that you showed a few different times was the aerial photo showing the eight or nine tower locations around the Shandon Rosewood area and then the almost sort of what I would consider maybe a donut hole here in the middle of those nine towers. I guess this question is directed for you, Keith. In Charleston and other municipalities, is it typical to have an area of a mile or so like this without one of these facilities in it? I know it's a vague question. Fill us in on general coverage and holes in other municipalities. You hear me? Yes. All right. So to answer your question, yes. That is normal to occur and that's obviously why we build these type of situations. Over time, the number of users on a system has increased. So if you can imagine each one of these sites being an umbrella at a party and as more people come to the party, you need more umbrellas to provide coverage. So where they used to be, say two miles apart, you've got so many users now for it to operate efficiently and effectively, you've got an operational deficit in that area. And so to be a mile apart from one on one side and a mile on the other, especially with the terrain of Columbia, having the ups and downs, the hills, the valleys. Yes, that is a normal occurrence and obviously a direct effect of that is, you know, obviously better coverage for that area, but obviously more users on being able to be handled on the network. So it's kind of a two-prong effect, not only coverage deficit, but obviously more users in that area. And Mr. Chairman, this Jonathan, just very briefly, we saw this situation really across the country exacerbated over the past year. With the COVID pandemic, you had a lot of folks trying to work from home, educate their children from home. So a lot of, a lot of strains on the network and that's when you find the holes. So interesting year for the wireless business, heavy demands that we had to meet in a very unusual year. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Okay. What other questions do the board members have for the applicants? Anyone? Now you mentioned, you mentioned those little, you said there were little bitty things that you can put on light poles, right? Then they would, they boost, they boost a block at a time. That would be an option, perhaps? Those, those are small cells. And a lot of the, because of the high frequency and what's going on, they're serving in high dense urban areas. So if you can imagine downtown Phoenix, downtown Dallas, Manhattan, that's where a lot of these things are going on with these macro sites in these more rural areas and lots of trees, trees love to soak up RF energy. A lot of these things require still a lot of macro work, but these small cell capacity sites, they're just that they're more capacity than they are coverage because they cover such a small area. Okay. Great. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Catherine, we have a lot of those nodes downtown, five points and around the football stadium right now. Right. Okay. Okay. I know they used to bring in those little cows for the St. Pat's Day. I know that. The cow cellular on wheels. Cell on wheels. Yes, ma'am. Cows and colts, all sorts of fun stuff. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you very much. That's very helpful. They have been very, very thorough. I just, I think they dotted all the eyes and crossed all the T's as far as I can see. I don't have any other questions. So one last time, anyone else have a question for that? All right. Very good. I'm sensing we're going to have a good bit of public input. So Rachel, let's move into moving the public input portion of the case. And we had letters that were emailed to you all after the packet and then also just the letters that were in the packet from when this case was originally on in January, February and now. So I'm just going to read the last names from those letters so that those individuals know that their letters were received in our part of the record. These letters were in opposition. Huggins, Hamilton, the Blake's, Braza, Williams, Gerard, Heal, Knitz, Kraut, Rose, Scrobe, and Trask. Again, sorry if I butchered your name. But those are the letters that were received on the record. And then I have not seen any new emails come in. So I will turn it over to Erica because I think we had some voicemails and some callers. We do have at this time four callers, four or five voicemails and a couple comments. We are going to play in again and then we'll pack in the callers. Hold on. Okay, Rachel, I'm going to go ahead and play a voicemail while we wait on the others. Okay, here is the first one. Yes, my name is Steve Carter. I own a company called Custom Welling and Fabrication. We're located in West Columbia. We do a lot of work around the Columbia area and around the Rosewood Drive area down around the Midlands Tech area. We were doing there last year and we had a hard time with cell phone reception now. So anything that we can do to get better cell phone reception to be able to conduct business in that area would really be appreciated. So thank you very much. Okay, here is another one. Hi, my name is Susan Ruiz. I have a daughter with 10's Midlands Tech. We just need more cell phone data, internet data. We know that y'all have a meeting tonight and just was wanting my input on this. Kind of agree that we need such in that area, other areas. Thank you. Bye. And here's another one. Cindy Robinson is calling about the cell phone power that we need on Rosewood Drive. I believe those are the voicemails. I do have a couple of comments that were logged in. Okay. The first one is from Bobby Kaufman and he says this tower would be a great improvement for cell phone coverage in this area for schools and local businesses, not to mention the general public. And let's see. There's one from Zachariah Jones and he says having lived in the neighborhood for over five years, I advocate for installing the tower at the proposed location. And let's see. I've got two more. There's a Bobby Kaufman. I think this is part two. I apologize. They're separated. So my company has constructed several of these style towers in California and are by far the best solution for curb appeal in residential areas. These guys are definitely proposing an A plus solution. There are no known or documented health concerns for RF signal waves. This will also benefit the FCC on the Palmetto 800 for all first responders radio communication through emergency calls for clear communication. And also there is a message from Alicia Holder and she says my name is Alicia Holder with ultimate marketing. We have multiple breaths on the field or in the field that struggle daily with cell reception in the Rosewood area. I believe that this tower would be very beneficial. And with that, I'll let Erica handle the callers that are on the line. Yes, I'm on the line. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, board. Thank you for allowing me a minute or so of your time this afternoon to speak. My name is Tara Dickerson. I am a realtor with a local company called next time specialist. I work locally here in the area. I wanted to speak this afternoon in favor of the cell phone tower going in at 3624 Rosewood Drive. As most of you are probably aware, we as a society depend heavily on adequate mobile service. I specifically do a lot of business in this area, the South Kilburn area, South Edisto area around USC and of course Midlands Tech. In order to access homes, we are required to use super lock boxes that require Bluetooth signal. There have been multiple times that I've been unable to show homes to clients simply because I've had inadequate or no cell coverage. I also rely heavily on my mobile hot spot. If any of you are familiar with the market now, it is very hot. My car is essentially my office, so I conduct a whole lot of business straight from my car. I write contracts a lot of times from my vehicle. Because of the substandard coverage in this area, I have a lot of difficulty conducting business. I wanted to definitely thank you this afternoon for your time. I hope you will consider the cell tower on Rosewood. I know multiple businesses, including other realtors like myself depend heavily on this, and it is definitely needed. I am certainly happy to provide you with my contact information or any additional information that you may need. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your call. I'll connect the next caller now. Thank you for taking listening to me. This is Kay Molyneux. I live at 3700 Yale Avenue, which means that the cell tower would be visible from my back deck directly behind my house. I have lived in this neighborhood since 1986. I live in a family home that my grandparents built in 1949. My kids played sports. My son played sports at Drear, so we had many occasions to be at the baseball field and the football field at district stadium, and there's virtually no service down in that hole. I own a small business, and I make my living by using a cell phone. Recently, or especially recently, we've experienced a lot of dropped calls and fuzzy calls. I mean, it's just in and service in and out. I've followed this. I have been at all of the, I believe, all of the public hearings on this, and I've seen what this company has done to try its best to work with the community. From what I can tell, a lot of the objections are coming from people who are further down and probably have better service family days. But as far as that part of Sheen and that part of Rosewood, we have no, I mean, we're in a hole. We just don't have the coverage. Let's see. I think that's everything. I appreciate your time, and I really hope that you will support and approve this tower. Thank you. Thank you. We have two more collars. I'll patch the next one in now. I'm Celia Means. I am a local grocery broker. In the area, I've been there for a long time. I also live in Rosewood. And one of the things I moved to Rosewood about a year ago. And that's where I noticed a lot of problems with my cell phone. I mean, I had to go sometimes outside of the house to be able to get service. And the other agent was saying that we have to show the house sometimes and talking or dropping calls is not very feasible for me. And during this past year, I had to rely a lot of my cell phones for several reasons. Going around in the house is still not good service. And I don't leave. I'd leave very close by to that tower. And I will love to have more better service so I can pick up most of my calls are low. So thank you for your time. Thank you. I will play the next caller in and we do have another caller. Hey there. This is Zachariah Jones calling in. I left my comment earlier just on the off chance of my call drop. Poor humor. Excuse me. For what it's worth, at our residence at 1119 Super Street down in South Kilburn, very often we'll have maybe one, maybe two bars in the driveway. Walk through the door of the house, no bars. And that's why I advocate for there being the tower at that proposed site. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Okay, it looks like we have one more caller and I'll connect them now. Okay. Yes, my name is Ken Hulk and I live at 3914 Kenilworth Road. I was intending to join this meeting earlier by Zoom, but I had some other things of business that occupied my time and couldn't do it. So I was calling on behalf of Julie and Mark Berger and their request for a waiver to zoning ordinance relative to fencing. I don't know. Mr. Hull, we are not, we are talking about another case right now. That one is on the agenda later to come. So I'd like to ask you to please hang up and call back at the appropriate time. It's later today? Yes, it is. Yes, we're not exactly sure when, but it probably will be fairly, fairly soon. Yeah, and you can stay on the line, but you'll just need to press star three again once that case is called. So there's about two more cases in between this one and that one. If you can just stay on the line. Okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Do we have any others there? Okay, that's all for now. Okay, thank you. And I do not see any more voicemails or comments that have been entered. Yeah, and I don't see any new emails that have popped in. Okay, well good. Well, that will officially conclude the public input portion. Rachel, you didn't have anything else to read or anything. Did you or say that? I didn't. All of the letters made it into the packet emailed to you all ahead of the meeting. Okay. All right. Very good. Well, normally we give the applicant a few minutes to rebuttal. I don't know whether it is to rebut regarding any of those statements. You might know some are pretty positive. Mr. Gates, could you wish to add anything quickly? Mr. Chairman, we just here to answer any, any and all questions you have. Okay. Well, thank you. Well, the question portion is done too. So with that being said, let's move into board discussion. And I'd like to get some thoughts from the board and see what you all think about this matter. Gene, I think it's very thorough case. Certainly they've done a great job planning it. And I think identifying where something like this might be needed. And I'm not really sure how else you would conceal it other than what they've done. I mean, but I think they've definitely gone through and with all the expert testimonies and I think they've definitely explored about every angle they can and tried to answer every question that has been presented to them. All right. Thank you, John. Who else? When I go down the list of criteria, I mean, they anticipated pretty much anything I could possibly think of. And then some, it really felt like very, very thorough. Now, you know, I read the objection letters and they were not very specific. They were just like, you know, I protested because of this. But when I looked in the packet materials, it seemed as if they had, the applicants had more than thoroughly countered those concerns. I mean, obviously aesthetics, that's just a matter of judgment. Excellent point, Catherine, regarding the oppositions, how a lot of them were just, we don't want it in the neighborhood, but you're right. What was it based upon other than we don't want it? Excellent. I couldn't get it. I mean, if somebody, if we had been seeing them in person, I would have asked them, you know, well, what, can you give me a little bit more detail or anything? Because they just were like, okay, these are the criteria of public safety. Well, it seems to me that occupying the site, they with the applicant went over public safety in depth. The safety requirements and that they're doing to make sure it doesn't fall on somebody, blah, blah, blah. And the fact that, you know, the property will be occupied and monitored. So it seemed like it was just, that the applicants were extremely thorough. I agree. I think it was a very thorough application and my concern going into this would have been aesthetics, but from the pictures in the packet of the different places around the neighborhood where it's not visible. I think they've done a good job answering that question. Right, Jenna. That was very well done. But I think that really illustrated, you know, what it would look like. That was a, that was a good touch. I agree completely. I'll make it unanimous. I do think the opposition letters were general and like Catherine, I wish that they had been a few more, a couple of them had, had called in so that we could ask them specifically to, you know, support their opposition. But as far as the presentation was, it was, it was very thorough, like everybody said. And I thought they didn't leave any questions on the answer. Hey, very good. Well, I'll simply add, I think this will be a real asset to the neighborhood. The presenters made a good point that it's sort of like a water or sewer or another utility, you know, it's just, it's sort of necessary. And in this particular case, they've done as good as any of us could imagine at concealing the thing in a location that really looks like there's a need for it. So simply stop it there. At this point, we'd like to ask the board for a motion regarding this request. Jane, I'll move to approve this request for a special exception subject to staff comments. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Anyone oppose? Okay, very good. Motion passes. Thank you very much, applicant. It's a fantastic representation. Thank you all so much for your time. We apologize. We pulled up your dinner, but we thank you very much. That's okay. Thank you, sir. The next item on the agenda is case 2021-0042. This is at 4111 Kilburn Road. It's a variance to the maximum fence height requirement. If the applicant is on the line, he's welcome to find himself and go over his request. Certainly. Thank you. I appreciate the time to be able to present to you today. We're asking for a variance in the height of the housing and it's the fencing along the side of the house. It's on the right hand side. From this picture, what we're trying to address is two things. One is our comfort and the other is safety. So we are basically what you're looking at is the intersection between Kilburn Road and Beltline. And so on either side of Beltline, right here at the intersection, is bus stop. And so we have pedestrian traffic as well as traffic. If you see this crosswalk, it's sort of pointing right toward the backyard of our house, which is the one that's highlighted. And at the back end of our house is the master bedroom. The master bedroom on that side has a small deck. And so there are very large windows and a glass door right there. And so we can see the light from the traffic that is crossing Beltline coming up Kilburn. And there's also a lot of trees and bushes that are right here. And so some concern to us that with all of this pedestrian traffic that someone be looking toward and be able to see into the back of our house where master bedroom is. We bought this house in 2017. It's undergone two phases of a very big renovation. We basically replaced everything. We have new plumbing out to the street, new electrical, new roof. It's been painted. There's a small garage on the end here. As you're looking at the side of the house, that's now a one car garage. And the fence that is along here that's very difficult to see. In fact, I don't think you can see it was the original fence, was a standard six foot gray fence. And so it's been replaced with a standard six foot fence where the wood just looks a little bit newer. A very small section of it is been raised to eight feet. And that is to block this view. So you can sort of see at the back end of the house the windows and glass door that I was referring to. And so we're trying to be conservative in our request here. We don't want to raise the entire fence to be eight foot. It would be out of scale with everything else. Just a section right here to help block out some lights and possible persons who could see us from the street and who were walking. Along Beltline there is a sidewalk that people generally speaking stick to. Along Kilburn, unfortunately, there's not a sidewalk on either side. And so anyway, that's sort of what we're looking at. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. I think your application is well written and addresses the questions that we're asked to judge upon very well. So we won't go through those. Do any board members have any specific questions for the applicant? Yes, of course. When I was reading this, I mean, it doesn't seem overly challenging. But I mean, I live at a corner where there's a light coming in and a street light coming in and so on. And we have, you know, light blocking drapes. And I imagine you could screen your deck with, you know, plants and something closer to the deck if that were really a concern. On the other hand, it doesn't seem like they're asking for very much. So I don't know. Is there some reason why you could not use, you know, light blocking drapes or a screening around the deck? So we could. And in fact, we've started planting things alongside the fence, not up close to the house, but closer to the fence. The picture that you're looking at is a little bit old. As I said, there's another garage that's on this side. And some of the trees are no longer there. They were dead and have been brought down. So some of that can be done certainly. The other concern though, just being someone being able to see us, basically, look from there. So yeah, and the wooden fence is just on this side. We have a four foot chain link fence along the rear. And then there is another fence on the other side of the house, the top end that is a different style fence, but it is owned by the next door neighbor. And so we don't have a fence on our side. And so I guess, I guess we have three different styles of fence in the backyard. Okay. Anyone else have a question for the alphabet? All right. Doesn't sound like it. Rachel, let's move into the public input portion of the application. Okay. No emails. So I will let Erica and Andrew let us know if anybody's on the phone. We do not have anybody who wishes to speak and no comment. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Erica. Okay. We'll move into board discussion. Do any board members want to discuss this matter? Okay. It doesn't sound like it. Like to ask for a motion then please. Do any make a motion that we approve this variance subject to staff comments? Second. Okay. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right. Very good. Motion passes. Okay. Good luck with you, Mr. Orton. Thank you so much. Appreciate your time. All right. He's 2021-0045. This is a variance at 3917 Kennelworth Road, a variance to the maximum fence height requirement. If the applicant is present, they're welcome to unmute themselves and speak. Hi. Thank you for having us today. Welcome. Thank you. Hi. Mark Berger is my wife, Julie, and we live here. I've been here about four years with our family of five, and we love being here, and we appreciate the opportunity to appear, and we appreciate you guys being here as well. So we basically were asking for some relief. I'm asking for this variance based on some topographical disadvantages that we have in the property of a very lovely home that's quite higher than ours right there. I guess where our pool right there comes to the property line, and we were feeling that having some decorative lattice screening would help with our privacy for us and our neighbors, as well as noise reduction for us and our neighbors as well. We have a couple of teenagers and, you know, they're getting the pool and it gets a little loud, and so we basically were, again, appreciate you all having us here to talk about that. We want to just point out that the decorative lattice topper is not completed. It will get, it has plans to have two coats of sealer and stain so that it's a little darker, kind of like a teak color, and also we have abundant big leaf ivy greenery that we're going to grow up through it to make it blend in even more, and so we received a notification from the city and immediately called and just have to compliment, again, the zoning administration department does a fantastic job and got us to this point, and with that, is there anything you wanted to add? No, I just think you pretty much covered it. Okay. Well, thank you all. That's kind of all we had, and if you all have any questions for us. Okay. All right. Do any board members have any specific questions? Yeah, Mark and Julie have been doing well. Thanks all for coming. What other options were considered? I mean, just because looking at the pictures and seeing you're almost, maybe not quite, but almost doubling the height of it, of the existing wall, I mean, I guess what else was considered as far as screening requires? Sure. Thank you. So the closeness to which the wall that's the brick wall is six feet, and it's three foot off the property line from our neighbor who's in the picture here from the side. That's looking kind of into what would be the pool area. There's no room to plan anything there. There's just everything so tight. So getting relief with greenery and things like that would be kind of problematic for us. But we basically, when we were talking about it, we thought that if we had a screen and not necessarily a solid wall, that would make some difference, I guess. And that's sort of why we went with the decorative lattice instead. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. That's a good answer. That does make sense. Okay. So all you're doing is screening the view. It's not, you don't need any height for protection or fencing off your pool for safety or anything. It's just screening the view. Is that really? Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. That's exactly right. Okay. And it's going to, again, it's going to have greenery grown into it. And the plan is to make it, you know, really blend in and be nice. Okay. It looks like there's a, there's certainly, as you're looking at this photo here, there's certainly a little, a little dip in the yard as you head towards the wall. It's hard to tell how much it is. Is it a couple of feet or so? If you're standing, where are the feet? I would say, yes, sir, there's some topographical change there. There's a up slope. The property next door, the port is wonderful folks. We, I'm estimating that could be anywhere from three to five feet, sir. Maybe six. There's a little hillock, but certainly they're the highest house on the whole block. Okay. Topographically speaking. All right. What else? Board members. Okay. Very good. Rachel, let's move into the public input portion. All right. I didn't see any emails coming in. But I will, I know one person had called earlier wanting to speak on this case. So I'll see if they've indicated to get back on. Rachel, we have two voicemails and one caller. So we'll play the voicemails first and then connect the caller. Yes, my name is Jenkins Mann. I have written a letter in support, but also wanted to voice support for my neighbors, Mark and Julie Berger, who are seeking a variance for a fifth edition that they have done in their backyard, and pergola, I believe. As I have said in my letter, Mark and Julie have done a wonderful job, not just in this particular instance, but generally as neighbors in our neighborhood, they have improved their home painstakingly, and they have done a wonderful job in this particular instance. I will say that I'm, they're direct across the street neighbor. I live at 1317 Belmont Drive, and I cannot see the addition that they've done to their fence from my home. Now, I can if I go out in my yard and look at it, but it's so tasteful and well done that from my home, I can't even see it. So I am calling and offering support for what they have done. I think it looks great. I think it improves the neighborhood. And most importantly, I think it cures the hardship that they're facing with two neighbors whose houses look directly down into their backyard where they have a swimming pool. If anyone needs to reach me for additional comment, I'm available at 803-665-0675. Again, my name is Jenkins Mann, and I am calling on behalf of Mark and Julie Berger on Kenilworth. Thank you very much. My name is Andy Lowry. I live at 3919 Kenilworth Road. I'm the neighbor of Mark Berger, who is having a hearing today at four o'clock. I'm calling in support of the fence addition that Mark made. I live right next door to him. We enjoyed the privacy that the fence affords us and him. It's been done very tastefully, looks good, and we would hate to see him have to take it down. I'm probably more affected than anyone because it's the house right next door, and we have no issues with the fence. Again, my wife's a very private person. She really enjoys the privacy that affords us, so I just wanted to call and leave this message in support. Thank you. Okay, that was the last voicemail. I will connect the caller now. Yes, my name is Ken Holt. I live at 3914 Kenilworth Road. Julie and Mark Berger are across the street neighbors, and I did write a letter in support of their project. I'm just calling to reiterate that my wife and I think that what they've done has been done with such amazing craftsmanship and that what they have done is an attribute to the neighborhood as far as we're concerned. So we're in support of what they've done, and we hope that this board will find it, that they will allow them to have a variance to this zoning ordinance. Thank you. Thank you for your call. Okay, is that it for public input? All the callers. All right, very good. Is there any board discussion regarding this matter? I'll say briefly, I don't like the height. I think 10 feet is too much, but I think that's something, this is also the reason that we have the board designing appeals, and you're able to come in front of us and ask for variances for matters like this, because ordinarily it is too tall, but the applicants have done a good job of illustrating why it is necessary and beneficial for this particular case, coupled with the surrounding neighborhood support. I don't see how we couldn't be in favor of it. I agree, that was the first thing that I saw was the height, and I went, oh my gosh, the percentage is, yeah, we're used to seeing five inches or something like that, but absolutely, and I think what really sold me is the next door neighbor wants it there. So I mean, the neighborhood support is just really important, and it does look very nice actually. Yeah, that little dip before the work, and that hurts them here. So this, in this particular case, you know, only I think it's warranted. Yeah, yeah, I agree. And also the fact, like I said, that it's, the neighbors all want, are all fine with it, they like it, and anyone buying the house can see that it's there, so. It's nicely done too, that really helps, and it's very attractive, it's nicely done, done a good job. All right, anybody else? Okay, like to ask for a motion please. I make a motion that we approve the variance subject to all staff comments. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Anyone oppose? Okay, motion passes. Good luck with it, y'all. It looks nice. Thank y'all so much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate y'all. All right, the next matter on the agenda is case 2021-0049, a variance at 24-01 Atlas Road. This is a variance to the maximum height for a multifamily development that's going to be senior-based development. I just want to note, because it says pending RG2, the parcel is currently within a planned unit development. That is going through rezoning. It goes to council for first reading on the 18th, so everything will be subject on the rezoning passing. Should you approve this today? But if the applicant is present, they are welcome to discuss their request. Yes, Ms. Bailey, thank you so much. My name is Nick Anderson. I work with Dominium, the company developing this project. I'm here today to give a little bit of background on our project, as well as the reason for the request for the height variance. We've been working with what will be our neighbor, the Bible Way Church of Atlas Road, Darryl Jackson, the COO for the churches on the line, as well, along with me. The image before you shows the site plan, and then we also have some building elevations to demonstrate what the building would look like. We are a national affordable housing developer. We have an office in Atlanta, Georgia, that I work out of. This will be our first project in Columbia. We're really excited to be in front of you and appreciate the opportunity. We've really enjoyed working with DJ and the church on this project, and we're hopeful that we can get the requested variance to help move this project forward. The project itself will be a 196 unit senior independent living apartment project. It'll include one and two better units, and the maximum height of the building, and this is the highest peak of the pitched roof, would be at 55 feet, or just under that. The current height limitation for the RG2 zoning classification is 40 feet. Really, in order to achieve a building that would be under 40 feet, you would have to do a three-story building with all of the units having eight-foot ceilings if you were to use a pitched roof. It's pretty commonplace nowadays to build apartment projects with nine-foot ceilings, and even with nine-foot ceilings and a three-story building, you'd be at about 43 or 44 feet, which would be in excess of the 40-foot RG2 height maximum. We typically build our senior projects with four stories instead of three, and the reason we do is because these buildings are typically serviced by elevators, and building a four-story project instead of a three-story project effectively shrinks the footprint of the building. You can basically get the same amount of units in a smaller footprint with four stories than you can with three, and when you go to four stories and you have nine-foot ceilings and a pitched roof, you end up at about the height that we have here. The max height is 55 feet, I think the median height of the roof line is about 48 feet, so the median height is about eight feet in excess of the maximum. Going to the four stories from the three stories is important because our residents will be seniors, and if the footprint of the building were to expand by going to a three-story structure, it would be a pretty far walk for a lot of the residents to reach amenity spaces, to get to the elevators, to get to stairwells, that sort of thing. So we typically do the four stories just to minimize the walk distances for the seniors that will be living here. I think in addition to the site plan, we did have a building elevation that we provided. I would like to point out as well that our primary neighbors are the church across the street as well as the church's discovery center next door. To our east or northeast, there are some single-family homes there, but there's a power line that runs between, so our property would actually be built on the leftmost rectangular portion of the site that's on the screen now. The site outlined in blue is the site that's being applied for to be rezoned, but we would only be developing a portion of it. It would be the portion that the cursor is kind of circling right now. On the far left side is where the single-family neighbors are, and between, I'm sorry, the opposite side, the left side of the, yeah, right there. So between those single-family neighbors and our property, there would be, there's a power line that runs through there. So there's a 15-foot power line easement, there's a 10-foot additional side setback, and then our parking lot would be as well as some additional green space would be between those single-family neighbors and our building. So there's probably close to 100 feet of buffer between those neighbors and where our building would sit, and it's heavily wooded, and we plan at least for the 25-foot side setback and the 15-foot power line setback, we would maintain as much of that treescape as we possibly could to sort of maintain that buffer between us and the lower-density residential that's next door. And then our other neighbors are really the church and the Discovery Center, and DJ and the church are very supportive of this. They're actually selling us the land for this development project and partnering with us on this and are supportive of the project and proposed height variance as well. So I hope that's helpful. I can certainly address any questions if there's anything that I didn't cover that that would be helpful to you all. Yeah, that is. I think you did the best that you could with answering the criteria. I'm not sure I'm in total agreement with your answers and the necessary hardship here to be honest with you, but I do think it's a good project. What questions do we have from the board for that regarding this project? I'm completely baffled at this point about the rezoning. I saw pending RG II when I reviewed the packet and then went, oh yeah okay and now I didn't think, wait a second. So they're rezoning it into something that would not allow them to build it as high as they want to build it. Would there not be, it's a large enough parcel. Is there some reason why they're not rezoning it to something that would allow them to build something that high? The PUD allowed for residential uses, but it was very restrictive as to where those residential uses would go. So that's why they are rezoning. When the rezoning was requested, they didn't necessarily have specific projects in mind. They just knew they wanted to be able to permit all residential uses, which is why they landed on the RG II. It was discussed, but no matter which way they went, they would have come before you all for something. So is there no height, I mean I see stuff that seems to be. They would have had to go commercial to be able to get to the height that they wanted. There's no residential district that would have allowed that. And with the rezoning, I don't know if staff would have been able to recommend approval for a commercial district on that side of the parcel where this is going to go. Because there's going to be some commercial on the Bush River. The Bush River, Rod River. Bluff Road. Sorry. Yeah, that side. Oh, I'm really confused. I don't know where we are. So I see we've got M1, M2 around on one side. Yes, very industrial back here. And then there's some county properties across the street as residential. This area here of the planned unit development is already developed with single family. They rezoned this portion of RG2 out of the planned unit development a couple years ago for development. And then this area here on Bluff Road will be becoming commercial as that went along with the future land use. Whereas it did not, the future land use did not show commercial at the very back of this. Okay. And what is D1? That's kind of a holdover district. It allows some residential, but it usually eventually gets resound to a residential district. Okay. And this is Daryl Jackson, Jr. from the church. We've been in touch with the community as well as Nick said. We are close partners with Dominion in order to build the senior residents. So we're in full support. And if anyone knows anything about this corridor, the church has invested about $17 million in this area to redevelop this whole community from where Rachel pointed from the RG2. We're looking at developing that site as well in partnership with another developer on that site. So we are in full support and working with the community closely on this site. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Jackson. We didn't want to cut you off, but we really are sort of in forward questioning right now, but that was a good point. You'll have another opportunity later if you'd like to. But okay, moving along, any other specific questions for the applicant about this project or their thoughts with such a significant increase? I have a question. So back in December, there was another variance on this property from another developer. And so I was just for clarification and just to understand what's happening. So I guess on the north eastern part of this property where the building site located, that's where the building, that's where this development's going, but that other development from 40 to 43 feet is the one where more of that subject property area was pointing, is that correct? So we would have two developments going on at the same time. No. So that other project that you're referencing would be built on the RG2 parcel that the cursor is over right now. Okay. So that one's still going on? Yes, they're two separate ones. But yes, the one that came before previously was in that existing RG2 area. And that was approved to be 43 feet? Yeah, it was a three-story design. They wanted a nine-foot or 10-foot sealant. So we gave them 43 feet. And this is a four-story design. Yeah. And this is a four-story design, primarily because it's a senior project. That other project was a general occupancy apartment project. It's a three-story product with breezeways, like stairs within breezeways, as opposed to this project would be a four-story project with interior corridors and elevators to be more well-suited for seniors. We would have a 55 and up age restriction at this property, but typically our resident demographic is more in the 65 to 80 range as far as age. So as I mentioned earlier, going to the four stories really makes it easier for folks to access the central amenity areas within the building as well as the elevators that just decreases walk distances for the seniors. So the difference between the regular general use, and this is about 12 feet, and your requested height would be an additional 12 feet, which is approximately visually a story. You're going from three stories to four stories. Is the visual difference? Correct. Yes. So we're not really talking about going from a single family house to four high stories. I mean, okay, I guess my thing is I have friends that still hopes and they walk a long way. Still hopes is huge and they just walk and walk and walk and walk. Still hopes is also extremely tall. So I don't know. Okay. All right. Okay. Any other specific questions for the applicant? All right. Rachel, do we have any public input regarding this matter? I have not seen any emails coming on it, so we will see if we have any phone calls. Rachel, we do have one caller that wishes to speak. Okay. I'll connect them now. Hi, this is Michael Haley from Dominion. I don't have any further comment. I was just on the call. Thank you, Michael. Okay. Thank you very much. All right. Let's move into board discussion. I'll just simply say I think it's a lot. Yeah, I'll just leave it to that. Pretty big F. What do you all think? Well, I mean, I think that if this feels more like a planned unit development, what really would be a planned unit development, I know that's not favored and nobody likes them anymore and all that sort of stuff, but it does feel like we're talking about still hopes or something like that and that this is over at Bible Way, which is nice. And that from what I read in good urban design kind of things, I mean, what you're doing is you're able to cover, have a smaller footprint. You're able to provide a level of density in a necessary product and preserving more green space and providing more appealing amenity, a more appealing program, more appealing use by going higher. And because it's such a large thing, that's what I was saying. It feels more like it could be a planned unit development because it is sort of a big project. It's not like, it's not like I'm building a big house next door to a little house. And I just want to note that the planned unit development was going away just because this site was not planned to be mixed use really anymore and planned unit developments have to be. Right. The Supreme Court case. Yep. Good point about the green space. I mean, if you compare this to Laurel Crest or still hopes. Well, one other quick thing that might be helpful is to point out is that I'm not sure exactly what the height of the church is across the street, but it's a pretty similar height. It's there's a portion of it that eating area. And a lot of that is it's all in addition to the courtyard area that is shown on the site plan that you're seeing. And it'll be it'll be very, very nice. And we're afforded the flexibility to do that in part because of the height of the building as well. Just move everything over to the bed area. Okay. Back to board discussion gave me a little leeway there. Mr. Anderson testimony is closed. We're in board discussion. So let us let us finish testimony close, but back to board discussion. Let's just get some more. What are the members saying? John Gregory, what do you think? It's probably I don't think they'd be doing this. They didn't think there's a need for it in the area. It seems like a lot. I wish they could kind of do it. Like it's not an architect, but we kind of cool. Have like two sister buildings, if you will. But I guess I don't. I guess I don't have that much of an issue with it. It just seems like a lot. And we're starting to I mean, I guess we kind of want them. How is the not this form an engineering question? And I don't know if it's appropriate for here. I guess all the water and sewer for these as many units in this area can fully handle it. I mean, when you combine this project with the other one, I mean, that that is a good question, John. And you're right. It's not really for us to discuss, but, you know, they will have to in order to develop this, they'll have to meet all the land development regulations and make sure that it is water and sewer capacity or not on an extension to the property. So we'll just leave that them to work out. You know, that's our good points. I like I like this design. I think it's very attractive in the green space that you're saving. And I mean, I think it's very good. I think it's better like this. My only concern, and I guess I'm asking this to you, John, and the other board members are, do you think they meet these criteria? I mean, I don't know that I don't know that they do. Yeah, Jean, I agree. I think the density in green space are a good thing. But what we have here, this applicant hasn't shown why this property is different and why it would warrant a variance. Yeah. So, Jenna, you said what I was trying to say. I mean, that's kind of my thoughts. Marcel? I'm inclined to agree with you and Jenna about them, about the criteria. I like to, I mean, you know, maybe here, I'd be interested for them to, you know, kind of expound on a couple of criteria. Well, we can certainly do that just because we've closed testimony doesn't mean we can't bring it back up and ask them. Right, right, right. We can certainly do that. So, you know, I think it's warranted. So, Marcel, why don't you ask the applicant to come back and ask them a couple of questions? Okay. Mr. Anderson? Yes, I'm here. Okay. Could you kind of expand on a couple of the criteria for me? Number five, explain how this variance requests as minimum necessary to make possible the reasonable use of the land, building or structure. Could you speak a little bit more about that? Yes, I would be happy to. Thank you. Even if we were to build this project as a three-story project, we would still exceed the maximum height allowed under the zoning. And as we understand it, and Steph can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there is a zoning classification that both allows a multifamily residential apartment project and allows a height in excess of 40 feet. So, and with nine-foot ceilings and a three-story building and a pitch roof, we would be in that 43 to 44 foot range. And that is for the maximum height. So, that's the highest peak of the building. A peak of our building with a four-story building puts us at about 55 feet. And our midpoint or kind of the median height would be about 48 feet. So, we're eight feet in excess of the cap. There's some financial hardship that comes with going from three to four stories. But if we were to go with a three-story project in lieu of the four-story project that we're proposing, the building footprint gets larger. The parking lot gets larger because it has to expand all the way around the building in order to provide adequate access to all sides of the building where properties are at. And so, it significantly cuts into green space. It significantly cuts into amenity space that would be available for the residents. It becomes just a lot more building, a lot more hardscape, and a lot less green space, amenity space, and impervious surface on the site. So, it becomes a less attractive project from my perspective and I think from the residents perspective as well. So, I think those are the reasons why we believe that the project is a better project as a four-story building than as a three-story building. And it will be better enjoyed by the residents who will ultimately live here if it's a four-story building instead of a three-story building. Okay. That's all I have. Yes. That's a pretty good answer. That's a pretty good answer. I don't disagree that it is a better project as a four-story building. Okay. Well, I think personally we kind of have a tough one here. I am on the fence. Really, I'm not sure what to do. I'd like to turn it over to the rest of you and see what y'all think. Or if anyone would like to make a motion or if y'all want to discuss this more. I just really like the fact of all that green space. I understand. I mean, I deal with my aged parents. You know, when they when your parents start to move into the walkers where they're having to use walkers and canes and stuff like that, then you start to realize how a little extra walking is harder. On the other hand, with so many parking spaces, I mean, I don't know what the part, I mean, I think it still hopes there's, I don't know, that they manage, people manage to get to their partner, their car, you know, regardless. But I just like all that green space. I like the fact that there's going to be some amenities. I think it's making an attractive project. But I see the point that it's, it's not truly a hardship. You're just making it a much more, a much, a much better design, a much better. Yeah, it's using best practices. That's right. And, you know, and these are the criteria that we judge these projects on. But if there's a certain random odd time like now where we feel that a project that's beneficial and necessary, that the benefits outweigh, you know, necessarily answering all the criteria specifically, then we can do that. So, you know, I just want to throw that out there. I don't think the criteria, or at least all of them are not as well, I guess you could argue, I don't think they meet them as well as I wish they would. But it's a better project as a four story building in the green space here is great. It buffers everything great. And it's a better project. I think in terms of the context, I mean, when I look at the area, if I were thinking Rosewood, just to pick a place out of, I mean, Rosewood, you wouldn't want to suddenly have 55 foot heights in Rosewood, because most everything in Rosewood is one, there's hardly any two story things in Rosewood. But here, there isn't really much context. You have the new multifamily thing that's going to be going on the other side. You have some single family, you've got industrial, you've got this big church. So it doesn't feel like it's going to be out of place. That's what I meant when I was talking about how it would be a plain unit development is such a thing existed for that non mixed use project. Because because it is it's sort of its own thing. You know, it's not it doesn't have it's contextless. It's its own new brand new thing. At the same time, it does harmonize it seems with that new multifamily that's going in. And it does seem like there's a real need for for that kind of senior housing. All very good points. Anybody else want to anybody else feel free to discuss or make a motion or whatever you want to do. But I think we think we can do it either way here. Good good points, everyone. I make a motion that we approve subject to staff comments. Okay, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Anyone oppose? No. No. Okay. All right. Well, the motion passes. Good discussion. Good project. Good site. Good luck. Mr. Anderson. Yeah, it was a close one. As you can tell, but we know you'll do a good job with it. Thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it. Welcome. All right. The next matter on the agenda is case 2021-0050, a variance at 3303 Duncan Street. This is a variance to the maximum lot coverage requirement for a single family dwelling. And if the applicant is present, they're welcome to present their request to the board. Sure. So my name is Christina Scott. I'm going to tear in from Kentucky to Columbia in 1990 and a dream to live in in Shandon ever since. I did fulfill that dream five years ago, but I live on Wilmot a couple of blocks away. This particular home, I don't know if you're aware of this a lot, I should say. There was a home on it at least more than five years ago. That home was demolished. There was a structure left in the back. So we are happy to be building a new home on that. The structure in the back takes up a little more than 25 percent of the allowable 30 percent coverage. So we're trying to fit our home into those confines without going up. Duncan Street is just a charming one-story kind of bungalow street, and we don't want to put, you know, a big two-story in there that it's not going to blend in at all with the neighbors. So we're trying to get all of the home that we need in that remaining basically 20 percent. So we've managed to do that with requesting a 4 percent variance for a total of 34 percent rather than 30 percent coverage. I'm told I'm not sure. I've talked to a lot of people. Your staff is wonderful. Thank you so much. I've talked to Erica and Hope and Amy, and I'm not sure who told me, but I think that we're made with the neighbor, that the requirement may go to 40 percent in the fall, but with the rising cost of lumber, we don't want to take the chance on, you know, waiting for that possibility. We'd like to go ahead and get our projects underway if you would be kind enough to grant us that additional footage. Okay, thank you for your presentation. A couple of quick questions for you. Tell us a little bit about the existing structure back there in the back. Garage apartment or mother-in-law suite or what is that existing structure? It's in my left is a carriage house. It is a garage and it has a little one-bedroom apartment. We would put my mother in there who will be retiring one day from Ohio, but in the meantime, it will simply be in office for my husband. And Gene, I can expand on that a little bit. Thank you. There used to be a main house, and then that was just the back accessory structure. The main house was demolished. It is in a community character area, which has demolition review, but the house was not found to be contributing, so they were able to demolish it, and it left that structure at the very rear of the parcel. I've talked to the property owner a great deal over the past couple of years. She's been trying to figure out what to do with this parcel. She had been living in that. It was constructed. It became kind of the main dwelling on the parcel. When a new primary residence is constructed on there, any elements of a dwelling unit will be taken out of that back structure since it's a single-family district. The conditions that would go on the permit is just those elements would need to be removed before that primary residence gets us a certificate of occupancy. Thank you very much for clarifying. That was my exact question to you, Rachel. That was going to work, so that's perfect. Thank you very much. Okay. Other board members, any questions for the applicant regarding her site plan or ideas here? Any questions? We'll get into board discussion later, but specific questions. Okay. I don't hear any. Do we have any public input regarding this matter? I just received a message from Erica. There are no callers on the line, and I do not see any emails that have come in. Okay. Very good. Let's move into board discussion. Board members? Well, I'm on an alternative. I'm on a couple of neighborhood groups, but one of them is the Shandan Facebook page. There's several Shandan Facebook pages, but one of them is this sort of alternative one, and one of the people posted this particular project and she's like, oh my gosh, what's going on? And everybody was like, meh, I don't care. Yeah. Okay. Let's do it. So I don't get the feeling the neighborhood cares. I mean, the neighborhood is like, yes, this looks like a good deal. Let's do it. We understand why this has to happen. So I think it's a good thing, but it's better than a vacant lot, which is basically what somebody said. Yeah. Absolutely. Essentially vacant lot. It's going to restore the, it's the teeth, if you will. It's a missing tooth in the rhythm of the street. Okay. All right. Anybody else? It doesn't want to be out of character or anything. To me, it seems fairly minimal. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. I mean, there's some zoning districts where you can have 40% lot covers, not here, but so it's not a huge, huge ask, really. All right. Well, if there's nothing else, I'd like to ask for a motion, please. Move it. Will you approve subject to staff comments? Second. Second. Okay. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All right. Anyone oppose? Okay. Motion passes. Good luck with it. Look forward to seeing your new house. Looks great. Thank you. All right. And the last matter or the last case on the agenda is case 2021-0052 for 24 Myrtle Court, a variance to the maximum bentite requirement. If the applicant is with us, he is welcome to go for her request with you all. Yes. Hi. Can you see us? I can. Okay. Good. This is my husband, John Dawson. He'll be presenting our request to the council this afternoon. Yes. Thank you very much for your consideration and patience in getting to our request. So we moved to this address 24 Myrtle Court about six months ago. My wife has owned this property for almost 30 years, but we were living about six blocks away in a Hollywood Rose Hill area. And her daughter and husband were living here until they moved out of town and the house became available. So we decided to move here. Our previous house had a very pleasant backyard with a six-foot fence that had a four-foot latticework extension above it around. And it created a very nice private space, created privacy for our neighbors as well. And we really enjoyed the additional privacy due to the higher fence. And so when we moved here, we thought we would like to do the same thing in our backyard. We only have about 50 feet across the north side of the property. I might note that although unfortunately I don't have a photo of it, on the east side of the property, there is already a fence running the entire length of that side of the property that is in some areas as high as 10 feet. It's actually a cinderblock wall, but it's as high as 10 feet in certain sections of it. It's covered in fig vines that you couldn't really see. Covered with ivy and such. And so in any event, we are requesting the approval to add the four-foot extensions latticework in order to increase our privacy. We spoke to Mr. Noble, who is the only neighbor who would be affected by this. He lives on Barnwell at 424 Barnwell. He was agreeable and in favor of our proposal because it would also increase his privacy and also give him some additional shade in the backyard. We're looking down our property. It has a bit of a slope to it. And so you basically can't see the existing fence from the street. You have to kind of crook your neck to look down the driveway to see the fence at all. But nonetheless, because of the slope, we look into the backyard of Mr. Noble. And then beyond that, we look into the rear entryways of a foreplex at 1800 to 1806 wheat. And so when we sit on our deck, we would like to have a more pleasant backyard enclosed by a slightly higher fence, somewhat higher fence, which we anticipate we would grow Confederate chasmin or something flowering a vine or something onto it once we put it up. And again, we were inspired to do this because of our experience at our previous house about six blocks away, which had that same feature with the fences. And there really is just one neighbor who's affected. We contacted him. He seemed agreeable. We encouraged him to submit an email, but I don't know whether he did. I would like to add that the fence company, Brabham Fence, is the company that constructed the latticework additions for our house on Southwood Drive. They did a very elegant job and structurally sound attractive addition, which our neighbors liked. Yeah, everything everybody liked it. So anyway, that's our request. And we're happy to answer any questions that may arise. How did you come up with the four foot? Well, that's the size of, you know, you go to Lowe's and look at the latticework that comes in four by eight sections, you put it on its side and it's a four foot height. Got you. Okay. All right. Any questions? We had my husband has to take the call. I'm sorry. Any questions for the applicant? Great. I don't have any questions. Jenna, any questions from you about this matter? No, I don't have questions. Okay. Rachel, let's see if we have any public input. No emails have come in and Erica's she messaged me. There's no one on the phone for this one. All right. Very good. Well, we'll move into our normal board discussion if you want to talk about this matter. Okay. I guess not. All right. Well, you know, it's, I mean, it's too tall again, but it seems reasonable. You know, they've got, they're surrounded by a brick fence that's 10 foot tall. So it would be sort of in uniform with that. You know, it's a fence request. I don't see a problem with it. I don't want our city to become surrounded by 10 foot fences everywhere. I do know that, but I guess that's why you come and ask for permission to do it. So if there's not any further discussion, I'll make a motion that we approve the variance request for the additional fence site for the subject property. Second. Okay. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Anyone oppose? Okay. Very good. Good luck with it. Applicants. Thank you. Thank you very much. Gene, did your motion reference staff comments? It did not. Thank you. Thank you, Rachel. I'll let you amend my motion to include staff comments, please. Thank you. I think first we have to move to reconsider, right? I think we're good here. Just real quick, Lee, the fourth had asked me just to remind you all, I know some of you are exempt, but for those who are not, make sure that you monitor your email for contact from Lee about upcoming continuing ed courses so that you can make sure to get your annual credits each year. So that is just your continuing ed reminder. We're hopeful to fill the land use board coordinator position soon that Andrea held. So we'll let you know when that contact changes so that you are familiar with the new person who will be handling parking passes and things like that when we go back into person, in-person meetings, which I don't know when that will be yet, but I will definitely keep you all posted when they start to talk about going back to city hall council chambers for our meetings. That's all I got. I understand that we have been sued. Now's not really the time to talk about that. Okay. You're welcome to give me a call and we can talk about it. Okay. Okay. Well, good meeting today everyone. So I thought it was very important, important topics and a good meeting. So is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Okay. Second. Okay. We have a motion to second. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Anyone opposed? Okay. Meeting is adjourned. Everyone have a great month. All right. Take care y'all. Thanks.