 I will start to my left, Catherine Finner. To my right, sorry. Yeah, John Guignard, Davis Whittle, Charar Duvall, and Celia McIntosh on the end. Welcome, y'all. Also, I want to introduce staff that assists us. We have Hope. She's not here today. Erica Hyen. To my right, Deputy Zoning Administrator and Sky Robinson Barnes, the land use board coordinator. The board is charged with hearing applications for special exceptions, variances, and administrative appeals. All testimony is recorded for the record, and anyone wishing to speak will need to be sworn in and come to the podium to speak. No testimony can be taken from the floor, so I guess that's the podium that we'll be speaking from today. When you come to the podium, please state your name and speak clearly into the microphone because this meeting is being recorded. Applicants with cases before the board are allotted a presentation time of 10 minutes, and then anybody who's a member of the public is allotted a time of three minutes or five minutes if you're representing an established body of three or more. The applicant then has five minutes for a rebuttal, and that's all the time we're taking. So the board reserves the right to amend these limits on a case-by-case basis. Those of you who plan to speak must be sworn. If you are here as an applicant or are here to speak in any case, please stand at this time and raise your right hand. All right, do y'all affirm or attest that the testimony you will give today is the truth and nothing but the truth? Yes. Thank y'all. At this time, I'm gonna turn it over to Ms. Hyatt. Okay, the first item on the agenda is to review the consent agenda. The only item there is the approval of the July 6, 2023 meeting minutes. It's pretty simple. I wasn't there, so if someone else could do it. Okay, can I make a motion to approve the consent agenda in the minutes? Yeah. Yeah, nothing on the consent agenda. So all right, we have a motion? Second. Second, motion and second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, the motion's approved. Okay, we'll move on to the regular agenda. First case on the regular agenda is the administrative appeal, 2023-0025, 1730 East Buchanan Drive. It's an administrative appeal to the zoning administrator's decision to deny an administrative adjustment to the minimum lot size standard. At this time, I will just give you an overview of the zoning administrator's decision to deny that administrative adjustment. We'll need to speak up. So in May of 2023, the zoning administrator received an application for an administrative adjustment for a potential lot subdivision on East Buchanan Drive. The request was to allow one large lot to be subdivided into two separate lots with lot sizes of 13,064 square feet and the other with 14,232 square feet. Properties owned RSF-1, residential single family large lot district, which does require a minimum lot size of 15,000 square feet for all newly created lots. Upon review, the zoning administrator determined that the request did not meet the criteria for an administrative adjustment. Specifically, the administrative adjustment was not consistent with the character of development on surrounding land. GIS data was collected for properties within a 900 foot radius of the property due to the majority of those lots being in the same zoning district, RSF-1 large lot district. Only six out of those 130 had lot sizes below the 15,000 square foot required by the zoning districts. And two of those lots had previously been zoned RSF-2, so they were conforming to that district standards of 8,500 square feet. The zoning administrator determined that the few outlying lots that did not meet the RSF-1 requirements for a lot area should not set a standard for newly created lots in the district. And the zoning administrator respectfully requested that the determination be upheld based on the city of Columbia. Unified development ordinance sections cited above that the lot subdivision does not meet that criteria for administrative adjustment and the facts as presented. And that's the 17-3.2 for the 15,000 square foot minimum lot area and the administrative adjustment decision standards and 17-2.5. Maybe she shuts it off. What's it for? I got some background. Would the applicant like to come to the podium to present their case? Just state your name for the record. Thank you all for having us. My name is Jordan Krabs. This is my wife, Morgan Krabs. We own and live at 1730 East Buchanan. And as mentioned, we're here to discuss the denial of our administrative adjustment request to split our lot at 1730 East Buchanan. That is our home. We live there. We're not developers or anything of that sort. We're looking to split the lot so that we can build a home behind our house. If you can turn to the second page as you are all probably aware, this is the standard for the review today. The zoning administrator made an error in determining whether the standard was met and an error in judgment occurred. We believe that an error did occur in reviewing the denial and preparing for this hearing today. We really do strongly believe that the standards were standard to attain the adjustment was met and we look forward to talking with you all about that today. So the next slide is the communication we received that was read to you guys a few minutes ago. The zoning administrator relied on section R4, a subsection R4, which determined that the adjustment would not be consistent with the character of the neighborhood. We feel the exact opposite. We actually feel the adjustment would enhance the character of the neighborhood. And we hope to show you guys that today. So the first thing we'd like to note is that the zoning administrator argued that the few outlying lots that did not meet the size requirement should not set the standard for newly created lots in the district. Setting a new standard for these lots in the district was never our intent with requesting an administrative adjustment. In fact, when you look at the definition of the purpose of an administrative adjustment, the purpose is to approve minor deviations from the standard that was set forth in the ordinance. And so we believe that the administrative adjustment process is to provide relief to people like us who are looking for a deviation from the standards that are existing in the ordinance. If we were looking to set a new standard for the development in the neighborhood, we would look to change the ordinance. Instead, we're trying to use the relief that's given to us through this administrative adjustment process to request a very slight deviation from those standards. Under this logic of setting a new standard with this type of adjustment, no adjustment would ever be approved. The purpose of the adjustment is for deviations. And so we see her logic as being flawed in the way that she applied the knowledge of the administrative adjustment and denied our request for this adjustment. So the next slide is just sort of an outline of some additional areas where we believe that an error occurred in the judgment for this appeal. Our request is compliant with the administrative adjustment allowance. And it's not only highly consistent with the character of the surrounding land and the neighborhood as a whole, but in fact, as Jordan mentioned, we believe that it will actually enhance the character of the neighborhood. The request that we've made is consistent with the allowance that the zoning administrator is allowed to make under the administrative approval process. The zoning administrator has the ability to give a deviation of up to 20% in the lot size area when requesting an administrative approval. Our request is only 12.9% and 5.1% deviation. And so we're well within her ability to create this adjustment for our zoning split. So you've turned to this page here. Page seven. Page seven. This is just a GIS image of the property as it sits now. Obviously that blue dot is our house currently which faces East Buchanan, but the property is bordered on one side by a split lot, a lot similar to our size that's already been split. And on the other three sides it is bordered by a road. So flip into the next page. That is the proposed plat that we submitted for the split. As you can tell that the new parcels that we are intending to create are gonna be very similar in orientation and in size to the property next door. And that new house and the house we're leaving behind will perfectly tie into the existing adjoining lots. And with negligible lot size that certainly wouldn't be visible to anyone walking down the street. I'm moving on to the next page. Our property is about a block away from some RS2 zoning which obviously has smaller lot size requirements. And so anyone coming through the neighborhood, the lot split would really be seamless for anyone driving through there. There would not be a noticeable difference as you go through the neighborhood. I think this map that's shown on the screen is actually different than what's shown on the city's GIS. So actually these blocks right here, if you go back. I can try them. Or zoom into RS2, yeah. So these are, you can see that these are much smaller. So this is RS2 zoning starting right here. That's perfect. And so if you go to the next slide, we like to note that there are other non-conforming lots in the neighborhood. The zoning administrator used a 900 foot radius which is shown on our slide there. And it seems either intended to or certainly has the effect of missing some other non-conforming lots that are just outside of that radius. There are five non-conforming properties on Parkman itself. This street here, these lots here are non-conforming. And also this lot here on East Buchanan is non-conforming which was created actually a few years ago when this lot here was split into three parcels. So we also didn't note in our slide that the property immediately adjacent to ours has already been split. We think it's a hair under the 15,000 but we didn't note it just to be on the safe side. Moving on to the next slide in our presentation this year. This is how nearly everyone in the neighborhood sees the lot as it sits now. It appears vacant and has some old utility boxes that we hope and attend to move. And so while we're here to discuss a variance in lot size, we do not think a lot size is determinant of character of the neighborhood. The lot is the only corner lot in the neighborhood that's empty. It attracts trash from people driving down the road that we have to pick up on a daily or weekly basis. We think splitting the lot is actually going to improve the character of the neighborhood that's going to fit in perfectly. And we'll be replacing this view that you see before you with what we hope to be a nice new home. And so ultimately we think that by splitting hairs and denying the adjustment, we're really detracting from the character of the neighborhood which is as noted earlier a family home neighborhood. And we're certainly not enhancing it but denying the adjustment. The reason why we're trying to split the lot as we've mentioned previously is to build a new home for our family. We moved into our house about six years ago prior to COVID, prior to having children. And for the past year or two, we've been looking at larger homes and have had absolutely no luck. This is because right now in Columbia, there are inadequate housing options. We have so many friends and colleagues and people that we know who are in the same boat as us who are looking at trying to find larger houses, trying to find new houses with more room and are just not having any luck. There are not enough houses right now in the Columbia market. This has been evidenced through many studies, through conversations with real estate brokers. Many houses are selling before they ever even hit the market. We've run into that time and time again only to be let down over and over. And so we really hope that this will be a great solution for our family. I'll try to get through what is our last slide without crying here. But I recently accepted a job where I work full-time from home. My husband also works from home. We've got a young daughter and we're hoping to grow our family and we just don't feel that we can do that in our current house as we sit today. We're hopeful that not only are we able to get a new home through this zoning split, but also provide an opportunity for another family to move into our current home. And so it would solve our issue and hopefully solve an issue for someone else. And so we hope that you'll recognize what we believe is an error in judgment by the Zoning Administrator and we hope that you'll consider our request. Thank you. Thank you. All right, good presentation. Now we move on to the public. Is there anyone in the public that wishes to speak in this matter? Okay. Well, actually before I do that, we should have had questions from the board to you guys. So can we get y'all back out there just in case anyone has questions? Sorry. I have a question. Oh, sorry, Catherine then. Have you spoken to your neighbors and what is their opinion on this, on your surrounding immediate neighbors? We've spoken to a few of them. I mean, we think that based on the size house that we would plan to build and then talking with architects and a contractor that we would certainly enhance the value of the homes around us. So I think that our neighbors will be fully supportive. We've got good relationships with our neighbors. But you haven't talked to them. We've talked to a few of them. We haven't talked to all of them. Okay. The ones next door. I'm just kidding. The ones right next door, are there somebody that will be in there? So we've talked to this main one here, the day host. Okay. We have not talked to... This is Mike Ty's house. We haven't talked to him specifically about splitting the lot. This is a rental home. So people kind of turn through there on a yearly basis. Sure. All right. It's a really good presentation by the way. Thank you. It's an important test to be able to do that as you can hopefully tell. Any other questions? Any other questions? Go ahead. Go ahead, sir. Yeah. Did you consider adding on to your current house? I have. So when we purchased our home, I guess it was in 2017, we actually gutted the house and did a full renovation on it at that time. And so we weren't contemplating, you know, needing an office and needing additional bedrooms. And so in order to actually expand on our home, we'd have to rip out all of the patio that we put in. We'd have to rip out the kitchen, the master closet, the master bedroom. And so some of the most expensive elements of the house that we just renovated, we'd have to basically tear out. So... So we have thought about it. It's actually not our best option. Which lot is the 12.9 and which one is the 5.1? The new lot of the old and polygons. So on the... I don't know from any more. The new lot of the 12.9. The new lot will be 14.2. And I'm sorry, the new lot will be 13. And the old lot will be 14.2. 14 is our house right now. Wait, so the 13 would be smaller. Okay, so what's the deviation from... That's the percentage. So which one is the 12.9 and which one is the 5.1? The 12.9 is the 13. I guess. Okay, I'm sorry. I got to show him. I appreciate it. I understand. There we go. I understand. I understand that. Yeah, so the new lot is the one that is actually deviating more. That would be the larger deviation. The larger deviation. Okay, but still only 12.9. Yes. Yeah, I think it's pretty straightforward. All right, any other questions for the applicant from us? Is the... I can't tell the property line of the new split from this one. I may be just missing it, but is it straight in line with the one with your property next to it? No. So in order to give us much square footage to the new lot... To the 112th foot. ...we did cut it in a little bit. So you can see on the adjoining property that property line comes in. It moves to the eval. It doesn't have a yardage there, but... It's okay, I see what's been... It's not right in line. It's not right in line. This is a utility easement that might be interfering with how much house you can build on the rest of it. Do I understand that bias on the corner? Right. We ought to do some of that. Well, the houses are fenced, and so they've both got, especially Mike Tye has a wooden privacy fence there, and so it would actually... I guess you wouldn't be able to see where that line would be from his house. And so that triangular thing you see there, that is actually a remnant of an old property line. I see, okay. So I don't know when, it's decades ago at this point, but... I see, I see. That triangle piece is actually just an old property. Well, it's a utility pole, so... I do have one question. Like on the new property line, as far as... Have you all thought about fence or vegetation just for a first screening and anything like that? Yes. That's the rear between the new property line. The... In between the two houses? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we would certainly put in a privacy fence in between those two properties. And probably vegetation. And then what we'd be facing the road would just depend on if we can move those utility boxes, whether we need to move those, or if we have to work around them, we'll absolutely adjust as need be. What size house are you looking to put? We talked to an architect, and he'd seen comfortable that we'd be able to build the house we wanted to. Probably 4,000 to 4,500. Okay. With the new house space, Bannock-Bern or Parkman, you know? So when we've been told that once we get this approval, if we get this approval, we would then apply for like a driveway access, and they would kind of tell us, I assume it would be Bannock-Bern, just because that's how the other house sits, but we would have to work with the city on that. Yeah. Yeah, I take it. Yeah, I'm good. All right, cool. Um, thank y'all. Thank you. All right, now do we have anyone from the public that's here then, which is to speak on this matter? Okay. Seeing none, let's, uh, you want to go into board discussion? Yes. Okay. You want us to leave us off? Celia? Sure. Sorry. I'll be, I'll be the bad guy in the room. Um, I'm actually not feeling great about it. It kind of feels like it scrunches the back of what would be their existing house. You know, the parking is sort of tight and having the large lot, so the RSF-1 with the large lot is sort of a unique thing in Columbia. So it's like, you're kind of taking that away from, you know, potentially somebody else. You know, what if, what if somebody wanted a pool? You know, what if, it just seems like there's more options. It seems like a shame to take away this size of a property and to sort of irreparably change what you could do there by taking it and making two smaller ones that are much more constrained. That's kind of what I'm, what I'm struggling with. So I don't know. You know, I'm in the other direction because I'm like, the house next, the houses, the two lots next door are small, small, much, are, are- Small houses. Smaller and have smaller houses. The smaller house thing is the one concern I would have. But I think they're smaller. I think that they're well within the deviation, the 20% deviation. That was, I think, the most compelling story to me is that, you know, I don't know that there was exactly an error in judgment exactly, but I think that certainly it was within hopes of purview to permit this. And I think that from a, from a city perspective, it's really a good idea to, I'd rather see them living here than moving out to, you know, the summit or, or, you know, someplace way far out that's going to just add commuting time and all like that. I mean, I think that, given that they're right next door to a pair of small lots, it's a little bit harder to do that. And plus when you open up the circle and you see that there are plenty of other smaller lots in the area, it's harder to say that they shouldn't be able to do this to me. I guess for me, it was like it's almost, if the lot next to them wasn't split, I would feel better about it because you say, you know, well, it's this unique condition, it's on the end, you know, it's sort of the corner instead of, well, now we have these four lots and, but it looks like if everybody maxes out their footprint, you know, it starts to. Except the, the, the behind them is basically a vacant lot. It looks like a vacant lot because of where the house is, is situated on East Buchanan, the existing house on East Buchanan. And then there's like this big giant backyard that the houses next door don't have, don't have. I know, but it would, silly, it's kind of saying is if the housing market were different and they could go find the house they want and move, then somebody bought that because they saw this beautiful huge lot where they could put in a pool. Yeah. Then that is one of the gorgeous things or the benefits of the RSF-1. I can build a cool garage and a pool and like it just, it's a unique property. I do agree that like at first I thought 12 and a half for 12.9% seemed like a lot, but then I realized the allowable deviation is 20 and they're not, they're not even with them. Yeah. Almost half of that. So that clarified. Davis, what do you think, man? I mean, it would be a great lot as it sits now, but I don't know that there's a huge market of people that are going to be coming in and potentially say, oh, that's a great lot. Let's just raise everything and start from the ground up. I just don't, if you did that in that neighborhood, it would kind of stand out. Like a sort of, that's true. That the character of the neighborhood is almost lots of that size. Almost all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's what you're going to see. I mean, that's what like you're seeing more of is like the add-on, you know, the house next to it becomes more. Right. Yeah. I'm okay being the odd man now. All the infill houses are always taller, but I think that infill is a good is a good thing from a planning perspective. True. It certainly would improve the corner and banning by an apartment. Yes, for sure. Yeah. All right. Well, did you mention anything on it specifically? I don't, I don't really have a lot to add that hadn't already been said. I think the only thing I could probably add is I just don't see enough to not uphold the zoning administrators already. I just don't see enough to turn it over. This is my opinion. So what do you mean by that? I'm like to I mean, to approve what they're trying to do. Right. I mean, ultimately, to approve the administrative bill or you don't see that. Ultimately, basically what I saw right here, right, what I see right here in the comments is one, it's the RSF one requirement. Those RSF one requirements, I think like you already said, are there because all of the lots have the RSF one size in that area? So that's part of what they were, that's part of that particular neighborhood's appeal is those, that particular lot size. Two, in the comments specifically states that some of the lots that aren't those lots were given, were kind of given to pass because of the story happened before these were signed, which is what was here in the staff notes. So I don't even know if that's a yeah, if that even matters. Right. And then, I mean, I understand the housing thing and all of that, but I don't know what that has to do with discerning administrative position. You know what I mean? This is more of a, this isn't so much a personal thing. This is more about the rules applied to this neighborhood with this what you're proposing doesn't say that the rules are wrong. It just says, Hey, we're having trouble buying the house. We want to put a house here. Can't we adjust the rule for us? It doesn't necessarily say it's not saying enough to me to say these staff comments are wrong. It's just saying these staff comments are right, but we also want to do this. You know, what's the point? But what's the point of an administrative appeal? I mean, I guess they have, there's a process which is allows for an administrative adjustment allowance. And there, it's clearly well within the that allowance of 20%. I mean, this is, so I think that they came with what I think is a fairly reasonable request. I mean, it's not, they're not looking for 20%. And I mean, some of the other stuff, I mean, you can, whether you can buy a house or not, I mean, that's neither here nor there, relevant to our decision. But I do think that there, there exists an administrative appeal and it was well within Hope's discretion to grant that administrative appeal, but she did not. Yeah. I think it's a small enough deviation to where it's definitely reasonable. Yeah, I think so too. What were you gonna say, John? No, I agree with that. I agree with what Charod saying, like taking the other stuff out of and looking at it on a very specific requirement of the neighborhood. I still believe that it's actually within the I think it's okay, because especially that there's three streets on that one property. You know, if it was one street all facing East, or one piece of property all facing East Buchanan, that's like even more to me, like less likely to subdivide it, but the fact that there's three streets and now we're gonna have two frontages. Two streets on two different lots, like looking at it just from a perspective and if you increase this 900 foot radius to 1200 foot radius, you got even more consideration of smaller lots, I think that there is the opportunity to yeah, to consider allowing the subdivision. I agree. Yeah, that's my yeah. I move that we approve the appeal of the administrative denial. Yeah. Okay. And permit the variance or whatever, I guess it's just we, I move that we, I move that we permit the, what am I trying to do here? I move that you approve the administrative appeal. I move that we approve the administrative appeal for the reasons that we specified. All right, we have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. All right. So do the five to one. All right. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Thank you all. Next case. Thank you for working with the architect. Yeah. All right. So next case is variance request 2023-26. Does it have the case number on it? I think it does. Yeah, that's it. So it's about 26. Would the applicant please come to the podium and state your name? And you're all in the same head. Oh, y'all. So you're all in the same head. There's no applicant. Applicant is not here. That's where you're on Blackman. Is he possibly up on the third floor? Is there any chance that he's up there? That'd be kind of odd that the applicant is here. That's kind of a good question. That would be a good question. That would be a good question. Please go ahead. Please go ahead. Please go ahead. Please go ahead. Please set up curiosity. Yeah, I don't know we can. Show. Show. What's the time limit on that? John, we can't do that without the applicant. We can defer it. We have a burr. We can defer it. Yeah. We can defer it. We did. We did. We did. We did. Agreed. Yeah. Harder shot. Harder could we move we be heard and see if that gives you sufficient information to roll? I don't think we can. Well, let's just give it a minute. Thanks, please. This is a new one. You don't have you don't have any contact information for John Blackman. Is there something on the did we I don't have the I can't see the the whole thing that was numbers should be in there because he he'd have to somebody actually jump right over there. We can't. Yeah, we can't call today. He would have to yeah. No, no, I'm just wondering if he's happens. If we have any idea of what's going on. I mean, it's just odd. I don't really really hear it partially. I mean, that's just he has to present his case. Yeah. We don't know what the question is, do we default or do we should defer it? I guess it's got to go up soon or something. Yeah. I'm going to go check and we can just wait till she gets back. You know, it's certainly we could make a decision without an afternoon. Right. I don't think we can hear anything. We don't need personally defer or do anything. Right. Well, I think we got two choices. I mean, we either defer or deny because he failed to fail the failure of prosecute, basically. Let's say we're staff for 100 years. I'll respond to his case. We either need to hear his case or just say, sorry, you failed prosecute. If you have an appeal to anything and you don't show up, you lose. I mean, that's easy. That's a I hate it because it seems like reasonable. I mean, what's Krista, what's your viewpoint on that? What do we do? I'm gonna show it up to him. Can I just make a skin here? Yeah. You're gonna ditch someone? Yes. No, they don't have to do it. That's right. Okay. That sounds right. This is not right. Is this? This is not right. She's in the white with sex use. I mean, like he said, you've seen it ditched somewhere you don't yeah yeah yeah especially since it's like on when you would feel like in the profession it's not just like a random corner but doesn't my intense before Alright, let's let's join back in here. Alright, so the applicant's not here. I'd like for someone to make a motion to defer it to next month. Okay, motion in second. Second. Alright, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Alright, thank you all for coming. Alright, can I get a motion to adjourn? Move to adjourn. Alright, so moved. Is that it? Second. Alright, so I moved. I just said so moved at the end there. So moved. Yeah. Oh, any time I order. Yes. We don't have to go through that again. See you all. Do you want to hang on to me? We've already got them.