there, but I will show you examples of cars parked there. In any event, this is the initial
application for appeal um that's our our item two uh item three is the deed in favor of my
clients um showing it was recorded in november of 2024 i can make that a little larger for everybody
Okay. Item five shows that they have a zero tax balance. I was not able to generate the document from this site, but I did print out their tax history.
um so the next item is the original letter from their initial counsel to the neighbors uh dated
10 30 25 inviting them to an rco meeting on 11 18 25 and followed by the certificate of mailing
um with regard to that letter in october then there was a letter uh to the board of november
19th of 25 and a vote tally. And at that vote, back in November of last year, there was a
bit more of opposition. It looks like the total vote was 9 to 3. After that point, their
council did not appear with them at the RCO meeting in November, and we're not entirely
sure what happened there but they eventually hired me and I entered my appearance that's item
I think it's item nine I entered my appearance initially by email on January 30th of this year
and I also sent a letter by email to Mr. Hegarty and Ms. Emerson on 410 of this year I sent out a
new letter to the neighbors. The RCO was gracious enough to sympathize with my clients and understand
that they had had issues with their counsel in the past and hosted a new RCO meeting. So I
wrote a letter dated April 10th of this year inviting everyone to an RCO meeting to be held
on April 21st. This is the certificate of mailing. It's many pages long because Dickinson Square is a
pretty dense neighborhood so as
So as part of my client's attempt to get this curb cut and parking spot zoned, they went ahead and got pre-approval from the streets department, which they obtained in May of 2025.
That is our item number 13.
they also have a contract with PICO to eventually build a new telephone pole about five feet
eastward on Dickinson Street sidewalk that will eventually move all of the utilities and I
actually have our structural engineer here to explain our plan this is a copy of the zoning
plan, and as you'll see, I'll kind of call out a few different pieces of it here.
So over here, this is where the telephone pole currently stands, and that would not
allow access once a curb cut would be built.
The telephone pole would be moved about five feet over here, which is a breezeway door
between 432 their neighbor their immediate neighbor 432 and 434 and down here is an inset of
the grading and slope and integration into the sidewalk of what the curb cut would be and i will
call our civil engineer jake sheridan of aqua economics to testify a little bit more to that
now photos this is a close-up taken uh on 415 of this year of the zoning poster it's not orange
in this case it was white posted by their front door this is a bit more of a wide shot as you can
see this paved area was here they purchased the house with this paved area here and that is posted
at their front door this brick wall next to them you'll see in a minute this brick wall next to
them is the sidewall of this single story front loading garage which is uh 436 dickinson um and
this is a side-by-side view of the properties this is a view from across the street where you can see
our property 434 436 and the telephone pole that is sort of obstructing where a curb cut otherwise
would go um following that that's a view dickinson street looking towards fourth street
and this is a view looking towards fifth street um 436 is the garage here this is a coffee shop
and the corner of fifth street now as i mentioned my clients purchased the house
under the assurance of a realtor that they were going to be able to park a car there
This Zillow ad shows a car park there.
That is not my client's car.
The Zillow ad was what they had found when they were originally shopping for their house,
and that car probably belonged to the prior owner of the property.
Here's another view, another Zillow shot of that.
this is the letter um that the board received more recently in the past weeks uh from dickinson
square west civic uh i would state that the letter uses the word overwhelmingly and i don't think
that a two vote margin really would consist of a an overwhelming opposition there there was
opposition um the total vote was uh eight to seven in opposition of the general um population of the
rco and two to one of the board so that's um a lot slimmer of a margin than then probably should be
considered overwhelming in addition uh my clients had originally um with with the assistance of
their prior council uh they took it upon themselves to have a number of their neighbors sign letters
in support including their neighbor at 432 dickinson which is the house that immediately
adjoins their house and the property in front of which the uh utility pole the new utility
pole would be placed uh this is a letter from the resident at 432 dickinson from their neighbor at
430 dickinson uh a letter from their neighbor you we have remember i told you we have all your
paperwork understood so you don't have to go over everything understood um with that i would like to
uh call my clients to adopt my testimony josh emily um please
no i don't
Hi, take a seat, sir.
hi could you please okay all right
Hi, could you please?
Okay, all right.
all right why don't you pull the microphone close to you sir over here why don't you you
Come over here.
All right.
can sit there by yourself that's it hi could you please state your name and spell it for the
not refer joshua cunnings do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the
truth yes counsel um good morning uh josh did you hear all the testimony and see all the documentary
evidence that i introduced to the board just now yes and is all of that testimony and all of those
documents are they true and correct to the best of your knowledge yes and would you adopt that
testimony as though you had given it yourself yes thank you is that your case or do you have other
witnesses i do have some further witnesses okay why don't you go back and sit down and if we have
any questions for you we'll bring you back so your other witnesses are going to be um my uh i have
one witness um jake sheridan he is our structural engineer i wanted him to give a bit more of
explanation of exactly the size and shape uh and that this would take up no more than one
uh parking space why don't you bring him up is he here or he is he's on the zoom okay
what's his name again jake sheridan mr sheridan
Good afternoon, Chair. This is Jason Hand. I'll be your calls for this session.
Jake Sheridan should be welcome, sir. Jake Sheridan should be coming back in shortly.
And my...
Well, we'll get him next. Let's take him to Sheridan.
I believe that there are some other of my client's neighbors out there,
and at this point I would invite them to raise their hands,
either whether they're in the room or out on the Zoom, to testify.
Well, here's the thing. This is your clients. I will call when people can put their hands up. Okay. In other words, the process would be your witness, right? Understood. We'll go to the board, our lawyer, and then we'll go to the audience. Understood. Okay. All right.
mr sheridan yes can you guys hear me i can sir could you please state your name
it's spelled for the stenographer my name is jacob sheridan j-a-c-o-b-s-h-e-r-i-d-a-n
do you swear or firm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth
that's correct counsel uh jake good morning um good afternoon rather did you draw up the plans
that i am about to pull up right here that's correct i don't uh here we go and jake you can
see my screen correct yes so why don't you um take the board through describe uh the dimensions of
where the curb cut would be and can you give them a little bit of background about moving this
telephone pole? So pretty much the curb cut is designed to be completely within the property
owner's frontage as well as meeting all of the streets department minimum standards as far as
the apron depth and side flares as well as well as trying to minimally you know impact the relocation
of the pico telephone pole by trying to adhere to the minimum distance of the offset from the
proposed apron that you can see on the plan okay okay and this was um these plans were given
pre-approval by streets department yeah yeah the streets department signed off on the the zoning
level aspect of the plan and you know building permit level submission and and approval would
be subsequent to a potential um granting of the variance okay and would how many parking spaces
uh length um does this space uh does this curb cut take up uh basically less than one a typical
parallel parking parking space is anywhere between 20 to 22 feet per city standards and this curb cut
is how long again uh the curb cut itself is 12 and a half feet plus a two foot and one and a half
foot flares so so in in total in total yes yes 15 feet
okay um and you've personally visited the site uh you took your photos and and evaluated it
personally visited the site uh you took your photos and and evaluated it prior to drawing
up these plans that's correct okay and these are photos that you took um looking east and
west on dickinson and showing that telephone pole that are on the bottom of your plan set
that's correct okay um i have nothing further for mr sheridan right now if we need him we'll call
him back so please keep him available who's your next witness um i believe that there are
some supporters out on the zoom i don't have the supporters they're going to have an opportunity
when i call okay so that's your case uh that that's our case in chief yes questions from the
board yeah i have a question you mentioned that the the uh residents of the property at 432
didn't have a problem, but do you have anything from the actual owner of 432?
I have a letter from one of the residents of 432. I am not sure whether that is a tenant or
an owner. However, I would like to know whether or not the owner of that property, I understand
tenants may not have an issue, but quite frankly, if I was the owner of the property next door,
would not want to have a telephone pole moved from the house in front next door to me in front of mine
so so that's my question did the is this does do you have something from the owner of that property
not a res not a tenant i an owner my clients may be better uh equipped to answer that question
um i can recall my client they do not they're shaking their head no okay thank you i guess
they do not okay all right all the questions yes um i have a question about the overall site plan
for the property sure um it looks like this does not have a backyard or rear yard is that correct
it does not to my knowledge have a backyard that's accessible from the street so typically
when houses with this design are designed this way it's because the front yard is supposed to replace
the fact that the rear yard doesn't exist and so i just want to be clear that like what's being
proposed is to take the only open space on this lot and to replace it with a non-standard parking
space um okay should i i again i can have my clients uh come to testify about the kind of
dimensions and uh features of their house i i do want to say the parking space is a standard
size parking space it isn't the they have 18 18 by eight and a half feet of
like availability within that front yard to the property line so that's not including any
like i mean typically they're not going to park their car exactly on the property line and also
that's a standard car i think my concern is that like by making this a parking space like
your clients might not live here forever this they're the only tenants that i'm assuming have
ever lived in this house in this format based on just property data and if anybody that comes
behind them has a bigger car which happens right there there are large format cars it would not
fit in that spot it would overhang onto the sidewalk which is what the current drawing is
actually showing the the current drawing is showing the the stamp that what we have to model
for the streets department is a 19 foot long vehicle which is equivalent to like an like a
ford f-250 pickup truck with an extended cab the regular size suv but yes and it's regular size
suvs are typically between 15 to 17 feet sure but we're at this point we're mincing words because
we're talking about a foot i'm not like gonna belabor it but i think my issue is that like
we're talking about taking up the space all the way up to the actual facade and even in typically
there's some sort of barrier that keeps
the car from hitting the wall. Okay.
Understood. Let me ask you the question. How many
people in the audience are here
relative to this case?
Put your hand up. Okay.
So I think what I want to do is
look, when we get
to this point, each person can get two
minutes, but what I wish you would do is come
up, mention
council do you have any comments when not okay so what i'm what i'm going to do is we're going to
bring the people up who want to testify and we'll give them you know if you would um you're either
for the project or against okay because i think i know where most of the people here as i've just
been watching you shake your heads the whole time so um first person why don't we come up
and if you would just state your name is spelled for the stenographer
and if you would
just state your name
and spell for this
to not
good afternoon sir sir please sit down sure you can um could you please state your name
is spelled for the doctor donald mccrone m-c-c-r-o-n-e can you get a little closer to the can you get a
little closer to the mic, please. Donald McCrone. M-C-C-R-O-N-E. Right. Do you swear or affirm to
tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth? Yes. Sir, are you a neighbor? I am. Are you
in favor of this project or against? I am not. You're against. I'm not. I'm against. Okay. All
right. You know, it's already been sort of brought up, but that, you know, it is a walkable
neighborhood a uh another curb cut um reduces safety um you know uh okay as is the morning
counselor do you have any questions to this witness um sir so
have you personally seen anyone hit by a car uh coming out of a curb cut on a
mid-block property, say, out of 436? Dickinson?
Personally, no. Okay. Thank you. And yet,
you know, one does see... We're going to bring
the next person up. We know where you... We understand where you stand. Okay? Thank you very much.
Thank you. Good afternoon.
Hi. Could you please state your name and spell it for the sonographer?
Lisa Miller, M-I-L-L-E-R. Right. Do you swear
referring to tell the truth told truth nothing but the truth i do are you a neighbor i am are
you in favor of this project you're against i'm against thank you for is there anything you could
offer real quick well i i have been nearly hit by cars coming out of driveways that are in the
middle of block in this neighborhood i walk everywhere and there's a reason we have zoning
uh ordinances and um as bad as i feel for my neighbors i don't think this is uh enough to
to justify a variance thank you counsel do you have what do you wait you have a question i don't
have any questions next person please
there you go
get that mic real close to you if you could good afternoon good afternoon could you please state
your name and spell it for the stenographer geraldine johnson spell the whole name yeah
g-r-a-l-d-i-n-e johnson j-o-h-n-s-o-n if you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth
nothing but the truth yes are you a neighbor oh 40 years for only 40 years okay 40 and some plus
hold on um are you for this project or against against is there anything you can offer that you
haven't heard uh besides the gentleman that was before me about safety and also all the people on
block have a problem with parking okay and i am not a driver but i sympathize with those that do
drive and they want a parking spot too okay all right do you have any questions council
i i don't have any questions thank you very much for coming down next person please
we're not we're not in a hurry