I just want to tell you what they are so you have a little bit of a roadmap.
First, this is a case about a use variance and also several dimensional variances.
And we're going to point out that no hardship has been demonstrated and that we can actually prove that this can be used.
in compliance with the zoning code we're also going to focus on the character of the neighborhood
we have a lot of photos to show you we're going to focus on the lack of parking in the neighborhood
and we're also going to focus on traffic safety issues we don't have any experts
we just have residents and their observations and photographs and experiences
witnesses, but we think that that will show pretty much.
So I am going to share my screen here.
Let's see.
Well, this is from last time, and this is from today, and you will see that we have
five witnesses we may have a sixth depending upon if we need the sixth but we have five witnesses
and the first witness i'd like all of my if possible ms sunkett i'd like all my witnesses
to raise their hands and be recognized and then we can just move through them one after another
or would you rather they raise their hand only when we get to them um yes once we get to them
Okay, then my first witness is Freda Williams, and I'd like Ms. Williams to raise her hand and be recognized, please.
Afternoon, Ms. Williams. Please identify yourself with a record, name and address.
She hasn't raised her hand yet, Chair.
Can we go to the next person, Mr. Bonney?
We'll come back to Ms. Williams if we have to.
She's available now. Ms. Freda, you can unmute yourself. I'm waiting to be sworn in.
Good afternoon, Miss Williams.
Please identify yourself, name and address.
Good afternoon.
My name is Freda Williams.
It's F-R-E-I-D-A, Williams.
W-I-L-L-I-S.
It may be looking like John Williams.
It does.
We got her.
She's on.
can everyone else hear me i can yes chair we can hear you fine paul could you hear me
you're muted paul sorry there was a blip hear me i can hear you okay miss williams was just
giving us her name we'll get her address and i'll swear her in thank you okay you have my name
yep and the spelling got that okay thank you and i live at 815 asbury terrace
do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
yes sir i do thank you ma'am mr bonnie okay ms williams i'm going to turn the floor over to you
and i'll just uh scroll through the exhibits as you speak okay well again my name is freedom
Williams. I am the co-chair, well actually I'm the chair of the Housing and Zoning Committee of the
Oak Lane Community Action Association, commonly known as OLCA, and we are the RCO for this
particular matter. And today I would like to describe to you who we are, talk a bit about
the immediate neighborhood, and report to you the votes of the community at the two RCO meetings
that were held on this matter. And then I also want to bring to your attention the strength of
our opposition to this project. I guess everyone thinks where they live is the best place, but
you know, we take a great deal of pride in East Oak Lane. It's a very old neighborhood. It was
established in 1683. We have a long history of community engagement. Aside from OCA as an RCO,
We're a community organization. We have our tree tenders. We have the Friends of the Oak Lane Library.
We have multiple organized blocks. We have many block captains.
And many in this neighborhood have a book where East Oak Lane is actually featured.
It's called The Images of America, Oak Lane.
It's called The Images of America, Oak Lane, Olney, and Logan.
And in the introduction, the book states,
in East Oak Lane, the home builders erected mostly large, elaborate, detached houses.
Mr. Chairman, I'd like to object to this.
This book is not in evidence.
I haven't seen it.
Yeah, I'll sustain it.
With all due respect, Ms. Williams, I appreciate.
That's fine.
we can appreciate the pride you have in your community i'm well familiar with your community
we can get just to the heart of the matter as to what the opposition is about
thank you we can we can omit this exhibit i'm gonna let's keep please keep going ms
williams we want to cover a lot of ground okay sorry i'm not seeing any of you mr bonnie we
have no exhibits up. Oh, okay. Well, that's a problem. I apologize for that. Do you see it now?
Yes, we do. Thank you. Okay. Well, so this is what you missed. And then this is their website.
And then this is the book she was quoting from. And it's just the introduction to a book. But
Why don't you continue? We can ignore this exhibit, and Ms. Williams, please proceed.
Okay. Well, basically, again, what I want to bring to your attention is that
there are, you know, if you look at the subject property, you can see up and down Oak Lane that
there are, yes, a few institutional uses. There's a school. There's a firehouse. But basically,
this project is surrounded by homes, detached residential homes. And we're the people who live
in the homes. We, you know, we didn't come here by random. We chose to be here. And we are a
diverse community. We've been an active community, but actually this project has galvanized us in a
way in terms of opposition, which is a bit stronger than has
been that has happened in the past. We, if you look at the
property, not a drawing, not a rendering, but if you actually
look at a photo of the property, it's vacant, it's a flat
corner lot. And you can see the property from Oak Lane. You can
also see all of the other homes, detached single homes that
around this area. I believe that there were some photos, I'm not sure if you can see them or not.
But nonetheless, since you asked, and it came up before that was about the width of Oak Lane.
And I did go out, I went out with Mr. Boney, and we measured from curb to curb,
and it was considerably narrow at 12th Street, and it was 22 feet six inches wide.
There's also, we pointed to out the narrowness of the driveway on 11th Street.
And I understand that the engineer talked about it being a concept and they would make changes as necessary.
But currently, as it stands, this is a very narrow driveway and there's a set of stairs that jut out.
And then there are stacked, you know, there are cones that are stacked and the church uses that.
And sometimes they put the cones out and then that eliminates parking.
So, again, you know, just just to let you know, and I wish you could see the photographs and you could actually see more of what the actual neighborhood looks like.
As to the RCO meetings, I have submitted reports from the RCO meeting from February 12th, I believe.
it was sorry only yes um chair did we lose paul bonnie i was just thinking the same thing i don't
see him yeah miss williams could you please pause sure mr bonnie are you out there yeah i don't see
him here. I just looked. I don't see him either. I'm not seeing him either.
Ms. Saletta, do you have contact for Mr. Bonney?
Yes, I will give him a call on his seat now.
Thank you kindly.
Thank you.
Mr. Bonnie signed on
on his ipad he is on can you um identify and keisha can you promote him yeah thank you
there we go got you back
okay miss williams continue please and if you can summarize it would be helpful
oh let me try and get the exhibits up on this um okay i was just pointing out to to the board
that, again, this particular area, the particular site, is basically surrounded by residential
detached single-family homes. But I was bringing to your attention that we had submitted as the RCO
two reports regarding both addresses, 1100 and 1122 Oak Lane. The first RCO meeting that we held
was held on February 5th. At that particular meeting, over 100 people came out. 82 people
voted in opposition. 15 were in support of the request for variance. There were a number of
objections that were raised with regard to why they felt that this was not the appropriate site.
But the primary one is that this is zoned as single-family housing, and that is what we believe
it should be used for. In the second RCO meeting, which was held October 22nd, and we also sent a
report for that, we objected to the unity of use application by the applicant. Again, because this
supports the original application, we are not in support of anything that supports this project.
As we've indicated previously, we have concerns about parking. We know they had a parking engineer
or they had you know someone who did parking however we live here and we are the ones who
experience our need for parking and having to walk from this place to that place and uh parking is
one of the concerns that we have and actually from what we can see just based on the refusal
it indicated that the church only had five spaces and now they want to share those five
when on the on the refusal it actually states that the church was to have 32 spaces. Now how that was
how they got a variance for that previously we don't know. I'm only going by what is on the
actual refusal or the application that they made at this time. So we are not in support at all of
any shared parking. The next thing I'd like to bring to your attention is that you may have
received multiple letters because our neighbors, as I've said, were very much engaged in a series
of actions that were in opposition. And one of the things that we did were yard signs. I think
we've lost Mr. Boney again. And he had our exhibits, which were to show you that we had over
100 signs that stated no, no to this apartment building. When you strip away the title of senior
affordable, whatever you want to call it, the bottom line is that this is an apartment building
with 40 units and the potential for 40, 60, it's a stretch to go to 80, but certainly there are
some people who would be couples and therefore we're not only talking about 40 additional
persons being added at this one site. In addition to the yard signs, which we didn't have to beg
people to obtain, they called us. They were willing to pay. That's the level of opposition.
We held not one, not two, but three rallies. I'm sorry you don't have the photographs to show you
how many people actually came out. At two of the rallies, 75 people came out in opposition.
In the last rally that we had in September, we actually had signs where, you know, we knew we
couldn't come to the ZBA. And so we came out and we stood and we asked you to vote no. That was
the purpose of that particular rally. So once again, what we would say is that we consider
ourselves. As citizens, taxpayers, property owners, we are held to a certain standard.
We're expected to participate in, you know, the process. We're asked to participate in RCO,
and we're seen as being competent to assess and measure and to make determinations about our
to assess and measure and to make determinations about our neighborhood. And that is what we have
neighborhood.
done. So in the second RCL for the unity of use, I don't know if I reported the actual vote,
but it was 64 opposed and two in support. So again, the only thing that I can say to you,
Mr. Chairman, I'm sorry to interrupt. This is Sharon's letter. Mr. Bonnie is asking that he
again be promoted he has signed on his main computer i apologize for interrupting and if you
can just um allow me miss williams yes sir yeah you can conclude that would be helpful thank you
okay so my conclusion is that we are asking that our judgment as experts in our neighborhood
be respected and acknowledged because we are indeed the experts as to what belongs
in our particular neighborhood. We have no objection to senior housing in general. We are
simply saying this is not zoned. It's inappropriate, the height and the use. And we would say that
they should that what should go there is what it's zoned for single family detached housing
thank you very much thank you for your testimony very helpful thank you mr bonnie
can you see my screen mr chairman all we have is the uh introduction into the uh yes history of
oak lane i'm just going to rapid fire scroll through these exhibits this is the um photograph
that ms williams was referring to that shows the neighborhood this is from google all the houses
in the back around and i'll just continue this is the subject property that she was describing
as flat and vacant that's one side of it that's the other side of it this is the property looking
from Oak Lane, as she mentioned, straight through to Ms. Young's house. Ms. Young's going to speak
next. She lives in the house to the right. This is the narrowing of Oak Lane, Mr. Chairman. We
spent some time on this last hearing and also a few minutes ago. As you can see, looking straight
up Oak Lane, it radically narrows on the block of the subject property. The subject property is to
the right, on the far right corner. And as you can see, Oak Lane really narrows considerably.
I hope you can all see that. And that's a two-lane street. This is the rear driveway
on 11th Street that I measured as 9 feet 10 inches. This would be the entrance to the
parking spots. This is a little closer. This is me sort of holding the camera above the gate.
And this is the looking at that entrance from 11th Street. You can see the two neighbors right
next to that driveway have lawn signs protesting this project. These are the various lawn signs
that are around the neighborhood. The purpose of these photographs are not just to show you the
lawn signs, but also to show you the single-family homes that are in this neighborhood. I'm just
going to scroll right through it. Gorgeous house, beautiful houses, beautiful neighborhood,
beautiful neighborhood. Now these are the rallies, and I'm almost at the end here.
This is one of the rallies that was held specifically to oppose this project,
which would be right across the street. You can see the vacant lot on the right-hand side.
Here is another different rally.
And now this is the difference.
So these are two rallies altogether.
And then the third rally is in the next page.
This is at the zoning board hearing that was ultimately canceled for procedural reasons.
And instead of coming, we can't come to 1515 ARCH.
so all of the neighbors uh associated with the rco gathered at the site and held signs
to try and mimic as if they were in your boardroom i'm going to object to all these photos of these
rallies i don't i don't have any way of knowing who these folks are where they live how close
they live to the property i have no way no way of vetting that out so i would just object to
these and ask that they be stricken from the record i hear what you're saying but i just don't
see people coming from other parts of the city. I'm familiar with Oak Lane and how they operate,
so I'll overrule your objection. Okay, thank you. So now I'd like to call Ms. Yvette Young if she
can raise her hand. Yvette Young, you can now unmute your mic, say your name, and wait to be sworn in.
And Paul, I would ask that you instruct your witnesses if we can come up, have...
And Paul, I would ask you to instruct your witnesses, if we can come up, have a discussion
or comments, something new and different, not to be disrespectful, but in the interest of time
that would be helpful. Yvette, are you there?
Yvette, I hear a lot of static. Yvette, we hear a lot of static. Ms. Young?
So I muted her, Ms. Young, if you could reconnect, maybe with a telephone.
So could we move to the next witness, Tanya, while that's happening, or let's move?
Yes, Chair.
We can move to Mr. Matthews.