No, the one that the tenant moved out of, I'm just going to keep that empty and use it as an office.
Or when my husband and I get approved, we'll move into that room.
Thank you.
Questions or comments from the virtual audience?
mr chair i have a hand raised by a doris aldridge i have allowed them to speak okay
good morning my name is stars aldridge spell that please could you spell your name for the
court scenario yes d-o-r-i-s-a-l-d-r-i-d-g-e
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Are you a neighbor?
I am the chair of the RCO.
Please proceed.
When Allison presented at our RCO, her project was not met positively, but the situation has changed.
We were mostly concerned about the sheer number of people in the House.
As she presented, there were two rental units and asking for two Airbnb units.
We were uncomfortable with the arrangement of that many unrelated people living in such proximity.
I don't have the power to change the vote, but I think her project is more amenable to our community, as she stated.
That's all. Thank you.
thank you thank you for taking the time to call us um planning commission
thank you chair bergman and good morning david effecta with the city planning commission
chairman and board members the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the residential
multi-family zoning at this location the appellant has shown that the proposed single
room residence will have no detrimental impacts beyond what might be expected however there is
no unique physical condition or circumstance of the property that would require it to be used
for visitor accommodation the 2020 zoning ordinance passed by city council which regulated
short-term rentals did not change the basic rules prohibiting full-time use of a dwelling unit as a
short-term rental this type of absentee management where the owner does not live in the unit has been
illegal since the first short-term rental zoning regulations became effective in roughly 2012
what's changed since the passage of the 2020 ordinance is that there is now a licensing and
enforcement mechanism the city planning commission recommends the board grant a proposed special
exception for single room residents but deny the proposed use variants for visitor accommodation
okay thank you um so miss hartram what i want to do with this is um i want to meet with the other
board members and next wednesday uh they will vote on where we stand um and we just want to
take a little time to try to figure out what this is and i want to work with our attorney too okay
i mean i know i know what you're presenting but we haven't had this single room residence
with visitor accommodation so i want to it's unique yeah i want to just really try to figure
this out where we stand and we will get back to you next wednesday okay we will vote at
9 30 next wednesday okay should i should i show up for them um you you could you you should listen
in, I would think. Yes, absolutely. I'm invited. Okay. Wonderful. Thank you. You're invited.
You'll be invited. Okay. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. Okay. So we're going to now go
number
number seven
yes number seven
MI 2023
005 618
Bryan Street Steve Masters
is the attorney
there is a letter of non-opposition
from West Mount Airy.
And also there's
a petition of support
approximately 27 neighbors
nine from the 7200 block
of Bryan Street. Mr. Masters.
Good morning Mr. Chair
and members of the board. Mr. Masters
could you just state your name for the record and spell it for the
court stenographer? My name is Steve
Steve Masters, S-T-E-V-E, M-A-S-T-E-R-S, with the law firm of JustLaws.
Do you swear a firm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Do you swear a firm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Could you identify your client and relationship to the property?
We represent the property owners, Itzik Lawrence and Elaine Blender.
And our vice chair has a few questions for you, sir.
Good morning, counsel. Do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal or stipulate towards accuracy?
Good morning, Mr. Shahid. We do not stipulate to the accuracy.
In fact, we believe that many of the refusals are actually wrong, and we are going to present that in our presentation today.
So I would like to go through the refusals.
You don't have to.
I will agree to waive the reading of them because I'm going to go through them in my presentation.
Understood.
Looking forward to it.
Have you emailed in all the required documents and exhibits that's needed five days in advance of this hearing?
Yes, we did.
THANK YOU. PLEASE PROCEED AND SHARE YOUR SCREEN.
ALL RIGHT. GOOD MORNING AGAIN, MR. CHAIR, MEMBERS OF THE BOARD.
WE ARE HERE TODAY. LET ME BRING THIS UP TO THE FRONT. OKAY.
This zoning appeal concerns a deck that was built some time ago in the rear of our client's
property and then when they bought the property, the deck was in very poor condition and they were
strongly recommended to reinforce it and to repair it, which they did.
And after that point, they received a code violation from L&I saying that the deck was not properly permitted.
We had originally believed that the deck was originally built according to a permit after the sheriff's sale
and the previous owner had purchased the property from the city.
That does not appear to be the case or we could not really verify whether this deck had originally been properly permitted.
So as a result, and we'll go through this, but we filed an amended application for appeal to basically reflect the fact that this was not a previously permitted deck.
The notice of refusal here has three grounds.
The first is in terms of the stairs.
As we'll see in the photos, there is a stairway that goes from the deck down to the rear of the backyard.
And the LNI examiner said that that stairway was not allowed when a deck was part of an attached building.
The other two are dimensional standards, and we believe that both of these dimensional standards are actually improper refusals.
We actually meet these requirements, and we'll go through that and show you that.
So there are three zoning refusals. It is our contention that only one, the first one, is accurate and the last two are not.
The petitions in support were also redone because our original petitions referred to the deck being previously permitted.
so now we circulated new petitions and got new signatures at the suggestion of the RCO
which basically addresses the story of how the deck was unsafe and how it needed to be fixed up
and now it needs to be legalized
all of these owners are very very close
many of them are literally on the same block as the property owners
So the Westman Airy Neighbors RCO voted to not oppose. There were five in support. There were two opposed, one abstained, and there were four in non-opposition. So overwhelmingly it was either in favor or non-opposition.
um their letter did go into some detail though about what i've referred to already uh the previous
understanding that we had that there was a proper permit for the deck and we have addressed it as
i've said by putting new petitions out to the neighbors not no longer referring to the deck
as being previously permitted and also um as we'll go through um putting any an amended
as we'll go through putting an amended application
application for
for appeal that doesn't reference the argument
that it was previously permitted.
So we do have an architect from OZ Collaborative
that's available if the board is interested
in exploring the design of the deck in any ways,
but these are the plans that were prepared on the deck.
so here we have um you'll you'll see these better with with the photos but um
but the deck has the here's the stairs that go down from the deck on
into the rear yard of the of the house um and
the deck framing
This is a more clear diagram showing the deck and then the stairs that descend down.
Here's a rear elevation view showing the deck and showing the stairs.
and some of these plans are are actually more of the building plans so they're they're not
they're they're much more detailed than than a typical zoning diagram
this is the underneath of the deck these are the stairs that go on the left of the
of the deck down to the rear yard.
Here's another view of the steps going up
towards the top of the actual deck itself to the right
and to the left is a door that connects to the kitchen.
This is the deck itself.
You'll see that the deck is not covered.
It has no walls, it has no ceiling.
It is a completely open deck.
This is a view from the deck towards the north showing the part of the portion of the stairs.
This is the kitchen door to the left, and this is, you have access to that from the deck
itself.
This is the footings of the deck, and this is the property boundary.
When we looked at decks, there are a number of decks, a handful, basically, in the surrounding block.
All of those decks also have stairs that go down from the deck level to the rear yards.
So here we have some photos that are going to be a bit better than this.
but we have a neighbor that's two doors down here
that has a deck with a circular stairway that goes down.
You can see that, well, this is a bird's eye view,
but I believe we have a better view here.
So yes, this is the neighbor's deck,
just two doors away that has a circular stairway that goes down.
This is our deck, but it's blocked by a large tree,
so you can't see it in that photo.
This is a deck around a few doors down in the other direction, showing this deck also has stairs that go down to, in this case, it's to the front of the property.
In Exhibit 6, we presented the RCO with an analysis of why the refusals were incorrect.
So the first one, you'll recall, is around the stairs. And that one is correct. But our argument on the refusal for a stairway not being allowed on a deck that is an attached dwelling is, number one, the character of this area is that every single deck that is in this immediate area has stairs that go from the
the level of the deck down to either the front of the house or the back up so there are no decks
that don't have stairs but more importantly as you'll recall there is a door to the kitchen
that is kind of that without that deck would simply would be inoperable because you can't
exit a door that is one story above the ground so the our clients would be allowed to put a
the ground so the our clients would be allowed to put a stairway that would connect that that
kitchen door to the rear of the yard it would be virtually the same stairway it would maybe
be a few feet over so it's not that there wouldn't be a stairway uh in the backyard it would be
attached to a door as opposed to the deck and so that seems to be a meaningless distinction in the
code. The maximum occupied area, the violation is de minimis. It's only 35 square feet beyond
the maximum occupancy allowed of 92, 923.61 square feet. The lot itself is undersized,
which is a hardship basis for the dimensional variance. And in the mirror, the minimum rear
yard depth uh we basically are more than three feet away from the the rear property line in
section 14 6044 this is the section of the zoning code that deals with with decks it states that a
deck may not encroach into the required rear yard unless it complies with the following
a it's constructed so the floor level of the deck is at or below the floor level of the first story
which is fully above grade uh the rco agreed with us that uh that's what's happening here the the
floor level of the deck is is at level with the first floor of the house which is which um from
the street area is is at grade but the but the there's a slope in the property so that in the
rear of the house uh it's actually down to the to the basement level and then second it's not at any
point closer than three feet from a rear lot line and it is more than three feet so we believe the
examiner was incorrect in saying that there was a rear yard dimensional refusal in addition
the the code also states that decks are permitted between the rear wall of the building and the
rear property line as long as they are not enclosed by walls or roof above if a
deck is has a cover or a wall then it's considered part of the principal
building and it has to comply with all the yard and other requirements in this
case as you saw the deck has no wall has no roof it is therefore exempt from
require from complying with any of the of the dimensional requirements for for closeness to the
rear wall and um so it is not uh it doesn't apply to the minimum distance to the rear lot line um
and therefore the only issue is the stairway and as we said the stairway would be attached to the
kitchen door if it's not attached to the deck which makes which which is which which doesn't
doesn't seem to be any kind of a significant deviation.
We're gonna scroll through here.
These were some of the items
that we presented earlier on to the RCO.
This is our zoning notice posters,
our tax clearance,
the deed showing the ownership is with our clients,
This is our amended appeal in which we specifically reference the errors in the refusals and we
summarize those on the second page, which we've gone through.
So you have seen all of these arguments before.
There is no project information form, content required.
This is our RCO notice letter that was delivered to all of the near neighbors and our proof of mailing.
At this point, I would like to call Itzik Laurent and Elaine Blender so they can adopt my testimony.
Mr. Masters, just to go over one more time.
They bought the property.
The property had a deck that was in Rory Bad shape.
they replaced that deck they didn't they well there's some there's some dispute as to whether