Okay.

Good afternoon.

I'd like to open up the meeting for the Board of Adjustment Appeals for October 1st, 2025.

First order of business.

Everyone read the minutes from the last meeting?

Yes, sir.

Any questions or corrections?

No.

Motion to approve.

I'll make a motion to approve.

Second.

I'll second.

All in favor?

Okay.

First case we have, Bill.

Yes, sir.

Members of the board.

This is the speech warned in, please.

Yes, of course.

Do solemnly swear affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in front of the board of adjustments and appeals.

I do.

Name and address.

William Neville, 301 Baltimore Avenue here at City Hall.

The first case is BAAV 25-076.

This should be familiar to you.

It's a request that's submitted for a variance from Town of Ocean City Code Section 3871A5 to reduce the minimum three-foot freeboard elevation requirement above the AE6 flood zone for a substantial improvement to an existing townhouse unit, locally known as 431 Bay Shore Drive Unit CEX parcel number 112-20-5437, lot number 209 C.

Owner is Mr.

Partington and the applicant Harry Howe.

They're both here today.

So this application is the third unit in a building that you reviewed back in February on February 5th.

Your last decision was for 431B, the middle unit, and this is one of the end unit on the right when you're looking at the front of the building.

It has the same existing floor elevation.

And a similar plan is in uh has been submitted for building permit, which is to construct an addition to the front of the unit toward the street.

Um that takes it closer to the AE4 flood zone and an extension to the rear on the water side of approximately 10 feet uh that ends up overlapping with the AE6 flood zone.

So previously the building had been constructed within the X zone between those two flood areas by extension on the back.

Um they trigger the requirement to meet the AE6 plus a three-foot freeboard requirement.

So the staff report has been prepared, uh similar to what you reviewed in February, uh request for up to 2.7 foot variants of the required freeboard elevation in order for the additions to match the existing floor elevation of the structure.

At this point, I'd be glad to answer any questions.

Um we uh I believe kid uh follow the same uh decision path regarding the criteria for the variance.

Uh this is an existing structure.

Um the floor elevation is above uh the minimum required face flood.

Um and uh the free board elevation um variants would be just to allow for that horizontal extension in order to match the existing floor area in in that sense because it's the same as the adjacent structure, it wouldn't pass it, it wouldn't um phrase a concern about you know creating a situation that would cause a an effect on the adjoining property, uh certainly not any different than what's already there.

Um we included a whole series of plans that have been submitted and photographs.

Um the one item that I noticed is that this particular end unit the survey is showing uh an adjacent shed that seems to be constructed on this property, but seems to be attached to the um unit to the right of this property.

So it's something that we can investigate separately as a possible flood code violation, but it does since it's not attached to this unit.

That that's why I provided the photograph and the and the plan just to confirm that it doesn't seem to be associated with this particular application.

You're talking about the photograph with the red car in front.

Is that the one you're looking at?

That should be a good one.

Yes.

Okay.

Right.

That's the one.

I mean, normally we would need to address that issue, but it seems to be uh associated with a different property.

That's not the property we're hearing today.

It's a different property.

That's correct.

Oh, okay.

I just wanted to I thought I'd point that out since we included that picture in there.

What unit is that one?