Then we'll get started, I guess.

Um so today is the Board of Zoning Appeals for August 10, 2026.

This is the call to order.

Christy D'Angelo present.

Tim Nikich present.

I don't see anyone else here for public comment, so I'm assuming there is none.

Um the only action item we have is the approval of the minutes from the from last month's meeting.

So I will move that we uh for approval of the minutes from the July 13, 2026 meeting.

I'll second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

All right.

And then we are moving on to new business, uh, which is an update and discussion on the new zoning code and the changes that will impact the board of zoning appeals.

I'm gonna turn it over to Charlie, I assume.

Yep.

Uh I have a kind of a presentation on the on the code itself, and then uh Megan has some uh some information on your process.

So perfect.

Um so yeah, we wanted to just uh the new zoning code was approved on July 7th uh to go into effect September 1st.

So before it goes into effect, we just kind of wanted to go through some of the some of the changes so you guys can kind of be familiar with it.

So it's the new code, the existing code has 75 subsections to it, uh, and some of those are very long and convoluted.

So uh the new code hopefully is organized in a way that'll be much more user-friendly and uh a lot easier to understand and use.

Um it's divided into 12 sections.

There are actually uh 11 on this screen that have been approved so far.

Um we do plan to have the subdivision section that's currently chapter 23 of the city code that'll be added in later, uh, hopefully in the next couple months.

Um so as of right now though, we have 11 sections of the of the zoning code.

Uh the the ones that'll be most uh important for for all of you for uh variances are the zoning district standards and then the use standards.

Uh the development design, parking, landscaping, uh all those sections, uh they most for the most part they're new uh standards which had just been design guidelines that the plan commission uh would would use in its review process, and they've been added and codified so uh there's a little bit more certainty for people.

Um and then each of those sections including some portions which were uh in the old old code and which would have come to you for variances, each of those sections has a sort of a built-in uh exception standard where if somebody wants an exception from many of those design standards or the the parking standards, those will go to the plan commission.

So uh so those will they have a little bit lower of a bar uh for approving their their kind of exceptions than you do for approving variances.

Um so that'll that'll take a few things off of off of your plate.

Um the district standards of the of the ones that are uh you know that are kind of you will be still reviewing uh district standards kind of uh are uh regulating where things can be built.

So they'll have uh descriptions of each of the districts, and then they'll have tables for lot sizes, uh setback minimums, height, and things like yard encroachments and and height exceptions.

Um they also each of the sections including these ones will have diagrams to uh sort of help people understand um uh understand the wording of the code and to make it a little easier to use.

Uh there's a lot, there were just a few in the in the current code, and there'll be a lot more in the new one.

Uh so this one on the right, uh this is uh showing where uh how the setback minimums apply to yards.

Um so it's each of those uh those kind of colored sections around the outside of the yards are um are uh showing uh uh setback area.

Um and the one that I kind of wanted to highlight there, you know, we still have front yards, setbacks, rear yards, interior side yards, and then now there's a new category called street sides.

Uh so in interior side yards are that'll be most of the uh the side yard setbacks that you have where there's two uh properties on either side of you, those will be your side yards.

Uh but in cases where there's a corner lot or where there's uh a lot with double frontages, that has in the past been just classified as a street yard, and that leads to all sorts of confusion when it comes to people wanting to build on corner lots.

That will be classified as a street yard or street side yard in the new code, and there'll be some cases where there are different standards for those than there are for regular front yards.

Um it's not gonna make everything super easy to do on corner lots.

We'll probably still see some variances for those, but it will hopefully make things a little bit easier for people.

Uh as far as the districts themselves, the uh the biggest one of the biggest changes in the code was to reduce the number of districts we have for at least for the residential districts from nine down to four.

So you can see in general uh the the districts on the left are those are the current ones.

There's they're uh uh divided out by single family, two-family, multifamily, and then each of those has different uh uh you know has several different um districts within those those divisions, and they're generally being combined into the uh four uh residential neighborhoods, which are just residential neighborhood one, two, three, and four.

There aren't any districts that are single family only.

The uh RN1 district, residential neighborhood one uh will only allow single family as a as a principal use, uh but it will also allow uh accessory dwelling units uh if people want to have like a mother-in-law suite over their garage or in a basement or something like that.

They'll be allowed to do that in any district, and then the other districts will all allow at least uh some duplex, triplex, quadplex, um, you know, or and larger number of numbers of uses uh in in those districts.

Um and again, it's it's generally but not exactly as it's shown there.

Uh they're being combined that way.

There are some some areas where you know, some areas of the existing RS3 single family district which fit more in the RN3 residential neighborhood than the the RN2, but generally that's how it is.

For commercial districts, um it'll be more it there isn't as much change, they'll kind of stay the same.

Uh but we've we'll we've changed it to uh more descriptive titles where you know right now it's the B5 community business district, it'll be just the C C corridor commercial districts.

So they're they're we've kind of taken out the numbers and uh have more uh descriptive uh names for them.

Um each of the districts will we have we'll have uh tables for the setbacks and for lot uh lot sizes.

Um hopefully to be a little bit easier to find than going into uh the the zoning ordinance for each district.

Uh and the sizes the of the lot sizes and the setbacks that are allowed have been reduced quite a bit in the current code.

Uh the smallest uh minimum lot size is 8,000 square feet, and uh pretty much any lot in the central city is gonna be smaller than 8,000 square feet.

So that uh that led to a lot of substandard lots and a lot of uh a lot of nonconformities.