all right it is five o'clock we will start our planning commission meeting today for august twelfth two thousand and fourteen there's a lot of you here today and i have a proof for the minutes for june ten july eighth and july twenty two movie approved four thousand favor i posed next communications from audience anyone in the audience i would like to speak to anything that is not on the agenda tonight they may come forward at this time know there are no unfinished business or tabled items under new business we have seven different items just for explanation for everyone we are going to do public hearings and each one of those items individually if you have things to say and the other item please hold those comments to later legally we have to do this to have a public hearing on each item individually thank you the first one letter a  briefly in regards to this this is a site plan review request the property in question is upon the screen this is the northwest corner of thirty street and avenue it's an existing commercial building that i believe is vacant the applicants have an existing automotive or a repair business just north of here down i believe as the twenty third street  looking into to purchase or an option to have purchased the property pending all city approvals with the site plan review it cetera so our site plan review requirements  require that any on any commercial property if there is going to be a new or a new automotive repair or service business proposed for a property that it does require site plan review regardless of whether they're going to be a building a new building or adding in addition to an existing building that's right up at southwest so in this particular case the applicants are not looking to to add on t building at all they simply want to get in there or in remodel it for their automotive repair business they are looking to do some parking improvements and you can see on the aerial photo here  where there is existing pavement and in them where there are some gravel pavement or or gravel paved area they are looking to do some additional paving in those areas would like to do some landscape improvements  staff is recommending approval of the site plan review request and this does require a public hearing and staff does have some noted proposed conditions on the approval should the planning commission look to approve this any questions at all or the applicants here are there to speak to this a minute you might just describe what you're doing what your plans are and you kno you don't have to but you can do to ok they covered it ok good this does your part choir public hearing if anyone would like to come forward and have comments or questions on this they may do that at this time all right i will close the public hearing planning commission members questions comments support all those in favor all right i posed all right thank you next item letter b amendment to the crescent shores development plan located at five forty s planning commissioners just read approved a well actually yes you approved again i should say the development plan for the crescent shores marina development this is up this is also known as or maybe more up to date name for this development is the south side condominiums but the planning commission approved of this development back  working on building the project out right now and are going on at least one unit in the development and intend to keep right on moving throughout the remainder of the summer and this  demand for more of the carriage housing type product and they wanted to try to to see if they could at least have one more of those units approved on the site so the actual request for the amendment for you tonight is actually to reduce the number of units you can see along the east side of the development and actually should probably for the benefit of those in the audience this role or this building here was originally approved to be a nine unit condominium building and the epoch into is requesting that that actually be reduced down to eight  units and then these carriage type homes in this location here the original plan had four of these being approved in the applicant is requesting for in additional one of these homes in this location right here and that is the extent of the request they're not looking to change anything else on the rest of the development so staff is recommending that  tonight i'd also add that the reason for the change in part is it enables the unit building to be to parking spaces per unit as opposed to one hand eliminates some of the surface the units to the east on the property same footprint just less units correct i believe so with the exception that the garages are going from single stall on some of them to drive all units then being able to accommodate a double stall and careful and then the carriage houses increased footprint are saying i believe the one that's being added is actually slightly smaller well i mean the overall footprint of feet for that are approved and much of the exact well i'm not just what we're at we're adding one other additional unit and it will cover more dirt that is correct ok there we go and there's no reduction of this does require a public hearing which i will open at this time if anyone has any comments questions on this issue they can come forward right now and state your name and address about they would take care the dirt or same bag and try to take care of our you really your problem you know of course that didn't happen they were going to take over the fence and we put that up ourselves and so i kind of feel i'm living on a one way street they asked for things are and we're all trying to get along fine and dandy but what they tell us doesn't happen so i don't know what we can do about that other than going to change on that condos on the east which i thought the same thing so i don't know folks will want to go along with the program that basically my only comment is just i hope that all the other thing is looking at the courage house elevations each courage hall so far on the print has been at five ninety i think yes flight ninety in the one next to our driveway is at five eighty nine and i'm wondering why because the land is higher there is farther ground around them why they lowered it a foot so like development plan approved for the second time mr sails came in and did his area of concern is right here in the southwest corner of the property and commissioners will remember there used to be a large a boat garage right in this area and in that was removed and mr sale says his claim that you know that the west wall of that was kind of when the building was there was kind of acting as a retaining wall and helping to keep his garage and in the slope there stabilised when that building was removed mr stills is is now claiming in in you know his is indicating that there slash developer and in november indicated that they would put sandbags or or something of that nature down along the slope area to help retain that slope from a further erosion and i believe that that occurred i guess i would say also i mean at that approval the planning commission did not you did not require them to do any slope stabilization and here however there was the acknowledgement by the developer and his engineer at the time that the they would do something and it's not in this package now it's not in this proposal now yes look slope stabilization here is is not an issue that's that the applicant is bringing in front of you but thirty more days of time to resolve be helpful all around we were table i think that would probably terribly be within your purview to put a condition on the approval of this amendment if you wanted to do so that that stated there ought to be some bank stabilization in that area mark you scroll down to the next one that shows the total that shows the elevations i believe it's should be one foot difference and is he saying that there you're down two foot know the difference between twenty seven between twenty seven there's one foot from from the existing grades which are on the left and the dog grades are new proposed grades you need to hold that with one foot difference between his lot you need to meet you need to meet these totals that you the sign you know we generally give you a fair amount of latitude and people do what they say they're going to do and when that doesn't happen it doesn't breed a lot of confidence and so it would be my strong urging that we had to provide you a little more time to think about it and get it done quicker than later can you say that on the record sorry the microphone i think with martin seen if you just get that we're twenty seven twenty six if you get that site to rough french grade i don't you don't have really what you want have a problem anymore i think what had previously been committed to was sandbag on the edge of the property line to well i understand that hadn't happened yet in and we can get that done in the next thirty days and if that's true as all right i'm going to probably see just a table in motion for thirty the site plan was re approved yet you indicated that at that time the wall from the existing structure was holding up the bank and i'm paraphrasing which lends me to believe that the existing grade before any construction happened on your property was know twenty seven is that a lower grade is because the current grade of the property in that particular spot in the lot is lower but the land around it is higher it would be get rewarded if wrote from the from my beginning of my driveway or the city sidewalk to where the ground is right now is probably five to six feet in the building cover both of those was there was a fix so when that when the old building was there that building retained that from the city sidewalk you walk right up to that building flat ground in a at the gas meter you couldn't do it now work and now we have about six foot of weeds that are about six foot tall can publicly hearing is still open if anyone else has any comments or questions about this item on the  i will close the public hearing at this time discussion among planning commission member well i mean we're here for a relatively limited purpose and that purpose is to amend the site plan just previously approved as it relates to a couple different things none of which have to do with the westerly property line now that being said as i think we've all discussed there was an anticipation that the that that property line between the old crescent shores and mr sale was going to be shored up in some way and that has not happened so so far as i know nobody from the staff perspective either last time around or this time around has raised a particular issue about needing to amend the westerlies property border of the subject property but on the other hand i think what we ought to do is approve this subject and in putting out a condition that within thirty days that there be you know shoring up of that that property area until final grading and i'm certainly interested in hear what others have to say before we get a motion going could that condition be just that he gets that southwest corner to within six inches a grade right now because  if the greats will work there you won't have any erosion just go there and i'll make i'll make a motion that you have thirty of conditioning at thirty days to get that corner or twenty six and twenty seven is within six inches a grain and then you can come and put your storm sewer and put it back and not sandbag first or just get that area where the russians occurring i hear what you're saying and it sounds simple i think some of this some of the soils on the site are contaminated and so how we do the final grading is somewhat to dictated by the permits that factor in as a rate as it relates to contaminated soil on the site itself i'm a little hesitant to say that will do our final grading you know in the next thirty days and that corner there as relates to meet up certainly we can do something to address the issue that's so you'd rather us put a condition on that you temporary or temporarily do that and put money that you're not going to eventually have to get that area to great absolutely but because of the timing and the engineer i hesitate to accommodate that without first talking with  fine however they want to shore up the property whether they want to take it with if they can get all the final or near final grading done now it doesn't matter whether they need to they prefer to use sandbags fantastic my point is that ultimately that was part of what we had discussed and i thought it agreed to and if that's not being done then here's our chance to more formally require it and in the methodology i frankly don't care but let's get it done i don't care if somebody looks at it there on any more discussion or emotion all right here's the motion i'm going to try this on for size if you like and i move we approve the amendment to the site plan as provided by staff with the staff conditions listed in by means that are acceptable to the city engineer and other city staff within the next thirty days all of the property line moving on to the next item on the under new business letter c zoning ordinance text amendments to create section thirty nine dash three forty three residential rental restriction overlay district v screen so i apologize for that to reintroduce myself and my name is joe di i am the community of the development core data for the city of holland one of my jobs is to i got it there one of my job the staff the staff planner for the neighborhood improvement committee the screen ready for you the neighbor to prove a committee is a citizen advisory committee the city council they consist of thirteen city residents and they spend their time talking about neighborhood and housing issues and making recommendations to city council on those issues over the past year roughly they've been discussing for issues with the city council and in the issues of a kind of ping pong back and forth between city council in the neighborhood improvement committee those four issues is the creation of a residential rental restriction overlay district the possibility of changing the definition of family so it limits the number of unrelated people that can live in a house at four unrelated people currently in the six or they are here in district and the fourth one are two changes to our housing ordinance one dealing with making crime free leases required throughout the entire city currently right now they're just required in the hope neighborhood area and then one is expanding our existing excessive public safety call ordinance to include other public servant interactions these are four separate recommendations that are from the planning commission tonight they must be dealt with individually each one will have its own public here the fourth one is germane to our housing ordinance that typically does not come to the planning commission but since each of these are kind we thought it was appropriate to bring those to the planning commission as well so starting with the first one arizona ordinance texan admits to the residential rental restriction overlay district before we begin i'd like to play the commission to look at the screen the overall goal for each of these four are the preserve and stabilize the predominant single family residential character and hollins residential neighborhoods and the guards to the renter restriction overlay district this would be in the top right hand corner that is to preserve and stabilize single family residential neighborhoods and ensure that our single family homes are more available to homeowners by allowing residents and property owners to limit the number of investment income properties and their neighborhood during the previous planning commission meetings the past to the planning commission has spent time reviewing each of these ordinances the most recent one we read verbatim on what was going to be presented tonight what i'd like to do is summarize each of the actions i can go in more detail with the planning commission would like to get in more detail i should also note that in the audience tonight is cindy osman she's the assistant director for community neighborhood services and she oversees the staff that districts to petition city council to establish an overlay district this over the district would prohibit or restrict the rental uses of one family and two family dwellings within the neighborhood this ordinance is modeled after an east lansing organs that's currently in existence it's been in existence since the mid two thousand over in east lansing the procedures for creating this district is first a petition must be circulated by a person who owns parcels or two discernible blocks or constitute a discrete neighborhood geographic area of which at least twenty percent of the existing one and two family properties in that district must have  active rental certificates so twenty percent of the existing properties are to then district must be rentals already the overly district must be entirely within the r one r two or r t r and zoning district once the petitions are gathered they're submitted to the city clerk the city clerk verifies them and then it goes to our basic our typical zoning the minutes minute procedure where that goes through the third floor community neighborhood services will prepare an ordinance amendment bring it to the planning commission the planning commission then we'll act on it and forward on the city council where we adopted any questions and we guarded that summary of what the rental restriction overlayed zone district you know aims to accomplish and the process to get it done one question the are the areas being determined by the property owners that's not coming down from anywhere else or act another question joel this potential overlay the sort of citizen led overlay district a resident led overlay district would be available in which zone classification would be available in the r one which is our one family zoning district are two which is our one and two family zon the fairbanks the are one you'll find more in holland heights the west then and maple wood and they are two kind of creates a secondary inner belt around that are one you get montell a park some of th old longfellow area might fall in that just south of twenty fourth street and around the hospital district unto itself so any private owned property in the educational do trickett will not apply to correct and won't be eligible to be part of this residential restriction of a district so that this will continue the process of driving a single family of people out of that district not not knowing your exact address or there's only with it the educational zon district infilling mark correct me if i'm wrong is ninety nine percent hope or black river proper black or public school properties very very very very few private residential privately owned properties are zoned easy i don't let just to clarify things we have an education zone district and then we also have a hope neighborhood area the hope neighborhood area goes from fairbanks down t seventeenth over the river and then up to ten you might be in the hope neighborhood area but not and not the education your property may not be zoned education ok so being in the hope neighborhood we would be really gets approved and then the rental gets sold to an owner occupied they can't go back to a rental again mcmillian understand you have to have a third of the two thirds of the people approve this special dist and if a third of the people third of the property is already in owned by landlords we're sunk well there's two schools of thought on that though one school is i'm one third of the landlord in that area go if i vote for this i've decreasing competition so there will be no more rentals competing with my rental the thought is on yours and that they're saying well we don't want to do that we would never vote for i go back and forth on that rationale actually i see no i think i think both are both are potential fact i've had a couple landlords think it's just the neatest things and sliced bread so i would suspect so yeah so so in that case if you had a third and in your area and the land were sort of new things and sliced bread you would never have more than a third game and potentially i don't know what it might my concern is that if a third of the properties already rentals that you could never get if more than a third if thirty seven percent you could never get enough let's face it that's highly unlikely i don't know i've had a number of people tell me that that's probably why claim from their perspective because it just reduces the number of units that they're competing with well i'm just expressing my concern i have jurisdiction does not provide the forty eight contiguous parcels or two contiguous city blocks or a discernable neighborhood area so as a resident you are drawing a line in your neighborhood and bringing  merely that you have to contiguous city blocks or forty eight contiguous parcels but that whatever the the zone is determined the term and to be through the resident owner initiated a petition all the properties are contiguous a question i do not understand why say you got sixty parcels forty eight or more contiguous then you jump over a block and you've got the remainder of the hurdles the other way the ordinance is written and the weights interpreted by zoning staff it is forty eight contiguous parcels or sixty contiguous persons or sixty or eighty whatever you get the forty eight here and then pick up fourteenth grate on the other side of town so whatever the zone district is is petition to be it will be a contiguous correct area to go back to the origins very quick if you don't mind grad there must be at least forty eight separate lots of parcels within the proposed district as described in the petition or two discernable blocks or the proposed district must constitute a discrete neighborhood geographic area of which at least twenty percent of the existing one and two family properties have an active rental no words just for jollys we have a block that's got the middle of it's own by hope and on the ends of our own by private individuals and they are isolated from each other and not contiguous with other properties but they're in that neighborhood and you could define that as a neighborhood and of the owners within the proposed bounty of the overlay district exclusive a proper public property so the only thing that's excluded from that is public property so jump outside whole college or jump to the washington square neighborhood where you have an intact neighbor commercial district in the middle of that if someone would drawl a district a boundary around that and you pick up your forty eight parcels those parcels are included in that process college sign though i do not know what a college would do and i'm not going try to g point of view within the concept of a discernable neighborhood group there's a possible to have only contiguous parcels or could there be a situation where there are noncontiguous parcels within that definition yeah ok and that's i think that's the question that's being asked and that sounds like that's probably a case of they have to be contiguous let me and you know perhaps if you get a briefing mojo you can jump on the city's  owner on one side he's got college and the only two sides he's got college and on the one side he's got a church on this side of city park but arguably he would be an orphaned parcel do we have a lot of those seminary owned in that its own district i think just need to be clear on whether it's hope on properties outside the district that you're talking about or hope i won't within the hope owned within the e d cannot be included in a bunch of different silos or a bunch of spot zoning that's happening there you have you know this residential wraps around this area you do though have some neighborhood commercial areas that fall within this however for the rental restriction overlay zone district it has to be in our t r and our one or our two so these parcel these only district these other ones that we just talked about are in in play the other questions in regard to the rental restriction overlay district hearing is still open to the next cruise when the name yeah when the neighborhood improvement committee discussed this that was actually a point of discussion on the concern of you know what if it is i think is at fifteenth street between central college is like ninety five percent rental and someone said well they can just you know pick up more blocks around them so they get to the point where they can get two thirds you know you know property owners to sign it i mean this is a very property owner slash resident and tense if process  puts a lot of the weight on the property owners in that neighborhood to say this is something we want to do it's not a top down you know city is not doing this down on them so if they're asked me a minimum of twenty percent currently being rentals before the supplies correct let's say that pick an area there is thirty four percent rentals and they pass that you're saying if somebody currently has a house that be in ramadan and they decide to sell it does it stay as landlord decides to sell it to a young family with three kids and they're going to move in and make that their primary home and they're going to go take the p r t you know exemption and so forth then it comes off as a rental and then it can no longer be rented that also requires him to go to the third floor and terminate the rental the annual rental permit not pay that again the rental certificate let that go defunct and so forth and there's no stop on that continues it can be it can be a it could be a slightly zero yeah but in the past ten years in the city when you give it to family and this is where you know staff feel free to correct me if i misspeak but you have each unit certified so if my family would move into a lower unit and rent out the upper unit that upper unit stays a rental unit but that lower watched or given up it remains a rental if you have a property that you sell and the individual buys an election not to maintain that rental certificate that it's  got so in the case of a two family if i bought it and i got rid of the certificate for my unit but kept the one on the other unit that unit stays so i would think it's more related to what the certificate is statuses rather than how the transfer happens or who owns it or what the deal i'm so the owner would have to make a decision whether the tax savings were using losing the certificates that is correct  next letter d zoning ordinance text amendments to amend section thirty nine dash two definition of family planning commission is the applicant the second idea that the neighborhood inc committee and city council were kicking  d was this idea of changing the definition of family to reduce the number of unrelated people that can live in a house from six work currently is to four on your screen if you jump down to the bottom right hand side the overall goal for this one is to preserve and stabilize the single family household nature of our neighborhoods by limiting the number of unrelated adults that can live together to four which will remove dormitory living opportunities and more closely reflect and attract the typical household in the city just to clarify when we say typical i think right now we're a little bit by three point two is the average household size in holland michigan so you know fo is what the average household size of maybe two were typical should be replaced with the word average household size there the definition is pretty simple as you see in your packets section thirty nine dash two under family subsection four we are looking at replacing the word six with the word four so we say up to four unrelated persons living together as a single housekeeping group in a dual one unit using common cooking facilities to give some background to the planning commission and those in the audience the city of ann arbor allows for a new dated persons unless it is in their multifamily zoning district then they allow up to six unrelated persons to live in a house the city a grand rapids allows for unrelated persons only replace the word allows it limits middle and limits for understated persons however and the city admitted then you may apply for a conditional use if you want to get more than four and there are city now and their charter township east lansing in kalamazoo all limit it to three and holland charter township township just to the north of us limits at the three unrelated person i believe that motion past ten to one and then when we got it for when we finally found time to get all these core issues in front of city council city council sent it back to the nic and said can you clarify you should this be in the zoning ordinance w effective immediately or in his own words where you could grandfather uses or should it go to the housing or nets at that time the nic in motion i believe it was seven to four with one person abstaining saying let's not talk about this since this is a change to the zoning ordinance that obviously has to go through the planning commission so that's why it's before you tonight any questions about this recommendation and how it got to where it's at right now yes a question for you so is this recommendation part of the zoning code or not which you know practical speak is that the grandfathering piece or not yet thanks for asking that question this is part of the zoning code however our housing  council wants a grandfather thing to happen then the change cast to happen differently than what's being proposed right now the well can we make a recommendation to grandfather the units we can't make that recommendation here anyone can make any form of promotion after a moment here another question joel yes the typical length of a rental certificate is six a furnace certificate showing the furnace is being updated then you can qualify for a six year certificate we encourage people to go for the six years again that means you've had no run ins with city hall and you have a clean furnace operating right and this is all on a rolling basis correct i believe so but i'm looking at cindy as me to make sure she's not shaking your head no i can't see her through the t v cindy perhaps you might want to get close to a microphone because i suspect you might be called on to answer a few questions at some point violations at your next inspection and you have your furnace certificate you can't qualify for a six year certificate you know question joe you review that and i see committee recommendation again sure last september the nic i believe it was i'm not going to guess who made the motion and who supported it but  c voted ten to one to recommend the city council that they reduce the number of under they did adults from six to a number lower than six last september it was september seventeenth two thousand and thirteen is when that motion was made i actually in front of me it was a committee member beer tice and it was supported by commit committee member to block so then why was it back before that committee on june eighteenth because it we went to  council with these four together in the spring of this year and we finally got to a point where city council could deal with all four they wanted to deal with all four at one time and city council said ok nic before we get this ball rolling on this one right here we need to know do you want this and the zoning ordinance or and the housing ordinance and so it went back to and i see in june i think it was june for that reason and they voted to keep it at six well they voted not to talk about this issue again i believe i don't have those minutes in front of me so i don't have the exact wording i do it so eric davis then mentioned on the recommendation reducing the number of changing the definition of family from six to four the process was last fall the recommendation of the city council then a direction from city council to the nic saying do you want to end zone ing or want it in housing the n i c passed you know a motion was made and it was passed to rescind the recommendation that was shared back with city council and city council said send this on the plane the commission we want to continue the discussion so why are we here tonight is because the city council as you know more or less recommended that the planning commission in september no this past june city council said well you know through a study session we want to continue the discussion on these four so i thought you were just saying it was approved by them and i see ten to one and september of last year ok and then just i guess for the record in june it was on june eighteenth for the record by the nic and then counsel sent it to the planning commission i'm just saying for the record the nic rescinded that in june on june eighteenth correct right  the household kind of originated with the rehabilitation houses or the halfway houses and some problems with the neighborhood were experienced is that an accurate or inaccurate statement it's i would say so i'll give you my own perspective which is all that it is is that it's part of it part of it you know it was an element but when that came up to be voted again in the end i see found out that they could not regulate those houses per this change did that not in fact drive some of the voting in the discussion within the i c ok just want to have clarity as to what the original intent was and where the nic had concerns about wasn't related necessarily to rental housing per se overall you're asking if and i see didn't have concerns about rent and i'm saying that from a voting standpoint the vote it was rescinded june eighteenth june eighteenth that was rescinded and that was driven by the fact that they found they could not control the halfway houses and of people or the rehab houses so i just want to make that point for the record a secondly as i understand the other pieces are going to be deal with will put a lot of controls on rental housing and one of them is the crime premier hood peace and i would ask if anyone appear under siege is knows in the hope district or college students during the time frame that have been under this crime free requirement that it's one of our next items up leave it up but just germane to this is germany going to have a public hearing for that i understand letters germane to the number of people if you'll let me finish ok we'll get there ok how many complaints of six people hope college students that were received in those two and a half years so anybody know sending you know you have a number you know we've had one recorded complaint however and there further discussion with our police department we found out that we probably weren't recording the appropriate way so one of the things we're working on in this upcoming year is a flow chart process to ensure that everything that the police are involved in is making its way to us so we don't know if we have a problem is what you're saying i'm saying we had one you know we talk in our police department we're working on if one starts out a hope a student that apartment i believe that with a private family i know right it correct ok just for the record so hope students can only live off campus their senior year or of their souther some other extenuating circumstances right seventy eight hundred seniors let's assume all of them want to live off campus we know that it's going to happen but let's assume that for discussion if eight hundred do and you have six people per unit that's one hundred thirty three units if you limit it to four now you're up to two hundred units it appears you're trying to control something that's being driven by the market hopes students want to be off campus they can't drink they're twenty one years old a seniors that can drink on the whole con they can do a number of things they want to be off campus that's not going to change ok hope college students don't appear to be the overriding problem here yet what you're doing is limiting the ability to have that arrangement with those students i would suggest that maybe the wiser approach would be to take the three controls that you have with the overlay the crime free district in the parking see how that impacts the behaviors see how that handles the problems that supposedly were having with ronald young just before you take that step where you go from six to four and you start having economic impact on taxpayers to the city that don't have the personal exemption we pay the full tax loading to the city ok i think you're trying to kill a fly with a sledgehammer and it would appear that a to five nine five paul paul drive to me this comes down not only really reading what he said what is the problem i've been asking for two years two years i was on an ad hoc committee with hope students people from the city residen back then we concluded six was the right number of a sudden it comes back up and like they were saying before neighborhood improvement committee did not recommend six and it was even quoted in the grand rapids press which i don't know where the ground at this press got their information but it just seems to me that something is a little weird here of why this keeps coming up and how it keeps coming up but that's beside the point to me it comes down to simple math you make this change me alone my homes alone will create the need for three to four more homes four bedroom homes if you what you're trying to do is encourage ownership where you're going to do with this is you're going to encourage investors to take another look at four bedroom and three bedroom homes because it's supply and demand you're going to kick how many kids out of homes who are living together they're going to need a place to live investors are going to see that runs are going up because the demand is greater and now those three and four bedrooms homes that we did not find attractive are now going to become very attractive because we can probably raise durant's so to me you're going to create a bigger problem with this than what you think you're solving the other thing to keep in mind is i don't know why you want to you take the landlords who done great improvements in these neighborhoods and in some ways we've kept hope college in check i mean if it wasn't for us buying homes improving home sticking a lot of money into it just think of hope college was the only buyer i mean hope college would gobble up all these properties the advantage we have is we can move quicker than hope so we get them before hope well we pay the taxes i mean they don't so i mean do you really want hope to have free reign to just gobble up as much property as they can i mean i love whole college don't get me wrong i'm not bashing hope college but to me it sounds like what we have now is a great check and balance i mean do you really want to run out of business the people in this town who are doing a great job and i think if you talk to cindy and tricia and some of the other people one risk carol if you ask them what kind of landlords we are i think of some of the people in my neighborhood where i have a will tell you they see me every week they have my phone number they know where to get ahold of me if there's a problem you know if you're going to do by doing this is you're going to run me out of business and you're going to leave the ones who are absent landlords and don't care in business so you know it's going to have a lot of effects i mean think about the community bank in holland here who has loaned many loans based on income that the city allowed what effect is that going to have on them i mean i think you'd be surprised how big of a financial burden that would be on a certain bank that maybe has a lot of loans in the city because they are a citi bank so just there's a lot of things to think about  i guess i had question educational district does not pay taxes at all on a bonobo house that had nothing to do with education on this or it's who owns the property and what's the use in order for anything to be off the tax for all it has to be owned by a nonprofit and used by the nonprofit for nonprofit purposes so for example of the board of public works own the power plant site but uses it for nothing well let's put it this way the board of public works owns a piece of property in like town township that is along the lake front but doesn't use it for any nonprofit purpose or tax exempt purpose it still pays taxes on the public works pays property taxes unlike the township on a property it also has to be owned and used  by the nonprofit which would be a sorority house would be used by a whole college and they won't pay taxes correct the people from six to four is a ridiculous situation because because it's not fair that that  hope and i feel that this is a terrible situation because we should have to pay higher taxes than hiring it because because people should have to and i think it's not fair i'm erin cunningham curtis's mom and i just wanted to weigh in on a couple of things kurt's been living at three twenty two  fairbanks for part of the year as a whole college student we kind of comes home parse the time and there are so time we have found a whole college students to be wonderful attends a ready for life program and he attends regular hope college classes in august them and h college has been awesome we love the students we think they are great neighbors they are great roommates to him and with people like kurt who have been included in regular read which more kids curse twenty one to be twenty three more kids in this community have gone to black river west out of the other class other schools and have been included in regular ed and with that you're going to see a growing number of students who are looking to live with their peers and they need natural supports and natural supports don't mean group homes i'm not a fan of poems i want my son to live with his friends the people he chooses the people he grew up with when you limit it from six to four you jeopardize a natural supports because it does take they're not getting paid to be as a roommate they're just friends who are pitching in and providing what we all would want our kids to you're going to see more kids like her wanting to live in this community and when you reduce it from six to four when there were living out an income of seven hundred twenty one dollars a month that's what you get when you have s s i when you pay rent of three hundred  three fifty you can't afford much more and so if if they're at the rates were reduced down to earth the number of people reroute duce down they might raise have to raise the rates because they have loans the landlords and that jeopardizes what my son  could ford and we're not allowed to subsidize really his rent or things because the federal government only lets him have two thousand dollars of income it in his ownership of any time so he has to spend what he has he can only have what he has and can be an exorbitant amount of his s s i income so as a person in the city who you know has a population of people who want to live like everybody else this is a norman rockwell town we love it we love the whole college students and we want to go to provide them with the assistance they need in a natural way let me turn that down to four current mosler with people with and without disabilities and it would make it harder because he could have in a six person house hemant two buddies who happen to have disabilities living with three guys who don't and it's a wonderful combination but when you take that away it really limits us and it really exposes us to higher rent that he can't afford and he doesn't want to come home and live with us because he's twenty three and he wants to be out with his buddies and that's what we want for him too and i just want to say on the record that you know we have randy that clattenburg as a landlord he has been amazing his number is on our fridge kurt called him and called a plumber and said i need some help here they were right there johnny on the spot we couldn't ask for a more caring environment for him thank you thank   supposedly and people living in it but i don't understand why they need thirteen bicycles and eleven automobiles losses he's only allowed to have six cars in a put in per parcel and there's nine ten cars there on a regular basis he doesn't have a occupancy permit for the place he's supposed i'm sorry i'm going to stop you i don't want to be disrespectful but please stay on the number of persons being reduced to from six to four ok ok if the number was read i would be supportive of the idea of grandfathering and then so the people who have already invested are fine until a sell out or move out but i think to continually build these monster units you know six bedrooms if he had space would have been twelve he'd have twelve people in that house next to us with two six bedroom units he's got ten now because he didn't have enough space without change in the footage he's also in a position where he has gotten any illegal land split so that he's going to try to squeeze another six unit house where none is supposed to be so we're dealing daily with people who are proclaiming their innocence but who really are not doing in the cities letting them get away with it so to some extent we're only talking about another indian treaty i would like to see it changed in the future to six but already wasn't it six but you want to keep it six for existing i would i would like to change it for my granddaughter works in athens georgia near the university and over she works for the university of georgia there it's they have a type two i would i would like that i would like to see but it but i don't like to see the rules changed on somebody after they have made an investment all right thank you mr chen but i would like to see the law enforced and this young man has randy's phone number public hearing is still open if you like to come to the podium so your name and address and i'm a homeowner my address is two eighty one east twelfth and yes i am in the middle of hope college i see the good in the bad i am in favor of having it go from six to four it's simply the density too many cars on the road we had situations and i had expressed they here before where the fire department could not to get to  a particular resident because there was too many cars on the road if we went down to four people per person that might make a difference to the party and that goes on and the landlords all of you need to i was seriously when i gave you the challenge how many of you took up that challenge the last time and actually went down and walk to my street and in that area how many of you did basis ok driving down twelfth street ok i'm there almost every day ok ok what are you all seeing when it's anybody else go down that black and take a look ok and what are you seeing are you seeing that some of the houses are not up to code are you seeing that they're not to being taken care of as the landlords are telling you are you seeing the overflow are you coming in the middle of the night from ten o'clock on and seeing the major party there's a new issue now that started this summer and that has to do with pit bulls and dogs running loose in the area that's become now and apparently in the area with the renters some of the landlords don't even know that it's going on so i'm just i'm just commenting and saying to you that i would like to see you take this seriously take a good look at it walk down the blocks take a good look before you make a decision and see talk to the residents and see for yourself thank it was holland michigan and i think we have a lot to be proud of to be living and serving and how i did understand the task that's in front of you as far as trying to preserve and stabilize  neighborhoods you know i love palatable he's lived in the city and i think that when i try to hear some of the initiatives brain proffered such as i want talking about bringing six to the f i'm really not hearing that this particular issue is really identifying or solving a problem at all here that the problem is really then identified to say you know because of these six minutes or because of more than six people living in this specific property has created this property you know we can talk about dance and we can talk about some of these other factors however we can't go up and down the streets of fifteen fourteen thirteen twelve str and say yes because of all these people you know those blacks in that education district and the hope neighborhood it's because of this whole college being their whole college has grown over the last twelve years they've added more students for that core area they're bringing in more more kids and more students that are going to be sprung out into that neighborhood that's a given and if you don't want the growth in the neighborhood of the changes that hope neighborhood desperate for them we need to go back to help college and say hey you need to stop drawing any more students to your population and so we don't want them spilling out into our neighborhoods i think the problem that i really have too is i also work with quite a few different investors that have invested and run our properties in the city and quite a few in that whole neighborhood district and when you look at what would happen is fires are property values because if you do change from six to fo expenses and they're going to lose money in their annual returns and ali that they're going to lose money because of that in the property that is because they're going to try to take that property and have to resell it and they're going to have a significant decrease in their property value that's just kind of the basic rules of what happens to a real estate investment have another property that currently have on the market at eleven watch fourteen three that's kind of an interesting one to look at because that's part of the traditional route residential neighborhood it's part of the south central neighborhood districts part of whole neighborhood it's also part of the historic district so you try to look at how the different zoning that they want her to your property has makes a kind interesting to try to market and sell and then you know i don't now want to look at it because it has a potential for five maybe six different people living and it to change offer that it could have five or six people being able to i could buy the property for all the side it's going to pass to four because that would have fact his numbers as far as he's how he would look and analyze that as an investment opportunity so now that's been put on hold because the value of that property is changing as this man that i guess i'll say kind of continues a move forward  and nonetheless if you still feel that this has some merit to moving forward you know i'd do strongly encourage a planning commission to grandfathered in on the because i think we do over to the people that did purchase the properties and make those investments in the city to still have that ability to maintain some of the that is expansion a sense we really haven't identified a problem that's been created there was just a couple before there you know right there i am one of the people near hope college that has been most affected by the change from single family owners to rental properties yes some from the students but really it's more because of having unrelated adults living in compact quarters where they all have cars and all need to go somewhere at the same time and so we see a lot of traffic and a lot of parking and the it is making life less than happy for us but i it hits me that that really is essentially the problem it's not just rental versus homeowner although that is a big difference in terms of investment but it's person density and card city and when i look at not just our neighborhood but all of howland it was built on this grid where the houses are extremely tight together so there's very little space in the street for parking with the assumption that there is one family that has maybe one or two cars not six unrelated teenagers that all have their cars and so what happens is you have a few people buying up some of those houses and then went doing lots of students in and that's ok for a while because there aren't many kurds around but now like on our block if everybody has a house with six students in it it becomes a parking traffic to say esther and so that's what i would see is the sensual most important thing about limiting the  number of unrelated adult residences because of the car it's not just that well they could perk behind if we just pave half the brick with yard ok if it doesn't go beyond half the backyard it's ok i would say that if you limit it to four rather than six you have population density that really is much more compatible with weight the way how it is a city was constructed in the first place it doesn't have a lot of street space there is not a lot of space between the houses and should not be densely filled with as many rental units as possible thank you can i ask a question for you on your fixation here is it the issue of the cars on the road or the cars in the driveway i would say the issue is the traffic because the cars don't just sit it's not just about i think coming and going it's the coming in the going and the traffic and obviously along with that the uninvested people but it's the courage don't just sit ok move all over the place and then that makes it more of a difficulty thank you thank you for that parties that you can't get on the sidewalk or they do park on the sidewalk but like you say it don't matter how many sleepin in the house it's everything at one end outside dallas eric davis six twenty one west thirty second street i was on the neighborhood improvement committee censor started i was on the neighborhood invites re committee for that and the whole college area committee for that and so on and so forth so if you need any history on this i can hear your question i think that the the idea of restricting it down to four people i have a really hard time with that because in order to do that you have to say that people that are not related to each other make worse neighbors than people that are related to each other that is making a judgment about somebody based on their situation and circumstance and not th individual person so if you make a rule like this and you do that not at least grandfather the existing houses in there will be hundreds or thousands of hope students over the years that live in a house where rooms have to stay vacant their friends are going to know that their room has to stay vacant and they are going to know that that is because they are not viewed as good neighbors and how do you think those future doctors lawyers professionals in the world are going to feel welcome in the city want to stay in the city i don't think so thank thank you for listening to all of us and thank you for your patience i am jane johnson i own two rental properties two forty seven and two fifty one east thirteenth street i participated with eric and several other people three years ago when this issue came up and i just like to share with you again a letter i wrote to you know just two paragraphs i challenge the assumption that a lower student density in a neighborhood would decrease the number of homeowners student conflicts it's not the number of students that's a problem it's a behavior of a minority of those students they are young in any speer ins and this off campus experience can be a wonderful transition learning year before they go out into the world on their own sometimes they just need direction when i have my orientation with my students i make them sign that crime free lease i say you violate this and this is how you violate it if you do and i am fine by the city of holland that fine is coming out of your security deposit and you get to explain it to your parents so by students don't they know they understand from the beginning and they have the experience of living next door to a family with children my neighbor has my phone number they know that if something gets out of hand i'm going to hear about it in a heartbeat so there is certainly a way to resolve these issues i don't understand why this issue is coming up again i also on housing at northwestern university in evanston where this issue came up again two or three years ago and they did not limit the number of they did nothing on this and did not change the number either even though you've heard about cities that have evanston illinois did not thank y already is the decision to not grandfather an existing property owners the concern as was pointed out is that it's going to create an immediate demand for fifty percent more rental units i think when you listen to the concerns that i hear from the people who live in these neighborhoods who do have some concerns my guess is they're not going to be thrilled about scene twenty thirty forty more locations for hope college students i think we're going in the opposite direction if you look at the goals that were stated and you'll still has that on the screen the center goal obviously to preserve and stabilize the predominant single family residential character by increasing the number of rentals in the hope college neighborhood by fifty percent seems to be at odds with what that goal is and i don't see how we're moving that forward the other thing it's been talked about extensively to see evening and that is the idea that that we do not have a clearly stated list of problems and certainly no objective data that would support that we've heard some concerns about parking we've heard some concerns about noise we haven't seen any of the data i think it's premature at this point to talk about this but with regard to the concerns that have been mentioned noise and again i don't think the concern is that six young men or six young ladies are making too much noise and that for young men or for young ladies are going to make that much less noise my guess is to the extent to which there's noise concerns that said there's fifty sixty or seventy kids at a location at one time that's creating a lot of noise and reducing it from six to four just isn't going to solve that issue so i don't think i don't think we're moving the ball forward on that front where they have the other issue parking to the extent to parking concerns it would seem to be that there's an easier way of solving that that when somebody comes in for a rental certificate that you look at the property and you say do you have the ability to accommodate six cars here if you do terrific if you don't well then there's a problem then maybe you can only have four cars or four residents it seems to me a much easier way of solving the parking problem than just across the board saying we can't have six people in a nice locations and the last comment then just briefly it hasn't talked about the ceiling but i know it did come up at the last study session and that somehow this argument that look everybody else is doing it look at all these other cities that have gone before we need to pick a number and why not just pick the number up for i think the difference is holland the number has been six and it's been six for a long period of time and there's been a number of individuals who've made investments into the property and have relied on the number of being six and that to do the change now from six to four adversely impact those people where in those other cities i don't know maybe they had been out for a long maybe they didn't have the same situation we have here but i mislead is going to impact those folks who have made substantial investments in their properties relying on the ability to have six unrelated adults there and i think before we take measures that would reduce that we want to make sure that there is in fact a problem and that what we're doing will solve that problem i'm just not convinced that that's the case thank you thank you realty i've been a realtor for thirty years but investor in holland probably for twenty five of those years and one thing i want to say holland is a great place to live to rent property to own property and one of the reasons is because the recession if it wasn't for the recession i know myself personally i've sold probably fifteen to twenty homes to individuals that were just rundown pieces and  and they put twenty to thirty or forty thousand hours in those homes granted a lot of them are rentals a lot of were not flips they were rentals because the person saw the need for hey there's rental demand in home let's fix up the house and make a rental now the lot of those are single families with as cindy puts limits on those when you have four bedrooms if they're the right size you can have eight people in there providing their family that's fine no problem if you would decide to go to a six non related individuals but one problem i see that could come up if it wasn't grandfathered in for the existing ones that are out there hope college might buy a lot of those properties whether they're next year home or not and how many could hope property whole college put into those ten better mutants for whole college unless it's in the district they're going to change it to the strict guess who's going to have to prove that ok but i'm going to look at that that's ok that's what's going to happen in the long run do they they could end up to that point this commission could change too and those views could change yes it could go down to two for that matter who knows public hearing is still open so that is something less than our current sex thank problems are that we're trying to solve with this at least in some of the study sessions i've sat and i haven't seen an itemized list and so the k b cd if we change from six to four it's going to address these issues  them so i think there should be some more time put into studying whether or not what the impact of this is going to be i think one of the negative impacts of it is like everybody has said is that it is going to increase the demand for more houses to be used for student housing hope colleges here the students are here they're not going to leave they're going to need a place to live there's been comments made well if we reduce from six to four and there's not housing available form maybe they're going to go out look at other areas they all want to stay close to campus they want to hop on their bike they want to be where their friends they're not going to go out beyond these districts misfires changes from six to four to preserve and stabilize the single family residential characteristics there's a huge density of student housing in that certain area which is basically from sixteenth to twelfth and from fair banks those high density areas that are currently being used for student housing it's not going to push single family people to want to buy in that area i mean it's student housing they're not going to want to buy a house in that area so i don't see how it changes from six to four is going to increase a million want to buy into the area and then as far as grandfathering in you know if the decision to go to four is a say in that's made and it's for the good of the community i'm for that because now i know what the rules are the rule was six i made huge investments into properties in holland i took an empty lot built a brand new house i didn't build a single family home i built a home to be use for student housing because there was a need for it in that area and the decision of how i put that house together was based on what your and what i was allowed to have six students living in that house i took another house i was only two bedrooms lifted it up put a new foundation underneath it built three bedrooms and put another bath and all those decisions were made and what the rules were at that time and the investment was made based on the rules so that now take that and change those rules puts us in a huge financial burden i mean there was a decision made to not allow single family homes to be converted into two families and i'm not sure what districts that was controlled and but basically any two families home that's existing in that area was allowed to stay most of those two family homes were single family homes that they t and put a kitchen in a bedroom upstairs and added a stairway so to say that were a little bit different than that that our home could still be used as a single family i basically did an investment in that home just like so many do and very a single family home into a two family i built a home that was to be used for student housing not for a single family so changing that is going to put me in a big buying financially are not any more comments on this item i will close the public have some question number one do we know how many rentals we have with six or more and related people that are privately owned in the city we do not track that information so we do not know that information ok  i guess you know i would like more data on that and i'd also like to know how many placed calls have their band at these units in the past year to know that there's a problem for us to fact know how many rental units have six now for more for up to six six six people the landlord you have to share with us the individual signed leases and the contact information with each of those we don't require in the in order to submit leases to us now i hear that we allow time to unrelated adults living in a private room the city ok it might be a two family house two family ok all right that helps me understand and then another number that i'd like to know is the number of public college students that are living on campus i don't think that we've evolved to college in this process i appreciate everybody's comment but i think that we're opening up a can of worms and we don't have all the data we need to make a decision and i'm not ready to make decision tonight effect you someone run so a six bedroom house and signs a lease with four people who's going to be responsible if the guy's buddies sleep over that would be the landlord and the landlord going to regulate so you're going to you're going to follow up on that on every occasion whether it's by complaint so i see a very hard time in force in this policy on behalf of the city  and i agree that what we're saying here preserving a stable we're we're creating more and more rentals in in that zone district in the t r and there in that neighborhood around the college and i've been told a couple times this isn't about hope college this isn't about the rentals around hope college where both the both the statement says to eliminate the dorm li opportunity i mean that's only going to happen around hope college and the statement says it here in our in our item for about our discussions it's to deter the the dorm style living assuming around whole college i don't think we're going to have much dorm style living on cell shore drive probably nothing east of west of river of i mean there's just things that just aren't making here again i've asked them and i don't see the problem and i don't see what going from four from to change it from six to four what what we're going to solve what problem we're going to solve and i a hypothetical thing as far as investment goes and we would never tell someone well we change a policy and we want also in our apartment district that someone would have to go from an eight plugs to a six block i know that's extreme but to say that you know what change change zoning that that we would we would just eliminate the number of units you can have an apartment complex and it's almost that extreme so i'm not the other comments are discussion or emotions i do have just a couple more comments you know i heard a lot of people who live in the hope college neighborhood is my mike on because i can't tell you ok not that i need a mike my husband says i talk  loudly i understand you know the neighborhood issues and hope college from listening never but he and i understand that but i do agree with what someone did say out here that i think we need to use some of the things that we will newly enact this evening and let those processes work themselves out to see how this manages some of the issues in the neighborhood like for instance the new and acted on rental restrictive overlay process that could be used we're looking at parking restrictions so i think we need to look at all so i know the neighborhood committee has talked about for years since i was on city council looking at a neighborhood for sure how to be a good neighbor to ever come up with that and we present that to hope college into the land hearts have something like that you know i heard one one one who lets her tenants sign that you know they're signing the crime  know the parking is already in the hole called district of tehran to be throughout the city no so then why am i hearing that there are these issues be we cannot expect the landlords to police this and so again i would say the same thing as how will we enforce this and i don't think i have enough data to vote on this yes i'm confused we heard from a landlord tonight who said it does apparently policing it very well i guess that's what i was interpreting that her residence sign the policy and the police is it well in there's an expectation from her residence so i don't see why there's a conflict there and i don't see why you don't have enough data i don't quite understand that my confusion at this point is how many six bedroom homes are we dealing with how many six bedroom homes are in this community where there's one person living in a home if this issue gets the city council or if it comes back to the planning commission part of my job is right now that have had some sort of transaction or if you look at census we can go through well no i'm but i mean i literally have the answer right there but i have available but my point being is trying to understand if we're talking about proper six bedroom homes or we're talking about three bedroom homes with two people living in a room that's what i'm trying to understand and there's a distinct difference between a six bedroom home and one person living in each room and a three bedroom home with two people living in each room there is a distinct difference in the density of that home and the density of that neighborhood so that is why this continues to be an issue and it keeps coming up because you have lots of people living in homes that are not suitable for six people and that is what this council this commission is here to address so i guess i don't fully understand i don't understand that either why not because it makes no sense why wouldn't it don't require that you know how much square foot per person what doesn't matter if there are six people living in a box yeah ok and they all have six cars  regardless of how many interior partitions are in the box the impact upon the neighborhood is there are six cars and six people yes so how would it debate if there's three bedrooms or six  it makes a huge difference because of that size that home in the size of the parking required it's a six bedroom home does not fit in a single floor and a half  absolutely no different than what it is right now how do we how do we enforce that there are seven people living in a home or eight people living in a home and anecdotally i can tell you that that happens so that changing the number from six to four has zero effect not on that issue of the enforcement question because the question that it's dealt with right now as long as we're talking numbers i mean let's just be honest the  inherently arbitrary what's magic about twenty five miles an hour nothing what's magic about driving at sixteen nothing what's magic about drinking at twenty one nothing drafted  from the individual person it's magical correct but there is my point is that there's nothing magic about saying that eighteen is the right number and sixteen is the right number to drive and that six is the right number four is the right number so that's why i come to the question of if if six is magical and wonderful then why not eight why not ten if the calculations work to say if you move from four and you have two hundred people seeking housing so that's going to mean x number more units well than heck let's bring it up to ten because you can  the number of you and the math works in the other direction as well so that's why i think it does make some sense to look at what other communities do what other jurisdictions do you know i haven't done an exhaustive survey and staff isn't an exhaustive survey but holland township is at four or three i'm sorry grand rapids is lower than six and arbors lower than so if you look at college towns university towns there tend to be lower than six in fact i don't know that we can find anybody who's at six park townships at five evanston by the way is that three the beauty of the internet yeah i get that checked it's take a look when you get home it is thirty it is six that ma'am six dash four dash one dash fourteen that's the ordinance number you can take a look at the city of everett evanston code so evanston is at three so nobody else is that six so far as i can tell nobody now the only argument frankly that i find that has merit against going for six to four is the investment back to expectation argument and the argument that people have invested in properties under certain set of guidelines and you know for lack of a better phrase we're changing the rules midway through and that has resonance so i am open to ways to address this issue one idea is grandfathering which i'm less inclined because of my hunch is many if not most of the rental properties not just in the hope area but in town are owned by l l c s well let me back up for a second grandfathering is is i think less advantageous for one reason because it stays at six until and unless it just simply is removed sort of like our two family to one family it stays at two family until somebody changes it while the incentive to do so economically is slim to none at least from an economic standpoint there are other organizations working at changing the two to one to family back to one family situation but i don't think they're doing it primarily on economic grounds so we come to the question of how do we how do we otherwise put a potential limitation on a time limitation on the ratcheting down from six to four so that those who have made the investment under the set of rules that we're looking at at the time six are not unduly penalized for having done so one idea could be that you make it coextensive with that particular owner's ownership of the property and here's where i jumped ahead of myself to say that i suspect that many of these properties are owned in limited liability company so that when the property is sold you just buy the l l c instead of changing over the property now it's suspect there could be ways  to deal with that through affidavits or those sorts of things that the rental certificate time might be a bit more cumbersome maybe that's a way to go where the other way to go potentially is to set a the sunrise date as opposed to a sunset date and we say twelve years eighteen years you know multiples of six given the fact that many of our rental certificates are on six year terms but that could be a way to deal with it so maybe it not of for many properties maybe they thais over thirty maybe the amortized over fifteen maybe something less are tax abatement sorts of arrangements tend to be about fifteen years twelve to fifteen years so maybe you know a round number somewhere in that range for a sunrise date of when this takes effect for existing units could be a way to address i think the legitimate concerns of those many of whom are in the or some of whom are at least are in the audience tonight saying wait a minute we bought under a certain set of circumstances and now you're you're sort of rewriting the rules upon us  i am fine with sort of holding on to this for a bit or standing at the council either way but i do think that ultimately we need to address that particular issue the issue of what do you do with the existing class of persons who are already in this market and came into it under a certain set of guidelines that in my opinion is is really the only argument against this that kaz any weight with me whatsoever the rest of it you know i'm i'm a lawyer by training s argue all day long and many of these things but i do find that one to be fairly compelling that what this does relative to making units available to families for sale as was represented you know you get three to three fifty a month from a kid so i'm six that's pretty good jack coming off of a house more than they'd ever get from a single family renting that house there's very little incentive to do anything other than that to convert them back and so that takes a house off the market that could be owned by an owner occupied property and that's one of my bigger concerns here the behavior issues the hope college issues it's time to go and i want to hope you're going to and that was many years ago and they were there were problems then they're going to be problems in the future i don't know how to address those but those are the two big issues from my perspective holland being six makes us a very attractive to outside investors coming and going i can basically do the old i can sell the parts for more than i can sell the whole and that basically creates an environment that those folks can bed last however you want to play survivor game on the real estate market and any individual family that's trying to come in my house that's a big concern from my perspective that and that's a lot of people with a lot of cars and in a forty eight by hundred thirty two for a lot and put it all right all eyes are going to be on whole college that very well may be and i don't know what we have a person who is from hope nec i don't know if she is formally representing hope i can tell you one but answer that i can tell i had a conversation with a person who would be in a position to well in frost and he specifically said hope college is not taking a position on these issues these are in his words now these are things the city is going to deal with one way or the other and hope lives with whatever the ordinances  to the city council which would show up well i think council is going to want to have a technically speaking ordinarily the matter would then show up on the next council's agenda but i council agenda given the fact that this is you know we've talked about this and really that the sticking issue last time around was this issue of what do you do with the existing persons in the market  let's plan ryan the next study session which would be the twenty seventh of august it will be on a study session for council there will be no action taken on that matter on that night  the public is certainly invited to a study session but there are no votes taken on that night and then the ordinary assuming council wants to eventually put it on the agenda because it would be a change to the zoning ordinance it goes through as an ordinance amendment it goes through two readings at two separate meetings the first reading and then two weeks later ordinarily it would be on for final reading and approval at that point so there will be at least three instances where this will be discussed by counsel before anything would be amendments to amend section thirty nine dash to eighty four off street parking in the artier in traditional residential neighborhood district planning commission is the applicant joel here up again thank you and the  in district there are certain sections that deal with the amount of the rear yard they can be paved the amount of the side yard that can be paved and how many and the and the number six parked vehicles are allowed per property again as the neighborhood improvement committee and city council were discussing these four issues this is one of the issues and there currently exists certain restrictions or regulations and the  again neighborhood area is roughly fairbanks ave over the river seventeenth street on the south side up to tenth street on the north side it might jog a little bit in there but that's generally the area and the neighborhood improvement committee was of the mind set if are good enough for the college neighborhood area they should be expanded to the entire central neighborhood area since the geography lot size and composition of the central neighborhood area and the neighborhood hit area are more or less identical so what they're recommending which was in your report was to restrict the amount of real yards that can be paved to fifty percent this would be out the entire central neighborhoods that in a side yard you can have up to seventy five percent paved it's less than fourteen feet in width with a paved area with of up to ten feet is allowed this would be like you know a driveway coming off the road past your house a corner of fifty percent of the yard area with a paving set back minimum of ten feet from the public sidewalk this is so if you have a house on the corner lot people aren't paving their entire side yard but you still have some you know some green space there that fifty percent that's not paved in the backyards remains landscape and green space including nine vehicular patios that walking paths or other non vehicular uses like paid playground structures or swimming pool if you can get one in there and that a maximum of six park vehicles be allowed per property and that is for the entire central neighborhood so in short we're taking rules that already exist in the hope neighborhood area and we're just stretching those boundaries to include the whole central neighborhood district joel when you say central outside the central neighborhood area there are some r t r and properties we have some areas of the city that are plenty and for our here and and if a new development would come in outside this area we're not quite sure what those lot dimensions would be because r t r end zone is it just limit to a maximum width of a lot so the neighbor improvement committee wants to keep it to the central neighborhood and this does require a public hearing as well you know questions from  joel right i will open the public hearing at this time if you have any comments you can come to the podium state your name and address and left brian keep this in mind i want to talk about this limitation central neighborhood vs r t r and joan one comment that mr paige made is that you get overly district upon overlay upon sort of a you know growing up in an unheated room on the second floor of an old house in the wintertime you have about six different layers on top of you to stay warm and it just feels like we've got to hope overlay over the central neighborhood overlay over the r t r and so i'd like to know why we distinguish and we can talk about that at the at the city se next item letter f amendments to section fourteen dash four point two seven one and fourteen dash for twenty seven dot two regarding a crime free lease for all rental properties and excessive calls planning commission is the applicant ok this is the fourth and final recommendation coming from the neighborhood improvement committee and city council to the planning commission again this follows the same logic as the one before this these are current regulations that exist in the hope neighborhood area and we'd like to take these apply them city white the first one is the crime free lease currently if you are a landlord and hope neighborhood area you must have a crime free lease with all your rental agreements it appears that's working out very well we would like to take that and make that apply citywide so any rental unit whether you're in holland heights or on the west side or maplewood has to have this crime free lease any questions about that before hop to the other  one ok the other one takes our existing excess of calls ordinance and reach current in the you know the only police action in the whole college neighborhood area we would like to expand that geographically to the entire city and we'd also like to expand the scope of those excessive calls as i just said currently the ordinance just deals with police action however the city finds itself dealing with repeat properties and regards to an operable vehicles long grass trash norreys complaints etc we feel that you know whether it's the police going to the property multiple times or if it's the third floor going to the same property multiple times essentially has to get to a point where he landlord you're not policing the property enough you're not paying your ten it's enough we need to start you know requiring you to you know pay for these services so as the ordinance is written right there you know it's in excess of three public safety visits over a twelve month period and these are rolling twelve months excess of four local ordinance violations over a twelve month period excess police issues one long grass and one an operable vehicle that triggers it there is common sense written into this ordinance we have to notify the landlords right away when we go out so we can't just quietly be you know piling up stuff then nail them you know six months later re also have written into this the ability for our inspectors on the third floor to kind of yell identify you know is this something we want to report to the landlords or is it a minor thing it might be you know some broken glass on the driveway that the neighbor called that we had to go out and he wants them blue moon but if it's you know bunch of rubbish in the backyard that's another issue the other thing we want to point out in here is we also have you know broke this down between four or less residential units or five or more so the large apartment complex is like a metal lanes  point we're giving them a little bit more to have violation because they have so many more units on their properties and then you know what you'd see in a single family rental again this would go citywide it would no longer just apply the hope neighborhood area any questions for joe joe as this owner occupied to correct thank you carl that is a very good point to make sure to clear up this is for owner occupied as well as rentals and it's for residential property so we're not going to go to council you know they didn't when they said the fines i do not know off the top of my head sorry cindy but i might need to rely on you for this one the cost for the excessive crime calls in our fee schedule at this time for crime calls that result in a citation or an arrest three or more and the first charge when we get the fourth call is two hundred dollars and the second the one next one after that is four hundred dollars and the next one after that is eight hundred dollars thank you any other questions for joel this time i'll open the public hearing anyone has any comments to say on this item and come to the podium will circle again eleven thirty three myrtle court myself or my business partner on a number of units in and around the hall and heights neighborhood in general we are supportive of this ordinance but there is one aspect of it that we have a concern about but i want to talk to you briefly and that is the back that the fee that's assessed in the fact that the annual rental permit are both mandatory it's a mandatory fee or a mandatory suspension and that there's not any discretion allowed on the part of city staff and i guess just by way of example what my concern is we've had situations where we've received a violation notice for something along the lines of somebody putting a rock in the door and propping open a fire door ok i mean it's not something that the landlord's done it's something that a tenant has done we've done things to try to curb that that counts as a violation my concern is that you get a disgruntled tenant or somebody else who tries to take advantage of the landlord and comes up with things that they can do to make the landlord's life miserable and and comes up with things that would result in those types of violations of the landlord really has no control over and suddenly now this becomes a mandatory fee and then a mandatory revocation of the rental permit and i think if you talk to those involved if you talk to tri cindy i think they can tell you the ones where they're having problems in the ones where there is not and can probably weed through some of that it would just be nice if they have some discretion where i see the word shell appearing why i say it's mandatory is both in subsection a at the beginning where it says the owner of the property shall be liable for a fee and then again under subsection f where it says that apartment community neighborhood services shell suspend the annual rental permit my request is that you replace the word shall with the landlord with and prompt time after the violation occurs and if we don't feel that it's something that the landlord could have been responsible for or has had a history of being responsible for we could choose not to notify them and that incident would not count against them and that the number that our county yeah i guess my concern is when i look at the language it talks about a violation of the ordinance right and and  we've had situations where there's been a violation like i said the rock in the door we got a letter in the mail that said you violated the the housing code you propped open a fire door so i mean are they saying now that they're not going to situations that were violations before suddenly aren't going to be violations that we operate up there with this kind of a professional i about being able to tell the difference between a chronic problem and i know a tenet who is trying to ca grief for a landlord for whatever reason we have that currently just about every single day and i think that we would notify if there was a rock in the fire door we would notify mr cicle that he has to take care of that problem get the rock out of the door because we don't know who put it in there but we would not choose to notify him that that's his first strike on his excessive public service calls  that that's a really difficult question but i think mazen is acceptable i think is really an martin to have confidence in your professional staff that are trained on these things and rely on their ability to discern the differen so maybe it is ok or you want to stick with show i'd rather stick with shell because the may is going to come at the front and once we start the notification process and we say ok here's a strike one that one was free here's your strike two that was free and here's your strike three next time you're going to pay whatever fee they probably said likewise i think that the concern is that what happens if someday we have you know a collection of overzealous kinds of persons who want to take an extremely strict reading of the law  you know from a practical standpoint my hunch is the practicality doesn't change that much whether it's may or shall i just think from now if practice being it doesn't change that much i think it's it's a fair change in my  and i just like they do a great job up there we appreciate all that they do it's in our best interest that they enforce this i mean there are some landlords they do not take care of their properties we want everybody to be on equal playing ground and i think they do a great job with it we trust them that's why i trust them there's other examples i could give you there are situations where you know they move into the apartment we've got screens in every window six months later and we go to a victim the screens are all missing the door knobs are missing i mean that you know there's just some things that are beyond our control world will take responsibility and get those things fixed that's our problem and we can assess the tenant for that and that situation i would know who the tenant was and can do it but when you have a multi unit building sometimes it's hard to know who's causing the problems and we've just had other situations where people for whatever reason were disgruntled we didn't approve them for a rental certificate or for an apartment you know because of bad credit and they took some actions to try to you know it doesn't happen a lot i just worry that there might be some situations we're not thinking about and suddenly we get boxed into a situation where i've lost my rental permit and heaven forbid it be in a neighborhood where they passed the rental ordinance and now i can't get it renewed because it's great you know we're not grandfathered in now i can and i've lost all rental i mean it's just those are the concerns so i think you know public hearing parents nine thirty four songbird line just like to clarify if i'm getting this correct or this including nine one one calls or they just couldn't do since calls can getting a shake  the head from any we actually did spend a fair amount of time talking about what kinds of calls they would be and they would be calls that are not emergency services such as an ambulance or somebody is hurting someone there's a crime going on if i call because somebody is breaking into my house that's not a clue i'm that would be a crime call that would be counted as a nuisance against the neighborhood but we would be talking about is barking dogs excessive noise loud parties and disorderly persons and the crime and and then other nuisance ordinances that we have in chapter nineteen of our housing code that talk about the confusion on that particular part of our budget is about forty nine percent of our budget goes to police and fire protection and i would hate to have somebody be in few confused if they should call the police or not knowing if they had one two or three if there's a domestic problem a drug problem or safety issue i have some concern about that because this could become confusing so i want to think about that thank you thank you do forty five each fourteenth live i have a dead in the alley right behind me now do we call nine one one because the college kids leave their character and walk someplace else and you can't get out or is that go to city hall with the alley and you can't get through last year we had on the it was fifteen complaint numbers from leaf tea party when brian white from city contact me city hall had one so any other comments on this item at this point i will close the public hearing comment you know that our experience with this excessive call concept really came about initially in the city i think  through the fire department commercial properties typically have some sort of automated fire alarm system and we were having instances where the fire department response to an automated alarm only to find that you know something got tripped or a cat walked across something or something like that bloom's there you go so that was where we initially put in this kind of three strike rule for the first time and then it has migrated so you know obviously if if the house is burning down you know we want people to call nine one one  the fire department there but the concern is is to just simply not take property owner business owner residents whatever to not take sufficient ownership in their own situation that in essence they're relying on city services or forcing the city to engage in things that frankly shouldn't have to so there's a i suppose there's an instance a particular case where you could have a fuzzy line but in large measure the lines pretty bright i think  next item on the agenda letter g zoning ordinance text amendments to amend sections thirty nine days three forty six and thirty nine s three forty seven of the voting warning zoning ordinance modifying the definition of providing material for determining the type of and the side of a skate ministries building down on thirty second street seemed to complain about that we went out and investigated and the nature of the problem was that mural had the name of the business the name of the organization i should say that that owns the building and was considered to be a sign under the language of our current ordinance  and because of the size of it it exceeded the size limit of a sign that was allowed in that in that zone district so that mural as it was painted was it was not permitted to to be can t we put a hold on any enforcement on that and said we need to take a look at the the ordinances what is before you you is a set of changes that really try to take a look at murals differently  than just your typical signs tries to provide some additional flexibility for allowing urals and allowing aspects that may convey some of what is included in that building  or by that ownership of the property on the mural which is contrary to what is currently allowed in our ordinance our lord says currently that you cannot if you put anything on the  exterior facade of the building that reflects the ownership of the property or the business or the activities that are going on in the building or anything that's sold in the building that that's considered a sign not  mural and it has to go through the sign ordinance and that's where we were catching catching escape ministry's on that particular issue what is before you now is is an attempt to make a differentiation between signs a type one mural which is a mural that has no information about what the business or operation or ownership or content of that building is and a type two mural which is intended as a one of a kind design and representation that contains limited references to the establishment product or service provided on the site in which it's painted or drawn  so a type one the process that's a stablished here is that someone who wanted to paint what they think is a miracle on the side of their building they would come in there in the c three downtown business district they would go to the design review board otherwise they would come to community and neighborhood services and it would be reviewed to determine whether it is a sign whether it has information that exceeds a size limit and conveys what's going on in the property whether it is a type one which means it has none of that information or whether it is a type two it has that information but then it would be allowed to continue there would be no further action by the city on that it would be allowed to continue and keep that in place if it's determined to be a type two mural and this does require submission of a drawing in information about what it is the mural is going to contain if it's determined to be a type neural tape to murell then there are some criteria that it would have to satisfy the graphics words and or symbols referencing the establishment product or service are limited in scope and dominance and not readily construed as commercial advertising the references must be subtle and integrated into the overall mural and for purposes of this subsection limited in scope and dominance show me not exceeding twenty percent of the wall area on which is located that's not the mural that's the i'll say the commercial aspect of the sign the piece that's conveying what's going on in the building cannot exceed the twenty percent the mural could be larger of the wall or in which is located integrated throughout the marrow and not be placed in a concentrated manner concentrated area or manner where it becomes in essence a prominent advertisement and the references to an establishment product or service are not in the form of a traditional building signage and a traditional building signage gets reviewed under our otherwise a political signage requirements  and the the mural if there is this commercial aspect in a type two mural that that commercial aspect does not count towards your maximum sign areas on a site or number of signs on a site that that's treated as part of a miron dealt with separately and then a in appeal of this would go to the board of appeals it's an attempt to provide some flexibility without opening the door entirely to commercial advertising of any sort on the side of a building you could debate whether twenty percent is the right number twenty five percent or twenty three percent or the the example you have in front of you is the beginnings of a mural on this wall this is the  ministry's wall back up to the full wall size one more that gives you a sense of the scale of that on this building that in itself is i believe we scale that out  about eight to ten percent of the wall area press so there's still room for additional information on this wall that conveys what's going on inside the building we also have another property this belo city bike store on the corner thirteenth and river is looking at the possibility of painting a mural on the side of their building and mark will get you a picture of it here momentarily   this is a proposal they have that is a general scene but has elements it's a bike shop it has elements of bicycles integrated into the mural this is this is that mural now you can see in the center of the photographed you can you can see a wheel there are coggs chains elements of bicycles in there and and if you look real carefully in the shadow of the or in the silhouette of the yellow in the middle there actually are three or four bicyclists riding bikes anyway all of those elements in total on this facade total probably fifteen percent or so of the of the total wall so this sort of this this rendering would be  allowed on this building again you can debate the present and i know there are differences of opinion from the planning commission members on that aspect of this but that's what we've come up with for allowing some flexibility and some increased incorporation of those kinds of elements on the side of a building without turning it over to a full full commercial on the side of a building and if i could just thank willie in particular and his friends and and those that have stuck around this is an unusually long meeting and i think this is the second one he's been at that's been unusually long so i appreciate his appreciate his tolerance for th expel you know questions from now on the horizon and open a public hearing of anyone in the audience wants to speak to this they can come forward and state your name and address over the last several months this was brought to the city as a complaint the complaint was that the individual did not like that this so called gang  from the mirror oh it's self the rest of the marrow will be pick some of this things that kids can escape do by doing education is one so we want to put that's another way to escape from situations in their lives that that keeps them in bondage sports yes we do boxing inside the building and fitness but also all sports want to be recognized on the side as another way of escaping once again i'd like to apologize for the the argue mean the arguing back and forth in the in the city about really if this was not being accepted because of the art form versus if it's a sign and not we've had escapist tried our best to make sure everyone understands that murals that's been put up there was nothing depicting that different culture of art form which is graffiti art that was extatic and the seventy's understand that  certain graffiti art is not acceptable and certain parts of the community we understand that that's why if you notice that this is actually put on the side of our building away from the curve so it was seen by only students going into the door that you see on the west and side back so understanding that we appreciate all that the city has done with working with us in this endeavor and get the language changed so thank you thank public hearing is still open you want to come up and make some comments good evening my name those little one zero six was thirteenth street and actually assisted coronating this art piece here as well as another piece of art that is an excuse ministries and then this whole idea with this is came as in our work and as a miracle there was never no touching to produce to be assigned as but it was for the young people and escape ministries test something to look into identify with that's reassuring to myself as a young person and as an urban artist in this community that hopefully there's a place for us here in this community because there are some people who just don't understand our culture or do not want us here understand and see the and that we can actually help encourage young people in this community to clean up their our work and clean up the city because i don't like seeing a little take on buildings and i like seeing this and i think they need to be educated i think the city needs to be educated and we need bring it together so i appreciate you being close upon your merrill's and amending the rules so that there's a place for us here in holland thank you thank you my name is jacob castor enough i live at sixty five was fifteenth street i've never been to this ministry i've seen this piece and it brought joy to me because i've we  travel to a lot of different cities and we see a lot of goofy the we see a lot of tags we see a lot of gaining activities and the first thing that people want to do is associate this type of style of art to that and to have a ministry show kids that you could use that talent that art to a positive is very good for the city  being sold small and we have a lot of people from chicago texas california coming here and they see that it's very small and to see a sign like that it's a sign of hope that they could come somewhere where they accept it and i hope that it's change that you guys are trying to do there because it's not being taught in other cities that's why i love holland is because they are you know come as you are but please conform and to take this down will be a step backwards for what the city is trying to do when it comes to inner city problems and gang violence is that we're trying to step forward and showing them that there is a xscape to your depression or there's a skate to your madness that you think that you have to go vandalize other people's buildings like i said i've never been there and when i saw this piece i thought that that was very very very smart on their behalf because there's a lot of kids that don't understand life and what they do see is that and that could draw them in to something for change and so i hope that the city and holland would stand up for change when it comes to inner city youth thank you thank you comments questions motions from planning commission members i want to add a comment that i'm glad are moving in a direction toward making the mural policy more lenient i i still somehow find it absurd that we're applying field i guess i see that as art squarely in the art realm of art and again the downside of art is that it's open to interpretation by everyone in we want that to happen we want that interpretation we want people to discern what it is for themselves i want to see more of this i think what was done at  escape immediately i thought was fantastic and i think there's many of us on the council i'm speaking for myself but the conversations that we had on council in the wake of this was was overwhelmingly positive and so i write all of this is very subjective i get the fact that we're trying to make this more lenient and we're putting rules around it but i just for some reason this is just i'm just not there yet but i know there's number of people on this count on this committee who do see differently so if i do vote no on this it's because i i think we can we can do even better so thirty again this will go to city council i don't know that this will be on a study session or not but the first reading of this potential ordinance change or this proposed ordinance change would happen week from today with final reading our first meeting in september i for third a fine day again i don't think this will be on a study session so it will be first reading next week wednesday final rebut reading and possible approval on wednesday september third right that is it for public hearings today and the next next communications in petitions scheduling of any other public hearings there are none communications from commission members