private drive and create an additional one this is the subdivision council did approve the modification and after september twenty fourth meeting as you see a lot one the interesting point here is that the setback law was drug which is a private road is basically peace being established by this setback that is already in place directly to east with very scarce recommending approval subject to the three conditions yesterday the october thirty one memo simple one long subject does it increase the visibility to the other issue running property residential property of the building is there any shrubbery trees anything like that would would shelter it from existing homes and that's around the property all right thank you thank you here in this is the posture property the request is to for the township to grant a modification from our subdivision ordinance requirements that state that you can only subdivided nine watts off of a tract six lots of long trotters couper to a long hill place and then one across the street from bos charge those of the nine lots that were already subdivided off requests before the township now is to create a another lot beyond nine which would be the tenth lot to create a five acre lot in this area where there is already an existing farmhouse owned by the boss  in order for this proposal to move forward planning commission and council need to approve a modification to allow this fifty this tent lot to be created for this five point four acre lot so that that's the issue before you tonight all too it will be decided by council just some points here as you can see in as everyone knows who has been out in this area this area is characterized by large lots character it's two plus acre lot five acre lots was with single family residences on lots this area the learner lakes area it's an area of peter's township that does not have public sanitary sewers and there's really no play and in the future to bring public sanitary source to this area this is the peters township so tonight planning commission needs to make recommendation to council to determine whether or not you feel that this five acre lot tenth lot beyond the nine would be  times the plan is to use the existing driveway to this point care down the existing house the existing septic system which is located here cannot be reused they don't let you tear down a structure and then use the old septic system so a new system had to go in so the reason for the request for the modification is is that described that previously this property was subdivided off with nine watts and left what was referred to as tract a left in it there was a deed restriction that did not allow the other locks the nine lots to be further subdivided but the deed restriction did not apply to the nine watt so there is no deed restriction against it the zoning in the areas are one a which allows a density of one point two so in theory you could build thirty four single family wants on this property if you had public sewers public sewers are not envisioned at this time and as part of the five thirty seven so we're looking at septic one of the logics if you would for making this particular request is today there is a septic system for the main house and there is this septic system for the second structure on the house a sector resident on the property the intention is to just replace one residence with the second residence and replace the existing septic with a new septic a little bit hard to read on here but this is the area in which we did septic testing and were able to find a suitable site for a  in ground trip irrigation system to be placed in that point out specifically that this is on the eastern side of the watershed there have been concerns that maybe any same issues of failure etc that some systems do you know if there ever were to be one it will go to the east not to the west same thing goes with the house itself the houses as shown here would have a definite increase in the impervious area the intention here is that we would gather up all of the water with surface water for it and direct it back into the boss trucks pawns currently they have to call and quite honestly this pond is under fed form from a water point of view so taking this water bringing it back into them will be beneficial beneficial to that pond secondly it will also provide an area for storm water management and probably thirdly again a means of all of the water that currently along this ridge could go either west or east that would all be diverted and taken back to the east so again removing any potential flooding there currently is a roll of white pines along this particular area that is screaming out the cost of property to our left to our west and we would propose that additional landscaping be located along this age people have asked where the house would be located  at the house to be centered in the middle of the five acre parcel approximately three hundred feet back and seventy five feet over from the property line so three is more than adequate side yard setbacks within this area  additional screening and buffering that one would want to see here the parcel itself is five point four acres in size and that would then leave there were maining tract at twenty three point nine acres the question has been raised that well you're here for a what we call a one day one swap one house for a new house one septic system for a new septic system what's to prevent that from happening again just as there was a deed restriction placed on the nine watts here on hill place that stop them from further subdivision we would propose that there be a deed restriction to the property that would restrict further subdivision of this property at the time of subdivision or just be placed on the subdivision itself in addition when and if public sewers are made available to this area the lots themselves will be subdivided and not less than five acre acres we think that the modification really did not or the reason for the nine watts was somewhat arbitrary and really didn't have any environmental or statutory basis for the not there is maybe a historical basis because the pennsylvania d e p t has a regulation that says if you subdivide a truck by more than nine watts then you must go through the d e p for septic testing but it doesn't prohibit it it just requires you to go through septic testing monitored by the we think that's probably the basis from which this prohibition came about but we think there's a reason for the modification in that the the area itself does not have sewers and in fact it's five thirty seven requires it to be septic at this point so it seems a significant hardship to take a piece of property that zone for thirty four lots and allowed to be used for just two lots in this particular case and so there were four we think the action would you ask for is the least amount of relief that one could ask for and then we're backing that up through the deed restrictions ropin you will recommend for the modification so we can go forward with  restrictive covenants to not prohibit further subdivision i would not necessarily agree with that that is a matter that has to be decided by a tribunals that is not part of our discussion tonight  i know that restrictive covenants are not something that the township normally gets into ten years ago i was on the planning commission and i had would often entertain requests by residents to get involved with restrictive covenants and of course that's not something that we deal with you're here to to approve or disapprove a request for modification when we moved into the area actually my wife and i and the parcel which is called lot t which is next to ours i would like to ask if you've been to the property ok have you ever i mean if you've been on this site exactly where this is all taking place  we knew the score we knew what we were getting into we knew about the restrictive covenants we knew about the ordinance and we knew about with the ordinance manned and that it grew strict that any further subdivision unless sewers were brought in which there are no sewers there at the present time now after we received a letter from the council from planning my wife and i made an effort to go around to our neighbors because there were twenty seven letters sent out to the neighboring properties of those twenty seven there were six duplicate so that reduced it to roughly twenty one including the boss chart so if you exclude boss checks at least twenty other residences that or properties that receive letters we went to many of them some of the people were not in they were in florida but we managed to go to about fifteen of the of the residents and actually sit down and talk to them about what we knew was going on we knew very little actually we didn't really know much about what was being requested we did get some information from contacted by anybody and we got a letter from from the planning department we wandered around to the neighbors and their understanding of the letter was it was confusing to say the least we had to try to explain to them because what they thought was happening was that the farmhouse was coming down and another house was going on where the farm house was that's what they thought so we had to explain to them that that wasn't what we understood we didn't know anything about where this house was being built as you can see it's rather close to our residence under the circumstances you can see where it's located where we are located but bottom line is that we talk to each and every resident i have a petition signed by almost everyone in unanimity that we're opposed to this modification however that was before i received the letter from mr victor through mr suit mr suit had sent me as soon as he got the letter from mr victor the information i believe came in on tuesday and i believe  that believe that's true ed called me and he e mailed it to me within an hour after he got it not enough time for me to discuss this with my neighbors my concern is this ladies and gentlemen my neighbors signed petitions based upon information that i gave them which was sketchy at best and not complete i have now been provided with information mr victor now has indicated that according to his representation to you that there is an intention to place i believe what he calls a deed restriction on the subdivision and as i understand it this deed restriction and please correct me from wrong but not only can the five point four acre lot never be subdivided but also the remaining farm or the remaining part of parcel  cannot be subdivided in less than five acres if i'm understanding that correct now i will point out to you that on the right hand side of this property is a rather large vacant piece of land right through the middle of that is an easement for a power line and it's one hundred feet wide so it's very unlikely that there's going to be a whole lot of development on that property anyway however what i want to indicate to you is that i would like the opportunity to go back to my neighbors and present to them what mr victor has represented because that might change their vote in fact they may vote in favor of it because they have a vote and i think it's part of the democratic process and that's where that small d that they have a right to vote knowing all the facts it may end up folks that we may we meaning my wife and i may be the only ones in opposition but i don't think that i can come here and ethically present you these petitions knowing that my neighbors did not have all the facts so i think i have to go back to them and ask them to review their decision and see whether they still oppose this so consequently i'm asking you to table this to allow us to gather the information we need plus i've also requested from mister so as tree i wanted the notes that were gathered through the  understand however i know from being on the planning commission that a recommendation to council by the planning commission carries weight and a recommendation made to council without having the opportunity to allow the neighboring individuals to have all full information is not a recommendation that should be made i understand where you're coming from and i i i know based on my experience on the planet commission i understand what you're saying but again as i said there are i think that it is important that the neighbors have an opportunity to express their opinions in this regard was future development of the property whether this was just simply a means of opening the door to get further exceptions because i will tell you this township should cringe at such a request because what it does is this when a realtor sells property to an individual when they come into this township you know we have a rather  bucolic nature and we have a kind of a township that has a lot of it's a rural nature and people like that and when a person comes into the township in a realtor says i'm selling you this house right up against an open space never be built on it's important that that person know that that's going to be the case when you have a situation like this where we have an ordinance in place and it says you're not supposed to subdivide this property until sewers can and now it's being done it gives an insight as a what i call a sense of inquietude it makes you wonder whether or not this could ever happen to you and i think that's very very important so i do believe that even though i do have as i said petitions signed by many of the residents who got letters and i think that's important to know because those letters are sent for a reason that i need to go back and talk to them about this and that's why i'm asking you to take one because it may turn out ladies and gentlemen that maybe they may be in favor of it or they may not but i think they have a right to know the facts and all the facts and as the reason the septic system if it's not put in properly or there's an issue with the septic system down the road it could actually affect four different points in that area which the wildlife and everything we really appreciate i've seen areas where of gone bad and it's really an ugly situation the second thing is when you make an exception like this i have an area of land behind my house that opens up the field for other people and other exceptions to happen in the community so that's my second concern  on the way down this way can it it could eventually get into learner like yes or it could get that in the sub watershed but the septic system that would be designed in here is you know a drip irrigation in the ground it does not leak can fail these things have been running for this type of system has been around for fifteen plus years and it's the high end it's the best thing that you can do so we don't believe that that's an appropriate consideration in this particular case as it relates to the petition we really respect mr costello and say that he's withdrawing the one that they signed because quite honestly that's exactly what happened he went out and told them there were all these concerns we heard from the the staff what those concerns were and did our best to address them we put the septic system on the easterly side we put we're proposing that the stormwater would be directed back to the easterly side and lastly as it relates to covenants what are we going to do for the future we're going to put by covenant to say there will will not be any further subdivision and tell there are public sewers and then if there are they'll be a five acre minimum which is significantly larger lots than what the current property owners have i think we are of the same mind is the chairman that we really don't see a reason to forestall this because if these people still have concerns or mr costello wants to bring petition after of these people have the full knowledge that opportunity will happen at the council because council will be reviewing it as well i would hope you would look at it based on the facts that you have here in the recommendation that you have from the staff and make your own decision on this we are not a referendum state us a planning commission or an independent body to review it and make your own recommendations and it is not a public vote contest it's in the presidential election so we appreciate  that people signed based upon information that i gave them it was not complete so i felt that in order for it to be proper and honorable it had to be with a full disclosure so i the fact that i'm not giving you these situations tonight is not an indication that there is not concern or people who are against this it's just that i county was premature and that's the reason why i felt it was and that i should ask for this to be table to allow me to go to my neighborhood commission has led me to to come to the realization that there are many members of council who accept the recommendations of the planning commission without question and so if you proceed at this point you may end up making a recommendation that may not be opportune and that is the reason why i request this opportunity to table this until we have a chance to come back and it may very well be mr mills that my neighbors may say you know what i we all agree with this and bad you're on your own and if that's the case so be it but i do don't want to do anything that would be considered improper would ultimately approve this modification and the next steps would be to come back through planning commission and council with a formal subdivision and we can have our directed to the ponds on the boss church property we can stipulate that the septic system be located on the eastern side of the proposed law which we can add all this is conditions of your recommendation  mr victor i have a question for you yes ma'am  one of the comments that we heard was that they the neighbors wanted to know more about the style of house where be located and where the septic system would be located we immediately filed an application with the washington county sewage council and they because of their timing were not available until november first so we were out here on november first and did the septic casting at that time we discovered that of all the site here that was the only area where the septic system would pass so that's why we sort of came to that although that was certainly our objective was to try to get it on the easterly side and until we knew where the septic system was we really couldn't go ahead and do the site plan so the first i think was a thursday on friday i was at my office we completed this drawing and i think we had it along with you know othe information had it back to the township i thought it was monday because tell us in tuesday so that was the reason it was if you would not out in enough time but we were due because we were doing bush reacting to the questions and comments that were coming forward and we were feeding it and i think we've successfully fed it to to the public you know before tonight's meeting so they have a chance to see it but then they will also have another chance to see it later and plus this is a public public doing it we would the reason we would not like to do that is because the following the modification if it's granted then we have to prepare a subdivision plat and we then have to go through the subdivision process to get the construction early summer of next year and so a delay would not be helpful toward that so we think that we think that the public if they would they want to make public comments or sign additional petitions we'll have that opportunity before the council it will be a similar public offer a public hearing for the truth squad to say that you know we still have issues to deal with with the restrict however i will say that i don't feel that this was handled properly because you know we've been here for seventeen years i think we should have been given information a little faster and more information so we could have reacted at least know what we were dealing with rather than getting it on it and i'm not faulting anybody i'm not faulting planning i'm not calling distributer i'm just saying that we didn't get it i don't have a chance to talk to our counsel about it so i mean we were operating in the dark and you're making the recommendation that could be taken at face value by members of council and put us in a significant disadvantage and that's why i'm asking you to table this motion  without an existing house there is an existing existing septic system already being there i think that there may be a concern maybe our recommendation would be different but in this case with the house being there and the old farmhouse being there and the existing septic system being there that factors into our recommendation newkirk and the fact that you know we are in this learner lakes watershed and the prefer way in which the said theory authority wants to handle this area is on a lawsuit years or on the sceptics there's no plane ever cast upon anyone people that knew the into this area and bought property when in knowing the ending and knowing the score and i think that we have all have a right to rely on our ordinances otherwise there are they are meaningless they don't mean anything that's why i said that any the realtor is watching this should be cringing and people who are buying property should be worried because we never know it could happen in the open space that's owned by the township somebody shows up and wants to put something on that property who knows what might happen if the proper dynamics come into place in the future been years that's really not a relevant reasonable comment well but i think also if i can jump in there i think neither the zoning ordinances nor subdivision organises and we're dealing with the subdivision ordinance in this case you're grasping for a modification are the ten commandments that are written in stone there is a process that is part of the law that specifically looks at ways to get relief when there is a hardship if it's an article in the zoning ordinance it's the zoning hearing board looks at it if it's in the subdivision ordinance which this particular section is the township as a state law provides for a mechanism to deal with hardships and to ask for a modification does not cause our whole society to fall over by the fact that a modification would be granted in this particular case it should not lay you know a cloud over the rest of the real estate in peter's it's a means by which to look at a specific situation deal with it on a modification basis development whether be residential commercial or policy is to notify property owners within six hundred feet and that's a policy that's not a law that's just a way the way in which the township likes to operate we'd like to notify people that live in an area that something is changing in there so what we do is send a letter briefly explaining what the proposal with when the meeting is how we advertise the meetings how they can get information and then we invite them to come and see us call us no one has done that except mr costello you know we notified all the property owners in the hill place estates pla voiced his concerns and i communicated those concerns to the applicant and they tried to address them with their proposal thank you i took it upon myself to go around to the neighbors because i was the one most affected and i explained everything to them and so i sort of took control of it so i think that's the reason why they work through me rather than deal directly with planning thank you  however i just got the revised information on victor mr victor letterhead today when i got home from work so the fact that you know i plan to come to the meeting with the information mr sachs later provided however tonight at five thirty when i walked into my home on my computer was mr victor's letter sent forwarded to me by mr costello not by peter township so i did have an opportunity to come to the township was closed when i got the information so i realised there are we other forms down the road but i have concerns that not only to the house and everything but just for the impervious areas the runoff of the water if you folks have not seen  drains driveways patios sports courses or through taking it to the east may not solve the problem of water coming to my corn in the west so i realize we will have the opportunity to coun ok you you all have the opportunity to come here it's not his job is the winning director to speak to one person he said the latter as if the township had to in these situations is that the standard operating procedure at what you did heard tonight right sir yes ok but then if he would have come last week he would have left his email address so that when mr costello got his on tuesday bob would have got his on tuesday as well and bob said he has the opportunity come back he's heard the which is directly above him in that watershed you know half of ours is into his watershed half of ours is not in his watershed as it relates to the subdivided lot and we've said that we would because we're at the hilltop we can direct that which is on the side back to the eastern side and they're concerned that that i've heard this evening that water from this area is being diverted this way that's pretty easy to you know accommodate through a channel here pick it up in a pipe and bring it back so now we know of that concern just as we did with the septic and where the houses are tetra we can we can respond to that in a physical manner and then i think solve your problem i understand but i just want to make sure for myself and my fellow neighbors who've been here for fifteen seventeen years paid a lot of taxes peter township it's a tribune of the story that we will have an opportunity when we have an opportunity to review the final conditions before council actually do to make sure they agree with what we think should happen in order for this home to go that's what we're asking for and i think mr costello is trying to portray that by giving us a little more time to collectively need is a neighborhood who've been here for a long time in say not where i stand my concern is my property value in what has happened to me in the past i don't want to happen again because quite frankly the township did nothing for me so i want to i've learned from experience to voice my concerns now and we just want to make sure we have a forum by which before the gavel goes down saying it's approved that not only you know that the tree is in this that no other thing the sceptic but there may be other things that we collectively as  costello as an attorney mr costello's or neighbor so we're here to support you but also personally i need some assurances that i'm going to get run up again and get rid of the old one rather one right there perfect fairly that's what the storefront used to look like and they did have two two signs are very similar just their off during the walk so chevy initiative sure it's pretty small ones it's twenty seven square feet request logo for that's her dealer she deals with all the time going with the single color you came from of the logo as well she came full color she would also like to display pictures of a floor design may be something that's attractive and you know i think maybe the the argument for proving that the restrictions on color was probably dealt with there are business district of los vegas for that right but if they you know something a color would you be willing to leave it there longer than twenty seconds absolutely and in fact i think i don't know if it was part of the application process or not but we actually were suggesting on this for only a third of the time that it would be  to put the windscreen on this little stretch of fence right there and it's you know on the far side of the field there's exist there's an existing slope there and trees and i went up and look danny and we didn't see a real need for it there your moms i think the last time talk about this windscreens was mor complaining that a couple of kids had come up on the hillside with the school district crockery when they put signs out there to limit people from growing up we planted trees and shrubs that will grow to a degree that would keep people from going up there so i