11-20-2023 Planning Commission Packet

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MINUTES OF THE ORONO PLANNING COMMISSION October 16, 2023 6:00 o’clock p.m. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Page 8 of 11 Bollis said the language clearly exempts stairways and doesn’t say attached. He said it is poorly written as it exempts all stairways. McCutcheon said precedent has been to treat stairs attached to decks as part of the structure. Curtis said the DNR was responsible for that wording. It is meant to refer to stairs going down to the lake. Libby said he still maintains that they have certain precednets they have to work with the language they have in front of them. Ressler moved, McCutcheon seconded, to deny the appeal portion of LA23-000058 and encourage Staff to draft language to clarify the code according to the Staff interpretation. VOTE: Ayes: 5, Nays 1 (Bollis). The applicant, Tripp Snyder, in speaking of the request for the After-the-Fact variance, said when they purchased the home the old deck was in place with no guardrails, only a bench around the perimeter. Their initial permit application had a different location for the stairs and it would have landed on the pre- existing concrete that the inspector said was not the right size. The landing led to concrete stairs going down to a fire pit. Changing the landing would have meant changing the stairs. They moved the stairs and the new configuration caused the need for a variance. The new stairs are ADA compliant so the safety issues has been mitigated and they come down to a wider landing which is safer than the original, he said. When their neighbor’s house was torn down and rebuilt the average lakeshore setback for his home was changed. Their new stairs are two feet closer to the lake than the old stairs. The increased height of the deck was also a safety issue because there was an 8-inch height differential between the threshold of the door and the step down to the deck. He said now you walk straight out onto the deck without any difference in height which is safer for residents in their 70s. Chair Bollis opened the public hearing on the variances at 7:59 p.m. Don Germanson, 1501 Bay Ridge Rd, the neighbor to the north, said they view this as a grandfather situation, not an average lakeshore setback issue. He said they saw this deck go up and it was higher and where there were three steps there are now eight or nine. This is not grandfathered, which means replace like-kind, he said. Everything should have been built in the existing footprint. They would encourage keeping the new deck within the existing footprint. Chair Bollis closed the public hearing at 8:01 p.m. Bollis said after-the-fact variances are always hard and they need to look at it as what they would have approved if it had come before the Planning Commission as a request. There are safety concerns that he thinks would have brought the Commission to the conclusion of approving the variance if it had been requested in the first place. He said they probably would have had more control over where those deck stairs went if they had seen it in advance. He said he had no doubt they would have approved the safety concerns. Snyder said the stairs are built and attached but the deck is not completely finished. He said both decks were 16 X 24 not counting the stairs.