08-13-2012 Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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MINUTES OF THE ORONO CITY COUNCIL Monday, August 13, 2012 7:00 o'clock p.m. (PUBLIC COMMENTS, Continued) they are looking to have a strong showing from the Navarre community to show that they are very interested in pedestrian safety PLANNING DEPARTMENT REPORT 5. #10-3491 CITY OF ORONO - HARDCOVER REGULATIONS AMENDMENT Ben Gozola addressed the City Council regarding the proposed new hardcover ordinance. The draft ordinance has been revised in response to the recommendations made by the City Council at its June 26th meeting. The changes include the elimination of the proposed definition for building coverage to remove any possible conflicts with the City's historic term of lot coverage. In addition, swimming pools have been specifically listed as hardcover within the definitions; hardcover exclusions that had been listed within the definition and drew a lot of discussion at the meeting have now been moved out of the definition and have been placed directly in the code in the hardcover exclusions section; and the sections on hardcover encroachments have been clarified to explain how those encroachments would be calculated. Gozola referred to a presentation slide to illustrate how two equally sized lots of 10,000 square feet would be dealt with to calculate hardcover. Lot A has a 1,000 square foot house and Lot B has an identical home but also a shed that encroaches into Lot A's property. When the owner of Lot A comes forward and requests a permit, the hardcover will be based on the gross acreage of that lot and there would be no penalty to that landowner for the neighbor's encroaching hardcover. Comparatively, for Lot B, the allowed hardcover would be based on the gross acreage of Lot B, but in this particular case, the hardcover would be based on both the house and the shed as well as the encroaching portion of the shed onto the neighboring property. Under either scenario, Staff would not make any adjustments to the lot area based on the encroaching hardcover. Another change made in the language is that spacing between deck boards is now going to be required in order to be eligible for the 100 square foot credit. Retaining walls under the revised ordinance have been split into two categories. The first category is the group of walls that are deemed necessary by the City Engineer to control erosion as well as other necessary functions. Those retaining walls would be exempt from the hardcover calculation. The second grouping of retaining walls that are built for aesthetic purposes would be counted as hardcover. A specific set of criteria was also devised to determine which parcels within the City would fall within the Stormwater Quality Overlay District and which parcels would be exempt. Gozola indicated he actually built that framework directly into the ordinance so it could be used as subdivisions occur. The next update was the creation of a new map based on the new process to assign stormwater tiers. Gozola stated in his opinion, due to that update, the overlay map is better because of it, and referred to the next slide to illustrate how the map has evolved. Gozola stated he basically started with a blank slate for the entire City of Orono and then analyzed the entire city under Step 1, which identifies all of the parcels that abut a protected lakeshore or stream. All such parcels are the most critical to protect and they need to be in the Protection Tier 1, which is the most restrictive tier. The end result is the map before the City Council tonight. As you look at the map, there Page 3 of 19