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PL 03/19/2008 - 30940PLANNING COMMISSION MEETING March 19, 2008 Chairperson Savage called the Planning Commission Meeting to order at 7:30 p.m. MEMBERS PRESENT: MEMBERS ABSENT: OTHERS PRESENT: Dean Saba, Diane Savage, Brad Sielaff, Jack Velin, Brad Dunham, and Leroy Oquist David Kondrick Julie Jones, Planning Manager APPROVAL OF PLANNING COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES: Mazch 5, 2008 MOTION by Commissioner Oquist to approve the minutes as presented. Seconded by Commissioner Dunham. UPON A VOICE VOTE, ALL VOTING AYE, CHAIRPERSON SAVAGE DECLARED THE MOTION CARRIED UNANIMOUSLY. 1. PUBLIC HEARING Consideration of a Tezt Amendment, TA #08-01, to modify the R-1, R-Z, R-3, and S-1, Residential Zoning Districts to further define the level of housing maintenance required of all residential property owners in those districts. MOTION by Commissioner Dunham to open the public hearing. Seconded by Commissioner Sielaff. UPON A VOICE VOTE, ALL VOTING AYE, CHAIRPERSON SAVAGE DECLARED THE MOTION CARRIED AND THE HEARING OPENED AT 7:32 P.M. Julie Jones, Planning Manager, sta.ted the housing maintenance code has come up for discussion many times with our City Council. Most recently the discussion was spurred by public comment that was received by folks during the running for City Council in 2006. It also came up as an item of concern when staff conducted the housing forums in 2005. Looking at the demographic study in preparation for updating our Comprehensive Plan in 2006, staff learned that 95 percent of our housing stock was going to be 30 years old or older by 2009. That was a concern to staff. Housing maintenance was also raised as a concern in our neighborhood planning meetings last spring. Also, there were some questions asked in our 2007 citizens survey that addressed the issue, showing there was quite an interest among the public to do more as far as housing maintenance even if the City needed to spend more money on staff to conduct housing maintenance. Ms. Jones clarified that staff realized that the age of our housing stock did not necessarily mean the condition of our housing stock was poor. We have had many storms in Fridley, which have resulted in significant improvements to homes. So staff recommended that a housing condition study be done before jumping to any conclusions that we had serious housing condition problems in the community. They went ahead and had that study done last summer, and the study showed that housing conditions overall were very good; 85 percent of the homes were showing to be in good or excellent condition. StafF recommended to still pursue looking at a housing maintenance code amendment because they thought the time to. implement a program is when housing conditions aze good. Ms. Jones stated staff is recommending modification to the existing code language that currently only addresses severe housing maintenance. The City Council has indicated an interest in going with this sort of option. Several times in the past they had talked about adopting, for instance, the International Housing Maintenance Code, a very extensive code, as some of our neighboring cities have adopted it. They discussed this formerly with Council at a work session, and they agreed the Council indicated that they did not want to go that route. The International Housing Maintenance Code addresses even interior housing maintenance. Council made it very clear in the past, when talking about the housing maintenance code amendments, that they never want staff to get in that situation of going inside and inspecting the interior of a home. Ms. Jones stated they looked at existing language in the code and felt they could modify it and make it work for us. T'he existing langua.ge staff has a problem with is that it only refers to roofs and exterior surfaces in regards to the entire plane or the entire wall. For example, if a house has peeling paint, the code says the paint needs to be more than 25 percent damaged on an entire plane of the home before it is a housing maintenance violation. When our intern did the housing conditions study last summer, she found that while overall conditions were good, you might have a home that has one door that has peeling paint or the window trim on the house has peeling paint; but the rest of the house is in great condition. Staff has long struggled with these situations where a home had minor housing maintenance issues that should be addressed, but the problem was not extensive enough to trigger a code violation. Staff wants to address some of those minor issues and develop some more specific language, allowing them to address the peeling paint on just the window trim of a house or maybe just a garage door instead of the damage needing to be so extensive that it affects the entire house or entire side of the house. Ms. Jones stated they feel that this text amendment will provide sta.ff greater ability to address some basic needs in regards to exterior home maintenance before the structure gets to be severely dilapidated. They would make things like missing windows or damaged doors, garage doors that do not shut all the way, peeling paint on house trim, 2 and damaged gutters items that can be addressed without the entire structure being in poor condition. Ms. Jones presented some examples of what she is talking about. Ms. Jones stated the next step for this text amendment would be for an additional public hearing to be held before the City Council, which is scheduled for April 14. Staff is planning to ask Council to also conduct a first reading of the ordinance on April 14, approving the language of the text amendment. Staff is recommending that the Council move ahead with this item more quickly than usual, because they would like to have the text language in effect when the summer code enforcement intern starts in May. They want to take advanta.ge of having extra staff on hand this summer and aze hoping to address these issues at the same time they aze doing systematic code enforcement inspections over the summer months. Chairperson Savage asked whether sta.ff was asking for approval of the text amendment language even though it will be going through the process to the Council? Ms. Jones replied, yes. Commissioner Saba stated regarding the 25 percent overall of the painted surface which is cracked, flaked, or chopped away, and looking at the garage door shown, there seems to be a gray area in this maintenance code, whether it is 25 percent, 10 percent, or 15 percent. What really constitutes a violation where you can cite a homeowner? Do they go out and measure the door as to what amount of paint is peeling? How are they going to enforce this? Ms. Jones replied this language is in our existing code now. It is actually quite common language in other cities as far as housing maintenance requirements. She said she was initially concerned about this herself before looking at some of the examples in the field, however, the 25 percent is quite easy to calculate. She pointed out that staff has been using the 25 percent for a number of years. The problem has been is they aze looking at the entire house or the entire side of a house. Oftentimes it is just a portion of the house or just the trim or a door that is peeling and that does not calculate out as 25 percent of that entire side of the house so it is not a violation, but it looks bad. Commissioner Saba asked whether enforcement has been an issue? Ms. Jones replied, no, not really. What has been the issue is that they do not have enough strength in the language that they can do anything on a lot of the properties they get complaints on. Commissioner Sielaff asked if there have been violations? Ms. Jones replied, very few. It is not something they have been actively going out and enforcing. They have only responded to complaints on this. 3 Commissioner Dunham sta.ted but now they will have the ability to enforcement the issue greater because they are minimizing the azeas and allowing more enforcement opportunities. He thinks they are going to have a hard time. Chairperson Savage asked, just to clarify the new portions of the proposed code are the portions that are underlined, correct? Ms. Jones replied, correct. Chairperson Savage sta.ted the rest of it is the current code. So that is not an issue here. The only issue would be the portions that are underlined. Ms. Jones replied, yes. Commissioner Sielaff stated he is kind of scratching his head on this. It makes sense to him about the 25 percent and being able to establish that. Chairperson Savage stated she does not see why they are discussing this because this is not before them at all, this section about the 25 percent. They are only concerned with the underlined portions. Commissioner Sielaff replied, right, that is what he is getting to. Because the 10 percent is going to be a lot more di�cult to enforce he would think vs. the 25 percent. He really does not know how you would be able to tell that. First of all it is a lot smaller proportion. That is why he was asking about whether they have had violators and have we been successful enforcing the violations at the 25 percent. Because it is going to get more difficult with the 10 percent. Ms. Jones stated she thinks staff had maybe 14 property maintenance violations last year. With our CTS tracking system staff can pull up certa.in violations. So they do not do many of these cases compared to hundreds we had, for example, on outdoor storage. It is not something they have been aggressively going out or looking for, but when they get a complaint about it, then they have to respond. However, she would argue the 10 percent is pretty easy just like the 25 percent because it is a pretty minimal amount on a door or window, to say that is 10 percent peeled and needs to be painted. Commissioner Saba asked what kind of time do they give a person to remedy for whatever the citation is. For example, a damaged door panel. Is there a difference in time then say for a big storm? Ms. Jones replied that the current time given on code enforcement violations is 15 days to correct the violation. This applies for something like a car parked on the grass or outdoor storage. With housing maintenance, staff realizes that many issues are going to require getting bids, finding a contractor, and it is going to take time to get the work done itself. Staff is proposing a 30 day deadline for compliance. Staff will be willing to work with people who need more time, as with all our code enforcement situations, where � extensions are often granted if property owners communicate reasonable reasons why it is might take them some more time to staff. As far as the storm damage, the code already has language addressing this and allows folks one year to conect problems resulting from storm damage. Commissioner Dunham stated so the 10 percent is the direction of Council that they want to have more ability to enforce smaller issues and then somehow somebody picked 10 percent vs. 25 percent? Where did that come from? Ms. Jones replied staff felt 25 percent is pretty extreme. When they are talking about 25 percent they aze talking about the entire side of the home or a bigger section of the home. Commissioner Dunham stated he just thinks they are going to have more issues as you have many more properties where there are 10 percent on some issues and their ability to get them to correct those he does not think it is going to be easy. Ms. Jones stated she drove azound for about two hours and could not find an example of a door that she felt needed to be painted. Commissioner Velin stated what if there is an elderly woman living by herself, who is going to have to paint that door? Is the City going to paint it? If the woman is on a fixed income and she just cannot make that loan payment? What do they do? Does the City put it on her taxes? Ms. Jones replied staff talked about this quite a bit. They are currently concerned about extensive improvements. It is one thing to paint a door but to replace a roof on a fixed income was a concern and that is why staff provided the information in the packet about the programs the Housing and Redevelopment Authority has available to folks. We have a home improvement loan program that is designed to help those on a fixed income or of a low-moderate income to have a long-term home improvement loan. All the things they aze talking about in this code would qualify for a loan; however, there is a minimum $500 loan amount to justify the paperwork. Also, there are other loan programs that are not income-qualified as well. Staff considered abatements, where the City goes in and does the work, but it is sta.f�s recommendation that they do not follow the abatement proceedings when it comes to exterior building improvements, because it really puts the City in a lot of liability. Painting is one thing but when you aze talking about maybe fixing a garage door or something that is structurally part of a building, they do not want to get into a situation where a homeowner can come back and sue the City ten years later and say you did not fix that right and somebody got hurt on my property, etc. They talked to the City Attorney about this, and he agreed that the City should avoid doing an abatement process. If there is a situation stafF just cannot resolve they would issue cita.tions rather than doing abatements because of liability issues. Pam Reynolds, 1241 Norton, asked the Commission if the document they were reviewing is on the City website? Ms. Jones replied, no, it is not. Ms. Reynolds asked if manufactured homes fall under this as well? Ms. Jones replied, no. Ms. Reynolds asked if also the S-2 and also the O-6 or O-S, something to do with the smaller properties zoned prior 1959, were those included in this as well? Ms. Jones replied, it is strictly for the sections listed here. It does not include S-2 and the other overlay district that she is referring to. That is an overlay district which would be still included in the R-1 or R-2, whatever they were zoned. Peter Eisenzimmer, 6535 Oakley Drive NE, stated he is concerned about the ordinance. Regazding the people who live in these little homes, some of these people only have an income of about $700 a month social security. They cannot really operate or repair their homes. They can hardly afford to pay their taxes now or keep their homes up. They are forcing them to do something they cannot afford. What percentage are the loans going to be at? Ms. Jones replied, it adjusts according to the going rate. She knows right now it is around 5 percent. Mr. Eisenzimmer stated that is still pretty high when they cannot pay for their gas, the heating of their homes or electricity. Everything is getting so high and the gas, etc. keeps going up. They still have a problem. How aze they going to make a loan payment when they have no income? He is having the same problem. Every time he turns azound they are raising his taxes, and saying he has to do this and that. Are they going to hire extra staff to manage this? Or are we going to use the City staff we have? He would like answers tonight. Why should we put an ordinance in that we do not know what it is a11 about? It is not on the website. He stated it should be no different for apartment buildings? Are the owners of the apartment buildings going to have to bring it up to code? Ms. Jones stated it is really no different from what they are already required to do as far as the rental requirements now. Mr. Eisenzimmer sta.ted he would like to know if there is going to be extra staff added to do this. Ms. Jones replied, she wished there were but, unfortunately, she has to do it with her existing staff. Chairperson Savage encouraged Mr. Eisenzimmer to attend the April 14, City Council meeting and he can again make his views known to them. 0 Ms. Jones sta.ted when items get to the City Council level, that information does go on- line on the City website, so it will be available the Friday night before the April 14 meeting. Joanne Zmudu, 6051 Fourth Street NE, she asked why are manufactured homes in trailer parks not included in this because they can get just as trashy as some residential properties also? Ms. Jones sta.ted that is a good question and they pondered the same thing last summer when they did the housing conditions survey. They did not include the manufactured home parks i� it for the same reason. Because they were ranking foundations and parts of the home that aze different for manufactured homes than single-family homes. They have found that the manufactured home parks very good at self-policing themselves. They have found management does not put up with deteriorating structures. So they decided for a couple of reasons, (1) they aze doing a good job of handling it internally of managing maintenance issues and (2) they cannot really treat them by the same criteria that they could other structures. Ms. Zmudu stated she did not think they should be exempt anymore than a homeowner. MOTION by Commissioner Oquist to close the public hearing. Seconded by Commissioner Saba. UPON A VOICE VOTE, ALL VOTING AYE, CHAIRPERSON SAVAGE DECLARED THE MOTION CARRIED AND THE HEARING CLOSED AT 8:13 P.M. Commissioner Velin stated because of the liability the City would not be going over to paint that garage door for the elderly person. What if she says I'm not going to paint the garage door? Do we take her to court? Do we sue her? Commissioner Saba replied, they would issue a citation. Commissioner Velin stated he thinks that any responsible homeowner would want to take care of his property unless a guy has lost his job and living on workers' compensation or something. Commissioner Oguist commented but there aze some people who do that. They have a house in their neighborhood where finally someone has bought it and he thinks they aze flipping it but they should have seen what it looked like before. Commissioner Saba commented that would have fallen under the 25 percent rule. Commissioner Oquist stated regarding ordinances like this, sometimes they do not have the staff to go azound and write up citations as they aze going down the street but, what this ordinance does is give the people in the neighborhood and neighbors an opportunity 7 where if they do make a complaint, then the City has something to fall back on. Unless you have something like this, there is not much the City can do about it. He thinks what the City is trying to do is maintain our housing stock in Fridley so it does look reasonable and respectable. He thinks the City may not have a code enforcer go out a11 the time but it at least gives the City a fallback. He somewhat agrees with Ms. Zmuda about the manufactured homes. He does Meals on Wheels and has had an opportunity to be in those parks and there aze some pretty bad looking facilities in the parks. If the parks are policing themselves, they should probably do a little better job. Chairperson Savage stated but overall as was indicated by staff, 85 percent of the properties are in good condition. Commissioner Saba stated he thinks there are parts of this that maybe need a little bit more work but there are some good parts of it. He likes the overall text and the way it is planned; however, he is concerned about the person who cannot afford to replace a door. That could be up to $500 to replace a door or a garage door could be much more. Commissioner Oquist stated but then again what do we do about that? We cannot just have somebody with a gazage door that is falling over, three or four of the sections are gone or fallen in. There has to be something to try and maintain those. Commissioner Saba stated assume you have a 70 or 80-year old person that has heart problems or cancer, etc.; and now the City says they have 30 days to replace a door and they can bazely make medical payments the way it is. There has to be a section in here that addresses hardship. Commissioner Velin asked Ms. Jones regazding the photo shown with the garage not closed all the way, did they ever find out what was the problem with the door? Ms. Jones stated eventually they got the door closed. The City has had problems where there were no gazage door at all, and there was nothing the City could do about it. Commissioner Dunham stated this needs to be done to improve the properties, and we want to help keep your investment in the property. We cannot have a number of bad apples on the street that affect them negatively. However, he does not know if he likes the 10 percent rule. He thinks that is where he has a little bit of an issue. Maybe 10 percent of a roof might need a repair, but if it needs replacement, that can be rather costly. He thinks they are going to get into having a hardship on a lot of people at 10 percent. That is the language he stnxggles with. He knows they wanted to have more of a piece of it than the 25 did, but he thinks 10 is overkill. Some of the garage doors he looked at in the pictures, he did not necessarily agree with the characterization where they would make somebody put a$1,000 garage door on now based on what the door looked like. Chairperson Savage suggested if they so decided to, can they make a recommendation to approve the text language with some of the commissioners having an opportunity to 8 point out the sections they had a concern about but City Council should take a look at. Can they do that? Ms. Jones sta.ted she would highly recommend that this is the type of discussion they want to have because internally among staff they have gone back and forth as to what is a reasonable amount. They have to look at what they can enforce with the staff we have, too. They have to come up with code language they are comfortable with that they can enforce with the staff they have. Chairperson Savage asked, regarding the 10 percent, have they looked at other cities? Ms. Jones replied it kind of goes back and forth between the 10 and 25 percent. Commissioner Sielaff stated he thinks 10 percent would be really difficult to enforce; he can visualize 25 percent to be a lot easier. He thinks there will be issues. Commissioner Dunham stated he can see the real neat guy on one street and then all of a sudden he is mad at his neighbor, and the 10 percent he can use to focus on, and then all of a sudden there are more issues. Commissioner Velin asked whether a motion would be in order to remove the 10 percent requirement and words to that effect? Chairperson Savage asked, what are you going to change it to? To 25? Commissioner Oquist replied, then you change the whole thing. Because you would not have anything on there. You have to have some kind of figure. Commissioner Saba stated he does not mind the 25 percent, but he would like something in there about hardships. Commissioner Oquist stated then could we just remove the whole thing? Chairperson Savage stated, no, you cannot do that. You have to have a percentage. Chairperson Saba asked if it was amendable? There are a lot of 10 percents. If they are trying to protect housing, just because they have crossed out 10 percent in some of these areas, they are going to be doing some of things they did not want to do than just correcting it back to 25 percent, he is not sure there is not a way to define this. He does not know whether that has been explored. He does not like it that much. Chairperson Savage asked, does he mean he does not like the percentage? Chairperson Saba replied, no, he does not� like the percenta.ge and he really likes the idea of something about hardship because if �we are at 10 percent on this issue and everybody has to enforce those, then there are going to be some issues then. As much as � it is for enforcement as the ability to pay it. A couple of garage doors does not bother him that much in this economy. Commissioner Sielaff asked whether the 85 percent that was determined, was that based on the 25 percent. Ms. Jones replied, no, they did not get that detailed. From what she has seen and from just kind of crosschecking how the intern ranked things, if anything needed the slightest repair she would make note of that and so she was very detailed in her work. That 15 percent might just have one very minor issue that needs to be addressed. Most cases, from what she has seen, would not trigger any action based on the language they have proposed here. Commissioner Saba asked whether the intern picked a cross-section of the City in the survey? Ms. Jones replied, she covered the entire City. Every single residence or residential property, including apartments. Chairperson Savage stated as faz as the hardship, she thought that could be added on and be something to the effect of where there is extreme hardship that can be shown, then staff would work with the owner to resolve the issues or something to that effect. Ms. Jones replied she did not think that necessarily needs to be in the Code now because they do that now. They offer folks extensions and work with people and that is an internal policy. They do not have it written in the Code but have been doing it all along for years. Commissioner Dun6am asked does it not say that there are approximately 2,000 properties that could need a maintenance item addressed and enforced? Ms. Jones stated she would say that number is overestimated from-what she has seen. Commissioner Dunham replied one-half is still 1,000. Ms. Jones replied, again, that is one minor thing that maybe was noted on that property. From what she has. seen most of those may not qualify as a violation that would get a letter. Those that do would need paint trim on a window or maybe replace a bottom panel on a gaxage door, etc. Commissioner Saba sta.ted he is concerned today with the amount of default mortgages and housing situations this might just be adding the straw that broke the camel's back as far as somebody being able to continue making their mortgage payments and continue to live financially the way they would like to. There are a lot of burdens financially on people. Maybe the time is not right for this. 10 Chairperson Savage stated she thinks staff has indicated these violations they consider to be minor. She understands the reason this all came up was a request from City Council? Is that correct? Ms. Jones replied, yes. Chairperson Savage stated she thinks they need to address it although she thinks it is inelevant; frankly, the issue of the foreclosures. MOTION by Chairperson Saba to send item back to staff to consider the issues of (1) hardship and (2) 10 percent vs. 25 percent. Seconded by Commissioner Dunham. Chairperson Savage stated she thinks it should move forward. Chairperson Saba stated he would like staff to take the comments made tonight and come up with some further amendments. He likes the idea of a housing maintenance code but has a lot to think about on this one. UPON A VOICE VOTE, 5 VOTING AYE AND 1 VOTED NAY, WHICH WAS CHAIRPERSON SAVAGE. CHAIRPERSON SAVAGE DECLARED THE MOTION CARRIED ON A 5-1 VOTE. 2. Receive the Minutes of the February 4, 2008, Parks & Recreation Commission Meeting. MOTION by Commissioner Velin to receive the Minutes. Seconded by Commissioner Oquist. UPON A VOICE VOTE, ALL VOTING AYE, CHAIRPERSON SAVAGE DECLARED THE MOTION CARRIED UNANIMOUSLY. 3. Receive the Minutes of the December 11, 2007, Environmental Quality and Energy Commission Meeting. MOTION by Commissioner Oquist to receive the Minutes. Seconded by Commissioner Saba. UPON A VOICE VOTE, ALL VOTING AYE, CHAIRPERSON SAVAGE DECLARED THE MOTION CARRIED UNANIMOUSLY. OTHER BUSINESS None ADJOURN 11 . e MOTION by Commissioner Oquist adjourning the meeting. Seconded by Commissioner Saba. UPON A VOICE VOTE, ALL VOTING AYE, CHAIRPERSON SAVAGE DECLARED THE MOTION CARRIED UNAMOUSLY AND THE MEETING ADJOURNED AT 8:25 P.M. Respectfully submitted, l � `Yf • G������ Denise M. Johnson Recording Secretary 12 , e CITY OF FRIDLEY SIGN-IN SHEET PLANNING COMMISSION MEETING �-��-�� Name d e /An/� Address/Business ,c_ ` , D � � �J . ,�. Y / /; /S�/C�� /��� ��� 0 3` �c