[Music] Planning Commission of Columbus. It is now 6:00 p.m. and we will have the pledge of allegiance [Music] to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [Music] Okay. All right. I'm looking for approval of tonight's meeting agenda. Hi, Kim. We'll go ahead and call the meeting to order. Okay. And you had a motion to approve the meeting agenda and a second. Second. Second. Say your name. Mike Oswald. And second. And second. Okay. We'll take a vote. Kim life. Robin. I abstain. Okay. Okay. And get approval of the June 4th 25 2025 planning commission meeting minutes. I, Kim, will approve the June 4th, 2025 planning commission meeting minutes. Make a motion. Um, second, Mike. All right. And look for a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. Am I Oh, go ahead. Oh, a motion to I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Approve the consent agenda. In a second. Second, Mike. All right. All right, we'll take a vote. Can I Mike abstain? Uh, no, you're here. Oh, I can Okay, because you were here for the approval of meeting agenda. Oh, all right. All right. Uh, at this point then we're going to open the floor to a public if anybody has anything they'd like to speak at this time. Anybody here or online? All right, then we'll close that and we're going to have planning uh commission discussion with the Ryback site plan review for 13915 Lake Drive Northeast. David, if I could have you, David Ryback, uh come on up to the table up here. Have a seat in front of the microphone. Give us your name and address. [Music] Uh Dave Rybeck, 5725 137th Avenue, uh Northeast Columbus. Thank you for coming tonight, David. Um could you tell us a little bit about what your plans are uh with the property going forward here? We'd like to uh put a storage building up for the equipment that uh we have parked outside now. Okay. Uh uh it's uh 90 by uh I don't know what the length is. One 120 120 uh four bays. Uh I do you have the plans? Yes. Okay. Okay. So yes, everybody's got a copy of the plans and it's to support our uh railroad services business. Okay. Which uh is you know the majority of the work we the work isn't done at that property. It's done out in the, you know, on the rail line industry, but the building would be used for our emergency call out services. Okay. Um, well, I was out there today and uh everything looked in order. You have the uh the uh easement there set off to the side. That's good. Um, everything looks like it's ready to go from what I could tell. Um, now the plans, I was looking at the plans earlier. They're all set. Yes. Yes. So, you have architectural drawings and all of that. That's what these are as well. I believe they've all been submitted. We have not submitted for building permit, but everything is submitted through Watershed. Okay. Okay. We're hoping to submit for building permit after tonight's meeting. Okay. We will actually probably have to wait for uh city council. Are you going city council going to see this at all or just us? Uh yes. So this would be a recommendation to the city council after their approval. Um or um then at that point you would be able to apply for building permits. And when is the city council meeting? So that would be next Wednesday. Next Wednesday. And do you have any questions, Kim? No, I do not. And for yourself? I do not. Okay. All right. Um, do you want me to go over? Yes. Would you go over what's what's uh what is taking place? You should do that. Yes. Um, there is a bit of a history in this site plan review that I wanted to go over with all of you. Um, this addition was originally submitted back in 2007 and was a part of that cup. No. Yes. 2007. um and was a part of that cup. Um unfortunately, it was not built at that time. It's still written in all of their approvals, all of their documentation on the site is this um expansion that they were proposing, and it just simply never went in until uh recently. They resubmitted all of these plans to us. Uh we looked through their approval, saw that there wasn't really any major changes from what was already um written into their cup. There was a couple things that had changed. Namely, um they updated the building elevations to become compliant to reflect our updated building code. Um in the original cup they actually had not submitted any building elevations and it was approved on the contingency that those are and eventually come through. Um so that is some new information that we have. Um and then the other larger change was Rice Creek Watershed is requiring some additional storm water ponding go in um at the front of the property near the driveway on either side of the driveway, which will unfortunately require um the removal of a number of um some of their screening trees along the um along Lake drive. I think it was four trees that will have to be pulled out in order to accommodate the new storm water ponds. Uh that was a big part of their original approval was the installation of these uh large pine trees along Lake Drive. So it is unfortunate that um some of them will have to be removed in order to accommodate the Rice Creek wershed requirements. Um, however, in the original approvals, it's not specifically stated how many or where those trees need to be. So, they won't be not out of compliance with their cup with this change. Um, so that was really the only major changes from what was originally um proposed and then what you have in front of you a couple decades later. Um, but it's finally going in and we're pretty excited about that. Um, is there any questions on that? Not for me. All right. Okay. Can I make a motion to approve that? Yeah. I can make a motion to recommend approval of the Rybeck site plan. A second for Mike. All right, we'll take a vote. Kim, I Robin I. Mike I. That passes. Okay, our next is you can step back. David, thank you very much for coming in tonight. Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, next on our agenda, we're going to talk about Backyard Weddings concept review at 7507 180th Avenue Northeast. And Eleanor, would you please give us some background on this, please? I I would love to. Um this is a concept that's coming before you because city staff was contacted by um some residents who would like to host small wedding ceremonies in their back backyard garden on a semi-regular basis. This would be renting out their backyard space for these weddings. Um, according to our current code, a event license is required for gatherings exceeding 50 guests or when admission fees are involved. Now, the renting of the venue would be considered an admission fee. So, this kind of event would require an event license. Um, and this can happen in any zoning district, whether that be residential or if a company would like to host a similar event um in any area. That's the the breadth of our uh event licensing. Um so while the proposed events would be limited to 40 guests, the ones that they are proposing, the fact that the venue would be rented for a fee triggers the requirement for that event license. Um, at the current time, the city code does not specifically address this type of activity on a residential property and um, therefore would require the residents to apply for each of these weddings individually um, and have to go to city council meetings for each individual um, proposed wedding. However, if you guys would uh if the planning commission and city council wish to consider this use and uh uses like this in the future, there are several potential pathways to amend the code uh to allow these types of events. For this particular one, uh the residents submitted a um example event license application which can be found on page 24 of your packet. Uh this outlines what an example wedding application would look like. Um stating that the estimated number of attendants would be only 20 to 40 people. Um canopy tents tent uh permits would be applied for individually if rain is forecasted. There was be no amplified music. Uh the events would be during daytime hours. Um, and the staff agrees that these are pretty reasonable requests to have. Um, but the first thing that I want to discuss is whether or not this type of use is something that you would like to consider. Um, well, I I know in in talking uh with you earlier about this, I I feel it's kind of over redundant to have them apply if they're going to be doing this on a regular basis. Yes. To have them apply for every single wedding seems like an awful lot of time. Waste of time. a waste of our resources as as a city that we don't just make this as a standard uh business license for them that they can run out of their house. Um just for context, I believe those are the applicants if you wanted to have them explain anything later. Um, so there's two different ways that we can permit this as a continuous use. And that would be our annual event license, which they would um which currently only applies to businesses and they would come in every year um and we would approve all of the events for that year going forward. They would have the license for the year and then they would come back the next year in that similar process. Um, the ordinance amendment that would be required to allow this for this specific use would be to allow the annual event license to apply to residents as well as businesses. Um, and so this would this ties back to a previous applicant that we had come in in 2023 who host dog shows and dog competitions on a semi-regular basis at their property. um we kind of did this for them at that time of approving all of the events beforehand. Um however, our our code doesn't necessarily address that. And the exception that we made for them was because we knew each and every event beforehand with this particular resident, we wouldn't know the dates of every wedding that they're planning a year in advance. We would say essentially you can have eight of them, you can have 10 of them a year and we would mark that you would have to notify us beforehand. The other um way that we can go with this is to do an IUP. An IUP can last as long as we decide they can last. It can be 3 years, it can be 5 years, we can let them do it for 20 years if we want. Um, uh, staff recommendation is to go probably around three years for this. And that would you can limit that to only wedding venues in the residential neighborhood. Uh, if those vett wedding venues only have 40 guests. So, we can keep that a little bit narrower uh, if we don't want to allow continuous event businesses to start popping up everywhere in the rural residential. And that's that is a policy decision that is up to you guys on what direction you want to go there. Um, one of them allows them to have a longer uh length of permit and would potentially only really relate to this particular business and the other one would require them to come in every year um, but would allow for other types of uses similar to this in the future to come in and do a similar process. Does that make sense? Makes perfect sense. Yes. Um I also want to talk about public hearings for both of those. So for an event license, the annual event license, you don't technically need a public hearing. It can go straight to city council. It doesn't need to come before planning commission. It can if we want to. Um staff recommendation would be if somebody were to apply for one of these annual event licenses, they would come before a public hearing and the planning commission the first goaround, go to the city council to be established and then if they operate without any issues, without any neighbor complaints for a full year, they um on their renewal, they can just simply go to city council and not have to go to a public hearing, planning commission meeting, and city council on each renewal. Um, I believe that the the applicants are here if you wish to ask them any questions as well. Hello. Chris Harper, I have a question. Is there adequate parking in our yard? We are blessed to have a very long driveway and it's grass on both sides. So, um, as I expressed with that she provided me. This is where people and the road is not going to be used or car. So, we're lucky to have that. We just tred the driveway yesterday. Not for this, but for our own, but it it's really a nice park. Um, so, uh, could you please come up to the table so we can hear you better? Thank you. Speak in a mic. It's a little bit easier for me later. Certainly. [Music] And I have you state your name and your address for us, please. Julie and Chris Harper and 7553 180th Avenue, Northeast Columbus, 55 025. Thank you. Um, so we got the formalities. I I was a little a little uh backwards here. Um, I have a question for you. Um, do you how long do you see doing this into the future? Well, we're retiring. Um, so probably not forever. And this is um 3 to five. Yeah, maybe 3 to five maybe at the most. Um, and we really don't have a idea of like deliberately ending it at a certain time. Um, I mean like we lit we're tucked up to Carlos Avery and again it's it's a beautiful spot and um we've married a couple of kids of our own off of uh in the past and both times have been um one in the winter and one in the summer. Um and the summer one was much easier because we didn't have to entertain anybody in the house. So that's the goal is only May, June and then we have to have a break from the deer flies and believe it or not that's in our area it's a nightmare. So they last for 6 weeks and then we would start up again September October for fall. Okay. So that's kind of the way that's kind of what our goals are. It's not for every single month of the year just the summer. And we want to have the opportunity to have um everybody outside, not in our house. Okay. Have Have you booked any weddings yet? No. No. No. No. No. We've got to get through this process. I would I would hate to hear you say that you had booked some weddings and we haven't done anything yet. And that was reason for getting with Elanor in the first place because we we missed our May June now. And um we would like to try if we can to do September, October if it's possible. Mhm. And not have to wait until next year. Okay. Um do you have any? No, sir. No questions for me. Well, and I'll let you let her if your the question is about the parking. If you see what's exhibited on the screen on the driveway there going in on the left would be 45° angle parking. Yep. And on the right would be parallel parking. Yep. And with the length of that driveway and the spaces required the special requirements for those parking spaces depending on if you had somebody there to help people park, you could probably get 28 vehicles along that driveway. If you let them go and park on their own, you could get a lot less, but if you control it, you can probably get maybe up to 28 parking spaces there. Okay. And then the blue dot is the biffs the um we would have to entertain a porta potty because we are septic system and that kind of volume of people we like I said we don't want them in our house. So that's what we always have to entertain there is the best. Mhm. When when you do when you do the parking, will you leave your driveway turnaround at your house and garage open so emergency vehicles if they had to get in there would have ample staging areas? Yep. So, we would be able um and especially now with this hard driveway. I'm so happy for it because um as you see the the cars that are um more um um on the right side that h other half of the driveway is completely open. So we would be able to have any kind of 911 vehicle be able to come in. Also then the where you see the concrete up by the house and the garage. You every car can go down that driveway, turn around and just come back out again. So that works good, too. Pretty much do a U-turn that's big enough for Yeah. Oh, does that answer your question? Yes. Yes. Um, so I'm not actually looking for a motion at this point. Um, I am looking for a direction of if you guys have a preference on what way to go. Well, like I said when we we talked about it before, um, and I I I really thought about this for a while and I thought I want to keep control over how much of this is going to go on in the city. Mhm. Um, I think you got a great plan. Don't don't get me wrong when I say this. Um, but I think if we if we do the application every year, I think we have a little more control um where we get to talk to them. We get to uh see if there's any been any complaints, anything like that. Whereas if we go with an IUP right away, you know, they're they're approved for 3 to 5 years. And we've never done this. And I I think I would like to do this on one year basis at least till we see how everything turns out. Uh if we have more people applying, um then maybe we have to do more more about it. But I think in this particular instance and in probably most future incidents instant um one year at a time will be plenty. I you know cuz I think some people find that they don't want to do it and here they've invested all the time and energy and we have too to for an IUP. Um, I I think that's overkill at this point unless we start to see a problem, then I could see changing it again and start doing IUPs to Okay. limit things. Can I ask a question, Robin? Yes. Um, with that in mind, every year is there a fee that you are recommending or that it would be charged to us in terms of is it any cheaper for a UIP or I will turn that over to Eleanor for that answer. All right. I was hoping that we would touch on this a little bit. Okay. Currently, our event licenses for your type of um event would just be it would be $30 per event hosted. Um and you currently in our ordinance would have to pay upon the uh annual event license. So every year um every event would be $30 for the um interimm use permit. That is a $200 fee when you get the IUP and that lasts for however long um length is the length is. However, for an IUP there is a escrow deposit. Sometimes IUPs get really expensive with engineering and consulting fees. This one probably would not. Um, but unfortunately there is a um $1,500 escrow that would be returned to you once the IUP is approved with any legal engineering fees retracted. That's if we went IP. That's if you went IUP. The annual event license is 30 bucks per event. Okay. Thank you. Actually, it's two. It's $20 per event. Oh, 200 for that. It's getting better. Yes, it's 20. Uh, so if you were planning to do 10 events a year, that would be a $200 fee every year, while the IUP would be $200 for as long as it lasts. So, it is a little bit cheaper to go the IUP route. I circled back and got to my point eventually. Yeah. Well, I think that's I think that's a good point. And again, like I said, I'd like to start though with just a yearly annual uh license to hold these events so that we can get our feet wet a little bit before we start making huge decisions about how long we want somebody to be able to run these. Okay. Well, um can I ask a question? Can I ask you a question? So, um so this is Janet. I'm the council liaison, so I don't get a vote. I'm just here here to uh add intrigue to the discussion, I guess. Um, one of the things you could consider if you like the idea of the IUP is you could just do a one-year IUP and then and then renew it for a longer period of time if everything goes well. We've done that before for new businesses when we did it in the residential zone as as residential. So you don't, you know, it you could you can assign any length of time to an IUP, but you could just say, "Let's do it for a year. It'd cost $200. You can decide what you want to do about the escrow. If you know there's not going to be engineering, you could deal with that. But um and then when they come back the next year, if everything's great, you can say, "Let's do it for three years or five years." And and so that's an option, too. Okay. Thank you. Mhm. Do I have a vote? We would like to hear your opinion. Yes, we'd like to hear your opinion. I really appreciate the IUP part. Um, and then renewing it for the first time in a year. Simply like you said, Robin, get your feet wet. And we need to get our feet wet as well. And then if we don't like it, we're going to, you know, get out of it. Mhm. But then at that point then go a longer period if we feel we like doing it. Okay. So I think it gives both parties a win-win in that respect and I'm not afraid to say that out loud. I I think it's the meeting of the minds here for the sake of understanding what's best for everybody. I mean, you guys, I have to watch for uh cooperation with Eleanor for making sure she knows of the events coming up and then and then backwards again next year, you know, getting back together and seeing what worked and what didn't. And um you know, going from that point, I think we'll have more say in a year from now which way we want to go. And I just don't want to commit to something long-term if it doesn't work. Sure. Sure. And that and that's the same way that I feel about it. I don't want to commit to a longterm when we haven't done this before. Have we done anything like this before, Alanor? Just the dog. Um just the dog events and that was essentially through an annual uh event license. Okay. Um though with some asterisks with some asterisks in there. We'll just put it that way. I I know they live on a very busy road and that is they have a long driveway. Thank God for that. But they have a very busy um road to contend with, you know, just exiting. Yeah. And and that's something we're grateful for that we don't um our road is um pretty much almost a dead end. Um, well, it's not really dead in, but it just the gravel part, what Eleanor, I was sharing with Eleanor earlier, um, isn't the way we would bring people in. We would be bringing them in on the tar, uh, on the PTOAC tar road. Okay? And that we don't want to entertain that dirt either. I don't appreciate driving on it at all myself, so why would I want anybody else to? So when you do Google Maps for our place and our address, it always brings them in on 180th which is and that is Altar. Yes. Which we would prefer as well. Yep. So that's kind of a nice thing too. Well, I see you know and with your wonderful suggestion and your uh input on it, I see no reason why we can't do a one-year IUP. We can certainly do that. Yes. I did not know that that was an option. So yeah, one-year IUP is a good idea. Okay. Thank you, Janet. Oh, you're welcome. Thanks. I have one other question. So, if you go back to the other picture where those dots are, that's where people would be seated, correct? Yeah. So, it's pretty close to the house on the other side. How are your neighbors feeling about this? Um, he built that great. That's not his house. That's a huge ship. Oh, it's a big pull barn or something. Big pull barn. Okay. He's got smashing cars in there. Okay. Um yeah, and um our population would be sitting there for the wedding party cuz that's the um uh pergola that is getting decorated for the wedding and then from there we would be off maybe on the more on the um concrete. So we haven't talked with him yet. Okay. Just kind of in the beginning. Yeah, it sounds like there probably wouldn't be a conflict, but that might be a good another next step for you just to let him see Yep. if he has any issues with it. We're we're um a huge backyard big um a lot of mowing um but it's all green grass back there so we would you know that would be a wonderful place. Yeah. And I I've said this to Allaner out loud already in the bottom of an email. We were blessed with such a remarkable piece of land that Jim Blake originally built and then we remodeled when we bought it 13 years ago and why we didn't do this when we were younger. I'm like why why did we wait till we retired? But it is um you know like I tell my husband all the time, I said it's only good until our first forest fire that takes us all out. And that would be a very sad day for us as well. Okay. Elanor, what would you like from us? Um, so I'm getting the general consensus that the planning commission is recommending the IUP route, um, with the potential to renew it in one year. Um, and then decide at that point if you want to go a longer route. Um, unfortunately, this will have to go before the city council for the official call to make that ordinance revision. That will be next week on Wednesday. Um, if you can attend, that would be great. Um, otherwise, I will write up a report of today's proceedings. Be here. Okay. Fantastic. Thank you. All right. Planning Commissioner's Report. Um, nothing at this time. Kim, did you have anything that you wanted to bring up? No, I did not. Anything in the future? Nothing for me. You? Okay. Okay. Um, I just want to say that I had a very good visit there with uh David Ryback today. His business is uh uh very interesting. I he gave me a full tour of the whole place and how they do everything. And I saw the sign there for Ryback, never knew what they did. And he says, "Nobody knows what we do." So, he was just thrilled to death to get get to show somebody around to see what all it is that they do. And uh if you guys want to talk later about it, I can tell you some of it. The packet is excellent. It really shows what they do. It's it's fabulous little tool for us. So that's all I have. I have I have one thing. I'd like to introduce our new plan commission member, Mike Oswald. Oh yes. He's been appointed. This is his first meeting and u he was interviewed. He was a very impressive candidate. we welcome aboard and look forward to working with him. Thank you, Mike. Thank you. And anything from the assistant planner? Well, you stole my introduction of Mike. Um, but thank you for joining us, Mike. You're going to say nice things like go ahead. Uh, we're excited to have you here and uh get to hear your input on some of these matters. Um, I'm going to do my uh, every two weeks I'll just mention what types of questions I'm consistently getting from the public um, as matters of things that we should bring up later. Um, recently I've been getting a consistent number of calls from residents wanting to do temporary care dwelling units for their family members for um, older residents. Um, currently our code only allows them to build an addition uh on their home in order to house um uh sick family members um aging parents um that kind of situation. It is pretty common in a lot of towns to start moving towards allowing ADUs. We have not in the past, but since we've gotten an increased number of calls, it might as it might be a good idea in the near future to at least discuss that as a as a point. Whether or not we decide to pursue it fully, I would like to make everybody aware that that is what staff is getting calls about recently. Okay. Um I think that's all that I have to to report on today. All right. Well, I guess now I am looking for a motion to adjurnn. Hi Kim. I'd make a motion to adjourn tonight's meeting. Second. Mike. All right, we'll take a vote. Kim, I I Mike. Rob and I. Vote carries. Meeting is adjourned at no 35. [Music]