we'll go ahead and call tonight's planning commission uh to order um we'll start by approving our agenda and minutes um minutes from last meeting and agenda for tonight
i'd move to approve the minutes and agenda from both meetings second motion a second all in favor hi hi um we'll start into uh new business
um request for conditional use permit for Northshore Waste Demolition Site uh case 2025 to uh CUP i would let just like to with the board i have a potential conflict of
interest with this um if you guys are comfortable I will continue to chair but just will abstain from voting on anything is that Mhm all right y Neva thank you Mr chair this is a
request for a conditional use permit for a permit by rule transfer station for municipal solid waste recyclable materials and demolition waste the property is 5.52 acres and the property is owned by Cook County the applicant is Dustin Hansen with Northshore Waste but
today Brooke is with us from Cook County um facilities management the parcel is entirely within the single family residential R1 zone district and in the this is a listed conditional use for any zone district in Cook County and the property is within the Northshore
management zone of Lake Superior this request is brought forth by Northshore Waste to build and operate a permit by rural transfer station on county-owned land that's currently hosts the Hovland Highway Department garage the Hovindland transfer station will be a part of a hub and spoke model for Northshore Waste which proposes to provide solid waste
services in Cook County the site will accept municipal solid waste recycled materials and demolition materials which will then be transferred to the Grand Right Transfer Facility to be processed for transport outside of Cook County the operation will include a onedirection driving route with specific rolloff
containers for drop off the site will also have an office for staff and guests the layout of the site will include a gravel parking lot with just less than 1 acre in size with an 8 foot high chain link link fence and gated entrance with access off the north road the site is set back away from the road which will
limit visibility for zoning considerations the zoning map of the Hopland area is on the screen the green area is the single family residential zone district and the subject property is highlighted in the yellow box the red is the general commercial zone district and the orange
is the F two or three zone district i can't quite read it from here uh regardless the principal purpose of the single family residential zone district is to provide for residential uses at a higher density generally adjacent to or near developed areas major roadways and other sources of services and then in
the zone district it does rec or zoning ordinance does recognize that limited commercial uses are allowed on a conditional use basis in the zone district and that's how we're reviewing this in this location today um next up we've got for
background on the site this property um as we mentioned with the highway garage there there's also been a recycling trailer drop off site historically uh access across or across the road the land is zoned for general commercial uses between the
north road and highway 61 although several of those parcels are residential uses a permit by rule transfer station is regulated by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency in addition to the Cook County use permit storm water permits and land use permits for structures the operator will also need to work with the
MPCA to ensure full compliance for this type of solid waste facility on this screen is from the application which shows that this will be kind of a onedirectional loop where or users will stop at the out the building to pay for their stuff drive through drop off the
demolition waste and there will be certain drop off points along the way for site conditions and consideration for septic the transfer station will not create sewage however there will be a staffed building during operating hours uh so the application doesn't indicate what services will be
provided for staff on on that account um maybe there's going to be outhouse i'm not sure if the highway garage has septic so that's something to discuss a little bit further for impervious surface coverage because this property is in the northshore management zone it is in shoreland area of Lake Superior um
by my calculations this expansion will exceed the 30% impervious surface coverage maximum which will then trigger the need to have a a surface water runoff plan by registered engineer so um on there is just an estimate of my
current calculations that the highway department's usage generates an impervious surface coverage i think it's about 21% of the property and then adding just short of an acre of additional imperous surface coverage uh will exceed that allowable amount so a
water water runoff plan will be needed given the presence of wetlands on the property which is shown on this slide um surface water runoff plan is essentially just being intentional about the grading to ensure that water's um getting into the wetlands for proper filtration and there isn't any immediate surface waters
near here so it's not um of a high concern for well I already talked about wetlands so that's the wetland delineation map it's nice to have that available at this stage of the project where you can see that there will be some wetland impacts they have been working with Mitch Travis the Cook County wetland specialist to talk
through the replacement plan for those wetland impacts um for slope the parcel doesn't have any steep slopes or bluffs for noise the activity will uh is anticipated to generate some noise while dumpsters are emptied or rolloffs are switched out for lighting the
application indicates that the hours of operation are expected to be two days a week um in the summer and one day a week in the winter although no hours are specifically stipulated hours of operation may extend into the evening to offer availability to the public outside of normal working hours in which case
outdoor lighting may be installed in the future for safe access the existing access off the north row is proposed which is currently used to access the county's recycling trailer and uh just a note that there is odor anticipated from this use um for public noticing this
application was legally noticed in the Cook County News Herald on March 28 13 letters of notification were sent to adjacent property owners as well as county departments Northshore Management Board MPCA and the DNR hydraologist we did not receive any written uh comments during that written comment period um
and for staff consideration based off of the findings that we have um we found that the proposed transfer station is aligned to provide better solid waste management services to Cook County and the 2023 Northeast Regional Minnesota solid waste management plan and that the
use is adjacent to land zone general commercial and is readily accessible from the north road near Highway 61 the use is aligned to provide solid wasteway services to the Hogland area and is next to the highway department garage and abuing general commercial zone land and that the proposed use will provide a service to the community and is a part
of the larger hub and spoke model that nor waste plants utilize more efficient solid waste services throughout Cook County and then for staff recommendations for consideration historically the site has had issues with cleanliness with
unattended recycling dropoff trailers with the transfer station being surrounded by a fence with a gated entrance and a staffed facility these issues are less likely to occur the proposed use appears non-proatic with surrounding land use patterns and zoning the planning commission should consider the potential findings listed in this
report and modify or amend or adopt them as they determine appropriate after the public hearing for recommendation for the county board of commissioners and then I did list off some potential cons uh conditions of approval for your consideration number one all local state and federal regulations must be adhered
to and this is where we talk about the surface water runoff plan being required uh property shall be in compliance with the state septic regulations and wetland regulations and that all permits for necessary construction would be received prior to construction number two any outdoor lighting shall be downcast and
directed only to the transfer station area number three the security fencing and gate shall be installed in accordance with the conditional use permit application and number four the facility shall be staffed when open for business thank you Neva um at this point I'd open it to the owner if he wants to add
anything to NEA's narrative dustin um I think Nea did a fantastic job explaining and I really don't have a lot of comments um I'd be happy to answer any questions if you guys have some um was the county has a Thank you um at
this point we'll open it to the public for for comment is anyone here to speak on this application can I just ask a question Charlie do I have to come up to the You do have to come up and state your name and address
for the record it is not a comment it is a question for the fire department uh we currently have the tank building behind the county highway building uh the only map I saw that might have had the placement was
the wetlands we can bring that back up thank you and so is the placement proposed to the west of the buildings not encompassing the area that would Yes so that's where the trailer is so
and then your tank building back there thank you now the entrance coming into that area uh this entrance off of North Road is not going to be barred to truck traffic it'll be open and then the gates will be up here okay coming into just the
fencing area there that was my question thank you thank you thanks B anyone else from the public wish to comment at this point we'll close to the public
and discuss amongst the board jeff you want to start sure um just one question i know um there's a lot of tree removal are we going to Is there going to be any screening left on the west side i mean there is there are trees off the property but is any
screening going to be left on the county parcel on the west side i just keep always think about the toy site and hoping that this doesn't kind of look like that from the west i mean from the looks of it there's
not going to be a whole lot of trees left but the fencing is going to be taller than the toffee site and then have the plastic slats in it to kind of block the view the garbage not on the fence yeah yeah i mean yeah I I understand the fence but
then we lose the natural buffer on that edge just a kind of a concern for me yep i think they're going to leave what's there it's just pretty sparsely treed right now you know so there's not a
whole lot i mean we did we could probably look at doing some plantings of some pines or something along that tree line to block it but I don't think there's much to leave currently at that site yeah yeah yeah if you look at the air photos it is a mix of uh mostly mostly
broad leaves and some some evergreens but yeah is it appropriate for me to comment on that uh my my conflict of interest is I potentially um the excavation contractor on this site um in looking at
that layout the there is right along that line existing um evergreen vegetation there um that is mostly on the neighbor's parcel but there is some here that will all remain so so directly to the neighbor's house there is
reasonably good cover there um this parcel is fairly sparse on what's there yeah okay thank you oh Dustin's saying something dustin oh I'm sorry go ahead Dustin i was just
going to say that I agree with Charlie's comments you know our intention would be to not clear anything west of the fence line um I'm guessing with some dirt work being done there you know there might be there might be an area where you know where they're going to have to be on
that west side to get the fence post in and stuff like that um but we wouldn't we our intention is to not clear anything west of that fence line courtney I do not have anything else i've got two questions um do is there an
intention on the septic answer is there going to be I'm not sure what Justin said on the septic the county building has a well and holding tank that we have to pump up regularly but I do not believe they will have access to that building because you'd have to have access to then all the equipment that's
in there as well so I'm assuming we have to have G&G get a get a satellite out there sure okay yes that is correct we would put a we put a portaotty out there okay um and then my second question uh
is about the existing trailer the recycling trailer um is that going to be within the fence is that leaving is that the the you know for Dustin yeah I think it's leaving but
that's the the intention um the intention is to move recycling inside the fenced in area um and so it would limit the availability to recycling at some points but I think it also kind of addresses the issue of items being left at that recycling trailer that shouldn't
be there yeah I mean so I I made it on the map even of of nearby uh proximal neighbors so it's definitely my neighborhood and I know that things get left at that trailer that shouldn't um it does feel a little bit cross-purpose if the
intention is to increase our access to services to then only be able to access it one or two days a week so I'm a little caught between those two things to be honest um sure well I think that's
a a conversation that can happen between you know the folks in Hovind um the land services department and and us i I guess I'm not prepared to answer that completely right now jim yeah Mr sure i I I would state just
anecdotally uh we had had a period of time where the uh abuse of the trailer with the other items going into those uh recycling bins created such a problem that we had to remove those from the site so having them fenced in and used
and and available for periods of time is a better solution than removing them altogether from the site to not even having that service accessible at all mhm thank you Tim anything else Paul that's it for now
want to go ahead you got anything no um not hearing any other discussion in the board i guess I would entertain a vote or a motion i mean I would make a motion to approve um with the
conditions that were outlined by staff a second got We've got a motion and a second um with the exist with the proposed conditions by staff are we feel comfortable with staff's findings
yes we're concurring with staff's findings um with that I call for a vote all in favor i I opposed hearing none motion passes all right thanks Dustin i'll bring this
to the next action meeting for the commissioners thank you everybody have a good night our next agenda item is uh work session for draft proposal
revisions uh or subdivision ordinance neo exciting stuff all right i don't know to what degree we want to get into details on this but uh this is my unveiling of some brainstorming I've been doing over the
winter and so we don't have a lot of quote unquote affordable housing in Cook County and so the question is what can we do at the county level in our planning and zoning facility to try to do what we can do do our part so to say so our current
conditions you know just to make sure we're all on the same page we have limited private land 9% of Cook County is held in private ownership the rest of it is state or federal uh we have high cost to developments our private septic systems are starting around $30,000
we're hearing quotes in our office for $40 $50,000 septic systems um zoning pattern with large minimum lot size requirements inland so our FAR 1 two and three zone districts that are the primarily nonshorland inland zone districts uh those are 20 10 and 5 acre
minimum lot sizes so of that private land it's pretty large tracks of land um the lake is where you get the high density so Lakeshore residential 1acre lots and then uh you get one primary dwelling and one guest cabin per residential parcel and frankly this is
where we're actually more generous than what's usually allowed in a lot of other areas that guest cabin that second dwelling on your lot would have to um if you're on Shoreland be you know set back further or you'd need twice the lot size to have it so this is actually one area of our zoning that we're more lenient
than what other counties traditionally are just for a frame of reference so so the question how can rural zoning be a part of the solution to housing issues so the purpose of everything that I am trying to do in what I'm going to talk about here is to encourage workforce
housing so focusing on places people will live i'm not focusing on second homes or or really um the higherend type thing i'm trying to get what could be actual housing um preserve our large tracks of land as open spaces so not
change the character of Cook County how do we maintain that far one two and three zone district um but still allow more single family ownership um and limit short-term rentals to prioritize permanent housing availability i want to streamline some permitting processes to reduce costs and
delays for developers and align our subdivision and zoning regulations to reduce administrative burdens where we can so with all of this I am thinking of doing something oh well I'm going to That doesn't look good anyway note to self change the color scheme on that
slide so open space subdivisions is where I landed on this so for those of you unfamiliar an open space subdivision is a type of plat where um your conventional subdivision would have everybody you know you're in the FAR three with five acre minimum lot sizes everybody has to have a 5 acre lot but
you're all in one big row and it it's just very standardized um the open space subdivision you're looking at the landscape and you're saying "What is tricky about this landscape to develop you've got wetlands you've got a river you've got some steep slopes." Okay well let's take all that area that's already
not easy to develop let's set that aside into the 50% open space and then let's make smaller lots in the area of this land that is easier to develop cook County is already hard landscape to develop so this seems like a good fit but we don't see a lot of these types of proposals in our office not a lot of
people take advantage of the open space subdivision we see a lot more of the administrative subdivisions and um you know it's it's an easier permitting process but you're not being as efficient as you could with the landscape with an administrative subdivision because it essentially turns out looking like that conventional
subdivision method over time so um I'm trying to find a way to facilitate or incentivize developers to consider this open space subdivision as a tool to better do things mink Ranch Road is a really nice example over in Luden um it's I think a nice success story of of
Woodland Foothills preliminary and final plats that we just did the final um approvals of the buildout or not really build out the final lots of it so this zoning or this parcel map you see on here is still before those final five lots got added on the east side but if
you follow Mink Ranch Road up on that map there um you end at Woodland Foothills a little culde-sac and there's a nice little community there where there's a lot of people living and working in the community so those are really small lots and that's kind of the lot size that I was playing around with
when I was trying to formulate what this new version of an open space subdivision could allow so I am not married to anything in this except for a couple of sticking points so this name not something I'm married to this is what we got residential Open Space Overlay
District Roso um this is this is my idea this is nothing official i should say draft on every one of these slides i'm again not offended if we want to toss the whole thing out but I want to get some feedback from you so again this is an open space subdivision idea I have
now the first step of what this idea is is that we would make this as an overlay district so in zoning we've got our different zone districts and this would be a specific overlay district that lays over the the normal zoning so we're not changing the zoning at all but it's an
extra zoning layer over it the reason that's important is because there's specific uses I want to target in on and if it's not in this overlay district it's going to be really hard for our office to know over time that these properties are a part of this special provision so the good side the reason
people would want to be a part of this is because I'm proposing a higher density allowance so you would get one and a half more private lots out of this open space subdivision than a standard subdivision so remember earlier where I said every property you get one main
dwelling and one guest cabin essentially I'm saying let's let that guest cabin be in separate ownership to someone else so let's we're not making more dwellings for an area that what someone could have it's just that everybody gets one dwelling kind of is the nuts and bolts
of it um I created kind of some bumpers around this idea to try to keep it out of problematic areas so nonshorland area staying away from lakes i don't want to get into the DNR's feelers don't even want to mess with it so if we stay in nonshorland everything stays a lot
easier um the caveat to that is rivers I'm proposing could be in the open space um see if the DNR is okay with that they'll need to give their blessing on that eventually anyway um I'm saying this is for the FAR two and the FAR three zone districts so 5 acre and 10
acre minimum lot size areas so the FAR one keep in mind 20 acre minimum lot size dog kennels are a permitted use let's not try to go into there also FAR one is usually further away from roads far two and FAR three are usually right off of a main road so there are main
travel corridors we're trying to keep this close to where people can actually get out of their driveway um within close distances to county roads I have a provision in here that states that it has to be direct access off of a county township or state road um and so we're
we're not going to be having this you know way in the bush off of Tom Tom Lake Road like the the the non roads that the Forest Service and the DNR has we're going to avoid those areas for this at this point um and then the thing that that I really want to try to push for
this is that within this overlay district this would not allow vacation rentals so um this is really targeted for housing i want to really focus on very specific uses that would be very restrictive so if people go into something like this I don't want to hear
down the road oh I need to make some income so I need to rent out this thing to someone on Airbnb that's not the intent of this at all you can rent it out long-term rental if you want to do that and that's highly needed as well so those type of things um so this density
allowance I talked about this is a table that tries to explain it in numbers so um you would have the the FAR two is a 10 acre minimum lot size so those first three rows are all FAR two examples with
a 10 acre minimum lot size normal so if someone was to do an administrative subdivision no lot can be less than 10 acres in size let's say you know the the total parcel acreage I'm giving you some examples of what some tracks of land
could look like so that first example an 80 acre far 2 would allow eight conforming 10acre parcels um someone wants to elect to be in this process they could get 12 separate parcels out of it so it's a a one and a half density
allowance to be in this open space subdivision and then um you can see like FAR three a five acre minimum the last example on the bottom row uh say you got 30 acres of far three zoning um you normally could get six parcels out of
that one and a half times you're now getting nine so um the math's fairly simple i don't need to keep explaining math um so how this would work the mechanics of this is the first step would be for someone to come with a reasonzoning application you guys have
seen reszone applications before and I think this is a really important first step because this is a lowcost way for a developer to run this idea by you before they move forward into the cost of platting platting is really expensive developers often don't want to put a lot
of investment into something without knowing that they're going to get an approval so the first step of the reszone is very conceptual it's like identifying look there's these bluffs and these wetlands all those things are going to be in the open space and I'm going to make you know nine of these
little lots here and they're all going to be you know single family residential uses and then you guys review it we do the public hearing there's a big notice to everybody within a half a mile um we hear hey this is a great location for this type of housing or you know hey we
don't want that and we do a normal public hearing process for a reason after that reszone gets approved you know in this positive example um you know we go over to the commissioners commissioners have final approval just the normal standard process we do for
that um it then gets reszoned into this overlay district so the underlying FAR 2 or FAR3 zoning is still there um so those uses that were still allowable in FAR 2 and FAR three still um you know we would look at that through that reszoning process so like if there's a
use that was on that property that isn't really compatible with this reszone that's where we can kind of identify those potential issues at that point in time so it's just a more precise way to do this type of review um so I have some draft language in there that we can dig into for the
discussion that's just the draft purpose statement that I drafted for this again within this overlay zone district I'm proposing only five permitted uses with a few ideas of conditional uses and a couple of prohibited uses to be pretty specific about um the ideas of what this
area is for um and then I'm throwing out some dimensional standard requirements so minimum lot area of a quarter acre maximum lot area of 2 acres um the minimum lot area to keep that small would minimize the amount of like driveway length off of the road people
have to build they would allow people to cluster the houses next to each other um potentially to be on a shared septic if that's more economical depending on how things go um the maximum lot area you know it's somebody asked me why do you have a maximum lot area for that um that
you know maybe it's my wrong assumption but I kind of feel like if you limit the lot size to be a maximum lot size we're trying to like key in on affordable so like nobody gets more than a twoacre lot may is that a way to like keep these a low dollar lot these are the things I'm
not married to I'm bouncing these ideas out there to see if these are tools that we could do to generate um some development um and then lot size setbacks kind of standard Um
and eligibility so this is where we want to say like where could this really be the eligibility to be in this this overlay district um half a mile of state highway 61 county or township road the property or the development is fully within non-shorland area and within the
northshore management zone only on the west side of Highway 61 not the lakeside and then maybe an exemption for the shoreland areas to be in the open space area and then only within the FAR two or FAR three zone districts and then after like I said after that overlay district
got uh reszoned then it would be the preliminary plat step and the final plat step and uh some of the changes I have in here are outside of just this main priority there's things that our office looked at our current preliminary and final planning processes and we said
what can we reorganize to make this easier for developers so if you think about our recent temperance trails project that we reviewed the developer uh wasn't quite uh detailed earlier on in the stage for things that the ordinance wants to see and they kept saying "Well I'm not really sure what
that's going to look like yet." So we're proposing some more flexibility maybe to just say all the septic stuff we want to see that before the final plat it's a little bit of a risk um but that's kind of the way we're operating already like for Temperance Trails we never saw a full septic design and we just kept
punting and we kept saying "Well we want to see that before we issue the preliminary plot or the final plot." And so it just puts a lot of responsibility on the developer to have their ducks in a row and know that what they're putting on paper can actually come at the end of the day otherwise final plat's not going to get approved um and let's see septic
design HOA agreement so again that's something that you know you guys got an HOA draft agreement for Temperance Trails but it was kind of a useless document frankly and so why are we asking developers to put that together at the preliminary plat stage when they don't even know what it's going to look like yet so I'm saying let's just wait
till the final plat so that's some of the other little ordinance changes in here as well and then just an electronic submitt thing so just a reminder of zoning in Cook County so um pretty much as we look at those road corridors going inland um the yellow and the orange is
the areas that are immediately off of a county township or a state road that I'm looking at for this uh overlay district idea so that's that's the nuts and bolts of me talking to you and then um you know I'm happy to hear any thoughts that
you have um I have a question about on page six number three at the very bottom where it says duplexes and then it says each unit on a separate lot what does that mean
yeah I was playing around with the duplexes a lot i want to allow them because that's a great way to own something and rent something um but I'm trying to think through like the septic side of things and keep this
straightforward and I haven't quite so like yeah how do we figure out the density of duplexes so the idea like on on some developments you would have each part of the duplex on a separate P ID and you have two separate taxpayers so
someone could own both of those parcels and own the full duplex but they would still be on two separate parcel IDs but you could also have two separate people owning duplexes yeah like Yeah like I own one side of the wall and you own the other side of the wall so yeah just like
try to make our uh structure setbacks make sense for things when there is no setback if I'm understanding it right it this would be eligible if it's within those distances of the road and it would only
change on the parcel that it's requested and it wouldn't be so the neighbors parcel still just a far two parcel for example yes yep and that's why I like the overlay district idea rather than saying let's just reszone let's change all the far three zoning instead of five
acre everybody can have two and a half acres now like that's a really blanket broad change without really thinking about the potential impacts re reszoning of these overlay district locations you can be very precise and look at the surrounding area and really make sure it
fits for for that spot um I have all kinds of thoughts on this i've worked I've worked on some of these developments in the past mostly to do the environmental review but um the important part is the design process for the property for the
developer to come in say where are the wetlands where the woodlands where's the bluffs get all that laid out first and then say number one do I have enough land in order to get my density differential credit and then lay out
with with respect to those natural resources and protect them and I know I was talking to someone about this the other day i said like "Wow 0.25 that's a small lot but when you think about the big open space area that surrounds you
that lot feels much bigger because you have access to it and it changes the kind of the character the way the neighborhood feels so I I really think this is a good idea um it gives developers that incentive
you know to get that extra 0.5 in your in your units can really make your your math work better courtney do you That was the only question I had I guess before
we What is What is the goal for us tonight to do with it just introducing it to us or are we what do you want us to do with it tonight i want your feedback i want to know like hey let's think through these examples or you know I don't like this
idea or you know I'm I was asked to present this also to the commissioners at the cow meeting next week so I'll run this by the commissioners as well to get their preliminary feedback um but I I want this to work so you know if if tonight seems like you guys are
supportive of this we could move forward to a public hearing at the May meeting um and you know pending the cow meeting as well um but I'd really like some some homework to make this better um it's been a lot of talking to myself and a
few people that have been helpful so far but um you know what you know maybe Charlie as a developer like you you understand the economies of scale to some degree like do you think this pushes the envelope enough to make this something that people are going to be willing to do um you know I'm trying to
lay all the cards on the table to see what does it take to build some build some things from a zoning perspective in some spots so yeah just your feedback mhm paul um yeah I was able to look at this ahead of time uh and give some
feedback to Neva but in general I think the you know cluster development is really key and on point um when we think about the county and what we like about the county or what I think a lot of people like about the county uh you know
to yeah you look at those two maps of the conventional subdivision and a cluster and I think even thinking of my own property which is to 40 and five of it is cleared you know like that is in itself kind of a cluster development and the fact that you can keep more
wilderness undisturbed I think is what we're going for and I'm really supportive of that and I think it's it's bounded to the right zones as well in far two and far three so I'm really supportive of it and think a lot of
the nuances of it have been thought through um that's my initial impression it's going to take some digestion time i've I I've got questions and I'd have to really think long and hard about
with the sharing of septic systems wells um etc i like this idea um I we do need uh better uh better options for developers in this uh in this county
um and I think this might be one of the ways to do it but I think we're going to have a lot of hammer hammering to do to figure out exactly how this will work uh with all the infrastructure yeah and it wouldn't require a shared
septic so that maybe that's something I should have made more clear too is just laying out the option um and I was checking in with Mitch Iverson our environmental health specialist whether or not he thought there was a substantial savings um economywise of making a shared septic system and he
didn't really think that that was a a hard and fast rule all the time so um it's going to depend on site topography and and all those things so it's definitely flexible it doesn't require everybody be on the same system it just provides that option
maybe a follow on to John's comment about then so if we have individual septics this allows septic to be built on the common open space so if everybody had an individual they could have they could have it on
the out lot behind their behind their house or whatever okay so it wouldn't necessarily have to be a community septic to be put on that open space yeah if you do the math like I'm saying 50% minimum open space but 2 acre maximum lot size like your open space is going
to be more than 50% for five and 10 acre minimum areas mostly I haven't played out every example but um so that's part of why I felt comfortable uh kind of throwing a bone because usually the septic's not allowed in the open space and that causes some heartache um so let's just
let the mounds be in the open space and call it a day and and like Paul you you had sent me a copy quite a while ago and I remember doing the math the 30% impervious cover also has a factor on the smaller lots of
keeping the house size smaller because what just you put in a driveway you put in a garage now you put in a house and some sidewalks you bump up against that 30% max pretty fast i think it was a 2200 square foot house i I don't have my that old sheet with me
cuz I went through the math how big a house could you actually build so it it does create that affordable housing size not some mansion small mansion property so um
had another question and now I forgot it so so the 30% lot impervious coverage that would apply to each individual lot size whether it's 0.25 or 2 acres yeah okay
that's how I remembered thank you um and we had we talked about um the kind of the idea of carriage house or garages with an apartment above them this kind of allows this if I understand it right i feel like I've gone back and forth on the guest quarter like five different
times in this proposal idea well and I I think I don't know what's actually in this version anymore cuz I actually think about it more as a as a rental mhm yeah you know that because I built my garage that way i
chose not to to build it out but I could actually have a rental apartment built my garage so whether that's an option under this to happen or not yeah and it would allow for a long-term rental just not vacation right right exactly y what I have in the current
version it's coming back to me now is the guest cabin is a conditional use okay and a part of that thinking was that if people were on a shared septic we would want to be evaluating whether or not that septic capacity was there and it would have an impact on that
other you know other users um you know these are the things that like I'm not married to it this is just like my logic trying to create a streamlined thing so I also would love to have like yeah that second apartment to rent out long term would be a good
thing so maybe we could think more on whether or not that just should just be a permitted use and we just figure it out as we go i don't know i I think the septic in the open space is maybe something that would be only if it's
shared septics just my first thought on it is if each lot built their built their grain field in that open space you're burning up a lot of that open space which on these already smaller lots and far far two and three um we're
losing the buffer for the for the neighborhood too um so I think as a developer this really seems like a great concept to work with and I you know personally been doing the math on a few different plans and I just keep struggling to make the math work mhm and
and this additional allowance is the kind of thing that might might really tip the balance and make things work so yeah so cluster systems maybe in the open space keep the individual ones within the lot within the lot that that's my initial thinking on that it
just it feels like it'd start to burn up the buffer for for the neighborhood um and might might make this problematic but if we keep that buffer area for the neighborhood I think this really works
um go ahead Mr chair um one of the things I'd like to just comment on is having served on the HA for over three years that um this really addresses all of the issues that we have struggled with in our
conversations dealing with the very limited private land that we have that we need workforce housing so you have to look at affordability you have to look at smaller homes you have to look at um shared septic as being part of that
solution um and this is an opportunity for us to really incentivize developers which has been problematic for us um it also addresses the concerns that we have about vacation rentals they're not allowed in this overlay district and so
I would just say on a personal level I really support this because it aligns very well with everything we've talked about for the last three years thank you just as a side question and I don't know if there's restrictions on this or
not but um shared wells is there any I mean we don't regulate wells that would be Okay and one other Yeah yeah I mean back to the guest cabin idea I guess I'm I can
see the merit of keeping it a a CUP um just to have some oversight on it but I'm really supportive of it i think from an affordability standpoint that that you know that could be the difference between whether you can afford to pay the mortgage on the house or not to have
that rental and to that point I I don't have an opinion yet maybe need to think about it more but there might be some room to allow vacation rental in conjunction with a primary residence on
the site um you know and I know that's a strategy that like a lot of municipalities take with Airbnb to you know cut down the speculation of Airbnb that yeah sure you can have an apartment you rent out above the garage as long as
you live there you know you can't just buy up the lot to turn it for an Airbnb but that's another strategy to make it affordable to live there is if you know you you want to engage in that and have that as a side hustle basically and you rent out a little apartment short term
I'm not necessarily opposed to that at the start i think there's things to think about about that you know and the biggest one being that you're in close quarters neighborhood so that's changing the lived experience of that neighborhood a little bit so I had similar thoughts about that Paul part of
my thinking on it was that if you want to have that kind of side income then make that unit a long-term rental because how many people do we know are looking for someplace just to rent and if we want to be kind of purist a little bit uh I hear grumbles from people
sometimes of like there's nowhere that you can just know there's not going to be a vacation rental next to you in Cook County and so this would give that neighborhood of like there is no short-term rental here and like that that was where I was landing on with that is like if you want that that side
income to try to pay your own mortgage get a long-term renter in your thing and you know that comes with its own things but we don't regulate that there's no right there's no license or permit for that at all so that's another another option um for that yeah I
definitely concur yeah um and then to play devil's advocate I mean just to give people the choice of what they want to engage in to make that income but like I said I think what's what tips it is that well your neighbors not signing up for necessarily which option they'd
like you know and this this is an opportunity for us to put our thumb on that scale a little bit and say these neighborhoods are for full-time residential you know and I think some places where they're doing this they're called accessory accessory dwellings
you know which maybe maybe is a a terminology to consider so it conveys that directly to the developers we're not talking about you know creating mini Caribou Highlands or something but we're talking about another place for somebody
to live whether it's your mother-in-law or a long-term rental it appears to be a great concept to continue exploring some of these details uh for the sake of tonight um I'd like
to get to our people who are sitting in the audience and don't want to so before we leave the subject because the next step would be for me to publish this in the newspaper and put it out there for people to start calling my phone [Music] you know what what of these different
things that we talked about just as a conclusion you know what would you like to see different before we put it out for public hearing to actually throw it out to the community for their feedback you know we talked about um the cluster septics being in the open space um
dimensional requirements these different use discussions that we had um do you feel ready for that do you want another work session to think through this some more i don't want to this just been sitting in my brain there's no giant rush i just know that once the summer comes everybody's really busy and I knew
if I didn't move forward on this now I never was going to so I think it would be a great idea to get other people's opinion okay as well so I would totally support you if you're ready to be the filter for all that and take on all
those phone calls because I think something does need to be done mhm so one of my thoughts um just as a detail was and I don't can't predict all the ramifications but potentially within a
quarter mile of the road system versus a half mile um might be something we want to look at but I think it sounds likely it's worth moving ahead with um to to bring to the public i don't think
anybody sounds way way far off here on we got a few details to to explore so okay well if you have substantial changes in mind or any changes let me know within like the next week before I put it in the paper otherwise it'll be on the May agenda for
a public hearing and I'll wait till I get some commissioner feedback also so all right thank you very much guys i think you need a queue thank you Mr chair i'll make a motion to adjurnn we've got a motion to adjurnn do we have a second second all in favor hi
closed kick me out of here have a good night we'll go ahead and uh Diana do you need a moment or are you just still