06 ATTACHMENT 6 - Laserfiche WebLink

Michael Miller: Thank you and Commissioners, I appreciate very much your attention to this. Staff has worked on it and we thank you very much for your time. I'd like to start by posing a situation to you and bring this kind of personal so you're kind of sitting in our shoes. Imagine you're in your backyard. You're having a quiet dinner with your friends and suddenly you hear 200 people right across your fence line throwing a party. That noise is going to be enormous. It will completely ruin your evening with your friends. The next day you ask your neighbors, what's going on with all this noise? And they say, well, we're renting our backyard out for parties and make some money. We say, well, maybe can you keep the noise inside so we don't hear it? And they're answer is, we make more money by renting out the backyard. Well, I didn't think that was allowed in a residential area. You're killing us with this. Can you please just make it better? And they say we like doing this. We're going to keep doing it and in fact they continue to do that. Okay, this is your home, your backyard. My guess is that you'd go ballistic but in fact since 2006 that's what's happened with the Masons. They have been conducting parties and events of all types outside their building right across our fence line for money. They collect money for people they're renting the building to. That's commerce. Now, this is a complicated issue as you've seen lots of material we presented to you. We're sorry about that you had to read through it, but there really is a simple question here. The question is should a quiet, private, non - commercial fraternity in a residential zone be allowed to morph into a noisy commercial business that ruins the lives and damages the property of the people who live close to them so they can make money? That's the fundamental issue. Put yourself in our house and the house of people behind me. That's what this is about. Now staff has suggested the conditional use permit is not clear about the outside building use. We would disagree with that in the staff report. If you look back in 1977 until 2006 and I've lived in the house since 1985, there were absolutely no events of any kind. I thought the building was abandoned. The CUP was a perfect solution, perfect. In fact, even in 2008 the City said the existing entitlement does not allow outdoor use on any side of the structure. In the last staff report in 2015, staff said, enforcing the conditions of the CUP would not allow continued active use of the backyard. So, it's very clear to us both from the history and from the comments from the City that the Masons are not allowed to use the outside property. Now, there were absolutely no problems of any kind until they modified their building, put in French doors, landscaped the outside and brought the inside activity outside into our lives. So, Chair Ritter you asked what we would suggest going forward? Enforce the current CUP and keep the activity inside. That worked beautifully. The Masons could do whatever they wanted inside their building with absolutely no complaint from residents around it. But, once that activity comes outside, there is no way to control is. And again, if it were your house, would you want to be outside with your friends on a Saturday night with 200 people across your fence line partying so the people next door could make money? We would say, you wouldn't want to do that, nor would we. We have our attorney to speak more to the specific codes and issues with this account and we'd like to climb up second if that's possible. We appreciate your time very much on this. Thank you. EXCERPT: PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES, June 22, 2016 Page 12 of 52