PC 032316 - Laserfiche WebLink

Schroeder: Those are all the same lots with the bonus room, they'd still be under 45% so it's the same 9 lots. Commissioner O'Connor: Nancy's asking for input if we would support. Schroeder: Well, we're negotiating here. I'm willing to restrict the number of bonus rooms on there if we get maybe 5 of those 9 with bonus rooms. We could live with that. That's another thing to consider, but all that would fit in with our plan to go with 40% average. If we looked at each house, plotted them all, and figured out what the average was, it would be 40% and I think as long as we get 5 of those bonus rooms.... Commissioner O'Connor: If they agree to do this average thing though, I wouldn't want you to put that on the PUD. I wouldn't want that to be the restriction because it's too much like Gerry was saying .... that it's really hard to accomplish that and I wouldn't want someone next door not to be able to add on because the guy next door already has 1,000 square feet more than me. Schroeder: Well, these houses are not small necessarily. They're fairly well designed and in looking at the houses, it's hard to think where you would want to add, but who knows what could happen in 15 -20 years from now. But then again, you deal with that anyways. It's part of what you do on a case by case basis. If someone said, "I want to build a single story party room here and it adds 300 square feet and nobody's going to see it," who cares? I mean, I guess it's up to the neighbors. If neighbors care, then they show up and argue with you and don't get it approved. Not that I would create work for you, but I think you do deal with that. Commissioner Nagler: Just a comment on your thinking which I completely do appreciate the fact that you're trying to look to the future, all right? I guess I don't think all precedents are created equal and there are some things that are precedential which have enormous impacts and we ought to pay attention to like building roads on hillsides. You know, sometimes there are conditions which, you know, your idea about a retaining wall, right? That's precedent and a bridge you may not want to cross and that we didn't cross because that's not the precedent you want to create, right? There are some it seems to me that are implied in us being asked to make decisions about projects, right? Because if everything were just so, then we would have less to talk about and we would be asked to make fewer judgment calls. And on this particular one, it strikes me that it actually does matter, both what is our policy; in this case 40 %, but what's the setting? And if it doesn't just completely run rough shod over our policy, then sometimes we can make those decisions because in the context of the setting, the development, the look, the architecture, the whatever, a variation isn't the end of the road. And on the point of not all precedent being equal, I actually think it would be a very damaging precedent to establish FAR on the basis of the average in a development because I think that would raise many more opportunities in the future for an applicant to come in and say, well listen, you have this precedent. We did this here and that there and you said it's okay to average and why isn't it okay now when it was before as compared to, our guidelines are 40% FAR and in a particular setting we may allow a variation, right? We are recognizing that the developer did a terrific job of working with the neighbors and they set in stone what the FARs are on that street because that was important to the neighbors. And so, we're looking at the overall project. So I guess the point I'm trying to PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES, March 23, 2016 Page 23 of 46