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HomeMy WebLinkAboutORC minutes 110216Approved 12/7/16 1 SUMMARY NOTES 1 ORANGE COUNTY PLANNING BOARD 2 NOVEMBER 2, 2016 3 ORDINANCE REVIEW COMMITTEE 4 5 NOTE: A quorum is not required for Ordinance Review Committee meetings. 6 7 MEMBERS PRESENT: Lydia Wegman (Chair), At-Large, Chapel Hill Township; Tony Blake (Vice-chair), Bingham Township 8 Representative; Paul Guthrie, At-Large Chapel Hill Township; Kim Piracci, At-Large; Maxecine Mitchell, At-Large Bingham 9 Township; Lisa Stuckey, Chapel Hill Township Representative; Andrea Rohrbacher, At-Large Chapel Hill Township; Patricia 10 Roberts, Cheeks Township Representative; 11 12 13 STAFF PRESENT: Craig Benedict, Planning Director; Michael Harvey, Current Planning Supervisor; Perdita Holtz; Planning 14 Systems Coordinator; Patrick Mallett, Planner II, Rachel McCook, Planner I; Meredith Kern, Administrative Assistant II. 15 16 17 AGENDA ITEM 1: CALL TO ORDER AND ROLL CALL 18 19 Lydia Wegman called meeting to order. 20 21 22 AGENDA ITEM 2: UNIFIED DEVELOPMENT ORDINANCE (UDO) TEXT AMENDMENTS – TEMPORARY RESIDENTIAL UNITS 23 CONDITIONAL DISTRICT 24 To review and comment upon proposed amendments to the UDO that would establish a new 25 conditional zoning district for temporary housing units. 26 Presenter: Patrick Mallett, Planner II 27 28 Patrick Mallett reviewed the abstract. 29 30 Lisa Stuckey: I don’t understand why we have to go through these charades. 31 32 Patrick Mallett: That’s the way the state building code, the health codes, all of the codes are defined. 33 34 Lisa Stuckey: So these are not built to habitable standards? 35 36 Patrick Mallett: Yes, once you go beyond that magic day it becomes a permanent structure or residence. 37 38 Lisa Stuckey: So what about the tiny homes? On TV I’ve seen tiny homes subdivisions. These are very permanent. 39 40 Patrick Mallett: They’re not. You could do a subdivision, theoretically, with 10 lots and do 10 tiny ho mes that meet the 41 minimum lot standards. I think part of the rub is unless you do something like a cluster subdivision, you end up with a 300 42 square foot tiny home on a 1-acre lot. It may work, it may not. I think that the cost of the land basis kind of drives that out of 43 the realm of reality. It definitely does in the Rural Buffer where you’ve got 2-acre to 5-acre lots. 44 45 Tony Blake: They’re doing it in Chatham County but when they did it there was no zoning at all so they were able to pull it 46 together. 47 48 Patrick Mallett: Right now, you would either build the tiny home on a foundation that could be a stick built, and most of them 49 are not long enough. You can also build to a modular home standard; a mobile home standard; or now an RV Park Model 50 Standard of construction. 51 52 Lydia Wegman: I don’t know. The ones I’ve seen that are not that big. 53 54 Approved 12/7/16 2 Patrick Mallett: The framing ultimately becomes an issue. You’ll see a lot of the literature will say, “These are energy effi cient, 55 they’re sustainable”. Well yeah, that’s true but they have solar on them because they can’t meet the electrical code. In other 56 words, the spacing requirements for the electrical wiring and the framing doesn’t work out. Literally, these things are so sh ort 57 you can’t frame a window and a door, and a structural frame and get all the electrical wiring or the framing to work to meet 58 those code requirements. So that’s the rub. It’s not a hatred for a smaller home. 59 60 Lisa Stuckey: So if you took a mobile home park and you wanted to put all tiny homes in it then it would end up being all 61 temporary? 62 63 Patrick Mallett: Or they would be underpinned and built to the mobile home standard. I think a lot of people are realizing th at 64 we need to allow for these tiny homes, but do them to the mobile home standard and go in a mobile home park or do it as a 65 camper unit and put it in an RV park. As it stands today the RV part of this really, we don’t have an allowance for that. The 66 only way you can have an RV and stay off of your property is you can park one obviously, but you’re not supposed to have 67 Cousin Eddy living there. So if somebody enterprises and said, “Hey, there’s a market. I want to do an RV park,” they would 68 have to get a SUP for a camp retreat center. It’s the only way that they could do it. 69 70 Tony Blake: There are some with that business model. They existed before. 71 72 Patrick Mallett: That’s right. They’re grandfathered in. So how do you know that but also realize that there are changes in t he 73 market place and there are people that need to come here for a period of time and they can’t afford to stay in an extended 74 stay, or a hotel. This is an alternative, same thing with a mobile home. I think that there may be people that want to do a t iny 75 home, not so much a single or doublewide type of product. So tha t’s the essence of the text change. It just so happens that 76 Allen said, “you know the Department of Environmental Health just released guidelines on a white paper and it has a nice 77 description code, all of those nuances about the RV park model, what is a r ecreational vehicle and everything else”, so I 78 brought this along as a handout and if you want I can ask Allen and or Michael to come to the Planning Board meeting and 79 give you their pieces. I’ll meet with them and go over the nuts and bolts and technical minutia. We’re meeting with the legal 80 team tomorrow. And Ashley Moncado of our office has been working with the group that’s been working on affordable, 81 sustainable, tiny home stuff and so I’ve asked her to speak so we can make sure this is in sync with th at effort, which is not 82 this. 83 84 Lydia Wegman: It’s not the same thing? 85 86 Patrick Mallett: Their focus is tiny home. 87 88 Lydia Wegman: And will they be defining tiny home? 89 90 Patrick Mallett: I think it is still murky. There are all kinds of ideas and no clear legal way to define it. And that’s part of her 91 advice that I’m going to lean on. For legal purposes, a tiny home is to be built to an RV standard or built to a mobile home 92 standard. And that’s that. There’s a new term that’s emerging called micro-home. So my thought is I don’t want to wait. And 93 the building code is not there. They don’t have a standard. Their response to this day is it’s either a RV, a mobile home, a 94 modular home, or a single-family home. And the reason they do that is that RV’s have license plates. It’s built to a 95 transportation standard. It’s never intended to be a permanent residence. Mobile home is built to a different standard that’s 96 been vetted, and approved, and tested. Like I said, the basic section is that we need to change and the 2 districts. The mobile 97 home park district conditional use and the TRU, Temporary Residential Unit. 98 99 Tony Blake: Where are the close districts? Are they just not… 100 101 Patrick Mallett: We have no plans to re-zone something the TRU CZ. That would be upon someone… They would file a case, 102 they would have to show us a site plan, specify where thee stalls and the spaces are it would be virtually the same. 103 104 Tony Blake: Is there any minimum acreage size or anything like that? 105 106 Patrick Mallett: Same acreage. For the purposes of impact on the surrounding area, all the setbacks, all the minimum acreage 107 requirements are the same as a mobile home lot. 108 Approved 12/7/16 3 109 Tony Blake: How would the septic be figured? 110 111 Patrick Mallett: If you’re doing homes you would have to have a lot, you would have to have a septic system; you would have 112 to have a well, making permanent connections. 113 114 Tony Blake: But if you’re doing a mobile home park it’s different? And that would follow that same standard. 115 116 Patrick Mallett: Yeah. Because there’s not a lot so it’s a space… Conventional standards are from the driveway. And they’re 117 really designed so that people can come in and come out and emergency services can service and solid waste can service 118 them. One of the interesting things that is… A tiny home is the only way that you can get a single bedroom septic system. 119 120 Lisa Stuckey: Could those houses made out of container boxes? 121 122 Patrick Mallett: As long as you can build it to a standard it could be made out of recycled plastic. But it has to meet a code. 123 124 Lydia Wegman: Does it have to meet a building code of some kind? 125 126 Tony Blake: Well it has to meet a mobile home standard. 127 128 Patrick Mallett: The HUD standards for Mobile Homes, yeah. 129 130 Tony Blake: But the problem is with the tiny homes is that cost per square foot is so much greater than it is for a mobile home. 131 And so it’s hard to justify. 132 133 Lisa Stuckey: But they’re taking those containers and making them into houses. But it’s the same, are they mobile or not 134 mobile? 135 136 Patrick Mallett: Yeah, exactly. And what standard are the built to, and what type of utilities are the hooked up to (permanent or 137 not)? This is part 2 of those 4 text changes that are moving through. Michael’s got one of them that will be part 3. I see it as a 138 step in the right direction and at least we can give the people some answers and some guidance versus you can live in a 139 camp retreat center if you get it approved. So our goal is to get this one to the February Public Hearing. 140 141 Tony Blake: One more question. How does this fit with accessory use, or does it? 142 143 Patrick Mallett: It’ll be the same as it applies for others. There’s supervision in there for the sheds. So let’s say you had an RV 144 park, you had common open space, it’s owned by the landlord, and you have a caretaker. Theoretically you could get a shed 145 and for an extra $5 a month you get a shelf in the storage accessory structure. But the same rules would apply as accessory 146 shed structures. 147 148 Paul Guthrie: I’ve got a question. We have some in my house that watch all these tiny building shows that are on TV, so that’s 149 my exposure. But one of the things those show is that there’s a growing range of cost on things of a similar size. Has there 150 been any effort or any movement towards trying to get some more common definitions of these various alternatives? 151 152 Patrick Mallett: That’s the affordable housing part of this that Ashley is involved in. We’re getting into the mobile home pa rk 153 and the RV park part of it. The sustainability, affordability part is a much bigger then, and then defining it. I think they’ve spent 154 a long time trying to define. 155 156 Paul Guthrie: There’s a broad range in those general exposures. 157 158 Patrick Mallett: Exactly. You ask 10 people what a tiny home is and 5 of them are probably going to say, “Like that show” and 159 the other 5 are going to have very different opinions in what that is. But by far I think the most common product has wheels on 160 it and a chasse and is built to either no standard or an RV standard. 161 162 Approved 12/7/16 4 Lydia Wegman: So should we expect some changes following your meeting with the attorneys and? 163 164 Patrick Mallett: Yeah. This is the first. We’ve gone through the first pass of this and then we’ll put the legal vice grips through 165 it. 166 167 Lydia Wegman: I want to speak in sport of Lisa’s plan. I think it’s worth it to look into doing something smaller than 10-acres, if 168 possible. 169 170 Patrick Mallett: Ok. That’s a good point. And I think that there probably will be some experimentation. For example, the 171 gentleman on Orange Grove Road is like, “I’m not going to completely convert this stuff on a speculative rolling the dice and 172 throwing it on the table, but I’m willing to convert a couple of the stalls and see what happens.”. And his idea was that there’s a 173 market and it’s a good idea to get involved in that. There are nuances with rega rd to a RV park versus a mobile home park. 174 Mobile home parks tend to rent by the month. RV parks tend to rent by the day or the week. And from a maintainer standpoint 175 that’s a pain. But it may be worth it, willing to try, that’s part of his input. 176 177 Lydia Wegman: Are there advantages of being a RV park? 178 179 Patrick Mallett: A lot of interest. And the other part of this that I think pertains to that bigger discussion is that some o f these 180 things, based on where you put it and how it’s classified, impact your ability to get a mortgage. If it’s got wheels it’s probably 181 going to depreciate. But this is about the zoning and the panning part of it. That’s it. 182 183 184 Lydia Wegman closed the meeting. 185 186 187 188 ___________________________________ 189 Lydia Wegman, Chair 190