HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes PC 05-21-24
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Plan Commission Minutes 5-21-24
be provided for the new JGV residents. To Sue’s point, Dubbie’s question, and Councilwoman Minnaar’s statements, yeah,
there were commitments made back then. But then the whole game changed when the Cunningham parcel came into play.
Staff tried to do the right thing by saying instead of the Cunningham parcel being developed by itself and becoming a thing
hard to manage, let’s do the right thing and move it to the east. This will lower net density, provide shared parking, all the
good things we need in our community, including daycare. I understand the daycare is the continuation of the “boogieman” of
commercial west of Spring Mill Road and a number of residents who are very well organized have convinced themselves this
is a really bad thing. But I have said it before – I think this Commission is tasked with making tough decisions for the right
thing for the community. Everyone has heard my buggy-whip comment before, sometimes people convince themselves of one
thing and they are not sure what they actually want. When I see everything, and I try to be objective about it, I really think the
right thing to do is presenting itself. I guess we are going to have to vote and decide which one of those things it is.
Campagna motioned to provide a favorable recommendation to the City Council seconded by Kirsch.
MOTION FAILED 4-5: (Nay: Buckler, Grabow, Minnaar, Westermeier, & Zoccola)
Commissioner Westermeier and Zoccola requested clarification on why a second motion was entertained for consideration
after the failure of the first motion which they thought should mean the recommendation to City Council would be
unfavorable since the favorable motion failed. Commissioner Zoccola asked legal counsel to confirm that they had updated the
rules of procedure to not require a revote. Legal counsel responded that for items such as ADLS where the Commission
provides a yes/no final determination that is the case, but in their advisory capacity regarding rezones they should revote to
provide a recommendation.
Minnaar: I would like to personally see if there is a way we could work out keeping the square footage in the commercial
area what we promised. That’s not a promise, it’s in our ordinance and we all know they are allowed to redo these things, but I
would like to see if we can figure out a way to try and keep it at the maximum that was presented previously.
Buckler motioned to provide no recommendation to the City Council seconded by Kirsh.
APPROVED 5-4: (Nay: Grabow, Hill, Westermeier, & Zoccola)
2. Docket No. PZ-2024-00041 OA: Non-Dwelling Short-Term Rental Standards UDO Amendment
The applicant seeks to amend the Unified Development Ordinance to establish standards and definitions for Non-
Dwelling Short-Term Rentals. Filed by the Department of Community Services on behalf of the Carmel Plan
Commission.
Petitioner: Adrienne Keeling:
• Keeling opened with a brief refresher on the definition of non-dwelling short-term rentals which is essentially any
rental of outdoor space or property on a residential lot.
• Keeling provided a breakdown of all revisions that were made to the draft ordinance during committee which are as
follows;
o Language clarifying the application of this ordinance to PUDs.
o Reduction from three to two notices of violations or citations to trigger automatic revocation of approval.
o Added clarifying language that liability insurance requirement was per incident/ occurrence and that annual
insurance renewal information must be provided to staff.
o Added language requiring that at least one person in the rental party must be 21 years of age.
o Limited rentals to one day per calendar month not to exceed five hours.
o Revised definition wording to include generic “yard” instead of specific “backyard” to avoid a loophole.
Committee Comments:
Commissioner Buckler inquired about the new language clarifying the application of the ordinance to PUDs. Legal counsel
informed her that the language they drafted was per the request of the committee, but they do not advise adding it because it
would be inconsistent with how the rest of the ordinance is written. Legal counsel feared that could lead to legal challenges
based on rules for statutory construction. Yet there is still within the general zoning ordinance language that makes sure PUDs
are properly covered.
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Plan Commission Minutes 5-21-24
Commissioner Zoccola concurred with legal counsel’s concern over statutory construction. She stated she was now of the
opinion that the proposed wording be removed.
Sensing some hesitancy from the Plan Commission on fully removing the clarifying language regarding PUDs legal counsel
suggested a compromise solution that removed the language from the direct text of the ordinance and instead placed it within a
footnote. The Plan Commission was overall supportive of the compromise.
Grabow: The zoning districts listed there which may find their way into a footnote, does that encompass all residential uses
going back to the very first PUD in 1999?
Grechukhin: Kind of a curve ball question. I actually don’t know. I am not sure if we had R5 or S1 or S2 back in the day?
Adrienne you might know a little bit more.
Grabow: But the intent would be to make sure that all of our PUDs were drilling down to the underlying residential use? We
don’t care about Parkwood or any of our commercial PUDs, correct?
Grechukhin: Correct.
Grabow: Ultimately maybe at the Council level if it turns out this is less a land use issue and more of a behavior issue and it
finds its way into City Code instead of the UDO.
Minnaar: Yes, that could be possible.
Grabow: It’s a behavior issue, and that is my other concern, there was language in the previous draft that said the resident
must be present at all times so that if CPD comes knocking on their door there is someone to talk and not all properties are
owned by an individual, many are in trusts or corporate names. So when there is offensive behavior I think what the neighbors
want is to have the party shut down. Its not very satisfactory to have that noise continue for four more hours knowing that the
owner is going to get a citation, they want the party shut down.
Commissioner Minnaar went on to summarize a conversation she recently had with a Carmel firefighter that stated not having
the owner present during such rentals could be a problem as the renters might not be aware of the locations of things such as
the gas shutoff which could increase risk to first responders in the case of emergency calls to the property.
Coleman: I love the notice of violation being reduced. The million dollars per occurrence is probably going to be cost
prohibitive at some point one would assume, but I am not an insurance broker. Then we give them one day for five hours. My
thought process on this just to play devil’s advocate as lawyers often like to do, if you go through all these provisions it seems
like we are being a little punitive by saying you’ve registered with us, you have the right amounts, we aren’t even going to let
you have a party till dark cause in the summer you know the sun doesn’t even go down till 10pm. Even if we bump that to 9 it
still gets people out of there by 10 probably. It just seems a little restrictive to me, maybe that is something that the Council
can work through in their process, but I just feel like as it stands if you do all these things, and you are responsible enough to
do that maybe we should allow you a couple more days.
Westermeier: You know I thought it was two times?
Zoccola: No, it is one time per month. That is what we landed on after quite a bit of discussion and Counciler Worell was
there who has really kind of talked to all the residents about it. For a resident that happened to live next door to this he
described it, and I will let Counciler Minnaar chime in more, they lose the use of their backyard, because they have this huge
part going on all day long. The point of this is it is not supposed to be where this is someone’s new business it is supposed to
be an option on occasion or something special once in a while. It is not just in the summer this is all year round. They could
rent out their backyard with their fire pit. I mean it’s all year round so once per month is where we landed after quite a bit of
discussion.
Minnaar: Chaka I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but what I disagree with is you know it’s a quality-of-life issue I think
for people who have…everybody shares backyards in neighborhoods. Personally, I think it’s a quality-of-life issue. To your
point Christine if you really want to run a business is it supposed to be at your home?
Coleman: Well according to the Constitution… I do think there are bad actors but there are also homes in Carmel where you
can’t even see the next home because their lot is so big and are we unnecessarily restricting an estate home? We should be
able to in a free market use our homes that we are paying for. We have Airbnb correct? I don’t know if we have bad actors or
what the process is for getting them not to, but I just don’t want us to get to the point where we are solely focused on one issue
that we inadvertently punish everyone.
Minnaar: If I may talk about that to the punishment piece. I think about a situation in our neighborhood where someone
bought a house strictly for short term renting. I am just using this as an example. They don’t live there and it’s a constant
barrage of people coming and going from there five to seven days a week. Like I said it goes back to a quality-of-life issue. I
know constitutionally we all have the right to do what we want with our land within…you take deed you take rules that go
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Plan Commission Minutes 5-21-24
with the land. Yet when I think about the bad actors who want to do this too your point, they are going to jump through those
hoops to do that, they will do that. Its not meant to be an enterprise, its meant to allow people to rent their home out… excuse
me their yard, pool, fire pit, or whatever. I just know having to knock on someone’s door to tell them there is someone naked
running down the street is not something I want to have to deal with. Like you said there are good people out there and they
don’t necessarily fall into that category. I am just thinking long term. This is just my opinion; I am thinking about my
neighbors.
Kirsh: When I saw people who talked about what was going on, and I think we are really talking about the bad actors, it made
me distressed. The thing that really resonated with me was if I have a problem with my neighbor Don, I can go knock on
Don’s door and be like, “Dude Don clean up your action a little bit”. If there’s bad actors at the end of my cul-de-sac I am like
button up the doors and baton the hatches and we are just going to ride the storm out. Admittedly I didn’t go through this with
a fine tooth like some of you attorneys have or you council people have, but on a personal note as a side note to this sometimes
we make these rules and we try and cover every scenario and I don’t know that we are actually getting to the actually thing?
One of the things that popped into my head is if you rent out your house for one day once a month could you rent it out the last
day of the month and then the first day of the next month? My guess is you probably don’t want people doing back-to-back.
Zoccola: Yeah so we talked about this a lot at committee. So it’s the length of the permit, it could be in July it could be in
December. It’s one year from the time you get your permit, so it does not reset in a calendar year. So, it doesn’t reset Jan. 1st
automatically unless that is when you got your permit.
Kirsh: No, no that’s not what I am saying. I am saying do you have a problem with them renting them back-to-back? One day
one month and then the first day of the next month.
Zoccola: You could actually I didn’t think about that, but yeah you could.
Kirsh: The other thing I was thinking actually was don’t you really want the people who own these properties to be
conversing with their neighbors so there is some accountability?
Minnaar: Well to that point these bad actors we are talking about don’t do that.
Kirsh: No, no, no that’s my point though. If my neighbor Don wants to rent out his fire pit or his backyard or whatever maybe
he should have to come knock on my door and maybe he has to come knock on my door and say, “Hey next weekend I am
renting my house out”.
Zoccola: I see your point, but we have to do something. This process is public so there is a public hearing. So, if your
neighbor is going to ren out his backyard there will be a public hearing and you will get notice, I am assuming typical
noticing. So, you could show up and say I think that’s a bad idea or not.
Minnaar: I spoke to a friend who is an HOA attorney and I asked him about swim laws…I’m going to just use swimming
pools because it’s the easiest usage. He said it always takes time for these things that come from the coast - the east coast the
west coast - to filter to the Midwest. Part of this for me is making sure we do have some sort of language on the books so if the
state legislature does decide to make a law saying municipalities can’t do this at least we are prepared and on our toes and not
on our back heels to protect our neighbors.
Buckler: There was a lot of discussion about this at the committee. You can’t legislate for every situation, but there were key
situations that brought this to this body for consideration in the first place. With the temperatures we had today we are in the
summer pool season, and the petitioner, the author of this proposal had a sense of urgency to move this along.
Motion by Buckler and seconded by Zoccola to provide a favorable recommendation to City Council.
APPROVED 9-0
Meeting adjourned at 7:50 PM.
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Bric Butler PC Secretary Brad Grabow President