Council hears new language on adjoining building issue

At the City of Sidney Council meeting last night City of Sidney Attorney J. Leef presented the council with revisions of two different proposed city residential laws.

After taking feedback from both the previous council meeting and the city’s planning commission meeting Monday night, Leef gave recommendations based on the teams’ inputs regarding the definition of accessory buildings in residential zones.

Also discussed was the continued consideration of an ordinance related to the parking of recreational vehicles and trailers in town.

“The planning commission did go over the language that you had suggested at the last meeting and did make some changes,” Leef said regarding the definition of accessory buildings.

“What we have here says it shall not exceed, and is to-be-determined, 1,200 square feet. Instead of whatever is ‘larger’ they have changed it to whatever is ‘smaller.’”

Leef said that the commission members were comfortable with the rest of the description but they are having staff rewrite another proposal and hope that the council will not take action until they have had a chance to look at the new language and agree once more.

The attorney said that the definition of a garage versus the definition of an accessory building was also discussed among commission members.

Leef said that upon further examination the garage segment was deleted from the proposed rules, due to the reason that it was already defined as an accessory building.

She said that simply wording was causing confusion.

“They were trying to say that you certainly could have a garage and an accessory building, but there had to be some sort of limit. So it looked to us as thought it was going to be two accessory buildings maximum and not counting the small less than 180 square feet building as one of those too. I agree you make one change and it can affect the entire look,” Leef said.

Sidney Mayor Wendall Gaston inquired about the new definition of a common wall since many members of the community had asked him about it.

The attorney answered that it was discussed that instead of having a common breezeway to make a building an attached accessory building that maybe the building should instead share a common wall with the primary residence. It was discussed that residents should possibly be required to have a certain percentage of a wall be connected to the primary building.

“It comes down to trying to define it. If you limit it to a certain percentage, what are you calling something that doesn’t meet with that percentage?” Leefasked.

Council member Aaron Barnes suggested another approach to define an attached accessory building.

“If it helps what I have seen in other communities is that anything structured that is within 10 feet of the main structure is considered attached. That way you are getting away from the common wall and breezeway,” Barnes said.“It’s another option if the planning commission wanted to talk about it; it’s within 10 feet is attached, further than 10 feet it’s not attached.”

Leef agreed to send Barnes’ idea along with her revised text to the commission members.

Council members agreed to table the proposed ordinance until it can be adjusted.

Discussion also continued on the possible ordinances relating to where trailers and recreational vehicles are allowed to be parked.

Leef said that with combined efforts from Sidney Police Chief Mike Brown, they had come up with some revisions and ideas for the possible ordinances.

“We changed the definition of vehicle and dropped out the word ‘bicycles’ because there is a section that deals with that already,” she said.

The attorney said that the definition of recreational vehicles was also created.

“It also changed to any vehicle can park for 72 hours rather than the 24 hour window. But then specifically exempted the recreational vehicles saying that they can’t stay there 72 hours,” Leef said.

She also said that the proper parking and storing parameters for recreational vehicles were also redefined.

Gaston said that a lot of community members had come to him asking if recreational vehicles and trailers would be allowed on their lots at all.

Brown said that they could be allowed under the revisions if they followed certain guidelines such as parking them on a built side yard pad adjacent to the driveway or in the back yard.

“I think that they (recreational vehicles) should be allowed to stay on the street. I kind of like the April 15 to Oct. 15 time period,” council member Joe Arterburn said.

“In the summer it’s the recreational time of year and that’s when people have their boats out and campers out and it seems like we have to make some sort of provision for parking on the street for people who don’t have side yards or backyards.”

“If you have an operational or licensed vehicle or recreational vehicle you can still park it on your lot. I think they can park them in the driveway. If they have a pad or a driveway that’s fine. If it is on their property, it’s fine,” Gaston said.“I have a little problem with on the street because we are getting some narrow streets where if you have one on each side it is pretty tough to get through them.”

“The limitations may need to be revised if you are going to let these things go on the street. Recreational vehicles, and vehicles like that continue to get wider and bigger and it’s causing us more and more problems on more and more streets,” John Hehnke, the City of Sidney’s public service coordinator said.

Hehnke said that in some instances only one vehicle at a time could fit down some streets.

“With the additional parking of vehicles having more than two vehicles that are being parked on the streets you start to park the boats and the campers and it really starts to congest our streets to the point where it has gotten quite cramped,” Hehnke said.

Brown also said that the congestion due to extra recreational vehicles canalso cause a problem for law enforcement.

“They present some concerns from a public safety law enforcement perspective. They block house address numbers so we have a hard time finding out what house we need to go to when responding to a call,” Brown said.

“Obviously it’s just one more structure out there that the suspect can hide behind or under or in. There are concerns. Are they insurmountable? No, we’ve been dealing with it up to this point. But yes, they can present issues.”

An additional issue that council member Mark Nienhueser addressed was the occurrence of these vehicles being parked on curbs and sidewalks.

“Another thing along those lines is they park them in the streets and straddle the curb and put the wheels on the sidewalks then you don’t have a way to pass. And then when they drop their dollys and don’t put dunnage underneath of it, now we have damaged the streets,” Nienhueser said. “If we are going to allow them I want to see them held accountable to any damage done to the street. While we’re going the extra mile by allowing them to park out there, trucks and these vehicles have damaged the streets and now these become another problem.”

Hehnke said that sometimes vehicles such as campers can stick out over the sidewalk, making it harder not only for pedestrians to walk by but also for city workers to keep the streets clean.

Barnes also raised the question as to whether construction equipment was allowed to sit on the streets.

“I would like to keep working on it and get a response back of what people think about parking on the street. If it is on their property I have no issue with that at all. If it’s in their driveway or their pad I don’t think I want to be telling them where they have to park it. If it is off the street I’m happy with that,” Gaston said.

“There are a couple lots in town where they have a camper, they’ve got a tractor, they have a trailer and stacks of firewood in a residential area and they are turning it into a multipurpose storage area,” Nienhueser said.

“It’s for residential use and we are not holding them accountable for getting that junk off of there. If I was their neighbor I’d be livid. We are doing nothing but detracting the value of the neighborhood when we allow that to happen and we don’t do anything about it. That is why our older neighborhoods will continue to deter and we will see them go downhill. It’s our responsibility to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Leef said that all discussion would be taken into consideration and a new proposal idea would be formed based on creating unlimited parking for vehicles, including recreational vehicles, from April 15 to Oct. 15 and taking out the banning of parking use for said vehicles in the front driveway.

“We also won’t be prohibiting the parking of a recreational vehicle upon the streets up to 24 hours at any time,” she said.

Gaston said that he greatly encouraged community input on the matter.

“Those people that have recreational vehicles please help us with that a bit, as well as ones that don’t. Please get ahold of us,” Gaston said.

Also brought up at the meeting were concerns from community members regarding the marking of each school zone and the repainting of school crosswalks around the area to make commuters more aware of where those zones and crosses are.

Hehnke said that the team plans to repaint the crosswalks this spring and attempt to do so twice each year.