{"id":10024,"date":"2014-09-05T17:05:57","date_gmt":"2014-09-05T21:05:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=10024"},"modified":"2014-09-05T17:11:43","modified_gmt":"2014-09-05T21:11:43","slug":"solar-parking-v-accessory-structure-in-valdosta-ldr-zboa-2014-08-05","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/solar-parking-v-accessory-structure-in-valdosta-ldr-zboa-2014-08-05.html","title":{"rendered":"Solar Parking v. accessory structure in Valdosta LDR @ ZBOA 2014-08-05"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nBoth of\r\nDr. Urbonas’ solar parking lot\r\nvariance cases\r\nwere tabled by ZBOA for a month so he could figure out a revised way to do it,\r\nprobably involving connecting the supports to the building so\r\nthey wouldn’t be accessory structures.\r\nPlus some sentiment that Valdosta City Council needed to address this\r\nissue that solar parking shouldn’t be classed as accessory structures.\r\nThis was at the\r\n\r\n5 August 2014 Regular Meeting of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Zoning Board of Appeals<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n
    \r\n
  1. \r\n\r\n\r\nAPP-2014-07 — Arunas Urbonas<\/a>\r\n<\/strong>\r\n
    \r\n(2922 N. Oak Street)\r\n
    \r\nVariance to LDR Section 218-7 as it \r\npertains to the location and setback distance for accessory structures \r\n

    \r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nVideo.<\/a>\r\n\r\nArunas Urbonas is a doctor<\/a> with an office at 3564 N Crossing Street.\r\nMy guess (some sort of addition to his offices) was wrong.\r\nHe wants to upgrade his solar panel structures,\r\nto shade parking lots.\r\nTRC recommended denial because of canopy oak trees that would get\r\nbigger, probably shading the panels, and were not permitted to be removed. ZBOA found many more issues pro and con than that.\r\n

    \r\n\r\nJames D. Cone<\/a>, Architect, 1806 Plum Street, passed out some pictures\r\nof the solar structures.\r\nNumerous people said they were in favor of solar, but they didn’t\r\nwant to set a precedent of letting structures be too close to a street.\r\nMac McCall pointed out they would be no closer to the street than light poles.\r\nNancy Hobby wanted to know if they’d addressed the issue of tree shading.\r\nCone’s answer was that would happen, and it would reduce power generation\r\nsomewhat, but that was acceptable.\r\nGretchen Quarterman and the Chairman asked if they could move them\r\nto a different side of the property.\r\nCone said behind the building would be even shadier, and basically useless.\r\n

    \r\nGreg Kelly of Hannah Solar spoke for, saying shaded parking solar generation\r\nwas the goal, showing the doctor’s concern for his patients.\r\nMac McCall wanted to know if the supports were connected to the building,\r\nwould that count as an accessory building?\r\nAnswer, nope; that would be a walk way.\r\nGretchen said that was what she had been suggesting, and it could\r\nstick out and cover the parking, too.\r\n

    \r\nDr. Urbonas\r\n\r\nleapt up<\/a> and said they were looking at various areas.\r\nAlso that most of the sun comes in the morning under the trees.\r\nThe patients are very sick, getting life-sustaining therapy,\r\nand he didn’t want them to have to get back into cars that had\r\nbeen getting hot in the sun all morning.\r\n

    \r\nSeems to me Valdosta and Lowndes County needs some code changes\r\nto deal with solar supports.\r\nAnyway, they put it off for a month so the applicant could come up\r\nwith a revised way to meet the goals of shade and solar generation.\r\n

    \r\nVideo.<\/a>\r\nGretchen\r\n\r\nmoved for approval<\/a> and got no second.\r\nDr. Houseal moved for denial; Mac McCall seconded.\r\nThey voted for, while Orrenstein, Hobby, and Quarterman voted against,\r\nso the motion failed.\r\n(Laverne Gaskins had already left the meeting at some point.)\r\nScott Orenstein moved to temporarily table until hearing the other\r\ncase. Dr. Houseal seconded. Unanimous approval.\r\n

    \r\nZBOA’s own\r\n\r\nSummary<\/a> says:\r\n

    \r\nTABLED until the September 9th ZBOA meeting (4-1 vote) \r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

    \r\nThat’s actually incorrect: the vote was unanimous as you can see in the\r\nvideo of the next item.\r\n

  2. \r\n\r\n\r\nAPP-2014-08 — Arunas Urbonas<\/a>\r\n<\/strong>\r\n
    \r\n(3564 N. Crossing Circle)\r\n
    \r\nVariance to LDR Section 218-7 \r\nas it pertains to the location and setback distance for accessory structures \r\n

    \r\nVideo.<\/a>\r\nSame solar parking lot idea as\r\n\r\nthe previous item<\/a>.\r\nStaff once again recommended denial because of trees.\r\nScott Orenstein said this wasn’t the first time and Gretchen Quarterman\r\nsaid it wouldn’t be the last time this came up, and he wondered how\r\nthey could get it reclassified as something other than an accessory structure.\r\nCity Planner Matt Martin said there were two classifications:\r\naccessory building and accessory structure, and this was the latter,\r\nas a carport.\r\nHe added “the solar panels are irrelevant”.\r\nSeems to me that last is exactly the problem: they shouldn’t be irrelevant.\r\n

    \r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nOrenstein pointed out a bus canopy was different than a carport and\r\ncloser to the roadway.\r\nChairman said Valdosta City Council needed to address that.\r\nGretchen pointed out these types of structures were all over Atlanta.\r\nAlso that for this item, connecting to the building would be impossible.\r\n

    \r\nChairman pointed out ZBOA had the power to grant this request,\r\nbut he wasn’t sure it was appropriate unless Valdosta City Council\r\nchanged the LDR to deal with solar parking being different than accessory\r\nstructures.\r\n

    \r\nChairman clarified that if they denied it, the same applicant couldn’t\r\ncome back with this application for 12 months.\r\nAlthough applicant would have 30 days to persuade ZBOA to rehear the case.\r\nIf ZBOA voted to table, applicant could revise and ZBOA could hear again\r\nat next meeting.\r\nThat resulted in a spate of diverse discussions among the board.\r\n

    \r\nQuarterman moved to table for 30 days; Orenstein seconded, \r\nDr. Houseal voted against; the rest for; so the motion passed.\r\nThey repeated the exercise for the previous item<\/a>,\r\nthis time Quarterman moved, Hobby seconded, and the vote was unanimous.\r\n

    \r\nZBOA’s own\r\n\r\nSummary<\/a> says:\r\n

    \r\nTABLED until the September 9th ZBOA meeting (4-1 vote) \r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

    \r\nVideo.<\/a>\r\nThey continued talking about these solar items informally after adjournment.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

    \r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Both of Dr. Urbonas’ solar parking lot variance cases were tabled by ZBOA for a month so he could figure out a revised way to do it, probably involving connecting the supports to the building so they wouldn’t be accessory structures. Plus some sentiment that Valdosta City Council needed to address this issue that solar […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[18,3252,24,54,1341],"tags":[7785,7858,7786,8701,8708,10,8868,8702,5396,3304,12,7,2878,4,8714,6,8726,2320,8826],"class_list":["post-10024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-georgia-power","category-hannah-solar","category-solar","category-valdosta-city-council","category-zboa","tag-5-august-2014","tag-accessory-structure","tag-arunas-urbonas","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-gretchen-quarterman","tag-hannah-solar","tag-lake","tag-land-development-regulations","tag-ldr","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-parking","tag-regular-session","tag-solar","tag-valdosta","tag-valdosta-city-council","tag-valdosta-lowndes-county-zoning-board-of-appeals","tag-zboa"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-2BG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10024"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10030,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10024\/revisions\/10030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}