001messiah township michigan very schulte jerry you were muted sorry present attending remotely from the city of ann arbor angie rasmussen president attending remotely from city of ann arbor lisa stelter present and attending from ann arbor michigan tim durham is absent and staff we have randy lewis president and reporting from the city of adrian john riser president and here in ann arbor michael redmond president from ann arbor glenn dempsey attending from ann arbor myself deborah williams from ann arbor and we do have a quorum all right great thank you up next is the approval of our agenda entertain a motion to approve the agenda i make a motion to approve thanks jerry a second i'll second it thanks angie any discussion all right all in favor please say aye hi post all right agenda is approved
002up next is our public commentary outside of our applicant do we have any members of the public that would like to address the board we have no one in the waiting room okay all right then i think we i think it's safe to move on um we'll move on to the approval of the minutes uh before us we have the housing board of appeals meeting minutes from june 8th of 2021 folks could take a second to review those i will entertain a motion i would motion to approve thanks jerry second angel ii all in favor aye aye post okay june meeting minutes are approved up up next is our old business we have a table variance for um 907 sunnyside in ann arbor and it's also in our packet i believe we um are revisiting
003this now that we have a cost estimate and so i would just ask for a quick uh overview from the city and then we'll also hear from the applicant so um mike are you giving the report or is glenn today i am great thanks um the the staff um is isn't sort of the same position that we were before we're not recommending it be approved because we can't determine if that stair is original to the house if the stair is original the house under building code r102.7 for existing structures the stairs could remain the way that they are now um the the issue comes in is that there's a a permit that was issued um in 1966 if that stairway was the interior stairway um it would not meet the code of the time and
004would need to be altered to become compliant and i believe that it was discussed last time that there's an exterior stair that could have been altered around the same time thank you or do you have any questions of the city at this time before we hear from the applicant all right not see any mr zeller would you like to um address the board of course good afternoon members of the board um appreciates you taking the time here to look at the application of for variants for my property at 907 sunnyside boulevard if you see that the concern seems to be that um it's it cannot be determined that by the members of the board if the staircase is original to the house or if this is the the staircase at the back entrance um i've
005taken pictures of the staircase at the back entrance which is a concrete staircase i could submit that by email if that's helpful right now um that would make sense um in terms of this permit in 1966 was filed by pyre which is a concrete concrete uh concrete tractor the staircase that leads to the basement is inside the house it leads from the kitchen too there's there seems to be some kind of is that me um feedback not sure but we can still understand you oh okay and can if you can hear me i continue i can hear you um the the staircase i in my application have taken pictures of the staircase i i strongly believe that it is original to the house i have removed the carpet also of the staircase now and what
006could we do about it to clarify this question we had talked about this last time i mean would it help you helpful if uh this schedule here um a meeting at the house um we look at this staircase um in so i've submitted a floor plan with my application and there is however the outside staircase or the the is implicated in this 1966 um um a permit is not drawn in there but it's a back entrance staircase that is code um so what can what could i do here to help you with the clarification um of what is the staircase in the pictures i think one can see the staircase i filed the variance application form is within the house it has six steps leads from the kitchen uh to the half basement the um
007staircase in the back entrance of the house however is not included in my application since i did not realize it would be part of the discussion thank you i remember seeing the pictures from last time of the concrete stairs that go from the surface level down into the basement so i know that at least some of us have seen those i think we were all in that same meeting yes we were fine so i don't know that we need to see those again um and those stereo cases are to code they have a 10 inch thread depth they do have um i would have to look now at the exact measurements but they are to code um i think the rhizome those staircases is also seven inches and they're wide enough and this stairway is
008constructed out of wood correct right it's constructed out of wood yeah there used to be a carpet on there and i've removed the carpet now um so the red one can i actually see it better but i've not taken pictures since then i do have um brandon um box um has scheduled a re-inspection for this coming week on monday if i may brandon is out of the office so it will be jeff malone that will be coming okay so there is a there is a reinspection scheduled for this coming week but it actually um yeah there were a few other minor things um in the original inspection report that i have fixed in the meantime and i think the additional information submitted this time was the um the repair estimate and that that's what you
009asked for and so i got in the repair estimate it's right now difficult to get contractors they are all fairly busy um are there any questions or further questions i can answer i don't have any questions anyone else on the board so we've ruled out that the permit or we're not 100 gerbil or pretty sure that the permit in 66 is for the back staircase is that correct is that what we're all an assumption i mean i don't like to assume but payer doesn't usually do interior work so angie i think that the question is is that we we have a permit and it's unclear what that permit is for got it and i think the city is saying because they can't say with a hundred percent certainty that it was not for the interior
010of the house they're saying there's a possibility that the stairs are not original and thus the variance is being required i see okay i'm following on i went ahead and called payer yesterday just to see if they happen to have any records from 1965 they do not um but can they tell you if they do interior work on wood stairs is it just a little changed ownership a couple of times since then uh there was nothing on their website that indicated they did you know woodworking that was not immediately related to foundation work right so they'll put in some wood to lay a foundation or for a sidewalk but everything else was uh pretty strictly concrete work great okay yeah i i would take the premise on this that yeah payer is a foundation concrete
011contractor it's unlikely they built these stairs anything's possible but you know if the premise is these would if these were original they would be approved i have no reason to believe they're not original and i think the payer receipt doesn't shed any light you know is in any way speaks to these being modified especially when you've got stairs outside with a 10 inch tread and very likely done you know by payer i really didn't i was hoping there'd be like a stamp on those stairs outside that said like pay your 1965 to really just tie this into a low but i assume someone would have mentioned it by now if that was the case that there's no stamina i mean i've looked but so far i've not seen it i could put someone on there
012i don't like altering reality what about the initials eb if we could find the initials eb somewhere because that's who signed the i'm just kidding heavy power yeah so is city's recommendation that he needs to spend the 65 bucks to get the interior steps to code is that one of the one of the options so i think the board had asked for an estimate because um one of the three abilities to grant an appeal is for hardship okay and so now we know about what that cost would be for the six stairs would be about five hundred dollars based on that cost estimate um and i think with the additional information about hair primarily being concrete and if it was a concrete staircase right if it was if the staircase was original to the house
013it wouldn't have gone to appeal all of those things were layered together in this particular um proposal that's i i don't know that argued that 6 500 is an unreasonable burden on the other hand i'd argue that there's no evidence to me that's compelling to believe these weren't original and they should be viewed therefore as original right so and john certainly correct me if i'm wrong the board has the ability to grant an appeal based on practical difficulties or undue hardship or that the variance does not violate the intent of the ann arbor housing code section 8502 or that the variance does not jeopardize public health and safety that's correct or you can deny it on page two there are uh sample motions uh in either direction of course that's correct correct or the opposite
014the a practical difficulty or undue hardship does not exist it would violate the intent of the code or that it would jeopardize public health and safety so those are the kind of questions before us as a board that's exactly right should we talk about each of those or how should we proceed yeah so let's i think that's a great way to do it lisa let's talk about um you know kind of the the hardship the practical difficulties i mean other than it's a significant cost it would be done once and hopefully never again um but it's also about a thousand bucks a stair and as a rental property it would take i mean i would guess significant time to recoup that cost well plus we can't find anybody probably to do it in a timely
015manner there is that added overlay right now yeah so to review that is what do we view that as i think we can probably go through all of them and then make a final determination um the other one is kind of the intent of section 5 8 504 of the ann arbor housing code does someone have that handy well actually 8504 is exits but 8502 does talk about the minimum standards for light and ventilation yeah this wouldn't be light in ventilation this would be exit okay because you want an egress and in this case it's my understanding that there's two egresses right so this staircase as well as the exterior from the basement is that right george yeah that is correct that's correct right okay there is um there's two windows in the room that
016are wide enough for nemo in addition to the back entrance in addition to the back entrance and it's a short staircase it's not our traditional like 11 or 12 step staircase no it's a short staircase yeah there's only six steps and then the third piece would be the variance would jeopardize or would or would not you know the idea of jeopardizing public health and safety so i i would make the argument there that if it if if it wasn't so you know if it would have been deemed approvable for original construction then it must not be that significant a hazard to public health or safety or we wouldn't uh you know granted a variant says original construction and therefore it doesn't jeopardize public health and safety i think this one it's got a couple of
017layering factors right it's a shorter staircase there's several other exits out of the building um it's a straight shot it looks clearly visible you know again i think in in many cases we're looking at like fire exits and safety and trying to both um you know have our first responders go down as well as our residents leave and um in this case it's not that long staircase that we would normally see and there's you know an exterior entrance to the basement so in theory you wouldn't ever have to use the staircase if you needed to leave in an emergency so i guess the way i'm leaning is to um support of variance because given all of those factors together um i think it does not jeopardize public health and safety happy to continue to have
018a discussion or hear other thoughts i'm on the same page with you agreed i would support the variance okay i will go ahead and make a motion um regarding the proposed motion if you don't think it's 8502 if you look under 8514 the our code says practical difficulties or unnecessary hardship it says that variance does not violate the intent of this chapter this chapter is chapter 105 the housing code you could replace 8502 with you know chapter 105 or you could do it with 8504 but you might want to if you if you're going to follow the this one uh 8502 does talk about um minimum standards for light and ventilation so you might want to substitute that for something else as in chapter 105 or whatever section you think it might apply 8504 with
019respect to uh okay stairs because in there it does talk about uh the treads and things like that all right so 8502 is light you know 8502 is minimum space i'm sorry minimum standards for light and ventilation okay so that might be a typo then gotcha they're both in there so right right i would refer to mike and glenn on that but you might want to correct that i would i would say that the light ventilation was addressed in there we are not working on an appeal for light and ventilation correct correct so i'm gonna i'm gonna give this a try tell me if i got the right section um so my proposed motion is that in case hba21-0002 uh the appeal of the building official's decision that the rental unit at 907 sunnyside does
020get relief from section 8 colon 504 and the housing board of appeal reverses the building officials decision uh because the variance does not jeopardize public health and safety that is my potion i second that motion thanks angie there's a second any further discussion all right all in favor of that motion please say i i opposed right appeal is granted okay just go back to my agenda here do we have any i don't see any other old business do we have any new business okay not hearing any i think we are at everyone's favorite meeting time which is a motion to adjourn i move to adjourn the meeting thank you i'll second that all in favor aye aye opposed all right deborah do you need anything else from us today we are good thank you so
021much thank you everybody thank you so much for attending thank you thank you so much thank you again for reviewing my case here thank you bye everyone bye