Commissioners Gohagan and Williams were present. This is a summary of the meeting.
Your faithful Camden County Guerrilla media team was present as well as 8-9 people who were there for the Planning and Zoning agenda items. We went the extra mile and brought coffee, set up the audience chairs which were all over the place from a previous event, and got the video ready. We’re full service!
Virtual Nathan called in halfway through the first agenda item.
The first agenda item was PZ21-0071 Lake Life Holdings 652 Crawford Drive, Sunrise Beach for a Rezone from R-1 to B-2.
Josh Kayser from Lake Life Holding spoke in favor of the rezone. He purchased a storage facility and invested money in fixing up the property and improving the water drainage. He lives near the storage facility and purchased it because he wasn’t happy with how the previous owners were maintaining the property. There are drainage issues on the road and he felt that some of the opposition from the neighbors was based on issues involving the maintenance of the road, not the storage business.
The road has been maintained using money from the well association and he doesn’t feel this is an appropriate use of money from the well association. He wants to build and expand his storage business and when he applied for permits to add structures, he was informed that his storage property was zoned as R-1. Kayser was unaware of the zoning issue before this. The building was built in 1996 and the zoning went into effect in 2004. In order to build anything else for the storage business, it has to be rezoned as B-2.
Kayser described the drainage improvements he made to the property. Previously, there was a lot of standing water but he installed gutters and piping that disperses the water from the property in five different directions. This was a considerable investment for him. He has a waiting list for storage units and many members of the surrounding community use the facility for storage.
Kim Willey from P&Z stated that the original building is grandfathered in.
Three property owners spoke in opposition to the rezone.
The first owner complained that water from the piping is draining into her property. She lives below the storage facility on the water. Gravel from the water flow is filling her part of the cove and she can now walk across the gravel to her dock. Ameren will let her remove the gravel but they will only permit the removal if she can show them that something has been done to prove the sediment build-up won’t re-occur.
The second owner had no problem with Josh Kayser but was concerned about what might be stored at the storage facility. He was concerned about water and liquid waste from the storage units being washed into his property. He did not have an issue with how Kayser runs the business but was worried about how future owners might manage the business. Apparently, there is also a granite company that is storing granite on an adjacent property and it appears to be contrary to the general zoning of the area. The granite business might also have been in place prior to the introduction of the zoning.
A third property owner brought photos of the area. He stated that the water drainage pipes from the storage facility are discharging within 250 feet of his well and his neighbor’s wells. He felt that Kayser did work to the property before Camden County became involved. He has also talked to many of the renters in the area and they are upset about the proposed zoning change. He mentioned there is a pool in the neighborhood that the children use and he was concerned about the impact an expansion of the storage facility would have on the pool and vehicle traffic in the area.
Commissioner Gohagan asked him how deep his well was but the property owner wasn’t sure about its depth.
Kim Willey said that even if the property is rezoned to B-2, only 65% of the property can be impervious coverage and this would include paving for parking. This would limit the scope of Josh Kayser’s plans for expansion on the property.
Josh Kayser talked again and described how he fixed the bad job the previous owners did with the tree removal at considerable expense to himself. He wants to build a personal storage “barn” for himself and put new storage units in to accommodate the demand. He mentioned that some of the renters who were previously mentioned as opposed to the project are on his waiting list for storage units.
Virtual Nathan spoke up and asked how many of the homeowners present had owned homes there before the commercial building was built. All three of them said they had owned prior to its construction. This just tickled me because there was this disembodied voice coming over the phone speaker asking a question and half of the people had no idea who it was. The homeowners took it in stride and answered the question from the mysterious caller. The other half of the crowd knew it was Nathan Rinne and you could see them smiling and elbowing each other about it.
There was then some verbal dispute between Kayser and one of the opposing homeowners about who was telling the truth about the current status of the storage business and whether he had responded to concerns about the property. In the end, it seemed there had been a misunderstanding on some of the communication issues and this was cleared up.
Commissioner Williams responded to this by warning the speakers not to cast aspersions on other parties and stated that issues like this were best worked out as good neighbors.
Kim Willey stated the Planning and Zoning Board voted 6-6 on this item.
This rezone was approved unanimously.
My opinion: One of the problems with being near the lake is that almost all water is going to drain down towards the lake. It sounds like Kayser made an effort to disperse the water in different directions. It would have been much worse if he just installed some giant drainpipe creating a creek below him. It’s also understandable that the owners below aren’t thrilled about having water flowing down on them from above.
Everyone seemed to agree that there are already drainage issues on the road above their properties. It’s interesting to note that the owners stated the road to their homes is a Camden County-maintained road but they haven’t seen maintenance on it in a long time.
The second agenda item was PZ21-0092-Carroll-Chimney Rock Rd, Camdenton Rezone R-1 to B-2.
Kenny Carroll spoke in favor of the rezone. This is one of those former resort properties where most of the property was B-2 but there was one lot for a house that served the resort that was zoned R-1. These have come up before at meetings. Carroll just wants the lot rezoned to B-2 so the entire property could be B-2. No one spoke in opposition.
Strangely, the P&Z Board voted 6-6 on this rezone. It’s unusual that it would be a 6-6 vote on a rezone that had no opposition and was just trying to conform a single “spot zone” lot to match the property lots around it. This vote result matched the 6-6 vote from the previous agenda item which was much more controversial. I’m wondering what’s going on at the P&Z Board and if there’s been a change in membership recently over there. It’s odd that the vote would be identical on two very different property zoning issues.
This rezone was approved unanimously.
A final item was for the Assessor Book for 2021. The Tax Assessor wasn’t present but someone asked the Commission on his behalf if they would approve $1,000 to pay for Camden County to be on the cover of the 2021 Missouri Assessor’s Book.
This expenditure was approved unanimously.
And that was that.
Among the Dogwoods 