May 30, 2023 Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.

I attended the May 30, 2023 Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.

The meeting was held in the Camden County courthouse. Commissioners Gohagan and Skelton were present.

There were quite a few people present so I sensed something might be up.

The first agenda item was Lake of the Ozarks Regional Economic Development Council (LOREDC) Membership.

K.C. Cloke is the President of LOREDC and was present to discuss the membership fee with the Commission. LOREDC was pursuing an annual Gold Level membership investment from the Commission. According to Cloke, Camden County has paid $500 annually for this level of participation since 2005.

Cloke explained they have an all-volunteer board, but they hope to hire for a paid staff position.

Commissioner Gohagan replied that he thought the workplace data provided by LOREDC was valuable for development in the county. He proposed increasing the county’s level of participation from Gold to Platinum Level for $1,000 annually.

This increase to Platinum Level was approved unanimously.

The second agenda item was Citizen Request for Surplus Money.

The request was for $39,735 on a property located in the Four Seasons Racquet Club (now called Osage Vistas). That sounded like a pretty large amount for a tax surplus. In many cases, the tax surplus is the property value that is claimed by the property owner after their property is purchased by someone else in a tax sale. The surplus is what remains from this value after past due taxes are paid. No idea what happened with this one. Commissioner Gohagan confirmed that the County Treasurer had reviewed the surplus request.

The Commission approved the Request for Surplus unanimously.

The third agenda item was Shawnee Bend #6 Property – Joe Roeger.

This item seemed to involve the group of about a dozen people who were sitting to the right of me.

Joe Roeger spoke before the Commission and he did most of the talking on behalf of the group.

In summary, they were all neighbors from Shawnee Bend #6. A developer desired to record a new plat for a property near their houses. This request was previously addressed at a Planning and Zoning Commission meeting on February 16, 2022. The surrounding neighbors objected because they felt that 15 of the 20 lots were too small and did not comply with the requirements of the Unified Land Use Code (ULUC). In the end, the Planning and Zoning Commission approved the plat contingent on the lots being compliant with the ULUC.

At the February meeting, Planning and Zoning Administrator Kim Willey said the plat would not be recorded if it did not comply with the code.

According to Joe Roeger, Kim Willey signed off on the recording of the plat shortly before she resigned from her position and left county employ in December of 2022. Roeger stated that he was fine with the Planning and Zoning Commission’s decision, but he did not feel the plat should have been recorded since in his opinion, it did not comply with the ULUC.

The question of whether the R-1 lots conform with the ULUC seemed to center around Section 908.5 (a) of the ULUC which requires a width dimension of 70 feet measured perpendicular to the centerline of the lot. According to Roeger, Willey (and apparently the current Planning and Zoning Department) feel that this 70 foot width dimension could be measured diagonally across the property.

(It’s hard to imagine how the line measuring the width dimension could be diagonal yet perpendicular to the centerline of the lot, but I’ll defer to expert surveyors on this one. Of course, looking at the scanning job on the ULUC, declaring something as diagonal might be a regular thing.)

So there’s the rub. The neighbors told the Commission they don’t have a problem with the developers building on the lots. They just want the lot sizes to conform with the ULUC.

The developers and the Planning and Zoning Department feel the lots do comply with the ULUC.

If only we had a commissioner with some experience in surveying. That would be great, right?

And that was that.