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Resident seeks gravel driveway variance citing safety and cost; board moves to require hard surface
Summary
At the July 22 Board of Zoning Appeals meeting, Brian Buffington asked to keep a stone/gravel apron and side patches at 965 Jefferson St., saying parking and child-dropoff safety and flood-driven drainage needs make full replacement costly. The board read a motion to require hard surfacing and proceeded to vote.
Brian Buffington told the Board of Zoning Appeals on July 22 that he was asking for a variance to allow a stone/gravel addition to the driveway at 965 Jefferson Street. "My name is Brian Buffington. The address on the variance is 965 Jefferson Street. I'm here for a variance, to allow stone stone addition on the driveway," he said.
Buffington told the board the house is a three-bedroom with one-car driveway space, that he owns a large truck and a side-by-side that make parking difficult, and that his girlfriend's child is sometimes dropped off in the roadway, which he described as unsafe. He also cited repair and drainage complications and estimated the additional concrete and drainage work would run roughly "$6, 6 to 10" thousand.
Neighbor Richard Cropp, who identified himself as living at 895 Prime Drive, urged caution. "I think that if you guys allow this, we kind of, you know, hand or a box, you know, and who knows what's gonna be," he said, arguing gravel in a front yard could harm property values and neighborhood appearance.
After questions from board members and administration about code dimensions and whether the current stone was an appropriate material, a board member read a motion referencing the relevant drive-surface code (r41270.05) requiring that driveways be hard surfaced and moved to deny the variance for a gravel apron. The motion was seconded and the chair announced the motion outcome. The board directed the applicant to follow up with the billing/building department for next steps.
The board's motion and procedural record were read aloud at the meeting; the transcript records the motion language and the chair's instruction to contact the building/billing department for compliance steps. The record does not include a detailed, named roll-call tally in a clearly parseable form in the transcript excerpt provided.
The applicant was told how to pursue alternatives, including removing or modifying the gravel apron and addressing drainage issues before returning to the board.
