Uh, right there for nine. That's all yours. Sorry. This is. What? Oh. Oh. What? What? When this is on or off? Is it red or what does that mean? Red is. It's already recording. So. So. Just hang in a second. Oh. It's three o'clock. Go ahead. We're all about to go. We're going to call a meeting to order at three o'clock. First thing I order today is we're going to do the pledge of allegiance to the flag. Put your stand here right there. Well, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic of which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, and liberty and justice for all. Any of you people up here have a conflict of interest or anything that's going on here? Keeley? Anybody have a conflict of interest? First thing we want to do is approve the minutes from the last meeting. Hello. Is there any additions or corrections? Very none will accept the motion. I'll move to accept. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Minutes are approved. I'm going to let Steve take care of number three. Number three, one. Sounds good. One of the things that the committees do with the once the elections are taking place with the different committees, we typically have an election of a chairperson and vice chair. So that's why that item's on there. And so item 3.1 would be the election of a chairperson for the Board of Appeals. Make a motion for Kevin Samson to be the new chairperson. So there's a motion and a second for that. Is there any other nominees? And so with a vote for that, the election is for a chairperson to be Kevin Samson. And I guess we'd take a vote for that. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. So as and then the next item 3.2 is the election of a vice chair to the Board of Appeals. And she's not here. There's no one on the phone, correct? Okay. And then the item 3.2 is the election of the vice chair to the Board of Appeals. So if anyone would want to make a motion to that, no one wants to be vice chair. Well, we could always vote down to be vice chair. Thank you vice chair. Any seconds? Well, so there is. Okay. So there was a motion for Don Gerber to be vice chair. And was there a second to that? I'll second Keely's motion to be vice chair. So you can't second your first. Okay. Is there a second to Don's motion for Keely to be vice chair? Is that what you Richard? All right. All those in favor? All those opposed? All right. So with that done, we appreciate all the time that you've given us the last couple of years. But Kevin, at this point in time, we'd ask that you take over the chairperson role. And if you guys wanted to switch seats. Yep. And I can help you out with this. So we're at 3.3. All right. Well, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the zoning board of appeals meeting. Next item up is 3.3 variance application by Michael Wade requesting to concrete his gravel driveway currently has 11 feet from house to side lot line at 724 grand avenue. Mr. Wade, are you here? Okay. If you'd like to go ahead and step up the podium. Is there anybody here for this particular item? Any neighbors? Okay. So we have a couple of folks. Okay. So Mr. Wade, go ahead and let us know what you're looking at doing. I have a gravel driveway as you can see in the pictures. And I would like to pave that. We're in the process of building a new garage. I can't meet city ordinance because I only have above 11 feet from foundation to property line. So I'm asking for a variance for three inches from my property line and the nine foot driveway. Oh, yeah. We're going to go from front all the way to about where the garage sits now. Slightly forward. Yeah. And is it going to be concrete or black top concrete? I'm sorry. Don, did you have, did you have another question? Okay. I think there is a another gentleman. I think we have a couple of folks here that, that may have some questions here.  Good afternoon. My name is Mark Shinnebec. And I am the property owner of the lot empty lot adjacent to 724 grand avenue. I'm not sure how much time I have to speak. As long as you need. Yeah. Okay. There's already been a motion to prove it. However, I would hope that you'd wait until you consider what I have to say. Okay. Okay. I would first like to point out that I have been talking on two occasions to Jeff Litzke, the code administrator for the North side of Shmoy. Okay. I would like to point out that there are two code compliant locations on the lot at 724 grand avenue to access the proposed new garage. Okay. One of those locations is east of the house on grand avenue. And it's where they have approximately 27 feet of road frontage to put in the new driveway that will go to the garage in the backyard. The second code appliance approach to the yard would be through the A street alley. Now, when I talked to Mr. Litzke on Monday about this, he was unaware that the alley was a public alley. He told me the alley was abandoned. I informed him that indeed it is a public alley. And if you look at the survey that Mr. Wade presented, you can see it says right on the survey, the certified survey that it says 16 foot wide public alley. So that indeed is a code compliant entrance way to Mr. Wade's property. So Mr. Wade's property has two code compliant entrances where you can meet the city codes to build the new driveway. Okay. And to make it an official part of today's public record, I'd like to present to the committee chair. I have a same survey that Mr. Wade has enlarged it a little bit and I placed both driveway locations, which I've just suggested along with Mr. Wade's future garage. I'd like to present them to the chairperson. Can you be able to put the survey on the screen please? I'd appreciate that. So we have this. Okay. How do you know if it's on? Yes, it's on. It's red. Yep. So a couple of things I had just mentioned there is there is the opportunity, obviously the code compliant, I guess driveway that he speaks of with regards to the alley is an unimproved alley. It's there technically on paper, but at this point in time it is unimproved, meaning that it's all grass. So just so everyone's aware of that. I beg your pardon? The alley that is there technically on paper is not physically built in terms of an alley. It's a grass alley. So it's there technically on paper, but it is not an improved alley. That's correct. It's an unimproved alley. That's correct. Which we have spoken about when we talked about you wanting to build the house there. Okay. Now I've been, I've owned this lot, my empty lot for some time and I've been developing ideas to put a future home on that lot. And at one point I was considering using the alley entrance to access my garage. And I asked the city zoning official at the time and he said that it would be allowed that I could use that alley to access my garage. This is however. What I mentioned was that you would be able to speak to the city engineer and the public works department to see what standard you would have to put that alley into in order to utilize that for as an alley to access your property. Are you Mr. Letzky? I'm Mr. Steve Sokolowski. Oh, okay. Yes. And I was told after I inquired further that I indeed can use the public alley to enter my garage but I'd have to improve the public alley with the city requirements, eight inches of gravel and another eight inches of concrete on top of that. And so that, you know, if I as a property owner developing my lot has the right to use that alley, Mr. Wade certainly would have the right to use that alley as well. That's the point I'm trying to make here. The alley is an unimproved public alley but there's nothing preventing it from being improved. That's the point I'm trying to present. Yep. Yep. We understand that. Okay. Now, the second public access to Mr. Wade's property is on Grand Avenue. That's a good picture of it. That's the A Street entrance for the alley. This is an entrance off of Grand Avenue where the big tree is there. That's Grand Avenue right behind that big tree. Okay. So you got 27 feet right where the little arrow is there circling around. That's 27 feet. And so by code, you know, that is a code compliant entrance to that alley.  And so that would be the second location on that for that lot where they would have a code compliant access to the alley. And what it would be is there's not an access from that road for him to enter there. He would have to change the curb and gutter on that property to do that. That's extended cost plus removing of the tree. And then you're encroaching very closely to the property right next door as well. So there's, you know, there is already an existing driveway entrance where he's asking to put where there is really already a driveway there and to improve the property to the neighborhood as well. So I guess I have a question about why, why, I guess what your grievance is as to why you wouldn't want us to do it or accept it. Okay. Well, Wisconsin statutes say that you have the city, the property owners, they have to abide by the laws in the state of Wisconsin. And if you review your own variance request form that you have to, that Mr. Wade had to fill out to apply for this variance, there's three steps that Mr. Wade has to take before his request for a variance can be approved. Okay. Step, step, the first step. Please let me refer to my, to the form. No worries. You know, he's supposed to be able to be, Mr. Wade has to pass three tests according to your variance request before something can be granted. Correct. And if Mr. Wade can't meet the three tests, according to Wisconsin statutes, the variance has, it's not warranted. Okay. Okay. You're familiar with this? Yes, I'm very. I'm sure you are. Okay. So I want to point that out to the panel that, you know, approving this variance without it meeting test one, two and three is against Wisconsin statutes. And it's against the city court zoning ordinance. Okay. Okay. Three tests are part of the application. And if you want the, basically the three are why, what hardship is created by the application of the zoning ordinance to the property is reasonable use of the property denied by the zoning regulations. Is there a unique physical characteristic of the property which prevents development of the property and would granting the variance harm the public interest in any way. So Mr. Wade is supposed to explain to the board how his situation meets test one, test two and test three. And he did in his application. Well, as I read his application and I have it, I have it up from the office on Monday. I do not see in there where he explained satisfactorily how he fails, how he cannot, why he cannot build the new driveway on the west, on the east side of his lot. Okay. We'll have him. He can answer or his contractor. Well, his, his contractor or he can answer that question. Okay. You can come up to the podium. Mark, if you could let them come to the public lectern, Dave, you need to come up and speak into the lectern so everyone can hear you. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, we can, yeah, we can go back and forth if we have to. Yeah. Again, I'm, again, I'm Dave Nenning, American garage builders. Most of you know me to contest this gentleman over here on the other, it says the other side of the property has a hall structure and a tree in the way. See picture. So that's the other that he's contesting why I can't go on that other side. And as this, I'm sorry, I don't know your name, ma'am. Keely Johnson. This Keely Johnson has notated by the pictures that, and there's the tree and the others, the east side of his house, which would cost more in construction costs versus just trying to do the variance to go by the existing driveway already. Mr. Wade's in compliant with everything here. And Mr. Wade has told me this gentleman calls him, argues on the phone with him, comes on his property unattended. I've gotten pictures that you've been there doing things on his property. So, you know, he's had this empty lot for X amount of years. Does he plan on ever doing anything there? You saw the pictures of the un-maintained alleyway there that's strictly grass. You know, then you, if I put in a driveway on the east side of the building where the tree is, that's a cost, laying that concrete is an extra cost. And then having to fill in the existing driveway with dirt, grass, whatever, landscaping, that's just more costs. So, I ask that you accept this variance and we just move along with life. Thank you. Thank you. Do you have any other? Sure. Okay. Sir, was that your response to how you approved test one? Yeah. Please address the committee and not each other. If you have questions. Okay. Please address the committee. So, I'm asking if that's Mr. Wade's representatives. Is that his response to prove that, is there proof for test one? Right. And he said yes. Okay. He mentioned that he's talking about cost, that it might cost more to build the driveway. They have to take a tree down, have to move a garden. According to Wisconsin statutes, any extra costs incurred to bring your lot up to code compliance. It's inconsequential. Those costs extra time are not supposed to be a consideration by the board when they review the facts. Okay. Irregardless that there was an existing driveway there, there's a 80 plus year old driveway at the site right now. Well, that I'd like to point out that driveway is a non-compliant driveway. Well, it could have been a compliant in 1890, but yes, as of today's code. Okay. So it's an obsolete driveway with an obsolete garage that Mr. Wade would like to tear down. I'd like to point out that this obsolete garage is actually about two and a half feet into the alley. So it's not code compliant. So we're eliminating one of the non-compliant issues. Yes. So that's a good thing. I'm trying to point out that the property is so old that any of the things that are obsolete and no longer apply to the current codes, such as the garage and the driveway. So Mr. Wade wants to redo the garage. So by code, he has to put in a new concrete driveway. And by code, he doesn't have enough room for that driveway. He's only got about 11 feet, eight inches, I believe it's short on the picture. Right. And we're familiar with that. And that's why he's here today. Yeah. And you need, by minimum by code, you need a 10 foot wide driveway and a three foot setback from the neighboring property. Right. Okay. So that location does not meet current codes and according to your variance, the guidelines for your variance, which are spelled out in the section 15, that area of the current driveway does not qualify for a new driveway. And if any other options exist, according to the city codes, if any other options exist, those options are, take precedence over a non-compliant option, which is what Mr. Wade's contractor is suggesting. He's suggesting a non-compliant option. So since there's two different locations on the property for the new driveway that would be code compliant, I am suggesting that Mr. Wade's contractor follows the city codes and bring the property up to be code compliant. Okay. That is the point I'd like to make. If I may ask, what is the objection to taking his existing, what he's using as the existing driveway, what is the objection to having that actually improved? My main objection is that it's not following the city codes, the new driveway. If you would approve that non-compliant driveway for permission to put this concrete down, you'd be approving, you'd be going against the state codes. And as long as there are, I can see that there would be a solution if Mr. Wade didn't have any other access to his yard for a driveway. But he does. In Wisconsin law states, that if the property... He doesn't because you're dealing with him to put in a driveway on the other side, he does not have access or curb and gutter open for him to be able to access his driveway. So that would then be a cost that would be incurred by the city to be able to acquire him to have access to his property off of that road. There's already existing access on the existing so-called driveway that he is using right now. So the other side, if he chose to put the property or the driveway on the opposite side of his house, he has no access to that driveway without curb and gutter. I understand that. And that's a cost that the city, which then you as the taxpayer would acquire at that time. So that is something we also have to take into account as well. That if there is something that needs to be modified or changed, in that way, so much so, that it's actually a cost for our taxpayers, we have to be cautious of that as well. So, and then having an access of an alley that is full of grass and is not cut and not trimmed is also a hard thing to really say that he has access, because he wouldn't. It's not like he would be able to get to his property once he put that driveway in. He wouldn't. Okay. I appreciate that viewpoint. But I'm wondering at this point, after your comments, if the city is, cares about enforcing the zoning ordinance. What we do to a certain point? Sure. To a certain point. We do to a certain point. I know there is no official curb there. That's from years ago.  But it gives him access to his property. Yeah. I mean, you could take a car there right now and just drive right onto the lawn. It would be no problem. It's almost like an apron. The whole frontage of his lot is like an apron on the Grand Ambulance. The whole Grand Ambulance block there is like that. But I live around the corner from you. So I know exactly where the property is, and I know exactly what the roads look like there. Yes, I do. Okay. But, you know, it's something that we have to look at the same type of thing too, where if he wants to drive and park his car on the front of his lawn, he's not allowed to do that. That's right, because the court says he has to drive and build it on a driveway. Exactly. And so, but what I'm getting at is he has plenty of room on that road frontage there to build a code compliant driveway. Okay. I mean, I guess my question. On my particular lot, I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, continue. Okay. On my particular lot on H Street, I have a large street in the front yard, and that's going to be in the way when I build my home. Sure. I called up the Department of Public Works and asked, can I have permission to cut the tree down? And they says yes, you can cut the tree down if you're going to put your driveway in. But you have to pay for it. Right? I have to pay for it. Sure. So your comment is saying that Mr. Wade has to pay to cut that tree down. I mean, that's not at the city's on a city's dollar. No, I understand. The tree is in the public right away. But it's a property owner like myself. I have to pay to cut my tree down. Correct. Put my driveway in. So Mr. Wade would have to pay to put. Sure. Cut the tree down if it is driveway in. Sure. And I'm not saying that he doesn't have to do that. That's not what I'm saying. There, there, I guess my question would be more to Mr. Wade, what your, what your intention is or what it, what the new garage will look like, what the new plan for the driveway is. Just to get more of a picture. Sometimes if you show us a picture, that's a little bit more helpful to get everyone to understand exactly what you're looking to do. So if we have some of those pictures would be a little bit more helpful. Yeah, I guess, I guess from that perspective, what are you, what are you talking about doing? I mean, there's a footprint on here, but what are we talking about in terms of the garage? I guess it's the question. If you would mind Mr. Wade coming up to the lectern to speaker is contractor. The garage yet, not the garage is waiting for your decision today to see where we can actually put it. So I don't have any pictures of that. Okay. It's going to be a four car garage. I believe around 960 square feet or 980. It's compliant with the What's the current size of the garage? I do. Isn't it a three and a half, I think? Yeah. There's a picture of it. You can go up there. It's real close to the same thing. It's just the newer garages I think aren't going to be as wide. Sure. You know, they're going to be shaped a little bit differently. So the garage is going to be probably close to 10 feet forward from the picture and probably three to five feet off to the right. And it's just going to be two big doors and then the door off to the other side there. That's what I'm wondering. That's what I'm wondering. That's what I'm wondering. That's what I'm wondering. That's what I'm wondering. So I guess is there a possibility to move your garage over just a little bit to move that driveway over just a scoot so it will fall in compliance? Right. One of the things that could be considered as we're looking at this is say, for example, he gets it to the house. And if they're veering it over at the house, there could be a certain area to veer it on over to get the three feet between the neighbor's yard who's speaking and the garage to turn it on over. So that definitely is an option that the board can consider. I didn't understand all of that. I didn't want to stop you. Yeah. Dave, you're going to have to speak in the microphone. I just want to... You have to speak into the microphone, Dave. When you're talking, we'll look. Yep. We can put that survey up on the TV if you want to explain that. We just have to have people speaking in the mic. Yeah. I got you, Steve. So as you see, it's five feet already from the survey done from DNH Land Surveyors, which is certified by the red stamp here. I'm five feet off of the marker from what Dennis found on the north side of where the unimproved public alley was. We are going to be five and a half feet from the northwest corner, five feet where you go up to the southwest corner on the garage portion of it. And the question about veering lies where the corner of the back of the house is where you see the 11.7. Yep. That's the tight space where we're really only impeding on anything right there. Otherwise, I'm code compliant all the way around and I've built plenty of places in this city where I'm code compliant and I don't have issues with the city because I follow their rules. When my customers want to have a hardship, I suggest them to come here so they can comply with the city. So again, I ask you. So the question that's being asked is you're mentioning that you're five feet, but there's no reason why the garage couldn't be pushed over if that was an issue a little bit to the east in order to get past that corner and have three feet along the common property line. The only area where necessarily would need to be closer is the section between up to the house and then a certain portion past the house. There's no reason why it could fear and keep the three feet over there. So I don't know what the neighbor feels about that, but that's certainly an option that the board can take into consideration. I would gladly be as far away from this gentleman as possible because my customer doesn't deserve this, really. And he's clearly got an empty lot that he's had for how long. So I don't know what you want to do right by the house there. That seems to be the only problem in question as being code compliant. So I'll do whatever you guys want to suggest to me. I know that's why I'm here for another answer. So again, I ask that you approve this. We just try to make everyone happy if we can. Yes, yes. And you've seen me before and we all want to try to make everybody happy. I don't know. And I certainly appreciate that. Thanks, Dave. I don't know if you'd have any comments one way or the other with regards to that, sir, if what your thought process would be because obviously he's looking at the zero areas or the three inches in the area between the houses and then once they got it passed, they could veer it over, which is more adjacent to your property, which would be code compliant, which you keep stressing. So I don't know if that makes things any more acceptable to you or not. Okay. I appreciate the fact of you exploring the possibility of a secondary solution. We just had the survey up on the TV. I'm wondering, I submitted my two proposals for a code compliant driveway. Is it possible to have them up on the screen? No, it is not. We don't have, that was all documentation that was brought to us ahead of time and that's the only way we can get it in. Okay. So the two code compliant items that, I'm sorry, what was your last name again? Shinnebec. Shinnebec. Mr. Shinnebec is speaking about, is the alley which we've talked a number of times that's coming this way and then the other which is coming this way off of grand. So those are the two that he's showing. Right. That are different. So basically if you look at that, if you're looking at the survey right now, this is the one that Mr. Shinnebec is talking about on the unimproved alley, which doesn't make sense. And then the one off of grand, which would have more of a legitimate opportunity at this point in time from the standpoint of you're coming from an improved street. So those are the two options he's speaking of, which he has spoken of for his other previous comments. Okay. What does the city suggest?  So from our perspective, even if we denied it as board, he would still have the opportunity to use the gravel as is. I'm thinking offhand and the board can do what they wish, but at a minimum, we could have that area a little past the house in terms of going close to the property line. And then if anything, veering it on over to the east so that there is that three foot paving setback that Mr. Shinnebec is talking to that is the code compliant in that zone. So does Mr. Shinnebec own lot 10 and 11 or just lot 10? I don't know. I don't know. Are you, do you know if it's just half and half of 11? Okay. Okay. So half of 11. So if, I mean, we would have to probably give about, I would imagine 10 feet past the house in order to start getting a radius of some, a legitimate radius. I have a survey map. I blown up Mr. Wade's survey. I read, I maybe spoke too soon. Are you? No, no, no. Feel free. I submit those two other survey maps that I enlarge from Mr. Wade's survey. Yes. Where I have the two proposals. I also have, I use the same enlargement. It will show the impact area of which I'm referring to. I mean, it's kind of hard to see on that photograph. Sure. Yeah, yeah, sure. I wish we could put these up for everyone to see. Yeah. Unfortunately, it's, you know, you're going to have to, you're going to have to, you're going to have to speak into the lack there. No, no, no. The proposals can't be put on the screen. But I have a diagram of Mr. Wade's original survey that shows the impact. You have to speak into the public. They're recorded. Yeah. The microphone. Yeah. Because we're being recorded. Sorry about that. Okay. I have a blown up survey, an enlargement of the survey that Mr. Wade has up on the screen there. And it shows the area on the lot that impacts my lot. If you're going to concrete that driveway. Now Mr. Wade wants to put his concrete three inches from my lot line. That's correct. Okay. And that's why he's here today. Yes. And state code requires three feet. City code is three feet. Or city code. Okay. So we're talking about three inches. So I would like to present this to the board so the board can see this. I know unfortunately the public won't be able to see it. But you know the board is the one that's making the decision. And it'll show you. I've also included on this diagram. The plot plan. For my. Future development. And I live in the whole city right now. I retired. I've been holding on to the city lot. For the last 12 years because I want to build my retirement home. On that lot. I am currently drawing up plans. If you want to bring that up. And this is a street. I don't know if you want to ask if any of the board members have any questions. Yeah. I think if anybody else has any questions. Thank you very much. We'll hang on to this for the time being as we kind of go over this. Pass that around. Does anybody else have any questions up on the on the board here? Dad. Can you hit your button? I don't know. I'd have to. Ten and a half. Don. Don. Don. Don. Don. Don. Don. Don. Don. Done. Done. Done. All done. On the shoulder. Done. Call. Thank you. For standard. And that property that you're talking about there has been like that. Ever since then. And so. It's done. Got the. Good. It's been like that ever since then. And Keeley, how long have you been in the business? That was 20 years. Almost 20 years, OK. This is what he owns right here. But this is an abandoned alley here. That's what we're really talking about. You're talking about an abandoned alley. No, sir. The abandoned alley adjoins my property. The abandoned alley is to the north of my property. My property is to the north of my property. I'm a little confused. What do you use? 11. Survey map is on the map. Sir, you have to speak into the microphone. If you look at the survey map that's on right up, if you refer to that, you can see Lot 10. And I own the first, the north half of Lot 11. The gentleman there that's saying he was in real estate business, he should have enough experience to read a map. If you look to the north of Lot 10, that's the unapproved public alley. I'm not sure what point he's trying to make that he's that I've owned a lot for 12 years. OK, thank you. Your objection has certainly been noted. And we do appreciate your input. But I think we should probably be better at moving forward here because we have a whole room full of other folks. I appreciate the opportunity to speak here today. But I do have one last thing to talk about. If you review the application for a variance, this panel is supposed to be asking Mr. Wade how he passes test number one. And that's what the application has done. Right, correct. You're supposed to ask him how he can prove test number two. You haven't asked him that. You haven't given me an opportunity to say how it would harm my interest in that property. And you haven't given Mr. Wade an opportunity to say how his project won't harm the public interest. So then you're trying to take this process and shorten it. And that's not fair. Thank you, sir. I deserve time to speak and time to express my interest, especially when it comes to no harm to the public interest. Thank you very much. I think we're going to go ahead and take a vote. I mean, unless there's something else that we have to adjust. Well, if Mr. Wade would like to speak again, he can respond to what he's saying. Excuse him. He would like to answer his questions. OK. Of course, I already heard that the alley really is not an option. I just want to point out that there's a tree block in the other entrance. So the only way to go through the alley is way on the other side of the block. Then I want to add that if you look at the survey, I must have misunderstood you in the beginning. I don't expect to go all the way back three inches from my property line. That was never the idea. It was only from about where my foundation of my house ends.  And it wasn't going to go and be compliant with the city and everything else. Sure. Just wanted to make sure. Yeah. And then I just want to say thanks for your time. Thank you. So right now, we do have a motion to approve on the floor. And we do need a second. And that is noted. Sir, if you would like to speak, you have one more opportunity to get done what you want. And then the question has been posed. And then we're going to close it to public testimony, and the board is going to act. So you have the opportunity. One of the things that the board is supposed to consider before approving of variance is test number three, Armed to the Public. Now, as I previously expressed, I'm trying to develop this lot for my retirement home. Now, when I was a kid, I used to play with dominoes. You set them up on a table. And then you draw on a line. You press one, and all the dominoes start tumbling. Any decision that's made in the city on these small lots, one decision has a domino effect where it pushes back on everything else. Also, in an urban setting, you got like trees that grow over the lot line. And then they start interfering with the neighbor's property. They start hitting the road for the regatta or a wire. So the neighbor has the opportunity to cut that tree branch off the lot line to regain his airspace for his own protection. OK, now I give you those couple of analogies here, because I don't know how to help make my point. OK, granting the nonconforming driveway would deny me the full use of my lot. I could face a legal challenge in the future if I decided to put up a fence on the lot line. A driveway on the lot line without the protection of the three-foot setback would force the airspace over my lot to be used for the vehicle's mirrors.  He also had a large box truck that he used to haul construction materials around to fix his house. Now, by forcing that concrete right up to my property line, you're forcing the traffic through that driveway to use the airspace over my property or those mirrors. Now, you might say, well, what difference does that make? Well, I'm interested in putting in developing a lot. I'm interested in putting a fence on the lot line. I could face a legal challenge because I put a fence on the lot line and the neighbor's cement is right on the lot line. My fence would be in the way of his mirrors. So then I would be forced to set my fence line back into my property so he could pass through with the mirrors. This, I plan on building a 10 by 20 yard shed in the backyard, which is five feet from the corners. And that's an impact area. If you look at the survey map that I handed in there, it's in the impact area of his driveways in the impact area. So I build that shed there. If I have to move my fence back from the lot line, then my fence is going to be too close to my yard shed. And I'm going to lose the use and enjoyment of that part of my lot. I'm going to lose that. And you're going to say, well, so what? Just move your shed back closer to A Street. Well, I can't move my shed back closer to A Street because there's a city code that says it has to be 10 feet away from my house. So you see how the dominoes are starting to fall.  Well, then I'm going to lose the use and value. I need a certain amount of room to put my driveway. So what I'm trying to make is, if you allow this new concrete driveway to be three inches from the lot line, it's going to have a domino effect going across my entire lot. And that's an unfair burden for me to have to bear. In short, every inch of my lot is vital to my success in my attempt to develop it as a single family retirement home. This variance restricts my choices of what I can do for my lot's development. It would create an unfair burden to bear, especially when there are two code compliant choices available for 724 grand at them. Now, it was earlier mentioned that the alley, it's in grass or whatever it is. It doesn't matter what state it's in. It's always cut. But I mean, it's a fact of the matter is it's a public alley, and the public can use it, and the public can have it developed at their expense to make it into a driveway to access the garage. It would be code compliant. Anything else? Okay, yes. Because we need to start finishing up. You're rehashing a lot of points you've made. So if you could be brief, we'd appreciate it. Okay. I'm opposed to any remedy that allows less than a three foot setback by code from the edge of the concrete to my lot line. My lot is only 60 feet wide. Even one car length impacts nearly one third of my rear lot line, as I was referring to with the shed and the fence. An undersized driveway, Mr. Wade's undersized driveway would be sandwiched between Mr. Wade's home and the potential fence on the lot line. And this would inevitably cause problems. Snow removal could damage the fence. Vehicles, mirrors could be impacted by the home or the fence. You know, the mirrors are gonna be running into the home, they're running to the fence. In my eye, the code compliant driveway would eliminate all those potential problems that a new non-conforming driveway would create. The fact that 724 Grand Avenue currently has an 80 year old driveway is not a suitable burden approved for granting such a variance request. Such a request would be solely for the owner's convenience and a spelled out in the variance procedure application. Such a request would be solely for the owner's convenience and therefore it does not meet the guidelines for variance approval. So by approving that, you'd be going against your own guidelines. The fact that Mr. Wade would probably need to relocate his garden and remove a tree as of no consequence according to the law, according to the codes. Any additional expense or time spent by Mr. Wade to achieve a code compliant situation solution are required by the very variance procedures. Right here, the variance appeal procedures, they're required by this very form. Right, you've mentioned that. Okay, okay. And finally, my main opposition to this variance is that Wisconsin state law dictates that if a code compliant solution can be found, it must be given precedence over any non-conforming request. Mr. Wade's request is non-conforming. My proposals fit the codes for his new driveway and garage. All he has to do is move his garage over to the east side of the lot. Sir, is there anything new you'd like to add? Because everything that you're speaking about, we've heard a couple of times. Okay, I have one last paragraph. If it's new, fine, but if it's rehashing, then we're gonna start taking questions from the board and taking action. Okay, sir, I respect your opinion. Thank you. Thank you for the time. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Say one thing real quick. Yes. Hang on. Nope, Don. Nope, Don. Hang on a second. I just want to address the board one more time. As this gentleman over here thinks that we're going to be right on the line in question of the back of the house there with the 11-7. Mr. Wade is suggesting nine-five. So here's his rebuttal. We don't want to be on your property again, but it is a huge cost to move that. You don't know how much of a cost that is. Mr. Wade is already spending a lot of money to improve his property over there. You don't build nothing on the property. Dave, you want to speak to the board. Okay, all right. Thank you very much right now. So we do have a motion to approve on the table. Do we have a second? Second from Dick? Yeah. Any discussion? Could I make one comment? Yes. I have one comment. Don, could you press your button, please? Three of us are familiar with this eminent domain. This has been longer than 25 years that he's probably been mowing grass on your property. I'm not sure that you have a legal claim about what you bought. All right. It's not for us to get into the legal aspect. So let's stay with the item. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I think one of the things that the board may want to consider that presently isn't part of the motion is whether or not we wanted to say, for example, have a three foot setback say 10 feet north of the edge of the home so that it starts to have a radius and then eventually you have the three, as much as possible of a three feet along that common property line over there. It's something to think of to, and we probably need some type of distance to mention. I don't know what works best, but I was just saying 10 feet because that probably starts to get around. I would imagine the house. So that might be something the board would want to think about if they're considering approving as a condition of approval. And obviously the question, and we deal with it from a building inspection perspective as just making sure all the drainage is maintained onto the site. Did you want to address that? Is that something that can be done? Yeah, I can certainly do anything you ask me. The other side of the house though is I can't. Yeah, right. So down with that in mind, do we need to have him amend his motion just to include that language there? Yeah, that would be a good idea. I'm already showing five, I'm already showing from that. We have board, we have discussion amongst ourselves at this point in time. So there's a question, there's an approval, there's a condition that's being talked about. Someone needs to take that into account and decide if we're going as is with nothing or if we want to include that condition. I would include that condition. Okay, so the motion then will include that condition as well as a second? Yes, Lindy did second. Yeah, okay. Any further questions, comments? Discussion? I guess my only question to the board would be I understand his, the vacant land owner, his point, I understand where he's talking about green space and air space. But I guess I look at the standpoint that he's only being or using a nine foot driveway. So it's not like he's going the full 11 and a half feet. So it will give a little bit it's just, it's a sad decision to have to make for three inches, it really is. It's a very sad decision to have to do. Any further discussion? Okay, so we have the motion with the amended language. When he's improving his property, it's sad because he's trying to make the neighborhood better and improve his driveway and improve his property and it's just, it's very sad. Okay, so all in favor of the motion? Should we call it, should I do a roll call? I think we should do a roll call. Okay, Don Gerber, Ed Suric, Keeley Johnson. Undecided. We'll come back to Keeley, Don Sviton. Yes, I agree. Richard Lindy, Kevin Samson. Chair votes aye. And Keeley Johnson. I deny. Keeley denied, motion passed. Okay, thank you folks. Thank you, thank you. The motion was approved. This is your. The variance was approved with the condition that approximately 10 feet north of the northwest corner of the home that the driveway starts to veer at that point and then hits the three feet from that point on. So that's what the decision is made and we are moving on to the next item. And sir, if you'd like to call me tomorrow, we can certainly speak more. Yeah. If you want to go downstairs at this point in time, it's the building inspection office. Just ask for Steve Sokolowski's card and they'll give you that. Thank you. All right. Okay, moving on to the next item. We have 3.4 variance application by Alejandro Alvarez requesting to build a six foot high fence within their required street yard at 2304 South 9th Street. Mr. Alvarez. Ma'am, could you come up to the microphone please and speak and let us know, pull it down and then let us know what you're after and why you're making the request that you're after. Well, a six foot fence, we have a four foot but it's open all the way. And we just want to close it to be able to have some privacy. Oh, it's a side yard. Don, you have to, Don, you have to press the button, please. Right now, you just want to replace it with a six foot fence. Yes, that's all I want to do. But it's on the side yard. So the issue here is the tip one that we've run into on a number of occasions where a person has a corner lot looking for some additional privacy. The concern ends up usually being the style of fence because it's being put right in the street yard. Right now, you can see the picket fence that was there. That's code compliant and 50% open. This is what they want to do, which is not, it is close, but often our discussion is the board on board or vinyl fences along street frontages from the standpoint of how visible they are. So that's oftentimes been the concern we've had are the aesthetics in terms of what those fences eventually look like. Not saying that these citizens would want to have their things looking weathered and tired, but oftentimes that's what we see throughout the city. Anytime we deal with these street fences and that's why the board has often went with the shadow box design or the vinyl. Okay. Actually, I think the next question would be, is there anybody here that's neighbors that want to speak on this item? No. No, okay. And I know all the neighbors except the new one. Sure. But the, well, I guess in the past, what we suggest for homeowners when they are on a corner is to put, if you're going to use a wood type of material, it needs to be a boxed. So you're able to kind of see through it, not go all the way through the fence. Okay, I think the neighbor, isn't the neighbor, you were talking about that because you were there last night. Who, I'm sorry, who are you pointing? Could you? Yeah, him. Jeff, can you hit your speaker? Not you. Him. Oh, Don. Don? Yeah. There's a fence on the south line, half of it is a shadow box and half of it is this. Okay. So it's a shadow box type fence, we require that to be put in. The interesting fence is right, I'm just replacing it with this, that's all. Or the other option is a vinyl fence. What's a vinyl? I don't know nothing. So it's a material that, I guess, is very low maintenance, always needs to be clean. You know, it can be cleaned very easily with just water or pressure washed if it does get dirty. It's more of the white fence when you see, oh, they're plastic. It's probably a crash to the street, they have that. A vinyl fence, yeah. I think. So we require those two types of fences. Okay. That you can select and the building department would be able to instruct you as to what they look like or what type of fence do you think they are. Oh, I'm pretty sure my husband knows, but. Yeah, but what you selected and showed us a picture of what you would put up is not what we would allow. So this is the type of fencing that we would accept. Okay, and that's a vinyl? It's a vinyl fence. And you can select colors, you're not limited to just having white or off white. You could select a color, but that is the type of other material that we will allow. So either a shadow box or that type of material. Shadow box or. Or a vinyl. Okay. I got it done. Okay. Yeah, okay Steve. The only other comment is their garage comes off of. Yes. Grand Avenue. And I do believe in their survey, they're showing that they're doing a little site triangle. Like they would. A lot of the driveway. So that we want to just make sure is included and that's what's being proposed. So if the board was to approve this, we'd want to make sure from a design perspective or a condition perspective that it's either a shadow box or vinyl if you want to specify one of those. What's done in this corner? That is a picture of the house. Oh, okay. So it's in the middle of the yard. So could we do dog ear thing or no? I don't know, it's no dog ear. Not what we're talking about. It's either going to be shadow box or vinyl. And if they approve that, it's going to be really important that you talk to the building inspector to know specifically what it is you're after. So you're not purchasing or installing the wrong one. Nothing. Okay. I'll make a motion to approve based on using those two types of materials that building inspection will instruct you. Do we have a second? I'll second that. Okay. Quite a few, we got quite a few. Okay. Okay, any further discussion? I call the question. No. All right, Donna's called the question. All right, do I, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Chair votes aye. Motion's been passed. Just talk to our friends down in the city to make sure we get the right kind of fencing. Okay, do we go down to building inspection? That's correct. You'll deal with that. I reckon building inspection. Tell your husband you did it. You got it. Tell him to get the building inspection and get your permits for your fence. Thank you. Good job. Okay, next item, 3.5. We have a variance application by Michael Hemeister requesting to replace part of his existing driveway, which is closer than three feet to the property line, which is allowed, and extend the driveway and an additional nine feet, which would also be closer than three feet to the property line at 2503 North 8th Street. And we have Mr. Hemeister up here right now. That's what the problem I have right now is I try replacing existing, about a third of my existing driveway. Person that put it in, oh, what, 2003? Supposed to pitch it away from the house. Well, it comes toward the house and the foundation does leak as a result of that. So I wanna correct that problem. As far as extension is concerned, when I did floor that driveway 15, 20 years ago, I had a parking pad put alongside the garage. It's not quite long enough. I regretted that shortly after I put that in and seeing as I have the opportunity, I figured I would actually put it in and be much, much more useful. It would fit in with the yard better than what it is right now and give me ample space to park what I need to park there. Would the driveway take up more than 50% of your yard, meaning grass? No. There's, from the end of the driveway to the lock itself is 180 feet deep, from the end of the driveway to the, of where the driveway will end with the extension to the very back of the yard that would be an additional 75 feet. Okay. Any other questions? Your neighbor doesn't object to that? Nope. Because you're really tight there. It is tight there. I have a 40 foot lot line. That's why I have to. Do you wanna do it on the south side? Is that what I'm understanding? Pardon me? You wanna put the cement on the south side of your house? Yes. Okay. Yeah, he has no problem with it. It's just an extension from the driveway that's there right now, actually. Well, other than the fact that I'm taking out part of that driveway and replacing it again, but... And it'll be concrete.  And it is concrete? Yes. Okay. Steve, any issues from the city standpoint? There was not an objection or the staff was fine. Okay, with it. Make a motion to approve. Do we have a second? A second. So we have a motion to approve in a second. Do we have any further discussion? Okay. All in favor? Say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye. Motion passed. Thank you very much. Thank you. You're welcome back. All right. Item number 3.6, variance application by Timothy and Deborah Davis requesting to build a roof over their porch on the front of their house. A covered porch is not allowed within the required front yards at 3723 South 16th Street. Mr. and Mrs. Davis, you're both more than welcome to come on up. Sure. Yes. We wanna put a gavel up. We had a stoop and it the, can't think of the name of it. The soffit only covers half of it. Okay. And we wanna extend it out to the stoop no further than what the stoop originally was. So that's the front of the house that you see before you, everybody right now on the screens. And then Mr. and Mrs. Davis, you can correct me if I'm wrong here. And then this is the section that they're looking at to extend the small sidewalk patio over here as well as the gavel. Yep. And I believe there are some neighbors here as well for this one. Yep, okay. Please, if you have any questions or objections, please feel free to come on up. Everybody signing right? Yes. Hi. Hi. Excuse me. My name is Carol Vitella Vansluis. I'm in the house just north of them. I received this correspondence saying that it was not allowed and I'm a bit confused because I bought the house in 2014 and it has a covered porch probably the same size. I haven't measured, but probably the same size as what they are talking about. I just wanna say that I have lived in a lot of different states, had a lot of different homes, had a lot of different neighbors, some that I would not want to have as the neighbors again. They are fantastic neighbors. They keep their yard shape. And I mean, if you look on there, you can see our house has that one right there. Yes. Has. Oh yeah, she does have a part. I don't know. I haven't seen any plans. I haven't talked to them, but if it's anything similar and I'm sure the city would let them put in a dump, I don't know why. Am I out of variance then? I mean, I bought the house in 2014 that had the covered porch. And I'm assuming that they're gonna.  Typically there's a minimum of a 15 foot setback requirement in order to cover a porch and they're inside that. So that's why they're here requesting that today. Your home was constructed. Who knows, I don't know, 50s a while ago and it had that in there. So there's no issues whatsoever. We typically, anytime there's a variance, send notice to property owners to be aware, hey, the neighbors next door are looking for something so that you have the opportunity to participate and learn more about it and speak for against it or not to object at all. But that was the reason. So there's nothing up with your property whatsoever. It's more of the Davis's looking to do something similar. Okay, I had absolutely no objections. They're fantastic neighbors, as I say, and they keep their property, their yard probably looks better than our front yard lots of times because they mow it more often. We won't keep that on the record. Thank you, thank you very much. Mr. Ms. David, oh, there we go. My name is Kimberly Burroughs. That's my mom, I live with her. I have seen no objection either to them putting a covering over their porch. They have a very beautiful home and there are other houses in surrounding areas that look way worse than what's already existing. And I think it would add curb appeal. I think it would make the other homes look good as well. And I think it's something to add to make the neighborhood look nice. It's not something that they're trying to do to devalue the homes in the neighborhood. It's something that they're trying to improve and for their family make it enjoyable for when they have grandkids over and their children over that they can sit out under a covered porch. It's just a covered porch. I don't believe it's something that is extreme out of the box that they're asking for. And I, like my mom said, they are awesome people and they deserve, they've worked hard. And they deserve to be able to do that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's nice to see neighbor support. We appreciate that. Yeah, right. Do we have any... I'd like to make a motion to approve. Okay, we have a motion to approve. Do we have a second? Can't we have a second? Can't we have a second? Any further discussion? Okay. Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Chair votes aye. Motion passed. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah. All right, last item. You would just go to building inspection and probably it's here. I just want to make sure that my name is spelled correctly. My first name, I told you of that. And I'm sure I spelled it correctly on the application. I'm sure it is. All right, sounds good. Sorry about that. That's okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Anything else? That's it. When I talked with the people downstairs as far as easements and so on, now I'm under the understanding that patios don't necessarily need an easement, but I want to verify that and get it approved if on the north side of my house, I have a section of patio that I want to replace. It's existing concrete right now, but it had floated a bit. So I want to replace it, but that is also right up to the property line. You'll have to speak to Jeff Lutsky on that, our building inspector, and he can speak to you on that. Okay, I did include pictures of that too when I asked for the variance or easement, rather. Jeff, do you want to address that? Because that was not part of the request. Yes, it was. It should have been, I guess, because I did send you pictures of that, of the patio section as well. Okay, so pictures, but was it written in the request for the patio? Turning existing gravel driveway into cement driveway. Oh, nope, not that one. Not that one. We spoke a lot about that one. Let's see, replace part of existing driveway and extend it nine feet, replace patio concrete. Does say replace patio concrete. So what are we talking about? I guess we should revisit. I'm glad you came back. Pardon me? Glad you came back. Yeah, that was a good one. I am too. Yeah, and I am a judge. So that patio is this other, would you be able to bring the, yeah, oh, I'm on the wrong one. Thank you. This right here, are you referring to this section up here? Yes. And that's existing already. That is already existing. Concrete. It's just that it's Do you have a photo of that one in here? I did send you photos. I just didn't know if you knew offhand. Is that in this? That there section is the back of the driveway area where, so let's see if I can, right there. You can see how it's where the green lettering is in the upper, yeah. It says save that part of the concrete. I'm going to be leaving there. There's, it says save right at the bottom and also toward the top of the picture and green letters. You can say it's AVE, right? That concrete is going to stay there. Where it has the R, that's going to be removed. The next piece will be removed. And then there's a section that's between that save section and the deck itself that would be coming out and it would be re-poured, same size. It's just that it would be poured. So I poured that 30 years ago and that part of it, unfortunately, I didn't know how to pin it to the old concrete. So it floated away from the existing concrete. Created quite a bump that is actually quite hazardous as far as walking is concerned. So I want to take those out, have it put in properly so it stays put and it's. Okay, very good. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Jeff. So we have two things with this. One, patios don't require a building permit, which that's one aspect of it. The other aspect is existing concrete that's closer than three feet to a property line can be replaced as is whereas without a variance. Gotcha, okay. That's our ordinance. Oh, okay, okay. Or whoever made the motion could just add it. Would be required. To that it would be approved. Yeah, okay. Because I don't think anybody would object. I don't think so. To having you report that. So we're good either way. Yeah. Okay. Just want to make sure. Yeah, I'm glad you did. Thank you. I'm glad you did. Thank you much. All right. Do I have the motion to adjourn? So cool. Any second? It's all in favor to adjourn? Second. Opposed? First, second. Yeah. All right. Thanks everybody. Thank you. That was a good first one. Thank you. Thank you so much. That was a good first one to start that off.


This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. I'll haunt it by the past. Okay, this is the thin line on history lens. Marco Mangostore from Provision Solar in Hilo joins me by Voip Phone. He's a concerned citizen, as am I. There have been some incredible events that have happened in the building behind me lately. And as it works out, he had written a think piece before any of this broke. So this is an important discussion because it's dynamic. It's happening while we speak. The subject of this show is being covered on national news, a number of channels right now at this moment. Let it never be said that we are not current on things happening in this country. So Marco, let's talk about your think piece. Welcome to the show and tell us how you got involved to write a think piece about the question of conscience versus loyalty in federal government. On the show, Jay, and it's kind of unusual that our usual talking points together have to do with the exciting subject of renewable energy in Hawaii and energy in general. So I appreciate very much the opportunity to veer from our usual subject matter and talk about stuff of equally important but of a different nature. And I read a book. In fact, it was one of my father's books that he was quite the book collector during his time last year amongst the many, many paperbacks that he kept and read over the years. And this particular book was called Nuremberg Diary. Nuremberg Diary written by an American Army officer by the name of Gustav Gilbert who was fluent in German. He was a psychologist. And he had unfettered access to the 20-plus Nazis both within the government of Fidel Hitler, the military, civilians as well, who were on trial, who were about to trial in Nuremberg, Germany after the end of World War II. And Gilbert, as I said, had unfettered access to these individuals including Herman Gehring, who was the number two to Hitler, Yodel, who was the chief of staff of operations, Wilhelm Keitel, who was the chief of staff to the general staff, the Wehrmacht, the German military. And he wrote a book about his observations and interviews with these Nazis as they were being tried by the International Tribunal. And it got me to thinking about some of the striking parallels between the rise of Hitler and Hitlerism in the Nazis from 1933 when Hitler was duly elected chancellor of Germany to his final end there in April May, I believe it was 1945. And I got to thinking about how is it that people of good conscience and integrity, whether in the military or whether in the civilian workforce, how they were essentially corrupted over time, over the years by the abomination of national socialism in Naziism in Hitler and Germany. And while I want to be careful and not easily or willfully describe as someone as a Nazi, because I think that is a far off too often used epithet, it just got me wondering about the current age in which we are living in terms of having Donald J. Trump who was duly elected by majority of the electoral college back in November 2016. How is it that, in my opinion, there are some striking similarities between what the testimony was of these people on trial for their lives during the Nuremberg trials in terms of how they dealt with the abominations that they were witnessing and knew of in the case of persecution, not just of Jews but also of people of non-Aryan dissent, gypsies, Roma, homosexuals, Slavs and so forth. How is it that people supposedly of good faith and integrity, moral integrity, allowed themselves to be so debased in associating with someone like Adolf Hitler. And I found some very striking and rather terrifying parallels in terms of how apparently they felt the duty to the German state, the duty and loyalty to their leader, Chancellor and Führer, Adolf Hitler, how that somehow corrupted their own individual senses of responsibility and morality and allowed them to be a part of an abominable period of our history, not so far just in history, and what they perpetrated across millions and millions of people across eastern, western, northern, southern Europe. So that led me to... By the way, that's all very relevant these days. Just said Germany, for one reason or another, is turning right. Angela Merkel, who's one of my heroes, she's very progressive, but she's had trouble staying a leader in the German parliament because of the rise of conservatives, sometimes very far-right-wing conservatives in Germany. And indeed, two, three days ago, there was an article in The Times about a little village in the south of Germany called Hexheim, H-E-X-H-E-I-M, which has a bell in the church, which was put there by Adolf Hitler in 1934, and which bears the swastika on it. And the town of Hexheim is polarized over this. People come from both sides of the aisle and protest and express themselves on whether the bell should be removed. And it's an issue about whether they want to incorporate the bell into their view of history as a ripple along the way, or whether it's anathema and it should be removed immediately. It's not yet settled whether to remove the bell as a device from Nazi Germany. So the issue is pretty hot right now about how Hitler operated and how he got the average person in the street to go along with the crazy things he was doing. And that's instructive in our time, and you wouldn't be the first one that makes a comparison between the Hitler in the 1930s and what's happening in the Trump administration. Yes, I agree, and that's what led me to write what I wrote to try to bring to light the tug that I'm sure must be going on within those people in the White House, the cabinet members and sub-cabinet members who see themselves more as patriots as opposed to partisans, but who are serving a chief executive, a commander in chief, who has, without I think, just getting into anything controversial in terms of making the claim that this particular individual has pushed the norms and boundaries to a very humongous extent in terms of the course of action and the playing field in terms of what a president does or what a president has done. I mean, Mr. Trump has stretched many, many norms, some would say, to the breaking point, I mean, he certainly has been a transformative president in multiple ways, and you have people such as Chief of Staff John Kelly, who is a former four-star retired general. You have James Mattis also, if I'm not mistaken, four-star retired Marine Corps general, who is Secretary of Defense. You had H.R. McMaster, who is a three-star Army general, who was the chief, excuse me, national security advisor to the president. Rex Tillerson was a civilian, but also a man of some repute. How is it that you have these individuals, how are they internalizing the tug and the conflict within them between the duty they have to their commander in chief? Donald J. Trump versus the duty that they have to the nation and enter their own moral and ethical consciousness? Yes, to say nothing of the Republican Party, the Republican Party, who seems to go in lockstep with him on nearly any legislative initiative he wants to endorse, and they will agree with him, even when it's obvious that they shouldn't. So you get that same issue of loyalty to Trump against conscience. And I think this is not a recipe for success. It's not sustainable because Trump himself is reckless and immoral and willful disregard of the Constitution and the laws of the United States and of humanity. So when that happens, even if these guys would be likely to follow him in better circumstances, they become less likely when he is decompensating, which, you know, we have a lot of indications that he is decompensating. So what is the conclusion of the article that you wrote? I should say the thought piece that you wrote. The thought piece that I wrote. Maybe I can just read to you the last two or three paragraphs, I think, rather than trying to paraphrase my own words, if that's okay, I'll just read the last couple of three paragraphs. Sure. Strikingly, even though most of those judged at Nuremberg acknowledged that there had been horrible crimes committed, they claimed that they had individually acted in good faith according to the standards of their respective positions and professions. Admitting to no dereliction of duty, the generals and admirals had only followed orders. The politicians had only acted for the good of the nation and the financiers had only taken care of business. To what degree, the tension between loyalty and conscience is playing out among those closest to power in the Trump administration. Perhaps it won't be known until after the end of his presidency and the release of more tell-all memoirs. So far, those in top-level positions who have left are keeping any possible internal conflicts experienced to themselves. With no shortage of both domestic and foreign policies and actions pushing and often breaking long-established boundaries coming from this White House, this tension is likely to play out with even greater intensity. Complicity or worse in facilitating the denigration, if not destruction of the bedrock principles of our constitutional republic must not be overlooked amid the daily political din. Too much is at stake. And I'll add to that the blockbuster, as you mentioned in a previous conversation we had a little while ago, the blockbuster today of this anonymous op-ed which was published most unusually by the New York Times because they rarely, if ever, publish an op-ed that is not, someone doesn't take ownership to. But this apparently is from a so-called senior and a high-level administration official who submitted this to The Times. And his last, his or her last sentence says, quote, the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one, Americans. So it's that tension between patriotism and loyalty to the nation and to America and the constitutional republic for which we stand for and loyalty to your boss, your chief executive, your commander-in-chief, and apparently that tension is coming to a high boil now, especially with Bob Woodward's book that has just been released these past days, simply titled Fear in addition, and with the addition of this op-ed piece which was published by The Times today. So apparently we are going truly in uncharted waters here, Jay, in terms of where else is this going to go in this White House? What's going to be the next big shoe to fall? And it's just pretty striking. I mean, I've never, as a citizen, as an American, never experienced anything like this, and I think the day after the election in November 2016, a lot of us had a fair amount of anxiety in terms of where was this relatively unknown man in terms of not having any governmental experience, where was he going to lead the nation? And I certainly would never predict it. I couldn't predict, could not have predicted it. I think very, very few people could have predicted that we would be in the place where we are right now. It's been remarkable, and it's been getting worse. And he's been getting worse. But the interesting parallel that you drew in your think piece is, you know, it's all the more poignant. Because the guys in the White House, and for that matter, the guys in Congress who follow him in the Republican Party, they do have or should have this crisis of loyalty versus conscience. And some of them have been in lockstep the whole time. They have not in any way diverged or shown any lack of loyalty, except for a few like John McCain, to Trump. And loyalty to Trump has somehow been conflated to loyalty to the nation. So if you're loyal to Trump, you're loyal to the nation.  And this issue you've raised is out there in extremis. This is the same thing, the same issue that should have been raised in Nazi Germany. No, I can't just follow orders. And I think that's the American culture, the American governmental culture, if you will, that's coming up now after, what, 18 months. Finally, we see that there are people who are not going to just follow orders. And I hope this happens with the existing Republican Party or with the remade Republican Party, hopefully, after November. So what we have is a huge sea change going on. And it all emanates from his decompensation. He's decompensating. So we have your article or your think piece, which actually, I think, has been on the minds of a lot of people over the last year, including me. And then we have Bob Woodward's book that came out. It was actually leaked to, I forget what, media or the Washington Post. And it will be released on September 11th. It's an interesting choice of a release day. And you can buy it on Amazon right now in advance. You won't get it until September 11th, but you can buy it. And presales have been enormous. This is going to be a best seller. I mean, they set it up so that in the week between the time it was leaked to the Washington Post and the time it comes out, so you can read it in verbatim, there's going to be all kinds of discussion about it. And there have been many shows on TV and many commentaries in the newspaper about this book. And this book is a well-documented study by a notable journalist who was responsible for bringing Richard Nixon down, a first-class political journalist, Woodward, who now has talked to hundreds of people over hundreds of hours of interview, recorded, by the way, including people who were there, who were in the White House and who saw what Trump was doing from day to day. And who heard him talk and heard others talk at him. And Woodward has revealed this in his book. It's an extraordinary book. It will be very, very popular, I think. People will want to know what's really happening. And you come to find that there's no method behind the madness, just madness, just reckless behavior from day to day, moment to moment, where nobody around him could follow what he was doing. And so what you have is this landscape that Woodward describes, followed by the op-ed piece in today's New York Times. It's moving faster, logarithmically faster now. And the op-ed piece in the New York Times actually supports everything that Woodward said, even though Trump and his press secretary have said, ah, it's all bunk, none of it is true, they made it up. Well, the fact is that Woodward didn't make it up. The fact is it's been corroborated by somebody who the Times knows, but the Times is sympathetic and doesn't want to see him lose his position in the White House staff. So the Times doesn't reveal his name, which is really a remarkable thing for the Times. And it's confirmed, Woodward's book is confirmed by this guy who wrote the op-ed piece one day later. Quite remarkable. And it suggests that there are other people. In fact, it says there are other people in the White House as part of the same group. They have conscience, but they don't want to leave. I'm sure they've thought of the idea of resigning on many occasions as most of us would, but they have decided to stay and protect the country from where they are. This is very noble and as you say, sure enough, it's going to come out as to who they are. I can imagine right now, right now, Marco, Trump is pounding around the White House trying to figure out who did it. It's Captain Quig in the court of strawberries. He's going to spend, you know, days, weeks even trying to figure out who did it so he can fire him. What makes it worse for the paranoia that I'm sure he's experiencing is that it's not one person. It's actually a group of people and they all feel the same way. So is this president going to be able to continue in office? Is this president going to be able to continue what he's been doing? Is this president going to have anybody really, truly loyal to him and supporting him? Those days are gone forever. And the question is, can we impeach him? Shouldn't we impeach him? This is non-functional. He's going to be into the court of strawberries for months. And Quiri, you know, how does that work on a domestic level, on an economic level? How does that work in terms of dealing with Congress and the public? What do they call them? The guys in the White House called them a professional liar. Kelly or one of the others said he was a professional liar. Well, you know, I think it's even worse. So what you have is a non-sustainable presidency. And Quiri, whether the Republican Party is going to come around, now or after November, and throw him out. Because we as a nation cannot afford any more of this. We are completely dysfunctional. The policies that he has made are completely dysfunctional and are getting us into trouble on every quarter. Do you want to rebut any of that? Oh, man. No, I don't want to go there. I wouldn't try to do that. I'm most fascinated kind of from the individual psychological drama going on within these various individuals. And again, trying to find parallels between Gilbert's, Gustav Gilbert's observations going back to Nuremberg, which is there is a seduction of being close to power. I think that if you can't be president of the United States and you aspire to position of great power, since of course the vast majority of people will never be president, the closest you can get is to be a top-level subordinate.  And I think there's a powerful seductive quality of that in doing that. And as you kind of alluded to a few moments ago, and this was very, very prevalent in Nuremberg where you had multiple individuals who were being tried who believed and stated so in their testimony that they felt that they're sticking around working under Adolf Hitler, they would be able to moderate his worst instincts, moderate his behavior, and that if they were to leave that things would only get worse. So without getting into the head or doing too much psychobabble analysis of former General James Kelly, former General James Mattis, I have to speculate that there is some of that going on in their minds and others close to President Trump who do believe that they are doing the nation a service by sticking around to that administration because if they were to leave and there's a fair amount of ego involved there, there has to be, if they were to leave, their replacement would only be doing worse and therefore the nation would suffer. So this is the same, I believe, similar rationalizations that went on 70-plus years ago and were expressed by these people on trial for their lives at Nuremberg that's going on right now in the Trump White House.  Yeah, the military guys presents a kind of issue to me because they're picked as military. It doesn't have to have military people in there. He has a raft of them. And what is it about military that's different than ordinary people on the street? Well, they used to follow orders. That's what they were trained to do. That's what they have done through long and successful careers. They have successfully followed orders. It means they're loyal to the ordering authority. And it reminds me, I told you before the show that when I first came to Hawaii, I was introduced to a fellow who was bilingual, spoke German and English, and who was in the United States Army right after the war, and he was one of the interpreters, if not the chief interpreter at Nuremberg. And he saw those trials you were talking about. He interpreted what the Germans were saying in those trials. And when I met him, I remembered that he talked about what their standard defense was. The standard defense was the defense you always find in situations which were immoral or amoral. And that is I was only following orders. So a lot of those Nazis in those trials said I was only following orders. I was loyal to my boss. So loyalty enters into this. Now in Woodward's book, he talks about remarks by both Kelly and Matisse, Mattis, that were uncomplementary to Trump, where they called Trump names like idiot, and said that Trump had the same understanding of North Korea as a fifth or sixth grader would have. I mean, they were not complementary comments. After the comments about the book came out, after it became a public spectacular yesterday, they both fired off Twitter messages where they both denied that they'd ever said anything that was less than complementary to Trump. And in fact, they complimented him on his work as president. And I find that interesting because if you put that alongside what Woodward had said in the book, which was based on a variety of sources of people who heard those remarks being made in the White House, I would have to believe Woodward. I would not believe the tweets from either Kelly or Matisse. And so what is that operating that they would make those tweets?  And they took the bait. When you think about it, Jay, what choices do they have? Three options. One would be to say publicly that they corroborate Woodward's words, which would have meant their immediate either resignation or dismissal. Two, they could have stayed silent, which would have been a tacit, I think seen as a tacit admission that Woodward cited them accurately. Or three, they go out there and they push back and said, you never said such thing as beneath me so forth and so on. So, you know, it devolves into a, did they say it or not, with Woodward claiming that they did. He said, I stand behind my reporting. And people, you know, Madison Kelly, who said I never said any such thing. So both versions of reality cannot be right, right? Right. Well, this is, you know, I mean, I can see that in the years to come, or maybe the days or months to come, we'll find out more about Kelly and Madison and others in the White House. We'll find out, you know, what side of the fence they were really on, that they really are on. I mean, they could be operating out of loyalty, out of that same kind of loyalty that occupied the general staff in Germany. Or they could be operating out of that sort of constrained loyalty to the country. I'm in here as a mole. I'm really here to protect you. And actually, I'm not sure that that's totally ingenuous. That might be slightly disingenuous as a way to defend holding on to power and holding on to, you know, all the perks that go with being at the top of the heap in the White House. It's not clear to me that that really works for everybody who claims it. I was only protecting the country. Maybe the same thing is I was only following orders. The question is, where did the orders come from? And the other thing I'd like to point out, and maybe this is something we should talk about for a minute anyway, and that is, does it stop here, Marco?  It's almost as if you knew what would happen only 24 or 48 hours later that this thing would break and that he would be shown to have been decompensating on a daily basis in the White House, that he was reckless and wild in all of his thinking and the way he handled people. Just like, you know, the crazy decisions he made on the apprentice show years ago. You're fired. But, you know, it strikes me that this is decompensating to the point where we can make an assumption that these are not the only guys, that the guys in Woodward's book are not the only people, that this anonymous writer, op-ed writer in the New York Times, is not the end of it. And as he suggested, there are others. There is a group in the White House. And I would like to offer the thought to your comment that there are groups in the departments too. He's appointed some real followers, some blind followers as department heads around federal government. But I'm not sure that the second tier people in federal government look, for example, at the Department of Justice. That second tier is probably not loyal to him. And so what we have is the possibility of other op-ed pieces. It's rolling down the hill. This is a snowball, don't you think? It's hard to make, for me as a political analyst, it's hard for me to make a case that this, let's call it big waiver, tsunami has crusted. It doesn't seem to me that there's an end in sight as far as the drama, the turbulence, and the instability of our executive, chief executive, who's in the White House at present, as far as the next shoes to fall. I mean, there's the looming release at some point, hopefully not in the too far distant future of Robert Mueller's special counsel report that he'll be submitting to Rod Rosenstein and that'll be made public soon thereafter. We have elections, midterm elections, in just a little over two months that a lot of pundits are seeing as being, whether it's a teeny tiny blue wave or a mid-sized blue wave or a big blue wave or a tsunami blue wave, of course we have to wait and see, but it doesn't seem to me that the drama that has been essentially such so acute and so high-pitched and so high decibel over the past several days, it doesn't seem like that drama is going to die down anytime soon, and as far as how it's all going to play out, I'm not prescient enough to see an end game, but typically as, you know, you use the word decompensate a number of times, Jay, as one decompensates more and more and becomes further detached and becomes connected to the more commonly held, dare I say, objective reality around them, the farther out they get, the more apparent and wild and crazy and perhaps risky and dangerous their behavior and their decisions may get. So I think that's certainly something that concerns me and I think a lot of people, just how much further given an increased feeling of paranoia within the White House, especially in light of this anonymous op-ed piece coming out, you know, how is that going to add to the stability or instability within the mind and the emotions and the core of Donald J. Trump? And I don't think things look particularly positive right now as far as things getting better before they get worse. Yeah, I agree. That's the issue. That's the issue we have to leave it on. What happens to him? He's a dynamic too.  All of this increasing group, they're all in this huge conspiracy, all to bring me down. That doesn't work anymore. So what are his options in terms of defending himself against an increasing number of people who are revealing what life is like in the White House and in the government? So it's hard to say what he would do, but I agree with you, there's a substantial possibility that he will further decompensate, that he will do more reckless things, and after all, he's still the president. I hope those guys can contain him when he starts to go further south. Well, thank you, Marco. What a great discussion. Thank you for sharing your think piece with us. And I look forward to our next discussion soon on energy or possibly other things. Thank you so much. My pleasure, Jay. My pleasure. Thank you very much for having me on for this special edition of Jane Marco and Haunted by the Past. Okay. History Lens. We'll see you soon. Allah hafiz. Thank you.


I am going to talk about R-Paper Lightweight Authenticated Encryption mode suitable for Threshold Implementation. I am Takeshi Sugawara and this is a joint work with Yusuke Naito and Yu Sasaki. This is the outline of my talk. Our motivation is to design an authenticated encryption scheme suitable for Threshold Implementation. Here suitable means to minimize the memory size in Threshold Implementation. We follow the approach of PFB of improving the performance with TI by reducing the ratio of nonlinear part that uses many shares. In the previous work, the size of the nonlinear part was the same as the security level in bits. We extended the work to design two TI-friendly AE modes. The first one is PFB+, and its size of the nonlinear part is a half on the security level, which is a half of PFB. This figure on the left shows how the memory size is multiplied in TI in PFB. We can trade a half of the nonlinear part with a linearly updated state, as shown in the figure on the right for PFB+. Since we need less number of shares for protecting the linear part with TI, the total memory space for PFB+, can be smaller than the other PFB with TI. PFB or MIGR is a generalization, and its size of the nonlinear part is even smaller, and it is the security level divided by a positive integer or MIGR. We give conditions about internal parameters that PFB or MIGR should satisfy, and give concrete parameters up to omega equals to 3. We want authenticate encryption for resource constrained IoT devices, so the design goal here is to minimize the implementation cost without compromising the security. As a result of the recent advances in lightweight cryptography, register or memory dominates the hardware cost rather than combinatorial circuits. Here we show an example. A 4-bit S-box, which is common among lightweight block-cypher algorithms, uses 20-40 gates. In contrast, a register for storing 128-bit data needs 6-900 gates. There is a threat of such a channel attack for IoT devices, because they are sometimes operated under a hostile environment in which an owner attacks the device. This needs lightweight cryptography standardization process ongoing, and it optionally considers the security against side-channel attack. So there is a need for lightweight and side-channel attack-resistant AE. In other words, the performance of an implementation with a side-channel attack counter measure can be an important performance metric for AE schemes. The goal of our work is to design an AE that has minimal memory size with threshold implementation. Threshold implementation, or TI, is a side-channel attack counter measure suitable for hardware. It's based on multi-party computation, and it has the non-completeness property that ensures the security in the presence of glitches, which is the transient signal propagation through combinatorial circuits. The number of shares multiplies the memory size. This order TI needs TD plus 1 shares for a target function with the algebraic degree T. So for first order TI, the minimum number of shares is 2 for linear functions, and 3 for non-linear functions. So the memory is related to non-linear operations is multiplied by 3 in threshold implementation, while the linear part multiplies the memory size by 2. PFB is the previous design, and what we learned from PFB is that different part in tweakable block cipher uses the different number of shares. The state for data randomization uses 3 shares, and linear key scheduling needs 2 shares, and the public tweak needs no protection. And we can change the ratio using a beyond-the-bust-a-burn scheme. And the resulting scheme has a small memory size when implemented with TI. So the figure on the left is a block cipher-based design, called SAEB, and one on the right is the TBC-based design, PFB. So what PFB did is to convert a half of the non-linear part into a linear and public tweak. The total number of memories is the same without TI, but because of different multipliers, the memory sizes with TI are different between the schemes. We compare different design approaches and their memory sizes with TI. In permutation-based design, like duplex, the capacity C should be 2S for the security level S because of burst-a-bound. So the non-linear size equals to the permutation size, and it is 2S plus all. In block cipher-based design, like SAEB or Sunday, the block size B should be 2S, again because of burst-a-bound. Here the non-linear size becomes 2S with the block cipher using linear key schedule. Finally, in tweakable block cipher-based design, like PFB or Aramulus, the block size B equals to S because of beyond the burst-a-bound security. So the non-linear size equals to S with the tweakable block cipher using linear tweaky schedule. Here is our approach for TI-friendly AE. We extend PFB to reduce the ratio of the non-linear part even further while keeping the S-bit state for security. This video shows the ratio of non-linear and linear parts and how they are multiplied in TI. This one on the top is PFB, and it's our baseline. We replace the non-linear part with linear part within the S-bit. The total memory size is a constant without TI, but we can reduce the memory size with TI because the non-linear and linear parts have different multipliers. These are our results. We extended PFB. The first one is PFB plus is the security S equals to the double of the block size. That means the size of the non-linear part is a half of the original PFB. The second one is the generalization we call PFB omega, and its size of the non-linear part is S divided by a positive integer. We get conditions that PFB omega becomes secure. Next, we extend the skinny with a larger tweekie for PFB plus. It is what we call skinny E with 64-bit state and 256-bit tweekie. Finally, we gave concrete hardware performance evaluation by combining PFB plus with the skinny E. I briefly recall the TBC best-skinned PFB. This figure on the top left is TBC, which is a familiar BBIT permutations indexed by the key and the tweak. It offers many distinct permutations by changing the tweak, and using this functionality, we can obtain a highly secure and lightweight AE like PFB. This figure on the top right is PFB, composed of a hydrated structure of TBC. It uses a non-n and a counter value as a tweak for each TBC core, so they are distinct permutations. This structure ensures that the security level is equal to the block size B. To further improve the security level from B to XB bits, we modify PFB by adding this X-1 times B-bit state that uses linear operations. This is PFB plus, and the additional BBIT state is defined by X varying each TBC output. Now the internal state size is the double of the block size, and it ensures that the security level is equal to the double of the block lengths in the non-respecting setting. The ratio of the non-linear path in the internal state is a half, which is smaller than that of PFB. This is the generalized mode we call PFB omega. The additional omega minus 1 times B-bit state is defined by processing each TBC output with these linear operations. The extended internal state ensures that the security level is equal to the internal state size given by omega times B in the non-respecting setting and under some conditions that these coefficients in the linear operation should satisfy. The ratio of the non-linear path in the internal state is 1 over omega, which is even smaller than that of PFB plus when omega is larger than or equals to 3. To instantiate PFB plus, we need a TBC with four BBITs tweaking space for the block size B, because we need two BBITs for a key and another two BBITs for a tweak. There is no previous lightweight TBC that satisfies this requirement. For example, Skinny supports up to 3B-bit tweaking space. So we designed Skinny E, which is an extension of Skinny that supports 64-bit block and 256-bit tweaking. Skinny is based on the tweaking framework. Skinny 64 is a variant with a 64-bit block and can have up to three tweaking states, namely TK1 to TK3. So the 192-bit tweaking is the maximum and the number of rounds is at most 40. These three tweaking states are linearly and independently updated. In Skinny E, we extended the original Skinny by adding a new tweaking state, TK4, along with a new linear tweaking schedule. Skinny E supports a 256-bit tweaking with a 64-bit block. For ensuring the security, we extended the number of rounds to 44. Please see our paper for a detail about the security analysis. We did hardware performance evaluation of PFB plus combined with Skinny E. For comparing its performance, we also implemented PFB instantiated with the original Skinny with 128-bit block and 256-bit tweaking. We implemented both schemes with the same design policy. These are the diagrams of the data path architectures of the two schemes. Both of them used the serialized Skinny implementations from the original Skinny paper. We added some extras, selectors, and ungates to support commands for processing blocks for PFB and PFB plus. Another thing you might be interested in is the various number of shares coexist in these implementations. The blue region I extended to three shares for Skinny's nonlinear operations, and the orange regions used two shares for secret keys and the PFB plus extended state. This is the implementation results. This table compares the number of registers and the circuit area between the two schemes with and without TI. The two schemes are almost the same without TI both in register size and circuit area. In contrast, PFB plus combined with Skinny E is smaller by 1009 gates with TI compared to PFB. This difference comes from the difference in the number of registers that PFB plus is smaller by 64 bits. This is the conclusion of my talk. We designed two TBC-based TI friendly AEs, having the ratio of the nonlinear part less than one. The first one is PFB plus and its nonlinear part is a half of the security level S, and it's a half of the conventional PFB. The second one is PFB omega and its nonlinear part is only S divided by omega. We gave the conditions regarding the internal parameters needed for satisfying the security. Then we designed Skinny E with 64-bit block and 256-bit tweaking by extending the original Skinny E with the fourth tweaking state. Finally, we made hardware performance evaluation, the PFB plus, combined with the Skinny E, and PFB plus was smaller than the original PFB by 1009 gates with TI.


Backroom's Entity 141 or the Ambassadors.  Ambassadors look like floating cubes that can glide and glow through the air. They have human level intelligence and sometimes above it and they can fly through the air and through objects at high speeds. These Ambassadors can somewhat control emotions of people they encounter. They can also recreate voices of anyone to lure them closer and they can also manipulate the thoughts of people, to some degree. The lore doesn't stop there though because these entities were considered myth and legend by many older civilizations in the backrooms. So much so that they would carve them into ruins and paint them on walls and in books. The Ambassadors' main goal is to lure people to their home level and control people to do their own bidding, but the true motive of these creatures is unknown.