August 7, 2017 at 3:43 p.m.
Oneida zoning moves against Minocqua Lake Condo encroachment
County will hold permit revocation hearing, issue citations
Oneida zoning moves against Minocqua Lake Condo encroachment
The committee also voted to have zoning staff pursue citations against the condominium association and/or individual unit owners, based on the evidence it has. The condominium is located just south of the bridge leading into Minocqua from the south.
According to assistant zoning director Pete Wegner, the department received a complaint on June 16 alleging the encroachment of a pier onto the adjoining property, essentially blocking that property owner from entering and leaving his boathouse, as well as an excess number of pier berths.
In addition, Wegner said, a pier configuration did not comply and signs alerting the public that some of the berths are available for public use had been removed.
"After I looked into it, I found out they could only have two piers and eight berths, four of which are for the public," Wegner told the committee. "Right now, I think at a minimum they probably have 18 berths and one elongated pier that does not comply with our ordinance as far as configuration. I don't know what the length would be, but it's almost the entire frontage of the property."
Wegner said there were more than four boats which appeared to be permanent because they were covered and stayed overnight.
"There should only be four," he said. "The other ones for the public are not overnight use, so there should be four open ones basically and then four for the condo."
After receiving the complaint, Wegner said he sent the condo association copies of what would be permitted under the 2002 CUP for marina status, notifying both the condominium association president and vice president.
"A couple of times they told me they would address the issue of encroachment, and it never really happened," he said.
Wegner said the pier goes over the property line and, once a pontoon boat is placed at the end, it's even worse for the adjoining property owner.
"And that's how we got to where we are today," he said. "Enough is enough. ... It's just not fair. He (the adjacent property owner) is completely blocked from getting his boat in or out of his boathouse."
Wegner also said he had received calls from the association's attorney informing him that the association could not find anybody to reconfigure and relocate until after Labor Day.
Immediate relief
Supervisor Billy Fried wondered if the county could take action to provide the adjacent property owner with immediate relief.
"I will use the analogy of someone parking their car at the end of your driveway, and you can't get your car out and the frustration that this has gone on even into other years," Fried said. "We understand the processes we need to go through, but when he (zoning director Karl Jennrich) read the ordinance (at the beginning of the meeting), he said he has the ability for corrective measures and I just question why, when we have such a small window of summer enjoyment, why we don't have the ability to hire someone to go correct it to bring relief to the adjoining property owner and then charge it back to them."
Moving through the process of a public hearing, or even through the courts, kicked the can down the road, Fried said, while the summer season would soon be gone and the property owner would be blocked for the majority of the time.
Corporation counsel Brian Desmond reminded Fried that the county did not have the ability "to just go and undertake what's called self-help." Committee members also observed that the property owner could go to court for relief.
Oneida County resident Tom Handrick, who filed the complaint but who is not the adjacent property owner, said the issue had persisted for several years.
"This condo association just keeps pushing the envelope," Handrick said. "The property owner has been trying to be a good neighbor. There was an issue with a fence that they were supposed to do a document with the county and I believe they never completed that, but this has been going on and the property owner doesn't want to get into a battle with his neighbors. That's why I filed the complaint."
Handrick said he had gone to the area three or four times a week and had been sending photos to county zoning, but nothing had changed.
"My question is, why don't you issue some citations?" Handrick asked. "That's how you get people's attention. You can warn somebody all you want, but, if you issue citations, maybe that will wake them up."
Handrick also said he had offered to remove the piers at no cost to anybody.
"We could tie them up to the tree on their shore," he said. "It would take us an hour to do it."
The central issue is, Handrick said, the adjoining property owner can hardly get out of his own boathouse, especially if there is a pontoon at the end of the condo pier, and the burden should not be placed on the adjacent property owner's shoulders.
"Why does he have to go and get a court order when the other people are obviously violating the law?" he asked. "I think the piers are supposed to be 10 feet from the property line, and they are actually over 22 feet. And these people are basically telling county zoning we are not going to pay any attention to you."
A hearing and citations
In the end, the committee opted for holding a public hearing and pursuing citations.
Jennrich said the fence issue raised by Handrick had been resolved, and Wegner said he was not aware of past complaints. Nonetheless, Wegner said, based on photos, there was a huge change in the pier configuration between 2015 and 2016.
Jennrich said the department had the authority to move ahead with citations, regardless of a public hearing, and Desmond said citations could actually be issued for every day of violation since the discovery of the infraction.
Wegner questioned whether citations would be effective. In his discussions with the condo association's attorney, Wegner said the attorney and the association were confident the condos are legally allowed the number of piers and berth spaces they have.
"I don't think a citation is going to shake anybody up," Wegner said. "There are 21 unit owners, 18 of which, technically, believe they have their own berth space."
But, when asked, Wegner said there was nothing to that effect in the condominium documents, and nowhere was there any documentation that each unit came with a berthing space.
"There's nothing in a file or in any open meeting where that was discussed," he said. "If anything, it was just the opposite. There were concerns raised stating the number of units versus the number of piers actually permitted."
The discussion turned to who might be cited, if citations were issued. Desmond suggested the condominium association, but Jennrich said it might be better to cite each individual condo unit owner.
Desmond said some owners might argue that their particular boat was parked legally, but Wegner said he had photos coming which would show the tags on parked boats, and Desmond said then a combination of citations might be in order.
"There may be some violation that we could give directly to the condo association as an entity under the ordinance - violation of a permit - and some of these we can probably give to the individuals if we have those boat tag numbers," he said.
Supervisor Dave Hintz offered that a public hearing should be held to hear all the arguments and to look back at what was actually granted, and supervisor Jack Sorensen said it was important for the county to take action.
"We just went through this with the condominium that Trig (Solberg) is associated with, and we basically told those folks that the best we could do was marina status for them, so, if we allow this other condominium to go do whatever they damn well please, that's precedent for every other condominium on every other lake in Oneida County," Sorensen said.
At that point, supervisor Mike Timmons moved to go forward with issuing citations to the condo association and/or the appropriate individuals and to schedule a public hearing for possible amending, suspending, or revoking the conditional use permit.
The motion passed unanimously.
Richard Moore is the author of The New Bossism of the American Left and can be reached at www.rmmoore1.com.
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