August 22, 2018 at 6:01 p.m.
The need for consistent zoning
The need for consistent zoning
Right now there is none.
In this instance, supervisors ignored the feelings of more than 200 Hazelhurst residents and rezoned a parcel from business use, where gravel pits are not allowed, to manufacturing use, where they are.
The Lakeland area's delegation itself was split, with Woodruff town chairman Mike Timmons and supervisor Robert Almekinder joining Hazelhurst town chairman Ted Cushing in supporting the petition.
But supervisors Billy Fried from Minocqua and Lance Krolczyk of Woodruff voted no.
To be sure, there were reasonable arguments on both sides. For the pro side, there is a history of gravel excavation on the property, and it adjoins a manufacturing-industrial parcel, which makes the rezone a logical extension of that district.
But opponents noted the highly residential character of the nearby area, not to mention the noise and the dust, the fuss and the muss of a gravel pit, as well as potential health issues related to air-borne dust.
Unlike some other proposed gravel pits where homeowners built homes in areas they knew full well could become gravel pits, that was not the case here. Those who built homes in the area had no reason to believe that site would ever be mined, because it was not zoned for one and because the town's land-use plan called for it to remain undeveloped woodlands.
That portion of the land-use plan has now been consigned to the dustbin of history, so to speak, making one wonder whether comprehensive land-use plans, which we have never liked, are worth the paper they are written on.
The decision is what is it is, for better or for worse, and opponents can still oppose a conditional use permit for the gravel pit. That said, we should call out the disingenuousness of some supervisors who suggested the rezone should be passed because the CUP could be later defeated, for a new state law makes it practically inevitable that a CUP for the gravel pit will be issued.
This specific issue aside, the larger question for us is how the zoning committee, which recommended this rezone on a 4-1 vote, is making its decisions, and the lack of consistency that comes out of this committee in making many of them.
In this case, it did not matter to the committee that changing the zoning district to allow an industrial use would encroach upon a residential neighborhood. The noise pollution that operation might make did not matter to them; they said it would be minimal. And they pooh-poohed the notion that having a mine next door might lower their property values.
Instead, they looked at the gravel pit as an expansion of a neighboring zoning district that would constitute a reasonable use of the property without much damage next door.
Well, OK, but that's not how the zoning committee always sees things. For example, when it comes to short-term rentals in single-family neighborhoods, the committee was singing a different tune.
To the committee, which opted for stricter rental regulations only because state law no longer allows them to ban them outright, short-term rentals are not a reasonable use of those residential neighborhoods.
As we look back over those deliberations, we remember zoning director Karl Jennrich crowing about having all sorts of ways to regulate such rentals, all sorts of obstacles that could be put in their way. There was no rezone to fight, but they sure could require permits and parking and inspections to discourage such an obviously undesirable use.
We remember supervisors saying property values would be destroyed by having noisy party houses in the neighborhood, if short-term rentals were allowed to encroach upon pristine lakefront properties.
Here's how supervisor Jack Sorensen, who didn't see a problem with a gravel pit next door to residential properties but saw a big problem with a rental house next door, put it during the rental debate: "The other side of the coin is, quite frankly, the people who spent a quarter of a million dollars or more on a lake home, expecting privacy, and suddenly this happens next door. It's a recipe for conflict. Serious conflict."
Yes, and the same serious conflict occurs when you substitute gravel pits for short-term rentals, but apparently Mr. Sorensen doesn't get it. For Mr. Sorensen, a short-term rental next door is cause for calling the sheriff, while a gravel pit is akin to having a pristine paradise to watch and listen to all day.
The inconsistency was even more ludicrous when a majority of the zoning committee declared themselves to be health care experts and decided that Marshfield Clinic could not build a hospital at the same site as its current clinic in Minocqua because it would injure the health, safety and welfare of the community.
So let's see. A hospital built on a site already zoned for health care and already used for health care wasn't proper, but a gravel pit on a site not zoned for it in the past, and not slated to exist in a land use plan or used for it now, is proper?
The point is not whether there should be a gravel pit. The point is, the committee is making it all up as they go, and there is no consistent application of zoning principle. There is no grasp of what zoning is all about.
And that's the fundamental point: The purpose of zoning is to allow for the reasonable use of private property that does not ruin the legitimate use of neighboring properties. And its imposition was to be quite limited: It was to divide commercial, industrial, and residential areas so that the purposeful use of each could be fulfilled, not to micro-zone within those categories as a way to build gates to keep people out.
The very purpose of zoning was to prevent factories or hog farms from springing up in residential neighborhoods. It was not meant to keep commercial hospitals out of commercial districts or to use legal props such as minimum lot sizes as a way to discriminate between various residential formats, meaning their underlying affluence.
It was meant to protect the residential character of neighborhoods, not to be used to discriminate between different kinds of residential properties or against different classes of people based on color or income. And zoning was never meant to be used to protect water quality, as some would have us believe.
The answer to any zoning question is, does it further the true purpose of zoning? On any of these specific issues there are arguments to be made and questions to be asked.
Are short-term rentals really residential anymore? Does transforming a business district into an industrial district really make the reasonable use of nearby residential properties less likely, essentially obliterating the zoning boundary? What industrial use might be permitted after the gravel pit is long gone (an issue raised notably by supervisor Bill Liebert)?
There are no easy answers to those questions, and the answers differ by the specific case, but to pretend that a gravel pit next door is OK while a short-term rental is not is absurd, as is pretending that a hospital being built in a district already zoned and used for health care is not a proper use.
Such decisions are all over the place, and indicative of decisions based on personal beliefs and agendas, not on reasoned deliberation of principle.
Maybe it's time for a new zoning committee, for consistency's and principle's sake.
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