August 19, 2021 at 1:25 p.m.
Pickerel Lake rezoning issue resurfaces during Newbold board meeting
Opponents allege irregularities in petition; town chair says decision was not based on number of signatures for or against
Pickerel Lake rezoning issue resurfaces during Newbold board meeting
Nancy Verkuilen, representing the Pickerel Lake Property Owners Group, was the lone speaker during the public comment portion of the Aug. 12 Newbold town board meeting. She alleged that irregularities in a petition submitted in support of the Schiffmann rezoning had come to light. She also asked a number of questions regarding how the board verifies signatures on zoning petitions.
"Perhaps as part of your standard procedure you had examined the petition after the July 8 (town board) meeting for yourselves and found many signatures that seemed problems. I don't know," Verkuilen said. "The Pickerel Lake Property Owners Group played by the rules: One signature per parcel and back in April, stuck to people who actually live on Pickerel Lake. I'd like to know what your procedure is when you get a petition, who checks it? How is it verified as authentic?"
"Why after a majority of Newbold citizens opposed the two rezones, one involving DNR property, didn't you bring it back for further discussion to the planning commission to relook at it as was documented in your minutes, that you should have, knowing many, many opposed this as represented at the county public hearing?" Verkuilen asked.
While the town board was precluded from responding to Verkuilen's questions during the meeting, due to state statutes, town chairman Dave Kroll did respond to some of her statements in a subsequent phone interview with the River News.
Kroll said the rezoning request was made to Oneida County planning and zoning, who then forwarded the request to the town for review. The review consisted of a determination as to whether the rezoning request conformed to the projected future use of the area in question as outlined in the town's comprehensive plan. After the town board reported its findings, the county planning and zoning committee held a public hearing on the request. After the zoning committee voted in favor of the rezone, it was forwarded to the full county board which also offered its approval.
Kroll said the town doesn't have much leeway in denying a zoning request, and neither does the county.
"To deny it would have opened us up to a lawsuit from Glenn Schiffmann, in addition to basically telling people that the comprehensive plan is worthless if you're not going to follow it," he said, stressing that these decisions are not based on how many signatures are on a petition for or against a proposal.
Kroll noted a remark he said was made at the board's July 8 meeting. Someone said they had recently moved into Newbold "and now that I'm here, I don't think you should allow any more construction."
"It's the Lambeau Field mentality, nobody can come in until somebody dies," Kroll said. "And that, obviously, is not reasonable either."
He said that future use of the land was taken into consideration when the comprehensive plan was being written.
"So the town looks at that several years ago and said if we're going to have development, this is one area where we can permit some limited development, and we would accept some recreational zoning in this particular area," Kroll said. "Not single family, not high density development, but recreational which is a low density development."
Kroll said zoning also gives the town more control over the division of the land by the minimum lot size provision. He used the 40 acres of land he himself owns that is zoned recreational and farming as an example.
"If I chose to divide my land up, the smallest lot I could make would be 8 acres. But if I wanted to request a zoning change to single family residential, then we could probably go down to half an acre," Kroll said. "The comprehensive plan keeps people like me that have a nice, pristine 40 acres from turning that into a subdivision and putting 20 to 30 homes in there and ruining the neighborhood."
"But, again, we have to know that growth is going to occur," Kroll said. "Nancy Verkuilen coming to Pickerel Lake was growth, that's change, and it is going to happen. She can't come into Pickerel Lake and say 'OK, I'm here. Nothing else can change now.' It's just not the way it works. But that's the way some people want it to work."
He also noted that "the purpose of our comprehensive plan isn't to stop growth, it's to guide growth."
"That was the intent from the beginning," Kroll said. "And I think it has done a very good job of that. Prior to adoption of that comprehensive plan, if Mr. Schiffmann had wanted to divide that land into little tiny pieces and put 50 homes up there, he could have done that. The comprehensive plan restricts that and it guides growth into more reasonable areas at reasonable rates."
Rezoning the land from forestry to recreational "allows him (Schiffmann) some freedom to develop that property."
"You can develop recreational more easily than you can develop forestry," Kroll said. "But here's the thing, those discussions were all had when we developed the comprehensive plan. We looked at the town as a whole, and we said understanding that development is going to happen, where do we want to guide that growth. The land in question was zoned forestry, and when the town looked at the town as a whole, it said in this particular area - and quite frankly based on other areas of that lake where there are buildings, where there's been development, this is going to kind of be an extension of that, it is zoned as recreational."
While he's aware that some on Pickerel Lake remain unhappy about the rezone, Kroll said he does not foresee the town board revisiting the issue in the future.
"I believe we have beaten it enough," he said.
Jamie Taylor may be reached via email at jamie @rivernewsonline.com.
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