July 1, 2021 at 3:40 p.m.
Ridin' around in the breeze, finding violations as he pleases
Ridin' around in the breeze, finding violations as he pleases
Commandant Karl, as we fondly call him, seems to be everywhere, keeping the county safe for zoning justice. There he was on Hwy. 47, busting someone for an alleged illegal sign he "happened" to see. There he was in Woodruff, readying his missiles for what he says was an unauthorized fireworks business that he happened to see. And there he was on Country Club Road, wondering why oh why someone would have so many rocks on their property - rocks he just happened to see.
Must be doing something illegal, he decided, displaying the finest of fine government thinking, and so Commandant Karl promptly ordered his zoning enforcers to breach the property and find out what the culprit was up to.
As it turns out, the "culprit" - aka the property owner - was Minocqua resident Doug McCoy and he wasn't doing anything illegal. In fact, what he was doing was work he and his team had outlined exactly to the zoning department, which had issued him a permit to do it.
Now all of this may sound like amazing incompetence, and for sure it is, but there are even more troubling issues that this incident calls attention to.
Most troubling is that zoning staff, led by Commandant Karl, feel empowered and privileged to be able to violate your property - and your rights - anytime they feel like it, essentially.
Of course, the commandant says it's not like that at all. He says it's not like they are riding around looking for people to harass; they just nail a violation and a violator when they happen to see one.
To not do so would be irresponsible, he says. It would be like witnessing a bank robbery and just walking away without calling the police.
Well, not quite. To be sure, we recognize that, from time to time in their travels, zoning staff do see actual violations and, given their jobs, should take action. But that's not what happened in the McCoy case.
In that instance, Commandant Karl saw no bank robbery, to use his analogy. He saw no zoning violation. He saw nothing that even suggested a zoning violation was happening or about to happen.
All he saw was what he describes as "a large amount of landscaping rock." But there's nothing illegal about having those rocks. There was nothing at all to suggest anything sinister was planned for them.
There were no tips or complaints from citizens. Nothing but those rocks, sitting there, minding their own business.
But Commandant Karl jumped to the nastiest conclusion possible: Must be a violation going on. It's quite like seeing a black van with tinted windows parked in front of a bank and assuming it's the getaway vehicle for a bank robbery taking place. Call the police! Trouble's afoot!
Now Mr. Jennrich could have - since he is the zoning director, after all - checked to see if a zoning permit was open on the property, which it was. At that point, there would be ample reason for the rock to be there, and Commandant Karl could have just driven on and enjoyed an ice cream cone downtown.
But instead he called in zoning enforcer Keith Chors, who promptly intruded the property and found what Commandant Karl was looking for - a likely violation!
Enforcer Cohrs called in the commandant just to confirm, and sure enough: "Gotcha!"
"Gotcha" because they found an earthen wall built according to the guidance given to the builders by the zoning department itself and built as portrayed on the zoning permit - which presumably by now Commandant Karl and Enforcer Cohrs knew existed - but which, through the bureaucratic lens worn by the zoning enforcers on the ground, looked to them like an illegal retaining wall.
Now this is not surprising. Those who have followed the escapades of Wisconsin's zoning bureaucracies through the years knows they don't see the world quite like the rest of us.
Where we see family homes and cottages, they see repugnant junkyards of human detritus despoiling the environmental aesthetic. Where we see beautiful landscaped yards, they see fields of human infestation, harboring the most vile poisons possible.
A maintained or repaired or restored lawn is bad enough, but throw in an earthen wall that has some stacked rocks, or maybe too many rocks in the arbitrary opinion of the zoning enforcers (after all, there's no code definition of an earthen wall and, by their own admission, on the McCoy property the zoning staff never measured how much rock there was versus how much earth) and it becomes an unimaginable sin against the gods of the universe, in other words, against DNR overlords in Madison.
So off the enforcers went to the zoning committee, who had to spend taxpayer money and time (beyond what Commandant Karl and Enforcer Cohrs spent) to travel to Minocqua for their own on-site. After that, it took less than 20 minutes to find what was apparent all along - Mr. McCoy had done nothing wrong but had simply executed what was on the zoning permit.
Yeah, we're scratching our heads, too.
The whole incident, though, begs for the county to take action on several fronts. The most important is to stop the zoning staff from making unreasonable entries into private properties to check out their hunches and suspicions. This is a violation of basic private property rights, but obviously the zoning staff is doing it.
In this they are enabled by the county code itself, which declares that the zoning director can "inspect properties for compliance with this ordinance, regardless of whether a permit has been applied for or issued under this ordinance."
That language is a blank check. Taken at face value, it gives the zoning director authority to enter any property at any time, just on his whim.
It should be changed to give the department the authority only to enter properties with active permits, or if a citizen complaint has alleged a zoning violation or the staff has actually seen such a violation, or if there is probable cause to believe there is a violation.
As for that probable cause, the ordinance should define it by the legal standard, namely, probable cause cannot be established by mere suspicion alone (He has a lot of rocks, he must be doing something nefarious!) but by more substantial facts that give rise to the probability that a violation has occurred.
And, because this is zoning and exigent circumstances requiring immediate entry are not likely to exist, the zoning department's belief that probable cause exists should be ratified by a non-zoning department official, such as the corporation counsel, or, better yet, the elected zoning committee chairman.
Then, too, the zoning department should be barred from any entry on the grounds that a violation "is likely" to occur. In a bureaucrat's mind, citizens are always "likely" to be doing something the government doesn't like. Violations must have actually occurred or be ongoing.
All of this would curb Karl Jennrich's flights of fancy, as well as those of his staff. And it would also blunt any harassment that zoning staff might be trying to undertake. It is disturbing that Mr. McCoy, who has challenged the zoning department and won on other issues, might have been targeted.
There's no evidence that he was, but then you know what they say about coincidences.
Finally, extra scrutiny needs to be given to complaints that are internally derived rather than being complaint-driven by citizens. Violations that arise during routine permitting process inspections are one thing, but those driving-around-in-the-breeze complaints need to be rare.
It's worth mentioning that the county code was not followed in the McCoy instance, in that a formal letter and notice of violation was never sent, as the code requires.
Mr. Jennrich mentioned that he wanted to get the property owner and builders a quick answer, and he also mentioned getting calls from other county board supervisors, which he characterized as an important factor. Requiring county staff to follow the code to the letter - as all staff should do - would alleviate that political pressure, but it would not preclude the zoning department from simultaneously pursuing a quicker resolution of the outstanding issues.
Finally, we worry that this incident illustrates a zoning department that is catering more to the agenda and interpretations of the DNR than to the elected zoning committee and the county code itself.
That zoning staff and DNR coordination has taken place became apparent in an earlier and exposed attempt by the DNR and some private citizens to rewrite a portion of the shoreland zoning ordinance without the zoning committee's knowledge. In that case, the DNR eagerly worked with zoning staff, including Commandant Karl, but refused to meet with the elected zoning committee itself.
In this case, it is inexplicable to us that when staff members compared the actual work to the McCoy permit, they saw a product that didn't match the permit; but when the zoning committee compared the permit to the work, they saw an exact match.
It's all the more amazing because the builders had followed the guidance given to them by zoning department staff. Something doesn't add up, and the elected zoning committee should get to the bottom of it.
Somewhere along the line - between the guidance given to McCoy's team and Jennrich's Road to Damascus moment on Country Club Road, when he suddenly had a vision of a zoning violation - the department's interpretation of earthen walls became a lot, well, muddier.
Another way one could look at it is that it became sharply more restrictive to the bureaucrats on the ground, to the point of contradicting the department's own issued permit.
Did this new interpretation arise from a heavenly body or a government body? We'd like to know.
It's important because the committee and staff will be working on an ordinance amendment to clarify the earthen wall versus retaining wall distinctions. It would behoove the citizenry to watch the work of the department very closely, lest the county give Commandant Karl even more fodder for his afternoon drive-abouts.
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