Zoning panel ships shipping container issue back to towns

Oneida County towns will once again be asked to weigh in on the years-long debate about the use of shipping containers for such things as storage sheds, boathouses, and residential homes, after county supervisor Billy Fried asked the Oneida County zoning committee if it would consider resurrecting the issue.

Late last month, the zoning committee discussed several options, including creating a new zoning district or sending a resolution defeated last year back to the county board for reconsideration, but decided in the end to take supervisor Mike Timmons’s suggestion to resurvey the towns about what they would like to see.

The resolution defeated last year would have regulated the containers in various ways — most notably, prohibiting them in single family residential neighborhoods for more than temporary use. 

It failed on a tie 8-8 vote, with four abstentions from Rhinelander supervisors.

The defeated ordinance proposal would have set minimum requirements, established setbacks for the structures, and it would have allowed up to two shipping containers in all zoning districts for up to 45 days for temporary storage, and at construction sites for the duration of the project, to be removed within 45 days of the project’s completion or upon the permit’s expiration.

However, it would have prohibited permanent placement of shipping containers and semi-trailers in single family zoning districts and in multiple family residential districts, and their number would have been restricted in certain other zoning districts. 

They would have been prohibited on the island business district of Minocqua. 

At a late September zoning meeting, zoning director Karl Jennrich said the ordinance was bounced around among the towns for several years after several towns, including Minocqua and Lynne, expressed a desire to have permanent placement of them banned, and he said Fried, who represents Minocqua, had contacted him about the process of trying to get the matter back before either the county board or the committee.

Fried spoke at the meeting, saying he initially was under the impression that he could bring the defeated resolution back to the county board for reconsideration and had requested it to be considered at the last county board meeting. He said he acted on his own because the zoning committee has been consumed with other things and a discussion had failed to take place for several months.

“When I did submit my request for reconsideration, corporation counsel said I did not have the ability to do that,” Fried said. “It had to come from the committee for reconsideration. So I wanted this on the agenda to kind of outline what is the path or what’s the intent, if any, of this committee to have any further discussion.”

Zoning committee chairman Scott Holewinski once again expressed his opposition to a countywide regulation but said that, as before, he had a solution that would make everybody happy.

“If Minocqua wanted this separate, we could create a zoning district just for Minocqua and this would all be settled,” he said. “But you got all the other towns that don’t want more rules like Minocqua wants. And so we’re trying to write the ordinance to please Minocqua, but the other towns don’t want it.”

Not rocket science

The solution was simple, Holewinski said.

“We create another residential district,” he said. “Minocqua says, ‘okay, we want it in this, this, and this area. And it’s just like Forestry C or whatever we created for Ted Cushing’s districts [in Hazelhurst].”

The idea is, by creating a new residential zoning district that regulates the containers, Minocqua and other towns could replace their current residential zoning districts with the new ones if they wanted to, while towns that did not want the regulations could keep things as they are. 

Fried responded, for one thing saying Minocqua wasn’t the only town seeking the regulations.

“You’re saying it was just trying to accommodate Minocqua, but I believe … it wasn’t just for Minocqua, and other towns had input,” he said.

Fried also said the idea of a new zoning district was a great idea to consider but that, when he talked with Jennrich about it, Jennrich told him there were some challenges that would make the idea problematic. 

“That’s why I was like, you know what, this is worth the reconsideration because when it came to the county board, it passed your committee unanimously, yet some of you — and I know it’s your right — voted against it at the county board,” Fried said, adding that he thought a lot of things got lost in the county board discussion.

“In my perception, I thought it went way into other more broader subjects than what the intent was of the rewrite,” he said.

Jennrich explained his reasoning, saying the county would either have to create a type of overlay district — he said he needed to speak with the corporation counsel about that — or, if a new zoning district was created, towns would have to go through a process of rezoning portions of the town to the new zoning district. 

Jennrich compared the issue to the time Three Lakes wanted to allow horses in some single family areas.

“Three Lakes wanted to allow horses in single family residential on parcels, let’s say five acres or greater or something to that effect,” he said. “Well again, there was no appetite by a lot of the towns to allow horses within single family residential. So then again, they wanted to create a separate zoning district.”

The thing is, Jennrich said, zoning is not done parcel by parcel but according to government lots and quarter sections. 

“Again, what I think Mr. Fried is trying to say is, does the committee have any appetite to push this back forward to the county board for reconsideration?” he said. 

Regulating beauty

Supervisor Mike Roach said he opposed any reconsideration because the container issue boiled down to aesthetics and he said you can’t regulate aesthetics.

“What you think is ugly, I think is beautiful,” he said. “You can’t get into the aesthetics. If we’re going to outlaw these containers, how is it different than saying, ‘I’ve spent $5,000 at Menards to place one of those little huts to put my tractor in and I put Minnesota Viking colors on it or something else that offends you? Are you going to now say those are outlawed, that you can’t get those from Menards?”

Roach said people don’t like the containers, and he didn’t either, but that wasn’t the point.

“I’m all about doing the right thing here,” he said. “And you can’t get into aesthetics. My wife doesn’t like trees. I like trees. I mean it is different people, different things. So I’m not in favor of bringing this back.”

There was some discussion about the ability of one supervisor to bring a resolution for reconsideration if the committee of jurisdiction decided not to. Fried relayed the corporation counsel’s thinking.

“My understanding was, because it’s an ordinance amendment, reconsideration of an ordinance amendment that’s been defeated would have to come from the committee of jurisdiction,” he said. “That’s what I brought to you.”

Fried also pointed out that Minocqua has placed a moratorium on the containers. 

“It expired once, and they put it in place again,” he said. “It’s a little questionable, just like we had with the CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), on how long you can do this and we are just looking to see how the county was willing to proceed, be it reconsidering this or looking at other alternatives to help them before that moratorium expires.”

Holewinski said he still did not understand why creating a new zoning district would be so difficult, even if towns had to rezone some areas.

Jennrich recalled the county’s old overlay districts for minimum house sizes.

“The only thing similar to what we’ve done in the past is, actually, I was looking at a 1970 ordinance today that was given to me and back in the day we had building size overlay districts, which was sort of almost like it was a separate ordinance that overlay the zoning and that was the only thing I can think of, as possibly having some kind of overlay district for portable storage units to give the towns the flexibility of what zoning districts they are allowed in and not,” he said. “The only other option is, again, like you stated Mr. Holewinski, is to create a separate zoning district, or call it single family 1B, where we would create it and that zoning district would address the concerns of Minocqua, not only just for portable storage units or whatever other concerns they may have, but then they would have to go through a process of rezoning their town from whatever district X to whatever district.”

Holewinski observed that other towns would be able to use the new residential district, too. Jennrich cited the residential retail district, which he said really only exists in Minocqua, and Holewinski said that when Forestry 1C was created, the rezoning wasn’t complicated. He said it seemed like a good idea for Fried to work with Jennrich to create a new district to bring to the committee for consideration.

Jennrich reminded Holewinski that the committee could just ask the county board to reconsider the initial resolution.

Fried spoke to the aesthetics question raised by Roach.

“I totally respect where Mike’s coming from, but that’s where I perceive it as getting too broad,” he said. “If you want to take that type of thinking, you can apply it to everything you talked about as a committee and there’d be a lot of things you got to throw out. I get it. But this is something where I think it got way out there in the discussion. The intent was totally wrong.”

Under the new regulations, Fried said, shipping containers could still be used, just temporarily so.

“We have ordinances against junkyards, and there’s people that pay to be in single family and there’s certain expectations,” he said. “This is something that’s not going to go away. They’re being used not only as boat houses, but as many homes and other things, other configurations. I think this would help you guys get leverage on some of those challenges ahead.”

Fried suggested taking the defeated resolution back to the county board for clarity, before trying to create a new zoning district.

“I think a lot was left out of that [county board] discussion, that people were misled,” he said. “And if that fails then we can look at the redistricting. It’s certainly up to you, but I think it’s worth it, especially with the time that staff has on other matters to have a fresh look at it and probably not this September meeting, either at county board, maybe in October.”

Timmons then proposed another way besides creating a new district, or sending the resolution back to the county board for reconsideration, or simply voting not to reconsider the issue at all: He suggested sending the issue back to the towns to again gauge what approach they would like the county to take.

 “Why don’t we send it all back, have staff send it back to all the towns, and get feedback,” Timmons said.

 And that is what the committee decided to do. The towns will have until November to chime in.

Richard Moore may be reached at richardd3d.substack.com.