Heralding the Dawn

 

County Zoning asked if I would be interested in joining the Zoning Arbitration Board.    The Board is made up of 3 voting members and 2 alternates.  An alternate position is open.   There was a meeting coming up and I could attend to find out what it was like before making a decision.  This morning I bopped over to the Court House.   The Arbitration Board only meets when Zoning doesn't issue a building permit and the landowner feels they deserve a dispensation.   The first half of this meeting was to review the results of a judge's ruling from an earlier arbitration.  A land owner had decided he 'didn't need no sticking permit' plus built too close to a road.  Zoning cited him.  He took his grievance to the Arbitration Board and they had denied a variance.  He had then taken it to court stating the Board was biased.  The judge had ruled for the Board of Arbitration.  The Zoning Administrator was advised to continue to cite him until it became less costly to fix the issue than pay the fines.   I had taken a class in variances recently and was pretty sure I wouldn't grant many variances - if any - should I join the group.  The second half of the meeting was to hear the case of a woman who wanted to rebuild a cabin within setback limitations.  A cabin had been built by her grandfather.   Much of the land around the cabin had been sold off over the years and then a new survey moved the lot line 16 feet closer to the house.   Her father had died, probate, a cellar wall had fallen in - anyway, now she felt the best thing to do was to tear down the cabin and rebuild in the same footprint.  Zoning had understood her issues but was legally unable to grant her a building permit because the cabin violated setback rules.  During this meeting the board members asked if there were alternatives (it was a small parcel to begin with and losing 16 feet had caused one violation),  sanitary requirements (the existing holding tank isn't hooked up but Zoning said that was a fixable and separate issue), road snowplowing (snow is already pushed to the opposite side of the road because other homes on that side were also originally built too close to the roadway), traffic (minimal since road is a dead end), etc.  At the end of the meeting the Arbitration Board granted the variance.  I would have too.  So much for my "I'd probably never grant a variance" stance.