By Tray Ouellette
SLN Staff
The Village of East Troy Plan Commission member voted against recommending several ordinance changes to the Village Board at Monday night’s meeting.
The changes dealt with the requirements for water and sewer hooks up in the village and were being considered because of a request by a business that wanted to put up mini-storage units. The prospective owner of the storage units didn’t want to pay the estimated $250,000 for the utility hook up since the business would not use them as there would be no office and/or employees on the site.
Village Board President Randy Timms said because the property in question was at the “end of the line” for the utilities in the village and the property adjacent to it that would be the next to hook up to the utilities was actually in East Troy Township, he felt the “uniqueness” of the situation protected the village from problems if it changed it’s ordinances to allow for it not to hook up.
Several residents and Plan Commission members disagreed.
In the public hearing, residents and business owners Ted Zess and John Jacoby both addressed the board and said they are reservations about changing the ordinances and the possible future ramifications.
Zess said when there are holes in the system, it weakens the utilities and he cited the financial situation of the water utility as being a concern. He also cautioned the commission to consider the future.
“Leaving that open could let future businesses do what they want,” he said. “It sets a dangerous precedent.”
Jacoby said he agreed with Zess when he addressed the board and asked for further clarification on the reason for making the ordinance change because he didn’t think the plan to do so matched up with previous actions by the village. He said he thought the ordinance changes were “over reaching.”
“It doesn’t pass the smell test,” Jacoby said.
After the public hearing, the commissioners discussed the ordinance changes relating to the utility hook ups at great length.
Commissioner Linda Kaplan questioned whether allowing the mini-storage business to do as it was asking would cause a chain reaction, attracting other similar requests and if those were the types of businesses East Troy really wanted.
“I think we’re setting ourselves up for unintended consequences and setting ourselves up for less-quality businesses,” Kaplan said.
Commissioner Scott Seager asked the Zoning Administrator Tim Schwecke if there was anyway to give just that particular business an exemption for that particular property instead of changing the entire ordinance.
Schwecke said there wasn’t.
Commissioners Anna Mack and John Grudnowski also expressed concerns about what the ordinance change would mean in the long run. Grudnowski said he thought it would hurt the adjacent properties and businesses and bring down their value. Mack said she might be more favorable to the ordinance changes if there was an actual plan from a business to do this, but as it stood, she couldn’t support it at the moment.
Timms said there was a real business looking to build, but they didn’t want to spend “oodles of money” on formal plans and engineering if the village wasn’t going to do this for them.
After more discussion between the commissioners, where it was evident there wasn’t full support for changing the ordinance, Timms motioned to accept all the ordinance changes being proposed so the Plan Commission could recommend them to the Village Board.
Seager snorted audibly at the motion and asked Timms if he was really motioning to accept the changes.
When Timms said he was, Seager said, “This is ridiculous.”
Timms reiterated his position that because of the unique situation with that business and its location, and the fact that ultimately the Village Board would have to approve any developer’s agreement, they should recommend the ordinance changes.
Seager said the motion was “extremely careless” and offered no safeguards for the village.
The commission voted 4-3 to not approve the motion, with Seager, Grudnowski, Kaplan and Mack voting against it and Ed Arendt, Kirck Nelson and Timms voting for it.
Seager then motioned to approve the ordinance changes in the proposal which didn’t have to deal with the utility hook ups, which were mostly minor wording changes on other village ordinance and one change that would allow existing legal non-conforming signs in the village to add electronic message board.
The commission approved those ordinance changes and they will recommend the Village Board adopt them at Monday’s meeting.
