Zoning commission hears request for rezone; seeks new board member

By Randa Wagner

The for­mer Ohio Paper Stock build­ing on CR 30 8657 in Wash­ing­ton Town­ship may soon be the site of a work­ing business.

The owner of a busi­ness in Mar­ion County is seek­ing to locate some of his exist­ing pro­duc­tion at the site, a 70 x 120 ft. build­ing on 3 acres with 3-phase wiring and truck bays. The zon­ing needs to be changed from ‘res­i­den­tial’ to indus­trial to accom­mo­date the request.

Rural Zon­ing Com­mis­sion mem­bers dis­cussed the mat­ter at their Jan­u­ary 30th meeting.

“The zon­ing maps were drawn up in June of 2007,” said Zon­ing Inspec­tor Dan Lemke, “and because the build­ing was vacant when the zon­ing took effect, it was included in the res­i­den­tial zoning.”

Com­mis­sion mem­bers said when all the paper­work is turned in, the com­mis­sion can start the process of noti­fi­ca­tions and set­ting a pub­lic hear­ing date 20–40 days from the accep­tance of the paper­work. A pub­lic hear­ing is an oppor­tu­nity for neigh­bor­ing res­i­dents (to the struc­ture in ques­tion) to voice any con­cerns regard­ing the rezon­ing of the property.

A hear­ing date was set for Feb. 21 at 7 p.m. so the mat­ter could be dis­cussed at the zon­ing commission’s Feb. 25 meet­ing. Their rec­om­men­da­tions will be sent to the Regional Plan­ning Com­mis­sion by their next meet­ing on Feb­ru­ary 27. This will allow RPC to get back to the county com­mis­sion­ers, who then have a meet­ing and ren­der a decision.

Deana Detwiler’s res­ig­na­tion from the com­mis­sion leaves a vacancy, and a sec­ond alter­nate is needed as well.

Zon­ing Admin­is­tra­tive Assis­tant Kay Hass said she’d done a draft of a let­ter to the com­mis­sion­ers regard­ing Detwiler’s res­ig­na­tion and request­ing a replace­ment be appointed from a town­ship not already rep­re­sented on the zon­ing commission.

“We were draft­ing a memo from the com­mis­sion­ers to the town­ship trustees inform­ing them we need can­di­dates from Canaan, N. Bloom­field and Con­gress,” Hass said, adding she would fin­ish the let­ter and pre­pare it for delivery.

Elec­tion of 2013 offi­cers for the Rural Zon­ing Com­mis­sion will be post­poned until the Feb­ru­ary meet­ing due to the vacancies.

Finan­cial report

Finan­cial report Decem­ber showed an income of $310.50, expenses of S11,032.50 leav­ing a bal­ance of $48,157.72 as of Dec.31, 2012.

Zon­ing Inspec­tor Lemke reported peo­ple are respond­ing to the cer­ti­fied let­ters they have received inform­ing them they need to get per­mits for the struc­tures the auditor’s office dis­cov­ered when the asses­sor did their reap­praisals on county properties.

“Every 3 – 6 years prop­er­ties are reap­praised and reports come in of acces­sory build­ings that are new since the last appraisal that should be pay­ing prop­erty taxes,” explained Lenke. “If a per­mit was not filed for the struc­ture, it needs to be filed at this time.”

The pur­pose is not to slap penal­ties on peo­ple or gen­er­ate income, said Lemke, but to keep the records straight.

“When the auditor’s report came in, there were so many (adjust­ments) that we scratched off any that were under $10,000,” he said. “Folks need to come in an apply for a per­mit if it was built after zon­ing went into effect.”

He said county zon­ing only cov­ers 7 of 16 town­ships, and 6 of those 7 only came in under the plan at the end of 2003. Struc­tures built after that should have permits.

The next meet­ing for the Rural Zon­ing Com­mis­sion is Feb. 25 at 7 p.m. in the com­mis­sion­ers’ meet­ing room on W. Wal­nut Street.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Feb 6 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.