THE BOARD WAS LISTENING...

...or at least most of them.

At the February Board meeting, during the public comment section, three people came up front to enter their input. Two of the three were former Board members themselves; the third was a former Planning Commissioner and former Board member.  The three agreed with each other.  The points made covered the procedures going on of late between the Board and the Commission and the inappropriateness of the most recently modified proposed Agritourism Ordinance language.  The language resulted from the changes made by the three male Commissioners, Cleminson, Hansen, and Novacek, despite opinions to the contrary given by Commissioners Barfknecht and Jennings. These details, such as the misplaced inclusion of the Outdoor Assembly Ordinance (OAO) because "it is already on the books," have been covered in this blog recently.

The three people giving public comments gave a reason for speaking up at the Board meeting instead of waiting for the scheduled public hearing on February 17th. That was that all three considered even holding the hearing on what they considered, in part, as nonsensical language (See previous posts) was a waste of Township time and money.

When it came time for the Board agenda item of "Agritourism," Supervisor Ceminsky STILL moved to forward the language in its most recent version to the public hearing.  Discussion followed. Chair Kenny Miller called for a roll call vote on the motion: Budenski- nay; Behrendt-nay; Miller-nay; Ceminsky-yea. (Supervisor Madden has been absent due to health problems.)


Ceminsky, in spite of the fact that he had been promoting and advocating for the agritourism ordinance over the past year and a half or so, went on to move that the matter of the agritourism ordinance not be pursued, or words to that effect. ???!!!
Roll Call:  All Supervisors voted "yea."

You should remember that this text amendment to the zoning code came up as a proposal by one individual person.  When that attempt was poorly done (my opinion), then-Chair Pete Storlie stated that the Board was "going to take this on." That resulted in Storlie's woefully inadequate definition-only proposal. Again, my opinion, although I am certainly not alone in it!

A Task Force was eventually appointed to examine agritourism more fully and come up with ordinance language. Open houses were held. Public comments were submitted.  It was also my opinion given during the comment period that this public input was poorly "examined" and in the case of written, submitted questions about the attorney draft, not at all.

Two of the three Commissioners voting to change the agreed-upon Task Force language to include the Outdoor Assembly Ordinance were also Task Force members. Again in my opinion, this was simply a thinly-veiled attempt to significantly raise the threshold for the number of people before an Interim Use Permit would be required.  The Task-Force-agreed-upon threshold for number of cars was taken out altogether. The inclusion of the OAO had actually been brought up at Task Force meetings (repeatedly, in fact) and yet was ultimately rejected by that group. But that wasn't the end of it as far as the two Commissioner/Task Force members were concerned, I guess. I am not saying that the Commission couldn't make changes, just that it was interesting to me that this significant but ill-reasoned change was still made even after the two had agreed to the Task Force language that was submitted to the Board as the group's work product.

A public statement made by Novacek about wanting to "keep in place what already exists" and exemptions publicly passed by the three male Commissioners for "seasonal, decorative lighting such as Christmas lights" and even "candles in pumpkins! (Cleminson)" made me wonder whether the Township's interests were what was being looked after, and I said so.

When Clerk Mira Broyles asked, "What about the public hearing?" Chair Miller replied, "Well, you'll have to cancel that."

So at least THIS Board listened.

We'll see what the future brings...