In another post, pleasantries of surveying in small town America were mentioned. My home town has a population of a bit over 4,000. The whole county only has 20,000. Until the last 7 or 8 years, we didn't have a Planning and Zoning board/department. In the city, there were a few rules to follow but they were simple and the fire chief was also the zoning guy. He was just somebody's Grandpa that just happened to be fire chief/zoning guy and was very cool to deal with. He always held firm when he thought he was right and he was right every time I ever had a chance to question him. Except for once. A client kept getting denied when applying for a building permit to build an automotive shop. Zoning guy said he was in a residential zone. Every map of zoning areas I could find showed the client clearly in the business zone. This went on for weeks. Letters, phone calls. Then the denial letter again. I didn't understand. Chief Poole had been a friend of my Dad's and they had a good working relationship when Dad was still surveying. I think Chief Poole still wasn't too sure if I had learned all Dad tried to teach me. He was nice enough on the phone when we talked. Finally I just came out and asked him if we could meet informally to compare notes and zoning maps. He was ok with that and sounded a bit relieved to meet without others listening in. I met him at his office in the fire department. I remember the small talk and memories of Dad we shared. Then came to the business end of it. I had butterflies in my stomach knowing I was about to question his decision. The official zoning map was just a reduced, color map with tax parcel lines and street names. Each zone was a different color and the mostly followed tax parcel lines. I saw my client's parcel right there in the business zone where I'd been saying it was. I pointed to it asked if that was the right parcel. He said "I don't look at parcel line to determine which zone. Property gets subdivided so parcel lines change. I use the bold zoning line which may or may not follow parcel lines." I still didn't follow his explanation until he pulled the scale out and scaled the intersection tie distance from my plat on the zoning map. He made a pencil mark where his distance put my client in a residential zone. I wondered if I possibly could have busted the tie or made a typo. I said "Chief Poole, may I try for myself on your map?" He stepped back with a reassuring hand on my back as he towered over me, watching. If I remember correctly, he pointed to the stated scale of 1"=100'. I spotted the bar scale elsewhere on the map and remembered that I thought the map looked reduced. I placed the engineers scale on the bar scale and it was obvious. Chief Poole realized it a second after I did. "Stacy, I'm sorry. I'm just a fire chief that inherited the zoning hat from the previous chief. I'm not good with maps other than general road maps. YOU are the map reader." He called his second in command into the office and proclaimed he'd made a mistake. The three of us enjoyed a laugh and a cup of coffee. I don't think I ever told anyone the particulars, just that he got tired of all the permit applications and let us by so we would shut up. Chief Poole put more faith in me after that. He corrected my oversight a few times but I never caught another mistake of his. That was surveying in small town America. Now there are zoning boards, planning commissions, zoning boards of adjustment, etc. R.I.P. Chief Niles Poole. You were a man of integrity.
Me. "What's the difference?"
T.C. Carroll "It's the difference between right and wrong!"
I don't mind Planning & Zoning but I despise variances because they are used to get around the P&Z rules and they are usually abused. And around here they have a thing called "Family Exemptions" which is another version of a variance that people use to circumvent P&Z.
It seems that many counties that have P&Z also have many ways to avoid and get around it because they don't have the spine to enforce it.
I've not understood family exemptions as being used to circumvent P&Z, they are exemptions written into state law to protect the public from over regulation. Also, they usually include exemptions to DOT purchases, cemeteries, utilities, boundary line adjustments and other exemptions the states feel important.
The family exemptions here have to do with minimum road frontage requirements for lot splits and lot size. Whereas anyone else would have to have the required road frontage because it is for a family member they conveniently and predictably ignore the P&Z rules. There are many measures in place to circumvent and thwart the rules and it stems from the good ole boy crap.?ÿ
The family exemptions for planning and zoning requirements I've work with were put in place to allow easier inter-family transfers.?ÿ The thought process being that planning requirements put in place to control and/or regulate development (especially in areas zoned agricultural) should not be an impediment to Farmer Jed cutting out a lot or two for his children on the homeplace.?ÿ ?ÿMost exemptions include covenants with the municipality stating that the newly formed lots are for immediate family members and if the lots are sold within a specific time frame then some sort of mitigation is required at that time to bring them into compliance?ÿ?ÿ
All the family exemptions I've worked on were 2 or 5 acre splits from a family ranch. The 2 acre splits happen only in residential zoning were the 5 acre splits happen in ag zoning.
Much like other exemptions the family exemptions do come with rules to prevent abuse.
The exemption I've always wondered about is the Mortgage exemption, a bank can take a mortgage out for a small acreage that surrounds a house and leave the rest of the acreage unencumbered. If the mortgagee gets underwater the bank can foreclose and then a new tract is created. I haven't seen any of them that I've done get foreclosed on,,,,,,,yet.
I had a call to do one and I was very wary of it. I finally talked to them over the phone and suggested a simple description that would include their house, access to a county road and electric line. I wanted nothing to do with that one.