City of Monroe's Zoning Code Revision Passes but Linda Compora Votes No
Sending a seeming inept planner Ben Tallerico to greener pastures let engineer Pat Lewis, P.E. take over the planning function and this we got the work done quickly finishing in December 2006.
Linda Compora failed to derail the
Her public antics would be sure to win the best home video award if a home video camera were used. Compora never cited anything other than the issues John Iacoangeli had with the historical aspects of the code as reasons for voting no. If she had any objection to the I-2 zoning of the Monroe Transfer property that would have been the time to bring it up.
We have worked on the code for a long time. There are provisions that might be better stated. However althoigh the new code is no better than the old. It is time for any final changes and passage.
One Provision is a snake that may bite us but if enforced as written is good.
265.17 Neighborhood Commercial Uses
Here it is proposed to provide for a cluster of neighborhood commercial uses. While this may have the best of intentions for the reasons stated it is a snake that will bite us. The prohibition of liquor or alcohol can be banned by local option for a political subdivision which is rare in Michigan. This is more common for whole counties in some southern states and appears to be a conspiracy between the preachers and bootleggers which has open approval of the population as a part of a regional subculture. Simply stated, prohibiting liquor sales in a grocery store is not possible unless we vote the city dry. Otherwise, the state liquor laws will control who can and cannot sell alcohol. The council need only say yes and we get a party store in spite of zoning as shown below. The other uses proposed are permitted home occupations with the exception of the spa.
Example of our last Neighborhood Commercial Use
Do we want more?
Chapter 1272 Concerning
Signage
Our objective is should be to provide equity and keep the rights to erect certain temporary signs within the bounds of common sense and human nature. There is a good reason to provide an overlap between real estate for sale signs and garage sale signs. Simply stated persons are observed placing garage sale signs on the nearest intersection to the sale in the terrace much the same as realtors are permitted and appear to remove them once the sale is completed. Indeed the writer has observed this many times and it avoids the placing of signage on utility poles and other such structures. Thus keeping the signage in a similar context is “close to human nature”.
Suggested Action
Revise the signage regulations to provide an off site provision for garage sales and try to keep a much commonality as possible between the regulations for garage sales and reality sales.
Historical Note
The city at one tine proposed only one sale per household per year. This was due to abuse by quasi-charitable groups. Limiting the sale to goods from a single household is a good requirement.
Major Breakthrough Announced
At last we Monroe citizens have hope of progress and putting a stop to some wasteful spending and poor decisions. The planning function has been assigned to the Engineering Department making Pat Lewis, P.E. Director of Engineering and Planning.
The budget for the fiscal year July 1 2006 through June 30, 2007 provides for this change which will prove highly beneficial change was passed by council Monday April 17, 2005. In the webkeeper's opinion, only one councilperson, Linda Compora went into a rant attempting to goad Mayor Cappuccilli into an argument over an item she obviously did not understand. If she is going to serve on council she should research any questions she has before the meeting by contacting city staff or the mayor. Again, is is only the webkeeper’s opinion that Linda should focus on the business of the city and cooperate with her fellow councilpersons and the mayor.
Engineers have a compulsion to get projects accomplished. Engineers are taught to plan and carry out projects. Engineers also look for ways to improve the city. Thus engineers view everything as in need of planned improvements and keep their priorities in line with the available resources.
David Alkire Smith - Web Keeper
April 25, 2006
Draft Zoning Ordinance on City Web Site
The following is a draft of the proposed City of Monroe Zoning Ordinance. This draft has been made publicly available in order to invite feedback from the residents of Monroe. Table of Contents
Accepting Responsibility
Your Web Keeper has been seriously in error in blaming any one person for a lack of progress toward a zoning code revision. For example, early in his tenure here, I could agree with what Ben Tallerico saw as serious problems with variances approved by the ZBA. It could be that pressures from within and without city hall have caused him to become discouraged.
One cannot say with any certainty all of the pressures that can have served to discourage a planner. These could include:
A perception of pressure from a Mayor who is an excellent planner but some consider an excessive need to always getting his or her way. The Mayor's way may have been best but without consensual validation would fail.
Pressure to inject into the code any language from any source that appeared to protect the single family home from all manner of smells, sounds, vibrations and even undefined electromagnetic effects.
Demands to protect all historic properties in the city with an overlay plan that too much uncertainty as to who would administer such requirements and where the overlay might be applied.
Thus, the issue may be not how Ben failed but how we as citizens failed Ben when he needed encouragement to do his job. Perhaps we should have demanded a day's work for a days pay—an old but good way of doing business.
David Alkire Smith - Web Keeper
March 9, 2006
A Flashback
Hate and Violence over Duplex & RM Zoning
If you wish to take a historic single family home on Macomb Street and carve it up into four to seven low income apartments this is something you can do. Some neighborhoods have resisted this most notable the neighbors on east third street where small single family homes are zoned RM. It is a nice neighborhood that absentee landlords can easily trash.
One landlord has a favorite trick of buying homes from older couples on land contract promising long term income. The owners never get a penny and the home is finally demolished after being condemned with no taxes ever paid. Often use as a as a crack house leads to blight and disrepair... So sad.
Newspaper Reports December 14, 1999 incident
An Opinion of the Web Keeper
There is now fresh hope that we can deal with the slide in demographics and loss of home values in the city compared to the surrounding townships. In the web keeper's opinion, our planning wizards feel no need to work on a good zoning code with any sense of urgency because they continue to get paid and they have no vested interest in ever getting the rewrite finished. It is the writer's opinion that they are honestly unable to accomplish any meaningful work product are redundant to our needs as staff persons and should be turned out to seek employment in the real world.
The Monroe Evening News recently reported that John Enos was a half time planner for Huron Township. Given the population of Huron Township and growth in quality housing stock, perhaps John could be employed here for the other half of his time. John has served for a trainer for the ZBA. The fact that John Iacoangeli had to go outside of the city for training expertise speaks volumes about the sorry state or our planners.
Jim Tischler and John Iacoangeli were both excellent planners. One thing that makes for such excellence is knowing what to do and doing it.
February 21, 2006
It appears that Ben Tallerico department's ability to think requested variances through and see the extreme substandard variances requested by developers as being self serving to the developer and not the community is a serious problem. It is only a way to allow absentee landlords cram more slums like dwelling units in a limited space.
In fairness to Ben and his planning staff, it could be they have a type of impairment that results in an inability to understand what the lines and symbols on the expensive site plan documents required to be prepared for staff analysis for a proposed development actually mean. The term for the ability to visualize what is on these costly drawings that anyone including the VFW must submit when the plan a building is called Spatial Intelligence—the ability to look at a two dimensional drawing and visualize it in three dimensions. Thus the ability for the planning department also known as developer services to look at a drawing and see what variances to explain the required variances needed if the project is to go forward results in construction delays and higher costs to do business in The City of Monroe.
It took three trips by MB&T to the ZBA when one would have sufficed for all needed variances. The VFW is on their second try, this time for a flagpole.
There is no obvious progress at all on the code revision. The CPC is on a second try to downzone some residential areas. Thankfully the CPC appears to be taking matters into their own hands and are moving forward on their own. This is actually the correct procedure because depending on staff to get anything done is unwise.
Do you wonder why the zoning code revision is taking so long—I do. Have you ever had a nagging feeling that something was wrong with a process and you are unable to define what the problem with the process is?
As a practicing consultant in metal stamping work, we have analytical tools to troubleshoot the stamping process. These tools include many methods of measuring, charting measurables, interviewing the persons that control the processes well as seeking the input of the persons who use the product produced by the process. From this data the client and consultant work together to correct the process so the desired result of the process meets or exceeds the clients’ expectations.
The writer is strongly of the opinion that our zoning consultants Carlisle/Wortman Associates, Inc. are highly qualified and have delivered good value for their fee. Consultants can only bring their respective skills to work with a client to achieve a good result. This is how the process should and usually does work. If we do not achieve a good revised zoning code in a few months of work and the process drags on for over a year,the problem is not chargeable to the consultant. The consultants can only do their best to satisfy the client.
If the municipal client wants a block of code to attempt to regulate some unusual problem the consultant may find what is requested in some other communities' zoning code and paste it into the code of the municipality. However, there is always the danger that the code is not based on sound science or has been invalidated by a court of competent jurisdiction and ought not to be used. Here, the zoning consultant has a much more difficult job than the stamping consultant because we work with the laws of physics.
The writer's view may be an oversimplification of the problem we have in revising the code. However if the consultant's time has been wasted in chasing dead ends and any lack of skill or cooperation by city staff has occurred, the solution may be to pay the consultant whatever is needed to finish the job and provide whatever oversight of staff that is needed to insure that their cooperation with the consultants and citizens occurs.
David Alkire Smith - Web Keeper
January 27, 2006
Zoning Code Revision Progress Update January 23, 2006
In the writer's opinion there is still no progress to report. Many of our zoning experts who are on our payroll do not live in the city. The one thing these non resident experts can do well is smile nod and grin—at least when handed a paycheck. Some proposed changes have been pointed out as unsound and bad science as well as law.
The following is the writer’s opinion. There is a folk legend that the legislature of The State of Indiana once enacted legislation setting the value of pi at exactly 3.14. While the legislation was introduced on a whim, it never became law. However, what is proposed for ground vibration measurement by our planning staff is bad science and hence bad law.
In sound and vibration analytical work, frequency bands are broken up in some rational fashion such as an octave, third octave or some mathematical basis such as base ten or neperian logarithms. In no case is zero frequency considered to exist except in a philosophical sense. At zero frequency nothing moves and a mathematical chart shows the result to be an asymptote. One philosophical view is that time must exist otherwise everything would happen at one and no one would know that they ever existed or that the events of history ever occurred.
Further, because of ground wave propagation having nodes, a measurement at the nearest property line may reveal no violation. Three homes away from the property line may be where something exciting a vibration causes the chandelier to hit the dining room table. The proposal follows:
This Section to be Deleted in the Next Draft
1270.16 Noise and Vibration. NEW
(a) Noise which is objectionable as determined by the City due to volume, frequency, or beat shall be muffled, attenuated, or otherwise controlled and shall be subject to the noise regulations as contained in Chapter 654 of the City of Monroe Codified Ordinance.
(b) In addition, objectionable sounds of an intermittent nature, or sounds characterized by high frequencies, shall be so controlled so as not to become a nuisance to adjacent uses. Sirens and related apparatus used solely for public purposes are exempt from this requirement. Noise resulting from temporary construction activity shall also be exempt from this requirement.
(c) No use shall generate any ground-transmitted vibration in excess of the limits set forth below. Vibration shall be measured at the nearest adjacent lot line. The vibration maximums set forth below are stated in terms of particle velocity, which may be measured directly with suitable instrumentation or computed on the basis of displacement and frequency. When computed, the following standards shall apply:
|
Particle Velocity, Inches-Per
Second | |
|
|
|
|
Frequency
in |
Displacement |
|
Cycles Per
Second |
in
Inches |
|
0
to 10 |
0.0010 |
|
10 to 20 |
0.0008 |
|
20 to 30 |
0.0005 |
|
30 to 40 |
0.0004 |
|
40 and over |
0.0003 |
(d) Vibrations resulting from temporary construction activity shall be exempt from the requirements of this Section.
Here again, this is only one persons opinion. The section below is considered to be preempted from local regulation by Federal law passed by congress enforced to the extent needful by the FCC. This is so broad and vague that a user of commercial current could be charged with creating a disturbance when their air conditioner dimmed the lights of a third party when the problem is inadequate wiring. Whenever you put boilerplate in ordnance, it may sound like a good idea to the layperson but zoning consultants are not always experts at the law or engineering. When someone wants bad law enforced they have the code to point to back their demand. See Below:
This Section to be Deleted in the Next Draft
1270.18 Electrical Disturbance, Electromagnetic or Radio Frequency Interference. NEW
No use shall create any electrical disturbance that adversely affects any operations or equipment other than those of the creator of such disturbance, or cause, create, or contribute to the interference with electronic signals (including television and radio broadcasting transmission) to the extent that the operation of any equipment not owned by the creator of such disturbance is adversely affected.
Zoning Code Revision Progress Update August 1, 2005
There is no discernable progress to report. The Developer Services department, also known as the Development Services department is not working out very well in the writers opinion. The leadership seems to vacillate at the choice point and says yes when no is the correct answer. The ZBA granting a variance for one sign in the clear vision zone is not enforced. See:
Filling Station Exempt From ZBA
To developer services this means nothing.
Zoning Code Revision Progress Update April 22, 2005
The writer received the new zoning document code in word format from Bryan Powers of the consulting firm Carlisle/Wortman Associates, Inc. on April 11. 2005. I will share this with Mark Worrell who has no Internet capability at this time. Sue Gartz is no longer a member of the CPC and appears to not be included in the work.
Let me say that the consultant has been very receptive to changes of technical definitions when more concise and precise ways of stating a requirement are suggested. We must all remember that we are an old community that has problems related to the old French claims that split the community into narrow strips of land running from the river.
A priority should be to realize the realities of commercial districts where applying an utopian community layout to Monroe could and indeed has resulted in needless non conforming uses being created. For example, a simple change in definitions allowing small dairies with retail sales in a commercial district would make Independent Dairy a conforming use rather than non-conforming as is the present case.
Other changes such as defining a large commercial bakery with wholesale sales as belonging in a light industrial district while clearly permitting bakeshops with retail sales in commercial districts would be a good clarification.
A new 1265.17 proposing new neighborhood commercial uses in all R-1C, R-2 and RM zoning districts appears unwise. The proposed neighborhood grocery stores have historically turned into party stores selling liquor by a simple approval by council on the consent agenda. A barbershop or beauty shop operated by a resident of a home is perhaps already a legal home occupation.
A new section 1269.28 proposes historic overlay district regulations. I am in favor of historic preservation by voluntary means. Experience teaches that regulation and bureaucracy impedes rather than facilitates historic preservation.
The requirement for 65% clear class in the front floor facade of downtown businesses has caused many needless appeals the ZBA, all of which have been granted. Jeff Green was questioned as to where this existed in code and could not answer the question when serving as secretary to the ZBA. A look in the present code shows that the requirement is there and should be removed.
April 22, 2005
David Alkire Smith
Zoning Code Revision Progress
A small working committee composed of Sue Gartz, Mark Worrell representing the experience of the CPC and the writer representing the ZBA was formed by city staff to review the documents on a regular basis. Our first meeting was on November 19, 2004 and there have been no subsequent meetings. I view the document as being similar to an engineering reference work where progress typically takes a month for 20 pages. A revision of an existing reference work having serious problems may go at the rate of 40 pages a month.
As an author of such works, you need a technical editor and substantial peer review. I suspect the three citizens mentioned are the initial peer review and the community at large the final peer review. If the persons doing the initial peer review do a good job in an environment that facilitates progress, the citizens may be pleased with the result and find few changes needed.
I can only say that the only thing presented by staff for our review is the definitions, which are 44 pages in word format. This writer has submitted 49 annotated comments mainly noting the need for changes. The recommended changes are the types of problems that a person familiar with the modern automobile, motor hotel, bed and breakfast etc. would note. The same also applies to a person familiar with evolving case law with respect to the document we often forget, the United States Constitution. here is no provision in law for a working group of citizens to provide expert input into the document. Our work is a convenience to the consultant and city staff to expedite the revision and to head off problems early in the process. If there are problems with the work of the consultant and staff, then the place to learn of and voice concerns is at the Citizens Planning Commission (CPC) review meetings.
Any problem can either be solved in a public CPC meeting and the work laid on the table until staff and the consultant make corrections. One can envision a series of public meetings of the CPC to correct errors before the ordnance is presented to council for publication and required public hearings before that body conducted a meeting with the council with the required corrections noted by citizens are made.
March 24, 2005
David Alkire Smith
Zoning Code Revision Progress Update November 21, 2004
As of this writing, November 21, 2004, the consulting firm Carlisle/Wortman Associates, Inc. is actively working with the City of Monroe’s Development Services Department in rewriting the zoning code that governs land use in the city. The writer hopes that the new code will accurately reflect the actual use of property and thus allow normal economic forces to work in favor of the single family home.
Large areas of the city are zoned multiple family when single family is the overwhelming use. Correct zoning will encourage renovation of duplexes typically owned by absentee landlords into more valuable single-family homes. Lets look at letting normal market economics drive the improvement of our historic neighborhoods -- home ownership is an essential factor in stable neighborhoods.
Recasting the code every few years is essential to keeping the code easy to understand and apply. In the last ten years a sign ordnance, rental housing ordnance, and requirements for cellular communication towers have been added to name just three additions that need incorporated into the whole document as more than dangling additions. Every requirement that zoning and planning touches should be accessible in a well-indexed and logical format. This will require careful review by the consultants staff, city staff, and citizens at large.
The city website has recently been expanded to permit the code to be not only posted but also searchable. Posting the code has made problems with indexing each item and how to find it essential. Anyone with questions can also contact City Council by telephone or e-mail.
Citizens offer more input to the City of Monroe in 2002
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