By Debra Haight
J-E Correspondent
Oronoko Charter Township Planning Commission members took up three text amendments after public hearings at their meeting last week and ended up moving forward with recommendations on just one of the three.
The public hearings held at the start of last week’s monthly meeting covered proposed text amendments to allow schools as a special use in residential districts, change language about airports, and add the repurposing of old agriculture buildings as a special use in two zoning districts.
Commissioners heard comments from the handful of people in the audience and then discussed whether to recommend action by the Oronoko Township Board on each of them. While they decided to do so for the text amendment to allow schools as a special use in residential districts, they sent the other two proposals back to committee for further discussion.
Zoning Administrator Ryan Keough talked briefly about each proposed text amendment at the start of the public hearing.
He said the text amendment for educational facilities would make them an allowed special use in all residential districts. He noted that they are now allowed by right in those districts while they are allowed as a special use in agricultural-residential and commercial districts. “It doesn’t not allow them, it just makes them come to us,” he said.
He said the text amendment for the repurposing of agricultural buildings came about after a number of farm properties are being rotated out of use as farms. He said the proposed text amendment is similar to what Baroda Township already has in place with the Oronoko proposal more flexible.
He said the intent is not to create more event spaces in AR districts but to create some flexibility to allow for the repurposing of old ag buildings for other uses such as storage or landscape businesses beyond the current home occupancy rules that are on the books.
With the airport text amendment, it changes the current height requirements from the nearest airport boundary to the center of the airport runway. He said state’s airport height regulations go from the center of the runway and not the airport boundary.
Former Oronoko Township Clerk Suzanne Renton was the first to speak during the public hearing, asking about the church/school text amendment. She said she lives in a single family residential district and was concerned whether the text amendment would strengthen the ordinance or create more loopholes.
“Will it strengthen the R1 district or not and create more loopholes?” she asked. “Would it make the R1 district more susceptible to people coming in, tearing down homes and building a school?”
Keough and Planning Commission Chairman Jeff Lemon assured her that the new text amendment would strengthen the rules. Keough noted that churches are considered places of public assembly and already require a special use. “This adds schools to that,” he said.
The main other comment during the public hearing came from Forrest Claypool who lives on Scottdale Road. He said that he was concerned that the proposed text amendment for the repurposing of agricultural buildings could be misused and lead to unforeseen situations.
Claypool noted that he and others in his area had fought a number of years ago against people who owned a narrow strip of property near them and wanted to build a wedding venue, a wine tasting room and a storage building with apartments on the upper floor.
“We want to make sure this doesn’t create another loophole for them to make another attempt at doing something with their property,” he said. “I do see the advantage of using old barns for other uses but I want to make sure there are protections for the community.”
“We’ve had a couple of old farms being split up,” Keough said as he explained the reasoning for the text amendment proposal. “People have had the intent to run a home business but that would be outside of our current rules,” he said. “This would allow for uses like a landscape business but they would still have to bring their plans to the planning commission.”
“The intent is to allow for the repurposing of buildings that are vacant, abandoned or in disrepair,” Planning Commissioner Mike Camburn said. “We would still provide oversight and neighbors would be notified.”
Planning Commission Vice-Chairman Andrew von Maur chaired the master plan review committee that came up with the proposed text amendments. He said the committee’s goal was to add an item for repurposing agricultural buildings to the list of projects requiring a special use.
Von Maur expressed concerns that the proposed text amendment as currently written might be too open ended. He and others also pointed out that a number of the six items being considered to add to the agricultural-residential section of the zoning ordinance are already listed in the ordinance.
“Maybe it needs to be baked a little more,” von Maur said. “We want to make sure we get the language correct … It has a good intent to repurpose ag buildings, I just don’t want to create unintended consequences. I’m all for finding creative uses for old ag buildings and still have some oversight.”
Camburn noted that he would like to see the Baroda Township ordinance that was used as the basis of the Oronoko text amendment proposal on repurposing ag buildings.
Commissioners approved forming a committee of von Maur, Camburn and Bill Scott to look over both the ag building repurposing text amendment and the one about the airport height regulations. With the latter amendment, commissioners said they’d like to get input from the new Andrews Airpark manager before moving forward.
Upcoming
meeting
The commission’s next meeting will be Oct. 6 at 7 p.m. at the Township Hall.
