County grants property size exception for land swap

Taylor County will allow an exception to the zoning rules to allow for a noncomforming property to get a little bit bigger.

Zoning committee members on January 11 allowed a land swap of .13 acres of land between properties owned by Timothy and Suzanne Netzer and John and Bette Heier in the town of Medford. In the agreement, the larger lot would go from 1.83 acres to 1.70 acres and the smaller lot would go from 1.58 acres to 1.71 acres in size.

There is a shared ditch line between the two properties and the additional land will move the property line away from the building and to the middle of the ditch. The property owners worked out the agreement for the land swap and it was also approved by the town of Medford’s planning commission.

“You have two neighbors working together to resolve an issue,” said committee chair Jim Gebauer, noting that the county should be encouraging people to work together like this.

In general, current county codes require rural residential lots to be at least two acres in size. The rule was changed to increase lot sizes to 2 acres, prior to that, and going back to 1989, when the rules were put in place, the minimum lot size was 1 acre.

As county zoning administrator Kyle Noonan explains, the existing lots created before the rule changes are considered non-conforming with the goal to not make them more nonconforming.

When certified survey maps and other subdivision requests are made, Noonan’s office will review them to make sure they meet county codes and either approve or deny them. In this case, with the county’s rules about lot sizes, he was forced to deny the request, opening the door for the property owners to file an appeal to the county’s zoning which triggered the January 11 meeting.

It was noted that the county’s zoning rules regarding lot sizes and other things applied only outside of areas that are part of municipalities with their own zoning rules such as the city of Medford which allows for much smaller urban lot sizes.

Later in the meeting, committee members approved an increase in the fee charged when people appeal the zoning department’s decision. Currently the county charges $200 which is intended to cover the cost of publishing the public notices for a hearing as well as administrative expenses. In the time since the fee was last reviewed, the rate for the legal notices (which is set by a state board) went up so the actual cost for the notice is about $226.

Noonan noted the people filing the appeals are not even paying the cost of the advertising for the required hearing. Adding in the departmental time in preparing the information for the committee, Noonan suggested setting the new fee at between $250 and $300.

Committee members agreed and voted to set the new fee at $275.