I had the opportunity to watch the video for the 11/16/2020 Board of Zoning Appeals meeting and can report that variances were granted all around. Yay!
I appreciated that the board did seem to give careful thought to each situation and try to make sure that these variances were legitimately necessary to prevent undue hardship and that the homeowners weren’t trying to use it as a way of getting out of basic responsibilities.
A neighbor of the people asking to build a 4 foot high front yard fence instead of a 3 foot high front yard fence attended the meeting and said that he was just seeking information. He had received a notice about the variance request but did not know any of the details. When the details were explained to him, he said he approved of the project and thought it would make his neighbors lot look nice. The board did vote to approve that variance but they kept in mind that once this variance was granted it would stay with the house forever, so they tried to make sure that the language of the motion they voted on would only allow a fence that was open and decorative, and would not allow a future property owner to install something such as a closed paneled wooden fence fence that would block the view of the yard and be unsightly.
They did also vote to allow the lady who wanted to build a garage 4 feet from her property line instead of the normal 6 feet but only after they investigated whether it was feasible for her to build an attached garage or to build it someplace else on her property. They also were concerned about the proximity of her garage to her neighbor’s structure (although the neighbor himself had no issue with that), and wanted to make sure that the structure would be appropriately fireproofed. The builder who accompanied the property owner assured them that it would.
The final property owner was seeking a variance to build their house 5 feet from the property line instead of the required 6 feet due to WE Energies having run a cable along the very northernmost edge of the 6 foot easement they had on his property–this after telling him they would run it along the southernmost edge. Due to that, the builders were left without enough room to put the basement where they otherwise would have. The Board made sure (a) that there were not any other realistic and non-exorbitantly expensive options and (b) the homeowner had not been in a position to be reasonably expected to have known this was going to be an issue. It sounds like a lot of the problem was caused by Time Warner Cable illegally having run a cable on this property several years ago without having gotten an easement…right where WE Energies was going to lay their cable. As a result, WE Energies lay their cable further north than they planned and the homeowner ended up with less buildable land than expect on an already narrow lot.
It’s more than a little obnoxious that there isn’t a cost effective way to make Time Warner Cable fix their mistake.
See full meeting details here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=813010&GUID=C5C2C9DC-83E1-4005-A8BA-FDF86F9497CA&Options=info%7C&Search=&Refresh=1
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