Author: West
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Village Ordinance Changes
As many of you know, the Village Board is often times making changes to their ordinances. I’ve asked the board as well as Mr. McKee to provide either an out loud reading, or some notification accessible online so that the electorate has an easier and more convenient means to inspect these changes between the first and second readings, so as to give the public a chance to respond at the next meeting before the second reading is voted upon.
Thankfully, Mr. McKee has acquiesced to this request, at least in this instance, and provided the “first reading” copies of the modified titles on their website for the public to view, noting changes on the document in red. It should be noted that this release of information digitally is above and beyond the minimum requirements for the village, which by law must post this information in three public physical locations. (reference – https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/985/02/2/a)
You can find those documents and changes on their ordinances website, here, at the top of the page:
Let us hope that this becomes the new standard, giving the public a greater input into changes affecting them. Thank you Mr. McKee, and Ms. Roemhild, for making these more easily accessible to the public!
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Fees and Documentation
It’s just been brought to my attention that the fee schedule set by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue is not NEARLY sufficient to appropriately compensate the Village of Fall Creek for their time and effort in producing the digital packets that I was seeking to release periodically (such as the “May and June” roundup that I’ve already released).
This is disappointing. And apparently, I’m unable to, by law, compensate the Village more appropriately for those services, as those fees are set in stone with no room to help it match the ACTUAL time and labor necessary to produce that documentation.
As such, I will no longer be seeking that documentation. Anyone else that wishes to of course can, but I’ve learned that it’s nothing more than a burden on the Village to do such a thing, so perhaps it’s something that should be saved for “special cases”, rather than being a standard regular periodic exercise.
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My Primary Ballot for August 9th
The State of Wisconsin, at https://myvote.wi.gov has a FANTASTIC app built into the website that lets you pre-fill a ballot form online, and then print it out. If you do this with your phone, you have a chance to export it as a PDF. This is a GREAT public service, and I appreciate it.
Now, you should note that this is NOT an official ballot. This is merely a web form that you can then print off and bring with you to the polling place, so that you can more easily remember who you’re going to vote for. No election security concerns here!
That being said, here’s my ballot, do you have yours ready for Tuesday? Let’s make it happen!
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Fall Creek Village Board of Trustees Documentation Round-Up – May and June
In my ongoing effort for greater governmental transparency, I’ve requested the “Info Packets” that the Board of Trustees have access to during their meeting, for the months of May and June. I will keep requesting these as time goes on and keep posting them for as long as I can.
These are packets that in my opinion the Village should have prepared, finalized, and released to the public freely at least 72 hours before any board meeting. Otherwise, how will the citizenry have the knowledge to make informed decisions and comments regarding what subjects the board will be addressing? The “Agenda” is insufficient to this purpose, in my opinion. It’s a scaffolding, that’s missing all of the meat and details that the Board looks over during every meeting. Often times, those details are referenced by page to the Board members, who all look it over while the citizenry can only sit in the audience and wonder what exactly they are looking at.
So, until we can change the laws to make this more accessible to the public, all I can do is to provide these, after the fact, to the public. I gladly pay the labor charge for Renee and Joan to do the effort to put these together for me, so that I may share them with all of you.
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Board of Appeals Meeting 07.20.2022 Recording and Commentary
Below you will find the recording for the Board of Appeals meeting that took place on 07/20/2022. This was the first time I’d ever sat as a representative on a government body. The subject in question (as I’d previously posted) was a new sign for St. Paul’s Lutheran Church designed and to be built by Signart.
See below for my notes related to this meeting. I came into the meeting full well being willing to approve the variance, as it’s my belief that all things should be permissible on someone’s property, unless that thing would cause provable harm to another person. And from the position and size of the sign, it didn’t appear in my estimation that it would cause any real provable harm to any person, just as the Fall Creek School District sign doesn’t.
However, after we got into the thick of the meeting, and I listened to Marv Schmit, Jared McKee, and Tim Raap (who was sitting in an “audience of one” off-camera), I discovered that the situation was much more complex than it appeared at first. The key issue here wasn’t just the variance request, and whether or not to approve it, but whether or not the Board of Appeals had the AUTHORITY to approve such a variance, based on the size itself.
The primary ordinances in question were the following:
Bulletin boards and identification signs (on or off-site). Bulletin boards and identification signs for churches, schools and other permitted institutions and nonprofit organizations, not exceeding 32 square feet, one per zoning lot on which such use is located. Such sign shall be located entirely within the property line of the use.
268-42BShowing that any sign of this type must be at most 32 square feet, and the notes from this section of the Village ordinances:
Area Variance: Variances permitted under this section shall be limited to the following so-called area variances: which are limited to height, bulk, setbacks, area, yard, parking, and basement requirements only.
268-70A(2)…which basically limits from what I can see the power of the appeals board to these specific attributes of a village property. And since the “area” mentioned in the ordinance is mentioned in every other instance in the ordinances in that section as meaning essentially “the square footage of the property itself”, and with the ordinances showing no allowance for the Board of Appeals to allow for a variance for the area of the SIGN itself, I was forced to conclude that the board had no authority to issue and permit such a variation.
I don’t like it, not one bit, but I was tied by the existing laws of the land, and it is important for us, now more than ever, to respect the rule of law rather than the rule of our hearts. Because the human heart is a fickle thing and can waver from one moment to the next, while (as I stated in the meeting), the gears of government turn slowly, but DELIBERATELY. It is more important in this post-insurrection era, that we hold ourselves to the intentional mechanisms of the Law and change those laws through the proper and appropriate channels.
This is why we also moved to recommend to the Planning Commission and the Board of Trustees the following (and this will be my paraphrasing of the motions, the actual motions themselves will be in the meeting minutes to be released at a later date):
- For the appropriate parties to look over these ordinances and update the existing ordinances to the modern era and to be more in line with the existing signage that’s already been permitted in the Village.
- For the appropriate parties to reconsider section 268-70A(2) and either EXPLICITLY allow the Board of Appeals to rule on “sign area” variances or any other area variances, or to explicitly DENY this power to the Board of Appeals. There should be no legal gray area in this, and since this was an issue already, that issue should be resolved before it can be brought up again.
Now the Planning Commission and/or the Fall Creek Village Board of Trustees can meet on this, modify these ordinances further to “make room” for this sign, or modify the ordinances to give the Board of Appeals explicit permission to hear such a case, and I’ll be happy to see that new sign shining brightly on State Street.
But as it stands now, at this moment, it was not appropriate, for me at least, to make such a determination.
