Who Asked For This?
The community’s reaction to the new Zoning Ordinance makes it crystal clear that the Village is on the wrong track.
Reliable legal opinion tells us that the ordinance is invalid on its face. At best, the New Zoning Ordinance must be simplified and amended when a new President and Trustees can be elected.
The Village is doing two different things. First, the Village passed a new Zoning Ordinance that places new restrictions on every parcel in the Village. Second, the Village has developed a new zoning map with revised classifications.
Assurances were made about grandfathering – alongside language about special use permits and whether what you’re doing was ever conforming…
Large numbers of our parcels are now non-conforming. But if you sell, a special use permit may not prevent the non-conforming use on your zoning endorsement. It may lower your offer or even stop the sale!
A new zoning ordinance is typically approved with a new zoning map. Unfortunately, we have yet to see a final new zoning map. But it is coming…and your F or RE zoning may change to R, for instance.
Reporting in the Daily Herald and the KC Chronicle explain that an expert in Kane County zoning law haw written an opinion that our new Zoning Ordinance was passed incorrectly and is invalid. Is it possible we may need to go through the entire process again?
Voters wanted meaningful answers to the most basic questions:
“Kane County’s zoning was good enough. Why change?”
“Why does the Village need more rules and regulations?”
“I moved here for the semi-rural feel. Why is it necessary to change what we have?”
Janet sticks to the facts, no matter how uncomfortable they be. Two major areas that Janet will address include increasing and/or removing limits on animals, consistent with the 1975 County Zoning Code.
Janet will also work to clarify language and expand home owner rights regarding home business. The new Zoning Ordinance perpetuates outdated restrictions and does not clarify that most operators of home businesses today should not be regulated.
Some of these misleading statements include:
- “This process is NOT creating new zoning regulations”
This is manifestly untrue. The Village passed 127 pages of new Zoning Ordinance language that details all the various new restrictions that would be placed on our properties. This new Zoning Ordinance replaces the Kane County Zoning Ordinance the Village adopted in 2007, and in effect prior, that has governed our residents since 1976. - “All the meetings and workshops have been noticed and open to the public”
Perhaps. The best-attended sessions were in 2013. Even the workshops held in 2019 seem very long ago, and most residents were unaware. The “Steering Committee” was dominated by Mike Tyrrell himself. Post-pandemic, the community deserves a fresh start on a project of such immense significance to our residents. - “Simply, segments of the County’s decades-old code did not meet our community’s Vision.”
We don’t know what the community “vision” is, but it appears to be at odds with the “Vision” of Mike Tyrrell and his hand-picked “steering committee.”
A better explanation would have been to explain that the adoption of the Kane County code was always a placeholder and grant money had been accepted to reconcile a new zoning code with the Village subdivision ordinance. Some action was required. But in the end, we got a complex, restrictive ordinance we didn’t want, and we never did reconcile anything with our subdivision ordinance. Did we even actually comply with the terms of our 2013 grant?
Proposed Changes to Your Zoning Map