She took his seat on the Porter County Board of Commissioners, now newly-elected County Commissioner Nancy Adams, R-Center, is taking another role formally held by past county commissioner Bob Harper -- president of the Porter County Plan Commission.

At her first plan commission appearance on Wednesday, Adams was unanimously elected president by her peers 8-0 after being nominated by fellow planner Tim Cole.

The planners were less successful in selecting a vice-president which ended up with a tie vote between nominees Cole and new member Richard Maxey. Voting for Cole were members Sylvia Graham, Elizabeth Marshall, Herb Read and Cole himself. Voting for Maxey were Maxey, Kevin Breitzke, Rick Burns, and Adams.

“We hold the vote again at our next meeting when we have our ninth member,” said plan commission attorney Scott McClure. Lyndsay Ploehn was the member absent from the meeting.

The commission was also split in its board appointment to the county Board of Zoning Appeals. Cole won the vote over the other nominee Marshall 5-3. Voting for Cole were planners Burns, Cole, Maxey, Read, and Adams.

A Union Twp. rezoning case prompted a lengthy discussion among the planners about the “legal” and “philosophical” points of the county’s current Unified Development Ordinance.

Lake County resident Timothy Rouhselang petitioned to rezone 40 acres on the Southwest corner of CR 700W and CR 100N from Rural Residential (RR) to a General Agriculture (A-1) district. He said he plans to set aside ten acres of to build a house according to the zoning codes.

The case was tabled by the commission last month after members speculated that the plans for rezoning would go against what is said in the UDO.

Read made the observation that the commission has heard “a whole string” of requests recently that specifically call for setting up 10-acre lots in an A-1 district. He felt it should be known to the public that the lots being set up in A-1 are exempt from UDO standards.

Although he supports preserving farmland in Porter County, Read asked if the property could be developed without the rezoning. The petitioner said meeting the standards set for RR would not be affordable to him due to associated engineering costs. Breitzke, who is also the county’s surveyor, spoke of the need to have easements on the property to protect the hydraulic soils and low areas.

Since he believed the new zoning carried exemptions, Read said he could not support the request believing it would not be fair to the petitioners and developers who have conducted themselves in accordance to with UDO regulations.

“I say this is all a matter of fairness,” said Read.

McClure said the landowners would not be exempt from the requirements in the UDO that is mentioned for A-1. He did say the zoning would preclude the property from subdivision control, stormwater control, and open space requirements.

Marshall speculated that the request was not about preserving land for agriculture.

“It’s a petition that is asking for the owner, not for the land,” she said.

Marshall then posed the question should the UDO act as a “guide” for county planners or should it be enforced as the law.

Marshall and Read were the two naysayers in the final vote, 6-2. Breitzke made the motion to favor the requests carrying with it two measures.

One was for easements to be developed along the low areas and secondly that a development plan for the four lots be drawn up for county officials.

Adams felt the need to convene the commission for a meeting specifically for discussing the UDO in order to determine what is working well and looking at changes to provisions drawing conflicts.

Breitzke said the UDO is a “dynamic” document and suggested the commission meet in a workshop session.

A date for the workshop was not decided.

Plan Commission Executive Director Robert Thompson said he is also interested in looking over the UDO policies as his office is seeing a rise in complaints from the public over cases that were heard by the BZA since the adoption of the current UDO.

“We are constantly hearing complaints of the BZA,” Thompson said. “Maybe there is something wrong with our codes and I want to know.”

A staff member from the plan commission is currently researching the BZA cases looking for possible causes for the rise in complaints, Thompson said.

As the new president, Adams requested that commission members keep their comments brief to three minutes during the discussions to prevent their meetings from stretching into long hours.

Adams told the Tribune she would like to see the meetings become more time efficient and finish in around an hour’s time like the county commissioner meetings.

Posted 2/10/2011