Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Zoning topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Richland County committee approves multiple small rezones and one postponement
Summary
The Richland County Natural Resources Committee approved several routine rezoning petitions—largely cleanups moving small parcels into residential designations—and postponed one petition after the landowner reported a misunderstanding about prior approvals.
The Richland County Natural Resources Committee approved several zoning petitions on voice votes, moving multiple small parcels out of agricultural/forest classifications into residential or agricultural-residential categories and postponing one application after the owner said she had not completed township-level approvals.
Committee members said the monthly batch included several “cleanup” rezonings where parcels had not been updated when they were split from larger tracts. Michelle Abashoff of Ithaca Township explained the mechanics of one split: “So it's owned by Dennis Brinkman, and he is taking 3 parts of it to sell to Scott Dietzmann. He wants to keep the middle parcel, the big parcel. And because none of Mister Dietzmann's land touches the other parcels, they can't go into his. It has to be rezoned.”
Planning staff described one petition as a roughly 30-acre parcel being rezoned from agricultural/forestry to agricultural-residential for weekend recreational use with a small cabin; staff noted the cabin will have electricity but no septic and that the owner must sign an affidavit for composting toilets. A separate petition concerning a parcel labeled in committee materials as 014.2044-1000 was postponed after staff reported the landowner had not received township rezone approval and intended to return next month.
Other items approved included a certifiable split near Rock Bridge on Steamboat Hollow road and a parcel on Castro Ridge that staff said had already been surveyed and recorded. Approvals were taken by motion and second with voice votes; the committee called for formal motions and recorded “aye” responses for the approved petitions. No roll-call vote tallies or individual nay votes were recorded in the committee discussion.
The committee and staff also discussed recurring packet and numbering errors that made tracking which petition corresponded to which packet entry difficult; staff said the confusion stemmed from recent state privacy rules that remove certain judge names from public packet entries and from mislabeling in the meeting folder. The committee asked staff to correct packet labeling and to continue coordinating township sign-offs prior to public hearings.
The committee's actions were procedural approvals and a postponement; no ordinance text changes were adopted at the meeting. Committee members said they expect the postponed petition to return next month once the township-level approvals are secured.
