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Board of Appeals sends Smolin campground buffer dispute back to zoning committee
Summary
Sawyer County Board of Appeals voted 4-0 to return an appeal by Darlene Smolin challenging a zoning administrator’s change to a 150-foot buffer condition in a 2021 conditional use permit, after hearing argument that the administrator exceeded authority.
The Sawyer County Zoning Board of Appeals voted 4-0 to send back an appeal from Darlene Smolin that challenges a February zoning administrator change to condition 11 of conditional use permit 21-013, a condition that had required a 150-foot buffer between a campground and adjacent property.
Attorney Max Lindsey, representing the appellant, told the board the zoning administrator “took actions to change that unilaterally without any notice, any procedure, any hearings, any opportunity for input,” and argued the change—replacing language calling for a 150-foot buffer with a requirement for a row of pines along a 100-foot residential strip—was not a permissible correction of a “manifest error.” Lindsey cited Sawyer County ordinance language defining manifest error as limited to typographical or clearly obvious drafting mistakes and said the administrator’s reliance on audio recordings to justify the change showed the issue was interpretive, not clerical.
Zoning administrator Jay Kozlowski and his counsel, attorney Malia Malone, told the board the administrator had relied on the hearing record and audio to interpret the zoning committee’s intent and described the change as fixing a scrivener’s error. Malone said the committee had discussed a 150-foot separation as a combination of a 100-foot residential strip (not part of the CUP) and a 50-foot setback, and that the practical reading of the record supported the administrator’s correction.
Members of the public and nearby property owners testified on both sides: supporters of Smolin said a single row of small pines does not meet the protection implied by a 150-foot buffer and raised procedural concerns about the administrator’s unilateral change; the property owner, Steven Boden Schatz, said he had planted screening and understood the buffer to be the 100-foot residential strip plus the 50-foot setback.
After hearing testimony and legal argument, the board voted to return the matter to the zoning committee for clarification of condition 11’s intended meaning and any required written findings. The motion to remand, as recorded by the board, passed 4-0. The board also clarified during the meeting that, pending further action, the existing language in the decision letter means the 150-foot measure is read from the campground boundary inward and that camping activity up to the campground side of that 150-foot zone is stayed.
The board’s action sends the underlying dispute back to the zoning committee for an explicit determination of what the committee intended on May 21, 2021, and for any formal revisions or findings the committee deems appropriate. The appeal will return to the appeals board after that committee action, per the board’s motion.
The board did not make a final ruling on whether the zoning administrator had the authority to make the change; instead members said the committee should clarify the original intent. The remand preserves appeal rights under the county’s appeal deadlines.
Appeal documents and audio from the 2021 hearings were cited repeatedly by attorneys and by the zoning administrator as the factual basis for competing interpretations of the condition.
The board closed the public hearing portion on the matter before voting to remand.
