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Board of Zoning Appeals overturns planning staff, grants Tangens permit for kitchen in accessory building
Summary
The Miami County Board of Zoning Appeals unanimously granted an appeal from Lorelei and Eric Tangen, overturning a planning‑department denial and allowing a kitchen and additional sinks in an accessory building. The board said it was deciding on staff interpretation of current code, not on potential code changes.
The Miami County Board of Zoning Appeals voted unanimously July 7 to grant an appeal by Lorelei and Eric Tangen that asks the county to allow a kitchen and multiple sinks in a detached accessory building on their 13‑acre parcel.
Planning Director Kenny Cook told the board staff had denied the Tangen application because county practice and a kitchen definition added during accessory dwelling unit (ADU) updates have historically treated a second kitchen as evidence of a second dwelling. In a staff summary, Cook said those interpretations have been applied to limit kitchens in accessory buildings except in narrowly defined circumstances such as an ADU, conditional‑use permit for a business, or a qualifying agricultural exemption.
The applicants argued staff was enforcing a customary one‑sink rule not found in explicit code language. Lorelei Tangen told the board she and her husband operate a small farm and that farmers‑market rules (and the Kansas Department of Agriculture list of approved kitchens) left them without any rentable facility in Miami County that met their needs. "Miami County is following an unwritten rule based on custom rather than what is actually written in the code," she said, arguing the denial had delayed their project and that a conditional‑use route was cost‑prohibitive.
Board members questioned staff about alternatives and said the issue — whether a kitchen by itself must convert an accessory structure to a dwelling — was precisely the kind of interpretation the BZA is charged to review. After discussion commissioners moved to approve the appeal and direct staff to issue the permit consistent with the board's interpretation. The action overturns the planning department decision for this application; staff and the applicants noted that any future broader change to the county's accessory regulations would be handled through a text‑amendment process.
Next steps: staff will implement the BZA direction for this permit and the county's text‑amendment work on ADU/accessory rules remains a separate process.
