Agenda - Planning Commission - 11/07/1996

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Z.B. October 1996 Page 5 The county Board of Adjustment granted the variance, but made the Miswalds put a restriction in their deed that the lots had to be sold together. In 1994, the Miswalds wanted to demolish their house and put up a new 28- by-42 foot, two-story house. Each floor would be about 1,200 square feet. The Miswalds asked the board for a variance from the shoreland and floodland protection ordinance's 10,000-square-foot open-space square footage require- ment and '15 percent maximum floor-area-to-lot-size ratio. If considering only the lakefr0nt lot, their proposal had 3,098 square feet of open space and a ratio of 45.7 percent. If all three lots were considered together; however, they would have a combined area of 12,227.5 square feet. That amount of land would give the Miswalds' proposal 10,470.5 square feet of open space and a floor-area ratio of 21.9 percent. (While they'd meet the open space requirement, they'd still need a variance from the floor-area ratio.) The board granted the Miswalds a variance for a 25-by-40-foot, two-story house with an exposed basement. Based on the lakefront lot's area alone, the board calculated that the variance would produce 4,300 square feet of open space and a 28.3 percent floor-area ratio/ The Miswalds asked a court to find the board should have based its compu- tations on;all three lots. They said because the board imposed the 1986 deed restriction, it had to consider all three lots as one. The court reversed the deci- sion, and sent the case back to the board. The board appealed. DECISION: Reversed, board's decision reinstated. The evidence supported the board's decision, so the lower court improp- erly overturned it. The judgment was reversed and the board's decision was reinstated.' The board did not have to consider all three lots together when computing the proposal's open-space square footage and floor-area ratio. Its imposition of the deed restriction on the 1986 garage variance had nothing to do with the variance the Miswalds wanted for their new house. The judgment was reversed and the board's decision was reinstated. The deed restriction was meant to ensure the Miswalds wouldn't sell the lots separately, making the garage an illegal structure that had to be torn down. Although this may have been a burden on their ability to sell, they also got the benefit of a variance that allowed them to build an accessory structure on land that had no principal residence. ._ By contrast, the ordinance's open-space and floor-area-ratio requirements were meant to protect the area's health, safety and environmental integrity. The board's decision to grant a specific variance from the ordinance's re- quirements was not to be affected by prior unrelated decisions that dealt with different issues. Arndorfer v. Sauk County Board of Adjustment, 469 N. W. 2d 831 (1991). Snyder~v. Waukesha County Zoning Board of Adjustment, 247N. W. 2d 98 (1976).