Agenda - Planning Commission - 09/06/2007

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August 15, 2007 I Volume 1 I No. 16 ability to maintain safety and control its road and right-of-way, the board's decision to deny the variance was reasonable. The lower court had also determined that the board's decision vio- lated Schmidt's rights to equal protection. Schmidt had argued that the board had granted a number of variances to neighboring property own- ers that allow garages or other structUres to encroach on township road setbacks. But the appeals court found that no variances had been ap- proved since 2002, when the road in question had been recorrfigured. Because equal protection claims require a showing that similarly sit- . uated parries received disparate treatment and none of the ,earlier ap- plications were made after the road was recorrfigured, Schmidt's equal protection claim had to fail. Because respondents' variance request was not filed "almost simultaneously" with these neighboring variances that were approved, the district court erred in deterrnini.J."1g that respondents were denied equal protection under the law. See also: Kottschade v. City of Rocheste1~ 537 N. W2d 301 (Minn. Ct. App.1995). Subdivision-Landowner and town disagree over inclusion of setbacks in defining lot size requirements Proposed lot with extensive wetlands cannot meet minimum building site requirements Citation: Doyle v. Town of Gilmanton, 2007 WL 2050345 (N.H. 2007) NEW HAMPSHIRE (07/19/07)-Doyle owned a 62.5-acre parcel of land in the town of Gilmanton. In October 2005, Doyle filed an appli- cation with the town's planning board seeking to subdivide the parcel into three building lots. Lot 1 would consist of approyimarely three and one-half acres and would include an existing house; Lot 2 would consist of approximately six and one-half acres; and Lot 3 would con- sist of the approximately 52 remaiL-u.ng acres. To meet subdivision regulations, each proposed building site had to contain a minimum of 30,000 contiguous square feet of soil suitable for building. Despite the large size of Lot 3, Doyle had difficulty identifying suitable land because the lot was covered ex-rensively by wetlands. The board held a series of hearings regarding Doyle's proposed subdi- vision. During these hearings, there was some debate about whether the land covered by setbacks ought to be iL"1cluded when calculating whether a proposed lot meets the miniL-num building site size requirement. Ul- timately, the board determined that uSe regulations excluded setbacks from the calculation of the size of a building site. Using this interpreta- 7 131