Keeping Hinckley Rural – Zoning

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by Lisa

What do I think might help keep the township rural? I think we need a combination of changes to the zoning resolution, training for BZA members (possibly even replacing BZA members), and changes to how variances are written.

Zoning changes — Increasing lot size has been discussed, and doing so would certainly would reduce the amount of development. We might want to include minimum green space / maximum total lot coverage in the zoning regulations. Some townships out in Geauga County have looked at such regulations to retain rural character. As currently written, I believe I could transform the entirety of my 2 acre lot into driveway, parking lot, patio, etc. Or just pave the whole thing. Increasing minimum lot widths at the road might ensure homes are placed farther apart, although that might have the unintended consequence of moving some houses closer to the street with neighboring ‘flag’ lots in the rear. Increasing the side yard setbacks would ensure spacing between homes too. Including a slow growth plan — limiting the number of new construction permits per year — could ensure development doesn’t outpace the township’s ability to provide police, fire, and road repair services.

BZA Training — The BZA does not have legal authority to issue variances any time someone finds a zoning regulation inconvenient. Their authority is to issue a variance when strict adherence to zoning regulations deprives the owner of beneficial use of their property. An extreme example — a lot with a bunch of riparian setbacks that mean the buildable area is a 2×40 rectangle toward the front edge of the property. The BZA has the authority to approve a variance from the township’s fairly substantial front yard setback because a 2×40 buildable area has certainly deprived the owner of the ability to have a house on their residential property. Building a house forty feet into the front yard setback lets them have a 40×42 house that’s closer to the road than the zoning regulations stipulate. Building within a riparian setback can destabilize the bank of the stream, so isn’t a good option.

There are several variances where I don’t believe the requestor has shown a “practical difficulty” for area variances. These requests basically amounted to “yeah, I could do it another way … but I don’t want to”. The BZA does not have the legal authority to issue a variance, and I believe these variances would be overturned if challenged in court. That’s a whole process — and you’ve got to own one of the adjoining properties to have standing to challenge it in court. But there’s no reason the BZA should be exceeding its authority in approving variances, and it seems like they need to have what does and does not constitute a practical difficulty or hardship clarified.

Changes to how variances are written — I think variances should be written as restrictively as possible to address the specific problem presented to the Board. If my rear property line is 200′ long, and I want to build a 20×20 garage in the rear yard setback because of some Very Good Reasons, there is no reason for a variance of 20′ from the 50′ rear yard setback. Issuing a non-specific variance means additional, future, construction can also be built 20′ into the rear yard setback. Without having to show any difficulty in building the structure elsewhere — you’ve basically got a lot with a special rear yard setback instead of special permission to build that garage. Write a variance allowing 20′ at the rear of the property to have a 20′ variance from the 50′ rear yard setback. Write a variance allowing the building blueprints presented to the Board to have a 20′ variance.

Keeping Hinckley Rural – Senior Housing

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by Lisa

While I don’t think any survey with a 6% response rate is a reasonable basis for determining “what the township residents want” … desire for senior housing, called out in the 2015 comprehensive plan, seems reasonable. Two acres is a lot of property to look after, especially as you get older and getting around is more difficult. Walking the woods and mowing the grass … I could see this becoming a challenge. An apartment complex at the edge of town isn’t a popular solution, but how could the township make housing more appealing to older residents?

To start out with, I think any high-density senior housing should be a unique zoning area. S1. Getting property re-zoned is a more difficult path than requesting a conditional use be permitted. There’s more leeway to not re-zone the parcel.

Conservation development allows a development to bypass minimum lot sizes by using a combination of open spaces and private lots to average out to the minimum lot size. That is, if I have 200 acres in a two acre minimum district … I can develop a hundred one acre parcels and hold the other hundred acres as open space. What if we combine the high-density senior housing with a conservation development idea. A conservation development with small front, side, and rear yard setbacks that make quarter or half acre lots feasible. Then the senior development is enveloped in a huge area of maintained green space. This would allow for continued home ownership (I sure as hell don’t want to start paying a couple grand a month in rent after I retire!), minimize yard upkeep (part of the HOA fees could even go toward yard maintenance), and the rural environment is maintained.

Trail Expansion

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by Lisa

We’ve created a beautiful wood-chip covered trail in our woods — this has transformed the mucky maple harvest path into a usable trail and made collecting sap a lot quicker/easier (and less muddy!). This year, we’re working on extending the trail along the east side of our property. This will provide easier access to the maples in the back woods as well as the apiary. So far, I’ve cleared a bunch of honey suckle, multi-flora rose, wild raspberries, and general forest undergrowth. There’s a path angled off of the original path, a right hand turn, and a winding path along the eastern side of our property. Once we get it cleared, we collected a huge pile of wood chips from the Metro Parks this year that we’ll use to cover the trail.

(Mostly) Fits In a Volt

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by Lisa

Harbor Freight had one of their 20% off coupon sales for Fathers Day. We’ve been wanting to buy the 10×12 greenhouse for a while, and 20% off was the perfect opportunity to do so. There’s a site where someone details all of the tweaks they used to enhance the structure — we’ll be making a lot of these enhancements as we build the thing.

One of these days, we’ll have an electric farm truck running … but, until then, a 10×12 greenhouse in its box #FitsInAVolt … at least sufficiently to transport it a short distance home!

Adding MariaDB/MySQL Users

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by Lisa

Quick notes on creating a database user — MariaDB and MySQL use a combination of username and source host to determine access. This means ‘me’@’localhost’ and ‘me’@’remotehost’ can have different passwords and privilege sets. How do you know what the hostname is for your connection? I usually try to connect and read the host from the error message — it’ll say ‘someone’@’something’ cannot access the database.

# Create a user that is allowed to connect from a specific host
create user 'username'@'hostname' identified by 'S0m3P@s5w0rd';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON dbname.* TO 'username'@'hostname';

# Create a user that is allowed to connect from a specific IP
create user 'username1'@'10.5.1.2' identified by 'S0m3P@s5w0rd';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON dbname.* TO 'username1'@'10.5.1.2';

# Create a user that is allowed to connect from database server
create user 'username2'@'localhost' identified by 'S0m3P@s5w0rd';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON dbname.* TO 'username2'@'localhost';

# Create a user that is allowed to connect from any host
create user 'username3'@'%' identified by 'S0m3P@s5w0rd';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON dbname.* TO 'username3'@'%';

# Flush so new privileges are effective
flush privileges;

# View list of database users
SELECT User, Host FROM mysql.user;
+----------------+------------+
| User           | Host       |
+----------------+------------+
| username3      | %          |
| username2      | 10.5.1.2   |
| username       | hostname   |
| root           | 127.0.0.1  |
| root           | ::1        |
| root           | localhost  |
+----------------+------------+
6 rows in set (0.000 sec)

Civics Lesson – Federal and State Laws

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by Lisa

Civics classes seem to do a good job of explaining the framework for federal and state government. The branches and processes are covered as well. But, ironically, there’s not much information about laws enacted/enforced by these governments. Sure, you know the legislature writes a bill, both houses vote to make it a law, and the head of the executive branch (president or governor) sign their agreement with the law to actually enact it. But … then what? How do people know what the laws actually are?

Laws are maintained in the “Code”. There’s a US Code and state code — e.g. Ohio Revised Code (ORC) in Ohio. At the federal level, there are also regulations in the Federal Register — this includes rules (and proposed rules) individual executive branch departments enact. It also contains executive orders. States maintain their own registers — the Ohio Register, for example. Now, someone may think rules / orders from the executive branch fall outside the scope of the law — and that person is welcome to bring a suit challenging the law. But, unless there’s an injunction or the regulation has been overturned … it’s still a rule you need to obey.

In addition to the laws enacted by congresses and regulations written by the executive branch, the American legal system is based on “common law” — basically what a court decides about a situation based on their reading and interpretation of the laws becomes guidance for future or down-level cases. Which is to say you can read the Ohio Revised Code front to back and still not have a complete understanding of the practical implementation of laws within Ohio.

Take, for example, ORC 519.02 which states that

Except as otherwise provided in this section, in the interest of the public health and safety, the board of township trustees may regulate by resolution, in accordance with a comprehensive plan, the location, height, bulk, number of stories, and size of buildings and other structures, including tents, cabins, and trailer coaches, percentages of lot areas that may be occupied, set back building lines, sizes of yards, courts, and other open spaces, the density of population, the uses of buildings and other structures, including tents, cabins, and trailer coaches, and the uses of land for trade, industry, residence, recreation, or other purposes in the unincorporated territory of the township

That’s pretty open ended. What is a comprehensive plan? If you’ve got a chapter in your zoning resolution that’s called “Comprehensive Plan” is that good enough [spoiler alert: it can be … see Central Motors Corp. v. City of Pepper Pike, 63 Ohio App.2d 34, 65 (8th Dist.1979)] or does the Township need to break that chapter out into its own “Comprehensive Plan” document? Who is involved in writing that plan, how often can it be updated, etc. These details emerge as someone says “hey, court, I don’t think this is right” and the court clarifies some detail of the Code.

So you’ve got federal laws, state laws, federal and state executive branch regulations, federal and state executive orders, and decisions made in court cases that make up “the rules”.  Who do you complain to when you don’t like the rules?

Every time my daughter complains to me about being unable to drive, I tell her to write her state rep. Not because I particularly think the state rep is going to do anything, but “you have to be 16 to drive” is a state law. The only ones who can change a state law is the state legislature (I expect a federal driving age would be ruled unconstitutional, but starting at the federal level to change the ‘you only get our money if’ wouldn’t be a bad direction either. Sometimes the state has the law because federal funding is predicated on having the law — that’s how the drinking age got standardized across the country. But a state could, hypothetically, opt out of federal funding and do their own thing.)

What’s my point? If your township has some rule that you don’t like, there may not be much the Township Trustees can do about it. When the State Supreme Court has made a decision that creates a rule … you need to be talking to your state rep and senator to push to have that rule changed. They could pass a law that negates the court decision. Now someone could challenge the constitutionality of the new law in court … if the court deems the law unconstitutional, then the legislature could amend the state constitution too. When the federal government has created a regulation, you’d need to be talking to your federal rep and senators.