Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By ZACHARY MARANO
Hurley — The Iron County Comprehensive Planning/Land and Zoning Committee passed its last conditional use permit for a tourist rooming house at their meeting on Tuesday. Under the county’s new land use ordinance, property owners must now apply for a TRH administrative permit through the zoning department. The last CUP for a tourist rooming house went to a site on Lipp Lane in the town of Mercer.
When he presented the amended ordinance to the county board in May, Assistant Zoning Administrator Gerry Nasi said that this change will streamline the tourist rooming house application process. Under the previous system, owners had to apply for a conditional use permit from the county and then for a TRH permit from the city or town.
The new ordinance also includes new stipulations, including that every tourist rooming house have a resident agent from Wisconsin within a certain number of miles of the property as determined by the city or town, unless the property owner is a permanent resident of the state.
Committee members indicated at the previous monthly meeting that they want more control on tourist rooming houses in addition to the new ordinance, including the authority to limit the number of TRHs in the county. However, the state does not allow counties to deny short-term rental permits unless there is something substantially wrong with the property, such as it not passing inspections.
Per the committee’s request, Zoning Administrator Erika Roeder and Nasi prepared a formal resolution petitioning Gov. Tony Evers, the state legislators and other counties to repeal this restriction. Nasi read the resolution aloud at Tuesday’s meeting, which included some of the reasons discussed at previous meetings.
According to the resolution, the committee wants greater control over short-term rentals because tourist rooming houses lead to a transient rather than stable population, deprive tight housing markets of available housing units and exacerbate housing shortages. The committee approved the resolution as presented.
The county also continued discussions from the previous meeting about storage containers that have been appearing on properties throughout the county, which Nasi said has led to complaints to the zoning department.
Since the last meeting, Nasi said he conducted a straw poll of towns in the county asking if they people want to see storage containers permitted as accessory structures, prohibited or allowed without permits. He said that six towns wanted to see them controlled, three wanted to see them prohibited and one did not respond.
The committee authorized Nasi to draft another resolution that requires people to obtain a permit from the county to have a storage container on their property. The committee considered whether the county should place a time limitation on these permits and concluded that they will leave that decision to the towns.
The committee also discussed a property owner in the town of Mercer who converted his accessory building to a habitable dwelling. Nasi said that Mercer granted a CUP for this building with the condition of no human habitation or commercial use in 2008 and he subsequently converted it into a dwelling without applying for a new permit.
The committee agreed to require this property owner to apply for a new CUP for a dwelling. Committee member John Sendra said that the owner will be taxed for a dwelling this year and for the previous two years.
The committee also:
—Rezoned a site on County Road FF in the town of Mercer from a forestry to recreation-residential district to bring into accordance with the Asset-Based Community Development plan.
—Allowed the construction of accessory buildings at sites in the towns of Oma, Saxon and Knight with separate owners.
—Postponed a decision on allowing accessory buildings at two sites in the town of Mercer with separate owners until they receive town approval.