By Greg Ambrosius
The hearing on Waupaca County’s motion to dismiss our appeal against the Faulks Bros. sand mine is set for Friday, May 17, at 2 p.m. with Outagamie County Judge Vincent Biskupic.
Waupaca County is asking for a motion to dismiss in Circuit Court, claiming that Waupaca County ordinances say that the next step for this appeal must go to the Board of Adjustment (BOA) in Waupaca County. Judge Biskupic will hear responses from both sides and decide the next course of action.
Ironically, Zoning Director Ryan Brown spent 15 minutes discussing the Board of Adjustment’s role in this matter to the Waupaca County BOA members on Feb. 22, three days after we filed our appeal with his office. His message was that the Planning and Zoning Committee had the right to approve Conditional Use Permits and that even if the BOA disagreed with their decision on this permit, it could just come right back to the Planning and Zoning Committee. In fact, many board members stated that they want this to go right to circuit court because their decision carries little weight, which just isn’t true.
The Green Lake County Board of Adjustment overturned a Conditional Use Permit in December 2022 and that was the final decision. Brown has muddied the waters on the BOA’s role, and it will be tough to undo what he has told Waupaca County’s Board of Adjustment members.
I transcribed the entire exchange and you can see here how it will be tough for us to get a fair shake on this if it goes to these same Waupaca County Board of Adjustment members:
Ryan Brown: “If I’m understanding the room right, the Zoning Committee by ordinance is set up to be the stewards of Conditional Use Permits. So they’re the ones that have the given jurisdiction for those items. And so, now I’m not an attorney, so, just for the record for people watching on YouTube, if this were to get remanded, it wouldn’t make sense to me to get remanded back to the Board of Adjustment. It would get remanded back to the committee of jurisdiction, which would be the Planning and Zoning Committee for further instruction to fix whatever wrong or whatever interpretation issue or whatever got vetted out through either way or through circuit court or through the judge because in the end I see that the Planning and Zoning Committee are the stewards.
“The Board of Adjustment would only be used to determine whether or not the Board of the Zoning Committee made an improper decision based on an erroneous or wrong interpretation of a term or something like that within the ordinance. The scope that the Board of Adjustment would have is much more narrow.”
Woman board member (I couldn’t identify): “I would say just go to the Circuit Court. We’re just going to be a venue anyway. But that’s my personal opinion, but if we don’t have any jurisdiction on changing anything and it’s just going to go back to the Zoning Department whatever we say anyway.”
Male board member: “Then we’re like an advisory committee.”
Everyone: “Yeah.”
Second Female board member: “I feel we should be out of the process.”