By Jef Rietsma
Vicksburg municipal officials last month completed a critical, long-term goal centering on ordinance amendments and zoning updates.
McKenna Associates’ Kyle Mucha, serving as the village’s zoning administrator, walked council members through a number of the changes. Following the Nov. 4 meeting, Village Manager Jim Mallery explained the significance.
“A big part of this was getting the ordinances to reflect the reality of R-2 zoning,” he said.
Mallery speculated that some of Vicksburg’s original ordinances were adopted about a century ago and likely copied from other communities out of convenience.
He said the task of updating the various ordinances was a two-year process that also included a long and thorough review by the village’s Planning Commission.
“Arguably, I could say these changes were made to make life better for village residents … it’s saving them money so they don’t have to pay $750 for a variance, for example,” Mallery said. “The most significant change out of all this, in my opinion, was reducing the setbacks on lots in residential (zoned R-2) areas.”
Mucha covered several ordinance changes that were subsequently approved by council members. Highlights include:
- Food trucks. “We’ve talked about the applicability of this ordinance, definitions, regulations of where mobile vendors would be permitted, business hours and days, storage of equipment, traffic, signage, waste, lights, noise, parking, alcohol sales and so forth,” he said. “This does not apply to village-sponsored events. This would be applied to private-property events.”
- The village’s zoning ordinance itself. “A lot of our provisions in here are to help regulate and clean up some inconsistencies, some gray areas, such as our schedule of regulations, reducing restrictions for the R-2 District, amending our site-plan-review process by offering clarity of when a site plan is required and when it can be done administratively,” he said.
It also involves adding modifications to non-conforming uses and modifications to special land uses. Specifically, special land-use matters would need approval by the Planning Commission only and not by the Village Council, Mucha noted.
- Setbacks. “We’re also recommending some modifications to existing ordinances for setbacks from lakes, ponds, streams and rivers, reducing that from 100 feet to 50 feet,” Mucha said. “As some of us are aware, we ran into concerns with some development in past years on the ponds because of these setback requirements, making some parcels almost unbuildable because of the regulation.”
- Off-street parking. “This will simplify and clarify where off-street parking is required and when it’s required,” he said.
- Service and drainage. “This was a recommendation from the village engineer, from inconsistencies or unclarities that he was seeing,” Mucha added.
- Parking-use table. “This amendment would hopefully help streamline when the number of parking spaces that are required for different types of uses,” he said. “In general, the intent of all these changes is to help streamline and make our ordinances more efficient moving forward, and also reduce potential barriers to development within the village.”
Council President Tim Frisbie said he appreciates the time and commitment the village’s Planning Commission put into combing through all the ordinance updates, acknowledging it was an arduous task.
Meanwhile, Mucha offered a positive opinion of modifications to the village’s R-2 standards.
“They will reduce minimum lot areas to 5,500 square feet, minimum width to 60 feet, maximum lot coverage to 40 percent and the minimum setback of front yard 20 feet from property line, sides to 10 feet and rear to 20,” he said. “We noted there are a significant number of parcels in the R-2 District that don’t meet our current standards, so this will help correct a lot of the non-conformities in the R-2 District. Not all of them, but it will make a significant improvement on our non-conformities.”
Council member Chad Kissinger noted the amendments will make it easier for residents to perform home improvements.
Mucha then focused on zoning amendments. He said one clear example of why updates should be considered is the Shell gas station. It sits on property zoned residential, for example. In addition, he said the village has a four-plex residential unit on property originally zoned industrial.
“By rezoning these (26) properties, all the uses currently in place can stay,” he said. “They would be considered legal, non-conforming if they ran afoul of anything. We’re not proposing to change any of the uses, we’re seeking just to modify our zoning maps to better align with the existing uses on these sites.”
All changes will take effect by the end of the year.
In other Village Council news, Jessica Cox was welcomed to the seven-member council during its Nov. 18 meeting. Cox, and incumbents Ryan Wagner and Gail Reisterer were the top three vote getters out of a five-person trustee race in the Nov. 5 election. Meanwhile, Frisbie was uncontested in his bid for village president. He, too, was sworn in for another four-year term.
