To: LWRA members
As you may know, the LWRA appeared, last month, at a Huntsville Committee of Adjustment hearing to oppose a plan to redevelop 844 North Waseosa Lake Road (owned by Wright & Jager). The Board had looked very closely at this application and found a number of serious problems with it. The Committee of Adjustment accepted misleading information and erroneous conclusions in approving it.
Following the AGM, the Board was approached by some residents and asked if there was anything further we could do. Because we believe that the Town's Committee of Adjustment improperly allowed such a significant deviation under the guise of a "Minor Variance", the Board of Directors were unanimous that it is in the community's interest to take the Town's decision to the OMB and ask the OMB to rule on it. If the Town is permitted to treat such a project as a "Minor Variance", it could be used as a precedent on all of our lakes. As always, our goal is to protect our lakes and the surrounding lands, to help us all maintain the quality of life we have come to enjoy. This is also the purpose of the zoning bylaws.
We are sympathetic with the plight of the landowner who is, in a sense, caught in the middle. We have had several discussions with the landowner in an attempt to find an acceptable compromise that will meet their needs yet still maintain the necessary protections. We have proposed a possible solution that meets their stated objectives, yet be almost completely consistent with the existing SR5 zoning and the Town's Official Plan. We have made it clear that we are open to any similar alternatives that better suit the landowner yet substantially comply with the established measures designed to protect our lakes. To date, we have not received such a proposal. We have also offered to attempt to settle this through mediation, and the Town has accepted that offer in their response to our appeal.
We believe that negotiations are most likely to succeed if the respective parties are not deeply entrenched in a public position. Recognizing that when all this is settled everybody will still have to live next to each other, we have kept all negotiations confidential thus far.
We are told that a relative of one of the owners of this property is circulating a petition to gather support for the family's development of the property and to request that the LWRA withdraw its appeal of the Town's decision. We have not seen the wording of the petition. Since the landowners have decided to make this public, we have taken the unusual step of posting the relevant facts and documents (such as the development proposal along with the LWRA response and the recent LWRA proposal) on the website at http://www.lwra.net/Wright-Jager
-- The Board of Directors of the LWRA